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POEMS 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD 
 REALF 
 
DOEMS BY / 
 
 RICHARD REALF 
 
 POET 
 
 SOLDIER- •• 
 WORKMAN 
 
 WITH A MEMOIR BY 
 RICHARD J. HINTON 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 I898 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY FUNK AND 
 WAGNALLS COMPANY. REGIS- 
 TERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, 
 LONDON, ENGLAND. PRINTED 
 IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 
 rwo COPIES RECEIVED. 
 
 M 201399 )) 
 
 
> ?£ 
 
 FORE-WORDS. 
 
 In presenting the collected poems of Richard Realf 
 to the English-reading public, the editor disclaims any- 
 special effort at criticism or literary skill, beyond that 
 required to gather, fill in an occasional missing word, 
 or to arrange the poems in some sequence of subjects. 
 But he believes that, in fulfilling his modest but labori- 
 ous and patient task of compilation and arrangement, 
 the result will be found to be a genuine addition to the 
 noble stock of English poetry, a real contribution in the 
 loftier sense to true literature. 
 
 The only merits claimed for the Memoir are the faith- 
 ful feeling of friendship which directed the work, and 
 the sincerity as well as charity of spirit which, I trust, 
 has controlled the statement of facts and conditions that 
 the writer would have been much more pleased to sup- 
 press than express, even in the modified way that he 
 has sought to accomplish the task. What the world 
 really has to do with is the subjective work of the man; 
 the outgiving of the spiritual forces that animated one 
 who, however sadly marred were his outer" days, has 
 left us a monumental record of his inner life and of the 
 "mystic aspirations" which he so nobly expressed. 
 
 Conscious that I shall be censured for delay in accom- 
 plishing the work I can only say that I am sure the 
 
Poet's renown and my friend's name have both gained 
 by delay, which, for at least ten years, has been some- 
 what deliberate on my part, for I would not be the cause 
 of inflicting more sorrow on one who had already suf- 
 fered too much. So I waited till his wife had left us. 
 Now that the book is at last before the reading world, 
 and my obligation to the one who " fell by the way " is 
 met, I may also declare that this is due very largely to 
 the inseeing admiration for the Poet, and the constant 
 service to myself amid many untoward conditions, of 
 my beloved wife, Isabel, to whom I venture to make 
 this public reference and thanks therefore. 
 
 I wish space would permit me to thank by name the 
 many true friends of Richard Realf, as well as some 
 who honor me with their friendship. But I can not do 
 more than express gratitude in this general way, except 
 as to a few who must be named because of their un- 
 selfish devotion to the dead Poet. I desire to express 
 my thanks for valuable suggestions in the compilation 
 of this volume to Rossiter Johnson, editor, scholar, 
 critic; Mr. and Mrs. Cothran, of San Jose, and Col. 
 Alexander J. Hawes, of San Francisco, Cal. ; George S. 
 Cothman, of Irvington, Ind. ; Frances E. Riggs, of De- 
 troit; Mrs. Cramer, and Dr. William Akin, of Chicago; 
 Miss May J. Jordan, of Michigan; Mary P. Nimmo (now 
 Mrs. Ballantyne), and Rev. Dr. Hanna, of Washington; 
 and the Rev. David Schindler, formerly of Pittsburg. 
 
 Richard J. Hinton. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Adieu, The Faint ....... 209 
 
 Advice Gratis 154 
 
 Agony ......... 226 
 
 Annunciation ....... 118 
 
 Apocalypse ........ 37 
 
 Army, The Grand ...... S7 
 
 B., To Miss H. 28 
 
 Battle, In 42 
 
 Birthday Lily, A 148 
 
 Black Man's Answer, A .... 50 
 
 Burns 108 
 
 Byron 113 
 
 Carpenter, To Frank B. . . . . . .24 
 
 Cellar, A Voice from a City .... 183 
 
 Children, The ........ 165 
 
 Comfort 127 
 
 Communion ........ 198 
 
 Condemned, A Voice from the .... 169 
 
 Daguerreotype, On Receipt of a . . . 212 
 
 Deafness, To a Lady Afflicted with ... 15 
 
 Death and Desolation ...... 139 
 
 xi 
 
PAGE. 
 
 Decoration Day ....... 18 
 
 Denunciation . ....... 123 
 
 Emancipation ....... 51 
 
 England, To Mrs. M., of 26 
 
 Entreaty 143 
 
 Esoteric ......... 167 
 
 Expectancy ........ 144 
 
 Face, A Pictured 150 
 
 Farewell ........ 146 
 
 Father-Love 103 
 
 Fragment, A . . . . . . . . 215 
 
 Fragments 173 
 
 Friend, To A 105 
 
 Friend, To An English ...... 25 
 
 " Gently, Deal" .220 
 
 Gun, The Joy .76 
 
 H., to R.J 32 
 
 Harriet, To . 207 
 
 Hashish 189 
 
 Home, Going ........ 162 
 
 Home, Letters from , 116 
 
 " Hope For Thee, There is " ..... 218 
 
 Human Statue, The 229 
 
 Hyatt, To Thaddeus .... 30 
 
 Impatience ........ 200 
 
 Inauguration, The . . . . . . . 131 
 
 xii 
 
PAGE. 
 
 Indirection 152 
 
 Inspection ......... 120 
 
 Insufficiency ........ 6 
 
 Introspection .... t ... 43 
 
 IoTriomphe! 73 
 
 Ireland's Misrule ....... 95 
 
 Joshua, Wanted: 47 
 
 Justice or Trade 86 
 
 Kansas 101 
 
 Lawrence, The Defense of ..... 89 
 
 Lessons, Our ........ 83 
 
 Liberty and Charity, Of . . . . . .64 
 
 Life and Love 114 
 
 Life's Dower 129 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham (1863) 13 
 
 Long? How 53 
 
 Lost One, My 221 
 
 Love's Fear ........ 206 
 
 11 Love is Deep, My " 205 
 
 Love's Marvel 17 
 
 Magdalena 176 
 
 Marriage Hymn 147 
 
 Memoriam, In ...... 58 
 
 "Mollie" 192 
 
 Mother Remembrance 178 
 
 Name, A Man's . 163 
 
 Nameless . . . . . . . . 180 
 
PAGE. 
 
 Nannie's Picture 31 
 
 Need You Not, We 79 
 
 Nobility 171 
 
 Notre Dame, In ...... , 30 
 
 Old Man's Idyl, An 157 
 
 Outcast, Song of the , 185 
 
 " Pass, But Let It" . 213 
 
 Passion 19 
 
 Patience 19 
 
 Peril, In 15 
 
 Picture, A 106 
 
 Pittsburg, Hymn of 142 
 
 Poet's Wealth, The ... ... 223 
 
 Prize Fight, The 159 
 
 Progress, Voice of 125 
 
 Question, The . 81 
 
 Rally! 55 
 
 Reconciliation 172 
 
 Remember, I 197 
 
 " Rest, He Giveth His Beloved" . . . 194 
 
 Rest, The Spirit of 147 
 
 Retrospective and Introspective .... 69 
 
 Salvete Milites! 61 
 
 Scrapbook, In a 24 
 
 Seamstress, Song of the 187 
 
 Sentinel Thoughts 175 
 
 xiv 
 
PAGE. 
 
 Silence Still 20 
 
 Slain, My 11 
 
 Soul's Despair, A 135 
 
 Spring, Song of 115 
 
 " Subdue You, We Will" 93 
 
 Suicide, Written on the Night of His ... 33 
 
 Summer Night . . . . . . . 210 
 
 Swing, David ....... 22 
 
 Sword Song, My ....... 40 
 
 Symbolisms ........ 3 
 
 Thought, The Palace of . . . . . . 216 
 
 Tones, My Lost ....... 224 
 
 Tress, A Golden ....... 149 
 
 Truth, The ........ 28 
 
 Two .......... in 
 
 " Vates " 32 
 
 Viola's Song ........ 17 
 
 Woman's Breath, A 168 
 
 Writing, To a Lady Chiding Me for Not . . 26 
 
 Year Ago, A . 21 
 
 xv 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Richard Realf in 1878 ... . . . Frontispiece 
 
 The Poet's Mother 34 
 
 Realf in 1858 and 1864 69 
 
 The Poet's Grave 112 
 
MEMOIR 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Richard Realf was born at Framfield, Sussex 
 County, England, on the 14th of June, 1834. His sister, 
 Mrs. Sarah Whapham, gives as the date the same month 
 and day in the year 1832. The poet himself, in his 
 autobiographical notes, written for the ' ' Little Classics " 
 series, gives the later date, and all correlative testimony 
 goes to prove its correctness. The poet's venerable 
 father, writing after the death of his gifted son to the 
 latter's warm friend, now deceased, the Rev. Alexander 
 Clark, D.D., of Pittsburg, declares that his son "was 
 a child of wonders for learning." He could " read well 
 at three and a half years old" — his mother, Martha, 
 being his teacher, for there was no school near. He 
 was fond of plaving preacher, of building chapels, and 
 of gathering the neighbor children as a congregation. 
 For a child he sang well, and was fond of giving out 
 hymns. He often said, " It will be funny when I get to 
 be a parson and preach! " At chapel Sunday-school he 
 was always at the head of his class, as he was also at 
 the day-school. Before he was nine years old he wrote 
 a few lines on the death of some rabbits. He worked 
 in the field at an early age, and then went " to service " 
 
for a time. As he wished to go to sea, his father went 
 with him to the navy yard at Portsmouth. He was 
 rejected, however, and then returned to Brighton, where 
 an elder daughter, Ellen, was employed in the house- 
 hold service of Sir John Cordy Burrows, M.D. The 
 father's letter states that Mrs. Parnell Stafford early 
 recognized the boy's ability, and aided materially in 
 giving him a good education in the Burrow's household. 
 After a short period of service he became a secretary 
 to Mr. and Mrs. Stafford, and when Mr. Stafford died, 
 he made his wife promise to care for the boy Richard. 
 Some immature poems were published under the title 
 of '* Guesses at the Beautiful," when he was seventeen. 
 His father writes that it was after this that Lady Byron 
 aided him, stating that she desired to make a " farmer " 
 of his son. This, of course, is incorrect, as Real was 
 "articled" to a land steward in charge of the Noel 
 estate in Derbyshire, a business of a semi-professional 
 character, requiring a knowledge of law and land values 
 and uses. The boy poet had previously worked in the 
 studio of the sculptor Gibson. His eyes, however, failed 
 him. Mr. Realf, Sr. , states, as does Mrs. Sarah Whap- 
 ham, that Mr. John Burrows, of Brighton, England, was 
 at the time of Richard Realf's death, and probably still 
 is, in possession of personal papers relative to the poet, 
 which his father and himself had gathered. These 
 papers have never yet been made public. 
 
 Sir John Cordy Burrows, by whom Richard Realf 
 was first employed at Brighton, he being then in his 
 
twelfth year, was by profession a physician, and had 
 been mayor of Brighton. He was made a knight on 
 the occasion of some royal visit, as is the custom in 
 Great Britain, and was a man of liberal mind and gener- 
 ous public spirit. He was always the friend of the 
 gifted boy, and when the first grave misfortune befell 
 him, stood by and aided effectually, as did also Miss 
 de Gardinier, a prominent lady in Brighton, the 
 daughter of a retired colonel, who was well known 
 then as the personal friend of Louis Philippe. The 
 ex-mayor and this generous-hearted lady were the ones 
 who helped Realf to his American career, and Dr. 
 Loomis, of New York City, secured for him the position 
 of assistant superintendent of the Five Points House of 
 Industry, then the most notable beneficent institution 
 in the metropolis. 
 
 The birthplace of Richard Realf io in the midst of 
 one of the loveliest sections of south England, the land 
 of lush greenery, flowers, and natural beauty. It is 
 the famous Arundel Castle, one of the homes of the 
 Howard family, made more famous in later years by 
 the labors of the Arundel Society in unearthing, pre- 
 paring, and publishing the early movements, deeds, ac- 
 counts, etc., of the feudal dukes of Norfolk. 
 
 Realf was a boy of nine years when he wrote his first 
 rhymes ; he was then going to a neighboring village school 
 through the kindness of Mr. John Whapham. This 
 gentleman was a market gardener of considerable means, 
 a warm friend of the Realf family, and to his son at a 
 
/ater date Sarah Realf was married. Richard Realf 
 was the fifth child in a family of ten, several of whom 
 died during childhood. Two of his brothers were 
 soldiers in the British army, both becoming non-com- 
 missioned officers, and serving with honor in the Crimea, 
 each receiving the Victoria Cross. One brother is still 
 living at Buxteed, where the parents also resided at the 
 date of the poet's death. The father was a rural police- 
 man in 1834, enrolled in the West Sussex Constabulary, 
 a position which, in the almost minute social hierarchy 
 of English rural life, must be regarded as quite superior 
 to that of the agricultural laborer. He is a man of 
 character, greatly respected in the neighborhood, and 
 evidently endowed with much more than the average 
 of bucolic intelligence. Martha, his wife, is also a person 
 of superior breeding and ability. She was Richard's 
 first teacher. It is reported that after hearing any hymn 
 or song twice or thrice sung by his mother, he could, 
 when two years old, catch the words and tune and sing 
 them perfectly in a sweet baby voice. He never worked 
 in the field, as most village and country boys did in the 
 rural England of that date. Mr. Whapham paid about 
 sixty cents per week for him at the nearest school, requir- 
 ing him only to work about his shop and garden on 
 Saturdays in return. Richard worked also for the 
 village undertaker, but he was a rude drinking and 
 swearing man, and the boy could not get along with 
 him. After this his father took him to Portsmouth, but 
 the commandant refused to enroll him. He had two 
 
 xxiv 
 
sisters " at service " in Brighton: Ellen, who lived in the 
 Burrows' household, and Mary Ann, who was a domestic 
 in that of the Staffords. Mr. Stafford was a physician 
 and a man of fine attainments and intellectual character, 
 sympathetic in spirit, and was at once attracted to the 
 handsome village boy, whose very features spoke of the 
 effluent soul within. Richard was early transferred to 
 the Stafford home, not as a domestic, but an amanuensis. 
 His handwriting was always exquisitely formed, clear 
 and perfect. The San Francisco reporter, to whom Col. 
 Tappan handed his famous death sonnet — his "Swan 
 Song," as I like to term it, — declared he had never seen a 
 manuscript firmer in strokes or more clear in ensemble, 
 even in the portion which had evidently been written 
 after the poison took effect. 
 
 Mrs. Stafford belonged to the famous Stewart-Parnell 
 family, being an aunt to the great Irish leader. The 
 b>oy poet received his education by her bounty and it was 
 a.good one. He read well and widely, was grounded in 
 Latin, and knew something of French. Of literature, 
 classic and English, he had quite a wide range and 
 possessed a severe, keen critical taste. Richard Realf, 
 in deportment and daily life, was always as if to the 
 " manner born," and that of the best school, too. Unlike 
 other Englishmen of my generation whom I have known 
 as winning culture and securing recognition, though 
 born of labor and struggle, he was never too shy or 
 overforward, he never felt any disability because of 
 origin, or forced personal recognition. He obtained 
 
it naturally, and if the " blue blood " theory had any 
 vitality in fact, those who met him and knew not of 
 his family associations, would have readily testified 
 of him as a born aristocrat — a gentleman by birth. He 
 was one by nature. The bo)r was radical also, in the 
 English sense, and of the period. The glamor of '48 
 was still in the mental atmosphere. What Charles 
 Mackey, Eliza Cook, Ebenezer Elliot, and Gerald 
 Massey had sung for Labor and Democracy, was still 
 inspiring and uplifting. There was a social fad also in 
 patronizing the people, when individual units of that 
 somewhat amorphous material showed capacity above 
 the average. 
 
 In the " Little Classic " sketch already referred to, 
 Realf describes his youthful position and surroundings 
 at Brighton. He wrote: 
 
 "At the age of fifteen or thereabouts I began to 
 write verses — * lisping in numbers, for the numbers 
 came.' When some sixteen years old I hired out as 
 1 boy-of-all-work ' to a master mechanic in the neigh- 
 borhood, grooming his horse, taking care of his garden, 
 and generally discharging whatever menial duties were 
 allotted to me. When about seventeen I grew very 
 weary of the gross character of my surroundings. I did 
 not live at home, but at my ' master's/ who was a 
 drunken and brutal man, and with the consent of my 
 parents paid a visit to my elder sister, then living in 
 the family of a physician at Brighton, Sussex, as a 
 domestic servant. The wife of this gentleman, a lady 
 of literary taste, manifested a great liking for me, and 
 at her invitation I became her amanuensis. Two or 
 
three weeks after I entered on this new life her husband 
 died. Shortly thereafter an eminent physician, who 
 had paid special attention to the then new science of 
 phrenology, visited Brighton for the purpose of deliver- 
 ing a series of lectures on that subject before the 
 Brighton Scientific Associaton, of which he was an hon- 
 orary member. He was the guest of my benefactress, 
 and became interested in me. One day he borrowed 
 from me, ostensibly for the purpose of more careful 
 reading, a number of my crude ventures in verse. The 
 next morning I learned to my astonishment that in his 
 lecture of the preceding evening he had read some of 
 them in illustrating the organ of ideality. Brighton, 
 the fashionable watering-place of England, was then in 
 the height of the ' society ' season, and among his 
 auditors were many whose names were famous in litera- 
 ture and science. A great many people came to see me 
 thereupon, among them Lady Byron and her daughter 
 Ada. Rogers, the poet, sent for me, being too old and 
 infirm to come himself. Mrs. Jameson, Miss Mitford, 
 Miss Martineau, Lady Jane Peel, and others, also began 
 to pet me. I had shown the possession of some slight 
 imitative talent as a molder of images in clay, and 
 Gibson, the sculptor, thought there was the making of 
 a creative artist in me. Among themselves they de- 
 termined to publish a collection of my verses, and this 
 was done in 1852, under the title of ' Guesses at the 
 Beautiful,' the editor, Charles de la Pryme, Fellow of 
 Trinity College, being a nephew of Thackeray. The 
 little book was, of course, valuable only for what it 
 promised, not at all for what it contained. Lady Byron 
 grew greatly interested in me, chiefly, at first, on 
 account of the representations made to her concerning 
 me by Rev. Frederick W. Robertson, who resided but 
 
two doors from the home of the lady with whom I lived. 
 
 " The natural tendency of it all was to make me for- 
 getful of the honest peasant ancestry from which I 
 sprang. So I wrote to Lady Byron, who was then, in 
 1853, at her country residence, begging her to get me 
 away from these false surroundings. I think that, with 
 the exception of my mother, she was the noblest woman 
 I ever knew. She at once made arrangements for me to 
 go down into Leicestershire, to her nephew, Mr. Noel, 
 manager of one of her large estates, with whom I was 
 to study the science of agriculture as well as prosecute 
 my literary purposes." 
 
 His sister Sarah intimates that Mrs. Stafford was over 
 indulgent with her brother, and gave him an undue 
 amount of pocket money, as well as jewelry. There is 
 no doubt at all that Realf was petted a good deal, and 
 that by a social circle which might readily unfit him for 
 the struggles of life. He, however, had the good sense 
 to perceive himself this incongruity, and it was at his own 
 request that he was sent to Derbyshire to learn the 
 business of a land steward. He was then well on in 
 his nineteenth year. Remaining there for a number of 
 months, and apparently with content and reasonable 
 success, the village household in Sussex, as well as the 
 Byron circle at Brighton, was soon roused to disquietude 
 by reports of Realf's disappearance, and of a social 
 scandal in the Noel mansion. After some weeks of 
 doubt as to his whereabouts, Richard Realf was found 
 by his father on the streets of Southampton, in a semi- 
 demented state, ragged, bare-footed, destitute, and sing- 
 
ing ballads for pennies. He was taken home and care- 
 fully nursed. It appeared also that before reaching this 
 condition in which he was found, he had lived in an ex- 
 pensive hotel at Eastbourne, a fashionable watering- 
 place, under an assumed name, where he run up quite a 
 large account. This was met shortly after by his father. 
 Some weeks had passed, during which the young man 
 had wandered over England, indulging in acts which cer- 
 tainly indicated a disordered mind. What had occurred 
 has never been made clear; that there was a woman 
 in the case, is certain. She was of the Noel family also, 
 and several years the senior of the young poet. His sis- 
 ter Sarah states that this lady became pregnant, and an 
 elder brother, arriving from the continent, found Realf, 
 and beat him unmercifully. Richard himself never 
 spoke of it, except as, in his death poem, he sung that— 
 
 He wrought for liberty, till his own wound 
 (He had been stabbed), concealed with painful art 
 
 Through wasting years, mastered him, and he 
 swooned, 
 And sank there where you see him lying now 
 With the word " Failure " written on his brow. — 
 
 The story indicated in that other pathetic lyric, "A 
 Golden Tress," may also perhaps illustrate the mental 
 as well as physical effect of the injury then received. 
 
 For myself I have, after patient delving and ju- 
 dicial inquiry, come to the conclusion that the Noel 
 episode, in its injurious effects, mental as well as 
 physical, (Realf always complained of. periodic trouble 
 
in his head, and once told me this was due to an injury- 
 received by him when he was in his twentieth year), is 
 mainly responsible for much of the peculiar conduct 
 that marked his after life. In the. ofttimes over- 
 wrought imagination, perhaps unduly "peering into 
 the immortalities," the recurrent effect of the perma- 
 nent injury inflicted by the spirit of brutal caste as much 
 as by the passion of virtuous indignation, furnishes 
 at least a rational explanation of acts that are so far 
 foreign to all other things that are so plain in Realf 's life, 
 that they can only be explained by temporary dementia 
 and not by the hypothesis of overwrought and melan- 
 cholic temperament. Realf was gentle, refined, cour- 
 teous, "breathing freely in high altitudes of spirit," 
 beloved by all but one who came in contact with him; 
 yet his days are marred by strange disappearances, his 
 life by weird passion, and his career degraded by acts 
 of apparent dishonor. All who knew him as I knew 
 him would defend him against such expressions, and 
 yet they remain true, because the facts can not be ob- 
 literated. With no desire to excuse or to extenuate be- 
 cause my friend, in spite of all, is the David of my early 
 and later years, admired in life and the more beloved in 
 the decades that have followed his untimely departure by 
 reason of the sadness I have traced and the suffering 
 that, I have learned, clustered so bleak and black about 
 him, I have reached the conclusion that Richard Realf 
 suffered at times from some form of dementia. 
 
 It was then that his best friends in Brighton, as well 
 
as the dear homely household in the Sussex village, 
 deemed it wise that he should make a place for himself 
 in the United States. His sister Mary, not long mar- 
 ried, had already sailed over the seas and settled with 
 her husband at Cumberland, Maryland. An aunt, Mrs. 
 Hynes, had long before emigrated and her family still 
 live in one of the Western States. Richard Realf 
 landed in New York during April, 1855, and began a new 
 and hopeful life at once at the Five Points House of 
 Industry. 
 
 One of the strongest impressions made on Realf by 
 his youthful residence at Brighton came through his 
 contact with a famous evangelical clergyman and orator 
 of the established Church — the Rev. Frederick W. Rob- 
 ertson — two volumes of whose eloquent sermons were 
 published in this country some thirty-five years since. 
 It was at his suggestion that Richard Realf became an 
 active member of the Brighton Workingmen's Institute. 
 He wrote in after days several eloquent and grateful 
 tributes to the memory of the English divine, two of 
 which appeared in the Christian Radical (Pittsburg) in 
 1871, and I find in a letter from the field, written during 
 1863, the following: 
 
 "His voice was the rarest to which I have ever lis- 
 tened. A blind man, being a stranger to our language, 
 would inevitably have loved him hearing him speak; 
 and there was no passion that he could not lull, no sor- 
 row that he could not soothe, no devil that he could not 
 exorcise, nor any child whom he could not charm with the 
 
benignancy of his voice. How the people of Brighton 
 flocked to him! Peers and princesses, the artist and 
 the poet with their fine spiritual cravings, Gunnybags, 
 the millionaire, with his heart of a metallic hue, the 
 fisherman from his boat, the seamstress from her 
 needle, the plowman from his fields, and the prisoner 
 from his cell, — all, of whatever caste, class, clique, or 
 condition, in the light of his sublime manhood stood 
 equal unto themselves as unto him and unto God. I 
 have within the walls of his church witnessed the finest 
 courtesies that I ever saw, the infection of his glorious 
 graciousness being upon all his listeners." 
 
 Another influence that affected Realf for good was 
 that of a large-hearted American reformer, Mr. Pease, 
 the transformer of the once infamous Five Points of 
 New York. Realf spent sixteen«months in the House of 
 Industry. He was as ready at the toil of teaching and 
 serving as we in Kansas and the army found him in 
 after days at fighting for liberty and union. During 
 this bright period it was my fortune to meet Realf and 
 become his friend. As chairman of a lecture committee 
 in a young men's temperance and literary club, I in- 
 vited him to deliver to us a lecture on poverty and labor, 
 which he did with the heartiest interest. His days 
 were busy ones. Elsewhere in this memoir I have 
 sketched the work of that period. But he early be- 
 came animated by that restless and heroic spirit 
 which filled the "fifties" with its almost divine fury 
 of resistance to slavery. This fresh voice was not 
 one of sloth; its clear special tenor was resonant with 
 
protest against suffering and wrong, pure in its appeals 
 for righteousness, and passionate in denunciation of 
 oppression. He made friends on every hand, and the 
 memories then created still keep his presence as a 
 glowing radiance. 
 
