LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, ©1^......-. ©nit^rig]^ :|o UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. WORKS OF BENJ. F. TAYLOR. The London Times (Eng.) says: "Benj. F. Taylor is the Oliver Goldsmith of America." DUr.CE DOMUM ; The Burden of the Song. Beautifully illustrated by leading artists. Silk cloth, gilt edge. 82.50. "The poems in this elegant volume display the author's unique qualities in all their variety; they are the strings of an instrument touched by master lingers, to vibrations alternately tender and plaintive, quiet and restful, patriotic and religious, quaint and niirthtul." —National Baptist, Philadelphia. SONGS OF YESTERDAY. With elegant illustrations, uni- form with the above. Silk cloth, gilt edges, 82. ."iO. "There is a simplicity, a tenderness, and a pathos, inter- mingled always with a quiet humor, which is inexpressibly charming." — Boston Transcript. OLD TIME PICTURES, and Sheaves of Rhyme. Illus- trated. Small quarto. Silk cloth, $1..50: gilt edge, 81.75. " Elegantly printed and daintily bound, and in every way fitted to be a general favorite." — Advance. BETWEEN THE GATES. Illustrated. $1.50. •■It is more true in color and perspective than a photo- graph, and by one of the greatest word-painters in the world." —Trnbner's Oriental Record, London. THE "WORLD ON "WHEELS. Illustrated. Si. 00. " In purity of style and originality of conception, Taylor has no superior in this country. The book is a gem in every way. It is quaint, poetical, melodious, unique."— Sf. Louis Post-Dispatch. PICTURES OF LIFE IN CAMP AND FIELD. $1.00. " It is not extravagant to claim that these descriptions of actual campaigns and battles surpass in interest anything in romance. . . . Every chapter will make an old campaigner live over again, in glowing fancy, those heroic days."— r/ie National Tribune, Jf'ashingt07i. SUMMER SAVORY, Gleaned from Rural Nooks in Pleasant "Weather. $1.00. •' There are not many writers who get so near to the heart of nature. . . . There is in the volume a great deal of wis- dom, keen insight, and felicity of description."— San Francisco Bulletin. v^^^> J^^J-C, COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS S2 BENJ. F. TAYLOR. CHICAGO: S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY 1886. Copyright, 1873, 1875, 1878, and 1883, By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. Copyright, 1886, By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY, KHIGI4T & LEOMARnTi INSCRIBED MRS. ELLA BRADFORD BROWN, RELATIVE AND FRIEND. BENJ, F. TAYLOR. CONTENTS. I. POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE Lazy, .... Life On the Farm, Milking Time, Night On the Farm, The Morning, The Churning, Mowing, .... The Spinning Wheel, The Old Barn, The Flails, The Fanning Mill, The Old Barn's Tenantry, Husking, Money Musk, . The Old School House, School " Called," School Time, Going to Spelling School, How the Brook Went to Mill, The Miller and the Mill, The Psalm Book in the Garret, Daniel Webster's Plow, V PAGE. I 3 3 4 5 6 9 13 17 19 20 21 22 23 25 26 27 30 34 35 39 45 Vi CONTENTS. PAGE. The Old State Road, 47 John Benjamin, Driver, . . . . • • 49 John Benjamin's Picture, ...... 51 A Vision of Hands, 52 The Cider Mill, . . ■ 55 Hearts and Hearths 56 H. POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. A Winter Psalm, 59 October, ......... 62 June, ,......•.•• 65 The California Year 71 Thanksgiving, 72 The Child and the Star, 75 Easter, .......... 83 Old-Fashioned Spring, ....... 85 A Birthday, 87 Our Silver Wedding Day, 89 July Fourth, 1886, -92 Burns' Century Song 93 Decoration Day. 95 Indian Summer, ........ 97 April, ..-.•..•••• 97 September, ......... 98 HI POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. Flowers, ......•••• 99 The Sky Lark 99 The Rochester Robin, 102 The Thistle Sermon, 104 Two Birds of June, ... .... 105 August Lilies, . . no CONTENTS. Vil PAGE. January Roses, 112 The Colored Marble, ....... 114 The Rose and the Robin, ....... 115 Rose, Lily, and May Flower, . . . . .116 IV. POEMS OF NATURE. The Sun That Never Sets, 119 The Vane on the Spire, 123 The Shattered Rainbow, ....... 126 The Gospel of the Oak, ...... 127 The New Craft in the Offing, .... .128 The Northern Lights, ... ... 130 Rhymes of the River, ....... 130 The Chrysalis, ........ 134 Massachusetts Sends Greeting, ..... 134 Prairie Land, 138 V. POEMS OF HEROISM. Mary Butler's Ride 140 The Dead Grenadier 147 The Captain's Drum, . . . . . . . . 150 The Battle of Oriskany, 155 The Cavalry Charge, 156 The Hero of New Hamburg, 158 Don't Give Up the Ship, 163 Bunker Hill, ......... 165 General James B. Steedman AT Chickamauga, . . . 166 VI. DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. New York North Woods, 170 The Old Village Choir, ....... 175 The Overland Train to California. .... 177 viii CONTENTS. 206 213 216 218 The Bark "True Love " ''^^^• rj. ^ jg^ 1 ORNADo Sunday, . Fourth OF July AT "The Corners," . ' . " . ' " '^^ "Atlantic," . . , • ' • ^94 The Flying Heralds, . . . ' . * ' " ' '^^ Kelly's Ferry, . . •••••• 200 Old-Fashioned Declamation, The Old Meeting House, The Old Choir, . . . ^ ^^^ An Old-Time Picture, The Farmer One Hundred Years Ago, The Old Kitchen, ' ' " • • 231 Fort Dearborn, Chicago • • . 234 Chicago, . . . , • • • . . 236 Death of General Grant, . • • • 243 The Two Armies, ....'**' ^"^^ The Mingling of the Nations, . . ' ' ' ^^'^ Centennial Bells, ... • • • . 248 Dearborn Observatory, Chicago, . . -251 Wisconsin, . . _ " " • • 254 The Tennessee River, . . • • • 256 Building THE Bridge, ... • • • . 258 Fire and Water, ... • • • • 259 The Wonders of Forty Years, The Telescope, . The Telephone, . . The Telegraph, . . . ^ ' ^ The Old Songs, 260 262 266 266 Vn. POEMS OF SENTIMENT. Jenny June, To My Wife, ../''''' "^^^ 269 CONTENTS. IX PAGE. "And Forbid Them Not," 272 A Poet's Legacy, 274 Beautiful May, ......... 277 The Deserted Homestead, ...... 278 One Step More, 283 Four Years Old 285 The Isle of the Long Ago, ...... 287 Going Home, ......... 289 My Out-of-Door Cricket, ....... 292 God Bless Our Stars Forever, ..... 293 Rock Eyrie, 296 Welcome Home, ........ 296 "God Knows," ......... 299 It Will All Be Right in the Morning, . . . 301 The Flag, 303 The Past Is with Us Still 304 Two Rivers and Two Ships, 305 The Beauty of Death, ....... 308 The Garden Thermometer, ...... 312 A Lament for Adam, ....... 313 The Song of the Age, 315 The Two Johns, ....... 316 Silver Wedding Day, ........ 318 Monuments, ........ 321 Julia's Commencement Day, ...... 322 The Gospel for the Poor, ...... 323 Last Year's Dead, ........ 324 Mission of Song, ........ 326 The Old Hearth, 328 CONTENTS. VIII. POEMS OF WAR. Chickamauga, Grant, ... Sherman's March to the Sea, LooK-OuT Mountain, . The Battle in the Clouds, Storming of Mission Ridge, Arlington Heights, The Heroes and the Flowers, . Lincoln and His Psalm, . Twilight. PAGE. 333 334 336 339 340 344 347 353 C^' 355 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. LAZY. UNDER the maple tree lying supine, Timing the beat of a pendulum vine, Swinging the Delawares turning to wine. Gazing straight upward a mile in the blue. Watching a cloud that has nothmg to do, Wishing a deed for an acre or two; Nothing to do but come down in the rain, Born of the mist unto heaven again, Nothing to sow, and no reaping of grain. Watching a bee in his pollen pant'loon Droning him home in the chrysolite noon, Ghost of a drummer-boy drumming a tune. Watching a jay on the cherry tree nigh, Stranger to love, with its cruel bright eye; What of that jacket as blue as the sky? Splashing his crest with the cherry's red blood, Jauntiest robber that ranges the wood. Nothing will name him but blue Robin Hood. POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. Hearing a bird with her English all right Calling Somebody from morning till night, Waiting forever the mystic " Bob White." Woman's own cousin since Adam began, Beautiful Voice that is wanting a man. Quail in a coif of the time of Queen Anne. Counting the leaves as they drift from the rose, Strowing with fragrance my place of repose ; Dying? Ah, no, only changing its clothes. Watching a spider pay out her last line, Working at Euclid's Geometry fine, Web is all woven, and weaver will dine. Watching a fly laze along to its doom, Silken the meshes, but death in the loom, Shrouded and eaten, but never a tomb. Sparrow a-drowse on a limb overhead, Opens an eye when the spider is fed. Opens a bill, and the spider is dead! Watching a butterfly slowly unfold. Crowning a post with a blossom of gold Strange as the rod that did blossom of old. Hinged on a life is the duplicate page, Lettered in light by a wiser than sage, Lasting a summer and read for an age. LIFE ON THE FARM. 3 Burst from the bonds ! For that coffin was thine, Tenantless thing where the sycamores shine, Riven and rent, and the worm is divine. Born from the dust, and its veriest slave, Hail to the herald direct from the grave ! Pinion of beauty, resplendently wave ! Bringing from far, what no angel could say, Something of them who have vanished away, Left me alone on this amethyst day. Rent is the chrysalis hid in the sod, All the dear tenantry dwelling abroad, Gone through the gate of the glory of God ! LIFE ON THE FARM. MILKING TIME. AT the foot of the hill the milk-house stands, Where the Balm of Gilead spreads his hands, And the willow trails at each pendent tip The lazy lash of a golden whip. And an ice-cold spring with a tinkling sound Makes a bright-green edge for the dark-green ground. Cool as a cave is the air within. Brave are the shelves with the burnished tin Of the curving shores, and the seas of white That turn to gold in a single night. POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. As if the disc of a winter noon Should take the tint of a new doubloon. Burned to a coal is the amber day, Noon's splendid fire has faded away, And, lodged on the edge of a world grass-grown, Like a great live ember, glows the sun; When it falls behind the crimson bars Look out for the sparks of the early stars. With the clang of her bell a motherly brown — No trace of her lineage handed down — Is leading the long deliberate line Of the Devons red and the Durhams fine. "Co-boss!" "Co-boss!" and the caravan With a dowager swing comes down the lane, And lowing along from the clover bed Troops over the bars with a lumbering tread. Under the lee of the patient beasts. On their tripod stools like Pythian priests, The tow-clad boys and the linsey girls Make the cows "give down" in milky swirls. There's a stormy time in the drifted pails, There's a sea-foam swath in the driving gales, Then girls and boys with whistle and song. Two pails apiece, meander along The winding path in the golden gloom, And "set" the milk in the twilight room. NIGHT ON THE FARM. Now all clucked home to their feather beds Are the velvety chicks of the downy heads, LIFE ON THE FARM. In the old Dutch style with the beds above, All under the wings of a hovering love, And a few chinked in, as plump as wrens, Around the edge of the ruffled hens. With nose in the grass the dog keeps guard. With long-drawn breaths in the old farm-yard The cattle strand on the scattered straw. And cease the swing of the under jaw. The cat's eyes shine in the currant bush, Dews in the grass and stars in the hush, And over the marsh the lightning-bug Is swinging his lamp to the bull-frog's chug, And the slender chaps in the greenish tights, That jingle and trill the sleigh-bells nights. The shapes with the padded feet prowl round And the crescent moon has run aground, And the inky beetles blot the night And have blundered out the candle-light, And everywhere the pillows fair Are printed with heads of tumbled hair. Time walks the house with a clock-tick tread; Without and within the farm's abed. THE MORNING. Apprenticed angels everywhere Were out all night in the darkened air, A dome to build and a wall to lay And shelter the world from outer day. They smoothed the arch with trowels of night, Work as they would, it never shed light; POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. They mended the roof with might and main, But it leaked like broken thatch in the rain. At crevice and chink the curves of blue Would let the glory glimmering through From the countless stars like silver sand All sifted and sowed with radiant hand. To show Creation's grain in the sky God quarried the worlds and let them lie! That eastern wall with its granite crown In the early dawn came tumbling down, With no more crash than the roses make When out of the buds the beauties break. The world is a-fire with a pearl surprise, A garden gate to our wondering eyes Discloses the path to Paradise: The dews are off, and the bees abroad, The Sun stands armed in the gates of God I THE CHURNING. No graceful shape like a Grecian urn, But upright, downright, stands the churn. Broad at the base and tapering small, Above it the dasher straight and tall — Windowless tower with flagstaff bare, Warrior or warden, nobody there ! Fashioned of cedar, queen of the wood, Cedar as sweet as a girl in a hood Hiding her face like a blush-rose bud. LIFE ON THE FARM. 7 The dasher waits knee-keep in the cream, As cattle wade in the shady stream, And flat in the foot as a four-leafed clover. Just waits a touch to trample it over. Beside the churn a maiden stands, Nimble and naked her arms and hands — Another Ruth when the reapers reap — Her dress, as limp as a flag asleep. Is faced in front with a puzzling check; Her feet are bare as her sun-browned neck; Her hair rays out like a lady fern. With a single hand she starts the churn, The play at the first is free and swift. Then she gives both hands to the plunge and lift: A short quick splash in the Milky Way — One-two, one-two, in Iambic play — A one-legg'd dance in a wooden clog, Dancing a jig in a watery bog — A soberer gait at an all-day jog — Up-down, up-down, like a pony's feet, A steady trot in a sloppy street; The spattering dash and the tinkling wash Deaden and dull to a creamy swash — Color of daffodil shows in the churn ! Glimpses of gold ! Beginning to turn ! Slower — and lower — deader and dumb — Daisies and buttercups ! Butter has come ! What thinks the maiden all the while? Whatever she thinks, it makes her smile, POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. Whatever she does, it is only seeming, Spinning and weaving, wedding and dreaming; Ah, charms are hid in the ingots gold, And more come out than the churn can hold ! Not butter at all, but bonnets sown With gardens of flowers and all full-blown ; A clouded comb of the tortoise shell, Ah, it is a beauty, and she a belle ! A grape-leaf breastpin's restless shine Is twinkling up from the fairy mine. The dasher clinks on a bright gold ring; Morocco shoes, like a martin's wing. Come up with a gown of flounces silk Some fairy lost in the buttermilk ! Ribbons of blue for love-knot ties To match the tint of her longing eyes ; Ribbons of pink and a belt of gray Rippling along in a watery way. She looks at herself in Fancy's glass. And she sees her own lithe figure pass — She closes her eyes and looks again. And sees, as she dreams, the prince of men — She closes her eyes, and, side by side. He is the bridegroom and she the bride ! Ah, never, my girl, will visions burn As bright as rose in the cedar churn ! Ah, what have we won if this be lost: The blessing free and the bliss at cost! MO WING. MOWING. I. OH, days that are always dying, Each turning its face to mine Across the breadth of a life-time. Like suns with their level shine That set on a world divine ! II. Sweet day of doom in the meadow Most redolent day abroad, When grasses, daisies, and clover All die like the Saints of God, And fragrance floats in the sunshine And eloquence fills the sod. III. But Time has mowed with the mowers, The boys have boys of their own, A monster prowls in the meadow. The daisies of girls are grown ; I linger and think alone. IV. That maple Bethel of summer ! I think of its emerald crown, Whence fell the dapples of shadow, Rosettes and a golden brown, As if a beautiful leopard In a timothy lair lay down. V. There heroes sit in the noonings And gaze on the battle ground, lO POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. And wipe their brows with their jackets, And luncheon and laugh go round, And lads in the yarn suspenders, The X-backed boys abound ! ^^^i[^ VI. A jug as sleek as a cricket Is drawn from a grassy drift, Swung lightly out by the shoulder, Swung up with a dexterous lift. Swung back to the bird's-nest rift ! VII. The mowers all rallied and ready Strike in at the leader's word. Right on through clusters of lilies. Those duplicate texts of the Lord, And put the broad field to sword ! MO WING. vill. The woods grow fine in the distance, As moss in a painted urn, The lady elms and the beeches Are patterns in lace that turn Asparagus plumes and fern. IX. The hills are polished as porcelain And tinted with mountain blue, One lamb-like cloud, as if angels, With nought upon earth to do, Had brought up b}^ hand a ewe, X. Lies clean and white in the welkin As snow on a blue-grass hill ; A red-capped drummer is beating Tattoo with an ivory bill ; A small brown fifer is playing A low and a lazy trill ; And the blade of a narrow rill Slips out from under a shadow, A scabbard so strangely still, That what was pictured by willow Might well have been cast by hill ! XI. The birds trail wings in the sunshine And sit in a silent row, The locusts are winding their watches, The butterflies opening slow. Like flame are the flowers in blow. POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. XII. A breeze drops out of the maple And travels the rippling grain ; The fog lifts white from the river, The glorified ghost of rain Ascending to heaven again. XIII. The fields are grand in their velvet, The tall grass rustles red, The bees boil up in their anger, The meadow lark leaves her bed, Right onward the mowers tread ! xiv. With steady stride they are swaying The snath with the chronic writhe, A wispy rush and a rustle, A swing to the grasses lithe, Right home through the swath the scythe. XV. Then rising, falling, and drifting, As buoys on the billows ride. The braided brims of the shadows Afloat on the red-top tide The brows of the mowers hide. XVI. The blades are rasping and sweeping, The timothy tumbles free. The field is ridgy and rolling With swaths like the surging sea Heaped up to the toiler's knee. THE SPINNING WHEEL. 13 XVII. Hark ! ivhit-to-ivhit of the whetstone, The stridulous kiss of steel, The shout of winners exultant That distance the field, and wheel As gay as a Highland reel. XVIII. Swing right I Swift left ! And the mowers Stream out in a sea-bird flight, The line grows dimmer and dotted With flickering shirt sleeves white Washed clean in the morning light. XIX. The steel-cold eddies are whirling About and about their feet. Die, Clover, Grasses, and Daisies I No dead m the world so sweet, Ye slain of the windrow street ! XX. Oh, wreck and raid of September ! Oh, prodigal death to die ! Till April gay with her ribbon, Comes bringing the bluebird sky. Oh, lilies of Christ, good-by ! THE SPINNING WHEEL. A WHITE pine floor and a low-ceiled room, A wheel and a reel and a great brown loom. The windows out and the world in bloom. — 14 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. A pair of "swifts" in the corner, where The grandmother sat in her rush-wrought chair, And pulled at the distaff's tangled hair, And sang to herself as she spun the tow While " the little wheel " ran as soft and low As muffled brooks where the grasses grow, And lie one way with the water's flow. As the Christ's field lilies free from sin. So she grew like them when she ceased to spin. Counted her "knots" and handed them in. "The great wheel " rigged in its harness stands — A three-legged thing with its spindle and bands — And the slender spokes, like the willow wands That spring so thick in the low, wet lands, Turn dense at the touch of a woman's hands. As the wheel whirls swift, how rank they grow ! But how sparse and thin when the wheel runs slow Forward and backward, and to and fro. There's a heap of rolls like clouds in curl. And a bright-faced, springy, barefoot girl — She gives a touch and a careless whirl. She holds a roll in her shapely hand That the sun has kissed and the wind has fanned, And its mate obeys the wheel's command. There must be wings on her rosy heel ; And there must be bees in the spindled steel ; A thousand spokes in the dizzy wheel. THE SPINNING WHEEL. 1 5 Have you forgotten the left-breast knock When you bagged the bee in the hollyhock, And the angry burr of an ancient clock All ready to strike, came out of the mill, Where covered with meal the rogue was still, Till it made your thumb and finger thrill? It is one, two, three, and the roll is caught; 'Tis a backward step and the thread is taut; A hurry of wheel, and the roll is wrought. 'Tis one, two, three, and the yarn runs on, And the spindle shapes like a white pine cone, As even and still as something grown. The barefoot maiden follows the thread, Like somebody caught and tethered and led Up to the buzz of the busy head. With backward sweep and willowy bend Monarch would borrow if maiden could lend. She draws out the thread to the white wool's end. From English sheep of the old-time farm, With their legs as fair as a woman's arm, And faces white as a girl's alarm. She breaks her thread with an angry twang, Just as if at her touch a harp string rang And keyed to the quaint old song she sang, That came to a halt on her cherry lip While she tied one knot that never could slip, And thought of another, when her ship — 1 6 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. All laden with dreams in splendid guise — Should sail right out of the azure skies And a lover bring, with great brown eyes. Ah, broad the day, but her work was done — Two " runs " by reel. She had twisted and spun Her two score "knots" by set of sun. With her one, two, three, the wheel beside, And the three, two, one, of her backward glide. So to and fro in calico pride Till the bees went home and day-time died. Her apron white as the white sea foam. She gathered the wealth of her velvet gloom, And railed it in with a tall back comb. She crushed the dews with her naked feet, The track of the sun was a golden street. The grass was cool, and the air was sweet. The girl gazed up at the mackerel sky, And it looked like a pattern lifted high. But she never dreamed of angels nigh, And she spoke right out: "Do just see there! What a blue and white for the clouded pair I'm going to knit for my Sunday wear ! ' The wheel is dead and the bees are gone, And the girl is dressed in a silver lawn, And her feet are shod with golden dawn. From a wind-swung tree that waves before, A shadow is dodging in at the door, — Flickering ghost on the white pine floor, — THE OLD BARN. 1 7 And the cat, unlearned in shadow's law, Just touched its edge with a velvet paw To hold it still with an ivory claw. But its spectral cloak is blown about, And a moment more and the ghost is out, And leaves us all in shadowy doubt If ever it fell on floor at all, Or if ever it swung along the wall, Or whether a shroud or a phantom shawl. Oh, brow that the old-lime morning kissed ! Good night, my girl of the double and twist ! Oh, barefoot vision ! Vanishingr mist ! THE OLD BARN. GENUINE boys take to barns as ducks take to water; not dan- dies of barns, disguised with paint, and crowned with ob- servatories, but roomy, gray, sincere fellows, with the perpetual twilight, and the big beam, and the broad bay, billowy with sweet hay, and the granary, with its delicious Radcliffian gloom, and the threshing floor, where fiails fell, and feet danced after the husking to the measure of Money Musk; barns with no adorning save a diamond in each gable to let the swallows through, and a single chanticleer upon the ridge that creaks but never crows; barns with musical roofs, and twittering eaves, where the rainy days are the pleasantesi in all the calendar. Here, if anywhere, a boy slips off the harness of constraint and the shoes of propriety that he wears in the house, and turns himself out to grass — leastwise to hay — and climbs like the ambitious bean 1 8 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. of Jack the Giant Killer, and leaps like the frogs of Egypt, and makes a hoop of himself, and lets out his quicksilver life at every toe and finger end like sparks of lightning from the points of an electric wheel, and gives tongue like the hounds of Actaeon, and, all the while, like the righteous, "with none to molest or make him afraid." Later, he leads the dance with some belle of the husking on the oaken floor, by the twinkle of tin lanterns, and the eyes of the astonished horses shining in the stalls, and the fowls winking slow from the high perch. The relentless years go on, and the man makes thought-pilgrim- age to the homestead; but he reaches it by way of the barn, and he tarries there and enters it, sometimes, and beholds his own boyhood come to resurrection in the old twilight, amid the shouts of dead comrades, the flutter of dead birds, and the fragrance of clover that perished full forty mowings ago. The same bee in black velvet and yellow trimmings drifts in his saucy way over the door sill. The same red fanning mill stands beside the granary door, with a hen's nest in the hopper. The same bars of dusty sunshine strike through the creviced wall, and slant across the bay. There is a strange mingling of the living and the dead. A man can slip back into childhood faster in a barn than in a human dwelling. There are no new fashions in furniture. The doves and the swallows are in the same old clothes, and the clips of the broad-ax show as plain as ever on the cobwebbed beams. If barns are the Meccas of rural boyhood, they were the first Christian churches of the young wilderness. Honored is the barn above all the palaces of earth, for in it the Saviour of the world was born, and the manger was His cradle. THE OLD BARN. A GREAT dim barn with the fragrant bay- Up to the beam with the winter's hay, And its shrunken siding wasp nest gray; THE OLD BARN. 1 9 Where the cracks between run up and down, Like the narrow lines in a striped gown. And let in light of a golden brown. They are bars of bronze — they are silver snow — As the sunshine falls, or sifting slow, The white flakes drift on the wealth below Of the clover blossoms faint with June That had heard all day his small bassoon As the ground bee played his hum-drum tune. Ah, what would you give to have again Your pulse keep time with the dancing rain. When flashing through at the diamond pane You saw the swallows' rapier wings As they cut the air in ripples and rings, And laughed and talked like human things ? When they drank each other's health, you thought — For the creak of the corks you surely caught — And all day long at their cabins wrought, Till the mud-walled homes with a foreign look, A pictured street in an Aztec book. Began to show in each rafter'd nook ? Never again ! Alack and alas ! Like a breath of life on the looking-glass. Like a censer smoke, the pictures pass. THE FLAILS. "Well, Jack and Jim," said the farmer gray, *' The flour is out and we'll thrash to-day!" — 20 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. A hand is on the granary door, And a step is on the threshing floor — It