 Among the letters sent me, I find one of the Five 
 Points period written to his sister Sarah, which contains 
 the only reference I can find to the sister and family 
 who located in Maryland. The letter is dated at New 
 York, July 28th, 1856. The poet writes to "dear 
 Sallie": 
 
 " I have been down into Maryland and Virginia, 
 amongst my own and your dear friends. Don't I wish 
 you could have been with me — that's all. No, it isn't 
 all; for then, much as I enjoyed myself, and pleas- 
 antly as the time passed, my visit would have 
 been a still happier one. They live 400 miles away 
 from New York, but with our facilities for traveling it 
 really is not much further than from Uskfield to London. 
 We do not in America measure distances by miles, but 
 by hours. I started at 6 o'clock at night, and had I 
 traveled all the way without stopping, should have 
 reached Cumberland at noon the next day. Pretty 
 rapid — eh, Sallie ? 
 
 11 I heard from Miss de Gardinier the other day. 
 I was so pleased that I couldn't help crying, when 
 she told me that you were to go and live with Ellen. 
 She says Ellen is so good, which, being the case, I 
 hope you will follow the advice and instructions of 
 that dear sister implicitly and without questioning. 
 Do you know, Sallie, that unhesitating obedience is 
 the highest altitude unto which any one can attain ? 
 
Not, of course, obedience to wrong or falsehood — 
 but obedience to right and truth. I know that I used 
 to think very differently— and so the sorrows and 
 the agonies came; had I understood this better, these 
 might have been spared. Wouldn't you like to 
 come to America? I guess you would. Yes, but I 
 don't want you to do so. What would our dear, dear 
 father and mother do, if we should all leave them ? I 
 should like much — much more than I can say — to see 
 you and have you near me, but I would rather never 
 see you than consent to your leaving England. I 
 haven't much time to talk about this, Sallie, but my 
 heart is very full with it, nevertheless. If father and 
 mother were ten or fifteen years younger, then I would 
 try and bring you all over, but that can't be now; and 
 
 so I want you to stop near them 
 
 4 'You are almost a woman now, dear Sallie, which, 
 when I think of, makes me tremble. From my position 
 I see so much that is fearful — and in the young too — 
 that it makes me doubly anxious for your welfare. You 
 will try to be very good, won't you, Sallie dear? 
 Father and mother, you know, are growing old now, 
 and couldn't bear much sorrow. They shall never have 
 to endure any on your account, shall they, Sallie ? " 
 
 Realf's memories of his early home remained vivid 
 to the last. I find another letter to sister Sarah, written 
 in 1858, at the period of his John Brown relations. It 
 can, however, be referred to here: 
 
 " Chatham, Canada West, May 14th, 1858. 
 
 " Good morning, my beloved sister! It is * Fair-day ' 
 at Uckfield. Did you think I had forgotten it ? But I 
 liaven't. I never forget anything connected, however 
 
THH POHT'S MOTHfcR 
 
 MRS. MARTHA kKALK 
 
distantly, with my dear home. I remember all the 
 trees: the willow, the oak, the ash, and the poplar. I 
 know all the hedgerows, the copses, the little brooks 
 and the silent springs, by heart. I recollect the paths 
 where the daisies grew; the hillsides where the prim- 
 roses and the violets nestled; the meadows where the 
 cowslips bloomed. , . How many times, when I 
 have been worn and weary, have I flung myself down 
 on the coarse prairie grass, to shut the eyes of my 
 senses, and open the eyes of my soul upon home. If 
 ever you should be such a wanderer as I have been, 
 roaming among strangers, cast in perilous places, O 
 how your heart will go down upon its knees with a chok- 
 ing cry for home! "Why, Sallie, I have sung 'Home, 
 sweet Home,' when no eye but God's has seen me, and 
 when no ear but His has listened; because if I had not 
 sung it my full heart would have broken; and the tears 
 would roll down my cheeks, and I would tremble till I 
 could hardly sit on my horse 
 
 "Ah me! dear Sallie! It is very long now since I, 
 a little child, would wander in and out among the 
 crowded cattle, and around the * shows/ and about 
 the swarming streets, walking in a sort of dreamy 
 wonder, marveling at all I saw. I have passed 
 into youth and manhood; gray streaks are among my 
 brown hair — my cheeks are thin — there is care upon 
 my brow. I criticise now, I weigh defects, I balance 
 merits, I doubt, I argue, I arrive at logical conclusions; 
 and yet, ever and anon, as to-day, the memory of some 
 simple circumstances — some ■ fair,' perhaps, or face, it 
 may be — will steal like an old tune across my heart, 
 smiting, as with another rod of Moses, the rock that 
 was once my soul; and presently the hard granite will 
 melt away with fervent heat, revealing the old perennial 
 
waters of blessed childhood, the everlasting beautiful- 
 ness of the time wherein my mother called me * Dickey.' 
 As I grew into my * teens,' it wounded my precocity 
 and pride, this childish name of 'Dickey.' I thought 
 I was too big for it, and that when I put off my ' pina- 
 fores ' for 'round frocks/ I also ought to put off the 
 childish name I have given for the manlier one of 
 'Richard.' I used to murmur in my heart sometimes 
 at what I called the obstinacy of mother in adhering to 
 the old name; but O, Sallie, what would I not give to- 
 day if I could hear her low, sweet voice calling unto me 
 as of yore? How I would leap at the blessed sound — 
 how I would rush forward to meet her — how I would 
 kneel to ask her blessing, and how tenderly and lov- 
 ingly I would wait upon her steps as I led her slowly 
 home! .... 
 
 Richard." 
 
 This letter was written at the close of the convention 
 which pledged its members to death in a wild, heroic 
 effort to overthrow slavery. 
 
 In August of 1856, Richard Realf determined on an 
 act which shaped and colored all his after life, and 
 which in its effects may be said to have wrought its 
 graver discolorations also. It is easy to speculate on 
 what might have come in thje way of exalting and 
 abiding literature if the young poet had moved in 
 more sober and ordered ways ; but we do know, how- 
 ever, that he nobly strove, often aided efficiently, was 
 always the most resonant of voices, and that life became 
 broader because of him, even if his own fell prone at 
 last among the gruesome shadows by which his footsteps 
 
were encompassed and sometimes misled. He decided 
 to go to Kansas and take a man's part in a man's strug- 
 gle — that cf making a State free from slavery. 
 
 An interesting account of his appearance there comes 
 to me from an old friend, and as it covers his move- 
 ments quite fully, I insert it here: 
 
 11 I shall never forget my first meeting with Richard 
 Realf. It was during those stormy and eventful days 
 when the question of slavery or freedom for a conti- 
 nent was being fought out on the plains of Kansas. 
 The Missouri river was blockaded for the free-state 
 settlers by the pro-slavery population along its banks. 
 I had gathered a large part of young men to march 
 overland through Iowa, to aid the free-state cause by 
 votes, and if need be, with strong arms. 
 
 " It was in September, 1856, and our party had reached 
 Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, by rail, and from thence were mak- 
 ing ready for their long march of over 600 miles. 
 Senator Harlan and Gov. Grimes came and gave us 
 addresses of welcome, and words of cheer. Teams had 
 been procured to carry the baggage of the men, and a 
 supply of arms and ammunition to reenforce the little 
 Spartan band which held the decisive point in the 
 struggle for free soil. The train was about to start, 
 when a young man, breathless, and with face flushed 
 with heat, came running from the cars. He inquired 
 for me, and presented a very kind letter from Mr. 
 Pease, of the House of Industry, in New York, where 
 the bearer had been a teacher. The indorsement was all 
 that could be desired, but Realf hardly needed it. Sus- 
 picious as all were of spies and traitors in our camp, his 
 soulful earnestness and noble devotion would have won 
 all hearts to him. His splendid face was radiant with a 
 
grand enthusiasm, and he was made welcome. He 
 joined in the march, and walked with his comrades. 
 He was in my own mess, and his especial pet was young 
 Lagrange, of Wisconsin, since a famous soldier and 
 public man, possessing a soul of the same chivalrous 
 type, but more fortunately balanced in intellect. Realf 
 was always ready to do his share of every disagreeable 
 job. If the wagons stuck in the mud, or fuel was to be 
 gathered for the camp, or a sick comrade needed care, 
 he was always among the first to offer his help. 
 
 " He was brimful of a certain fiery energy, which 
 seemed never to flag for a moment. He never showed 
 nervousness or vexation. He was singularly tender 
 and affectionate. At night, before we lay down, he 
 always embraced Lagrange and myself. Poetry bub- 
 bled up from his heart like a perennial spring, as we lay 
 looking up into the heavens of a clear night. He im- 
 provised, or recalled choice stanzas of his own, or of 
 other poets 
 
 11 Of Realf in Kansas I know little, as I never resided 
 there. About a year following, on a visit to the terri- 
 tory, I found him still as exuberant in life and poetic 
 fire as ever. I spent a night with a party on Mt. Oread, 
 near Lawrence, in one of the forts erected to defend 
 Lawrence from Sheriff Jones' army of Missourians. 
 Realf was of the party, also Cook and Kagi, who died 
 with John Brown at Harper's Ferry. Hinton also. 
 Later the same year I met him in New York city, and 
 visited the Five Points House of Industry with him. 
 Every one there seemed to love him. 
 
 " Years passed and I heard from him only occasionally 
 during and after the war. I met him again in 1874, 
 while he was on the Pittsburg Commercial. Though time 
 and trouble had left their marks upon him, there was 
 
 xxxviii 
 
much to recall my old friend and comrade. There was 
 the same undying love of liberty, and warm ready sym- 
 pathy for the cause of the poor. He told me of his 
 troubles, and I knew at times that he tried to drown 
 sorrow in drink. He was, however, steady at his work. 
 He had many mouths to feed, and all his modest earn- 
 ings were spent for others. 
 
 " In the winter of 1876, visiting Pittsburg, I found him 
 in the Temperance work, heart and soul. Francis Mur- 
 phy had made thirty thousand converts to temperance,, 
 and Realf was one of the brightest. He spoke with 
 great power at the monster gatherings and continued 
 steadfast after the meetings closed. He told me then 
 that he felt the stirrings of a new spiritual life, and that 
 he would enter the field as a lecturer. His life seemed 
 only just fairly begun, I heard of his lectures in Ohio 
 and of his visit to the Pacific Coast. The news of his 
 death came to me in his last poem, sent by our mutual 
 friend, Gen. Lagrange. Of him it might be truly said 
 as of one before: - His sins which are many are for- 
 given him, for he loved much.' " 
 
 Realf arrived in Kansas in the middle of October, 
 1856. S. C. Pomeroy, James Redpath, S. F. Tap- 
 pan, Preston B. Plumb, Edward Daniels of Wisconsin, 
 Oscar Lagrange, afterward a Union general, the Rev. 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Thaddeus Hyatt, and, 
 if I recollect aright, Horace White also, were among 
 the notable members of the northern emigrant "train." 
 He lived at Lawrence until he returned east with Thad- 
 deus Hyatt in the early days of January, 1857, Coming 
 back in April of the same year, he remained in the 
 territory until he left to join John Brown in Iowa, early 
 
in the following August. He never went back. Dur- 
 ing these months his life was one of ceaseless agita- 
 tion and literary activity. He wrote while in Kansas 
 at least twenty-five of his more notable lyrics, and to 
 his three months' residence in the east is due nearly or 
 quite a score of sonnets and love-lyrics of the purest 
 tone and rhythmic melody. 
 
 It is not necessary to follow the months of waiting 
 and drilling at Springdale, Iowa, where John Brown 
 with his son Owen, nine Kansas men, and one man of 
 color, prepared themselves for that strange overture to 
 the Titanic struggle against chattel slavery that their 
 captain inaugurated at Harper's Ferry, Va., October 
 17, 1859. It would take volumes to give the interesting 
 details of the quaint and simple life in the Iowa Quaker 
 settlement. The men drilled and read books of tactics 
 and war. They held lyceum and had debates that 
 made them famous on that lonely country-side. Every- 
 body knew they were preparing to fight slavery, every 
 one thought it was to be in Kansas and Missouri, and 
 the idea that the free-state war was to be carried into 
 the Virginian Dahomey was not known until later in 
 1859. The brothers, Edwin and Barclay Coppoc, left 
 Springdale to join John Brown in Maryland. As Rich- 
 ard Realf's name has been at times in hasty and 
 ignorant criticism attached to an anonymous letter 
 sent in the fall of 1859, from Cincinnati, to Floyd, 
 Secretary of War, declaring that John Brown de- 
 signed to attack Harper's Ferry, the matter of actual 
 
 xl 
 
authorship may as well be cleared up here. Until 
 within the past two years I have always charged the 
 writing of the Floyd letter to a Mr. Edmund Babb, of 
 Cincinnati. In this charge I have been mistaken, and 
 have done Mr. Babb such injury as the accusation might 
 bring, for which I hereby express my profound regret. 
 A brother of the two Coppocs, who served with Captain 
 Brown, published in an Iowa periodical {The Midland 
 Monthly), October, 1895, his ungrounded suspicion that 
 the warning letter was written by Realf. The state- 
 ment was absurd on its face, however, but it had the 
 good effect of bringing out the truth as to by whom and 
 from what motives the letter was written. The former 
 lieutenant governor of Iowa, Hon. B. F. Gue, told in 
 the same periodical how he and his brother, David J. 
 Gue, now of New York city, with a cousin, A. L. Smith, 
 of Buffalo, were visiting Moses Sarney, the Quaker 
 friend at whose house John Brown stayed in Spring- 
 field. This man of peace told the three persons named 
 of the intention to invade Virginia, and expressed at 
 the same time his conviction of absolute failure, bring- 
 ing death to all concerned. The young men felt the 
 same way, and in that spirit, hoping to prevent what 
 they considered madness, they wrote two letters un- 
 signed, one being mailed at Cincinnati, and the other at 
 Philadelphia. Both were mailed at " Big Rock," Iowa, 
 enclosed in envelopes addressed to the postmasters of the 
 cities named. The Cincinnati letter was received. The 
 writer of the letter was David J. Gue, now an artist and 
 
 xli 
 
portrait painter in New York city. After the letter was 
 sent, the young men waited. Then came the blow at 
 Harper's Ferry, and in common with all anti-slavery 
 sympathizers they too rose to the measure of the issues 
 created. Their well-meant effort was abortive, and on 
 the whole they were not displeased that it should so be. 
 
 I shall not recite the story of John Brown, or of the 
 Chatham Convention. It belongs to another volume, 
 and would take up too much space in this memoir. 
 Realf was one of the leading spirits. He sustained 
 with fiery eloquence his captain's extreme views. Of 
 John Brown's personal influence he once said : " He 
 possessed that strange power which enables one man to 
 impress many with his views, and he so psychologized 
 his associates, that, seeing only through his medium of 
 vision, they consequently were unable to controvert his 
 theories; therefore the movement went blindly on, For 
 myself, too, it is certain that had I not been to New 
 York, where, out of reach of his great mesmeric power, 
 I could in some sort master the questions involved, I 
 should have been with the enterprise to the bitter end. 
 I should, indeed, have had no other choice. Had John 
 Brown sent a man on an errand to Hades he must have 
 started hither, for Brown was one of God's own com- 
 manders." 
 
 Richard Realf was selected for secretary of state in 
 the skeleton form of provisional constitution and gov- 
 ernment under which John Brown expected to control 
 within slave territory, the slaves he was to make free 
 
 xlii 
 
by fighting for and with them. When the Chatham Con- 
 vention adjourned, the Browns, the father and the son 
 Owen, Kagi, Cook, and Realf, with others, went to 
 Cleveland, Ohio. It was there decided that the revolu- 
 tionists separate for a brief period, and Realf determined, 
 with Captain Brown's approval, to go first to New York, 
 and thence to England, not only to see his people, but 
 with voice and pen to endeavor to obtain means to aid 
 the enterprise. To this end he wrote letters to George L. 
 Stearns and others, who were sympathetic with Captain 
 Brown's aims, though not knowing then his plan and 
 place of attack. There is no word to be found during 
 the thirty-seven years of my constant research into the 
 movements of John Brown and his men, the result of 
 which has been embodied in another volume of mine, 
 that warrants such a statement as was made by a writer 
 in the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, at the time of 
 Realf 's death, to the effect that his alleged " betrayal" 
 of Captain Brown began at Cleveland, from where 
 he was ordered to look after Hugh Forbes (as the news- 
 paper critic states), an English drill-master, who was, 
 owing to a disagreement, engaged in denouncing John 
 Brown's purpose to the leading Republican politicians. 
 Realf went to England with John Brown's consent. J. 
 H. Kagi, who was named as secretary of war, and was 
 slain during the fighting of October, 1859, wrote to me 
 some time in June asking for news of Realf, and in that 
 letter said they had had no word from him direct since he 
 left to go to England with the captain's consent. Realf 
 
 xliii 
 

 said the change of his views, not as to the wrong and 
 unrighteousness of slavery itself, but as to the ■ ' rightful- 
 ness" of the proposed method of assault, began with 
 his reading for the first time Wayland's " Limitations of 
 the Human Will." And this is probably the entire 
 truth, for there is abundant evidence to show that he 
 worked arduously, though with no great success, to 
 earn money lecturing while in England; that he never 
 denied personal hostility or objection to the existence 
 of slavery in England, France, or in the South. Col. 
 Thomas P. Ochiltree, the well-known Texan and New 
 Yorker, when he was a youth himself, knew Realf dur- 
 ing the summer and fall of 1859. He greatly admired 
 the brilliant northerner, who openly spoke of his parti- 
 cipation in the Kansas Free State strife and against the 
 South. Col. Ochiltree has cold the writer of many such 
 incidents. Judge Paschall, by whose advice and action 
 Realf was saved from mob violence, told me in Wash- 
 ington that the poet never denied his anti-slavery feel- 
 ings. 
 
 Realf was in England and the Channel Islands from 
 late in June till early in September. He then visited Paris 
 and went thence to Havre, where he procured a cheap 
 passage to the United States on a cotton ship bound for 
 New Orleans. In this even he had apparently no other 
 purpose than to get a chance to see slavery in its own 
 lair, and work his way back to Kansas. He obtained 
 reportorial work on The Bee, but in some way fell under 
 the influence of Catholic friends. He went to Mobile 
 
 xliv 
 
for study, and on the 3d of October was admitted to the 
 Jesuit College at Spring Hill, where he was baptized as 
 "John Richard." Among my memoranda I find the 
 following notes, which were written a short time since 
 by one who was with Realf at the college, and is now, or 
 was at the time of writing, a prominent church dignitary. 
 The note that accompanied these has been lost and I do 
 not recall the name. But here is the statement. There 
 are some errors in date as, for example, Realf was in 
 England in July, 1859. 
 
 11 About the first of July, 1859, Richard Realf came on 
 a visit to the Jesuit fathers. He was at the college for 
 about three months, was instructed and baptized, and, as 
 my memory serves me, made his profession of faith, and 
 was received into the church by Father Gaureist, then 
 rector of the college, in the presence of the students 
 assembled in the chapel for the customary daily mass. 
 He left for New Orleans with the college boys on the 
 Morgan steamship early in October. His verses were 
 published in the New Orleans Catholic Standard, then 
 edited by a Col. Denis." 
 
 When James Redpath began, with my aid as collabo- 
 rator, "The Public Life of John Brown," Realf was 
 believed by us to have died at sea. When later, as the 
 last proofs were being read, Realf was arrested at 
 Tyler, and garbled statements were wired north, Red- 
 path wrote his preface thereon, and denounced Richard 
 Realf as a " traitor." I combated that view, but it was 
 of no use. Years after (1877) Redpath wrote to a lady 
 in Ohio (at Xenia, I believe), replying to an inquirv. 
 
 xlv 
 
and stating that his attack on Realf was unjust. He 
 gave the explanation I have just made. Redpath's 
 language in the book was as follows: 
 
 "The latest telegraphic news makes one correction 
 necessary. I have spoken of Richard Realf as dead, I 
 thought that he died a natural death on the ocean. It 
 appears that he still lives in the body; but dead to 
 honor, the voice of conscience, and the cries of the poor. 
 He has chosen the part of Judas and promises to play 
 it well." 
 
 He then adds to Mrs. Ann Good's inquiry (the corre- 
 spondence and name were all published in an Ohio paper 
 from which I copy): 
 
 "You ask me why I used this language. Just as the 
 preface was ready for the press, the news came that one 
 of John Brown's men had been arrested in Alabama or 
 Texas — or one of the Gulf States; that he had confessed 
 his connection with the old hero, and had offered to 
 betray all the secrets of the movement if he should be 
 brought before the Congressional Committee; that his 
 proposal had been accepted and that he was then on 
 his way to Washington under military or semi-military 
 escort. We all believed that Col. Realf had become a 
 traitor. This belief caused me to write that assault on 
 him. The book was printed before he gave his evi- 
 dence. 
 
 " Examined by Mr. Jefferson Davis and Mr. Mason, of 
 Virginia, while it is true that he told his story at great 
 length, it is equally true that he did not betray any 
 secrets that injured any one. I never read his evidence 
 in full until after I wrote the preceding paragraph. I 
 have just finished it, and write, therefore, with all the 
 
 xlvi 
 
 
facts fresh in my mind. But as long ago as 1872 I 
 publicly retracted and apologized for the unjust charge 
 that I had made against Col. Realf. You will find it in 
 the edition of my book, published by Kinney Brothers 
 at Sandusky, Ohio. . . . 
 
 " If a cloud has been cast across the path of Col. Realf 
 by the error that I made years ago, and that I have not 
 been fully able to atone for, I am not only willing, but 
 anxious, that his friends should make any use that they 
 see fit of this explicit retraction and apology." . . . 
 
 The evidence Realf gave had no political importance. 
 Its value is purely historical, linking, as it did, the 
 struggle in Kansas with the attack on Harper's Ferry, 
 and showing how both came to be. 
 
 When Realf reached Cleveland, Ohio, after the U. S. 
 Senate Committee had discharged him, he had some 
 $600 in his possession, received as witness fees and 
 mileage. In that city he met Barclay Coppoc and 
 Osborne P. Anderson, two of those who escaped from 
 the Virginia melee. He immediately divided his money 
 by one half, thus enabling both to reach their homes 
 and safety. 
 
 In quite a remarkable communication addressed to tne 
 editor (Mrs. H . F. M. Brown) of a Cleveland weekly of the 
 period, after analyzing the conflicting conditions which 
 went, in his judgment, to make up modern reform move- 
 ments, he writes: 
 
 "I am afraid I have been somewhat indecorously 
 amused at the various speculations of people in regard 
 to my former connection with John Brown. One news- 
 
 xlvii 
 
paper (the Philadelphia Ledger) writes me down in a long 
 editorial as ' quick, ardent, enthusiastic, able, earnest, 
 truthful, sincere, utterly fearless of consequences, and 
 with that sort of boundless faith in the goodness of 
 others which inspires confidence and makes others good 
 to him.' The Washington States and Union scolds me 
 like a virago for having, it claims, made the government 
 preserve my life from assassination, and transport me 
 from Texas to the North, that I might in my testimony 
 exculpate the Republican party from the Democratic 
 charge of complicity with John Brown's raid. Redpath, 
 the author of the old hero's biography, conceived an 
 impression that I had sold myself to the South, and so 
 attached an opprobrious epithet to my name. A Demo- 
 cratic organ in this city is mightily exercised because I 
 have given a little money to a 'traitor' who escaped 
 from Harper's Ferry; and men of both parties are 
 greatly puzzled to know how it is that I can condemn 
 Brown's insurrection, and yet vindicate his personal 
 character, and make donations to those who were en- 
 gaged with him in his enterprise. And thus I answer 
 them all: O! Brother, O! Friend, — do not perplex your- 
 self with perpetual prying into that which will not avail 
 you. Is it not enough that you can not understand me, 
 without unnecessarily vexing yourself with futile effort ? 
 Perhaps you are above me, perhaps below, or it may 
 chance that, though afar off, we are equal. If I choose 
 to balk your criticism and baffle your analysis, what is 
 that to you? Look you, friend, I appeal from your 
 customs, your rules, your measurements. I do not 
 stand in awe of you. I will not seek to conciliate you. 
 I will not pay you hypocritical attentions. I do not de- 
 sire your suffrage. If I am noble, it will presently 
 manifest itself; if I am base, I shall not always be able 
 
 xlviii 
 
to conceal it. If it can show itself in no other way, it 
 will ooze out at my finger ends. This world is God's 
 great whispering gallery. Speak we never so low, it 
 roars like the thunder of an avalanche. Act we never 
 so secretly, it blazes along the dark with insufferable 
 blinding distinctness like lightning. Hide we away in 
 places never so silent and far removed, the fiery finger 
 will point us out, the inflexible pursuing voice will trans- 
 fix us with the discerning words, ' Thou art the man.' 
 It is most egregious folly to attempt to play hide and 
 seek with our Maker. Wherefore, if I can neither lift 
 an arm, nor raise a foot, nor utter the slightest word 
 under my breath, without having it thrill upward and 
 downward to the shining pillars of heaven and the 
 ghastly pits of hell — if I am thus encompassed with un- 
 speakable responsibilities and thus surrounded with 
 unutterable grandeurs which flash in upon me through 
 all the avenues of my being — if I have entered into a 
 spiritual contract with God, to the performance of which 
 I am pledged by all sweetness of peace and all sublimity 
 of repose, and the failure of my duty wherein will in- 
 volve me in consequences more perilous than hell — what 
 is it to me if you can not gauge me with your personal 
 standards? Why will you leave your politics, your 
 merchandise, your money-making, only that you may 
 grow vexed and petulant? If you are true, I am glad 
 of it, for it is so much the better for you. But go your 
 way, and leave me to go mine. If I wrong you, I am a 
 fool; if you injure me, you are not the less so, for you 
 thereby constitute yourself my abject debtor, and 
 possess me with a lien upon your soul. Let us, there- 
 fore, be careful how we judge each other " 
 
 From the early part of February to the last of August, 
 i860, Realf is known to have been in Ohio. After Ieav- 
 
 xlix 
 
ing Cleveland, he went to Columbus, making the ac- 
 quaintance there, among others, of William D. Howells 
 and John J. Piatt, who were both engaged on the lead- 
 ing Republican paper — the State Journal. He did some 
 work for the paper while in the city. But he did not 
 succeed in obtaining remunerative employment, and 
 with the remains of the money paid him as witness fees 
 and mileage, he started probably for Cincinnati, but, 
 feeling worn with the mental strain he had undergone, 
 went to the Shaker settlement, at Union Village, War- 
 ren Co., Ohio, to obtain rest and recuperation. A lady 
 who afterward resided in Xenia, and nursed him 
 through a severe sickness, writes of his stay in the 
 village as follows: 
 
 " He came to a village in Warren County, Ohio, in 
 which I was living at the time. He wanted a comfort- 
 able place to rest, as he said he had just come out of the 
 John Brown trouble with his life. So we took him into 
 our house. In a few weeks he was taken very ill, and 
 it fell to my lot to take care of him, which I gladly did, 
 as he was so young and had not a relative in this country. 
 He continued very ill for many weeks, and it was three 
 months before he fully recovered. When convalescing, 
 he took great pride in giving me a history of his life, 
 which was, of course, very interesting to me. . . . 
 Then he was engaged by the Believers to lecture or 
 preach to them once a week for six months. It took 
 him one week to prepare himself for the first of the 
 course. The people advertised that such lectures would 
 be delivered free to the public, and the hall was well 
 filled. It was not long, however, before the fame of his 
 
 1 
 
eloquence extended over the region. The press lauded 
 him in high tones, and he continued to draw such crowds 
 that hundreds could not gain admittance to the hall. 
 As he proceeded with his course he grew more and more 
 eloquent, until the religious body he spoke for declared 
 he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. ... I never 
 missed one lecture during the six months. It was gen- 
 erally held as a delight to hear him, and, indeed, his 
 whole chain of thought was full of purity, logic, pathos 
 and eloquence." . 
 