is not his and it is not theirs — He went above by the golden stairs ; The boys are men and the nicknames grown, 'Tis James Esquire and Reverend John. How they waltzed the portly sheaves about As they loosed their belts and shook them out In double rows on the threshing floor, Clean as the deck of a seventy-four. When down the midst in a tawmy braid The sculptured heads of the straw were laid, It looked a poor man's family bed. Ah, more than that, 'twas a carpet fair Whereon the flails with their measured tread Should time the step of the answered prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread !" Then the light half-whirl and the hickory clash With the full free swing of a buckskin lash. And the trump — tramp — trump, when the bed is new, In regular, dull, monotonous stroke. And the click — clack — click, on the floor of oak When the straw grows thin and the blows strike through; And the French-clock tick to the dancing feet With the small tattoo of the driven sleet, When the bouncing kernels bright and brown Leap lightly up as the flails come down. THE FANNING MILL. Hang up the flails by the big barn door ! Bring out the mill of the one-boy power ! THE OLD BARN. 21 Nothing at all but a breeze in a box, Clumsy and red, it rattles and rocks. Sieves to be shaken and hopper to feed, A Chinaman's hat turned upside down, The grain slips through at a hole in the crown — Out with the chaff and in with the speed ! The crank clanks round with a boy's quick will. The fan flies fast till it fills the mill With its breezy vanes, as the whirled leaves fly In an open book when the gust goes by; And the jerky jar and the zigzag jolt Of the shaken sieves, and the jingling bolt, And the grate of cogs and the axle's clank, And the rowlock jog of the crazy crank. And the dusty rush of the gusty chaff The worthless wreck of the harvest's raff, And never a lull, the brisk breeze blows From the troubled grain its tattered clothes. Till tumbled and tossed, it downward goes The rickety route by the rackety stair, Clean as the sand that the simoom snows. And drifts at last in a bank so fair You know you have found the answered prayer ! THE OLD barn's TENANTRY. The rooster stalks on the manger's ledge, He has a tail like a scimitar's edge, A marshal's plume on his Afghan neck, An admiral's stride on his quarter deck. He rules the roost and he walks the bay. With a dreadful cold and a Turkish way, 3 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. Two broadsides fires with his rapid wings — This sultan proud, of a line of kings — One guttural laugh, four blasts of horn Five rusty syllables rouse the morn ! The Saxon lambs in their woolen tabs Are playing school with their a, b, abs ; A, e! /, o! All the cattle spell Till they make the blatant vowels tell, And a half-laugh whinny fills the stalls When down in the rack the clover falls. A dove is waltzing around his mate. Two chevrons black on his wings of slate, And showing off with a wooing note The satin shine of his golden throat. It is Ovid's "Art of Love" re-told In a binding fine of blue and gold ! HUSKING. Ah, the buxom girls that helped the boys — The nobler Helens of humbler Troys — As they stripped the husks with rustling fold From eight-rowed corn as yellow as gold, By the candle-light in pumpkin bowls, And the gleams that showed fantastic holes In the quaint old lantern's tattooed tin. From the hermit glim set up within ; THE OLD BARN. 23 By the rarer light in girlish eyes As dark as wells, or as blue as skies. I hear the laugh when the ear is red, I see the blush with the forfeit paid. The cedar cakes with the ancient twist, The cider cup that the girls have kissed. And I see the fiddler through the dusk As he twangs the ghost of " Money Musk ! " The boys and girls in a double row Wait face to face till the magic bow Shall whip the tune from the violin And the merry pulse of the feet begin: MONEY MUSK. In shirt of check and tallowed hair The fiddler sits in the bulrush chair Like Moses' basket stranded there On the brink of Father Nile. He feels the fiddle's slender neck, Picks out the notes with thrum and check, And times the tune with nod and beck, And thinks it a weary while. All ready! Now he gives the call, Cries, ''Honor to the ladies!'' All The jolly tides of laughter fall And ebb in a happy smile. D-o w-n comes the bow on every string, ''First couple joi?t right hands and swing!" 24 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. And light as any bluebird's wing ^^ Swing once and a half times round .' Whirls Mary Martin all in blue — Calico gown and stockings new, And tinted eyes that tell you true, Dance all to the dancing sound She flits about big Moses Brown Who holds her hands to keep her down And thinks her hair a golden crown And his heart turns over once ! His cheek with Mary's breath is wet, It gives a second somerset ! He means to win the maiden yet, Alas, for the awkward dunce ! " Your stoga boot has crushed my toe ! " " I'd rather dance with one-legged Joe," "You clumsy fellow!" ''^Fass beloiv!'' And the first pair dance apart. Then ""Forward six !'' advance, retreat. Like midges gay in sunbeam street, 'Tis Money Musk by merry feet And the Money Musk by heart ! " Three quarters round your partner siuing ! ''Across the set!'' The rafters ring. The girls and boys have taken wing And have brought their roses out; 'Tis ''Forward six !'' with rustic grace Ah, rarer far than — "Saving to place ! " Than golden clouds of old point-lace They bring the dance about. THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 25 Then clasping hands all — '^Right and left!'' All swiftly weave the measure deft Across the woof in living weft, And the Money Musk is done ! Oh, dancers of the rustling husk. Good night, sweethearts, 'tis growing dusk. Good night for aye to Money Musk, For the heavy march begun ! THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. LOW- BROWED school-house, silver-sided, Crowns life's Eastern shore. Where the downy day-times glided, Ere the throngs around the door By the Jordan were divided Evermore ! Evermore till comes the Master Through the gates ajar, And each faded earthly aster Shall have blossomed out a star — God, the Master of oiir master. From afar ! Slow the battered door is giving. As it gave of yore — Lo, the life it has been living Curved upon the entry floor — Closed at last on every grieving. Locked at last with spiders' reeving — Weary door ! 26 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. Cenotaph of vanished faces Lettered by the dead — Carved and graved the empty places, Names unmeaning and unsaid, And no token of the graces That have fled ! As the door of ceaseless swinging, Wander as it will, Ever to the portal clinging Sweeps its arc, and bides there still, So life's curve is homeward bringing, So my heart, forever winging, Bides there still ! SCHOOL ''CALLED." Don't you hear the children coming, Coming into school ? Don't you hear the master drumming On the window with his rule ? Master drumming, children coming Into school ? Tip-toed figures reach the catch. Tiny fingers click the latch, Curly-headed girls throng in Lily-free from toil and sin; Breezy boys bolt in together, Bringing breaths of winter weather — Bringing baskets Indian-checked, Dinners in them sadly wrecked; Ruddy-handed, mittens off. Soldiers from a Malakoff THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 27 Built of snow all marble white, Bastions shining in the light, Marked with many a dint and dot Of the ice-cold cannon shot ! Hear the last assaulting shout, See the gunners rally out, Charge upon the battered door, School is called, and battle o'er ! SCHOOL TIME. Don't you hear the scholars thrumming. Bumble-bees in June ? All the leaves together thumbing. Like singers hunting for a tune ? Master mending pens, and humming Bonny Doon ? As he thinks, a perished maiden Fords the brook of song, Comes to him so heavy laden. Stepping on the notes along. Stands beside him, blessed maiden ! Waited long! Cherry-ripe the glowing stove. Grammar class .inflecting " love," "I love — you love, and love we all" — Bounding states the Humboldts small. Chanting slow in common time. Broken China's rugged rhyme : " Yang-tse-kiang — Ho-ang-ho — " Heavenly rivers ! How they flow ! " Dnieper-Dniester " — Russian snow ! 2 8 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. Writing class, with heads one way — - Tongues all out for a holiday ! Hark, the goose quill's spattering grate, Rasping like an awkward skate, Swinging round in mighty Bs, Lazy Xs, crazy Zs — Here a scholar, looking solemn, Blunders up a crooked column,— Pisa's own Italic tower, Done in slate in half an hour. Figures piled in mighty sum, He wets a finger, down they come! Learners in the Rule of Three, " I love you, but he loves me ! " Blue eyes, black eyes, gray eyes, three. Aproned urchin, aged five. Youngest in the humming hive, Standing by the master's knee, Calls the roll of A, B, C; Frightened hair all blown about, Buttered lips in half a pout. Knuckle boring out an eye, Saying '' P," and thinking "pie," Feeling for a speckled bean, 'Twixt each breath a dumb ravine, — Like clock unwound, but going yet. He slowly ticks the alphabet : " K-ah — Vi-ah — C-ah — D," Finds the bean, and calls for ' E ! " See that crevice in the floor — Slender line from desk to door, THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 29 First meridian of the school. Which all the scholars toe by rule. Ranged along in rigid row, Inky, golden, brown, and tow, Are heads of spellers, high and low. Like notes in music sweet as June, Dotting off a dancing tune. Boy of Bashan takes the lead — Roughly thatched his bullet head — At the foot an eight-year-old Stands with head of trembling gold; Watch her when the word is missed! Her eyes are like an amethyst. Her fingers dove-tailed, lips apart, She knows that very word by heart! Swinging like a pendulum. Trembling lest it fail to come. Runs the word along the line, Like the running of a vine. Blossoms out from lip to lip — Till the girl in azure slip. Catches breath and spells the word. Flits up the class like any bird, Cheeks in bloom with honest blood. And proudly stands where Bashan stood! Evening reddens on the wall — "Attention!" Now — "Obeisance" all! The girls' short dresses touch the floor; They drop their court'sies at the door; The boys jerk bows with jack-knife springs. And out of doors they all take wings ! 30 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. Sparkling smiles along the line, Beads upon the amber wine, Sunshine on the river Rhine. Broken line and clouded wine, Night upon the river Rhine! Vanished all — all change is death; Life is not the counted breath. The slanting sun low in the West Brings to the master blessed rest. See where it bridges afternoon, And slopes the golden day-time down, As if to him at last was given, An easy grade to restful Heaven! His hair is silver — not with light, His heart is heavy — not with night; Dying day the world has kissed. Good-night, sweethearts ! The school's dismissed GOING TO SPELLING SCHOOL. The broad of a silvery noon! And the world lies under the moon, Under the moon and the snow; The moon comes out from under a cloud And shines on the world below — The snow, cold-white as a linen shroud Put on but an hour ago. Is a pearly web with a silver thread, Robe for a bridal, and not for the dead. The river is silent as light, The road is a ribbon of white, Ribbon of silk from Japan — Its borders rich with satin and shine THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 31 Betray where the sleigh shoes ran That iron the snow to a fabric fine, And edged like a lady's fan. Ah, the night is fair as a marble girl, Dusty with stars and the mother of pearl ! A twanging and trilling of wires ! Are angels attuning their lyres, Tuning with negligent hand ? Hark, chimes of bells from over the hills Dance merrily through the land — The tinkling troll of a hundred rills ! Cymbals of brass from a band ! 'Tis the ringing strings of the bells in bronze Sprinkling the night with their showery tones. A spell is abroad, and a song, The spellers and singers along, Wizards and witches by pairs ; In cutters snug are the Adams and Eves, Eden's own children and heirs ! Bells in the woods in lieu of the leaves And bells that the echo wears — It is ring^ ^'^^'g, ^'i'^gy to the swinging gait, Then the teams break trot, for the hour is late. At a ting-a-Hng, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling rate ! Now over the ridges they ride, And down through the valley they glide, Bring up at the school-house door, With bundled girls in the quilted hood, Edging of down, as of yore Their hearts as sweet as the cedar wood. 32 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. Gowns without gusset or gore, Vandykes with a peak before, And their hair glossed down like a blackbird's wings. And their shoes laced up and with leather strings ' They leap with a laugh to the ground, In woolen, all mittened and gowned, Lit up with a ribbon blue, A breath of cloves or of sassafras. And innocent eyes so true That look you back like a looking-glass. And cheeks with the roses through — All the girls like flowers that are newly blown, In the zoneless grace of their " London brown," Not a charm in bonds, nor a beauty laced. The cestus of Venus would girdle each waist. A chorusing crew comes last In the family ark of the past. Packing it full and in pairs-- The rude old sleigh, so roomy and red. Kitchens not robbed of their chairs. But strewn with straw like poverty's bed. Millennial lambs in their lairs ! Like an emigrant ship is the lumbering craft, Crowded and laden, both forward and aft, With a wooden heart surmounting the stern, Where the teamsters old gave the reins a turn — Ah, the hearts that throbbed with their youthful blood Were as free from care as the sculptured wood ! Oh, fairest of visions below. Old covenant ark of the snow, Freighted for church at the door! THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 2i2> Two, side by side on the sheep-skin seat, Are bound for Canaan's shore, The square foot-stove is under their feet, A buffalo robe before — In the two flag chairs that are side by side. Are the gray old man and his silver bride; Still she carries one for the added ten, May follow the rule and carry again ! Then the boys and girls in their Sunday clothes. And the rank slopes down the farther it goes. To three in a row, for the last are least, Like the sparks of stars in the early East ! Ah, the old red sleigh, be it ever blest ! It has borne the dead to their silent rest, The bearers, by twos, as they rode abreast — Has carried the brides, their bedding and "things," When the girls were queens and the bridegrooms kings, To the splay-foot jog of the olden time, And the clangs clang, clang, of the sleigh-bells' chime. Ah, necklace of melody old. With apples and walnuts of gold That danced to the horses' feet ! The mother bell in the middle hung. As big as a " Golden Sweet,' Then small each way till the string was strung, And two filbert bells did meet, And two rhyming hearts did beat. Ah, the beaded bells of the .satin street That beat the air with their tuneful sleet ! Ah, the string is dumb, and as green with rust As the dimpled graves of the maidens' dust. 34 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. HOW THE BROOK WENT TO MILL. A RIFTED rock in a wooded hill, A spring within like a looking-glass, A nameless rill like a skein of rain That showed as faint as a feeble vein. And crept away in the tangled grass With a voiceless flow and a wandering will — The wish-to7i-%vish of a silken dress, The murmured tone of a maiden's *'yes"! A thirsty ox could have quaffed it up, A boy dipped dry with a drinking cup ! Broke in a brook the rill complete — Broke in a song the brook so fleet — Broke in a laugh the song so sweet ! II. Tvvas pebble, rubble, and fallen tree, 'Twas babble, double, through every mile; It battled on with a shout and shock, And white with foam was the rugged rock. And dark were the hemlocks all the while, Till the road grew broad and the creek ran free. It glassed along on the slippery slide. And shot away with an arrowy glide — It slipped its shoes, and in stocking feet Under the bank and in from the street Whirled in a waltz about and out — Sprinkled with gold and put to rout — And bright with the flash of the spotted trout ! THE MILLER AND THE MILL. 35 III. It floats a name and it bears a boat; 'Tis Leonard's Creek, and is bound for mill, And makes you think, with its ripple and flow — ■ So light it trips to the stones below Tiie rhythmic touch of the gay quadrille -- How her fingers went when they moved by note Through measures fine, as she marched them o'er The yielding plank of the ivory floor. Beneath the bridge with a rasping rush, A bird takes toll — 'tis a thirsty thrush — It nears the gulf of the hemlock night Where stars shine down in the midday light, It verges the brink of the shadow's lair. Stumbles and falls on the limestone stair ! Clings to the mute and m.otionless edge — Tumbles and booms from ledge to ledge — Thunders and blunders down to the sedge ! THE MILLER AND THE MILL. \ RIVER and a brook ran across my boyhood's world; lively ±\_ fellows they were, and things to thank God for. The one rambled through pastures and meadows, among the buttercups and strawberries, and turned shingle wheels and floated boats that sug- gested the slipper of Cinderella, and wet boys' feet and their trow- sers withal, even to the waistbands, glassed out in the spring rains like the Zuider Zee, and submitted to be dammed without a murmur. The other rattled down the roughest, crookedest piece of road you ever saw, and quarreled with banks and wrangled with rocks and foamed over fallen logs as green as lizards, and plunged into hemlock shadows it never could get rid of, slipped over the broad 36 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. flat pavements and tumbled down stairs at last at the foot of the mill. The old mill with its rumble and grumble, its ghostly corners, its powdery floors, and its dim, gray look, as if lost in a fog that never lifts, is there yet, rumbling and grumbling still. It hums like a king bee in the nest of a village. The great wheel in its damp dungeon below day-time, gives way as of old beneath the tread of water, like a flight of stairs forever tumbling down. The mill was our only enchanted castle, and nobody has ruined it by improvement. As of old, '' Water runneth by the mill The miller wots not of." What treasures of childhood came home in the grists ; the turn- over bundled in a coverlid, tucked in with a thumb, and plump with happiness; the golden samp; the corner lot of Johnny-cake; the acrobatic flap jack, and the twisted doughnut. But the charm of them has vanished. Happiness is rarer and costlier. The old miller has laid off his dusty clothes for garments of white, and strange hands take toll. THE MILLER AND THE MILL. The roar came up in a misty cloak Whose skirt was trimmed with the swan's-down foam. Beside the mill with its window'd wall Of rusty red as it loomed so tall. The wheel was still in its dank, dim room, The air as whist as a wreath of smoke, The tangled light through the cobwebs fell. The mill was as dumb as a heather-bell ! The dusty miller was leaning o'er The lower half of the battened door. Thinking the things he always thought, THE MILLER AND THE MILL. 37 Tolling the grist no man had brought, Counting the dreams that came to nought. II. He saw four butterflies winged in white That fluttered over the wayside pool, They look like bits of an old love-note To Lucy Jones, and the first he wrote But never sent to the Flower of school. "What if he had?" and "Perhaps she might!" He saw four butterflies winged in gold And thought what things the "perhaps" might fold: A woman's foot on the powdered sill With arch enough for a running rill. To walk his world and — he thought again How blossoms show in the route of rain — Make summer time till the first snow-fall. Perhaps and Might ! How they puzzle all I Jogging along a horse came slow, Boy was aloft and bag below, Calliper legs and head of tow. III. The miller starts from the faded dream, A lever creaks, and he lifts the gate. The rumbling flood in the frothy flume Is rolling through to the twilight room In whirls and swirls at a reckless rate The rustic strength of the headlong stream. A storm of rain in the chamber dim: A mighty swing of a giant limb; The wheel is washing his naked arms; The mill is alive with the strange alarms; A lazy log has just turned over. 4 38 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. The mill is full of a thousand things, They tramp with feet and they hum with wings A troop has halted awhile to feed, Old Pan has come with his drowsy reed. Hark ! Bees abroad from a field of clover. A flock of grouse with a frightened whir, A Scotch brigade with a Tweedside burr. Two wheels lay hold with their iron teeth And turn a shaft that is hung beneath, With a jumbling thump of the tumbling bolt, Like the awkward trot of a barefoot colt; In swaying glide are the leathern bands, The hoppers jar with their palsied hands. Forever spilling the grists of grain In rattling showers like frozen rain. While face to face with its gritty mate The millstone whirls with a grinding grate. What might be laid in a castle's wall Is twirled as light as a parasol ! And out from the rock, as once of old, A streamlet flows in its white or gold. Busy as bees when the buckwheat blows Are the little buckets that run in rows Up stairs and down with a sparrow's weight, A tiny drift of the dainty freight. The place is thrilled with a rumbling tread, The air is gray with the ghost of bread. Dizzy and busy, above, below, Lydian river and floury How, Corn in the gold and wheat in the snow. THE PSALM BOOK IN THE GARRET. 39 IV. The old gray mill is yet murmuring on, The brook brawls down through the limestone street, The girls that blossomed around the door And hid and sought till the grist-snowed floor Was printed off with their merry feet Like notes of music — the girls are gone! The miller said that he always heard The slender song of the outside bird Through the grumbling roll of the whirling mill, He never heard when the wheels were still. Perhaps — why not .^ — through the anthem grand He helps to chant in the better land, The mill's old murmuring monotone May now steal up to his ear alone. Bringing a breath of the Saviour's Prayer — Droning the base to the angels' air — Hum of the Mill in the golden choir. THE PSALM BOOK IN THE GARRET. THE old garret, with one almond e\'e in each gable, was the memory of the homestead. The fashions of three genera- tions, the bits of ancient furniture that somehow grew akin to them that used it, the rusty red cradle, the rush-bottomed chair, the long-handled warming-pan, the little foot stove with a bail to it, the flaring leghorn, the bell-crowned beaver, the leather- bound book, the wheel, the reel, the distalY, and the swifts — these, and a thousand things besides, may be forgotten below stairs, but they are sure to be remembered above. You can find them swung to the peak of the rafters, or chucked under the eaves, 40 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. or strown along the oaken plate. They are all there. When I hear of the burning of an old mansion, I do not ask if they saved the silver, but did salvation reach the garret ? The long-winged psalm book, "sung in" by people whose graves are hard to find, lies upon a beam, and beside it a with- ered, dusty bundle of summer savory that nobody remembers. A little way off is a wooden pitch-pipe about the color of a chestnut, that used to go a couple of seconds ahead of Brain- tree and the rest, and blow like a disconsolate wind at a key hole. But the world will keep the old tunes without the help of garrets. Nobody ever thinks in "the dead waste and middle of" December that there can ever be another blue bird. But there can, and there will. When "the winter is over and gone" he is sure to drop out of the blue like a winged atom of live sky. So with the old tunes. They have a way of dying out of hear- ing now and then, but, for all that, they will meet us here and there on the way. St. Martin's, St. Thomas, and St. Mary's are about as immortal as St. Matthew, St. Paul, and St. John. Let us amend the beatitude of Christopher North, and say, " Blessed be the memory of old songs and old singers forever ! THE P^SALM BOOK IN THE GARRET. A Ct ARRET grows a human thing, With lonely oriental eyes, To whom confiding fingers bring The world in yesterday's disguise. Ah, richer far than noontide blaze The soft gray silence of the air, As if long years of ended days Had garnered all their twilights there. The heart can see so clear and far In such a place, with such a light — THE PSALM BOOK IN THE GARRET. \l God counts His heavens star by star, And rains them down unclouded night. Where rafters set their cobwebb'd feet Upon the rugged oaken ledge, I found a flock of singers sweet. Like snow-bound sparrows in a hedge. In silk of spider's spinning hid, A long and narrow psalm book lay; I wrote a name upon the lid. Then brushed the idle dust away. Ah, dotted tribe with ebon heads. That climb the slender fence along! As black as ink, as thick as weeds, Ye little Africans of song ! Who wrote upon this page " Forget Me Not?" These cruel leaves of old Have crushed to death a violet — See here its spectre's pallid gold. 42 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. A pencilled whisper during prayer Is that poor-, dim, and girlish word; But ah, I linger longest where It opens of its own accord. These spotted leaves ! How once they basked Beneath the glance of girlhood's eyes, And parted to the gaze unasked, As spread the wings of butterflies. The book falls open where it will — Broad on the page runs Silver Street, That shining way to Zion's Hill, Where base and treble used to meet. I shake the leaves. They part at Mear — Again they strike the good old tune. The village church is builded here, The twilight turns to afternoon. THE PSALM BOOK IN THE GARRET. 43 Old house of Puritanic wood, Through whose unpainted windows streamed On seats as primitive and rude As Jacob's pillow when he dreamed, The white and undiluted day ! Thy naked aisle no roses grace That blossomed at the shuttle's play; Nor saints distempered bless the place. Like feudal castles, front to front, In timbered oak of Saxon Thor, To brave the siege and bear the brunt Of Bunyan's endless Holy War, The pulpit and the gallery stand — Between the twain a peaceful space. The prayer and praise on either hand, And girls and Gospel face to face. I hear the reverend Eider say, '■'■Hymn fifty -first, long metres sing ! " I hear the psalm-books' fluttered play, Like flocks of sparrows taking wing. Armed with a fork to pitch the tune, I hear the Deacon call ''Dundee ! " And mount as brisk as Bonny Doon His " Fa, sol. la," and scent the key. He "trees" the note for sister Gray; The old Scotch warbling strains begin; The base of Bashan leads the way, And all the girls fall sweetly in. 44 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. How swells the hymn of heavenly love, As rise the tides in Fundy's Bay, Till all the air below, above, Is sweet with song and — caraway! A fugue let loose cheers up the place, With base, and tenor, alto, air; The parts strike in with measured grace, And something sweet is everywhere. As if some warbling brood should build Of bits of tunes a singing nest. Each bring the notes with which it thrilled, And weave them in with all the rest ' The congregation rise and stand; Old Hundred's rolling thunder comes In heavy surges, slow and grand, As beats the surf its solemn drums. Now come the times when China's wail Is blended with the faint perfume Of whispering crape and cloudy veil. That fold within their rustling gloom Some wounded human mourning-dove, And fall around some stricken one With nothing left alive to love Below the unregarded sun ! And now they sing a star in sight. The blessed Star of Bethlehem; And now the air is royal bright With Coronation's diadem. DANIEL WEBSTER'S PLOW. 45 They show me spots of dimpled sod, They say the girls of old are there — Oh, no, they swell the choirs of God, The dear old songs are everywhere ! A' DANIEL WEBSTER'S PLOW. AT THE CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION. MID the treasures strewn around Like trophies of dismantled climes, I saw the king of things uncrowned, The triumph of the earlier times — A ponderous, huge, unpainted plow. All stained with storms of rain and snow, With beam that might have been a ram — Of plows it surely was no lamb — And battered down the walls of Rome, And drove her golden eagles home I It stood and touched the magic place With something like a classic grace. Upon it were the printed words That Webster said : " Behind this plow. And twelve great oxen on before, I feel my manhood mount and glow. As never on the Senate's floor! " I thought I heard the songs of birds That dined along the trench he made, And followed up the gleaming blade; I thought I heard the ringing lash, A pistol-shot without the flash; 46 POEMS OF COUXTRY LIFE. I thought I saw his twelve-in-hand Break up old Marshfield's grassy land, And put to rout the camps of clover; The shining soil roll out to light, Like drowsy giants turning over; And heard the plowman's voice of might. That rang around the Babel earth From thane and throne to hovel hearth, With, " Constitution — Union — Law," Cr}'- to his swinging yokes, "Whoa, haw!" Na}^, never dream that any hand Can glorify the battered plow; Its touch inspires the desert land. Its fields are Plenty's battle grounds, Its bouts are empire's noblest bounds, Its guides are Freedom's body-guard. It needs a Homer for a bard! Without it what were kingdoms now ? If I could choose between the twain, Think out the plow within my brain. And give it royally to man, Or " Paradise " by grand old John, I'd say, let Milton sing right on, I'll make the plow, and lead the van! THE OLD ST A TE ROAD. 47 THE OLD STATE ROAD. THE old State Road from Utica, New York, to Lake Ontario, was, like Jordan, a "hard road to travel." Macadamized with rocks that never felt a hammer; bordered with bowlders and mayweed in summer, and in winter with drifts of snow that left the country as fenceless as the Arctic Ocean ; rising and falling v/ith the high hills and the deep valleys like a tremendous sea; the most like a liquid when it had a solid's three dimen- sions, — length, breadth, and thickness, — with all this, it had a charm for "us boys" that the Appian Way or the sheep paths up the Hill of Science never possessed, for it led out into the unseen world, and people went by stage — the yellow, egg- shaped, rollicking coach that smelled of tar, leather, buffalo robes, and reeking horses, but then no triumphal chariot of classic story was ever half so grand. Of that road John Benjamin, Driver, was hero and king. The breadth of his realm was as far as he could see on both sides of the way, and his subjects were all the people. His name, as here given, is exactly half true, and that is about all we can say of most history. A genial, hearty, tough fellow was John Benja- min. A reinsman without a master, he could get more volleys of small-arms out of the farther end of a whip-lash and a skein of silk than any man going ; he could turn a straight tin horn into a key bugle ; he believed in oats, and next to a matched and mettled four-in-hand, he admitted that man was the noblest animal on earth. He knew everybody, and was not above a nod to little boys, and a smile for slips of girls, even if he could count their toes any summer day as they stood by the road side. A man might be forgiven for being unacquainted with Apollo, Jehu, or Palinurus, but not with John Benjamin. Not a lad in the country but meant to be a man and a driver him- self. Not a lass but wished she could ride in John Benjamin's coach on her wedding day. The coaches are all wrecked. The drivers are all gone ; but 4^ POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. the stage road remains. I got glimpses of it a while ago, as I went scurrying along by rail, and of dilapidated stage houses, as gray as wasps' nests, and as empty as martin boxes in midwinter. " So runs the world a\vay ! " THE OLD STATE ROAD. Cut through the green wilderness down to the ground, Straight over the hills by the route of the crow, Now black as the bird, where the hemlocks abound, Then through the dim pines, half as white as the snow. By a cataract's track sunk away to the gulf That yawned grim and dark as the mouth of a wolf, Up hill and down dale like the trail of a brave. From Mohawk's wet marge to Ontario's wave, When the world was in forest, the hamlet in grove, Ran the stormy State Road where old Benjamin drove. The rude, rugged bridges all growled at the stage. The rough, rolling ridges all gave it a lift, You read off the route like a line on a page, Then dropped out of day into twilight and rift ! Through the sloughs of October it heavily rolled. And lurched like a ship that is mounting a sea. O'er rattling macadams of torrents untold, Now in silence and sand midway to the knee. It visioned the night with its yellow-eyed lamps Like creatures that prowl out of gun-shot of camps, When plunging along in the gloom of the swamps. With halt, jolt, and thump, and the driver's "ahoy! " It struck with a bounce on the ribbed corduroy, And from hemlock to hemlock, log in and log out, The coach jumped and jounced in a trip-hammer bout— THE OLD STATE ROAD. 49 Through Gothic old chasms that swallowed the night, Out into the clearings all golden, with light, Where flocks of white villages lay in the grass, And watched for the stage and its cargo to pass. JOHN BENJAMIN, DRIVER. The boys and the girls all abroad in high feather, The heads of the horses all tossing together. Flinging flakes of white foam like snow in wild weather, All swinging their silk like tassels of corn, 'Twas Benjamin's time! And he whipped out the horn! 'Twas the drone of king bees, and a myriad strong — 'Twas fanfare ! and fanfare! with a bugle's prolong. Chanticleer ! Chan-ti-cleer ! I am coming along! The bellows dropped down with a vanishing snore, The smith in black crayon gave the anvil the floor, And leaned on his sledge in the cave of a door; The landlord in slippers cut away at the heel Shuffled out on the stoop at the rattle of wheel, Click-click — went the gates, and like yarn from a reel, Smiling women wound out and looked down the street, Where the driver swung plumb in his oriole seat, The mail, chained and padlocked, tramped under his feet. He tightens the reins, and whirls oft" with a fling From the roof of the coach his ten feet of string; The invisible fireworks rattle and ring. Torpedoes exploding in front and in rear, A Fourth of July every day in the year! Now lightly he flicks the "nigh" leader's left ear. Gives the wheelers a neighborly slap with the stock, They lay back their ears as the coach gives a rock, And strike a square trot in the tick of a clock ! 50 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. There's a jumble, a jar, and a gravelly trill In the craunch of the wheels on the slate-stone hill That grind up the miles like a grist in a mill. He touches the bay and he talks to the brown, Sends a token of silk, a word, and a frown To the filly whose heels are too light to stay down. Clouds of dust roll behind with two urchins inside That tow by the straps, as the jolly-boats ride, From the boot rusty-brown, like an elephant's hide. With a sharp jingling halt he brings up at the door, A surge to the coach like a ship by the shore, He casts off the lines, and his journey is o'er. If king were to banter, would Benjamin trade His box for a knighthood, his whip for the blade That should make him Sir John by some grand accolade? Ah, few whips alive in their cleverest mood Can write with a coach as old Benjamin could. And you ought to have seen the sixteen feet With their iron shoes on the stricken stone When they waltzed around in the narrow street To a time and a tune that were all their own, Like the short, sharp clicks of the Castanet By the Moorish girls in a dancing set, When, as free as the sweep of a wizard's wand. Right-about witli a dash came the four-in-hand ! 'Twas crackle of buckskin and sparkle of fire And never a rasp of a grazing tire, As he cut a clean 6 and swept a bold 8, Like a boy that is trying his brand-new slate ! THE OLD STATE ROAD. 51 JOHN benjamin's PICTURE. I see him to-day all equipped for the snow In a wonderful coat that falls to his heels, With its ripple of capes on his shoulders a-flow And a plump visored cap that once was a seal's Drawn snug to his eyebrows down over his head ! In gloves of tough buckskin so wrinkled and brown, With muffler begirt, an equator of red ! A shawl round his neck like a turban slipped down; A couple of cubs are his buffalo shoes Asleep on the mail-bag that carries the news. All through of a size, in his Esquimaux guise, He read off the road and he breasted the storm. No sign of the man but his hands and his eyes, His heart below frost — ah! it always kept warm. "Afraid ! " If bright Phoebus had told him to try His horses of fire down the steep of the sky, With the motto Ich dien — I faithfully serve — He would grasp the gold reins, no falter of nerve. And, foot on the brake, he would drive down the blue Without breaking an axle or losing a shoe ! A touch of Northeasters had frosted his tones — He always must talk so his leaders could hear — Ah, men preach from grand pulpits and sit upon thrones Whose vision of duty was never so clear ! He loved the old route with its hemlock and rock. Its sprinkle of mayweed, the breath of his hills. The girls trailing out in bare feet from the flock That ran alongside when the horses would walk, Till they wore a small path like the travel of rills I Ah, Hero of boyhood ! Asleep in thy grave. Last station of all on humanity's route, 52 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. In measureless peace where the Lombardies wave, But time and its tempests have blotted it out, I letter his name on the way bill of death To tell who he was that is waiting beneath : Good night to John Benjamin, king of the road ! Who sleeps till the blast of the bugle of God. In feverish noon, on the highway of strife. Make the driver's old rule the law of your life: Keep the track if you can, but midday or midnight, Whatever you do, always turn to the right ! A VISION OF HANDS. AY, give all honor to the man . Whose sturdy work sweats off the tan, Who furrows out the royal road Where broad-tread harvests march abreast In rustling robe and golden vest, And gains his bread first-hand from God; Lives hand and glove with out-door life. Lives hand in hand with faithful wife. Strikes hands with earnest men who strive To keep both soil and soul alive; Who does his duty out of hand And tills his heart and feeds his land; Is hand to hand against the wrong, And sometimes, tallest when he kneels, W^ill lend a hand to roll the wheels Of manful, mindful toil along. There is a stain, but not of dust, That soils a hand beyond repair, A VISION OF HANDS. 53 The "damned spot" of broken trust; There is a fairer hand than fair, There is a shapelier hand than Burns Has sung. It may be broad and brown, And knotty as an antlered crown — The open hand that never turns Its back when need is at the door; The hand that feels the left-breast knock Like flails upon a threshing floor, And closes like the Arab rock And strikes for undefended right, With soul and sinew tense and tight. Straight out, and smites Goliah down — I think that hand has won renown; Might touch and grace a kingly crown. The plighted hand that glances white; The royal hand with diamond light; The gentle hand that cools the brow Like whispers from the fragrant snow Of orchards blossoming in May; The artist hand that halts the sun To dawn along the canvas gray; The hand whose tuneful fingers run Along the strings as zephyrs play And float the soul on some sweet dream Of peace for which we ever pray; The cunning hands that delegate To nerves of fire and pulsing steam. To lively valve and nimble wheel, To things that never want nor wait, To things that never lie nor steal. Alive as life, and trained and taught 5 54 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. The work by human sinews wrought — Ah, all these hands are wondrous fair, And yet, recounting all, I dare To toast the Farmers' hands that kept The wolf and wilderness at bay Where Pilgrims' bristling winters slept, And shaggy, white-maned lions lay; Who picked the flint and picked the flint For Indian corn and Indian foes, And cleared the cabins and the rows Of weeds and wampum by the dint Of rude flint-locks and rugged hoes. The hands that fired the morning gun Of Freedom when the world struck "one," And dug their rations as they went And left the Lord to pitch their tent, Were farmers' sons. I rather think They stood so close to glory's brink That, one step more, they would have seen Headquarters of the sons of men. Twins of the million hands that donned The hickory shirts and blouses blue, And marched "with equal step" beyond The solemn dead-lines duty drew; When soulless reapers took the field. And tireless threshers smote the grain, And speechless mowers swept the swath While gallant squadrons charged and wheeled, And bolts of thunder struck the plain. And batteries tore a ragged path Through solid columns massed amain And mowed the human aftermath. THE CIDER MILL. 55 And Blue and Gray alternate reeled And Gray and Blue alternate kneeled Along the road of wreck and wrath. The sun set red, as if he wrought The bloody work he looked upon; The moon rose white, as if she caught The pallid stare on which she shone Of dead men's faces turned supine And broken pitchers stained with wine. THE CIDER MILL. IMPROVEMENT" puts old times to rout And crushes fragrant meanings out Like apples in a cider mill, When creaks the screw and runs the rill, And gives us pomace in the place Of what had once exceeding grace. Ah, cider mill in clapboard cloak, A brimless roof above the screw, A mighty minute-hand of oak That round and round the horses drew, While our hands caught the amber flow That tinkled fitfully below, Where came the dissipated bees With drowsy talk and woolen legs, And swarthy wasps like Turkish Begs, And ten-toed boys about " the cheese," With oaten straws and tattered knees. 56 POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. HEARTS AND HEARTHS. THERE was a time when hearths and hearts In rural Hfe were counterparts — The only neutral ground of grace In all this troubled world. Would I Could paint the homely picture right, The low-browed dwelling's altar-place Forever lost, forever nigh — Paint the divergent rays that shed Along the dark their lines of light Like nimbus round a sacred head. There, sturdy fire-dogs, legs apart, Upheld that glowing work of art The beech-and-maple kitchen fire, The twinkling, crinkling, creeping fire That gives a flash and shows a spire ; One instant builds a phoenix nest, Another, mounts a gleaming crest, A feu-de-joie^ it shoots a jet, Up comes a crimson minaret ; The flame is fanned, the blaze is blown, You hear a mill-flume's undertone — The rattling, battling, roaring fire, With flapping flags and lapping tongues That purrs and burrs with lion's lungs. Expands the ring of kitchen chairs. And brightens up the brow of cares. The coals of rubies fall apart, Lo, secrets of a burning heart : The embers show a valentine. Dead faces smile, lost castles shine, HEARTS AND HEARTHS. $7 And pansies blow, and eglantine. And old gold beads and rings of price And buds and birds of Paradise. A soft red twilight charms the room And fills it like a faint perfume. There, couples sat the night away Whist as a buttonhole bouquet — Some russets roasting in a row, Some talking flames that " told of snow," Some cider that her hands had drawn, Two pairs of lips, a single cup. Both kissed the brim and drank it up. The candle has its night-cap on, The very embers gone to bed — Who shall record what either said ? Or who so eloquent can tell How early apples used to smell ? The woodsy, evanescent taste Of berries plucked with eager haste, As through the meadow lands they crept, And fingers touched and fancy woke And never slumbered, never slept Till day on life's sweet dreamings broke ? The pious clock a murmur made, Held up both hands before its face, Not meant so much for twelve o'clock, But just astonishment and shock At such a want of modest grace, For up the sweetheart sprang, and laid A muffling finger on the bell, Lest the shrill steel should strike and tell. And gave the hands a backward whirl. POEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE. Took time "on tick," the reckless girl! Where is the lover ? Old and lone. And where the maiden ? Gray and gone. I read the dim Italic stone : A willow tree, a " Sacred To " — The sad old story, ever new, For all the twain the world moves on. I saw a spider drift about Upon the sun-shot morning air, As if like thistle blossoms blown At random, desolate and strown. Now here and there and everywhere, And all the while that aeronaut Was paying nature's life-line out ! I traced it by the nervous thread Back to its little silken lair. Safe hid in a verbena bed. It never cut that cable fine, But felt its home along the line. And then I thought, and then I said, Our life-line is the love of home, Oh, make it fast where'er you roam — Amid the rough world's rolling strife, It is the anchorage of life. POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. A WINTER PSALM. A SONG for the meek old mountains — the mount- ains grand and strong, That lifted winter clear of earth all spring and summer long. And made it gay with evergreen, and then with one accord They shouldered the snows in silence and stood before the Lord. They did it for the roses' sake — that robins might be born, And Indian gold might flash along the rank and file of corn, And sheafy wigwam everywhere lift up its tawny cone, And Rachel sing the harvest-home where harvest moons had shone ; They did it for the little graves — bade flowers and children say, We'll smile together by and by, and fill the world with May ! Well done for the grim old mountains ! And well for the king who laid Upon their shoulders stout and brave his gold and crimson blade. 6o POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. 'Twas meet that the princely Morning, with banners all unfurled, Should knight them with his royal touch across the blushing world. As softly as on mountain air beatitudes were shed, As gently as the lilies bud among the words He said. So did the dear old mountains lay the sparkling winter down Upon the poor dumb bosom of a world so bare and brown — So noiselessly and silently, such radiance and rest ! As if a snowy wing should fold upon a sparrow's breast. Far through the dim uncertain air, as still as asters blow. The downy, drowsy feet untold tread out the world we know; Upon the pine's green fingers set, flake after flake they land, And flicker with a feeble light amid the shadowy band; Upon the meadows broad and brown where maids and mowers sung; Upon the meadows gay with gold the dandelions flung; Upon the farm-yard's homely realm, on ricks and rugged bars, Till riven oak and strawy heap were domes and silver spars; The cottage was an eastern dream with alabaster eaves, And lilacs growing round about with diamonds for leaves; The well-sweep gray above the roof a silver accent stood, And silver willows wept their way to meet a silver wood; A WINTER PSALM. 6i The russet groves had blossomed white and budded full with stars, The fences were in uniform, the gate posts were hussars; The chimneys were in turbans all, with plumes of crimson smoke, And the costly breaths were silver when the laughing children spoke; And gem and jewel everywhere along the tethers strung Where mantling roses once had climbed, and morning glories swung. So through the dim, uncertain air, as still as asters blow. The downy, drowsy feet untold tread out the world we know. The glimmer of the violet's eye goes out beneath their tread, White silence lines the ringing street and drifts around the dead, But more than all they trample out the crooked paths of men, And make the stained and wrinked world all clean and young again ! The summer rain hath won sweet song from many a tuneful soul Since God did paint day's alphabet upon the cloudy scroll, But who for the snow shall give us one grand angelic psalm. The beautiful feet of the snow — the feet so pure and calm ? Thanks be to God for winter time! That bore the Mayflower up, 62 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASOA^S. To pour amid New England snows the treasures of its cup, To fold them in its icy arms, those sturdy Pilgrim sires, And weld an iron brotherhood around their Christmas fires ! Thanks be to God for winter time ! How strong the pulses play, And ah, the pulses of the bells are not less sweet than they ! Dear heart of winter, throb again with old melodious beat, Around thy glow forever heard the play of childhood's feet, Worn smooth and beautiful the Rock where later pil- grims come To harvest all their loves and hopes around the hearth of homel OCTOBER. I T WOULD not die in May: \ 1 When orchards drift with blooms of white like bil- lows on the deep, And whispers from the lilac bush across my senses sweep, That 'mind me of a girl I knew when life was always May, Who filled my nights with starry hopes that faded out by day — When time was full of wedding-days, and nests of robins brim, OCTOBER. 63 Till overflows their wicker sides the old familiar hymn — The window brightens like an eye, the cottage doors swing wide, The boys come homeward, one by one, and bring a smiling bride, The fire-fly shows her signal light, the partridge beats his drum, And all the world gives promise of something sweet to come — Ah, who would die on such a day? Ah, who would die in May ? II. I would not die in June : When looking up with faces quaint the pansies grace the sod, And looking down, the willows see their doubles in the flood — When blessing God, we breathe again the roses in the air, And lilies light the fields along with their immortal wear As once they lit the Sermon of the Saviour on the Mount, And glorified the story they evermore recount — Through pastures blue the flocks of God go trooping one by one, And turn their golden fleeces round to dry them in the sun — When calm as Galilee the grain is rippling in the wind, And nothing dying anywhere but something that has sinned — 64 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. Ah, who would die in life's own noon ? Ah, who would die in June ? III. But when October comes, And poplars drift their leafage down in flakes of gold below, And beeches burn like twilight fires that used to tell of snow. And maples bursting into flame set all the hills afire, And summer from her evergreens sees Paradise draw nigher — A thousand sunsets all at once distil like Hermon's dew, And linger on the waiting woods and stain them through and through, As if all earth had blossomed out, one grand Corin- thian flower, To crown time's graceful capital for just one gorgeous hour. They strike their colors to the king of all the stately throng — He comes in pomp, October! To him all times belong. The frost is on his sandals, but the flush is on his cheeks, September sheaves are in his arms, June voices when he speaks — The elms lift bravely like a torch within a Grecian hand, See where they light the monarch on through all the splendid land. The sun puts on a human look behind the hazy fold. The mid-year moon of silver is struck anew in gold, In honor of the very day that Moses saw of old. For in the Burning Bush that blazed as quenchless as a sword. JUNE. 65 The old lieutenant first beheld October and the Lord. Ah, then, October let it be — I'll claim my dying day from thee. JUNE. THE world is in June and it ripples in rhyme — June ! Sweetheart of life and own darling of time. The year, with glad laughter, plays truant to death, Goes back so near Eden she catches its breath. And follows that airy old fashion of Eve's, And rustles abroad in an apron of leaves I She holds her cheek long to the kiss of the sun. Days widen and warm like some volume begun, Narrow night like a ribbon just marking the page Where some eloquent thought shall last out the age. Every bush has a blossom, a bee, or a bird, A beauty to blow or a hum to be heard — Battalions of legs — all eyes or all stings — And billions of monsters, mosquitoes, and '^ things," And needles like cherubs, with nothing but wings. There's a promise to plead or a bill to present, A grave to be opened, a shroud to be rent. For they rise without trump; resurrections in June Are as blithe as the lark and as bonny as Doon. From the tick of a heart in the breast of a wren To the trumpets that make Agamemnons of men — From the teardrop that trembles unflashed from its brim, To the surly old storm that rolls over earth's rim, Tramples out the white stars as daisies are trod, While its red plumage shakes with the drum beat of God, Till green world and blue world by tempest are riven 66 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. And the lightning's dread squadrons charge right up to Heaven, As Sheridan went — as if grim Mission Ridge With its arches of fire were the pier of a bridge Somebody had built to the gates of the sky And he bound to go up without waiting to die — Everything, everywhere, struggling up in the strife, Is beginning to climb that strange ladder of life, With an angel alight on its uppermost round And an atom alive where it touches the ground; From the blue music box of the robin's old wife A burglar breaks through into mansions of life. Hearts are trumps here in June : heart of lion and lark, Heart of Richard and Rachel and Joan of Arc; Heart of iron and oak, steady, sturdy, and true. When through lines of red fire broke the jackets of blue; A world of life's rivers all ebbing and flowing, A world full of hearts like hammers all going, Yet instead of our hearing these drummers of wonder, With their ruffle and roll pulsing out into thunder, The earth is, for all of this turbulent crowd, As still as a star, or the shape in a shroud. I think it was June when the maiden looked down On the dear little Moses just ready to drown. And, his basket of bulrushes rocked by the Nile, That Columbus of Canaan looked up with a smile. When summer's green surges roll over the land Till you hardly can tell as they break on the strand. Where this world doth end or the other begin, They so hide all the graves, the first footprints of sin, Is it strange that earth's singers should drift out of June, JUNE. 67 As if lifted by chance on the swell of a tune, And fairly float over life's musical bars, When the birds can go with them half way to the stars ? So went Sontag and Weber — magnificent pair — He was clerk to the angels and she sang in the choir; He recorded in score, but she passed down the word Till a turbulent world grew human, and heard. Ah, talk of the eye unsleeping, unweeping, Undaunted, undying, its watch and ward keeping, To whose glance telescopic raveled midnight is given — You can see to Orion, but you hear into heaven! So went they in June who, with wonderful art, Put in English and rhythm the beat of the heart — The bard of Sweet Hope, and the bard of Sweet Home. They wronged thee, oh Sexton! They tenant no tomb. For Campbell shall live when the tartan is dim, And Payne walk the world that is chanting his hymn. How came they in June who the rainbow unbent. And laid it alive on the fold of a tent; With fingers immortal the curtain withdrew. And the canvas was kindled, and faces looked through — Lips ruddy and ripe with the old loving glow Somebody was kissing three ages ago ! So Rubens, June-born, the grand master of art, With a nerve in his pencil strung straight from his heart, At whose touch the Evangels gave Calvary up, The Christ, and the cross, and the crown, and the cup — And Hebrew and Greek fell away from the story, And left it sublime in its gloom and its glory ! And that Spaniard, June-born, whose fame shed a gleam Ere Plymouth had pilgrim, or Bunyan a dream — 68 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. With no drop of blue blood in breast or in brain, By a right far diviner than Philip's of Spain, Was own king of colors — whose banners so brave Never lowered unto death, never struck to the grave; Pride and pomp of the realm, the Armada went down, Cleared the face of the sea like a vanishing frown, But some child that he painted, its journey undone, Makes the transit of ages as Venus the sun ! Christ lay in thy manger, oh, fairest of stars ! June rocks in thy cradle, oh, brighter than Mars — God walked in thy garden — man sprung from thy dust — Ah, who would not hold thy grand story in trust. That no blade would be wielded, nor battle be born. But the green waving sabres by ranks of young corn ? Yet what broods of grim thunders have nested in June, Swooped from eyries of blue in the broad summer noon, Splashed the greenest sod red with the color of fame, Flared the flags into flower with their breathings of flame. And growled the world dumb — all its eloquent words, The laugh of its girls, and the songs of its birds. Marengo roars down the long highway sublime, Tis the Corsican clocks striking Bonaparte's time — The grumble of guns that had hidden the stars From the sands of the Nile to the land of the Czars; Old Monmouth breaks in with its rattle and rain To the flash of the flint and *' mad Anthony Wayne." And Cromwell the trooper, half lamb and half lion. For the wicked King Charles and the blessed Mount Zion — Two hundred years nearer Time's morning than now, JUNE. 69 Rode into the storm, naked blade and bare brow, Wheeled his surly old squadrons as the Lord wheels a a cloud — Their hearts and their cannon all throbbing aloud — And rode down the king with a cavalry shock That smote off his crown, bent his head to the block, Made royalists tremble, and monarchy rock ! But the throb of no battery ever has stirred The world's mighty heart like some stout English word, Wherein a brave utterance, sandaled and shod. Has marched down the ages for Freedom and God ! 