 The secretary of the Believers community at Union 
 Village, whose adherents are generally called Shakers, 
 in reply to a communication from me, writes briefly: 
 
 "Richard Realf came to Union Village in March, i860. 
 He united and became a member of the society on the 
 22d day of April following. We have no record of the 
 precise time he left the community, but we think he 
 tarried with us about five months. A portion of the 
 time he sustained the position of a public speaker, 
 evincing much ability and talent, and by his oratory he 
 attracted large audiences. His conduct while at Union 
 was altogether unexceptionable." 
 
 When he left the community there was something like 
 a religious revival in the air. The subjects of his dis- 
 courses were such as : " The Hollowness of the World 
 Life," "The Nobility of Sacrifice," "Purity in Life," and 
 similar themes. The local papers referred to them as 
 masterpieces of ethical philosophy and religious zeal. 
 He grew restless, however; the beginnings of rebellion 
 were in the winds; his own active nature craved broader 
 life, and he was called to the lecture-field by the fame 
 
 li 
 
of his " Shaker " speeches. Two lectures were delivered 
 at Dayton, with great success and considerable pecuni- 
 ary reward. Other lectures were delivered by him in 
 Ohio cities and towns on poetry and anti-slavery topics. 
 It was at this period that his lecturing took hin to 
 Mac-a-Cheek, the home of Donn Piatt, then just returned 
 from a not over-creditable diplomatic career in Paris. 
 Realf was not in poverty at the time, but, on the con- 
 trary, must have been quite forehanded. I should not 
 have referred to this meeting but for the fact that, sev- 
 eral years after my friend's death, Donn Piatt gathered 
 a handful of mire and flung it needlessly at his memory, 
 by publication in a Chicago literary weekly of a story 
 that the poet, a vagabond in appearance, shoeless and 
 ragged, came to his residence with a note from some one 
 known to him. Piatt stated that he entertained the wan- 
 dering singer, loaned him $600, and sent him on his way 
 rejoicing, and had never heard directly from him since. 
 There are several bits of internal evidence that tend to a 
 natural disproval of this queer story. In the first place, 
 no one who knew Donn Piatt, as I did for several years 
 at a later period, would credit him with a specially gener- 
 ous disposition, or pick him out as a man likely to loan 
 $600 to a shoeless, ragged man, even if he were a gifted 
 poet and orator. Secondly, Piatt himself was well known 
 to be in pecuniary difficulties at that time. And thirdly, 
 as already shown, Richard Realf was by no means an 
 impecunious wanderer at the date Piatt gave — August, 
 i860. Realf's lectures at Dayton, Ohio, were delivered 
 
 Hi 
 
that month, and they netted him over $100 each. Be- 
 sides he had other funds, including the amount received 
 from the Believers. He lectured in Mac-a-Cheek 
 also at that date, and would hardly have done so had 
 he been in the state of vagabondage the romancing 
 journalist afterward described. I find among Realf's 
 papers of that period, and subsequently, mention several 
 times of his having lent Donn Piatt $600, which was 
 never returned. He so informed Captain Rowland, with 
 whom he enlisted, among others. Piatt was much abler 
 at borrowing than was Realf , an ' the possibilities are 
 all in favor of the latter. 
 
 After the Mac-a-cheek incident, however, from about 
 September, i860, until about July, 1862, Realf dis- 
 appeared from the public view. With all the efforts 
 I have made it has been impossible to trace, him for a 
 single day during the twenty months intervening. He 
 himself has said that a visit to England occurred; but 
 his sister, Mrs. Whapham, declares that none of his 
 family or their acquaintances know of such a visit. 
 Only one poem of that period has reached me, and it is 
 the one entitled " Apocalypse," and relates to the killing 
 of Private Ladd of the Sixth Massachusetts in the 
 streets of Baltimore, April 19th, 1861. Perhaps the 
 Mac-a-cheek incident, whether it was borrowing or 
 lending, may have been the immediate cause of this 
 disappearance. At any rate, Realf's personality passed 
 into the void, so far as I have been able to learn. The 
 next appearance is at the beginning of his military life 
 
 liii 
 
in Chicago. Realf's enlistment is thus described by a 
 former recruiting officer, Captain Charles Rowland, 
 in a letter dated December 10, 1878: 
 
 " In the summer of 1862 I was seated in my recruiting 
 office, in Chicago, when one morning there walked in a 
 bright, trim-built, intelligent-looking little gentleman, 
 and, saluting me with a pleasant ' good morning,' 
 asked, ' You are raising recruits for the army, I sup- 
 pose?' Answering in the affirmative, I asked him to 
 take a seat. Upon doing so he commenced a conversa- 
 tion on general topics, the war, slavery, etc., which 
 lasted probably half an hour. Ere he departed I asked 
 him if he had any notion of entering my company, and 
 said, if so, it would afford me exceeding pleasure to 
 swear him in. He stated that not at that time could he 
 answer my question, but would call again in a day or 
 two. On the ensuing day he came again, and after 
 another chat of, perhaps, an hour, he said: 
 
 1 ' ' Captain, I am really much pleased with you, and am 
 ready to be sworn in as a soldier.' 
 
 " Accordingly I administered the necessary oath. Of 
 course, he had told me his name — a native of England. 
 His age or vocation I do not remember. [He was then 
 in his 29th year.] ." 
 
 Captain Rowland mentions the disposal of some books 
 and clothing, for which Realf would have no use as a 
 soldier. The captain took his recruit to board with 
 him, as they would be in the city for some weeks. As 
 always, Realf's charming personality held those with 
 whom he met. Captain Rowland writes: " I appeared to 
 lift him out of sadness at times, for he often ran from 
 
 liv 
 
summer heat to zero in a few minutes. " His poetic genius 
 soon showed itself to his interested friend, and won, he 
 writes, "my sympathy, and at last, I might say, my 
 affection." He spoke of his early life in Brighton and 
 Kansas, and soon confided to the captain his connection 
 with John Brown, his life in Texas, arrest and removal 
 to Washington, etc. Captain Rowland writes: 
 
 " I really fancy that Realf believed in the feasibility of 
 the overthrow of slave government by the nucleus of 
 men that John Brown fought with at Harper's Ferry. 
 His imagination was, I was about to say, generally the 
 master of his reason. His wish to gain an object in- 
 duced him to believe it could readily be achieved; not 
 studying about the necessary means to gain an end, he 
 was ever liable to disappointment. But he possessed a 
 gentle, child-like, confiding nature. There was a great 
 deal of womanly sensibility mingled in his character. 
 He was governed by quick impulses and too frequently 
 was he deceived." 
 
 The two gentlemen were constant companions for 
 several weeks, and the captain testifies that intimacy 
 increased confidence on his part. Realf desired, how- 
 ever, to go to camp, and transportation was furnished 
 him to Camp Butler, Springfield, 111. Correspondence 
 was maintained between the two friends. Realf had an 
 opportunity of promotion at an early day, and Captain 
 Rowland released him to enable his securing a warrant 
 position in the 88th Illinois. He was made sergeant- 
 major of the regiment, and thus placed in line for the 
 adjutant's commission, which came a year later. The 
 
 lv 
 
regiment was soon ordered south, and at once saw- 
 active service in the famous Perryville and Stone River 
 campaigns, 
 
 That Realf's military career was one of honor, cour- 
 age, ability, and personal uprightness, can not be ques- 
 tioned. With his regiment, the 88th Illinois Volunteer 
 Infantry, he served in the Fourth Army Corps through- 
 out the war, under brigade and division commanders 
 Stanley, Schofield, Sill, Lytle, Wood, and Sheridan, with 
 Generals Rosecrans, Thomas, Grant, and Sherman, par- 
 ticipating in all the grand series of military operations, 
 from the march to and battles of Perryville and Mur- 
 freesboro or Stone River, the capture of Nashville, the 
 massive campaign of 1863, which resulted in the occu- 
 pation of Chattanooga, the great conflict on the Chica- 
 mauga field, the superb victory at Lookout Mountain 
 and Mission Ridge, the severe winter campaign under 
 Hooker for the relief of Knoxville, all the marching and 
 fighting southward to Kingston, Georgia, preparatory to 
 the great Atlanta campaign under Sherman, with 
 the arduous work and fighting therein, until the 
 capture of Atlanta brought him back to Chatta- 
 nooga, temporarily invalided with bilious fever. He 
 was actively employed thereafter at Chattanooga and 
 Nashville, participating in the final close at the 
 battle of Franklin, under Schofield, Stanley, and Wood, 
 of the Confederate attack under Hood upon General 
 George H. Thomas and his forces in the central 
 south; at Nashville, Tenn., through the larger part of 
 
 lvi 
 
1864 and 1865, until his departure north as a citizen, 
 June 21st. In the latter year he served upon the staff 
 of Brigadier-General John F. Miller, who afterward 
 befriended him so warmly in California, and acted, by 
 the poet's dying request, as his executor. 
 
 Occasionally, some one has written of the poet as 
 a "soldier of fortune," or a "military adventurer." 
 These caviling designations are absolutely inaccurate. 
 Realf was a conscientious and self-convinced citizen of 
 the United States, and therefore, when defense of the 
 assailed Union led in his view directly toward the free- 
 dom from chattel slavery which he held to be essential 
 to its safety, he was an honest and devoted soldier of 
 its flag and unity. He was personally brave unto rash- 
 ness, and won the high honor, for a subaltern, of 
 being twice named in general corps and division orders 
 for personal gallantry, once at Mission Ridge, where 
 he carried the regimental colors forward under aheavy 
 fire, the color-bearer having been shot down, thus rally- 
 ing the line for a successful advance against rifle pits 
 in front ; and again at Franklin, where the Eighty- 
 eighth Illinois bore the brunt of a great resistance. In 
 Eddy's "Patriotism of Illinois " (page 210) the author 
 says that the Eighty-eighth "bore a splendid part 
 in the battles about Nashville, fighting Forest at 
 Spring Hill, and on the thirtieth of October, 1864, 
 reaching Franklin, where the Illinois regiment led 
 in a remarkable charge." Col. Smith, Major Holden, 
 and Adjutant Realf, one of the bravest of the brave 
 
 lvii 
 
(writes Mr. Eddy), "were on horseback, not hav- 
 ing had time to dismount, and so entirely exposed to 
 the enemy's fire." He continues: "it was a desperate 
 hand to hand fight, and both Generals Stanley and 
 Wood, corps and division commanders, publicly and in 
 person thanked the regiment and its field and staff officers 
 by name, for the repulse of the rebel column, the safety 
 of the Union army, and the victory of the day" (vol. 2, 
 pp. 345-7). General Alexander McCook, corps command- 
 er, speaks of the Eighty-eighth as follows: "This fire, 
 not in any way diminishing, I ordered the colors forward 
 on the works, which a moment afterward were carried, 
 and the stars and stripes waved triumphantly on Mis- 
 sion Ridge." The regimental adjutant was slain in this 
 charge, and the poet sergeant-major won the vacant bar 
 by carrying forward the flag. 
 
 In one of the many war letters placed at my disposal, 
 Realf writes to a lady correspondent who wondered at 
 him, an Englishman, being in the American army: "I 
 hold that he alone is an American who is true to the 
 idea of the American Republic. There are many alien 
 natures born on these shores; many American hearts 
 that drew breath beyond the seas. And I think that 
 by and by among the many lessons we shall have 
 to learn will be that our estimates of the basis of con- 
 sanguinity, as well as nationality, are a good deal 
 wide of the mark." In another letter he wrote that, 
 born in the faith of Cromwell, and nurtured on the 
 genius of John Milton, how could he be other than a 
 
 lviii 
 
republican, and therefore a lover and defender of the 
 Union assailed by slavery and secession. 
 
 All the Kansas comrades of the poet entered the 
 Union army, or in a few cases, being physically unable 
 so to do, served in the recruiting or other useful ser- 
 vice. Several of them, like Realf, and this writer, were 
 of English or European birth, but none the less were 
 they most devoted Americans. And none of them are 
 entitled to the flippant designation of " soldiers of for- 
 tune." The war letters of Richard Realf, as well as 
 the annals of his modest but efficient service, prove 
 how alive was his patriotism. Apart from their exqui- 
 site literary quality, these letters would prove in print 
 an inspiration to citizenship. The poet's recognition of 
 President Lincoln's policy and statesmanship, with his 
 trenchant perception of the failure of others, as well as 
 his scorn of those who plotted and hindered at home, 
 are among the more notable expressions of soldier feel- 
 ing. Elsewhere I have referred to the literary value of 
 these letters, but I am by no means sure their civic sig- 
 nificance and importance are not much greater. One of 
 their delightful features is constant tribute to the char- 
 acter of his soldier comrades. In front of Atlanta, on 
 the eighth of September, 1864, he wrote to his Michigan 
 correspondent, Miss Jordan: 
 
 " Since I last wrote, what a grand consummation has 
 been put to this Atlanta campaign! What an arduous 
 time we had, filled with quick marches, rapid maneu- 
 vers, swift feints, and swifter strokes of purposes; and 
 
 lix 
 
how completely, intellectually considered, the inferiors 
 of Sherman, were Johnston and Hood. Balked and 
 baffled, blinded and misled, Hood was ever as an auto- 
 maton in our great leader's hands. How glad I am it 
 is at last over, and that our poor, tired boys will have 
 an opportunity for rest and repose before the tug of 
 war again comes. How brave they have been — how full 
 of uncomplaining heroism and fortitude, none but they 
 who have marched, fought, and suffered with them, can 
 tell. We are apt to look back regretfully upon the olden 
 times of chivalry, as though with the departure of those 
 days the knightly spirit went out; but I can bear testi- 
 mony to the fact that under the rough exterior of our 
 Union braves there beat as loyal and kingly hearts as 
 ever throbbed in Abelard or other knight, sans peur et 
 sans reproche." 
 
 In an earlier letter to the same correspondent, he 
 writes of his comrades: 
 
 4 ' That we degenerate in politeness of speech and man- 
 ner, that we grow somewhat abrupt and rude, is quite 
 true; indeed, I do not see how this could well be other- 
 wise, but these matters are by no means essentials, and 
 do not concern the purity of the soul. Standing on 
 these battle-heights, front to front with the dark mys- 
 teries of life and death, it is no marvel that we account 
 of little value the slight veneering of conventional pro- 
 prieties. But I repeat my heart's conviction when I say 
 that, in all the attributes which form the basis of true 
 manhood, courage, not of the flesh but of the soul — en- 
 durance, patience, fealty to conception of truth, and 
 sometimes pity and tenderness softer than a woman's — 
 the men in the armies of the Union will compare favor- 
 ably with any selection of people that can be made." 
 
 lx 
 
The temptation is great to continue and amplify these 
 extracts, but sufficient have been given to illustrate the 
 spirit in which Richard Realf performed his duty as an 
 armed American citizen. It was this devotion and 
 courage tbat won for him the unanimous encomiums of 
 his associates and superiors. 
 
 The most striking recognition is given in a letter to 
 me. Under date of San Francisco, March 26, 1879, 
 Gen. Miller writes of Realf's services on his staff at 
 Nashville, of which city he was military commander, 
 in part, as follows: 
 
 "Realf was aid on my staff at Nashville several 
 months. He was very intelligent in the discharge of 
 his duty, very punctual, and faithful, always on duty, 
 earnest, industrious, sober, and discreet. I never heard 
 a word of complaint concerning him in any respect 
 while he served with me, and I certainly regarded him 
 as an officer of rare attainments, faithful, efficient, and 
 intelligent in the discharge of his duty. His private 
 character during that time, so far as I knew, was above 
 reproach. My command at Nashville was that known 
 as military commander of a city, and it involved what 
 might be termed civic military rule. The duties were 
 very arduous, thousands of people came to my head- 
 quarters upon every conceivable errand and for almost 
 every purpose, and these I had to deal with as well as 
 to attend to my military duties as commander of troops. 
 The civil authorities looked to the military for aid and 
 support, and hence my duties brought me in contact 
 with all officers of the civil government, I had a large 
 staff, and among the officers was Realf, whose duty was 
 to receive the visitors to headquarters in an anteroom, 
 
 lxi 
 
ascertain their names and the nature of their business 
 with the commander, give assistance to them in formu- 
 lating requests, and admit them to the commander in 
 such order and in such numbers as was considered 
 proper; to give information to people who came to make 
 inquiries of various sorts, in such cases as he was able 
 to furnish the requisite information, etc., etc. These 
 duties he discharged with such courtesy, intelligence, 
 and tact, as to render valuable service not only to the 
 commander but to the people, and I found it expedient 
 to retain him in the place until he was mustered out of 
 service. I knew of his literary ability before, but he 
 made it more manifest while he was with me. He wrote 
 several poems of merit during that time, one of which 
 in particular I remember, for he read it to me one morn- 
 ing just after I came in. It was entitled the 'Joy 
 Gun.' Mrs. Miller had seen in a newspaper the account 
 of a negro who appeared at army headquarters in Fort 
 Monroe, I believe, and asked the general in command 
 to fire a joy gun, so that the company of poor, starved 
 people whom this man had brought out of bondage, to 
 within a mile or two of the fort, might hear the gun and 
 know that they were near friends. She cut this out of 
 the paper and giving it to me said, ' This is a fine sub- 
 ject for a poem; give it to Realf and tell him to write.' 
 I did so, and he read the poem to me as above stated. 
 He was very proud of it, and gave me a copy to present 
 to Mrs. Miller. 
 
 " Realf was a favorite among the officers at Nashville, 
 and was very popular with the people, for he treated all 
 visitors with such urbanity and polite attention as to 
 win their good opinion. He was especially kind to the 
 poor people who came, manifested interest in their suf- 
 ferings, listened to their tales of sorrow, and often came 
 
 lxii 
 
in and personally stated their cases, and made their 
 appeals as a friend to them with almost poetic eloquence. 
 The rich and powerful who came found him respectful 
 and polite, but not over sympathetic. Realf was the 
 friend of the lowly, the ignorant and poor, and often 
 their advocate. I was greatly pleased with Realf as an 
 aide-de-camp, and believed him a sincere, earnest, pa- 
 triotic man. He was never with me in battle." 
 
 With his mustering out of the Union army, there fol- 
 low incidents and life chapters not so attractive, and the 
 following of which is a painful duty indeed to this 
 writer. 
 
 The marriages of Richard Realf have been much dis- 
 cussed. I use the plural, though legally there was but 
 one marriage. The second ceremony was bigamous in 
 character, and Realf had no knowledge whatever of his 
 being free from the wholesome and honorable relation 
 that he first entered upon. The third relationship entered 
 upon after he had obtained from one State court a divorce 
 from the woman he contracted marriage with at Roches- 
 ter, New York, was, if any validity could attach, of the 
 common-law order. His partner in this third union was 
 the mother of children by him, and everywhere in his 
 latter years he spoke of her as " my wife." His efforts, 
 letters, and speech were burdened by his intense desire to 
 take care of her and the children. These were triplets, 
 all girls, and fortunately these have been adopted and 
 well provided for. The son has grown to manhood and 
 is spoken of as in every way worthy and upright. My 
 
 lxiii 
 
part just here is to tell the facts as to the real and first 
 marriage. 
 
 Sophia Emery Graves was a native of Maine, born, I 
 believe, in the neighborhood of Bangor. I have been 
 informed, whether correctly or not I do not know, that 
 there was some relationship through marriage with 
 Hannibal Hamlin, once Senator and Vice-President of 
 the United States. Her people were, however, fairly 
 well-to-do Maine folks, and the young woman herself 
 became a teacher and went west to a sister in Indiana, 
 — Mrs. Furniss, of Furnissville, Porter County, about 
 40 miles east-by-south of Chicago. My knowledge of 
 this marriage came first from the fact that at Realf's 
 funeral, while the Grand Army escort was passing from 
 Oakland, across the bay to San Francisco, a strange 
 lady, looking upon the face of the dead, started in sur- 
 prise and remarked to her escort, "Why, that's Captain 
 Realf, whom I saw married." She said no more, and 
 got out of the way, evidently desirous of avoiding public 
 talk. Shortly afterward an article appeared in an Ohio 
 paper denouncing the dead man as having been a biga- 
 mist. I could not trace this to any positive source, 
 though strongly desirous of so doing, in order to learn 
 the actual status of Catherine " Realf," nee Casidy, the 
 Pittsburg woman whose pursuit of Realf to California 
 was the incentive to his suicide. The Reverend Alex- 
 ander Clark, D.D., then Editor of The Protestant Meth- 
 odist Monthly, now deceased, sent me a letter signed 
 "S. Emery." The handwriting was fine and original, 
 
 lxiv 
 
and though it looked feminine, the contents implied that 
 the writer was a man. If so, it must have been an army- 
 comrade of Realf's. I wrote to the address given and 
 received a reply at once, the contents of which was 
 somewhat startling. The writer stated her sex and 
 claimed to be the lawful wife of my friend. 
 
 " I submit," she wrote from Springfield, Mass., under 
 date of March 8, 1879, " a true statement of my relations 
 to him reluctantly, for I would not add another dark 
 chapter to his already too much blurred life. / was 
 his wife. . . . The 88th Illinois — the regiment in 
 which R. served — was formed in Chicago. The colonel 
 (Chadbourne of Maine, formerly) of this regiment was 
 a connection of mine, and many of the privates were 
 young men or boys, who had been my pupils or neigh- 
 bors in that small Western town where I then lived, and 
 it was through my interest in the welfare of these sol- 
 diers that I became intimate with Realf. We were mar- 
 ried in June, 1865. R. remained with me until 
 August or September, when, having received a commis- 
 sion in a colored regiment stationed * south,' he pro- 
 ceeded thither, leaving me at the house of my brother- 
 in-law, E. L. Furniss, in northern Indiana. It was 
 intended that I should rejoin him speedily, but it became 
 evident that the troops would soon be mustered out. I 
 awaited his coming north again. His letters were fre- 
 quent and full of plans for our future, of his literary 
 ventures, and of his perils while investigating cases of 
 outrages against the negroes. I received a letter dated 
 Feb. 24, 1866, stating that the troops were to be imme- 
 diately disbanded, and that he should be on his way 
 home before I could have time to answer. That was 
 the last letter I ever received from him, and I never 
 
 lxv 
 
saw him again. Inquiries were made, but the officers 
 who were with him during the winter only know that 
 they left him at Vicksburg ready, as he told them, to 
 come north or ' home.' " 
 
 Mrs. S. E. Graves-Realf states that the next time she 
 Tieard of Realf was in the fall of the same year when 
 Joel Benton published in The Independent a notable letter 
 of the wanderer written to Humphrey Noyes, of the 
 Oneida Community. She continues, in the letter I am 
 quoting from: 
 
 " After reading these letters I determined that, if do- 
 mestic ties were burdensome to him, he should never be 
 annoyed or troubled by me. He might seek me if he 
 chose, but I should never go to him. I knew that I had 
 made a marriage that could only bring misery in some 
 form or other, and I accepted the penalty without a 
 murmur. After recovering from a serious illness that 
 followed his desertion, I returned to my relatives in 
 Maine and have lived a quiet, retired life with them 
 ever since. Not many of my relatives or friends, so 
 reticent have I been in regard to my marriage and de- 
 sertion, knew that the Richard Realf of John Brown 
 notoriety was in any way connected with my husband. 
 When his poems or items in regard to him met my eyes 
 I received a shock as if some long-lost friend had been 
 suddenly recalled to mind, but when I saw the account 
 of his untimely end I found I could still feel sorrow 
 for the woes he had heaped upon himself by his reck- 
 less life, and for many weeks newspapers became a tor- 
 ture to me. I can not believe that he was as heedless 
 of all moral or social laws as the reports, if true, prove 
 him." 
 