'Mid the splendor of June the roar of the Shannon Roused something more grand than the Chesapeake's cannon, For she wrung out the words from Lawrence's lip That s-hall linger forever : " Don't give up the ship ! " Ah, the click of flint locks is not half so divine As the click of the type as they fall into line. The audible step of unfaltering feet To a mightier tune than our bosoms can beat. I remember the heroes who sailed out of June, Ross, Harvey, and Franklin, and Hudson's "Half Moon," Into realms where the sea has breathlessly stood. Like the scalps of the Alps dumb and white before God; Who have bended the oar, and have lifted the wing, Fairly fled the dominions of caliph and king. Broken out of horizons as old as mankind, Shatter'd shells of the worlds they were leaving behind. Aye, Harvey, who stood by the brink of a heart. And saw it brim over, turn crimson, and start, And discovered a river as truly God's own As the river of crystal that flows by His throne. 6 70 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. Bear away, ye tall ships, farewell, and all hail ! Cloud up, main and mizzen, weigh anchor, and sail ! Be lifted, blue Heaven ! Let the admirals through, There's a lubber ashore that is grander than you ! Born of rags, and flung down on a marvelous street, All rough with the prints of a million of feet, And cradled in iron, and trampled with ink, This poor dingy creature, I venture to think, The frailest and feeblest of fluttering things, As easily crushed as a butterfly's wings, Has more power, oh, ye ships, than your canvas of white, To let out the world, and to let in the light, And swing from their hinges the portals of night. Let the ashes of Smithfield tell, if they can. When this gift of the Pentecost fell upon man. It was born out of doors in that faded old June When the chime of Christ's ages struck twelve o'clock noon, And the barons of John plucked the heart of this thing, The Charter of Liberty, warm from the king. Imperial June of the emerald crown ! When angels had read the Lord's weather-roll down, They found but one June in all heaven to spare. And direct by the route of the answer to prayer From the glory above thou didst fall through the air. THE CALIFORNIA YEAR. 71 THE CALIFORNIA YEAR. BEYOND the midland Rocky Range That wrinkles up the rugged world, Where gray volcanoes sat and smoked Like burgomasters weird and strange, And watched the columns as they curled — Where old Decembers, crowned and cloaked, Have seen a thousand Junes go by, A thousand winters leave the line Cast down upon the rocks to die. Until the granite crags grew white With icy bones and Arctic fight. And grave-clothes decked with pine; Where grim Sierra shows her teeth. Medusa East, Minerva West, A nursing Boreas at her breast. The chained and halted years beneath, She fronts two worlds with pale intent. And smiles across the continent. Beyond her, California lies At graceful length, with zone undone, Behold this Cleopatra's eyes Grow azure under western skies; Her smitten cheeks turned one by one, Like rare-ripe peaches to the sun, A June of Junes in either hand. Her early roses light the late To bed, and not a flower to grieve From Easter Morn to Christmas Eve — A tropic heart, a bosom fanned By breezes from the Golden Gate. 72 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. Then throned upon the unbound wheat, She slips her sandals, and her feet Walk white among the lilies, while We tramp the snow-drift's silent mile. Her months like graces stand in groups. To cull a flower November stoops, December's lips, with berries stained, Are pressed upon the cheek of June, October's hand is violet-veined, And morning-glories last till noon. The year's four seasons tossed and strown, Like Sybil's leaves along the track Of Time — the dear old reckoning gone. For May meets August coming back, And tender blades and yellow sheaves In one rich landscape strangely met, A wild Arabian-night vignette, And winter woods wear flowing sleeves. And bud and bloom and harvest all Commingle in a carnival. THANKSGIVING. LAY out the earth in a sheet of snow. There is nothing at all to harm below, Where men dream out the world together. And pansies sleep till pleasant weather — The safest place in all the land Is the narrow realm of the folded hand! Then thanks to God that a flower will die 'Twas made to time Thanksgiving by: THA NKSGI VING. 7 3 Breathe as it falls — prophetic thing! — "There'll be an April in the spring!" Then thanks to God for a sister there To stand on Glory's diamond stair, And thanks again, though I go late, A mother gone shall smiling wait, Shall breathe three names with reverent tone, The Child's, the Virgin's, and her Own, And lift the latch of Mercy's gate! II. Rouse up the fire to a costly glow, Till the maple parts, and the rubies show. Swing back the curtains now if ever, And, rich and warm, the slender river Shall cleave Thanksgiving Night in twain, As the mantle parted the old Red Main! Ah, never fear — shine as it will, Enough is left to cheer us still. Perhaps some wanderer going past, Who tried all sorrows but the last, And wonders why he dares to live, And thinks he has no thanks to give, May see that glimmer on the ground — His old dead heart give glad rebound — It looks so like the road of gold He trod himself in time of old — Look up and see Thanksgiving found! III. Bring out the chairs from the empty wall. Where fitful shadows used to fall. The shapes of father, sister, mother. Of slender sweetheart, friend, and brother. 74 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. No painted window half so fair As the old home-room with its shadows there; No pictured hall, at king's desire, Could match that group before the fire, Who never cast a shade beside, But on that wall, and when they died! And some went up at break of day, Some waited longer by the way; Let them who will thank God for light, Such shadows never made it night. Come one, come all, there yet is room, Thanks be to God, from heaven to home Is nothing but a flash of flight ! IV. Wheel forth the table, a laden palm. We'll all give thanks, and we'll sing a psalm — Some song old-fashioned, of Forever, That floated safe across the river. No note lost out, no cadence gone. They warbled, died, and sang right on! The girls shall come in their white and blue, As if they broke God's azure through. Played truant to the realms of light To be with us Thanksgiving night. The boys are thronging through the hall. They've not grown old these years at all! Some marched away to muffled drum, But fling no shadows as they come — Without a sorrow or a sin E'en Death himself would let them in — Oh, Sweethearts! Comrades! Welcome home! 0' THE CHILD AND THE STAR. 75 THE CHILD AND THE STAR. |H, feel in your bosom, my darling, If the flutter is there as of old. The pant of Sterne's captive, the starling, When this old-fashioned story is told. Oh, the days sparkling up to the rim That bounds the one world by the other ! Oh, your heart even full to the brim With love like the love of your mother! When you knew nothing more about sorrow or sin Than the buttercups knew that she held to your chin, While she watched with a smile your small secret un- fold. As it tinted the white with a glimmer of gold. We stood in the pasture together With the clover breath over our heads, Right down from the Lord came the weather. Right up went the larks from their beds; And we longed for a goldfinch's billow As it rode the invisible flood — An oriole swung from a willow, And the daisies were bowing to God. But the year was a harp, and like David, the king's, And the graver the cadence the longer the strings — One by one went the days, growing briefer and fewer. And we told them all off, and no tale could be truer — So we watched out the time with no thought of a sigh, For our hearts danced and sang, " Merry Christmas is nigh ! " Oh, honey-bee, gypsy of summer. There's a flower that is sweeter than thine ! 76 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. For thee there's an angel for comer, With the sweep of a pinion divine. Oh, day on the hem of December! And oh, star of old Bethlehem's brood! Shine down in my heart like an ember With a glow from the altar of God. Oh, fairest of flowers in the garden That dost blossom the brightest and last, When our Eden has furloughed its warden, And the roses and lilies are past; When Euroclydon's fingers so sculpture the snow, That you hardly can tell if the sleeper below Is just waiting for spring, or the trumpet to blow; When the marble in motion and the Parian blend. Till the sexton must say where " God's acre " should end, And 'mid these from the quarry and those from the cloud, Must declare which they are that are wearing a shroud! Sit here by my side like a lover, Let us turn down the flare of the lamp, And talk the dear story all over Till around us the shadows encamp. As we did in the days of the olden. We will light a dim candle again, For the blaze of a chandelier golden Never shone from the Now to the Then. We will blow a dull coal to its glowing, As we blew it long ages ago, While the Lord of the harvest is sowing With His tempest out there in the snow. THE CHILD AND THE STAR. 77 Do you see that gray roof strangely drifted with leaves, And the moss all along on its low northern eaves ? 'Tis as if Robin Redbreast, on duty again, Would have covered my dead from the vision of men. Each side of the gate a bold Lombardy stands, As stately as warders, as graceful as wands, That I watched long ago, while they swept the blue sky All clear of the clouds that were loitering by ! I, there in my cradle slowly rocking and dreaming. They, clearing the road where the angels were gleaming. Now I pause on the threshold the loving feet trod That have walked upon thorns, that have gone up to God — All traced here and there on threshold or stair But the one pair that left not a print anywhere — Ah, the little bare feet that had never been shod ! Oh, heart of the house, my dead mother, Give your boy the old greeting once more That I never have heard from another Since death was let in at the door. I can reach up my hand to the ceiling Of the rooms once the world's greater part — Who wonders I cannot help feeling They have narrowed to fit to my heart ? Ah, these little green panes let the morning in late But it never was stained by the emerald gate — And the clock has run down in its desolate place — How we counted it in with its moon of a face. When we said: " Four were born, but the clock is alive," And the household forever was numbered at five. And dumb is the bell that did toll off the hours 78 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. And the boys and the blessings, the birds and the flowers. And dead are the hands that were lifted a space When the noon seemed to halt while the father said grace ! Here's the place on the jamb where we " reckoned " at night, There's a mark on the wall where we measured our height, And a line on the sill where the sunbeam swung round Like a ship on a bar, as 'twas nearing the ground. Ah, how slowly it crept when some day was to-morrow ! Ah, how swiftly it went I have learned to my sorrow ! Oh, if Gibeon's sun could have shone there of old. And burnished the sill with unperishing gold ! The air is alive with a shiver — There's a wandering chill in the room — There's a foot that has forded the river — There's a hand feels for mine from a tomb ! I take it in silence, unshrinking. And I warm it again in my grasp. There is nothing of sadness in thinking Two worlds may have met in the clasp. My heart strangely longs as I linger. To be decked with some darling old word. Be clasped as a ring clasps a finger By a trinket my boyhood had heard — Some fragment of speech by love broken. As the emblem was broken by Christ, That, passed round the homestead in token Would a soul from a sod have enticed ! THE CHILD AND THE STAR. 79 Ah, the chimney draws still ! It is drawing my heart, And that rudest of things ever fashioned by art Does so kindle my soul with intensest desire To become as a child and see faces in fire, That I never can wonder the curling blue smoke, As dull water was wine when Divinity spoke. Always turned into crimson theinstant it broke Like a glory unrolled into sunshine and air. And then floated abroad like an archangel's hair ! For that chimney was ever the top of the stair Where my angel came down in the dear Christmas eve; Oh, set back the old clock and still let me believe That the saint of my childhood, Saint Nicholas, came Down that tunnel of glory, the route of the flame! Here the stockings were swung in their red, white, and blue, All fashioned to feet that were light as the dew, For they walked upon flowers without crushing a bud. That have trampled the flint till it blushes with blood. Ah, the fragrant old faith when we watched the cold gray Reluctantly line the dim border of day, When we braved the bare floor with our little bare feet — No shrine to a pilgrim was ever so sweet. When each heart and each stocking was burdened with bliss — On the verge of two worlds there is nothing like this But a mother's last smile and a lover's first kiss! " Merry Christmas," we cried, and in answer to prayer, The glad greeting came back like a gush of June air. That had lurked out the night in those bosoms of theirs 8o POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. To waylay us at dawn when we stole down the stairs. God pity the man who has naught to remember, With no heart anywhere if not in December, Who abandons the Cross because Romans adore it. And yet longs for the crown that is carried before it; Who declaring the birthday of Christ is uncertain, Would let down on the Manger Oblivion's curtain — Unheeding the birth of the Heir to the Throne, While he tells off the years, and then honors his own ! Shuts the door on the angels commissioned by Heaven To belong to the children for one blessed even, Locks out of their hearts the invisible land. And tarnishes time with the touch of his hand. Where the birds had the freedom of window and eaves. And the walls were all garnished with Bethlehem's sheaves, The bright straw with its amber bestrewing the floor. The great eyes of the oxen like lamps at the door, And their breath clouding up the dim air of the place As if censers were swinging round altars of grace. Was the Prince of all worlds in humility born. Who created the Christmas and crowned the new morn. There were angels without but a flash from the throne, With the flow of their robes as two mornings in one, For those angels without brought their glory along. And they sang to the planet its first Christmas Song. The Star in the East took its place in the choir, While the Seraph sang alto the Angels sang air. And they said: "Unto God all the glory be given!" Ere it ended on earth it had mounted to Heaven — And they said, and the cadence is lingering still, " Be His peace evermore to the men of good will ! " THE CHILD AND THE STAR. 8i There were Shepherds hard by when the carol arose, And they came as they were, in their every-day clothes ; All above in the blue lay the Lord's shining sheep, And below in the green were their own fast asleep ; And their hearts of themselves just beginning to sing What had fluttered to earth like a lark with one wing, But the anthem's grand surge swept it up to the King I And that first Christmas Party stood out in the moon As they watched the transfigured and glorified tune. And the Magi were seeking the Christmas that day, And the Star went before them and blazoned the way — Ah, the children and Christmas together belong. As the melody marries the words of a song That can float us right up where the seraphim throng. With their hands in a tremble the Magi unfold All their treasures of myrrh and their tokens of gold, And they swept the brown manger with beards like the drift, As the cloud turns to snow with the moon in the rift. And they led off the world with their first Christmas Gift. And the Star and the Manger, the Carol and Child Have been gladdening the planet since Bethlehem smiled. Bid the singers begin, and the manger's old chorus We will sing as they sang through the ages before us . Oh, lift your dull heart from its pillow, Let me hold it awhile in my hand. Till it warms at the sight of the willow As the sailor at sight of the land ; Till it rallies some soul from its sorrow, S2 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. Till it smiles the dark winter away, Lights the hope of a better to-morrow With the glow of a brighter to-day. Let us bid for a cloud to be lifted, For a bed that is nothing but straw. For a hearth that is ashen and drifted, For a debtor disastered by law; That the tables of stone may be broken And the hearth be an altar of gold, And the pillow of Bethel betoken Not a couch but the Dreamer's of old ! What song was born out of the grieving, What a faith in its splendor began. What worship of God by believing In the angel that lingers in man : Oh, awake in your chambers, ye bells everywhere. Overturn, oh, ye goblets, and empty in air All the music that swells to your resonant brims, Till ye throb like our hearts, and it blends with our hymns ! Now be thanks to our God that this Eve of the Christmas, Uniting two worlds with its radiant Isthmus, And joining again what transgression had riven, Is the children's own road to the Kingdom of Heaven ! Oh, bells that are iron ! Oh, hearts that are human ! Oh, songs that are sweet as the loving of woman ! Be ye blent all the while in a chorus sublime As the carol of stars by the cradle of Time ! And oh, spare us an angel from Bethlehem's choir. Let him bring the same song that he helped to sing there, Be the grand old beatitude sounded again. And to earth everywhere, Merry Christmas, Amen ! EASTER. 83 EASTER. TO MRS. MARY S. BRADFORD. LIKE flocks of sheep celestial the folded clouds were still — The sky fell blue and delicate on headland, lake, and hill — The sun was strong in burnish'd mail of the beaten gold of God, And childish daisies rose and rent the winding sheet of sod; And April's breath was redolent of something sweet and rare She lightly kissed in coming, that had left its fragrance there. Perhaps it was a violet, an apple bough in bloom, Perhaps it was arbutus, with its whisper of perfume, It might have been a hyacinth, a pilgrim at a tomb. So Easter offerings on the earth as on an altar lay, Sweet hints of double morning that should dawn on Easter day; As if one great beatitude fell down and bless'd the ground, As if a song exultant rose, like light, without a sound. Then, with a parcel in "her hand a smiling woman came; It might have beep a bridal robe, perhaps an oriflamme; And it was both, full well I knew, wrought for a holy place, A chancel would be radiant, an altar it would grace. Fold after fold the fabric fair unrolling to the light, It kindled up my little room, Aurora in the night ! With silken sheen of banner and broidery of gold, 84 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. The drapings of the altar and the chancel were unrolled. There were wreaths of golden roses, a golden cross and crown, — There were filmy ferns, and borders like a royal wed- ding gown, — Golden words of adoration, golden guise for golden thought. By that loving woman's fingers all delicately wrought; And she stitched her heart within them as her shining needle true Its little trail of golden thread in graceful beauty drew, Across that field of spotless white the sunny tracings went. And calla lilies to the Lord each golden chalice lent. And near them basked a butterfly as golden as the rest, — All pure and fair, they might have been a holy angel's vest; So pure, so fair, they would befit Old Herbert's Sabbath day. Despite December's drifted gloom these precious flow- ers will stay. Well done, dear Dorcas of to-day, this graceful work of thine Is nothing less than worship in budding flower and vine ! OLD-FASHIONED SPRING. 85 OLD-FASHIONED SPRING. GIVE me the sweet old-fashioned Spring, Dear as a girl's engagement ring — I hear the keys in crystal locks Slow turn to let the rivers run And shine like lizards in the sun. I watch the rigid world come to, The skies come off with broods of blue. The soft clouds troop in fleecy flocks, The mosses green the umber rocks, The twin leaves lift their tips of ears. The rushes poise their slender spears, The squirrels tick like crazy clocks, The sunshine leave the Southern hall And swing around to the Northern wall. I watch the blue smokes slowly rise Amid the maples* reddening skies — The hemlock couch, the rafter rails, The neck-yoked Libras with their pails. The bended twig, a ghostly spoon. That films across like a cloudy moon; The white eggs dance in the tumbling sap, The nut-cakes heap a checkered lap. The young moon's sickle reaps the stars. Her light ribbed off with maple bars; The laugh of girls, the camp-fire glow. The great black cauldron, bubbling slow. The amber mouth-piece on the snow — Oh, memories of the maple fane. Wax sweet for aye though moons shall wane ! 86 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. I tread brown earth with loving foot, Its breath steals up with Agur's prayer. I see the lily's green surtout Unbutton to the light and air. I hear the hymn-book songs begin To fly abroad from windows wide With notes of lilac-breath thrown in, And rhyme and thyme in mingled tide. I hear the bees' small hum-book's drone From garden bed to clover glade, And frogs strike up with deep trombone, And lilting bells and tambourine The old Homeric serenade. Give me the dear long-coming spring, Horizons like a blue-bird's wing; I love its sights and sounds and scents, The plowshare's fragrant corduroy, The greenwood's rustling halls of joy, Down to the toad-stools' tiny tents. The fire-fly brings his lantern light To show the summer's velvet night; The beds of pinks are bright with thrums. And golden glow chrysanthemums; Verbenas burn, geraniums blaze, The smoke-tree clouds with purple mist, The fuchsia wears an amethyst — A ruby at the hum -bird's throat And silver in the finch's note And satin on the martin's coat. And fire upon the red-bird's wing, God speed the Noon ! The Sun is king. A BIRTH-DAY. 87 A BIRTH-DAY. December 17TH, 1807. I. NEW ENGLAND bred, December born, Oh, eldest son of Doric song, We bid thy fame and thee good morn ! The welcomes of the world belong To thee. Thanksgiving Day drifts down To set thy birth-right in its crown. II. Thanks for thy bugle-horn that played Oppression's Dead March round the land, Thanks for thy ringing harp that made New pulses leap in labor's hand. Thanks for thy trumpet's Gabriel blast That rallied out the right at last. III. Thanks for thy psaltery's iron strings That shook their rhythmic thunders out As eagles spurn with clashing wings The mountain eyrie's rock redoubt. Until God's broad horizons ran The circling brotherhood of man ! IV. Thanks for thy golden bees that hum The fragrant tunes of summer through The year ; forever go and come With all things sweet and pure and true, And lend these dull and daily lives The music of the murmuring hives. POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. V. Midway between Thanksgiving Day And Christmas Eve a cradle rocked, An angel left his radiant way And stood beside the door and knocked. Before him waved the Christmas glow, Behind him whirled the drifting snow. VI. The door swung wide. Beyond his feet The yule-log streamed a golden light. As if a small celestial street Were ribbon'd on the breast of night. Let grace and mercy here abide From Halloween to Christmas-tide ! VII. " Now peace on earth," the angel said, " Praise God the Father and the Son," And so above that infant head The carol and the psalm begun, Translated since in every tongue, By Battle thundered, Mercy sung. VIII. The Christmas coal that touched his lips. The Christmas soul that warmed his breast, Unquenched to-day in earth's eclipse Is yet aglow; is still a guest, — In roll of timbrel, song of wren, 'Tis " peace on earth, good will to men ! " IX. He sang. The debtor's dungeon door Swung backward on its hinge of rust. OUR SILVER WEDDING DAY. 89 The chains clanked down that bondmen wore And blood cried out from speechless dust, Till skies of daisies starred the sod Where terror knelt and tyrant trod. X. He sang. And poor Bron rhuddyn's throat Was trembling sweet with English song. He sang. And bolted lightnings smote The grizzly battlements of Wrong. Strike not thy " Tent " beside the sea, Brave Laureate of Liberty! Not " Snow-bound " yet, this later John Sings Eden's dear old songs again. And Whittier's Pilgrims travel on Till Time's last anthem sounds Amen. OUR SILVER WEDDING DAY. 1852-1877. IN Geyser Canon, California, there is an alcove called " The Lovers' Rest," a sort of shrine under a roof of laurel It hangs like a balcony above the Pluton River. Vines drape the trees, and wild flowers smile from rugged clefts and swing above the water. It was just here that an anniversary found us that had been twenty-five years on the way. Kind fellow-mountaineers made it memorable with cordial words and pleasant deeds, and under the laurel shadow, the voice of mountain birds and Geyser River clear and strong, the air bright and sweet with sun and flowers, the Sev- enth of June straight down from Heaven, the wedding feast set forth, the friends around, these lines, written where the miner's 90 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. wash-bowl used to be, "on my knee," were read, and then, "The Lovers' Rest," left to its loveliness and loneliness, the wedding guests were scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific. " Here's a health to them that's awa'! " OUR SILVER WEDDING DAY. Five and twenty years ago And two thousand miles away, With a mingled gleam and glow As of roses in the snow, Shines a day ! Only day that never set In all this world of sorrow, — Only day that ever let Weary, wayside hearts forget To-morrow. All the world was wondrous fair To the bridegroom and the bride. With the lilacs in the air And the roses all at prayer Side by side. In the door stood golden day, Washed the noon-mark out with light, Larks half sang their souls away — Who dreamed the morning would not stay Until night? Dim and bright and far and near Is the homestead where we met — Friends around no longer here. Rainbow light in every tear — Together yet ! OUR SILVER WEDDING DAY. 9 1 Ah, the graves since we were wed That have made that June day dim — Golden crown and silver head Always dying, never dead, Like some hymn — Some sweet breath of olden days: Lips are dust — on goes the song ! Soft in plaint and grand in praise, Living brooks by dusty ways All along ! Wandered wide the loving feet, Some have made the lilies grow, And have walked the golden street Where the missing mornings meet From below. Night the weaver waits to weave, Facing north I see unfurled Shadows on my Eastern sleeve — Crape of night, but never grieve For the world. Now, dear heart, thy hand in mine, Through clear and cloudy weather, Crowned with blessings half divine We'll drink the cup of life's old wine Together In this " Lovers' " perfect " Rest," Beside the Geyser River, Where mountains heap the burning breast Of giants with the plumy crest Forever. 92 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. New friends grace this Silver Day, Apples gold in pictures fair, Bringing back a royal ra}'- From the everlasting May Over there. We lift the prayer of tiny Tim, " God bless us every one ! " Crown life's goblet to the brim, While across its Western rim Shines the sun. L' JULY FOURTH, 1886. AST-BORN of Babel men, A century and ten To-day ! Roar, heavy guns. By loud-tongued batteries thunder salutation, Ring off the rust Of cob-webbed slumber reddening brazen lips, And say : God save the birth-day of this stately Nation, God keep her aye from battle-cloud eclipse, From might-made right, From grasping greed, from cruel pride of station. Dieu et mon droit Shall be our legend with a free translation, God and the Right, All rights in one harmoniously entwining As shines the sun. Its tinted rays in noon's broad beam combining — God speed the day ! BURNS' CENTURY SONG. 93 Bid all our clouds unfold " the silver lining," For this we pray; Bid all day long our banner'd stars be shining. Ah, fairer far The Golden Rule's soft light than sabres gleaming. Or Arctic hosts with fairy falchions streaming, And spear and star. And then, Though feasts might dwindle to a soldier's ration, Who saved the Nation free on fare no better. Wrought out for time the Continent's salvation. Left land and hand no confine and no fetter Save seas that border and save love that binds, Good-will grown cardinal, borne by all the winds. We crave no land beside, whatever may betide The great Republic — God ever bless and guide, Amen ! BURNS' CENTURY SONG. HOPE, her starry vigil keeping O'er a Campbell by the Clyde — By the Tweed a '"Wizard" sleeping — '' Shepherd " by the Yarrow's side — Land of glory, song, and story. Land of mountains and of men, Did ye dream that Song could die? Banks and braes be glad again, Robert Burns is passing by ! 94 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. Everywhere, everywhere, Smiles will break and tears will start, Making rainbows round the heart, Plowman, Brother, Bard of Ayr ! II. Heart of leal ! Can this be dying. Coming thus sublimely down ? Lo, an hundred winters sighing Leave unstrown thy holly crown ! Not in sorrow dawns thy morrow, " Bonny Jean " is by thy side, Making life and love keep time; Beauty be thy deathless bride, Weaving all our hearts in rhyme ! III. Heavy heart and smoky rafter Growing light with Burns's song — Calmer tears and clearer laughter — Plaided bosoms brave and strong; Birds are singing, blue-bells ringing, Naked Heart in open palm ! With thy "days of auld lang syne," With thy Cotter's evening psalm, Thou hast made all ages thine. IV. Now the thrush's silver sonnet Trembling from the blossom'd thorn, Winter floating white upon it — Sweetest Lyric ever born ! Bruce is breaking — Wallace waking. From the clasp of mighty Death, DECORA TION DA Y. 95 Morven swells the Doric song ! — Lads' and lassies' blended breath Gushes sweet all summer long ! V. O'er the daisy in the furrow Bending low with loving words — By the mouse's broken burrow — Songs of burnies and of birds — Breezes blowing — rivers flowing — Hark, the beat of bonny Doon, Logan, Devon, Afton, Ayr, Braided in a pleasant tune, " Highland Mary " in the choir ! Everywhere, everywhere, Smiles will break and tears will start, Making rainbows round the heart, Plowman, Brother, Bard of Ayr ! DECORATION DAY. |H, be dumb all ye clouds As the dead in their shrouds, Let your pulses of thunder die softly away, Ye have nothing to do But to drift round the blue. For the emerald world grants a furlough to-day ! Bud, blossom, and flower All blended in shower. In the grandest and gentlest of rains shall be shed On the acres of God 96 POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. With their billows of sod Breaking breathless and beautiful over the dead ! They do flush the broad land With the flower-laden hand, Drift the dimples of graves with the colors of even; Where a Boy in Blue dreams A "Forget-me-not" gleams — No rain half so sweet ever fell out of heaven ! From no angel was caught The magnificent thought To pluck daisies and roses, those bravest of things, — For they stand all the while In their graves with a smile, — And to strew with live fragrance dead lions and kings ! It was somebody born, It was Rachel forlorn, 'Twas the love they named Mary, the trust they called Ruth; 'Twas a woman who told That the blossoms unfold A defiance to death and a challenge for truth; That the violet's eye, Though it sleep, by and by Shall watch out the long age in the splendor of youth. Ah, she hallowed the hour When she gathered the flower; When she said, "This shall emblem the fame of my brave ! " When she thought, "This shall borrow " Brighter azure to-morrow "; When she laid it to-day on the crest of a grave ! INDIAN SUMMER — APRIL. 97 INDIAN SUMMER. THEN past the yellow regiments of corn There came an Indian Maiden, autumn-born, And June returned and held her by the hand, And led Time's smiling Ruth through all the land; A veil of golden air was o'er her flung, The south wind whispered and the robins sung. APRIL. I SEE the pickets of the Spring come glimmering into line, I know them by their uniforms, I see their colors shine. The azure flash of birds in blue, the robins in their red, And fleets of pearl and purple at anchor overhead. The plumed vedettes begin to play, the pasture brooks to sing, The April gate is open and resurrection king. The World is glad to be alive, the Easter door ajar, All Christendom is Bethlehem and lighted by the Star — And lighted by the Star that gave a birth-day to the race And showed a Grave dismantled and a Glory in its place, And wrought amid the gloom a miracle instead That added to the calendar the Birth-day of the Dead ! The World comes smiling to the door with pansies in its hand. Remembering all the times before that Spring has blest the land. The muffled streets grow musical, the shrouded paths are bare. The children haunt the pavements, their cadences the air. POEMS OF TIMES AND SEASONS. SEPTEMBER. AGAIN the harvests white and gold Have rustled round the glowing land, The meadow swaths like billows rolled, Till sheaves of grain in wigwams stand Where Plenty pitched her tawny camps; The hickories light their yellow lamps, The nights are growing bold; The morning-glories lose their light, The birds are clouding up for flight, The daisies growing old. The katydids' all-night dispute Proclaims the end is near — The rafter peaks again are mute. The barn's sky parlor like a flute Without a breath of cheer — The bobolink has ceased to swing Upon the reedy spear. His marriage bells have lost their ring, The roses' leaves have drifted down. The lilies all are dying — The stricken fields are turning brown, The sunflower pales his golden crown. The winged seeds are flying — The gorgeous forests by-and-by Will kindle like a sunset sky, A heaven there and here ! The pageant of the grand campaign Will dim in autumn's latter rain, And ferns upon the window-pane Will deck the dying year. POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. FLOWERS. FLOWERS bloom in Christ's Sermon, and all the year long You can gather a Sharon from Solomon's Song. THE SKYLARK. 1HELD in my hand a wonder — a hymn of a thou- sand years, It was born in an English meadow — it was older than English cheers — 'Twas a hymn for the Roman eagles and a psalm for the Norman Line — It was sung through the wars of the Roses, when the York turned red as wine — It was heard on Bosworth field, when Gloster's flint struck fire, And Richard's soul to Richmond's steel did glimmer and expire; When the paeans for the thane drowned the dirges for the thing, And he swept across the planet on fame's eternal wing, Who waged the battle as an earl but won it as a king, And plucked the crown of England from the hawthorn where it hung, lOO POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. And lightly to his longing brow Golconda's cluster swung, The crown upon the coronet, till the light of its pearls grew thin And pale as a morning star that has led the daylight in. Charge ! and Marston Moor was a drum by galloping cavalry beat. Halt ! and each iron rank brought up with a clank, and each trooper sat still in his seat. Hark ! and down from the blue to the red was floating that exquisite strain. As if every rider had ridden, and never drawn sabre or rein, Right out of the hell of the battle to the door of hea- ven ajar, And thought he heard before his time the singing of a star. And thought he saw in the downy cloud the truant from the choir, As it hung in sweet libration — an anthem in the air. And I held in my hand that wonder — a book with a single psalm, That would not brim the hollow of a woman's loving palm; And the lyric was brown-breasted, and the lids of the book were wings. And the bird was an English skylark, and the feeblest of God's things. That had fallen out of the azure like a mote from a mighty eye. And had shared the fate of the sparrow, for the Father saw him die. THE SKYLARK. loi Oh, bravest bird of Britain! — a little ounce of death — Oh, song born out of heaven! — a clod without a breath. And then my soul grew reverent — my heart beat strong and grand, As I thought of the broad commission of the atom in my hand; That the Admiral of the fleets at anchor off the world, Flung out his pennant with a touch that little pinion furled — Unrolled the scrolls of thunder, 'twixt the seraph and the sod, Dashed down a word of fire in the running hand of God, And stamped the stormy margins with His ring so broad and brave, One half is in the welkin — the other in the wave; By him to meet that bird mid-air, the misty morn was driven. Lest it should break away from earth and sing itself to heaven; He sowed the Grand Armada like grain upon the breeze. But gave to lark and lightning the freedom of the seas! The cattle asleep in the meadow and the shadows asleep on the hill, And the mists, like gray Franciscans, all standing ghostly still — And the stars are drowsily shutting their eyes as weary watchers will — And the crescent moon in the West shows the flash of a silver shoe. As the steed that brought over the midnight is bearing it down the blue, I02 POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. A.nd out of the silence and shadow there quivered the slenderest song, And a bird going up in the morning exultantly followed along — And the mountains stood down in their places and the clouds all timidly clung, But a strand of Jehovah untwisted whereon the lost Pleiads are strung. When this bird with its music and motion, ere the dawn had blooded its breast, Up direct from the sod to the glory of God, trium- phantly burst from the nest. THE ROCHESTER ROBIN. A ROCHESTER robin alighted one day On a bar or a brace of the wonderful thing That mills the swift miles like grain in its way, And files like a bird, though it never takes wing. And the Rochester robin said to herself, " What a place for a nest, so strong and so warm, As neat as a pin and as shiny as delf, Up out of the danger, in out of the storm." And her mate by the roadside struck up the old lay He sang for the apple tree blossoms to dance, The girlish white blossoms in pink applique More fragrant and fair than the lilies of France. The heart of the engine was cold as a cave, The furnace door grim as the grate of a cell. And dumb as the church under Switzerland's wave. Like a tulip of gold the glittering bell. THE ROCHESTER ROBIN. 103 Then the stoker swung wide the furnace's door, Stirred up the dull fire, and the robins just said. " Summer weather to-day! " Then rumble and roar Played the water's hot pulse in white clouds overhead. '' I'm sure it will rain," he sang to his mate, " It thunders and lightens, but work right along. The house but half done and the season so late — How cloudy it grows! " So he kept up the song. And the twain fell to work, bore timbers of straw. And fibres of wood caught on thistle and thorn. And wrought them all in by the Lord's "higher law," With threads of the laces some maiden had worn. Then clang swung the bell and the warble was hushed, And the crazy sparks flew as if the storm tore The small constellations aside and asunder, While the engine along the steel parallels rushed. The birds watched it all with innocent wonder — " Who ever saw stars in the day time before ? " Then she cried, and he said: "The gale is so strong I think the whole world must be blowing away! " She, trusting, replied: "Cannot last very long," And kept on her work far sweeter than play. To and fro, far and near, their fiery world went, The cup of their loves brimming over with life. And the engineer stood at his window intent And watched the steel rails, the red-breast, and wife. And declared by his engine and honor he would Be the death of the man, big or little, who should I04 POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. In the height or the depth of his gracelessness dare " To meddle or make " with his passengers there. Ah, brave guests of the foot-board, ticketed through All weathers and times till the end of the run, The Lord of the sparrows who is caring for you And the Lord of all realms forever are One. THISTLE SERMON. PRAY let the gaudy tulip go For Scotland's flower with crimson crest, That wears a bee on every blow And bristles like a bandit dressed; That drifts its silver life-balloon Along the year's dull afternoon Bound for another Spring, and girds The feeble heart like holy words. Just as the seeds are fit to fly A yellow-bird drops deftly down, A living nugget from the sky, And lights upon the thistle brown. And then, as if the golden-head Were shaking up its feather bed, A little breathless tempest breaks About the bird in silver flakes, A cunning cloud of flock and fleck — Alas, the thistle is a wreck! But no, the seeds are taking wing, The goldfinch has no time to sing For taking toll, and then the gale TWO BIRDS OF JUNE. 105 Sweeps out the fleet of silk and sail, And so, the weeds are always here. And finches dine another year. And so, O troubled Soul, good cheer! TWO BIRDS OF JUNE. THE colors of Lord Baltimore were precisely those of the Oriole, and Linnaeus gave to it the name of the founder of the city whose trees and parks the bird makes beautiful with plumage and song. Ah me, ah me, how neighborly the precious Junes be- come. When life's brave marching tunes give way to the toll of the dreary drum. And the bugles hold their breath, and the clarionets are dumb. Have they left Time's great procession, to loiter by the way, That they cluster in my thought like a wedding morn bouquet. That their fragrance brings the breath of voices never heard, That I see tlieir vanished faces when the leafy veils are stirred. That the measure of their foot-falls makes music at my door. Though the weary feet have halted since Jime was here before ? Why should I strike the minor mode, with earth all new and fair, As if the morning hymn of Stars yet trembled on the air. io6 POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. And yet my heart is haunted with gray shadows of regret, For the song that breaks no silence, the sky whose sun has set. Imperial June has come again, the diadem of Time, Her breath is fragrant music, and her rivers run in rhyme; The land one mighty emerald, God's kohinoor the sun. As if the universe deployed its wheeling worlds in one; The leafy pomp and stateliness of forests in array, Down to the daisy groups that dance beneath the eye of Day; All the lakes besprent with lilies where the scented zephyr faints, So manv crystal tables with a service fit for saints; The clouds are bound about the brow with circlets of the seven, Whence bridal veils depending, of the gentlest rains of Heaven, Proclaim the wedding of two worlds, not Orient and the West, But the Planet in the green and the Azure of the Blest. The days grow long, as if some world far mightier than this Let fall its day-time mantle down the ether's blue abyss Upon our human homestead in radiant folds of light. Till their twilight-tinted borders overlap the narrow night. A token from a perished June adorns my sunset room, Unsightly to another's eyes, to mine a brilliant bloom. 'Tis just a branch of mountain ash, a slender, worthless thing, TJJ'O BIRDS OF JUNE. 107 Some withered rubies grace it still, some faded leaflets cling. I saw it in its braver time, a pendulum that swung When winnowed by a blue jay's wing or passing breezes sung. There came one day two liveried birds, in black and orange bright, They wore baronial colors of a noble belted knight. The golden robins of the girls, the hang-birds of the boys, The fire-birds, little flashing flakes of the living fire of joys. Now hark to his brilliant tenor, and hark to her dainty flute. It is the minnesinger's song, be other minstrels mute: " The thrush is our rustic cousin and dresses tra-la in brown, " He dwells in the backwoods places, and we tra-la in town; •* His every-day clothes, //;;^-^-//;z^^, are fine as a fellow needs " That sings in the thick-set hedges and lurks in the tangled weeds. "We dwell in the elm-tree arches, the next-door neigh- bors to man, "And, trill aivay, thrill away, trill, as free of our lives as we can. " We are the birds of Baltimore — orange and ebon all — " Bear his name and carry his fame when marble tablets fall. " Lord Calvert's colors are our own, they never fade nor die; lo8 POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. " Sure to shine as the rosy glow to light a June-born sky. "We have come from Magnolia Land, from islands on the lee, " Where the cactus builds the flowers like coral in the sea. *' We are Orioles, every one, cavaliers., cavaliers ! "We sing out the song with a will — for June in the North, three cheers ! '" Then in the momentary hush a meadow-lark begins, And then a shower beats faint tattoo upon the tinkling linns. A goldfinch sings in ricochet her fine and filtered notes. Cat-birds whine from a brier bush and blue jays clear their throats; With plaintive tenderness a dove, as if an echo sighed, Reminds me of a little boy who moaned like her, and died; And then the laugh of children small, who never grieved or sinned. Sweet as an apple-blossom drift comes snowing down the wind. The Service of Song all over, and over the wind and rain, My liveried birds of beauty flev/ to their work amain; They sought a place for their hammock and found it in the ash, — At a sparrow come to spy them they made a valiant dash ! — One flew with flax from the silk-weed and bits of crim- son yarn, One trailed a tangle of worsted and lichen from the barn: TM^O BIRDS OF JUNE. lOQ They tugged small bundles of fibers, the filaments of roots, And played a little, while they wrought, a pair of magic flutes; They robbed the grass of a ribbon, a spool of a " bite " of thread, One hair from a horse's mane, two from a maiden's head ; They came with down from the willow, a fleece from an old fence rail, Silken tape from a spreading beech, a tuft from a squir- rel's tail. They flew through the air like shuttles, and wrought in their loom of love, Drew woof and warp without fingers, and wattled, knit, and wove. A robin in his dull red vest, that watched them from a larch. With an angry cry and swoop they brought to " right about" and " march." The days swept by in splendid state, the hammock swung at last, So frail, so firm, the ratlines taut, the life-lines knotted fast. Then swiftly grew the ash-tree leaves, and thatched the cottage roof. And two, like hands in blessing spread, to keep the world aloof. The miracle of life began, the woven walls of gray Were tremulous with new-born breath and four small pulses' play. It turned a purse with golden notes; I heard their tiny tone; no POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. It turned a homestead desolate, the children fledged and flown. Here now, the hammock and the branch dismantled, silent lie, The tuneful tenants gone abroad to find a kinder sky; So may we all, by Grace of God, good-by, dear hearts, good -by ! AUGUST LILIES. DIED last night at twelve o'clock The richest month of all the year. Her belted grain in sheaf and shock Like gold encampments far and near. The rose-tree mourns in spider's crape, At half-mast stands the hollyhock, The rock that five-leaved ivies drape Has dared to rob some prince of Tyre And wear his robe of purple fire. II. The lively locust's rattling watch Is always busy running down. The cricket sings its breathless catch And sunflowers lift the yellow crown. As if a fairies' grave-yard lent Its slender bones to dance a match, Cicadae, knees and elbows bent, In flurries whirl, a crazy set, To click of Moorish Castanet. AUGUST LILIES. m III. Unto this August, Time has told Down thirty perfect days in rhyme, Unsullied hours a minute old, A minute from celestial clime, With two full moons to shine the while, Twelve hours were silver, twelve were gold; Five Sabbath mornings' peaceful smile To light the radiant weeks along, With flush of leaf and flights of song. IV. O Queen of Months, a splendid dower Was thine, and yet thou could'st not wait For all this wealth one little hour, But met inevitable fate ! Broad leaves have hid all summer long A precious thing beside my gate. One after one each floral throng Had perished, but those leaves still kept Their secret as if something slept. A hand has put those leaves aside, Lo, August Lilies light the day ! So fair, as if some angel died And took this monumental way; So pure, as if some Singer sweet Had touched it with her lips, and sighed Because these chaliced lives so fleet, These dear Day Lilies, only last While each swift day is going past. And yet why not? Why tarry here 112 POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. Till dark and drear November comes To play the Dead March on its drums Of sleet, and freeze the falling tear? JANUARY ROSES. SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS. I. THE snows had swarmed from their cloudy hives And the air was ghostly gray. And the flakes that muffled the doubtful day Whirled hither and yon in a hurrying way As if they were human lives. II. They traversed the day-time one by one And shrouded the earth at last, And they lay in state when the strife was past And the Dead March played by a dying blast Was a sorrow set to a tune. in. For over it all, drift, billow, and wreath, Where blue-bells rang in perpetual mass With symphony sweeter than bells of brass, And violets scattered the sky in the grass Were the chilly white blossoms of death. IV. Over the roses that sweetened the world, Daffodils golden and gay. The dying delight of the new-mown hay. Splendor of June and the promise of May, Those blossoms of snow were whirled. JANUARY ROSES. 113 V. The shadows stir on the carpeted floor Like restless souls in their sleep As the drowsy fire-lights flicker and leap To the winds that bury the noon-mark deep That scars the sill of my door. VI. And sadly I thought how Izrael waves His wings till the tremulous sod, Startled to life as the rock to the rod, Breaks as the sea with the billows abroad In ripples and billows of graves; — VII. Graves of my dead, — till the clods are akin. The grasses own cousins by blood, The glow of a lip may color a bud, The ebb of a life swell the foliage flood. The dust of a darling have been But disguised when the daisies begin. VIII. Mid glamour and gloom a messenger came, And a casket strange he bore Laden with roses, and never before Came a sweeter gift to a prince's door. Sweet flowers with a household name. IX. Some buds were a-glow like a great live coal. And some were like cloth of gold. And some dawn -pearl, as if they w^ould hold. Each shell of a leaf in delicate fold. The breath of a saintly soul. 114 POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. Arabian genii filled the room, Birds in song and bees adrift, And a soft sky shone through a downy rift, And the stately lilies began to lift. And snow outside and the gloom ! XI. Where the Trinity River lights afar Palmetto grove, Magnolia land, All gathered alive by a woman's hand Those roses grew in a garden grand. The State of a single Star. XII. The flower-de-luce is vv^ilted and furled. No matter for that, be strong ! Gird up, dear heart ! though the winter is long And listen in faith to the bluebird's song, 'Tis Summer somewhere in the world ! THE COLORED MARBLE. ON marble beds where violets die And the moss-rose pillows its pride, The marble looks like an azure sky Where a cloudless day has died. The years go by, and out of the shroud The statue stands naked in noon; Out of the tint and out of the cloud Of a long-forgotten June ! THE ROSE AND THE ROBIN. 