 Ixvi 
 
She then declares that, as the evidence of his bigam- 
 ous marriage and other connections came to her, she re- 
 adopted her mother's name of Emery and wrote to her 
 friends to thus address her. Referring to the son that 
 Realf left behind as a fruit of his last relationship, Mrs. 
 Realf wrote: " I am interested in that child — where is 
 he, and whom does he call mother?" Later she ex- 
 pressed a wish to adopt the boy, but, after a visit to Mrs. 
 Whapham, concluded to withdraw entirely from all 
 Realf connections — even ceasing any correspondence. 
 In closing this first letter, the great-hearted woman 
 writes anent a proposed biography that the writer 
 should 
 
 " Touch lightly upon his marital enormities — if men- 
 tioned at all — for the sake of the child and of his aged 
 parents. Had R. realized ' Our acts our angels are, or 
 good or ill,' he would have left a brighter record be- 
 hind him. ... I would not deal harshly with his 
 memory, for ■ God and the angels know ' alone what 
 were his temptations, struggles, and atonements during 
 his ill-starred life." 
 
 The greater part of his letters to Furnissville were 
 destroyed with other papers on Mrs. Realf's recovery 
 from the brain fever which marked her sweet young 
 face and whitened to silver her sunny brown hair. I 
 saw her but once, and she impressed me as both fine 
 and fragile in body and mind. She died some three 
 years ago. It was the desire to prevent renewal of pain 
 to this lady as well as not to burden with reminiscent 
 
 lxvii 
 
sorrows and hindersome memories another, who was 
 bravely and faithfully struggling out of false conditions 
 — I refer to the mother of the Poet's children — that in 
 great part is due the delay of years in fulfilling the ob- 
 ligation my friend's dying request laid upon me. If I 
 could not help to raise his son by an early publication, 
 I could at least hinder noisome discussion, which would 
 have injured him seriously. With the death of the law- 
 ful Mrs. Realf, for whom there can be nothing but 
 the sweetest of sympathy, and the passage of years 
 laboriously occupied in gathering my friend's fugitive 
 poems, and in tracing his erratic wanderings, I felt that 
 the publication of poems and memoir could no longer 
 be delayed. I am assured in conscience and judgment 
 that its effect has on the whole been wise. 
 
 It remains necessary in completing this painful record 
 to refer to the authenticated certificate of marriage, 
 which document is in the safe of the publishers of this 
 volume. It is not a question of scandal, nor one of pun- 
 ishment for one who made the life of my weak and 
 unhappy friend most miserable, causing him finally to 
 escape by the gate of suicide. That the woman, to 
 escape whom Realf committed suicide, has no legal 
 rights, the following is sufficient proof: 
 
 "No. Be it known, that on the 9th day of 
 
 June, 1865, the Clerk of the Porter Circuit Court issued 
 a marriage license, of which the following is a true 
 record, to-wit: 
 
 lxviii 
 
< 
 
 C 
 
 < 
 
 X 
 
 y 
 

"State of Indiana, Porter Co., ss: 
 
 " To any person empowered by Law to solemnize Mar- 
 riages in said County: 
 
 " You are hereby authorized to join together as Hus- 
 band and Wife, Richard Realf and Sophie E. Graves, 
 according to the laws of the State of Indiana. 
 
 <4 In Testimony Whereof, I, E. J. Jones, Clerk of the 
 Circuit Court of said County, hereunto subscribe my 
 name and (L. S.) affix the seal of said Court, at my 
 office in Valpariaso, this 9th day of June, A.D., 1865. 
 E. J. Jones, 
 
 by H. W. Talcott, Deputy." 
 
 "State of Indiana, Porter Co., ss; 
 
 "This certifies that I joined in marriage as husband 
 and wife, Richard Realf and Sophie E. Graves, on the 
 10th day of June, 1865. 
 
 H. H. Morgan, 
 
 Pastor Cong. Church, 
 
 Mich. City." 
 " Filed and Recorded the 2d day of September, a.d., 
 1865. E. J. Jones, Clerk." 
 
 " State of Indiana, Porter County, ss; 
 
 11 I, Rufus P. Wells, Clerk of the Circuit Court in the 
 County of Porter and the State of Indiana, hereby cer- 
 tify that the foregoing is a full, true, and complete copy 
 of the record, marriage license, and certificate of mar- 
 riage ot Richard Real! ana bophia £.. Lrraves, now 01 
 record in the office of the Clerk of the Porter Circuit 
 Court. 
 
 "Witness my hand and the seal of said Court, this 
 [l.s.] 7th day of October, A.D., 1879. 
 
 Rufus P. Wells, 
 
 Clerk of the Circuit Court." 
 
 lxix 
 
There is little reason to doubt that on mustering out, 
 March 20, 1866, at Vicksburg, Realf really intended to 
 go direct to Furnissville and the home of his wife. 
 Somewhere and somehow a fantastic impulse led to his 
 abandonment of this purpose, and he went direct to 
 Washington instead. In the many confidences I have 
 had extended to me, and the kindly help that has often 
 been unstintedly given in collecting the stray and widely 
 dispersed poems, etc., of my friend, I have learned of 
 many incidents that are liable to misinterpretation, not 
 necessary to repeat or publish. There was, I doubt 
 not, on Realf s part, an unwarranted fancy for a lady 
 in the Federal City. She was an accomplished, graceful, 
 and intellectual young woman, whom he became slightly 
 acquainted with at a house he boarded in while waiting 
 the fall before for his commission in the colored regi- 
 ment, and there could never have been any warrant on 
 her part for the passionate furore that appears to have 
 possessed him. She had expressed an outspoken admi- 
 ration of his genius as a poet. But Realf went to 
 Washington in place of Indiana, and remained there a 
 short time, when he left for the Cumberland Valley. 
 He then proceeded to New York city. Between June 
 and August there is no trace of his movements, but in 
 the latter part of July he was known to have been taken 
 sick of fever at French's Hotel, for a paragraph to that 
 effect came under my eye at the Federal City. I came 
 to New York soon afterward, for the purpose of finding 
 him, but he had gone elsewhere. I believe John Swinton 
 
 lxx 
 
found him at the time and comforted him with the glow 
 of his true, warm friendship. The remarkable corres- 
 pondence Realf had with the head of the Oneida Com- 
 munity belongs to this period and is interesting,, 
 although the poet never entered that community. The 
 correspondence is too lengthy to reproduce in full, but, 
 as it illustrates the strange processes of my friend's 
 mentality, I give several of the letters, access to which 
 I have had through the kindness of Theodore L. Pitt, 
 Secretary of the Community. Realf's letter to the com- 
 munity, written from French's Hotel, New York, July 
 2, 1866. was as follows: 
 
 11 President Perfectionist Association — Sir: I have the 
 honor respectfully to apply for information respecting 
 the nature, character of government, and conditions 
 precedent for membership of the Perfectionist Society. 
 
 11 Not being thoroughly informed upon these matters 
 I trouble you with this communication to state 
 % "That, recently at Vicksburg, Miss., I learned from 
 a former comrade in arms of the existence of your soci- 
 ety. That I am 34 years of age, pretty well educated, 
 that in various grades of private, non-commissioned 
 officer, and officer, I served four years in the volunteer 
 army of the Union, that I have in my possession the 
 official proofs of this, besides the proofs of the recom- 
 mendation of seven general officers, of my appointment 
 to a First Lieutenantcy in the regular army of the 
 United States (from which my refusal to endorse the 
 policy of President Johnson barred me), that I am an 
 occasional contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's 
 Monthly and Weekly, that since my muster out of service 
 three months ago, I have resided near Vicksburg, Miss., 
 
 lxxi 
 
that I came north partly on account of pecuniary losses 
 sustained in consequence of the proscription to which 
 loyal men are subjected, and partly for the purpose, if it 
 were possible, of associating myself with your own or 
 some other communistic society, 
 
 4 Far off from the clamor of liars, belied in the hubbub 
 of lies, 
 Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of 
 poisonous flies.' 
 
 " I arrived in this city this morning [Realf left Penn- 
 sylvania a month before] and I hasten to address you 
 this brief note, trusting to elicit from your courtesy a 
 reply to the request I have preferred, as well as a state- 
 ment whether and under what circumstances I should 
 t>e eligible for membership. 
 
 " I am quite poor, and unaccustomed to manual labor. 
 I am willing, however, to overcome my ignorance, and 
 I should not at all object to pay my board until I learned 
 to make myself useful. If you give me the information 
 sought for, and accord me permission to hold a personal 
 interview, I will bring with me letters and papers cor- 
 roborative of all the statements I have made. Please 
 address me by next mail at French's Hotel. 
 " Most respectfully, 
 
 " Richard Realf." 
 
 A friendly response was written to this letter from 
 Oneida, and as Mr. J. H. Noyes, the President and 
 founder of the Oneida Community, was at that time in 
 New York city, it was suggested that Mr. Realf call 
 upon him. 
 
 On July 24, Realf wrote: 
 
 " Dear Sir: Acting upon your suggestion I have 
 
 lxxii 
 
called upon Mr. Noyes, and held a long conversation 
 with him. ... I propose to visit Oneida on Thurs- 
 day, leaving New York on that day. I have read very 
 carefully the pamphlets you were kind enough to send 
 me, and I find the contents of one to be embodied in the 
 1 Berean,' a copy of which I purchased from Mr. Noyes. 
 
 " I shall not come to Oneida with any purpose of being 
 proselytized, or with any special predisposition towards 
 you. If, as I think, judging from what my friend told 
 me about you, and from what I learn through other 
 sources, your life is the most Christ-like that is being 
 lived — and if I can assimilate myself with you, not in 
 special theoretical views, but on the fundamental basis 
 of the soul — then I shall seek admittance to your 
 community. Nor do I doubt your capacity to judge of 
 the existence of such assimilation, if it shall exist. The 
 eyes of the pure-minded see very clearly. Whoso is 
 God-like, he hath something of the omniscience of God. 
 . . It is right before I come that I should relate to 
 you, in brief, the history of my life. [He then states the 
 main points of his career without comment.] 
 
 "But you must not judge that, as Mr. Noyes sug- 
 gested, the adventurous and changeful character of the 
 circumstances of my life indicate desire of change. I 
 asked him to try whether he could not discover a spirit- 
 ual unity of purpose underlying all these things; and I 
 ask you to try and do the same thing. 
 
 " I shall, of course, be glad to answer any questions 
 which may be asked me, and I have mentioned so much 
 of what is personal to enable you the better to propound 
 them. Briefly, during all my life, I have, as it were, 
 been haunted with a voice as of heaven, compelling me 
 upon the altars of sacrifice and renunciation. Often and 
 often I have tried to stifle it; often and often I have vio- 
 
 lxxiii 
 
lated its commands — tried to smother it, denied its val- 
 idity, blasphemed its sanctity; but never could I escape 
 it for all that. And because out in the world where 
 people don't see God, for that He is out of physical sight, 
 I can not live after the awful ideals which I can not es- 
 cape; because out in the world the howl of the beast so 
 often drowns out the song of the seraph within me; be- 
 cause the cares of it and the bitternesses of it make and 
 keep me unclean; because, while alien from God and 
 not in at-one-ment I perish in my soul until I am so re- 
 lated; because holding it true 
 
 1 That men may rise on stepping stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things,' 
 
 I desire to die to all sin, and to become alive to all right- 
 eousness, and because I am well assured that those 
 whom the Eternal Spirit has awakened from low and 
 material delights to a state of spiritual holiness and in- 
 tuition, constitute, as it were, a divine atmosphere for 
 the reinvigoration of needy souls, therefore I propose to 
 visit your Community, in the belief that if God sees it 
 best for me I shall gravitate toward you, and that if not 
 I shall at least have been strengthened and comforted. 
 
 *' Sincerely, 
 %t Theodore L. Pitt. Richard Realf." 
 
 On the same day that the above was written, Col. 
 Realf wrote the following letter to Mr. Noyes: 
 
 " French's Hotel, New York, July 24, 1866. 
 " Dear Sir: My time will be so occupied with business 
 engagements during the remainder of my stay in New 
 York city, that I fear I may not again be able to do 
 myself the pleasure to call upon you. And lest I should 
 not, I desire to thank you very sincerely for your good- 
 
 lxxiv 
 
ness to me yesterday, and to add one or two words to 
 the matter of our discourse. . . . Under all and 
 running through all the changeful circumstances of my 
 eventful life I have felt and heard — I have not always 
 obeyed — the everlasting imperative, ' Thou shalt work 
 in well-doing,' leaving me hardly any rest by day or by 
 night, because I could not translate it into my conduct 
 in the manner of a visible gospel of truth and love. 
 The world is so very atheistic, the contagion of the 
 world, of its selfishness and its jealousies, its mean pas- 
 sions and meaner aims, is so easy of acquisition, that it 
 has sometimes — quite often — caused me to be worsted 
 by the devil in the encounters which in common with all 
 men I have had to undergo. But nevertheless I could 
 not content myself to live after the outward semblance 
 — I could not rest in the visible comfort — I wanted al- 
 ways to live in accord with the Invisible Truth, and 
 very many times it seems to me that the struggle in my 
 nature between the beast and the seraph, the flesh and 
 the spirit, was greater than I could bear. It seemed 
 sometimes as if 'All his waves had gone over me,' and 
 as if there was nothing left for me to do but to die. 
 
 " Do you, indeed, doubt the existence of a certain 
 class of souls that can not satisfy their natures with the 
 common modes of life, in whom a hidden principle 
 drives them, so to speak, to seek better and nobler 
 modes of life, in whom the longing after the infinite 
 predominates, and by whom all other ties must be loos- 
 ened and sacrificed, if need be, to the growth and devel- 
 opment of the soul ? Do you, indeed, doubt that there 
 are some in the world who, although alienated from 
 God, would gladly submit to everything of suffering 
 and privation if, thereby, they could be brought into a 
 relationship of oneness with their Heavenly Parent ? 
 
 lxxv 
 
" But indeed, sir, there are such men and women, 
 who neither by the wealth, nor the praises, nor the 
 pleasures, nor the honors, nor the splendors and power 
 of the world, can be satisfied; men and women who are 
 bankrupt, finding not the peace of God. And are not 
 such people of you and yours, whether with them or 
 not? To die to sin and to live to righteousness, is not 
 that your faith also ? It is not necessary to pronounce 
 any shibboleth to become one of you, is it? If I desire 
 to be at one with Christ, so that His grace and love and 
 purity may run through me like a channel, that is 
 enough, is it not? And I believe that just in proportion 
 as we are Christ-like we attain His infallibility of in- 
 sight and judgment into the characters of men. I have 
 no fears. Therefore, dear sir, I shall go to Oneida, 
 making my proposed visit, trusting everything to the 
 direction of the Higher Powers which have guided my 
 life hitherto. If I (to use your own term) assimilate 
 with you, I shall remain. If not, still do me the justice 
 to believe that wherever I am and whatever I may do, I 
 shall not cease to labor and pray that ' His will may be 
 done on earth even as it is in Heaven; ' and so I am, 
 11 Gratefully your friend, 
 
 " Richard Realf." 
 
 The days passed, but Realf did not appear at Oneida. 
 Nothing was heard from him till the middle of August, 
 when he wrote that he had been very ill with typhoid 
 fever, but still expressing his determination of visiting 
 the Community. 
 
 The poet never went to Oneida, but Secretary Pitt 
 says that, sometime in the following October, he re- 
 ceived a letter, evidently from a woman, signed S. E. 
 
 lxxvi 
 
Realf, and dated at Furnissville, Ind., making inquiries 
 in regard to Col. Realf. From subsequent brief letters 
 from her, it appears that she had received copies of the 
 poet's letters to the Community. On recovering from 
 his illness, Realf appears to have left New York city, 
 probably intending to go to Oneida, but the army re- 
 cruiting records show that he got no further than 
 Rochester. 
 
 The private soldier soon began to electrify the literary 
 people of Rochester by the publication of a number of 
 poems, which attracted the attention of men like Ros- 
 siter Johnson, who was then on the staff of the Democrat, 
 of which the writer was the Washington correspondent. 
 Mr. Johnson sought the poet's acquaintance, after hav- 
 ing ascertained his identity with the authorship of con- 
 tributions to magazines which had not escaped his vigi- 
 lant, critical notice, only to find that he was a soldier 
 who had just been ordered from the city. Of Realf's 
 gravest fault and greater misfortune in the illegal mar- 
 riage contracted there, Mr. Johnson knew nothing till 
 years after his death. Catherine Cassidy and Richard 
 Realf were married at the Church of the Trinity, 
 Rochester, early in October, 1867. Realf himself never 
 denied his folly in this matter, though he never ac- 
 knowledged, except to his sister, some ten years later, 
 the illegality of the act. It is not supposable that he 
 believed himself to have then had another and living 
 wife. There has been no direct evidence before me to 
 prove that he even inquired as to the whereabouts, or of 
 
 lxxvii 
 
the life or death of the lady, but there are many details 
 which circumstantially go to show that somehow he 
 learned of her severe illness from brain fever at Fur- 
 nissville, after his disappearance in the spring of 1866. 
 
 Her departure from Indiana, and the change made 
 in the spelling of her married, and later of her maiden 
 name, might well have led to the conclusion from fugi- 
 tive researches, that she was not living. In some ex- 
 ceedingly pathetic letters, he afterward wrote, when 
 jealousy made his second companion a raging terror to 
 him, that his Rochester marriage was contracted " dur- 
 ing a prolonged debauch;" and to myself and Col. Sam- 
 uel F. Tappen, his two oldest Kansas friends, he declared 
 that he so acted " in a fit of mental aberration." 
 
 Realf was mustered out of the army at Fort Columbus, 
 New York, and then became confidential clerk to Gen. 
 Ingalls, Assistant Quartermaster-General, U. S. A. Like 
 others of his always loving friends, I had lost personal 
 trace of him until the accounts of a scandal appeared in 
 the New York newspapers. Realf was charged by James 
 Cassidy, of New York, with having on the 9th of Febru- 
 ary, 1869, stolen from him the sum of $40. On this 
 charge the poet was taken to the Tombs on February 
 13th, before Police Justice Hogan. He denied the theft, 
 but admitted taking the money, as his own or as due to 
 him from ''the father of Catherine." He was dis- 
 charged on his own recognizance, and, though indicted, 
 the matter was never pressed to trial. Mr. W. B. 
 Clarke, a former comrade of Realf s, made a thorough 
 
 lxxviii 
 
inquiry, and, after sending a copy of the official record, 
 declared that the charge was trumped up, as the result 
 only of a marital quarrel. On the 18th, Realf was 
 discharged, without trial, and after a plea of "not 
 guilty" upon his verbal recognizance. It was just after 
 this unfortunate affair that Realf left for South Car- 
 olina. He was driven in shame to this departure, as he 
 had often been assailed violently in General Ingalls' 
 office. The latter himself told me that these outbreaks 
 often approached insanity. In South Carolina, as else- 
 where, this woe-driven son of genius, made his presence 
 felt at once. His arrival in that State was during the 
 Reconstruction turmoil. The poet won political as well 
 as personal friends at once. Whatever faults may be 
 charged to Richard Realf, that of laziness is not one, 
 for my personal knowledge and continued research 
 prove him to have been ready for work at every oppor- 
 tunity. He wrote for the Republican State paper and 
 also taught in a colored school at Graniteville. Every- 
 thing was going smoothly till his fate again appeared. 
 Then her violent " colorphobia " compelled him to give 
 up the school. He had made himself felt as a Republi- 
 can speaker. This he did at great risk, and the constant 
 danger of personal violence which surrounded him at 
 this time is shown in a letter, the first direct communi- 
 cation I had received from him for several years — sent 
 to me at Washington, just after he had been appointed 
 Assistant United States Assessor of Internal Revenue 
 at Graniteville. In this letter, dated Graniteville, S. C, 
 
 lxxix 
 
July 9, 1869, he recounted at length the dangers and 
 difficulties of his position, and urged me as one he be- 
 lieved to be influential with the existing Republican 
 administration, to aid him in getting transferred to some 
 other locality and branch of the public service. 
 
 I tried to do what my friend wished, but failed 
 through a technical difficulty — revenue appointments 
 being purely local and not open to transfers. The next 
 thing I heard was that Realf had been publicly derided 
 in his own household, that some revenue money had been 
 misappropriated, but not by him, and generally that his 
 family circumstances were insupportable. Letters giving 
 gross details are in my possession, and such Republican 
 friends as the former chief of the South Carolina State 
 police, who was living in San Francisco when I met him 
 a few years since, have told me that these allegations 
 were correct, the police official having himself made 
 an inquiry. The small defalcation was made good by 
 friends, but Realf could not be induced to return, having 
 gone to Augusta, Georgia. He then left for the North, 
 and the next known of him was by mention in the daily 
 papers of Indianapolis, where his Nemesis had again 
 found him. Scandal at once arose and Realf again dis- 
 appeared. In December, 1869, he was heard of at Pitts- 
 burg, in a destitute condition. The temperance move- 
 ment inaugurated by Francis Murphy was well under 
 way, and Realf at once became one of its most shining 
 converts. He was then befriended by gentlemen whose 
 manly charity soon lifted him into usefulness and posi- 
 
 lxxx 
 
tion, affording him thereby six years of successful and 
 attractive life — an oasis indeed, amid the bleak and 
 blasted barrens of his desert years. The horrors of the 
 six years preceding, even though he himself had woven 
 the corroding meshes, are almost unendurable even to 
 research, and perfectly unspeakable as to publicity of 
 detail. What must they have been to him who suffered ? 
 At last, however, he stiffened against the fury that pur- 
 sued. Yet when it appeared in Pittsburg, carrying an 
 infant in arms, Realf believing, nay hoping, for a short 
 period, that the babe might be, as was asserted, his own 
 child, seriously designed taking up again his sad life- 
 burden. This is shown by a letter written to a friend, 
 the Rev. Dr. Hanna (now of Washington, D. C), whose 
 church he afterward joined. Becoming convinced, how- 
 ever, that the child had been obtained from an orphan 
 asylum, and that its age forbade his being its father, he 
 refused to care for the alleged mother. On her com- 
 plaint of abandonment, he was arrested and incarcerated 
 in the city jail. Through the efforts of the Reverend 
 David Schindler and some other friends, Realf was soon 
 released, and began again his temperance work. At 
 this time he was the inmate of a Christian Home, and 
 was a constant writer for The Christian Radical. The 
 child alleged to be his soon died, and Realf steadily de- 
 clined a renewal of marital life. 
 
 In 1872, when I was in Pittsburg on the occasion of a 
 Union soldiers' and sailors' convention, for which Realf 
 wrote one of his strongest lyrics, entitled "Rally," 
 
 lxxxi 
 
Mr. Brigham, editor-in-chief of the Pittsburg Commer- 
 cial, the paper on which Realf served for five years as 
 an editorial writer, described to me the way in which 
 he was pursued by his fate. He told me of the inter- 
 est Realf's story, and especially his eloquence, had 
 aroused. He went to hear him one evening, and during 
 the speech a woman created a disturbance. As Mr. Brig- 
 ham watched Col. Realf, he became impressed with the 
 conviction that a serious tragedy was impending. He 
 felt that the outraged orator would, if no one inter- 
 vened, soon do some desperate act. Realf once declared 
 •to me while in San Francisco that he would kill the 
 woman and himself too if he was again followed. So 
 the kindly-hearted, cool-headed editor secured an intro- 
 duction and asked Realf to call and see him on the next 
 morning. He promised and was on hand to a minute. 
 Mr. Brigham at once asked if Realf wanted work. The 
 editor was embarrassed when Realf looked at him in a 
 dazed fashion, and then burst into tears. The result 
 was his immediate employment at a fair salary, which 
 was soon increased. Realf remained in that office until 
 1876, when the paper was merged with another. Mr. 
 Brigham, now dead, told me after Realf's death that 
 he both trusted and honored him, and never saw or 
 personally heard of any loose or other unworthy con- 
 duct. He opened his own doors to his brilliant associate, 
 and as he had daughters to care for and was a man of 
 the strictest morality, the fact shows trust and esteem. 
 Realf was unquestionably much esteemed by his profes- 
 
 lxxxii 
 
sional associates. That six years was a harvest time 
 of good endeavor and finished work. He lectured a 
 good deal. His military poems gained him renown. 
 He published largely and in most ways forged steadily 
 to the front. 
 
 In September, 1872, Col. Realf applied for a divorce: 
 the Rochester woman, having remained in Pittsburg, 
 still caused him much annoyance. The case was heard 
 before the Court of Common Pleas for Alleghany 
 County, on the 14th of February, 1873, and decided in 
 Realf 's favor, the "jury having found the facts in com- 
 plainant's bill to be true," and it was "ordered that 
 said Richard Realf be divorced." The libellant was 
 also ordered to " pay the cost of this proceeding," and 
 the decree was made absolute. At this time Realf was 
 in the fullest health and spirit, rejoicing over his free- 
 dom. His sister, Sarah Whapham, her husband and 
 family, had come from England, and settled at farming 
 at Bulger, Pennsylvania. He also planned a visit to his 
 parents, which was carried out in the early summer. 
 His letters to Mrs. Whapham and other friends during 
 this period were joyous in tone and even boyish in 
 spirit. He evidently enjoyed his visit to Buxton and 
 elsewhere in England. 
 