115 THE ROSE AND THE ROBIN. THE yellow rose leaves falling down Pay golden toll to passing June, The robin's breast of golden brown Is trembling with an ancient tune. The rose will bloom another year, The robin and his wife will come, But he who sees may not be here, And he who sings be dumb. Thy grace be mine, oh yellow rose ! My heart like thine its blossoms shed, Grow fragrant to the fragrant close, And sweetest when I'm dead. And so like thee I'll pay my way In coin that time can never rust, And footsteps sound another day Though feet have turned to dust ! Thy gift be mine, oh singing bird ! My song like thine round home and heart: To Song, God never said the word, '' To dust return, for dust thou art ! " ii6 POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. ROSE, LILY, AND MAY-FLOWER. THE ROSE. IN Sharon's Vale some roses grew Three thousand years ago. And bloomed their little season through, And shed their leaves when winter blew Like flakes of fragrant snow. II. A royal hand did gather them And set them in his Song, You cannot fmd his diadem But broidered on his Hebrew hem The roses grow along. III. The stately Ages tread aside Where'er those roses are, Though realms have vanished, diamonds died, Old Sharon's children yet abide As deathless as a star. Christ's lilies. I. In Galilee some lilies hung Their chalices of white. And to and fro their fragrance flung. So many cups of incense swung Before the Lord of light. II. The Turk and Christian trod to death The glory of the shrine, ROSE, LILY, AND MAY-FLOWER. iij And left no lily's grave beneath Nor speechless eloquence of breath To sweeten Palestine. III. These idle princes of their race Have never died at all; Behold them in Judean grace As rallied round a holier place Within His instant call, They smile and wait at God's right hand And grow of strange account, For angels watch them as they stand Amid that lily-garden land. The Sermon on the Mount. THE MAY-FLOWER. I. A Pilgrim Flower — a troubled sea, A winter wild and white, Its only world was on the lea, A tempest caught and swept it free To wilderness and night. Oh, Christians, for the May-Flower pray, Each petal is a soul ! Adrift and doomed this Flower of May, Oh, women, u^eep your hearts away. Oh, gray-haired Sexton, toll ! 9 POEMS OF FLOWERS AND BIRDS. 111. December waited gaunt and grim Within its lair of snow, The shaggy forests ghostly dim Stood up and sang a funeral hymn Two hundred years ago. IV. That stranded flower was strangely blent Of amaranth and May; From marble tower to miner's tent, Where'er the Anglo-Saxon went It brightens night and day. V. Oh, roses, lilies, flowers of May ! Akin to human kind, The Ages bear ye on their way — Bound in one sweet and rare bouquet An endless Spring is twined. POHMS OF NATURE. THE SUN THAT NEVER SETS. ON some long day of June take a terrestrial globe with all the equipments for measuring the days, the nights, and the twi- lights; the route of the shadow and the sun; for catching Every- where in the fine web of lines and parallels. Find Alaska whence Campbell's doleful wolf has been raising its " long howl " for a life- time. You are not looking beyond the border where floats the Flag. You have not gone from home. Now turn the globe until Alaska is precisely at the sunset-line, then cross the continent with your fore-finger to the coast of Maine. It is sunrise, and the globe has not moved at all. At the same instant closing day in Alaska, opening day in Maine, it is one coun- try and one sun. Of old, San Francisco was at the Western edge of this eminent domain, but now it is as far from Alaska as it is from the singing pines of our farthest East, and by this measurement in the center of the United States. The wisdom of purchasing Alaska has been doubted, but lo, its utility is made manifest at last. It is a spot whereon the mighty sun may halt a moment just as he makes a splendid lift above the woods and fields of Maine. We hear some- thing now and then of the British music whose " Morning drum beats round the world." I think it is a grander thing to say the Sun can never bid good- night to the Great Republic. 20 POEMS OF NATURE. THE SUN THAT NEVER SETS. Pacific's waters turn to wine, The ripe red sun is glowing down, With Orient pomp the gloomy pine Wears rubies in its plumy crown And shadows on its column brown. II. With click and stroke of slender oar The fishers time their homeward turn, And pulling for Aleutian shore, Where dusky red the watch-fires burn, They trail their glittering spoils astern. III. I see them slide, as petrels skim The glassy scallops of the deep, I hear their wild barbaric hymn Re-sung by pale-faced cliff and steep. As children sing themselves to sleep. IV. "Good-night" in words from loving lips, "Good-night, good-night," the girls reply, "Good-night " from canon's cold eclipse, "Good-night" again from skiff and sky, And day is dead, and voices die. V. The flickering sea-birds seek the crag In dotted lines of hazy white. The Outpost lowers the Stellar Flag THE SUN THAT NEVER SETS. I2I Damp with the mists of sheeted night, A gray and ghostly Carmelite. VI. Tis sunset on Alaska's rocks, Aleutian Isle and Behring's Bay, 'Tis sunrise where Atlantic shocks The coast of Maine in rugged play, And domes of forest shed the day. VII. Sunrise in Maine ! The starry wing Takes flight at morning gun and glow, From tapering mast salutes the King Whose parting foot-prints plainly show Alaska land a breath ago And burning yet like blood on snow. VIII. I hear the axemen's clock-tick beat, I hear the twang of breakfast horn. The Yankee Doodle in the street And Yankee Doodle in the corn; One day not dead, another born, Good-night is married to Good-morn ! IX. All hail, thou Sun magnificent; And hail, ye Flag and Flame well met From Orient to Occident ! These colors, O great Light, are wet With splendors of thy golden set And Yesterday is lingering yet. 122 POEMS OF NATURE. X Strong as thou art, and swift as strong, It takes thee nine long hours to march Grand Rounds from noon to noon along The azure of the Federal arch — Majestic sweep of boulevards, The realm and route of travelled stars — That spans, as rainbows span the showers, All oaks of hearts and hopes of flowers, As thoughts untold may thrill and throng One mighty syllable of song. XI. How stirs my heart to think this Land Bound in long day-time's yellow zone, Maine and Alaska hand in hand, The self-same hour beholds in one A rising and a setting sun ! XII. It brings my fancy to the knee And kindles up my soul to see Ilim play upon meridian lines That string the globe as harps are strung; To watch each fibre as it shines, And hear, distinct as if it rung. The Music of the Union flung From this celestial instrument. Perhaps an angel choir has lent Some Israfeel of rarest powers To help this harper of the Lord, And grandly sing, w^ord after word : This land is mine, is yours, is Ours. THE VANE ON THE SPIRE. 123 THE VANE ON THE SPIRE. DURING the bitter and death-dealing days of the winter and spring of 1872 I often watched the gilded arrow that swings upon the spire of a neighboring church. And it always had a meaning for me — sometimes sad, a few times glad, and always true. Day after day. week after week, that arrow pointed North — pointed East ; always North, always East — like the finger of Fate. The chill winds blew ; the cold storms came ; there were beds of languishing ; there were new-made graves. Frost, sorrow, and death ruled the air in company. And all the while the arrow told the story. At last there came some genial days, when flowers blossomed, birds sang, the weak grew strong, and the graves were green. The arrow on the spire had swung round to the South ; it told the story still. It was no longer the finger of Fate, but a thing of beauty — a piece of aerial jewelry. It had eloquence enough to inspire a little song, had there been anybody to write it. THE VANE ON THE SPIRE. There's an arrow aloft with a feather'd shaft That never has flown at the bow-string's draft, And the goldsmith has hidden the blacksmith's craft. For its heart is of iron, its gleam of gold, It is pointed to pierce and barbed to hold, And its wonderful story is hardly told. It is poised on a finger from sun to sun. And it catches the glimmer of dawn begun, And is floating in light when the day is done. And it turns at the touch of a viewless hand. And it swings in the air like a wizard's wand, By the tempest whirled and the zephyr fanned. 124 POEMS OF NATURE. And the sinewy finger that cannot tire Is the lifted hush of the old church spire That vanishes out as heaven is nigher; And the arrow upon it the rusted vane As true to its master as faith to fane, That is swinging forever in sun and rain. Right about to the North ! And the trumpets blow And the shivering air is dim with snow, And the earth grows dumb and the brooks run slow: And the shaggy Arctic, chilled to the bone, Is craunching the world with a human moan, And the clank of a chain in the frozen zone; And the world is dead in its seamless shroud, And the stars wink slow in the rifted cloud, And the owl in the oak complains aloud. But the arrow is true to the iceberg's realm, As the rudder staunch in the ghastly whelm With a hero by to handle the helm ! Is it welded with frost as iron with fire ? Up with a blue-jacket ! Clamber the spire And swing it around to the point of desire ! It sways to the East ! And the icy rain With the storm's '^ long roll " on the window pane And a diamond point on the crystal vane. And the cattle stand with the wind astern, And the routes of the rain on eave and urn — As the drops are halted and frozen in turn — THE VANE ON THE SPIRE. 125 Are such pendants of wonder as cave and mine Never gave to the gaze when the torches shine, But right out of Heaven and half divine ! Ah, it swings due South to the zephyr's thrill ! In the yellow noon it lies as still As a speckled trout by the drowsy mill, While the bugle of Gabriel wakes the sod And the beautiful life in the speechless clod, Till the crowded June is a smile for God ! Resurrection to-day ! For the roses spoke ! Resurrection to-day ! For the rugged oak In a live green billow rolled and broke. And the spider feels for her silken strings. And the honey-bee hums and the world has wings. And blent with the blue the bluebird sings. While the cloud is ablaze with the bended bow. And the waters white with the lilies' snow, On the motionless arrow, all in a row, Are four little sparrows that pipe so small Their carol distils as the dew-drops fall, And we only see they are singing at all ! Now the arrow is swung with a sweep so bold Where the Day has been flinging his garments gold Till they stain the sky with a glow untold. Ah, the cardinal point of the wind is West ! And the clouds bear down in a fleet abreast, And the world is as still as a child at rest ! 126 POEMS OF NATURE. There's a binnacle light like an angry star, And the growl of a gun with its crash and jar, And the roll of a drum where the angels are ! And it tumbles its freight on the dancing grain, And it beats into blossom the buds again, And it brightens a world baptized in rain, And it gladdens the earth as it drifts along. And the meadow is green and the corn is strong, And the brook breaks forth in the same old song I And I looked for the arrow — it hung there yet. With the drops of the rain its barb was wet, And the sun shone out in a crimson set ; And behold, aloft in the ruddy shine Where the crystal water again was wine, And it hallowed the dart like a touch divine ! Under the sun and under the moon. Silver at midnight, golden at noon. Could Dian have lost it out of her hair ? Phoebus's quiver have shaken it there ? That wonderful arrow sweeping the air ! THE SHATTERED RAINBOW. WHEN blazed the trinket of the cloud abroad, The bent and broken jewelry of God, That fragment of a ring — its other part Was lost, I dreamed, within the forest's heart. And when October came with eager clasp. The jewel shivered in his frosty grasp THE GOSPEL OF THE OAK. 127 And showered the maples with celestial red — The oaks were sunsets though the days were dead, The green was gold, the willows drooped in wine, The ash was fire, the humblest shrub divine. THE GOSPEL OF THE OAK. WAR TIME. UP to the Sun magnificently near. The Lord did build a Californian oak. And took no Sabbath in the thousandth year. But builded on until it bravely broke Into that realm wherein the morning light Walks to and fro upon the top of night ! Around that splendid shaft no hammers rang. Nor giants wrought nor truant angels sang. But gentle winds and painted birds did bear Its corner-stones of glory through the air; Grand volumes green rolled up like cloudy weather, And birds and stars went in and out together; When Day on errands from the Lord came down. It stepped from Heaven to that leafy crown ! God's mighty mast with all its sails unfurled. That ought to make a Druid of the world. Some Vandal girdled with a zone of death, A life of ages perished in a breath ! Good night, Liv^e Oak ! Proud admiral, farewell ! The world has wailed when meaner monarchs fell ! The year went on, and with it marched sublime. Month after month, the journeymen of Time. 128 POEMS OF NATURE. Then came the May, such wings as angels wear, Buds in her hands and blossoms in her hair; Above that oak she shook her flowing sleeves — The poor dead tree laughed out with living leaves I Thank God ! Too vast, too grand to die forlorn It lived right on ! Brave heart of oak, good morn ! I'd be a Roman for the omen grand That thunders on the left through ail the land — God and the Fathers' tree forever stand ! Oh, growth immortal, reddened in the rain That beats out hearts as tempests beat the grain, All wrongs died out like breath upon a blade, A hunted world fled panting to thy shade — Thy roots have searched earth's bosom all around, Felt out the graves that make it holy ground — Like living hands with love and faith been laid In benediction on the sleeping dead ! THE NEW CRAFT IN THE OFFING. TWAS a beautiful night on a beautiful deep, And the man at the helm had just fallen asleep. And the watch on the deck, with his head on his breast, Was beginning to dream that another's it pressed, When the look-out aloft cried, "A sail ! ho ! a sail ! " And the question and answer went rattling like hail: '* A sail ! ho ! a sail I " " Where away ? " " No'th-no'th- West ! " " Make her out ? " '' No, your honor." The din drowned the rest. There indeed is the stranger, the first in these seas. THE NEW CRAFT IN THE OFFING. 129 Yet she drives boldly on in the teeth of the breeze. Now her bows to the breakers she steadily turns, Oh ! how brightly the light of her binnacle burns ! Not a signal for Saturn this rover has given, No salute for our Venus, the flag-star of heaven: Not a rag or a ribbon adorning her spars, She has saucily sailed by " the red planet Mars "; She has doubled triumphant the cape of the Sun, And the sentinel stars without firing a gun ! *' Helm a-port ! " " Show a light ! " " She will run us aground ! " " Fire a gun ! " " Bring her to ! " '' Sail a-hoy ! " " Whither bound ?" Avast there, ye lubbers ! Leave the rudder alone; 'Tis a craft in commission — the Admiral's own; And she sails with sealed orders, unopened as yet, Though her anchors she weighed before Lucifer set. Ah, she sails by a chart no draughtsman could make. Where each cloud that can trail and each wave that can break; Where that sparkling flotilla, the Asteroids, lie, Where the scarf of red Morning is flung on the sky; Where the breath of the sparrow is staining the air — On the chart that she bears you will find them all there ! Let her pass on in peace to the port whence she came. With her trackings of fire and her streamers of flame ! 130 POEMS OF NATURE. THE NORTHERN LIGHTS. ''pO claim the Arctic came the Sun, J. With banners of the burning zone; Unrolled upon their airy spars They froze beneath the light of stars; And there they float, those streamers old, Those Northern Lights, forever cold I RHYMES OF THE RIVER. 0' (H River far flowing, How broad thou art growing ! And the sentinel head-lands wait grimly for thee; And Euroclydon yrges The bold-riding surges, That in white-crested lines gallop in from the sea. O bright-hearted river, With crystalline quiver. Like a sword from its scabbard, far-flashing abroad ! And I think as I gaze On the tremulous blaze. That thou surely wert drawn by an angel of God ! Through the black heart of night, Leaping out to the light. Thou art reeking with sunset and dyed with the dawn; Cleft the emerald sod — Cleft the mountains of God — And the shadows of roses yet rusted thereon ! Where willows are weeping, Where shadows are sleeping, RHYMES OF THE RIVER. 131 Where the frown of the mountain lies dark on thy crest; Arcturus now shining, Arbutus now twining, And " my castles in Spain " gleaming down in thy breast; Then disastered and dim, Swinging sullen and grim. Where the old ragged shadows of hovels are shed; Creeping in, creeping out, As in dream, or in doubt, In the reeds and the rushes slow rocking the dead. When all crimson and gold. Slowly home to the fold Do the fleecy clouds flock to the gateway of even. Then, no longer brook-born, But a way paved with morn, Ay, a bright golden street to the city of Heaven ! In the great stony heart Of the feverish mart, Is the throb of thy pulses pellucid, to-day; By gray mossy ledges, By green velvet edges, Where the corn waves its sabre, thou glidest away. Broad and brave, deep and strong, Thou art lapsing along; And the stars rise and fall in thy turbulent tide, As light as the drifted White swan's breast is lifted. Or a June fleet of lilies at anchor may ride. And yet, gallant river, On-flashing forever, 132 POEMS OF NATURE, That hast cleft the broad world on thy way to the main. I would part from thee here, With a smile and a tear, And a Hebrew, read back to thy fountains again. Ah, well I remember, Ere dying December Would fall like a snow-flake and melt on thy breast, O'er thy waters so narrow The little brown sparrow Used to send his low song to his mate on the nest. With a silvery skein Wove of snow and of rain, Thou didst wander at will through the sweet summer land, — All the air a sweet psalm. And the meadow a palm, — - As a blue vein meanders a liberal hand. When the school-master's daughter With her hands scooped the water, And laughingly proffered the crystal to me, Oh, there ne'er sparkled up A more exquisite cup Than the pair of white hands that were brimming with thee ! And there all together, In bright summer weather. Did we loiter with thee along thy green brink; And how silent we grew If the robin came too, When he looked up to pray, when he bent down to drink ! RHYMES OF THE RIVER, 133 Ah, where are the faces, From out thy still places, That so often smiled back in those soft days of May? As we bent hand in liand, Thou didst double the band, As idle as lilies — and fleeting as they ! Like the dawn in the cloud Lay a babe in its shroud, And a rose-bud was clasped in its frozen white hand : — At the mother's last look It had opened the book, As if sweet-breathing June were abroad in the land ! pure placid river Make music forever In the gardens of Paradise, hard by the throne ! For on thy far shore, Gently drifted before, We may find the lost blossoms that once were our own. Ah, beautiful river, Flow onward forever ! Thou art grander than Avon, and sweeter than Ayr; If a tree has been shaken. If a star has been taken. In thy bosom we look — bud and Pleiad are there ! 1 take up the old words, Like the song of dead birds. That were breathed when I stood farther off from the sea: When I heard not its hymn. When the headlands were dim : — Shall I ever again weave a rhythm for thee ? 10 134 POEMS OF NATURE. THE CHRYSALIS. A COFFIN gray and spotted with gold, With a mulberry leaf for bier, And silken shroud with a silver fold, On a shelf is lying near. They say when April comes to the door, ^ And the blue-eyed foundlings wake, The humble thing that was dead before From its silken sleep shall break; A folio flower, in duplicate done, Like the face in the eyes of a wife, Two leaves shall open slow in the sun With a dissyllabic life. MASSACHUSETTS SENDS GREETING. 1MET a man away down East Who towered amid the eight-rowed corn Raccoons could finish at a feast. And listened for the dinner-horn. A crow aloft on a hemlock limb Looked black at what would fall to him. The bilious earth lay blank beneath, His angry hoe showed signs of teeth, So nicked and notched with glance and glint At bowlder gray and sparkling flint. He saw a pumpkin's yellow blow And touched it with his thoughtful toe. Prophetic flower of by-and-by, Forerunner of one pumpkin pie ! MASSACHUSETTS SENDS GREETING. 135 "Out West? Jes' SO ! From lUinoi ? My Jem is there — my oldest boy — And John's in Kansas, so is Jane, She married one Ehiathan Payne ; — And mother too — she wants to go, No musket ever scattered so ; And then it alius p'ints one way — Right where them big per-aries lay. Betwixt them two — Death and the West — They git our youngest, strongest, best. It's queer the grave-yard keeps a-growin' As ef nobody dreamed of goin' ! It's there right where them brooms o' trees Are sweepin' not/iui in the breeze. A queen-bee in an empty hive Is all o' mine that's left alive. I call them dead I never see, The West or Heaven's all one to me — I wait an' wait — God give me grace ! They don't come back from either place. *' Them miles an' miles of level land. And ev'ry tree brought up by hand. The sky shut down around the green As snug as any soup-tureen. Poor show for David with his sling An' not a pebble fit to fling." So talked the Massachusetts man And paused for breath and then began : " I hear you have," the farmer said, " A creature with a horse's head, A cricket's body, dragon's wings, The long hind legs of a kangaroo, 36 POEMS OF NATURE. The hungriest of created things That eats a landskip through an' through ; A boarding-house for bugs may be The place for 3^ou but not for me." "Alas, old man," I sadly said, *' They are, indeed, most nobly fed ; You taunt us with no dainty touch, . But had those creatures boarded here It would have saved us many a fear, They could not harm you very much, And then it cannot be denied, They surely would have starved and died. " I wouldn't swap the old Bay State," The farmer cried with voice elate, — He stood upright in every joint As any exclamation-point. And hoe and stone struck instant fire As if he thus touched off his ire, — " I wouldn't swap the old Bay State, Its rugged rocks and mountains great, For land as level as a hone. All ready fenced and seeded down. Our grain stands slender in the shock, The grists are light we send to mill. But then we gave you Plymouth Rock Where Freedom's clearins' first begin; The world takes stock in Bunker Hill, Where Freedom put the sickle in. You've Injuns West but we're ahead, Our Boston Mohawks alius led, That took a cargo of Bohea An' steeped a drawin' in the sea MASSACHUSETTS SENDS GREETING. 137 An' asked young Liberty to tea ! They snuff at Boston, and they dub The good old town the Yankee ' Hub.' What all it means I never knew, My way at least, it may be true : I know its gritty boys go out Like spokes of wheels to reach the rim That binds creation all about Till West an' East an' South an' North, You hear their whistle or their hymn Around the felly of the earth ! " The old man heard the dinner-horn And stumped away among the corn. The truth had lighted up his face And lent the furrowed features grace. He turned and called across the lot, ''There's one thing more I 'most forgot ; Ef you see Jem or John or Jane, Jes' tell 'em where you've been to-day; That I yit walk the narrow lane Whose end is growin' mighty plain, And iihat I send 'em far away One word from Massachusetts sod. The blessing of their Fathers' God, And tell 'em too, an Eastern boy Must make a man in Illinoi." Such hearty, homely words he spoke, The chimney wore a plume of smoke. The wife stood watching at the door, Good-by, old man, forevermore. 138 POEMS OF NATURE. PRAIRIE LAND THE prairies are the empty beds Deserted on some nameless day By seas that raised their crested heads And took their crystal clothes away. Not empty now ! A grander tide Than those of old that ebbed and died, Of golden seas that cannot drown, Of oceans where no Clarence lies, All rustling round the loving skies That fit the shore-line like a crown. These feeble images convey No picture of this realm to-day, Ye golden seas and tides away ! Behold the stately Northwest stands A queenly figure, firm, compact In one great grandeur by the act Of God and man. One splendid fact, As if the marble statue woke Completed at a single stroke — 'Tis thus to me the Northwest stands And fronts the hungry world, to hear The prayer of Christendom for bread, And holds the answer forth in both her hands ! The heaping harvests of the year Upon her prairie palms are spread From parallel to parallel. The lines that gypsies read to tell A fortune, are by fortunes hid As Pharaoh by pyramid. PRAIRIE LAND. 139 The men still live who might have seen This land without a yesterday — An empire of imfurrowed green, Unpeopled paradise of bees, Unsown, unmown, unknown, and gay With floral aborigines; An empty wilderness of grass As silent as a looking-glass. The prairie schooners' canvas white Like eggs of ants in beaded line Would creep all day, all day in sight, As blossoms on a creeping vine. Sometimes the drowning sun would turn That white to crimson as he loomed, Would watch to see the canvas burn Like Moses' Bush all unconsumed; Would make a trinket of the train, Then slowly sink beneath the main. Oh, world so utterly alone ! Oh, nights that weep and winds that moan ! Sometimes a group of horsemen tall Would ride with day-time at their backs, Their slender shadows weirdly fall In strange eclipse along their tracks; Ride on before like ghosts that guide And leave no foot-prints as they ride; Wolves turn and look a glittering growl And slowly winks the prairie owl. Till naked Night lets down her hair And lies along her level lair POEMS OF HEROISM. MARY BUTLER'S RIDE. THE story of Mary Butler's Ride is unembellished truth. To one of her grandsons, J. M. Taylor, Esq., of New York, I am indebted for the incident, and to another, the Honorable Arthur M. Eastman, of New Hampshire, for a spray from the old Blush Rose, set out by Lieutenant Eastman, of the Minute-Men, one hundred years ago. It lies upon the table, as I write, a withered but an eloquent witness, as if to perfume the poem with its fragrant testi- mony. To hear men say — those far-away boys of hers, and yet busy in life's affairs, — "Many a time I have heard her tell the story!" brings the gray-eyed Mary Butler strangely near. It is like raising a dead century to instant resurrection. The rhymes and the rose leaves are a little love-token to the future. MARY BUTLER'S RIDE. I. Ebenezer Eastman, of Gilmanton, is dead; — At least they had him buried full fifty years ago; — The gray White Mountain granite they set above his head, With some graven words upon it, to let the neigh- bors know Precisely what it was that made the grasses grow 140 MARY BUTLER'S RIDE. 141 So wondrous rank and strong. How they rippled in the wind, As if nobody ever died, nobody ever sinned ! To that old Bible name of his what eloquence was lent When its owner marched to battle,— not a ration, not a tent, Nor a promise nor a sign of a Continental cent ! Ho, Ebenezer Eastman ! We'll call the roll again,— Ho, dead and gone Lieutenant of the old-time Minute- Men ! II. Plowing land for turnips, with awkward Buck and Bright, Was stout Lieutenant Eastman, one lovely day in June; He "hawed " them to the left and he " geed " them to the right, And they slowly came about in the lazy summer noon. He humming to himself the fragment of a tune, Which he would croon at night to the baby-boy who lay In basswood trough becradled first, a week ago that day! I count the times the Blush Rose bloomed. Exactly ninety-eight Since Eastman's fingers planted it beside the garden gate. Almost one hundred years ago ! I know 'tis rather late To muster in the furloughed man and make him march again,— But smell the old Blush Roses ! They are just as sweet as then ! 142 POEMS OF HEROISM. III. All at a fl3^ing gallop a rider swings in sight, Pulls up beside the fallow and gives the view-hal- loo, — His horse's flanks are black, but his neck is foamy- white: — "Turn out! Lieutenant Eastman! There's some- thing else to do ! The red-coats are a-swarming ! Your summer plow- ing's through ! " No other word — away ! And the rattling of the hoofs Was like the rain from traveling clouds along the cabin roofs. The plowman turned his cattle out ; he saddled up the bay, And he rallied out the wilderness upon that summer day, And the Minute-Men of Gilmanton to Boston marched away. About the Mother? Well, she watched beside the cabin door, And rocked the baby's basswood boat upon the pun- cheon floor. IV. Days grew long in Gilmanton, and weeds among the corn; The quoiting-ground was grassy, and louder ran the rill; The wrestling-match was over, — the smithy was for- lorn, — The spiders in the empty door had swung their webs at will, — MARY BUTLER'S RIDE. 143 The champions had gone to Bunker's smoky Hill, To try the quaint, old-fashioned ''lock" they practised on the Green, And such a game of tough "square hold" the world had seldom seen ! About the Father? Only this: He fought in Stark's brigade, On Charlestown Neck, that dusty day. A splendid mark he made ; He never flinched a single inch when British cannon played. But foddered up an old rail-fence with Massachusetts hay, Stood out the battle at the rack, and stoutly blazed away ! V. Lo, through the smoky glory, that human Flower-de- luce, The gray-eyed Mary Butler, Lieutenant Eastman's wife ! Her pallid cheek and brow like a holy flag of truce. Her heart as sweet and red as a rose's inner life, No murmur on her lips, nor sign of any strife. Four days before the fight. Has the little woman heard From anybody Boston way ? Nobody — not a word ! VI. Then up rose Mary Butler, and set her wheel at rest; She swept the puncheon floor, she washed the cot- tage pride, — The cottage pride of three weeks old, and dressed him in his best, — 144 POEMS OF HEROISM. She wound the clock that told the time her mother was a bride, And porringer and spoon she deftly laid aside; She strung a clean white apron across the window panes, And swung the kettle from the crane, for fear of rust- ing rains; Then tossed the saddle on the bay and donned her linen gown, And took the baby on before, — no looking round or down ! Full seventy miles to Cambridge town ! Bring out your civic crown ! I think 'twill fit that brow of hers who sadly smiled and said: " We'll kjww about your father, boy, and who is hurt or dead ! " The maple woods that round her stand so solemn in the calm. Up and down are swaying slowly, like a singing-mas- ter's palm, All together beating time, — not a soul to sing a psalm ! "There's been a dreadful battle !"— that's what the neighbors said, " But when or where I cannot tell, nor who is hurt or dead." VII. Rugged maples broke their ranks to let the rider by, Fell in behind her noiseless as falls the stealthy dew; Such heavy folds of starless dark in double shadow lie, MARY BUTLER'S RIDE. I45 The slender bridle-path she treads can only just show through, And buried in the leafy miles was all the world she knew. By muffled drum of partridge and jaunty jay-bird's fife, That mother made her lonely march,— that Continen- tal wife. She never drew the bridle-rein till forty miles were done, And on her ended journey shone the second setting sun. And round the Bay, like battle-clock, tolled out the evening gun. Talk not of pomps and tournaments ! If you had only seen The royal ride from Gilmanton, the halt at Cambridge Green ! VIII. Dust-bedimmed and weary, with a look as if she smiled, She melted through the haze of the summer's smoky gold! Some Master's faded picture of Madonna and the Child, Born full a thousand years ago, and never growing old ! She heard old Putnam's kennel growl, the bells of Charlestown tolled; She saw the golden day turn gray within an ashen shroud. That showed the scarlet Regulars like lightning through a cloud. Forth from the furnace and the fire Lieutenant East- man came, — 146 POEMS OF HEROISM. The smell of powder in his clothes and fragrance in his fame, — And met her bravely waiting there, who bore his boy and name ! — She from the howling wilderness — he from the hell of men, The little woman called the roll ; he called it back again ! IX, Then lightly to the pillion the gray-eyed wife he swung, A bundle on the saddle-bow all tenderly he placed. And, lost amid the leafy calms where cannon never rung. Away they rode to Gilmanton, her arm around his waist. No general's sash of crimson silk so rarely could have graced ! Ah, Mary Butler cannot die, whatever sextons say, While yet her azure pulses keep their old heroic play. That splendid nerve of hers was strung like Morse's filmy bridge To hearts that beat at Gettysburg, Arkansas' dismal ridge. To Captain bold of cavalry, her grandchild's gallant son; To Sergeant of the Boys in Blue who wears the scars he won. Her dauntless soul electric, — a spark of fire divine, — Was flashed like thought by telegraph, along the slen- der line ! The thing she was on Bunker's day an Angel might have been, THE DEAD GRENADIER. I47 The song-bird to the wounded troops, the Nightingale to men, And on that later Flodden field lived Clara once again. A million men have lingered long, a million men have died, Who never saw a deed so grand as Mary Butler's Ride! THE DEAD GRENADIER. ON the right of the battalion a grenadier of France, Struck through his iron harness by the lightning of a lance. His breast all wet with British blood, his brow with British breath. There fell defiant, face to face. with England and with death. They made a mitre of his heart — they cleft it through and through — One half was for his legion, and the other for it too ! The colors of a later day prophetic lingers shed, For lips were blue and cheeks were white and the fleur de lis was red I And the bugles blew, and the legion wheeled, and the grenadier was dead. And then the old commander rode slowly down the ranks. And thought how brief the journey grew between the battered flanks; And the shadows in the moonlight fell strangely into line 148 POEMS OF HEROISM, Where the battle's reddest riot pledged the richest of the wine, And the camp-fires flung their phantoms — all doing what they could To close the flinty columns up as old campaigners would ! On he rode, the old commander, with the ensign in advance, And,asstatued bronzes brighten with the smoky torch's glance, Flashed a light in all their faces, like the flashing of a lance, When, with brow all bare and solemn, " For the King! " he grandly said, " Lower the colors to the living — beat the ruffle for the dead ! " And thrice the red silk flickered low its flame of royal fire, And thrice the drums moaned out aloud the mourner's wild desire. Ay, lower again thou crimson cloud — again ye drums lament — 'Tis Rachel in the wilderness and Ramah in the tent ! " Close up ! Right dress ! " the Captain said, and they gathered under the moon, As the shadows glide together when the sun shines down at noon — A stranger at each soldier's right — ah, war's wild work is grim ! — And so to the last of the broken line, and Death at the right of him ! THE DEAD GRENADIER. 149 And there, in the silence deep and dead, the Sergeant called the roll, And the name went wandering down the lines as he called a passing soul. Oh, then that a friendly mountain that summons might have heard. And flung across the desert dumb the shadow of the word. And caught the name that all forlorn along the legion ran, And clasped it to its mighty heart and sent it back to man ! There it stood, the battered legion, while the Sergeant called the roll, And the name went wandering down the lines as he called for a passing soul. Hurrah for the dumb, dead lion ! And a voice for the grenadier Rolled out of the ranks like a drum-beat, and sturdily answered " here ! " " He stood," cried the sons of thunder, and their hearts ran over the brim, " He stood by the old battalion, and we'll always stand by him ! Ay, call for the grand crusader, and we'll answer to the name." "And what will ye say?" the Sergeant said. "Dead on the field of fame ! " And dare ye call that dying ? The dignity sublime That gains a furlough from the grave, and then reports to Time ? Doth earth give up the daisies to a little sun and rain, II 150 POEMS OF HEROISM. And keep at their roots the heroes while weary ages wane ? Sling up the trumpet, Israfeel ! Sweet bugler of our God, For notjiing waits thy summons beneath this broken sod; They march abreast with the ages to the thunder on the right. For they bade the world "Good-morning" when the world had said " Good-night ! " THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM. FRIDAY, the twenty-first of April, 1775, a horseman rode express into Enfield Street, Connecticut, with the tidings from Lexing- ton Green. It was " Lecture day" and minister and people were in the meeting-house. Lieutenant Isaac Kibbe, the tavern-keeper who dispensed noggins of rum as befitted the times, procured drum and drummer, rudely put an end to the devotions, and Major Na- thaniel Terry, a forefather of General Terry, U.S.A., led the valiant band away. The local historian reduces my Captain Abbey to the ranks. Twenty-three years after, a child was born across the street from the meeting-house, and he dwells there yet. They had nothing against the boy as I can learn, but they gave him a Bible name that she would be a brave and reckless mother to confer upon her help- less infant in these later times, for they called him " Aholiab," and the child grew apace, furnished me with this historical incident, and has lived worthily and well " even unto this day." How much unrecorded history, unbound and tattered pages of our national annals, is hidden away in the tills of cedar chests, be- tween the leaves of Family Bibles, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM. 151 Baxter's Saint's Rest, Fox's Book of Martyrs, dusty old Josephuses, antiquated old almanacs and in feeble old memories, we shall never know. But the historic treasure-trove that quest or chance so fre- quently unearths, compels the regret that the knowledge of unnum- bered deeds of virtue and of valor has utterly perished from the earth. The great bells of centennial clocks, that during the last ten years have been striking round the land, have done more and better than to "make a joyful noise." They have stimulated research; they have startled multitudes with the truth that commercial values do not attach to everything exceeding precious; they have quickened dead incidents; they have been resurrection bells. THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM. I. In Pilgrim land one Sabbath day The winter lay like sheep about The ragged pastures mullein-gray; The April sun shone in and out, The showers swept by in fitful flocks, And eaves ticked fast like mantel clocks. II. And now and then a wealthy cloud Would wear a ribbon broad and bright, And now and then a winged crowd Of shining azure flash in sight; So rainbows bend and blue-birds fly And violets show their bits of sky. III. To Enfield church throng all the town In quilted hood and bombazine, In beaver hat with flaring crown 152 POEMS OF HEROISM. And quaint vandyke and victorine, And buttoned boys in roundabout From calyx collars blossom out: IV. Bandanas wave their feeble fire And foot-stoves tinkle up the aisle, A gray-haired Elder leads the choir And girls in linsey-woolsey smile. So back to life the beings glide Whose very graves have ebbed and died. V. One hundred years have waned, and yet We call the roll, and not in vain, For one whose flint-lock musket set The echoes wild round Fort Duquesne, And swelled the battle's powder-smoke Ere Revolution's thunders woke. VI. Lo, Thomas Abbey answers " Here ! " Within the dull long-metre place; That day upon the parson's ear And trampling down his words of grace A horseman's gallop rudely beat Along the splashed and empty street. VII. The rider drew his dripping rein And then a letter wasp-nest gray That ran: " The Concord Minute-Men And red-coats had a fight to-day. THE CAPTAIN'S DRUM. 153 To Captain Abbey this with speed.'' Ten little words to tell the deed. VIII. The Captain read, struck out for home The old quickstep of battle born, Slung on once more a battered drum That bore a painted unicorn. Then right-about as whirls a torch He stood before the sacred porch; — IX. And then a murmuring of bees Broke in upon the house of prayer, And then a wind-song swept the trees. And then a snarl from wolfish lair, And then a charge of grenadiers, And then a flight of drum-beat cheers. X. So drum and doctrine rudely blent, The casements rattled strange accord, No mortal knew what either meant, 'Twas double-drag and Holy Word, Thus saith the drum and.thus the Lord. The Captain raised so wild a rout He drummed the congregation out ! XI. The people gathered round amazed, The soldier bared his head and spoke, And every sentence burned and blazed As trenchant as a sabre-stroke: " 'Tis time to pick the flint to-day, 154 POEMS OF HEROISM. To sling the knapsack and away — The Green of Lexington is red With British red-coats, brothers' blood ! In rightful cause the earliest dead Are always best beloved of God. Mark time ! Now let the march begin ! All bound for Boston fall right in ! " XII. Then rub-a-dub the drum jarred on, The throbbing roll of battle beat ! ** Fall in, my men ! " and one by one, They rhymed the tune with heart and feet And so they made a Sabbath march To glory 'neath the elm-tree arch. XIII. The Continental line unwound Along the church-yard's breathless sod, And holier grew the hallowed ground Where Virtue slept and Valor trod, Two hundred strong that April day They rallied out and marched away. XIV. Brigaded there at Bunker Hill Their names are writ on Glory's page. The brave old Captain's Sunday drill Has drummed its way across the Age. THE BATTLE OF RISK ANY. 1 55 THE BATTLE OF ORISKANY. GENERAL HERKIMER. FORT Stanwix guns are dumb. No longer Death Grins from embrasures blackened with their breath. Appear, once more, immortal August day, Let muskets rattle, busy batteries play — Ye rifles blent with old Queen's arms fire true ! Fire low! fire fast! fire all! till woods turn blue With bullet blasts, and the green mosses red With such bad blood as Brants and Butlers shed — See there, St. Leger's scalp-locked scarlet hordes, Satanic bond of tomahawks and swords. Scalps at their belts — such peltry quoted high, A woman's hair ten dollars if she die! — Gunpowder in their rum! — Sling off the drum! Beat the long roll with cannon! Let them come! Run up the flag above the parapet! Those Stanwix colors strangest that had yet Saluted, shrouded, rallied, or defied, Grew costlier far than coronation pride: A soldier's shirt all scalloped into stars Was stitched — " fixed " stars — upon a martial cloak Of blue, and stripes of scarlet rags made Mars Blush dingy red and bless the battle smoke. Up with the garments! Valor's cast-off clothes Can have no ending more sublime than those! A sultry day, Oriskany, was thine. Of wild red revelry and wasted wine In shivering woods the waltz of death began, From tree to tree the dreadful circles ran, 'Twas white to red, 'twas death to man or man. 156 POEMS OF HEROISM. Death lurked behind each beech and maple shaft, Heroic soldiers took to woodman's craft, The bullets whistled thick as driving rain, The bayonets bristled like a hedge of cane, The forest columns dotted dense with shot Like bird's-eye maple when the wood is wrought. Amid this hell rode Herkimer, as calm As if he heard an old Hollandic psalm — Rode his "White Surrv " with a swinging rein, As if he loitered in a farm-yard lane; Then tumbling headlong died the stricken steed. Then fell the rider like a shattered reed; They bore him bleeding to a fallen beech, But sword and soul were both within his reach. And there reclined he fought the battle through With orders cool, as if he never knew That, every breath he drew, around him whirled An instant summons to the other world. And there he sat, and struck with arrow-head and knife A spark; the tinder crinkled into life. And then he calmly smoked as if he heard The storks come home, old Holland's household bird! THE CAVALRY CHARGE. HARK ! the rattling roll of the musketeers. And the ruffled drums and the rallying cheers, And the rifles burn with a keen desire Like the crackling whips of a hemlock fire. And the singing shot and the shrieking shell And the splintered fire of the shattered hell, THE CAVALRY CHARGE. I57 And the great white breaths of the cannon smoke As the growling guns by batteries spoke; And the ragged gaps in the walls of blue Where the iron surge rolled heavily through, That the Colonel builds with a breath again As he cleaves the din with his " Close up, men ! " And the groan torn out from the blacken'd lips, And the prayer doled slow with the crimson drips, And the beaming look in the dying eye As under the cloud the Stars go by. '' But his soul marched on," the Captain said, For the Boy in Blue can never be dead. And the troopers sit in their saddles all Like statues carved in an ancient hall, And they watch the whirl from their breathless ranks, And their spurs are close to the horses' flanks, And the fingers work of the sabre hand — Oh, to bid them live, and to make them grand ! And the bugle sounds to the charge at last. And away they plunge and the front is passed ! And the jackets blue grow red as they ride, And the scabbards too, that clank by their side. And the dead soldiers deaden the strokes iron-shod As they gallop right on o'er the plashy red sod — Right into the cloud all spectral and dim. Right up to the guns black-throated and grim. Right down on the hedges bordered with steel, Right through the dense columns, then "right about wheel ! " Hurrah ! A new swath through the harvest again ! Hurrah for the Flag ! To the battle. Amen ! 158 POEMS OF HEROISM. THE HERO OF NEW HAMBURG. ON the night of February 6th, 1871, an oil train was wrecked on the track near the bridge at New Hamburg, on the Hudson River Railroad. The Express train bound West ran into the wreck, the bridge took fire and fell, and twenty-one persons in the Buffalo sleeping car were killed. The Engineer, E. H. Simmons, remained upon his engine, doing what he could to avert the threatened dis- aster, and failing in this, looked death in the face, chose it to deser- tion, and perished at his post. THE HERO OF NEW HAMBURG. The grandest charge of cavalry That ever was seen or sung The solitary trooper made Who spoke in the Latin tongue. Bring out your Roman rider Who carried the Gulf by storm, And the dumb earth closed forever And shrouded his vanished form; Sowed like the seed that has fallen, 'Mid the multitude's acclaim, How it blossomed through the ages Till it ripened into fame! I can match your daring rider. Tell the Roman not to wait ! There's another hard behind him Drawing rein at Glory's gate ! Comes the deathless Engineer, Clears the ages at a leap. Crowds the flock of years together As a shepherd folds his sheep — THE HERO OF NEW HAMBURG. 159 Right across historic pages With a clatter and a clank, Craunches time to scintillations, Closes up the broken rank, Smites the Roman in the flank ! Nevermore shall mighty boatswain Pipe all hands with panting fire; Sweep thy soul, oh lion-hearted, As Apollo swept the lyre! Loose thy grasp, immortal Brakeman ! Flinging free the iron rein. Earth ! be taught articulation, Learn by heart the dread refrain, Jar and thunder back again ! Dare ye quench Elijah's chariot, Lightning touch and Titan tread ? Abandon every wheel and axle, Furl forever, flags of red ! Halt him not with battle lantern. Show a light as white as day ! Let him pass, O signal stations, His for aye '' the right of way ! " Flanked by rugged rock and river. Death and double side by side — Hand upon the mighty bridle, See the gallant horseman ride; See the ponderous creature coming. Sway and swing along the track. Brave postilion in the saddle. Flying chambers at his back — Chambers bright with hope and dreaming. i6o POEMS OF HEROISM. Chambers dark with terror dire — Chambers ? Altars for a demon's Dreadful sacrifice of fire ! On it comes, the sinewed being, With its rider grand and calm, Watch and heart keep steady beating Like the pulsing of a psalm ! Stolen out of Eastern story, Garbed in brass, this Arab's dream Plunges through the tunneled thunder, Cambric needle through a seam ; Flickering dimly in the distance, Flaring broadly into sight With his dawn of human making. Break of day in heart of night! Grumbling in the lairs of mountains, Roaring down the valley broad. Rounding out a sturdy headland, Blazing like a Grecian god ! Now this rider strangely changes — Touch him with a wizard's wand. He shall seem a wondrous gunner With the lanyard in his hand : Taking sight across the kingdoms. Cloud by day, by night a flame He trains his winged artillery. At a target taking aim, Sure to watch if not to pray, Drift December, blossom May, At a target night and day, Full a thousand miles away Taking aim ! THE HERO OF NEW HAMBURG. i6i Columned smokes built high and mighty- Colonnade the dome of night; Kindles like a face the dial With the bursts of furnace light, And the rider at his window, Watching with a pleasant smile, Sees the friendly world to meet him Coming down the track the while, Sixty seconds make a mile! Halt him on your rounds, ye Angels, Swinging wide the lights of God ! Watchman, flash afar the signal, " Death is waiting down the road ! " Halt him with your dropping lanterns, Shed like stars from ripened sky — Halt him, glances red and lurid. Glaring like an angry eye! All run down the clocks of danger. Dials with the sunshine passed ! Come the keen shrill cry and challenge, Death and Duty meet at last! Now transfigured stands the rider. Flinging down his rude disguise. Sturdy hand upon the bridle. Telling how a hero dies. " Hold her hard," he bade the brakeman. Clutched the monster by the throat Till the bell with sudden clangor Tolled as if the sexton smote. And the grand rebellious creature Plunged into the empty air, Swung him out to resurrection 1 62 POEMS OF HEROISM. Clad in Fame's immortal wear! Born alive to song and story Comes this Engineer again, Comes this man to plead for honor As the gage of kingly men; Pleading that the grace of dying Is the rarest grace of all ; That the earth's sublimest heroes Never heard a bugle call ; That the clock of Christ's own ages Never yet had sounded "one," If this planet's grandest jewel Had been nothing but a crown ! To his steed they lashed Mazeppa, Smithfield clanked with martyrs' chains. But this man, bound round with honor, Gathering up the iron reins, Free as Chimborazo's eagle Flaps his pinion over head. Charged forlorn at utter danger As if Death itself were dead ! Halt him not with battle lantern, Show a light as white as day ! Let him pass, O signal stations, His for aye "the right of way! " ''DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP" 163 "DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP." May 30TH, 1776. May 30TH, 1876. ONE hundred years ago this blessed day The schooner Franklin grounded on a bar, And British boats swarmed down upon the prey As thick as bees where clover blossoms are. She was a fighting schooner, and the sky Was clouded up with battle near and far, And like a flame the crimson flag did fly — She had her choice to strike it or to die. They took the hapless schooner fore and aft. With whips of living fire they lashed the craft, 'Twas raining iron and 'twas lightening steel, And cannon thundered through the heavy weather, 'Tvvas crash and flash — 'twas shout and whirl and wheel. And spattered fire and muskets' rattling peal, And cheers and curses went aloft together. Redder than sunset was the Franklin's deck, And many a sea-dog lay a shattered wreck. They brought the ship about until she wore Nearer hell's port than she had sailed before. The schooner's Captain bore an unknown name That never had been heard in song or story. And yet the gallant Wingford's heart of flame Should light a ballad of Centennial glory. One hundred years ago this day he died. One hundred years ago this day he cried Amid the throe and tempest of despair, " The flag, my men, we'll keep it floating there ! " Splashed like a wine-press, wounded, sore-beset, 1 64 POEMS OF HEROISM. Swath after swath he cut right through the throng, On every royal jacket that he met He slashed a scarlet chevron good and strong; He cleared a place to die with swinging stroke, His cutlass clanged upon the slippery oak, He fell, and gave one upward lightning glance That shone an instant like the flash of lance, For there aloft the fiery flag yet swung And lapped the murky cloud, a crimson tongue — He rallied up his soul and voice and cried "Oh, don't give up the ship ! " and so he died If that be dying, and the sailors heard And took the Captain at his latest word. Great Heart, good-night ! Death made thee commodore. And yet no orders for an hundred years ! Why name this man a century ashore ? I'll tell you why. They could have spared their tears Who mourned him dead. He is not dead at all. He was not made to smother in a pall. Men are alive who might have heard him speak Amid the thunders of the Chesapeake Those very accents, " Don't give up the ship ! " That rang again from Lawrence' dying lip. By some new name here, there and everywhere, The soul of courage breathes the living air. One noble deed may bless the race, and when, As myriads now asleep, men die for men And Liberty and God, the deed inspires And kindles and exults like prairie fires. Until horizon to horizon broad. It makes day's camp-fire in an utter night BUNKER HILL. 165 And doubles noon-time to intenser light. It wilts the flowers indeed and glooms the sod, But one sweet May will end the sad eclipse And flowers will worship with their scarlet lips And lilies pray and make all right with God. And so our vast encampments of the Blue May have their marching orders any day, And pass the world again in grand review, Defend the right and hold the wrong at bay — May haunt with valor some poor halting heart Till seeming clods to instant manhood start. Cast off, as lightnings flash, their long disguise And stand transfigured to our earnest eyes. T BUNKER HILL. O the wail of the fife and the snarl of the drum Those Hedgers and Ditchers of Bunker Hill come, Down out of the battle with rumble and roll. Straight across the two ages, right into the soul, And bringing for captive the Day that they won With a deed that like Joshua halted the sun. Like bells in their towers tolled the guns from the town, Beat that low earthen bulwark so sullen and brown, As if Titans last night had plowed the one bout And abandoned the field for a Yankee redoubt; But for token of life that the parapet gave They might as well play on Miles Standish's grave ! Then up the green hill rolled the red of the Georges And down the green vale rolled the grime of the forges — Ten rods from the ridges hung the live surge. Not a murmur to meet it broke over the verge. 