 On his return, however, and arrival at Pittsburg, he 
 was met by news that staggered and unmanned him. 
 An appeal had been taken to the Supreme Court, and 
 it, by a decree " venire facia de novo," ordered a reversal 
 of the divorce. The Court declared that the specific 
 
 lxxxiii 
 
charges were not proven, and the Court allowed libel- 
 lant to reopen the case. The result was a reversal of 
 the verdict. Realf paid alimony until early in 1877, 
 when he declared and proved his inability to do so any 
 longer. His attorneys urged upon him to renew the 
 application, declaring the setting aside to have been 
 purely technical, and that they could readily re-win the 
 suit. Realf refused to take any further action. When 
 told of the reversal at his editorial desk, he fell in a 
 syncope upon the floor and broke down utterly. His 
 sister afterward said that her brother's sanity had, she 
 feared, been affected ever since the decree was revoked. 
 She added that insanity was "hereditary in the Realf 
 family," mentioning that two brothers and two sisters 
 of their mother had been so afflicted, one of the brothers 
 being a suicide. Realf believed the woman to be his 
 evil fate, and was all the time trying to make that con- 
 viction square with the nobler spiritual courage thai he 
 still possessed. It was at this time he wrote : 
 
 "We do not rightly seize the type of Socrates if we 
 can ever forget he was the husband of Xantippe, 
 nor of David if we can only think of him as the mur- 
 derer of Uriah, nor Peter if we can simply remember 
 that he denied the Master. Our vision is only blind- 
 ness if we can never bring ourselves to see the possibil- 
 ities of deep mystic aspirations behind the outer life of 
 a man." 
 
 The loss of his editorial position hurt, and he was, 
 by his own nerveless volition, soon in the toils of another 
 
 lxxxiv 
 
union, which renewed anger on the part of her from 
 whom he was, like a blind man without a guiding sound 
 or stick, aimlessly seeking to escape. Yet he sought in 
 work to meet the new obligations that bore upon him. 
 There was nothing of public moment, except his literary- 
 work, between 1873 an d the spring of 1877. His brain 
 and soul, however, seem to have become clarified. He 
 published quite freely, writing among others at this 
 time his striking poem of " Loyalty and Charity," the 
 "Song of Pittsburg," and "Introspection and Retro- 
 spection," for the centennial celebration of 1876. Most 
 of his deepest and purest sonnets, " Christdom," also 
 11 Symbolism," " Little Children," " My Slain," were of 
 this period. And it is with these, and not the crawlings 
 of the flesh, except as they influence or divert, that we 
 are concerned. 
 
 The next step in his embittered life was made in a 
 very sincere effort on his part to win a working place 
 for himself and those then dependent upon him, as a 
 lecturer on literary, ethical, and political questions. By 
 the fall of 1877 he had launched out fairly as a lecturer. 
 He carefully prepared addresses on "Temperance," 
 he being then regarded as, next to Francis Murphy, the 
 orator of the movement that bears the latter's name. 
 In addition he had a famous war oration — "Battle 
 Flashes; " one on the " Public Schools and their Free- 
 dom from Sectarian Control;" "John Brown," which 
 was never written out in full; " Shakespeare;" "Poetry 
 and Labor," and others. His addresses at Grand Army 
 
 lxxxv 
 
posts and reunions, made chiefly in Pennsylvania 
 and Ohio, were very popular. He was unfortunate 
 in not being able to secure a good business manager, 
 and in entering upon this field at a period of severe 
 business depression. He was popular and well known 
 all through Central and Northern Ohio, and in West- 
 ern and Central Pennsylvania, yet the weary winter's 
 work brought only disaster and ill health. He became 
 the trusted friend of a Springfield family, and to the 
 youngest daughter of this household I am indebted 
 for the use of a series of letters, which, as John Mor- 
 ley wrote of Rousseau's letters to Therese, "are like 
 one of the great master symphonies whose themes fall 
 in strokes of melting pity upon the heart." The 
 sincere friendship of this large-brained young woman, 
 Mary P. Nimmo (now Mrs. Ballantyne, of Washing- 
 ton), evoked as sincere a regard on Realf's part. 
 There are a large number of these letters written day 
 by day, couched in the tones of a fond but sick 
 brother. Evidently they were met in the same spirit. 
 I give a few extracts. These letters cover several 
 months of hard work, mental agony, and severe physical 
 suffering, including internal hurts caused by a railway 
 collision, and the affliction which, in the late winter and 
 spring of 1877, produced almost complete blindness and 
 long confinement in a New York hospital. Space does 
 not permit the use of such copious extracts from these 
 letters as both judgment and inclination would justify. 
 I give, however, without date, (except to say that 
 
 lxxxvi 
 
they were written in October and November of 1876), 
 some brief quotations: 
 
 "I am breaking down, and have a horrible racking 
 cough. But that does not prevent me from remember- 
 ing with delighted gratitude your own, your mother's, 
 and your sister's manifold fragrant kindnesses. 
 
 . . How very greatly you mistake alike the facts 
 and the desire, in your talk about 'wealth.' There is 
 not a poorer man, so far as money is concerned, in the 
 country, than myself. I live from hand to mouth. Is 
 it any wonder that I am solicitous, and that my failing 
 physical powers (I am paying the costs of my service 
 during the war) make me very anxious regarding the 
 possible future ? I have never cared for money, except 
 as it enabled me to help others. I wish I had. Even a 
 fool's forehead takes on a philosophic seeming when it 
 is gilded with gold. I wish I might come to your quiet 
 home and rest awhile. I hunger toward you, for- 
 getting your youth and beauty, my age and decrepi- 
 tude, and the impassable gulf between us, and only fam- 
 ishing for the touch of your hand, the sound of your 
 voice, and the serene restfulness of your presence. I 
 will surely come when I can, and as fast. So would 
 any other starveling beggar, homeless amid a world of 
 spiritual homes. Don't mind my words. ... I 
 think I should like to go to bed and sleep a whole 
 week, and then awake in the everlastingnesses. I am 
 tired ! It is not the outward winter, dear friend, that is 
 bleak, it is the inward dreariness." ... 
 
 In 1876, removed to the Pacific Coast, and so, for 
 the time being, lost track of Realf's movements. I 
 knew that he had lost his editorial position, but thought 
 him fairly successful in the lecture field, until a pathetic 
 
 lxxxvii 
 
letter reached me, exposing his woful condition. I at 
 once made an effort to aid him. There were several old 
 Kansas friends on the coast, among them being Col. 
 Samuel F. Tappan, who was a close personal friend; 
 Henry Villard had also met Realf and was ready to help 
 with transportation; Col. Alexander T. Hawes, a lead- 
 ing insurance man of San Francisco, was an old Kansas 
 friend, and ready to help. The writer owes sincere 
 thanks to this gentleman, for his own as well as Realf's 
 sake and name. Ex-General John F. Miller, on whose 
 staff Col. Realf had served, expressed earnest sympathy 
 and was most helpful, warranting the statement also 
 that he would see to his ex-staff officer's employment 
 after his arrival in San Francisco. So with the aid of 
 Mr. Villard, Hon. Russell Errett, and Senator John P. 
 Jones, transportation was procured from New York to 
 Ogden, at which place I was enabled to have him fur- 
 nished for the trip to the coast. A small purse was also 
 filled. 
 
 In this sad stress the helpful friend in New York 
 proved to be Rossiter Johnson, and he has remained so 
 through all the years that have followed. Before re- 
 ceiving Realf's letter, on seeing a statement that the 
 wife of a literary man named Realf had become the 
 mother of triplets and was in distress, Mr. Johnson 
 made an energetic effort to find out if she was related 
 to the poet he admired, and, having done so, proceeded 
 to do what ha might to lift her burdens a little. The 
 boy Richard was cared for at the Child's Hospital, 
 
 lxxxviii 
 
where, however, he contracted a disease of the eyes, 
 which, soon after, his father took from him, and was 
 thereby soon prostrated almost to the verge of blindness. 
 The mother was cared for at the Homeopathic Hospital 
 on Ward's Island. The girl children were soon after- 
 ward adopted by a lady of means. Realf himself was 
 admitted to the New York Opthalmic Hospital. His 
 pathetic, broken, yet still hopeful, spirited letters to Mr. 
 Johnson show his condition, mental and material, at the 
 time much more forcibly than other words can do. In 
 one letter, dated May 13, he wrote: 
 
 " I think I can give, some day, under favorable con- 
 ditions, some interesting reminiscences of great English- 
 men and women. And perhaps I may, if I live long 
 enough, write my autobiography. ... I am walk- 
 ing the edges of the abysses. I hope God will bring us 
 through the stress safely. I have erred greatly in my 
 life, and suffered greatly, but I have always been a ser- 
 vant and never a hireling of the truth." 
 
 Later he wrote again to Mr. Johnson: 
 
 11 I thank you very deeply for all your goodness. But 
 you can judge how impossible it has been for me, in this 
 culminative stress, to do any worthy work. Sometimes 
 I fear I am losing my grip on myself. Do you know of 
 anybody in the city who would give one a hundred or a 
 hundred and fifty dollars cash down for the sole right 
 and title to all I may have written ? If I could get a 
 hundred and fifty dollars for my verses, I would send 
 
 L (his wife) to a hospital, and take for myself a 
 
 second-class ticket to San Francisco. 
 
 " I will tell you, when I see you, of the reasons why 
 
 lxxxix 
 
I am so desirous to get far away, far away. They are 
 not base ones; but I shall never be able to do that of 
 which I am capable in the East, — at least, not until a 
 certain person dies; and you know it is written that 'the 
 good die first.' Out in San Francisco I can find work, 
 and recover my poise." 
 
 Under date of May 23, 1877, he wrote to Miss Nimmo, 
 at Springfield, Ohio: 
 
 "I have suffered excruciating tortures. I never 
 thought I should be so poor, and helpless, and sightless, 
 but it is God's will; God's will be done." 
 
 On the 24th he wrote: 
 
 M I beg your pardon for troubling you. It may be 
 the last time. I can not tell. I can not see a word of 
 that which I write. I can barely distinguish the black 
 marks. I am in so desperate a strait as to humble my 
 pride enough to say that I would be very grateful if 
 the friends of temperance in Springfield, who re- 
 member me with any interest, would, in view of my 
 affliction, (I am almost totally blind — entirely so so far 
 as reading is concerned) of the fact that I am at the end 
 of my scanty resources, and that this is not a free hos- 
 pital, contribute a little purse toward the alleviation of 
 my present pressing needs. I do not mind thus unbar- 
 ing my bosom to you, but I should not like it to be 
 known to any one else that the suggestion came from 
 me." 
 
 Richard Realf arrived in San Francisco during the 
 firpi week of July, 1878. He resided there less than 
 four months, before taking his own life at Oakland, on 
 the 28th of October following. The friends who wel- 
 
corned him on his arrival were shocked at his physical 
 weakness. He was feeble in step and evidently had 
 barely recovered from a struggle for mere existence. 
 His voice, always musical in tone, now ran habitually 
 on a minor key, vibrant with a deep sadness. His still 
 abundant hair was almost white, and the face was worn 
 and lined with suffering. It was apparent at once that 
 he was unfit, temporarily at least, for work of any kind, 
 though his anxiety therefor was feverishly eager. He 
 was made comfortable, and, a few days afterward, 
 Gen. Miller took him to the Napa Valley, and made him 
 his guest on a beautiful ranch the family owned there. 
 Had Realf so chosen, the General would have been glad 
 to have made for him a permanent abode thereon, and, 
 indeed, the offer of a sort of stewardship, or at least 
 bookkeeper with residence, was made. But Realf's 
 original design of writing and lecturing had the strong- 
 est hold. He was, above all else, desirous of bringing 
 his boy and the mother, of whom he always spoke with 
 ardent affection, to San Francisco as speedily as pos- 
 sible. To that end he urged an application for a clerk- 
 ship in the U. S. Mint, of which another Kansas friend, 
 General Lagrange, was then superintendent. There 
 was no vacancy, but the promise of appointment at the 
 first opportunity was made, and the Colonel was offered 
 a place temporarily on the laborers' roll, in the melting 
 and coining room. He did not hesitate a moment. As 
 a matter of fact he was unfit for this work, but, half 
 blind, worn from recent illness, suffering too from 
 
chronic attacks of rheumatism and other results of 
 army service, he still persisted. His work was carrying 
 the molten gold from furnace to coining machine and 
 tables. Once he stumbled and was severely burned. I 
 write of this because there was always something stal- 
 wart in Realf 's determination to care for himself, and in 
 the reticence also which prevented his warmest friends 
 from fully knowing of his conditions and circumstances. 
 His pay was small, not, I believe, over $60 per month. 
 He lived economically and constantly sent small sums 
 to New York for those he had left behind. 
 
 His presence soon attracted attention. The city news- 
 papers mentioned him in pleasant terms, and these notices 
 were referred toby Eastern papers. In this way his new 
 residence, unfortunately, became known to the one 
 person he desired to avoid, together with, in all proba- 
 bility, an exaggerated idea of his well-doing. Person- 
 ally I became aware of her watchfulness by the receipt 
 of an insolent letter, signed by the name of " Holmes," 
 certainly a person wholly unknown to me, in which I 
 was berated for inducing a man to desert his wife; the 
 reference, of course, being to Richard Realf, and the per- 
 son who, at Pittsburg, claimed to bear his name. Nat- 
 urally angered at such a missive, for I had but the 
 merest shadow of knowledge of my friend's troubles, I 
 showed the letter on his return to the city from the 
 Napa Valley, and asked for an explanation. This was 
 given at once, and his position proven by the production 
 of the original divorce papers and many newspaper ex- 
 
tracts, showing the pursuit and persecution to which he 
 had been subjected. The point of this explanation lay- 
 in the fact of a very deliberately expressed determina- 
 tion on his part to commit suicide, and perhaps kill the 
 woman herself, if she followed him to San Francisco. 
 
 At this time Realf was making good progress toward 
 health and something of prosperity. Some of his poems 
 were printed in the San Francisco Evening Post, and a 
 larger number in The Argonaut, the most attractive Cal- 
 ifornia weekly, of which Frank M. Pixley was then the 
 editor. If he had not worked so hard physically — for 
 he was unfit for drudgery of any sort — and had taken 
 General Miller's offer, Richard Realf would have re- 
 gained his health, and with it that mental courage and 
 spiritual balance against which even his pursuer could 
 not have prevailed. 
 
 Arriving in San Francisco on the 26th of October, 
 1878, in some way she had obtained his address with a 
 family named Mead, on Mission Street, quite near the 
 mint. Realf was at his work when she arrived. As he 
 had often spoken of his "wife " and her possible arri- 
 val, the landlady had no hesitation in admitting the 
 person who claimed that title, stating she had just come 
 from the East. In the newspaper account it was stated 
 that she proceeded to an immediate search of Realf's 
 belongings, turning out his clothing, examining, seizing, 
 or destroying papers. She was found at this work 
 when the worn and tired man returned to his lodgings. 
 What occurred or was said can only be surmised. They 
 
remained in conversation for some time, and she was 
 heard to ask him to remain, but he refused, and re- 
 quested her to walk with him. This she did and they 
 soon after parted. After leaving her, he went to the 
 rooms of a friend named Pomeroy, remained there until 
 late, and on leaving borrowed a small sum. He made 
 an effort on Sunday to find me, and hunted up other 
 friends. I was in Nevada. The accounts of his pro- 
 ceedings on Sunday are confusing, but it is known that 
 he purchased a small quantity of laudanum and chloral 
 hydrate. On Monday he did not appear at the mint 
 and sent no excuse. The Oakland Times of October 30, 
 gives the following brief account of his ending: 
 
 ''Monday morning, about half-past eight o'clock, a 
 gentleman called at the Winsor House and inquired of 
 the proprietor, Mr. Wheeler, for Col. S. F. Tappan. 
 On being informed that the latter gentleman had just 
 taken the train for San Francisco, he requested a room, 
 saying he would wait Col. Tappan's return. After tak- 
 ing breakfast, he retired to his room, but soon returned 
 and requested paper and envelopes, saying he desired 
 to write. Shortly after he was seen to come down stairs 
 and walk out into the street. He was gone for some 
 time, but returned and once more went Jo his room. In 
 the evening, about a quarter before seven o'clock, Mr. 
 Wheeler knocked at his door, for the purpose of inform- 
 ing him that the dinner hour was almost over. Receiv- 
 ing no response, he went in and found the occupant 
 apparently asleep. Speaking quite loudly, Mr. Wheeler 
 told him that the dinner hour was almost past; also, 
 that Col. Tappan had returned, and asked him if he 
 
wished to see him. He partially arose from the bed 
 and replied that he did, whereupon Mr. Wheeler left 
 the room. As he did not afterward appear, Col. Tap- 
 pan concluded that he was sleeping, and refrained from 
 visiting his room till morning. 
 
 " The gentleman had registered as Richard Realf. Not 
 desiring to disturb his rest, Col. Tappan did not see him 
 that night. The next morning, however, he went to 
 Realf's room and knocked. No response being made, 
 he entered, and there, with features as calm as if he had 
 not yet aroused from his sleep, Richard Realf lay cold 
 in death. Dr. L. M. Buck was immediately summoned, 
 but Realf had too surely accomplished his aim. On the 
 table were two bottles, one labeled 'Chloral Hydrate' 
 and the other ' Laudanum,' both emptied of their con- 
 tents. An inquest was held, and from the testimony 
 there elicited, it appeared that Realf had been driven to 
 his death by troubles of a domestic nature. Two letters 
 which he wrote on the day before his death, directed to 
 Col. Tappan, were produced for the jury's perusal, but 
 as they were strictly private and confidential they were 
 not allowed to be made public. The jury returned a 
 verdict in accordance with the facts educed, showing 
 that he had taken laudanum with suicidal intent." 
 
 His friend Tappan had not, like myself, been in- 
 trusted with the facts and haunting fear that followed 
 Realf, and so was not on the alert over his somewhat 
 strange conduct at the hotel. In a letter written after 
 the death, Col. Tappan says: 
 
 " He came to my room at the Winsor early one morn- 
 ing after I had left for San Francisco; it being steamer 
 day, I went over much earlier than usual. On my return 
 
in the evening he was sleeping, and I concluded not to 
 wake him, but left word at the office to call if Realf 
 asked for me. From what the landlord told me I sup- 
 posed Realf had been on a ' spree ' and I thought he did 
 not care to see me until all right again. Late the ser- 
 vant called and said Realf wanted 'John.' I told him 
 to go to Realf and come for me if I was wanted. I 
 heard nothing more. In the morning I went to his bed- 
 room and found him dead and cold, leaving addressed 
 to me a poem and a note explaining why he had de- 
 stroyed himself. 'A woman in the case.' The poem 
 was published at the time. My not seeing him the even- 
 ing before was a fatal error, and I shall always regret 
 it, for had I done so all would have been well; but a 
 strange fatality followed him. Everything seemed to 
 conspire against him. I found he had purchased at two 
 different drug stores poisons, deadly when combined, 
 otherwise considered not dangerous. He evidently 
 knew just what was needed and how to get them without 
 exciting alarm. You know the rest better than I can 
 tell it." 
 
 Col. Realf left by his bedside a poem in sonnet form, 
 which has been republished wherever the English 
 tongue is printed and spoken. He also left the testa- 
 mentary paper of which I give the essential parts, with 
 another personal letter addressed to Col. Tappan. The 
 will is as follows: 
 
 " Oakland, Cal., Oct. 28, 1878. 
 
 " I, Richard Realf, poet, orator, journalist, workman, 
 do hereby declare that I have deliberately accepted sui- 
 cide as the only final relief from the incessant persecu- 
 
tions of my divorced wife. . . . My poems and the 
 MS. of certain lectures to be found scattered promiscu- 
 ously in my room, on the table, and in my trunk, are to 
 be put in the possession of Gen. John F. Miller, who at 
 his discretion will, or will not, surrender them to Col. R. 
 J. Hinton, of the Post, . . . But . . she . . 
 who once bore my name, and who is now in San Fran- 
 cisco, must on no account be informed of the residence 
 of my wife, who would be in constant danger. 
 Now, God bless all, God pardon me as I pardon all. I 
 love Gen. John F. Miller, Col. Tappan, Col. Hinton, Mr. 
 Mariner Kent, John Finigan, E. Levy, Col. J. J. Lyon, 
 and many others. 
 
 " There is, or should be, a tied lock of hair in the 
 form of a rude bracelet, lying on the bathroom window 
 sill of my boarding house. I should be glad to have it 
 placed around my wrist. 
 
 Richard Realf." 
 
 The essential portions of the letter addressed to CoL 
 Tappan are given as follows: 
 
 " Oakland, Cal., Oct. 28, 1878. 
 
 14 On Saturday night she broke in on me at San Fran- 
 cisco. I left the house, of course, but last night I went 
 back after taking a dose of chloral hydrate large enough, 
 I vainly thought, to give me permanent rest, and I left 
 this morning before they were up, and have spent my 
 last penny in purchasing some laudanum and more 
 chloral that I shall use when I have finished this note. 
 I desired to see you to make arrangements for repay- 
 ment of my indebtedness to you. I can not compute 
 what the mint owes me — my poor brain is in a whirl — 
 but I know that I drew $20 in advance in the beginning 
 of the month." 
 
Realf then stated some small sums that he was owing, 
 gives Col. Tappan authority to draw the balance of his 
 month's pay at the mint to settle these, and proceeds: 
 
 " Please take charge of all my books, papers, MSS., 
 and so forth, [Col. Tappan was spared that task, as 
 the person from whom Realf fled had seized them imme- 
 diately upon being admitted to his room by the land- 
 lady]; until Gen. Miller comes to the city. Then con- 
 sult with him. There should be some money in my 
 poems, etc., if published in book form. I have a dearly 
 beloved one . . . whose address is to be kept sacred- 
 ly private from all eyes save Col. Hinton's and Gen. 
 Miller's. My death will almost kill her, and my precious 
 boy, but I am utterly incapable of bearing more suffer- 
 ing. I wish some means could be devised of sending 
 her a little money. I had hoped to have gotten her out 
 here within a month. . . . On no account is the 
 person calling herself my wife to be permitted to ap- 
 proach my remains. I should quiver with horror, even 
 in my death, at her touch. 
 
 " I have had heavy burdens to bear, such as have set 
 stronger men than I reeling into hell. I have tried to 
 bear them like a man, but can endure no more. If I am 
 weak and selfish, God will forgive me. Write to Gen. 
 Miller at Sacramento and tell him how greatly I loved 
 him. Col. Hinton is in Nevada with Senator Jones. I 
 die in peace with all mankind and asking forgiveness 
 for my own manifold trespasses. I do not speak 
 
 of my love for my parents and kindred. It is too sacred. 
 Good-by. God bless you." 
 
 There remains but little more to be said. He was 
 buried on the 31st of October, the services being con- 
 ducted by the Grand Army comrades of Oakland and 
 
San Francisco. The Rev. J. K. Noble, Chaplain, offi- 
 ciated. Col. J. J. Lyon, his personal friend, read the 
 poet's " Swan Song," " De mortuis nisi nil bonum" The 
 remains were interred in one of the highest portions of 
 the Lone Mountain Cemetery, overlooking and embrac- 
 ing the Golden Gate and Bay of San Francisco. The 
 poet's injunction to "plant daisies at his head and at 
 his feet," was not forgotten, for a little maid of four- 
 teen, Miss Daisy Trueheart, was selected to meet that 
 wish. After the planting of the daisies a dirge was 
 played, and the death volleys fired above the grave of 
 the poet — my beloved friend — Richard Realf , who at the 
 time of his death was just forty-four years, four months, 
 and thirteen days old. 
 
 The Pittsburg " pursuer " remained in San Francisco 
 for about a month. During that time, claiming her 
 means to be exhausted, certain poems and manuscripts 
 were offered for sale. Gen. John F. Miller, then in at- 
 tendance on the State Constitutional Convention, in 
 session at Sacramento, asked Mr. Pixley, of The Argo- 
 naut, to negotiate in his own name for the purchase of 
 such material as she had in possession. This Mr. Pix- 
 ley did, finally offering and paying $100, taking Cathe- 
 rine's receipt. General Miller refunded this amount to the 
 editor. As a matter of fact, however, the material pur- 
 chased was only in part surrendered, and a large scrap 
 book containing some thirty poems, with the printed 
 report of his finest lecture, "Battle Flashes," are still 
 at Pittsburg. As will be seen in this volume I have 
 
collected, with some that are not included, about two 
 hundred poems. I know of but one literary friend 
 and admirer of Richard Realf, George S. Cothman, 
 of Irvington, Indiana, who has seen her material. 
 With perhaps two exceptions, I know it is not important, 
 as copies of every poem but one are in my possession. 
 The sale took place, and the material obtained, such as 
 it was, was turned over to me. 
 
 The effort to collect Realf s poems and other material 
 relating to him has been a task involving almost 
 unremitting labor and patience during the past score 
 of years, and it has not even yet been fully accom- 
 plished. My unfortunate friend left nothing like a 
 personal collection. What was obtained from the 
 " seizure" made at San Francisco, in October, 1878, by 
 her to escape whose pursuit Realf committed suicide, 
 were in the worst possible condition. He had published, 
 however, in The Argonaut, during the few months of his 
 residence on the Pacific Coast, a number of his more 
 exquisite sonnets and lyrics ; none, I think, except 
 "My Lady at the Window" and a portion of "Death 
 and Desolation," being new at the date of publication, 
 but all having been rewritten and more exquisitely fin- 
 ished, as careful comparison shows. I have adopted 
 The Argonaut versions as far as they go, and they include 
 "Love Makes all Things Musical," and several sonnets 
 selected from " Symbolism " and " Christdom," which 
 in their complete form were first published in Harper's, 
 The Atlantic, Scribner's, and The Independent, The por- 
 
tion of " Death and Desolation " referred to was printed 
 the week preceding the author's suicide, and with the 
 third one of the famous triplet of sonnets, found by 
 the side of his deathbed, the lines are without doubt 
 the last from his melodious pen and in-seeing soul. 
 I have found no previous issue of or reference to 
 l * My Lady at the Window," and hence have reason- 
 ably concluded that The Argonaut print is the first 
 publication. It may not be, for the poet, in his im- 
 pecunious wanderings and struggles, was often im- 
 pelled by dire necessity to doubtful procedure in the re- 
 writing of his poems and the disposing of them again. 
 It is probable that the failure of William Cullen Bryant 
 to take any notice of the strangely pathetic appeal Realf 
 addressed to him early in 1878 may have been due to 
 the fact that as editor of the New York Evening Post 
 he found that the poet had formerly sent it two or 
 three poems previously published, doubtless receiving 
 pay for the same. Besides The Argonaut, the original 
 publications in Harper's Monthly and Weekly, The 
 Atlantic, Scribner's, The Independent, and Christian Union, 
 with the consent of their publishers, have been drawn 
 upon for copy. But the larger number of republications, 
 and the wide reach of the same, has made the editorial 
 labor of gathering, comparison and revision, a difficult 
 task. 
 