1 66 POEMS OF HEROISM. But the click of flint-locks in the furrows along, And the chirp of a sparrow just singing her song. In the flash of an eye, as the dead shall be raised. The dull bastion kindled, the parapet blazed, And the musketry cracked, glowing hotter and higher, Like a forest of hemlock, its lashes of fire. And redder the scarlet and riven the ranks, And Putnam's guns hung, with a roar on the flanks. Now the battle grows dumb and the grenadiers wheel, 'Tis the crash of clubbed musket, the thrust of cold steel. At bay all the way, while the guns held their breath. Foot to foot, eye to eye, with each other and Death. Call the roll, Sergeant Time ! Match the day if you can: Waterloo was for Britons — Bunker Hill is for man ! GENERAL JAMES B. STEEDMAN AT CHICK AMAUGA. AH, God ! but we were nigh undone That Sunday in September, When quenched in powder smoke the sun Died like a hickory ember, I see the gleam of yellow sands. The dark green cedars' shining cones, The oaks that spread their tattered hands And stand like spectres in their bones. The long and crooked front of blue. Like some grand coast-line stretched afar. Heroic headlands valor-true All blossomed out with flag and star; GEN. J. B. STEED MAN AT CHICKAMAUGA. 167 And here and there the living line, Bent inward like a dreadful bay, Where, dense as cane-brakes muskets shine, And death at anchor silent lay And waited for the surges gray. Then Longstreet's men came rolling in High tides of battle, and the grum And black-mouthed batteries begin To roar the welkin thunders dumb. Then rose and fell as if they swung Upon the sea, the rolling drums And wailing fifes, and bullets sung Like busy bees when summer comes. The kennelled cannon roused from sleep, Roared out until their heavy breath Like fleeces of gigantic sheep Lay all along the line of death. The blue sea-wall was battered down, The gallant headlands washed away. Except upon one sandy crown Where sturdy Thomas held the day. His stubborn flags had taken root Within that tawny earth below, And many a tongue grew gladly mute To make those standards grow ! Day of intrepid souls unsung, That gleams across historic page Red as a harvest-moon, among The dismal Sundays of the age ! 68 POEMS OF HEROISM. Knee-deep in death the boys in blue Stood fast, Gibraltar to the seas, And sleety fire and iron flew And colors riddled in the breeze. Time took that day two hours for noon, Never so late was four o'clock, Never so slow the Western sun, Never so fierce the battle shock. Then Steedman with the hope forlorn Came riding in as cavaliers Old May-days came with bugle-horn To crown some village queen with cheers. The flowers he wore were immortelles, . The songs were made of cannon breath, Around him whirled with shrieking shells In gusty swarms the bees of death. The bayonets glitter in the light, The belts grow white, the flags expand Like flowers that blossom in the night, — On comes the Corps of Cumberland ! So wild and high the fierce assault. So red the blue, so rent the ranks, The column made a breathless halt — As if the world were at his flanks. The general kept right on, and when He saw the dizzy column lag, He wheeled upon the wavering men, Charged like a foe upon the flag GEN. J. B. STEEDMAN AT CHICKAMAUGA. 169 And grasped it — " Boys, you may go back ! " His voice rang out, then right about Faced the gray lions in the track, "The flag will go my way without " You, boys ! " The words electric flashed Heroic deeds along the line. And hearts were thick while on they dashed As cones upon a Norway pine. And now this grand militia-man. By birth a regular and chief, Supine and pale has led the van As silent as a fallen leaf. Oh, flags that wilted as if frost Had smote you ere the winter came, — Oh, fifes that wailed a hero lost, Oh, bugles warbling sweet his fame ! Oh, heart that led the hope forlorn, Good-night, my General, and good-morn ! DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. THE NEW YORK "NORTH WOODS." BORN in a wilderness that. I am glad to write, is a wilderness still, but with such clearings of loveliness and such elegancies of life as would never be sought in regions where a ride of ten miles will plunge you into forests, with the cry of panthers and the howl of wolves to wake you from your "beauty sleep"; or the leafless branches upon a lifted head in the edge &i an opening to set your heart off in a gallop; or the broad tread of an oscillating bear to set the fallen leaves and limbs crackling like a hemlock fire. It is a region that has had tragedies and lovemakings and adven- ture. It has always been a realm to me of strange mystery, start- ling possibility and wonderful fascination. I love its tangled trails, its tough climbs, its mighty recesses, its Druidical rocks and its endless march of woods toward Horicon and Champlain. It is not a desert because unsown, but a wilderness because everything grows and lives and does " at its own sweet will." Ah, a rare place to knit "care's ravelled sleeve," fight mosquitoes, catch fish and live a life of busy idleness. It was in that Wonderland I first saw the weazened old printing- press. It would have done poor Richard's heart good to ink it and work it and then order raisins and water for dinner. It is more than a century since Dr. Franklin stood up v.'ith a glass of Spark- ling Delaware — water in his hand and drank "Success to print- ing." It was the twin of that wilderness monster the convivial spirit was toasting. Now take the great quadruple cylinder, the mingled brains of a thousand men, that springs to the work with arms of flashing steel, 170 THE NORTH WOODS. 171 that snows down sheets like flakes in Northern winter, that strikes across the continents and shines like electric light from the East even unto the West. This is what Dr. Franklin drank to without knowing it. A Century ago indeed ! It is a thousand years from press to Press. THE NORTH WOODS. New York, what imperial acres are these Where great cities in camps shed the light of their lamps From Atlantic to Lake like a necklace of fire, Constellations of homes shining clearer and nigher As when star-lighted waters are stirred by the breeze. And to think, oh, Excelsior, five millions strong With thy five thousand presses all playing as one, And thy close-printed sheets flung abroad as great fleets Roll their clouds of white canvas and shadow the sun That locked in thy breast like a Dorian song. Is a shaggy old wilderness growling with lairs Where the catamounts wail, and big** majors" of bears With their plantigrade feet wipe the blackberries in, And tho lace-sifted twilights of forest begin, And the quick antlers lift where the quick waters drift, And the speckled trout flash in the crystalline cold All sprinkled with carmine and dusted with gold — Ah, what fish but a trout could the Saviour have made His treasurer there when the tribute was paid ? — That this Dukedom of wilds could be hid in the heart Of New York and not feel the full throb of its mart ? In that wilderness selvedge, a villager's Rest Now empty and gone, by an orchard once stood. 172 DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. Where the robins of old reared young robbers by brood, And beyond it a house, and the charm of the place, And as guiltless of stairs as a ground-sparrow's nest : A mossy-browed house that was eyed like a face, With a window each side its wide mouth of a door, And the print of a thumb and four fingers it bore On a panel or two, like a nobleman's crest; Ah, as fine and as clear as a sun-lit vignette Is the office whence came The Black River Gazette. And the editor, printer and pressman are dead, And the ''devil " withal. I have seen their low bed Where the Lombardies sweep the sky clear of a cloud. As in life the one jacket could button them round. And with one hat at once they all could be crowned. So in death they were laid in one coffin and shroud. I stood in that room when a roundabout boy. All my pockets a jumble with jews-harp and joy. With small nibbles of sugar and fish-hooks and strings, A new Barlow knife, alley marbles and ''things," But my heart gave a tumble and I gave a start, At the grim iron prince of the house of Black Art: At the Ethiop press with one elbow a-crook, And its rigid round arm and its sinister look. And its hand-organ crank and its fire-dogs of legs, And its rations of ink in a couple of kegs. And the eagle that caught its brass claws in the thing, And, made captive for life, could never take wing. Tallow candles stood round, lank, languid and limp, Too dim for an angel and too light for an imp; Maps of regions of darkness benighted the place But it shone through the past with an exquisite grace. THE NORTH WOODS. '73 And the boy gazed about with a silent surprise For nothing was white but the whites of h>s eyes. And the arm of the printer was dingy and long, And the arm of the pressman was shaded and strong. How that press came to life if I only could tell, But who ever drew up in the bucket the star That he saw as he leaned on the curb, in the well When the hour was high noon and the n.ght was afar ? Give the roller a run and the play is begun: Up with frisket and tympan and on with the sheet, Down with frisket and tympan in ^<^%^^^' ^^^'' Then a turn at the rounce and two pulls at the bar And the platen comes down on the face of the page With its lines in relief like the wrinkles of age; Then a whirl of the crank and a groan and a clank, And the words regimental in justified rank To a late resurrection reluctantly rise And stand before men in their eloquent guise. Then the sturdy-legged desk where the Editor sat With his hand in his hair and his mail in his hat. And the inkstand beplumed as with ferns m a fen As if he raised geese from the slip -of the pen. But the toil and the moil were brightened and past For he made a man member of Congress at last. And honors were easy - the Member made Iwn. ind he said in his heart that dipped candles were dim And he bought him a lamp, raised a " devil to light ,t, And discovered a wrong and wrote leaders to right it. Oh dear old Gazette, not good night but good morn. For I hear in the twang of thy earner s horn The prelude to bugles right royally blown That proclaim for the Press an estate of its own. 174 DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. How my heart playing Hebrew reads back to the time When Otsego's fair vale was a magical clime; Not that Cooper's creations are lingering there, But 'twas thence that my wonderful caravan came, Books of beasts and of birds in their covers of blue — All the rest of the pages were read through and through — With the tiger in stripe and the leopard in star As if they had torn Freedom's banner in two, And the lion bewigged like a barrister's bar, And with H. and E. Phinney's own imprint of fame. All the s's are f's and the catch-words below To lend me a lift as I eagerly go. And glad as a bee in a meadow of clover I give them a glance, wet my thumb and turn over. More bliss blossomed out in those primers of old Than in volumes of vellum in crimson and gold. That imp of a press grew gigantic and grand And startled the world as Atlantic the strand. And I stood with bare brow by that triumph of art When the breath was turned on and the iron-clad heart Of the ponderous press was beginning to beat With the regular tramp of a troop in the street. With the bending of springs and the flutter of wings, x\nd swinging of lever and swaying of bar, And the running of cylinders forward and back With a trundle of night for the letter-paved track, With a murmur of might and a rumble and jar And the playing of pinion and tumble of wheel And flutter of fingers and glitter of steel, To and fro, up and down, over, under and through, As steady and true the magnificent iron THE OLD VILLAGE CHOIR. 175 As the beat of chronometer timing Orion. And I thought, with no press, without pulpit or post, With no English, no engine, no lightning that ran The Celestial Express like a vanishing ghost, That Methuselah died when a very young man. When the sound of the press on this wilderness broke. And the clock was just ready to give the first stroke, Upon rudest of paper dead-ashen and gray The very first words that were marshalled in print Was "The Freeman's Own Oath." They were picking the flint Of young Liberty's firelock before it was day ! In this noontide, the shadows rolled up at our feet. And the paper dawned white as a field of fresh snow, And the clock striking "twelve," the old Oath we repeat And we pass it along to the ages below. THE OLD VILLAGE CHOIR. I HAVE fancied sometimes the Bethel-bent beam That trembled to earth in the Patriarch's dream. Was a ladder of song in that wilderness rest From the pillow of stone to the blue of the Blest, And the angels descending to dwell with us here, "Old Hundred" and "Corinth" and "China" and " Mear." All the hearts are not dead nor under the sod That those breaths can blow open to Heaven and God. Ah, " Silver Street " flows by a bright shining road, — Oh, not to the hymns that in harmony flowed, But the sweet human psalms of the old-fashioned choir, To the girl that sang alto, the girl that sang air. 176 DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. " Let us sing to God's praise ! " the minister said: All the psalm-books at once fluttered open at '' York," Sunned their long dotted wings in the words that he rea(^, While the leader leaped into the tune just ahead, And politely picked up the key-note with a fork, And the vicious old viol went growling along At the heels of the girls in the rear of the song. Oh, I need not a wing; — bid no genii come With a wonderful web from Arabian loom. To bear me again up the river of Time, When the world was in rhythm and life was its rhyme, And the stream of the years flowed so noiseless and narrow That across it there floated the song of a sparrow; For a sprig of green caraway carries me there, To the old village church and the old village choir. Where clear of the floor my feet slowly swung And timed the sweet pulse of the praise that they sung, Till the glory aslant from the afternoon sun Seemed the rafters of gold in God's temple begun ! You may smile at the nasals of old Deacon Brown Who followed by scent till he ran the tune down. And dear sister Green, with more goodness than grace. Rose and fell on the tunes as she stood in her place, And where " Coronation " exultantly flows. Tried to reach the high notes on the tips of her toes ! To the land of the leal they have gone with their song, Where the choir and the chorus together belong. Oh ! be lifted, ye gates ! Let me hear them again, Blessed song ! Blessed Singers ! forever Amen. THE OVERLAND TRAIN TO CALIFORNIA. I77 THE OVERLAND TRAIN TO CALIFORNIA. FROM Hell Gate to Gold Gate And the Sabbath unbroken, A sweep continental And the Saxon yet spoken ! By seas with no tears in them, Fresh and sweet as Spring rains, By seas with no fears in them, God's garmented plains. Where deserts lie down in the prairie's broad calms, Where lake links to lake like the music of psalms. II. Meeting rivers bound East Like the shadows at night. Chasing rivers bound West Like the break-of-day light, Crossing rivers bound South From dead winter to June, From the marble-old snows To perennial noon — Cosmopolitan rivers, Mississippi, Missouri, That travel the planet like Jordan through Jewry. III. Through the kingdoms of corn. Through the empires of grain, Through dominions of forest Drives the thundering train — Through fields where God's cattle Are turned out to grass 178 DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. And His poultry whirl up From the wheels as we pass; Through level horizons as still as the moon, With the rills fast asleep and the winds in a swoon. IV. There's a thrill in the air Like the tingle of wine, Like a bugle-blown blast Where the scimitars shine And the sky-line is broken By the mountains divine — Where the planet stands up Body-guard before God, And to cloud-land and glory Transfigures the sod; Ah, to see the grand forms' Magnificent lift In their sandals of daisies •And turbans of drift; Ah, to see the dull globe brought sublime to its feet, When in mantles of blue the two monarchies meet, The azure of grace bending low in its place. And this world glancing back with a colorless face. Who marvels Mount Sinai was the State House of God ? Who wonders the Sermon down old Galilee flowed ? That the Father and Son each hallowed a height Where the lightnings were red and the roses were white ! Oh, Mountains that lift us to the realm of the Throne, K Sabbath-day's journey without leaving our own. All day ye have cumbered and beclouded the West, Low glooming, high looming, like a storm at its best, By distance struck speechless and the thunder at rest. THE OVERLAND TRAIN TO CALIFORNIA. 179 V. All day and all night It is rattle and clank, All night and all day Smiting space in the flank, And no token those clouds Will ever break rank. Still the engines' bright arms Are bared to the shoulder In the long level pull Till the mountains grow bolder. Ah ! we strike the up grade ! We are climbing the world ! And it rallies the soul Like volcanoes unfurled, Where it looks like the cloud that led Moses of old, And the pillar of fire born and wove in one fold From the womb and the loom of abysses untold. VI. We strike the Great Desert With its wilderness howl. With its cactus and sage, With its serpent and owl, And its pools of dead water. Its torpid old streams, The corpse of an earth And the nightmare of dreams ; And the dim rusty trails Of the old Forty-nine, That they wore as they went To the mountain and mine, With graves for their milestones ; i8o DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. How slowly they crept Like the shade on a dial Where the sun never slept, But unwinking, unblinking, from his quiver of ire Like a desolate besom the wilderness swept With his arrows of fire. VII. Now we pull up the globe ? It is grander than flying, 'Mid glimpses of wonder that are grander than dying. Through the gloomy arcades shedding winter and drift, By the bastions and towers of omnipotent lift. Through tunnels of thunder with a long sullen roar, Night ever at home and grim Death at the door, We swing round a headland. Ah, the track is not there ! It has melted away Like a rainbow in air ! Man the brakes ! Hold her hard ! We are leaving the world ! Red flag and red lantern unlighted and furled. Lo, the earth has gone down like the set of the sun — Broad rivers unravelled turn to rills as they run — Great monarchs of forests dwindle feeble and old — Wide fields flock together like the lambs in a fold — Yon head-stone a snow-flake lost out of the sky That lingered behind when some winter went by ! Ah, we creep round a ledge On the world's very edge, On a shelf of the rock Where an eagle might nest, And the heart's double knock Dies awav in the breast — THE OVERLAND TRAIN TO CALIFORNIA. isi We have rounded Cape Horn ! Grand Pacific, good morn ! VIII. Now the world slopes away to the afternoon sun — Steady one ! Steady all ! The down grade has begun. Let the engines take breath, they have nothing to do, F'or the law that swings worlds will whirl the train through. Streams of fire from the wheels, Like flashes from fountains ; And the dizzy train reels As it swoops down the mountains; And fiercer and faster As if demons drove tandem Engines "Death" and "Disaster"! From Winter to Spring in one wonderful hour — Nevada's white wing to Creation in flower — December at morning tossing wild in its might — A June without warning and blown roses at night ! Above us are snow-drifts a hundred years old. Behind us the placers with their pockets of gold, And mountains of bullion that would whiten a noon, That would silver the face of the harvester's moon ; Around us are vineyards with their jewels and gems, Living trinkets of wine blushing warm on the stems, And the leaves all afire With the purple of Tyre. Beyond us are oceans of ripple and gold, Where the bread cast abroad rolls a myriad fold — Seas of grain and of answer to the prayer of mankind, And the orange in blossom makes a bride of the wind, And the almond tree shines like a Scripture in bloom, 13 1 82 DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. And the bees are abroad with their bhinder and boom — Never blunder amiss, for there's something to kiss Where the flowers out-of-doors can smile in all weather, And bud, blossom, and fruit grace the gardens together. Thereaway to the South, without fences and bars, Flocks freckle the plains like the thick of the stars ; Hereaway to the North, a magnificent wild, With dimples of canons, as if Universe smiled. Ah ! valleys of Vision, Delectable Mountains As grand as old Bunyan's, And opals of fountains, And garnets of landscapes, And sapphires of skies. Where through agates of clouds Shine the diamond eyes. IX. We die out of Winter in the flash of an eye. Into Eden of earth, into Heaven of sky ; Sacramento's fair vale with its parlors of God, Where the souls of the flowers rise and drift all abroad, As if resurrection were all the year round. And the writing of Christ sprang alive from the ground, When he said to the woman those words that will last When the globe has grown human with the dead it holds fast. Live oaks in their orchards, rare exotics run wild. No orphan among them, each Nature's own child. Oh, wonderful land where the turbulent sand Will burst into bloom at the touch of a hand, And a desert baptized Prove an Eden disguised THE OVERLAND TRAIN TO CALIFORNIA. 183 X. There's a breath from Japan Of an ocean-born air, Like the blue-water smell In an Argonaut's hair. 'Tis a carol of joy With a sweep wild and free ; And the mountains deploy- Round the Queen of the West, Where she sits by the sea — By the Occident sea — In her Orient vest, All the earth at her knee, And the heart of all nations Alive in her breast — Where she sits by the Gate With its lintels of rock, And the key in the lock — By the Lord's Golden Gate, With its crystal-floored chamber And its threshold of amber. Where encamped like a king, The broad world on the wing. Her grand will can await. Where now are the dunes, The tawny half-moons Of the sands ever drifting, Of the sands ever sifting, By the shore and the sweep Of the sea in its sleep ? Where now are the tents, With their stains and their rents. 1 84 DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. All landward and seaward Like white butterflies blown? All drifted to leeward, All scattered and gone. And this uttermost post Of earth's end is the throne Of the Queen of the Coast, Who has loosened her robe And girdled the globe With her radiant zone — The throb of her pulses Has fevered the Age — She has silvered and gilded All history's page? She has spoken mankind, And has uttered her ships Like the eloquent words From most eloquent lips — They have flown all abroad Like the angels of God ! Sails fleck the world's waters All bound for the Gate, All their bows to the Bay Like the finger of fate. Child of the wilderness By Deserts confined. Wide waters before her, Wild mountains behind, She unlocks her treasures. To the gaze of mankind. Her name is translated into each human tongue, Her fame round the sweep of the planet is sung, THE OVERLAND TRAIN TO CALIFORNIA. 185 And she thinks round its curve By the telegraph nerve. XT. When the leaf of the mulberry is spun into thread, Then the spinner is shrouded and the weaver is dead; And that shroud is unwound by the fingers of girls, And the films of pale gold clasp the spool as it whirls. As it ripens and rounds Like some exquisite fruit In the tropical bounds, In air sweet as a lute. Till the shroud and the tomb Dyed in rainbow and bloom, Glisten forth from the loom Into garments of pride, Into robes for a bride. Into lace-woven air That an angel might wear. Ah, marvellous space 'Twixt the leaf and the lace. From the mulberry worm To the magical grace Of the fabric and form ! Oh, Imperial State, Splendid empire in leaf. That grows grand on the way To the sky and the day, Like the coralline reef To be royally great. Dead gold is barbaric, but its threads can be woven Into harmonies fine, like the tones of Beethoven, Can be ravelled and wrought 86 DESCRIPTIVE POEMS. Into love-knots of faith For the daughters of Ruth- Into garments of thought, Into pinions for truth — And be turned from the wraith Of a misty ideal That may vanish in night, To things royal and real That shall live out the light. So the true golden days Shall be kindled at last, And this realm shall rule on When the twilights are gone. In the grandeur of truth And the beauty of youth Till long ages have passed. THE BARK ''TRUE LOVE." THE bark "True Love "arrived in the Delaware in November last, direct from Greenland, with a cargo of cryolite — both cargo and craft queer as an old ballad. She had been in commis- sion one hundred and six years, and, like the "old ship Zion," her timbers were all sound. With her tulip-shaped hull and her cum- brous bulwarks she seemed to have sailed out of another age into our own. T. With tack and turn in the idle air What craft comes beating up the Bay, Comes courtesying up the Delaware ? Ahoy, Three-master! whence away? Like millers' wings, her canvas gray THE BARK TRUE LOVE. 187 Is Opened wide in ghastly palms To feel for wind among the calms. II. Her sides are curved like the splendid flower That sets on fire the tulip tree, Between her teeth the trusty bower They planted last in nameless sea,— Ah, Hope takes root where'er it be !— Plucked up a thousand times with song. Swung like a charm, and borne along ! III. I hear the flap of the languid sail, The drowsy creak of swaying yard — I see the bunting's lazy trail, A figure mount the battered guard — The breeze is purring like a pard. " How are ye named, O gray and quaint ! " From monarch dead, or faded saint ? " IV. Then came the word from the master's mate, Then bounded back a trumpet gust Of salt-sea air articulate In tones that grated rough with rust: "From no dead king or saintly dust — ''The bark 'True Love' from Labrador, "Whose sun is cold as Kohinor ! " V. Where stars show through like the points of spears And cling and shine in wounded night, Impale a thousand frozen years I