 There are two small MS. volumes in my possession, 
 one prepared by the poet for his sister Sarah, and the 
 other for a friend of his earliest New York days. None 
 
of the poems they contain were written later than 1857, 
 and all apparently were composed between the spring of 
 that year and the early months of 1855. There are a 
 few duplications in both volumes, and the number of 
 poems and sonnets in both is some fifty in all. I have 
 learned of another and larger volume prepared in South 
 Carolina in 1869, but have never been able to see it. 
 This manuscript was atone time in possession of Realf 's 
 Nemesis, who is reported to have torn and mutilated it. 
 Several poems are apparently lost by this process, but 
 the rest have been traced and are embraced in this 
 volume. 
 
 The boyhood poems of Realf , so prematurely published 
 in 1853, when the poet was in his seventeenth year, are 
 not, with two exceptions, included in the present collec- 
 tion. The two referred to are entitled " Nobility" and 
 " A Man to His Word," and they were selected as the 
 most mature and musical. There are several in 
 " Guesses of the Beautiful," which seem the foundation 
 for later poems. One, entitled " The Sword Song," 
 being a plea for peace, is the reverse in expression of 
 the martial lyric which so vigorously touched the tenor 
 note of war. Yet there are lines in the boy's produc- 
 tion that indicate the spirit which animates the war 
 lyric. Realf's poetic nature, like the genius of Rous- 
 seau, was, as John Morley so admirably puts it, of the 
 'kind in which the elements of character remain mute, 
 futile and dispersive particles, until compelled into unity 
 by the creative shock of feminine influences." Realf 
 
felt this more than Jean Jacques did, in its most agree- 
 able form. Far more than by his faults or follies, must 
 the influence of woman upon him be judged. I have 
 been in possession of hundreds of his letters. In no 
 one of them have I ever seen an unclean word or un- 
 wholesome suggestion. A pathetic tenderness is a pre- 
 vailing and purely personal trait. The passional expres- 
 sion, whenever perceptible, is held in restraint by the 
 cleanest of poetic illustration. He certainly had the pla- 
 tonic faculty in a large degree. Children all loved him. 
 Old persons were drawn strongly to his side. Virile men 
 were all kind to him, and no women, but one, has 
 spoken of his memory otherwise. 
 
 If the genius of the poet is to be counted as the 
 real "me" of Richard Realf, then it must be acknowl- 
 edged, and without stint, that he nobly bore all the woe- 
 degrading consequences of his weakling acts. For it is 
 certain that as his daily and objective life became more 
 and more subject to a savage pursuit and fierce jeal- 
 ousy, the soul of the singer rose to nobler and loftier 
 height of expression, to more esoteric vision, and went 
 down to more sacred depths of feeling. 
 
 The poems of 1854 and of the early winter of 1855, 
 that are preserved, are nearly all of an affectionate 
 nature, called forth by gratitude and friendship, or the 
 feeling his departure for America aroused. After his 
 arrival in New York and direct residence in the Five 
 Points House of Industry, the love-nature manifested 
 itself in broad human expression. In this period of 
 
about eighteen months are found such poems as " The 
 Outcast," " Mother Love," " Magdalena," "The Seam- 
 stress," and others that show the influence of Hood and 
 Mackey, yet rise rapidly to power and originality that 
 are all his own. The first poem published in America 
 was one addressed " To England." It is a piece of fierce 
 objurgation and invective on the French Alliance and 
 the Crimean War. It is written in the resonant and 
 heroic Alexandrian measure, and attracted wide atten- 
 tion. Most of the poems published by Realf during his 
 work and residence in the Five Points House were 
 printed in the pages of the New York Mirror, a literary 
 weekly edited by Hiram Fuller. These include the 
 poems called forth by the peculiar influences of his 
 daily work, and by the dawn of a new passion which 
 had much to do with fusing and molding his immediate 
 future. The " H. B." or "Harriet," to whom several 
 sonnets and exquisite lyrics are addressed, was the 
 brilliant daughter of a family quite famous in the anti- 
 slavery agitation. She was, I am informed, a niece of 
 Charles Burleigh. The poem "I Remember," after- 
 wards re-written and published at Pittsburg in the early 
 seventies, was of this episode. Another one entitled 
 "Two," was originally written at this time, but as re- 
 written and addressed belongs naturally to the closing 
 year of his life, and marks his apprehension of the pur- 
 ity and fidelity of one of the sweetest friendships with 
 which even he was endowed. 
 
 Realf wrote also a considerable amount of prose mat^ 
 
ter, generally in connection with the reform work of the 
 Rev. Mr. Pease. I have not made strenuous endeavor 
 to collect such materials, for his prose writings are even 
 more widely scattered than his poems were. He pre- 
 pared and delivered some lectures. One on " Poetry 
 and Labor" attracted attention, and through it I first 
 met the poet, being at the time Vice-President of a 
 Young Men's Temperance and Literary Club, which 
 met weekly in Botanic Hall, New York, as I have 
 already mentioned. I was commissioned during the 
 late fall of 1855 to ask Realf to deliver this lecture, and 
 the interview that arose there began an intimacy which 
 continued till Realf s death. It has been continued ever 
 since, and even more intimately on my part, as I have 
 for eighteen years past continuously followed the sad 
 footsteps and deeply shadowed life of my gifted friend. 
 
 A notable example of Realf's intellectual growth is 
 seen in the poem which closes the collection — " We all 
 do carve our statues evermore." It was written for and 
 delivered as a commencement address at an academy, 
 Warnersville, New York, in June, 1855. My copy came 
 from the manuscript volume of a Dr. Smith, of New 
 York City and Elberon, New Jersey. 
 
 In Kansas, his arrival early in October, 1856, was 
 immediately marked by the writing of the " Defense of 
 Lawrence," a forceful lyric, which at once, from its 
 melodiousness and vivid, original illustrations, as well 
 historical significance, attracted attention. It has re- 
 mained one of the favorites with Realf's admirers. 
 
The poet left Kansas for New York, in January, 1857, 
 and remained in the East until the last of April. Dur- 
 ing the winter months of 1857 his muse was prolific. 
 Among the finer sonnets of the period that have been 
 preserved are the two, " In Peril," addressed to Mrs. 
 Hyatt; two under the title of M Passion " and " Silence/* 
 afterward re-written; "In a Scrap Book," and to his 
 artist, Frank B. Carpenter; others to "An English 
 
 Friend," to " Mrs. M ," two to " Miss H B.," 
 
 one to " Thaddeus Hyatt." Of the same period will be 
 found the vigorous descriptive poem illustrating the 
 Inauguration of James Buchanan, March 4th, 1857. 
 
 Under the title of "Free State Lyrics," Realf wrote 
 and sent to Kansas from New York a series of seven 
 vigorous anti-slavery poems. There are also a couple 
 of political "skits," which, having purely local force, 
 it was deemed unnecessary to incorporate here, though 
 they show his lightness of touch. In another vein 
 is a later poem, also excluded, directed against Wendell 
 Phillips, at the time of the latter's first delivery, in 1866, 
 of his once famous oration, "The South Victorious," 
 which excited the northern mind by its trenchant and 
 sarcastic review of the political situation then existing. 
 As an example of the sarcastic personal tone, these two 
 stanzas will be of interest: 
 
 " I only of the sons of men 
 
 Am chosen by the Creator; 
 My voice alone is Truth — my pen 
 The only revelator; 
 
Alone of all I look with eyes 
 
 Serene and analytic, 
 I — Phillips — the destroyer of lies, 
 
 God's consecrated critic. 
 
 " What Moses was to Israel, 
 
 Priest — leader — intercessor, 
 Deliverer from the jaws of hell, 
 
 And from the stout oppressor, 
 Such to this godless age am I, 
 
 Throned loftily above it, 
 Sole climber of its Sinai, 
 
 Like to the ancient prophet." 
 
 The lyric, "A Tress of Hair," relates to the twined 
 bracelet of blonde hair found on his arm when dead, 
 which is fairly presumed to have been a sad souvenir of 
 the earliest incident of his love-life. It is believed to 
 have been a tress cut from the locks of Miss Noel. The 
 series known as the "Free State Lyrics" were, with 
 some others, published in the Kansas News, of Emporia, 
 in the spring and summer of 1857. 
 
 Realf's residence in the South from September, 1858, 
 to January, i860, offers no poetic flotsam or jetsam to 
 my industrious search. Statements have been made 
 that he wrote, during the period of mysticism which 
 landed him temporarily within the folds of the Catholic 
 Church, some poems of a rapt religious tone. I have 
 not been able to procure copies of these, but The Cath- 
 olic Standard, of New Orleans, is reported to have 
 been the medium of their publication. The paper long 
 since ceased issue, and no trace of files or editors has 
 
been available. Nor are there any fugitive verses 
 found, after he left the Jesuit College in October, 
 1858, during the months of his wandering and lecturing 
 in Alabama and Texas. The first poem between Spring- 
 dale, 1858, and Cleveland, i860, besides the two sonnets 
 mentioned, is the one denunciatory of the Heenan- 
 Sayres prize fight, published in Garrison's "Liberator" 
 during April, i860. The long months spent among the 
 Ohio Shakers the same year, brought no poems for pub- 
 lication, and not until after the attack in the streets of 
 Baltimore, April 19, 1861, does the name of Richard 
 Realf appear in print, at least as far as I can trace 
 him. "Apocalypse " is the earliest of his striking series 
 of war poems, and " My Sword Song," published in the 
 Chicago Tribune late in the fall of 1862, was the next by 
 which he can be known. 
 
 Then followed, during the breathing spells of military 
 activity, two fine poems to Abraham Lincoln, "A Sol- 
 dier's Psalm of Women," published in the Continental^ 
 (N. Y.) June, 1864, and " Io Triumphe," a superb and 
 ringing outburst. The sonnets of the war period include 
 three superb ones dedicated to Abraham Lincoln, two 
 to "A lady who chides him for not writing," (Mrs. 
 Cramer, of Chicago), and another to the same after 
 she wrote of her infirmity of deafness. The sonnet 
 " Vates," written to General Lytle, author of " I am Dy- 
 ing, Egypt, Dying," is one of his most widely known ef- 
 forts, owing largely to the tragic circumstances following 
 its writing. Realf was in the brigade commanded by Gen- 
 
4 
 
 C1X 
 
eral Lytle, serving as a non-commissioned officer. Both 
 met as such when duty permitted, and became warm 
 friends. During the forward movement which closed 
 for the time in the occupancy of Chattanooga and the 
 great battle of Chickamauga, General Lytle made a 
 speech at Bridgport, Alabama. " Vates " illustrates its 
 effect on Realf , and expresses also the admiration he 
 felt. The MS. of the sonnet was in the General's vest 
 pocket, and was penetrated by the bullet that killed 
 him during the early morning hours of September 20, 
 1863, when directly in front of the regiment of which 
 Realf was sergeant-major. It was the second day of 
 the Chickamauga fighting. The sonnet and a MS. copy 
 of "My Sword Song," were soaked red with Lytle's 
 blood. Another poem, personal in character, beginning, 
 " Not a faultless seeming face," was addressed to some 
 lady correspondent who sent the soldier her photograph. 
 It was probably Miss May J. Jordan, as 1 received from 
 her the portrait of Realf in fatigue dress which is found in 
 this volume. Mention has been made of an Ode to 
 President Lincoln, written and published at Nashville im- 
 mediately after the assassination, but I have never been 
 able to trace it or to find a copy. " Io Triumphe " was 
 evoked by the surrender at Appomattox, and " Emanci- 
 pation " followed the memorable 1st of July, 1863. 
 These poems were published in Harper' sand the Atlantic 
 monthlies, or in the Harper 's Weekly and the Independent, 
 He does not seem to have directly addressed any poems 
 to his future wife, Miss Graves, except an early version 
 
of " Love Makes All Things Musical;" but was in the 
 habit, as she wrote me, of forwarding manuscript copies 
 of all he sent for publication. 
 
 The period following his mustering out of the 88th 
 Illinois, in June, 1865, and his renewal of service in the 
 colored troops and southern reconstruction duty, up to 
 the date of his leaving Vicksburg as a citizen again, in 
 March, 1866, was fruitful in a number of fine and virile 
 lyrics, most of them, however, touching on dominant 
 topics of the day. During the summer of 1865, " Hash- 
 eesh," — certainly one of his most remarkable poems, 
 one in which he touched the deepest of esoteric mean- 
 ings, — was written. One thinks of Joaquin Miller's 
 reference to Burns, in reading it, as "one who knelt a 
 stranger at his own hearth, seeing all, yet unseen, 
 alone." He began also at this time what was designed 
 to be a long and sustained poem, but a fragment of 
 which has been preserved. 
 
 Realf's prose is as marked in its rhetorical power and 
 finish as are his poems for their rythm, melody, deep 
 insight, andoftime spiritual grandeur. He was gifted 
 as an orator, and his prose had much of the swing, 
 affluence, and passion of his fervid speech. Yet, as an 
 editorial writer, he became recognized for terse, direct 
 power, epigrammatic capacity and grasp, homely illus- 
 trative faculty, and a sharp, logical grip on facts and 
 statements. 
 
 His war letters, however, are to me the most attract- 
 ive and valuable of his prose. There remains in my 
 
possession material sufficient to make another volume, 
 which would be an effective prose contribution to current 
 American literature. His lectures and orations were 
 almost overpowering in their eloquent tension and gradu- 
 ated power. His voice was an exquisite tenor, deep- 
 ening to a light baritone. It was the organ of an orator, 
 the timbre fine, and the tones musical and well modu- 
 lated. 
 
 Richard Realf looked like the traditional poet — even 
 to the day of his death. His handsome head, face, and 
 body were a fit receptacle for his handsome soul and 
 brilliant mind. Short of stature, being not over five 
 feet five in height, he was very boyish looking when I 
 first met him in November, 1855. Time dims memories; 
 yet, though forty-three years have passed, I still remem- 
 ber the figure that passed into my life as that of a beau- 
 tiful Greek, an Apollo that Phidias would have chiseled 
 into immortal marble. The young form was slight 
 and graceful, though not weak, hands and feet small 
 and perfectly formed. The rounded, perfectly shaped 
 head, sat well on a fitly proportioned neck. I recall the 
 ensemble: brown, wavy, and plentiful hair, a slight, 
 silky moustache, a broad, white forehead, perfectly 
 shaped face and features. His eyes were a fine hazel, 
 deepening to a dark brown, or lightening to a keen 
 gray, his nose well-shaped, broad at the root ; finely 
 penciled, arched eyebrows and a rounded, sensuous chin 
 completed the handsome face of Richard Realf. 
 
 What thing more remains to be said of Richard Realf. 
 
Intellectually and spiritually, judging of him as a true 
 poet, whatsoever had been the failures of his objective 
 life, he remained true to his finest moods and subject- 
 ive ideals. His own measure of himself, as the Poet, 
 may, perhaps, be found in the following sonnet, written 
 early in his Pittsburg days, and entitled by him 
 
 THE SINGER. 
 
 O high, impalpable spirit of Song which dost 
 
 Yield only, evermore, most palpable pain, 
 It is so hard and bitter that I must 
 
 To all thy silent scantities attain, 
 And not thy sweet serenities; so hard 
 
 To wear thy keen revealing crowns, which prick 
 Till the brows quiver, and to be debarred 
 
 Thy kisses, which thrill also to the quick, 
 Cleansing our lips for singing. But I am 
 
 Even in dumb paths renunciative content: 
 Content beneath thy solemn oriflamme, 
 
 Albeit thou treadest not the hard ascent 
 With me, since only from such dimmest height 
 Can man conjecture of God's Infinite! 
 
 cxni 
 
POEMS 
 
SONNETS 
 
SYMBOLISMS 
 
 ALL round us lie the awful sacrednesses 
 Of babes and cradles, graves and hoary hairs; 
 
 Of girlish laughters and of manly cares; 
 Of moaning sighs and passionate caresses; 
 
 Of infinite ascensions of the soul, 
 And wild hyena-hungers of the flesh; 
 
 Of cottage virtues and the solemn roll 
 Of populous cities' thunder, and the fresh, 
 
 Warm faith of childhood, sweet as mignonette 
 Amid Doubt's bitter herbage, and the dear 
 
 Re-glimpses of the early stars which set 
 Down the blue skies of our lost hemisphere, 
 
 And all the consecrations and delights 
 
 Woven in the texture of the days and nights. 
 
 The daily miracle of Life goes on 
 
 Within our chambers, at the household hearths. 
 
 In sober duties and in jocund mirths; 
 In all the unquiet hopes and fears that run 
 
 Out of our hearts along the edges of 
 
Symbolisms 
 
 The terrible abysses; in the calms 
 
 Of friendship, in the ecstacies of love*, 
 
 In burial-dirges and in marriage-psalms; 
 In all the far weird voices that we hear; 
 
 In all the mystic visions we behold; 
 
 In our souls' summers when the days are clear; 
 
 And in our winters when the nights are cold, 
 And in the subtle secrets of our breath, 
 And that Annunciation men call death. 
 
 O Earth! thou hast not any wind that blows 
 Which is not music: every weed of thine 
 Pressed rightly flows in aromatic wine; 
 
 And every humble hedgerow flower that grows, 
 And every little brown bird that doth sing, 
 
 Hath something greater than itself, and bears 
 A living Word to every living thing, 
 
 Albeit it hold the Message unawares. 
 
 All shapes and sounds have something which is not 
 
 Of them: a Spirit broods amid the grass; 
 Vague outlines of the Everlasting Thought 
 
 Lie in the melting shadows as they pass; 
 The touch of an Eternal Presence thrills 
 The fringes of the sunsets and the hills. 
 
 For ever, through the world's material forms, 
 Heaven shoots its immaterial; night and day 
 
Symbolisms 
 
 Apocalyptic intimations stray 
 Across the rifts of matter; viewless arms 
 
 Lean lovingly toward us from the air; 
 There is a breathing marvel in the sea; 
 
 The sapphire foreheads of the mountains wear 
 A light within light which ensymbols the 
 
 Unutterable Beauty and Perfection 
 That, with immeasurable strivings, strives 
 
 Through bodied form and sensuous indirection 
 To hint into our dull and hardened lives 
 
 (Poor lives, that can not see nor hear aright!) 
 
 The bodiless glories which are out of sight. 
 
 Sometimes (we know not how, nor why, nor whence) 
 The twitter of the swallows' neath the eaves, 
 The shimmer of the light among the leaves, 
 
 "Will strike up through the thick roofs of our sense, 
 And show us things which seers and sages saw 
 
 In the gray earth's green dawn: something doth stir 
 Like organ-hymns within us, and doth awe 
 
 Our pulses into listening, and confer 
 Burdens of Being on us; and we ache 
 
 With weights of Revelation, and our ears 
 Hear voices from the Infinite that take 
 
 The hushed soul captive, and the saddening years 
 Seem built on pillared joys, and overhead 
 Vast dove-like wings that arch the world are spread. 
 
Insufficiency 
 
 He, by such raptnesses and intuitions, 
 
 Doth pledge his utmost immortality 
 
 Unto our mortal insufficiency, 
 Fettered in grossness, that these sensual prisons, 
 
 Against whose bars we beat so tired wings, 
 Avail not to ward off the clear access 
 
 Of His high heralds and interpretings; 
 Wherefore, albeit we may not fully guess 
 
 The meaning of the wonder, let us keep 
 Clean channels for the instincts which respond 
 
 To the Unutterable Sanctities that sweep 
 Down the far reaches of the strange Beyond, 
 
 Whose mystery strikes the spirit into fever, 
 
 And haunts, and hurts, and blesses us for ever. 
 
 INSUFFICIENCY 
 
 OTHAT some Poet, with awed lips on fire 
 Of the Ineffable Altars, would arise, 
 And with his consecrated songs baptize 
 Our souls in harmony, that we might acquire 
 
 Insight into the essential heart of Life, 
 Beating with rythmic pulses. There is lost, 
 In the gross echoes of our brawling strife, 
 
 6 
 
Insufficiency 
 
 Music more rare than that which did accost 
 Shakspeare's Imagination, when it swept 
 
 Nearest the Infinite. Our spirits are 
 All out of tune; our discords intercept 
 
 The strains which, like the singing of a star, 
 Stream downward from the Holies, to attest, 
 Beyond our jarring restlessnesses, Rest. 
 
 I think our ideal aims will still elude 
 
 Our eager wishes — that we still shall miss 
 The elemental blessedness which is 
 
 Incorporate somewhere in our humanhood — 
 That still the unsolved riddles of the Sphinx 
 
 Will vex us with an inward agony — 
 
 That still within our daily meats and drinks 
 
 Will lurk an unknown poison, until we 
 
 Learn more of reverence for the Soul of Man! 
 
 O friends, I fear we do but desecrate 
 The sanctity of Being — do but fan 
 
 The cruel fires of slowly-dying Hate, 
 Instead of kindling hero-lives to dare 
 Greatly for Man's hope against Man's despair. 
 
 Our plummets are too short to fathom well 
 The deep things of existence. Unto pride 
 
Insufficiency 
 
 And unto bitterness it is denied 
 To know the sacred temples wherein dwell 
 
 The oracles and angels. We want first, 
 For the interpretation of the land, 
 
 Love, whereby Faith, the seer of Truth, is nursed; 
 And Sympathy, by which to understand 
 
 The faces of our fellows. What we need 
 Is dew on our dry natures — sustenance 
 
 For the starved spirit — not the outward greed. 
 We lean too much on palpable circumstance, 
 
 Too little on impalpable souls, to attain 
 
 God's morrows for our yesterdays of pain. 
 
 IV. 
 
 We want more depth, more sweetness, less reliance 
 
 On visible forms and ceremonial laws; 
 
 Less venomous jeering, at the ingrained flaws 
 Which mar our brother's beauty; less defiance, 
 
 Less clannish spite, less airy sciolism, 
 Less incense burned at worldly altars, less 
 
 Chuckling, less supercilious criticism; 
 More warmth, more meekness, and true lowliness, 
 
 More human moisture in our lives, more smell 
 Of flowers about our gardens, better sense 
 
 That something worthy and acceptable 
 May lie beyond the walls with which we fence 
 
 Our isolation round; excluding thus 
 
 The high ones who would fain have speech of us. 
 
 8 
 
Insufficiency 
 
 It is not by repressions and restraints 
 
 Men are withheld from imminent damnation, 
 
 But by the spiritual affiliation 
 Of love with love. Our vehemence acquaints 
 
 Heaven with our weakness, chiefly. O, we must 
 Lower our proud voices, front less haughtily 
 
 The inexorable years; learn ampler trust 
 In God's child, Man, with God's eternity 
 
 Standing behind him, before we may quell 
 Our riotous devils strongly, or drown out 
 
 The conflagrations which are lit of hell; 
 Or, panoplied in wisdom, put to rout 
 
 The insurrectionary ranks of lies 
 
 Which hang like murder on our best emprise. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Lo, this is Christdom! This same blessed earth, 
 From its clear coronals of the air we breathe, 
 Down to the primal granite underneath 
 
 Its mountains, hath had very notable birth 
 Out of Judaic insufficiency. 
 
 But what are we but unbelieving men, 
 Who put not Christ in our philosophy, 
 
 And only call our brothers bretheren 
 
 On Sabbaths merely ? Tooth for tooth is good, 
 
Insufficiency 
 
 We think on week-days — the old rigor that 
 With literal eye for eye and blood for blood, 
 
 Through all the centuries striveth to tread flat 
 The immemorial hill from which alone 
 We dare lift steady eyes to the unknown. 
 
 What shall we say then ? — That our brother's crimes 
 
 Augur our own diseases ; £hat his hurts 
 
 Imply our shames; that the same bond engirts 
 Alike the man who lapses and who climbs; 
 
 That formulas and credos, when divorced 
 From the great spirit of all-pervading ruth.. 
 
 Leave still the lean and thirsty world athirst 
 For the deep heart and blessedness of truth; — 
 
 That in the noblest there is something base 
 And in the meanest noble; that behind 
 
 The sensual darkness of the human face 
 Not to be quenched by any adverse wind, 
 
 Enough of God's light flickers for a sign 
 
 That our best possible is His divine. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Here's room for poets! Here is ground for seers! — 
 Broad leagues of acres waiting for the seed 
 Whose recompensing sheaves of song shall breed, 
 
 Within the bosom of the garnering years, 
 Harvests of prodigal plenty. O ye lips, 
 
 10 
 
My Slain 
 
 Anointed for the proper utterance 
 
 Of what things lie in worthy fellowships! 
 
 O eyes to which the dread significance 
 Of life's grand mystery is visible! 
 
 For lack of ye the poor earth perishes — 
 The patient earth, so very beautiful; 
 
 The comely earth, so clung with noble stress; 
 Aching for God unutterably, and wet 
 With most immortal tears and bloody sweat. 
 
 MY SLAIN 
 
 THIS sweet child which hath climbed upon my knee, 
 This amber-haired, four-summered little maid, 
 With her unconscious beauty troubleth me, 
 
 With her low prattle maketh me afraid. 
 Ah, darling! when you cling and nestle so, 
 
 You hurt me, tho you do not see me cry, 
 
 Nor hear the weariness with which I sigh 
 For the dear babe I killed so long ago. 
 I tremble at the touch of your caress; 
 
 I am not worthy of your innocent faith, 
 I who, with whetted knives of worldliness 
 
 Did put my own child-heartedness to death — 
 Beside whose grave I pace forever more, 
 Like desolation on a ship-wrecked shore. 
 
My Slain 
 
 There is no little child within me now, 
 
 To sing back to the thrushes, to leap up 
 When June winds kiss me, when an apple bough 
 
 Laughs into blossom, or a buttercup 
 Plays with the sunshine, or a violet 
 
 Dances in the glad dew — alas! alas! 
 
 The meaning of the daisies in the grass 
 I have forgotten; and if my cheeks are wet, 
 It is not with the blitheness of a child, 
 
 But with the bitter sorrow of sad years. 
 O moaning life with life irreconciled! 
 
 O backward-looking thought! O pain! O tears! 
 For us there is not any silver sound 
 Of rhythmic wonder springing from the ground. 
 
 Woe worth the knowledge and the bookish lore 
 
 Which makes men mummies; weighs out every grain 
 
 Of that which was miraculous before, 
 
 And sneers the heart down with the scoffing brain. 
 
 Woe worth the peering, analytic days 
 That dry the tender juices in the breast, 
 And put the thunders of the Lord to test 
 
 So that no marvel must be, and no praise, 
 Nor any God except Necessity. 
 
 What can you give my poor starved life in lieu 
 Of this dead cherub which I slew for ye? 
 
 Take back your doubtful wisdom, and renew 
 My early foolish freshness of the dunce, 
 Whose simple instinct guessed the heavens at once. 
 12 
 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN— 1863 
 
 IT touches to the quick the spirit of one 
 Who knows what Freedom is; whose eyes have seen 
 The crops thou sowest ripen in the sun; 
 
 Whose feet have trod the fields wherein men glean 
 The harvests of thy lonely hours, when thou 
 
 Didst grapple with the Incarnate Insolence 
 
 Lording the Land with impious pretense, 
 And very bravely on its arrogant brow 
 
 Didst set thy sealed abhorrence — when he hears 
 The glib invectives which men launch at thee, 
 
 Beloved of Peoples, crowned in all thy years 
 Nestor of all our chiefs of Liberty, 
 
 As if thou wert some devil of crafty spell 
 
 Let loose to lure the unwary unto hell. 
 
 11. 
 But thou art wiser; thy clear spiritual sense 
 
 Threading our tangled darkness, seest how 
 The equilibriums of Omnipotence 
 
 Poise the big worlds in safety. Disavow 
 And jeer thee as men will, stab, howl, and curse, 
 
 They can not blur the glory of thy fame, 
 
 Nor pluck the noble memories of thy name 
 
 13 
 
Abraham Lincoln — 1863 
 
 From the glad keeping of the Universe, 
 
 Quickened with the conjunction of thy Spirit. 
 
 For lo! thou art Our's alone — and yet thou art 
 Nature's, Mankind's, the Age's! We inherit 
 
 Joint treasures from thee; but we stand apart 
 From all the earth in bitter trespasses 
 ' Gainst thee and thy great throb of tenderness. 
 
 in. 
 
 Nathless, let not our cold ingratitude 
 
 Make sad the soul within thee: in the years 
 
 When the full meanings of our brotherhood 
 Roll their high revelations round the spheres, 
 
 The solemn passion of thy life shall be 
 A wonder and a worship unto all, 
 Whose eyes behold the Apocalyptical 
 
 Transfiguration of Humanity. 
 
 Meanwhile, because thy recompense is pain, 
 
 Weary not thou; invisible lips shall kiss 
 
 The trouble from thy heart and from thy brain, 
 
 In all the days of thy self-sacrifice, 
 
 Thy blessed hurts being still thy amplest wage, 
 Thou Archimedes of Love's leverage. 
 
 14 
 
TO A LADY AFFLICTED WITH DEAF- 
 NESS 
 
 WHY what a sweet and sacred recompense, 
 Dear friend, doth reinforce thy meagre loss! 
 Because, allbeit upon thy outward sense 
 
 Fainter than naked feet on woodland moss, 
 The blessed sounds of the blessed world do fall, 
 The fine ear of the soul is so intense 
 With its quick nerve, thou apprehendest all 
 
 The multitudinous voices which arise 
 From the singing earth unto the seeing stars — 
 
 Its low sad minors, its triumphant cries, 
 The lusty shouting of its conquerors, 
 
 The slaves' hushed wail, the tender mother's sighs: 
 Through all, thy listening spiritual instincts hark 
 God luring his poor children from the dark. 
 
 IN PERIL 
 
 BECAUSE of the bleak anguish of her cry. 
 When our two natures tore themselves apart, 
 Like a hell-horror crashing through my heart, 
 Wiping God's stars from out his purple sky, 
 I think I can the better testify 
 
 15 
 
In Peril 
 
 Unto the terrible smiting stroke which clave 
 Thro' the fine fibers of your delicate brain, 
 When, with your lashes trickling drops of rain, 
 
 For the last time your shivering lips you gave 
 To his, for kisses and for comfortings. 
 O deep, deep woman heart! O coiling pain 
 
 Of blackened silence, leaden as the grave; 
 O weary stricken dove, O drooping wings, 
 Christ hold thee in thy dark of shudderings. 
 
 Be strong — be strong! I think that He who held 
 
 His Son's soul in his Soul's Gethsemane, 
 Who smote the royal first-born, and compelled 
 
 The maddened waters of the moaning sea 
 
 To crouch in awe at his prophetic knee, 
 And harnessed his own fiery cloud of stars, 
 
 To march before his chosen humanity — 
 I say I think the sweep of scimetars 
 
 He will ward off from him who loveth thee. 
 O many limbs must yawn with ghastly scars 
 
 Before a godless hand may ever touch 
 This Moses of an Israel that is free. 
 
 Therefore — O trembler! grieve not overmuch 
 For him who yet shall clasp thee tenderly. 
 
 16 
 
LOVE'S MARVEL 
 
 I THINK that Love makes all things musical, 
 As, melted in the marvels of its breaths, 
 
 Our barren lives to blossoming lyrics swell, 
 
 And the new births shine upward from old deaths, 
 
 Witching the world with wonder. Thus to-day- 
 Watching the crowding people in the street, 
 I thought the ebbing and the flowing feet 
 
 Moved to a delicate sense of rhythm alway, 
 
 And that I heard the yearning faces say, 
 
 " Soul, sing me this new song! " The Autumn leaves 
 
 Throbbed subtly to me an immortal tune; 
 
 And when a warm shower wet the roofs at noon, 
 Low melodies seemed to slide down from the eaves, 
 
 Dying delicious in a dreamy swoon. 
 
 VIOLA'S SONG 
 
 DO you remember how, a day ago, 
 You broke into a mellow Tuscan hymn ? 
 And how your spirit's passionate overflow, 
 In waves of living jubilance did grow 
 
 And greaten all around you, till the dim 
 And shadowy parlor trembled to and fro 
 
 With shining splendors, as though the cherubim 
 
 17 
 
Decoration Day 
 
 Waved their white wings above it? O, dear tones 
 Of that rare singing! O, the subtle voice 
 
 Which shook me to the marrow of my bones, 
 And clenched and held me till I had no choice 
 
 Save in bowed reverence to follow it 
 
 Along its starry pathway — thrilled and lit 
 With radiance of far incandescent thrones. 
 
 DECORATION DAY 
 
 THANK God for Liberty's dear slain; they give 
 Perpetual consecration unto it, 
 Quick'ning the clay of our insensitive 
 
 Dull natures with the awe of infinite,. 
 
 Sun-crowned transfiguration, such as fit 
 On the solemn-brooding mountains. O, the dead, 
 
 How they do shame the living; how they warn 
 Our little lives that huckster for the bread 
 
 Of peace, and tremble at the world's poor scorn, 
 To pick their steps among the flowers, and tread 
 
 Daintily soft where the raised idols are, 
 Prone with gross dalliance where the feasts are spread, 
 
 When most they should strive forth, and flash afar 
 
 Light, like the streaming of heroic war. 
 
 18 
 
PATIENCE 
 
 THE swift years bring but slow development 
 Of the worlds majestic; for Freedom is 
 Born grandly orb'd, as a solid continent, 
 
 Layer upon layer, from chaos and the abyss, 
 Shoulders its awful granite to the light, 
 
 Building the eternal mountains, on whose crests, 
 
 Pinnacled in the intense sapphire, rests 
 The brooding calmness of the Infinite. 
 
 But we, whirled round and round in heated gusts 
 Of eager indignation, think to weigh 
 
 Against God's patience our gross griefs and lusts 
 Like foolish Jonah before Nineveh 
 
 (O world-wide symbol of his vanished gourd!) 
 
 Expostulating gravely with the Lord. 
 
 PASSION 
 
 1 CLENCH my arms about your neck, until 
 The knuckles of my hands grow white with pain, 
 And my swollen muscles quiver with the strain, 
 And all the pulses of my life stand still. 
 
 I say I clench so. Ah! you can not tear 
 Yourself away from my immortal grip 
 Of forlorn tenderness and salt despair, 
 
 19 
 
Silence Still 
 
 And child-like sorrowing after fellowship, 
 
 And wolf-like hunger of the famishing heart; 
 For not until my sundering fibers crack, 
 
 And my torn limbs from their wrenched sockets start, 
 O darling, darling! will I yield me back 
 
 To that lone hell whence, shuddering through and 
 through, 
 
 With one wild tiger-leap I sprang to you. 
 
 SILENCE STILL 
 
 BUT do not heed my trembling; do not shrink 
 Because my face is haggard, and my eyes 
 Blaze hot with thirstiness as they would drink 
 
 Your wells up to their ultimate supplies. 
 I will not hurt you, darling! I will be 
 
 More tender than our Mothers were to us 
 In our first days of helpless infancy. — 
 
 And if I kiss you thus, and thus, and thus; 
 And fling toward you — so — and make you wreathe 
 Nigher and nigher, until you can not breathe 
 
 Save by my sufferance, — I will not wet 
 Your dead white forehead with a single stain 
 (I will watch so) from all the purple rain 
 
 Of my great agony and bloody sweat. 
 
 20 
 
A YEAR AGO 
 
 A YEAR ago two thin and delicate hands 
 Trembled within my passionate parting clasp, 
 Two dreamy eyes seemed spiritual overmuch, 
 And one white brow my hot lips loved to touch, 
 Burned as if belted by the securing bonds 
 That crown our crowns of sorrow. Then she spoke: 
 " God keep you " — but a sudden shivering gasp 
 Splintered the rest to silence with one stroke. 
 O, t'was well feigned! the exquisite, audible sign, 
 The mute beseeching of the bloodless lips 
 The paleness reaching to the ringer tips, 
 And the deep, mournful splendor of the eye. 
 God! but her rare skill smote me as a cry 
 Of those who perish amid sinking ships. 
 
 Now, let this pass! O, woman, there shall come 
 In the deep midnights, when thy pulses throb, 
 And something startles thee like a low sob, 
 A shining grandeur that shall strike thee dumb — 
 The glory of a great white martyrdom! 
 And nothing save the old clock on the wall, 
 Whose strokes shall crash like awful thunder then, 
 Shall answer thee when thou shalt wildly call 
 
 21 
 
David Swing 
 
 On the strange past to speak to thee again 
 
 With one voice more! but thou shalt grope and crawl 
 
 Along wet burial crypts, and thy large tears, 
 
 Scorched with the heat of thy strong agony, 
 
 Shall blister on the dead hopes of old years, 
 
 Who shall rise up to glare and mock at thee. 
 
 DAVID SWING 
 
 FOR souls like thine, coined of creative fire, 
 Electric with quick instincts — it is hard 
 To endure the fool, the Pharisee, the liar, 
 
 The scoffs and jeers of little lives on guard 
 Against the lifting Savior; terrible 
 
 To tread most sovran indignation down 
 With still more sovran pity — to annul 
 
 The wrong as though it were not, and to crown 
 Man-hating with Christ-loving; bitter as death 
 To keep calm lips closed over burning breath, 
 
 And make the clenched fist reverence the will 
 That holds the tingling fibers in restraint. 
 
 Yet only through such pain may we fulfil 
 The measure of the hero and the saint. 
 
 Truth's self is Truth's own triumph and success. 
 Therefore wait thou: Whoso hath eyes to see 
 
 22 
 
David Swing 
 
 The marvel of his everlastingness. 
 
 Rooted in God's immutability; 
 He whose true soul is reverent and wise 
 
 To read the lesson of the Universe, 
 That not in crowd nor ritualities, 
 
 Nor the proud pomps with which men bless and Curse, 
 Lie liberty and mastery, but alone 
 In that ineffable Christ whom we disown, 
 
 Needeth no human succor — for he is 
 Girt all about with the Invisible. 
 
 Wherefore, albeit thine enemies howl and hiss, 
 Remain thou silent, till thine hour is full. 
 
 Until thine hour is full. For there shall come 
 
 A moment when, with clarified, soft eyes, 
 Men shall behold thy stature, and stand dumb, 
 
 Stricken with large and beautiful surprise. 
 But this is not thy glory; the broad gaze 
 
 Of seeing natures, the sweet sobs and shouts 
 Of glad, freed thralls who in new-throbbing praise 
 
 Do penance for the evil of old doubts — 
 The home in good men's hearts, the wider faith, 
 The benedictions poured along thy path, 
 
 The prayers that run like couriers at thy side, 
 The dear beliefs of childhood's innocence — 
 
 These are as naught: that thou hast justified 
 Thy soul with love, is thy soul's recompense. 
 
 23 
 
IN A SCRAP BOOK 
 
 HERE, gathered from all places and all time, 
 The waifs of wisdom and of folly meet. 
 High thoughts that awe and lilting words that chime 
 
 Like Sabbath bells heard in far vallies sweet; 
 Quaint fancies, musical with dainty rhyme 
 
 Like the soft patter of an infant's feet; 
 And laughter radiant as summer skies, 
 
 The genial sunshine of the happy heart; 
 And giant hopes looking out from human eyes, 
 
 With thrilling hymns that make the quick tears start, 
 Are here, in garlands of strange fantasy, 
 
 To catch the careless passer's casual look, 
 
 And show, within the limits of a book, 
 Unto him his life's own large epitome. 
 
 TO FRANK B. CARPENTER, Artist, 
 
 After seeing his portrait of Henry Ward Beecher 
 
 IT was thy soul's deep reverence earned thee this, 
 And not thy painter's cunning, — the true eye, 
 Bathed in the light of shining prophecy, 
 To understand the spiritual influences 
 Wherefrom do spring the wonderful mysteries 
 
 24 
 
To an English Friend 
 
 Of the high speech of features! Else, whence came 
 
 The silent subtle aroma that grows 
 
 Like the utter sweetness of a perfect rose 
 
 To the hearts of the beholders, and the flame 
 
 Clasping his brows with the old tenderness, 
 
 So that once more we part our lips to bless 
 
 The yearning face we look on, and pass forth 
 
 Watching the glorious bountiful sun caress 
 
 The people swarming on the rugged earth. 
 
 TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND 
 
 STAND still, and let me read thee as thou art! 
 O, like a spiritual hearted child, who stands 
 Watching a dying sunset by the sea, 
 When blazing awe hath stricken his lips apart, 
 And crept, like thunder, through the clenched hands 
 With which he clutched at that God's prophecy, 
 And missed it: so stands shivering on the sands, 
 Staring his reddened eyes into the night, 
 Straining his splintered heartstrings till he dies — 
 So does the hunger of his famishing eyes 
 Glare toward the line of overwhelming light 
 That stunned thee into speechlessness; and yet 
 It stands and waits in the eternities, 
 To clasp thee sudden when thy cheeks are wet. 
 
 25 
 
TO MRS. M , OF ENGLAND 
 
 On the birth of her first child 
 
 WHEN you lay shivering with the great excess 
 Of mother-marvel at your child's first cry; 
 
 When you looked up and saw him standing by, 
 Leaning the strong unspeakable utterness 
 
 Of all his soul upon you; when you smiled, 
 And your weak lips strove mightily to frame 
 To a new song your new life's oriflamme, 
 
 And presently the infinite words, " Our child," 
 Made a most musical murmur, as of breath 
 
 Breathed by a poet's spirit — did you know 
 
 The babe's slight moan, that seemed so faint and low, 
 Was God's voice speaking from dear Nazareth, 
 
 Covering you up with that white light that lay 
 
 On Mary and her young Christ in the hay ? 
 
 TO A LADY ON CHIDING ME FOR 
 NOT WRITING 
 
 i. 
 
 IF still I hold my peace, and stand aloof 
 From giving thee tongue-worship, it is not 
 Because my nature hath grown passion proof: 
 In truth I think my heart's blood is as hot 
 
 26 
 
To a Lady on Chiding me for not Writing 
 
 As when, foreseeing my spirit would else rot, 
 Heaven purged me with hell's sulphur; only now, 
 Leaning here, with my sword drawn, on my shield, 
 Ribbed with the strokes of battle's deadliest hate, 
 I have no leisure to unbend my brow 
 Into the mood of sonnets! Ay, and thou — 
 Though the deep song be nevermore revealed, 
 And thine own anthem perish uncreate — 
 Wilt deem me manlier that I do not yield 
 The stern hour unto music: therefore, wait! 
 
 Wait! it is better so. Some day, perhaps, 
 
 The Word within may find an utterance. 
 
 Only not now while God's great thunder-claps 
 
 And still small voices of vast covenants 
 
 Are talking with my soul. I must be dumb 
 
 When Heaven speaks, and my hungry eyes do glance 
 
 Into the deeps of Being, tho' my heart 
 
 Break with its bursting silence. — O, dear friend, 
 
 I surely trust the Pentecost will come, 
 
 When these mute yearnings of my life shall start 
 
 Into a living lyric, that shall blend 
 
 Music with all my pulses, and ascend 
 
 Calmly and purely the celestial hope — 
 
 A belt of fire across my horoscope. 
 
 27 
 
THE TRUTH 
 
 THE great world grows in glory; near and far 
 God's blinding splendors blaze upon our eyes; 
 
 And thunders, as of newer Sinais, 
 
 Crash triple grandeurs of deep prophecies; 
 And large loves, white as Christ's own Angels are, 
 
 Fling shining sweetnesses on all the spheres; 
 And calm vast hymns, high as the morning star, 
 
 Throb throneward from the green isles of the seas. 
 Yea, all the days are as a Mother's tears — 
 
 Brimfull with unsaid meanings. Therefore now 
 I will stretch forth my yearning hands to seize 
 
 The luminous Truth, which, girdled on my brow, 
 Shall fringe my soul with naming sanctities, 
 
 The early promise of an ancient vow. 
 
 TO MISS H B- 
 
 I HAVE been homeless such a weary while; 
 Have lived so long upon Love's scattered crumbs, 
 Strewn in the outer alleys of the world; 
 My naked heart has been so dashed and whirled 
 From side to side in bitter martyrdoms, 
 Made all the bitterer by the lean, sad smile 
 
 28 
 
To Miss H B 
 
 Shivering upon my lips, that this new feast 
 Whereto I am bidden as chief banqueter, 
 And whereat, though my speech be of the least, 
 I may bend on her my great, greedy eyes, 
 Walk by her side, a reverent listener — 
 Silent, 'till all my own soul's silences 
 
 Burst into blossoming music: 'tis too deep, 
 Too very blessed! Heart — be still and weep. 
 
 I held her name between me and the sun 
 
 And then I staggered downward to my knees; 
 
 O, blessed Christ! how my brain reeled and spun 
 When, like a flash from the Eternities, 
 
 The blinding blaze of burning glory clung 
 Around the luminous letters, till the name 
 Shot outward into breathing life, a flame 
 
 With Godlike splendor, as a cloven tongue 
 
 Of awful Pentecost! 
 
 O Holiest 
 Of all the holy! O, great Infinite 
 
 Who thro' all works still workest all things best; 
 I yield this name unto thee; pure and white 
 Keep it, dear Father! Keep it in Thy sight — 
 
 Keep it for me when my soul can not rest. 
 
 29 
 
IN NOTRE DAME 
 
 THEY look down from their places on the wall 
 With such transfigurings in their steadfast eyes, 
 You see a sweet ascending glory rise 
 
 About their foreheads apostolical, 
 And hear such wondrous spiritual replies 
 
 From those meek lips of patient sorrow fall, 
 You kneel down in the light that glorifies 
 
 The aisles of silent worshipers, and thrill 
 Beneath the anointed, soothing hand that lies 
 On the moaning surge of your dark agonies 
 
 Born of the lapses of the heart and will 
 
 From God's high levels to man's low tracts of ill; 
 And pass forth quivering with the soft surprise 
 
 That touched you in the whisper, " Peace, be still." 
 
 TO THADDEUS HYATT 
 
 WHEN God spake unto Moses, and the crags 
 Of Sinai shook with thunder, do you think 
 The gaping Jews upon the river brink, 
 Stripping the tinsel from their priestly rags 
 To build them yellow idols, ever caught 
 
 30 
 
Nannie's Picture 
 
 1 Mid the loud tumult of their mummeries, 
 
 The slightest whisper of the Eternal Thought? 
 
 So, do you think that those who fret and fume, 
 Tossed round and round in a great whirl of lies 
 Can catch the meaning lying in your eyes, 
 
 Or mark the colors of the mystic bloom 
 Whose silent growth is as a rose of fire; 
 
 Or through the rifts of dark, and mist, and gloom, 
 See Godlike Love beneath your manly ire? 
 
 NANNIE'S PICTURE 
 
 CHILD-INSTINCT of the Holy mingles here, 
 With the fine painter-cunning: heart and eye 
 
 All steeped in seeing of the mystic sky 
 Which broods above the enchanted wondersphere 
 
 The little children walk in. Else, whence came 
 The aromatic effluence that grows, 
 Dear as first fragrance of a dawning rose, 
 
 Out from the canvas — and the subtle flame 
 Wreathing the dainty baby-brows with light 
 
 Clothed with revealings of the Infinite — 
 Making us part revering lips to bless 
 
 The winsome face we look on, and pass forth, 
 Watching the beatific Sun caress 
 
 The people swarming on the happy earth ? 
 
 31 
 
" VATES." 
 
 [Written to General I^ytle, author of the poem, "Antony to 
 Cleopatra," ("I am dying, Egypt, dying"), who was killed at 
 Chickamauga, the bullet passing through the original manuscript 
 of this sonnet. Orderly Sergeant Realf served in I^ytle's Brigade, 
 and the two poets were friends.] 
 
 VATES," I shouted, while your solemn words 
 Rythmic with crowded passion, lilted past; 
 " That Land which, thrilled with anguish, still affords 
 
 Great souls all coined in one grand battle blast, 
 Like this soul and this singing, shall not fail 
 
 So much as by a hair's-breadth, of the large 
 Results of affluent wisdom, whereunto 
 
 Across the bloody gaps our blades must hold, 
 And far beyond the mountain and the maze 
 
 We pass with bruised limbs that yet shall scale 
 The topmost heights of Being! Therefore, thou 
 
 Lead on, that we may follow, for I think 
 
 The Future hath not wherefrom we should shrink, 
 Held by the steadfast shining of your brow! " 
 
 TO R. J. H. 
 
 1 MARKED fine crownings of a Crowning Hand 
 Flush on his brooding brows: and, catching so 
 The inward radiance through the outward glow, 
 I know that very tranquil, deep and grand, 
 Waited a power within him to withstand 
 All luring shows of things that were not based 
 
 32 
 
Written on the Night of His Suicide. 
 
 On nrmamental pillars. Then I said 
 I thank God reverently that amid this 
 Loud whirl of eager faction He hath placed 
 A far-eyed seer, calm-poised of heart and head — 
 A lithe-thewed Titan with winged faiths that kiss 
 The crests of difficult peaks, and tread the paths 
 Where the clear-sighted walk by the abyss 
 Close to diviner loves and holier wraths. 
 
 WRITTEN ON THE NIGHT OF HIS 
 SUICIDE 
 
 J~\E mortuis nil nisi bonum." When 
 
 "^"^^ For me this end has come and I am dead, 
 And the little voluble, chattering daws of men 
 
 Peck at me curiously, let it then be said 
 By some one brave enough to speak the truth: 
 
 Here lies a great soul killed by cruel wrong. 
 Down all the balmy days of his fresh youth 
 
 To his bleak, desolate noon, with sword and song, 
 And speech that rushed up hotly from the heart, 
 
 He wrought for liberty, till his own wound 
 (He had been stabbed), concealed with painful art 
 
 Through wasting years, mastered him, and he 
 swooned, 
 And sank there where you see him lying now 
 With the word " Failure " written on his brow. 
 
 33 
 
Written on the Night of His Suicide. 
 
 But say that he succeeded. If he missed 
 
 World's honors, and world's plaudits, and the wage 
 Of the world's deft lacqueys, still his lips were kissed 
 
 Daily by those high angels who assuage 
 The thirstings of the poets — for he was 
 
 Born unto singing — and a burthen lay 
 Mightily on him, and he moaned because 
 
 He could not rightly utter to the day 
 What God taught in the night. Sometimes, nathless, 
 
 Power fell upon him, and bright tongues of flame, 
 And blessings reached him from poor souls in stress; 
 
 And benedictions from black pits of shame, 
 And little children's love, and old men's prayers, 
 And a Great Hand that led him unawares. 
 
 So he died rich. And if his eyes were blurred 
 
 With big films — silence ! he is in his grave. 
 Greatly he suffered; greatly, too, he erred; 
 
 Yet broke his heart in trying to be brave. 
 Nor did he wait till Freedom had become 
 
 The popular shibboleth of courtier's lips; 
 He smote for her when God Himself seemed dumb 
 
 And all His arching skies were in eclipse. 
 He was a-weary, but he fought his fight, 
 
 And stood for simple manhood; and was joyed 
 To see the august broadening of the light 
 
 And new earths heaving heavenward from the void. 
 He loved his fellows, and their love was sweet — 
 Plant daisies at his head and at his feet. 
 
 34 
 
WAR AND 
 
 RELATED 
 
 LYRICS 
 
APOCALYPSE 
 
 Private Arthur I^add, Sixth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, 
 First Martyr in the War for liberty of 1861-5. Slain in Baltimore, 
 April 19, 1861. 
 
 STRAIGHT to his heart the bullet crushed; 
 Down from his breast the red blood gushed, 
 And over his face a glory rushed. 
 
 A sudden spasm shook his frame, 
 And in his ears there went and came 
 A sound as of devouring flame, 
 
 Which in a moment ceased, and then 
 The great light clasped his brows again, 
 So that they shone like Stephen's when 
 
 Saul stood apart a little space, 
 
 And shook with trembling awe to trace 
 
 God's splendors settling o'er his face. 
 
 Thus, like a king, erect in pride, 
 Raising clean hands toward heaven, he cried, 
 'All hail the Stars and Stripes!" and died. 
 
 Died grandly. But before he fell, 
 (O blessedness ineffable!) 
 Vision Apocalyptical 
 
Apocalypse 
 
 Was granted to him, and his eyes, 
 All radiant with glad surprise, 
 Looked forward through the centuries, 
 
 And saw the seed which sages cast 
 On the world's soil in cycles past, 
 Spring up and blossom at the last. 
 
 Saw how the souls of men had grown, 
 And where the scythes of truth had mown 
 Clear space for Liberty's white throne. 
 
 Saw how, by sorrows tried and proved, 
 The blackening stains had been removed 
 Forever from the land he loved. 
 
 Saw Treason crushed, and Freedom crowned, 
 And clamorous fury gagged and bound, 
 Gasping its life upon the ground. 
 
 Saw how, across his Country's slopes 
 Walked swarming troops of cheerful hopes, 
 Which evermore to broader scopes 
 
 Increased, with power that comprehends 
 The world's weal in its own, and bends 
 Self-needs to large unselfish ends. 
 
 38 
 
Apocalypse 
 
 Saw how, throughout the vast extents 
 Of earth's most populous continents 
 She dropped such rare-hearted affluence, 
 
 That from beyond the utmost seas 
 The wondering people thronged to seize 
 Her proffered pure benignities. 
 
 Saw how, of all her trebled host 
 
 Of widening empires, none might boast 
 
 Whose love were best, or strength were most, 
 
 Because they grew so equal there 
 Beneath the flag which, debonair, 
 Waved joyous in the cleansed air. 
 
 With far off vision, gazing clear 
 Beyond this gloomy atmosphere 
 Which shuts us in with doubt and fear, 
 
 He, marking how her high increase 
 Ran, greatening in perpetual lease 
 Through balmy years of odorous peace — 
 
 Greeted in one transcendent cry 
 
 Of intense passionate ecstacy, 
 
 The sight which thrilled him utterly, 
 
 39 
 
My Sword Song 
 
 Saluting, with most proud disdain 
 Of murder and of mortal pain, 
 The vision which shall be again! 
 
 So, lifted with prophetic pride, 
 
 Raised conquering hands toward heaven and cried, 
 'All hail the Stars and Stripes!" and died. 
 
 MY SWORD SONG 
 
 DAY in, day out, through the long campaign, 
 I march in my place in the ranks; 
 And whether it shine or whether it rain, 
 
 My good sword cheerily clanks; 
 It clanks and clanks in a knightly way 
 
 Like the ring of an armored heel; 
 And this is the song which day by day, 
 It sings with its lips of steel: 
 
 " O friend, from whom a hundred times, 
 I have felt the strenuous grip 
 Of the all-renouncing love that climbs 
 
 To the heights of fellowship; 
 Are you tired of all the weary miles ? 
 
 Are you faint with your swooning limbs ? 
 Do you hunger back for the olden smiles, 
 And the lilt of olden hymns ? 
 40 
 
My Sword Song 
 
 11 Has your heart grown weak since that rapt hour 
 
 When you leapt, with a single bound, 
 From dreaming ease to sovereign power 
 
 Of a living soul world-crowned ? 
 Behold! the aloes of sacrifice 
 
 Are better than radiant wine, 
 And the bloody sweat of a cause like this 
 
 Is an agony divine. 
 
 " Under the wail of the shuddering world 
 
 Amoan for its fallen sons; 
 Over the volleying thunders hurled 
 
 From the throats of the wrathful guns; 
 Above the roar of the plunging line 
 
 That rocks with the fury of hell, 
 Runs the absolute voice: O Earth of mine, 
 
 Be patient, for all is well! " 
 
 Thus sings my sword to my soul, and I, 
 
 Albeit the way is long, 
 As soiled clouds darken athwart the sky — 
 
 Still keep my spirit strong: 
 Whether I live, or whether I lie 
 
 On the stained ground, ghastly and stark, 
 Beyond the carnage I shall descry 
 
 God's love shine across the dark. 
 
 4i 
 
IN BATTLE 
 
 To Abraham I^mcoln 
 
 O LEADER of our sacred cause, 
 Twin sharer in our sadness, 
 Defender of our trampled laws 
 
 From perjured felon's madness — 
 In all our stress of mortal strife, 
 
 Our weariness and weeping, 
 Our hearts thank God our country's life 
 Is in thine honest keeping! 
 
 So blithe amid the cares of state, 
 
 So calm mid howling faction, 
 Clear-souled to hasten or to wait, 
 
 As fits the largest action: 
 With joyance, like a little child's, 
 
 Along thy grave moods straying, 
 And breezes as from heather wilds 
 
 In every cheery saying. 
 
 God bless the reverend lips that spake 
 The one grand word whose thunder 
 
 Through all the gladdened heavens brake 
 Our damned chains asunder! 
 
 God bless the patient hand that traced 
 The golden glorious pages, 
 
 42 
 
Introspection 
 
 Whereby our lost crowns are replaced 
 For immemorial ages! 
 
 We follow where thou leadest; far 
 
 Beyond the tribulation 
 That drapes these dreadful years of war, 
 
 We see a newer nation, 
 Through balmy days of greatening power, 
 
 And nights of calm ascension, 
 Expand into the perfect flower 
 
 Of God's divine intention. 
 
 INTROSPECTION 
 
 [July Fourth, 1876] 
 
 THROUGHOUT the land a glad shout runs, 
 Pealed by a mighty nation; 
 Flags dance, bells ring, innocuous guns 
 
 Roar eager salutation: 
 With joy the bannered cities thrill; 
 
 Stored hearts unpack their treasures; 
 Wood, stream and valley, plain and hill, 
 Leap to heroic measures. 
 
 The roused air throbs with fervor, all 
 The places have blithe seeming; 
 
 43 
 
Introspection 
 
 The meeting skies hold festival, 
 The sun hath brighter beaming; 
 
 The glory of one hundred years 
 
 Breaks in proud speech of thunder; 
 
 And I amid the epic cheers 
 Listen and brood and ponder. 
 
 I ponder o'er the days gone by 
 
 With their dead tribulations, 
 And see the solemn future lie 
 
 Sown thick with fresh probations, 
 And hear beyond the jocund noise 
 
 That rushes like a river, 
 The still persuasion of a Voice 
 
 Which speaks from the Forever. 
 
 O, well-beloved land, whose fame 
 
 All winds bear in their keeping, 
 The stately music of whose name 
 
 Far peoples are repeating, 
 As if the footsteps of its sound 
 
 By comfortings were followed, 
 And smells of Freedom from the ground 
 
 By Freedom's footsteps hallowed! 
 
 Brave things and noble hast thou done, 
 Staunch helpings for the human; 
 
 44 
 
Introspection 
 
 Hale hopes hast strewn beneath the sun 
 
 For hopeless man and woman. 
 Crowned growths of grandeur have been thine, 
 
 And sunrise bursts of beauty, 
 And hearty draughts of God-like wine 
 
 For Man-like thirsts of duty; 
 
 And sacrifices that have wrung 
 
 The quick cords of existence, 
 And bloody woe of pulses strung 
 
 For battle's steeled resistance; 
 And wastes where heaven, black with wraths 
 
 Against thy coward lapses, 
 And thorny search in coiling paths 
 
 Of perilous Perhapses. 
 
 And fit it is, and wise, and well, 
 
 This dear commemoration 
 Of winged upstrainings out from hell, 
 
 And eras of salvation, 
 To let thy ecstacies run free 
 
 In flowing jubilances, 
 And build brave odes for liberty 
 
 And her significances. 
 
 But thou hast victories yet to win, 
 Harsh roads of pain to travel, 
 
 45 
 
Introspection 
 
 With stress without and strife within, 
 
 Beset by beast and devil, 
 Before thy bruised feet crest the heights 
 
 That kiss the world's blue coping, 
 And heaven for thee and thine ignites 
 
 The altars of thy hoping. 
 
 Thine affluent realms that stretch away 
 
 From ocean unto ocean; 
 Thy subtle lightnings that obey 
 
 Thy right hand's finest motion; 
 Thy ships that walk the utmost waves; 
 
 Thy thronging sways and splendors; 
 Thy consecrated household graves; 
 
 Thine hero-eyed defenders — 
 
 These are not thy finalities, 
 
 They are the tools for hewing 
 Thine august spiritual destinies, 
 
 Else thine aghast undoing: 
 For lo! unless the inward Soul 
 
 Subdue the outward greatness, 
 The worms of ruin sap the whole 
 
 Foredoomed for desolateness. 
 
 Full oft, on palace lintel-posts, 
 Whereat Success stands vaunting, 
 
 4 6 
 
Wanted: Joshua 
 
 The fingers of invisible ghosts 
 
 Write the dread verdict — Wanting! 
 
 And though the plaudits and the praise 
 Of all men rise before thee, 
 
 Unmoved, a spirit waits always 
 To mark if thou art worthy. 
 
 Like whips, thy missed ideals urge 
 
 Fate's hounding Nemesises; 
 Like cliffs, thy breezy gardens verge 
 
 On fathomless abysses; 
 The pillared cloud may burst in doom, 
 
 The shining wing may darken, 
 The flaming guidance may consume — 
 
 O, land beloved, hearken! 
 
 WANTED: JOSHUA 
 
 WHEN God, whose courtlier crowns did wait 
 The forehead of our Moses, drew 
 His steps where Pisgah shot up straight 
 
 As a Seer's thought into the blue 
 Of the immaculate heavens, and fed 
 
 The life-long hunger of his eyes 
 With one swift vision that struck him dead 
 For awe of its sublimities: — 
 
 47 
 
Wanted: Joshua 
 
 And we turned instant unto you, 
 
 (Calling you Joshua), to complete 
 The meanings of the paths which grew 
 
 So sharp to our unsandaled feet, 
 I swear we thought the living soul 
 
 Of that great prophet wrought afresh 
 In you, like thunder, to control 
 
 To sovereign ends our drooping flesh. 
 
 Were not you with us when God clave 
 
 The Red Sea, with a blow, in twain? 
 Were you not of us when he gave 
 
 Manna, and quails, and blessed rain? 
 And those tall pillars which he yoked 
 
 For service — did you see them not ? 
 And all the alien blood that soaked 
 
 The paths he hewed — is that forgot? 
 
 When crested Sinai cracked in flame, 
 
 And all the desert round about 
 Shook with the dreadness of his Name 
 
 Whose glory paled the sunlight out; 
 Did not you tremble with the rest, 
 
 When his imperatives blazed forth 
 Along the tablets, to attest 
 
 The Absolute unto the Earth ? 
 
 48 
 
Wanted: Joshua 
 
 Whence — when the Lord smote hip and thigh 
 
 The Hittite and the Amelekite — 
 Did you draw warrant to deny 
 
 To him the issues of the fight ? 
 By what prerogative do you 
 
 Defraud the heavens of those results 
 Which ripened when we overthrew 
 
 Hell's battering rams and catapults? 
 
 I think you are not Joshua, but 
 
 Aaron art — he whose atheist hands, 
 Unclean as sin with worldly smut, 
 
 Reared, when God lightened o'er the lands, 
 A poor vain idol, unto which, 
 
 Reaching imploring arms, he caught 
 A curse that burned like molten pitch, 
 
 As symbol of his special Thought. 
 
 Are your hands lifted toward the sun, 
 
 What time our onsets wax and wane ? 
 Do you see troops of angels run 
 
 In shining armor o'er the plain ? 
 I know not; but I know, full sooth, 
 
 No wrath of hell, nor rage of man, 
 Nor recreant servant of the Truth, 
 
 Can balk us of our Canaan. 
 
 49 
 
A BLACK MAN'S ANSWER 
 
 WELL, if it be true, as you assert, 
 That this is a land for the white man's rule, 
 And not for " niggers," does that import 
 That our God is the white man's fool? 
 
 " Two peoples ? The hammers and heats of war 
 Have forged and fused, like welded links, 
 The fates of the twain in one; we are 
 For you, the riddle of the Sphinx. 
 
 " And you must solve us, unless again, 
 Over the burning marl of woe 
 Where never falleth the blessed rain, 
 Hell-dragged you want to go. 
 
 " When the scythes of slaughter swung in blood 
 And fair green fields of men were mown, 
 Did not our black limbs dapple the sod 
 With streams as red as your own ? 
 
 " But not for this do we look in your face, 
 White man, and ask, with hungry eyes, 
 My brother ! give us a little space 
 To work in under the skies ! 
 
 50 
 
Emancipation 
 
 u We are not mendicants: we are Souls ! 
 
 The soul that thrilled in Shakespeare, and 
 Lit Lincoln's lips with living coals, 
 Thrills us here where we stand. 
 
 " We try to use our wings and fly; 
 We try to use our limbs and run; 
 Do you hold mortmain over the sky, 
 Over the earth and the sun ? 
 
 " Your apples are of Hesperides; 
 You give us those of Tantalus; 
 But what if the Lord should blight your trees 
 And mock you as you mock us ? " 
 
 EMANCIPATION 
 
 THANK God, thank God, we do not flinch 
 A single hair's-breadth from the way, 
 Nor lose the thousandth of an inch 
 
 Of royal manhood on this day! 
 Thank God, the words are calm and strong 
 
 And keenly tempered with the truth, 
 While ringing like a battle song, 
 All proud, of fiery-hearted youth! 
 
 5i 
 
Emancipation 
 
 By Heaven! it sweeps through every soul 
 
 With its majestic, rythmic tread, 
 As tho' it were the thunder-roll 
 
 Of God's worlds marching overhead; 
 So high above our petty reach 
 
 Along the listening heights it passed, 
 Brimful of burning inner speech 
 
 As Paul when Felix stood aghast. 
 
 Our spirits, starting from their sleep 
 
 Into a crowned and regal mood, 
 Cleave on like light across the deep 
 
 Of silence and of solitude; 
 And, with the sweat upon our brows, 
 
 Stand strong again beside you there 
 In quick acceptance of the vows, 
 
 As from Christ's tomb white-winged were. 
 
 O, hearts that sickened at the wrong! 
 
 O, eyes that strained for the right! 
 O, weary lives whose bitter song 
 
 Swelled upward to the infinite! 
 O! mothers waiting for your sons! 
 
 O sons whose clenched lips never smile! 
 O dreary hearts of drooping ones, 
 
 Be patient for a little while. 
 
 52 
 
How Iyong? 
 
 For sure as God's Evangel moves 
 
 The hidden pulses of the spheres, 
 So surely do the unseen loves 
 
 Thrill onward thro' the greatening years: 
 And as we keep our loftiest faith, 
 
 Our kingly hopes, our sacred pledge, 
 The crown of truth that freedom hath 
 
 Hangs now upon the morning's edge. 
 
 HOW LONG? 
 
 HOW long, O God, how long 
 Must fettered Freedom writhe beneath her chains, 
 And send the wailing of the captive's song 
 Across the purple plains ? 
 
 How long, O God, how long 
 Shall Slavery's blood-hounds hold her by the throat, 
 And her life reel beneath the dripping thong 
 
 Of Hell's Iscariot? 
 
 How long, O God, how long 
 Shall she be haunted, homeless, thro' the Earth; 
 Nor thou — Just One — against the crimson wrong, 
 
 Launch Thy broad lightnings forth ? 
 
 53 
 
How I^ong? 
 
 O have thine eyes not seen 
 With what high trust she bore her bitter shames; 
 Nor marked how calm and God-like and serene 
 
 She stood amid the flames ? 
 
 O have thine ears not heard 
 Her long low gasp of inarticulate prayer, 
 When livid hate, with redly reeking sword, 
 
 Has clutched her by the hair? 
 
 O did'st Thou not look down 
 Upon her cruel buffetings of scorn, 
 And watch her temples stream beneath the crown, 
 
 Made of the mocking thorn ? 
 
 And dost Thou not discern 
 How the fierce, pitiless rabble casteth lots 
 For her white robes — alas! so rent and torn, 
 
 And smeared with purple spots ? 
 
 O when she held the cup, 
 On those wild nights of her Gethsemane; — 
 Father in Heaven, did she not still look up, 
 
 Firm and unmoved — to Thee ? 
 
 And when the bloody sweat 
 Oozed from the blue veins of her shuddering limbs, 
 
 54 
 
Rally! 
 
 Was not the burning clasp of agony met 
 With calm triumphant hymns ? 
 
 0, if she be Thy child, 
 And Thou art God, burst now this dread eclipse, 
 And let her pass forth, free and undefiled, 
 
 With Thy breath on her lips. 
 
 RALLY ! 
 
 Inscribed to the ex-soldiers and sailors of the Union armies and 
 navies, 1872. 
 
 O 
 
 COMRADES, who rose in your grandeur and 
 j might, 
 
 When the land of our love was in danger, 
 And Liberty girdled your loins for the fight 
 
 As you sprang to protect and avenge her; 
 O, brothers, whose tread, like the thunder of God, 
 
 Shook city and mountain and valley — 
 Once more the old bugle-notes echo abroad, 
 
 And once more our country cries, Rally! 
 
 Not now with the banners of battle unrolled, 
 The steel-fronted ranks standing steady; 
 
 Not now with the terrible calmness of old, 
 When the guns were unlimbered and ready; 
 
 55 
 
Rally! 
 
 Not now with the heats as when columns were sped 
 
 For bloodiest taking and giving — 
 But only with Honor for all of our Dead, 
 
 And Justice for all of our Living. 
 
 Bring ballots, not bullets — bring spirits that burn 
 
 With noble and knightly endeavor, 
 To keep our bright harvests of Progress unshorn 
 
 By a sheaf, of their fullness forever. 
 Bring love that can pardon the sorrowful past, 
 
 Bring hopes that are broad as our border; 
 But bring the old Manhood which, unto the last, 
 
 Stood Alp-like for Union and Order! 
 
 We fought, and we conquered — they fought, and they 
 fell — 
 
 And Freedom arose in her beauty; 
 But our swords were not edged with the rancors of hell — 
 
 They were sharpened for Country and Duty. 
 The sternest and swiftest when armies are launched, 
 
 And the onset of daring is shouted, 
 Are tender as women when wounds should be staunched 
 
 For the broken and ruined and routed. 
 
 We cherish no hatreds — our breath is as sweet 
 
 As the smell of the midsummer clover; 
 When the arms of our foemen were stacked at our feet, 
 
 That moment our anger was over. 
 
 56 
 
Rally! 
 
 Wrath softened to pity the instant their cry 
 
 Took form of alarm and disaster, 
 And we buried our ire in the grave of the Lie 
 
 Above whose dark corpse we stood Master. 
 
 Our hurts are as nothing — our gashes and scars 
 
 Are worn without boastings and shamings: — 
 What have men who have climbed to the steeps of the 
 stars 
 
 To do with Earth's vauntings and claimings ? 
 But the Altars of Righteousness reared on the mounds 
 
 Where our canonized heroes lie sleeping — 
 Not a stone must be touched while the sun swings his 
 rounds, 
 
 And our sabres are still in our keeping! 
 
 From your fields, then, and firesides, from workshops 
 and plow, 
 
 O, comrades, come forth in your splendor, 
 Recrowning the Victor and Saver whom now 
 
 Our temples demand as Defender! 
 Fling out the great cry which you flung when the breath 
 
 Of the cannon blew hot in your faces: — 
 One Banner, one Being, one Freedom, one Faith, 
 
 For immutable bulwark and basis! 
 
 57 
 
IN MEMORIAM 
 
 Read at the Annual Encampment of Pennsylvania Departm 
 Grand Army of the Republic, Pittsburg, January 26, 1876. 
 
 GREAT Greece hath her Thermopylae, 
 Stout Switzerland her Tell; 
 The Scott his Wallace heart — and we 
 
 Have saints and shrines as well. 
 The graves of glorious Marathon 
 
 Are green above the dead, 
 And we have battle-fields whereon 
 The grass at root is red. 
 
 . Not only in the grizzled past 
 
 Tingled heroic blood; 
 Not only were its swart sons cast 
 
 In knightly mold and mood; 
 Altar of sacrifice perfumed 
 
 Our hot, sulphuric air; 
 And Sidney's shining manhood bloomed 
 
 Around us everywhere. 
 
 Brands, regnant as the stainless sword 
 That grazed King Arthur's thigh, 
 
 53 
 
In Memoriam 
 
 What time our battle instincts stirred, 
 
 Flashed bare beneath the sky; 
 We felt the rowels of honor prick 
 
 As keenly as did he 
 Who sowed his savage epoch thick 
 
 With perfect chivalry. 
 
 Cceur-de-lions on every field, 
 
 Sweet saints in every home, 
 Through whose dear helping stood revealed 
 
 The joy of martyrdom — 
 Compassed by whose assuring loves, 
 
 Our comrades dared and died 
 As blithely as a bridegroom moves 
 
 To meet his glowing bride. 
 
 Though tears be salt, and wormwood yet 
 
 Is bitter to the taste, 
 God's heart is tender, and doth let 
 
 No sorrow fail or waste. 
 O, mothers of our Gracchi! when 
 
 You gave your jewels up, 
 A continent of hopeless men 
 
 Grew rich in boundless hope. 
 
 Renown stands mute beside the graves 
 With which the land is scarred; 
 
 59 
 
In Memoriam 
 
 Unheralded our splendid braves 
 Went forth unto the Lord; 
 
 No poet hoards their humble names 
 In his immortal scrolls, 
 
 But not the less the darkness flames 
 With their illumined souls. 
 
 Beneath the outward havoc, they 
 
 The inward mercy saw; 
 High intuitions of duty lay 
 
 On them as strong as law; 
 Beyond the bloody horizon 
 
 They marked the soft rains stored, 
 And heard heaven's tranquil voices run 
 
 When earth's fierce cannon roared. 
 
 O, little mounds that cost so much! 
 
 We compass what you teach; 
 And our worse grossness feels the touch 
 
 Of your uplifting speech. 
 You thrill us with the thoughts that flow 
 
 In Eucharistic wine, 
 And by our holy dead we know 
 
 That life is still divine. 
 
 60 
 
SALVETE MIUTES! 
 
 Read at the Army of the Cumberland Reunion, 1873. 
 
 WELCOME! and when we say it, we pack our 
 hearts in the saying, 
 Just as we did in the days war-crested, flaming and 
 
 thunderous, 
 When half the people were fighting and half the people 
 
 * were praying, 
 And slowly from crimson quags the granite of Peace 
 grew under us. 
 
 Ah, those were lofty days when, straight through our 
 
 mincing and canting, 
 The Soul of the Nation flashed, and gripped the hilt of 
 
 its brand, 
 And drained its aloes like wine, and strode forth, kindled 
 
 and panting, 
 Hewing, in forest of Lies, clear space for the Truth to 
 
 stand. 
 
 Ah, those were mighty days! mighty for stress and for 
 
 sorrow, 
 And mighty for regnant Manhood that turned them to 
 
 glory and gain; 
 
 61 
 
Salvete Milites ! 
 
 What would have been the cast of Humanity's crowned 
 
 to-morrow, 
 Save for our yesterdays of turbulent passion and pain ? 
 
 Save for the vivid swords which our reverent hearths 
 
 are keeping, 
 Save for the eloquent guns that held high faith with the 
 
 State, 
 Save for the heroes that sleep, and those who pass to 
 
 their sleeping, 
 Save for the dead that are shrined and for the living 
 
 who wait ? 
 
 This is our time of thrift, of Commerce, and Art, and of 
 
 Science, 
 And Nature, our nursing-mother, healeth the hurts of 
 
 war: 
 But the luster lights of our years are the sacrificial 
 
 giants 
 Who clave our blackness asunder and beaconed us 
 
 whepe we are. 
 
 Thomas, poised Titan of Battle; and Sheridan, Wrath's 
 
 Archangel; 
 And Grant, whose Cosmic purpose not Chaos itself 
 
 could shake; 
 
 62 
 
Salvete Milites ! 
 
 And lance-like Sherman, who spurred with the Century's 
 
 sharp evangel 
 Into our century's drowse, and clarioned Sloth awake. 
 
 And Hooker climbing the tlouds where his quarry 
 
 perched above him; 
 And Meade, Disciple of Duty — our hearts bend over his 
 
 grave; 
 And plumed McPherson the splendid, the true Heavens 
 
 guard him and love him; 
 And the scepterless kings of the ranks — the vast, un- 
 
 laureled brave ! 
 
 Living or dead, Earth thrills with their luminous fervor 
 of spirit; 
 
 Living or dead, their blood hath entered into our veins; 
 
 Their voice — the nebulous stars of the pinnacled firma- 
 ment hear it; 
 
 Their work — in the nethermost pits its august influence 
 reigns. 
 
 For what are our times and spaces ? Leonidas greeted 
 
 Warren; 
 Under our scarlet fields great Marathon's secret ran. 
 Nothing is past or future, nothing is hidden or foreign. 
 The speech of Freedom is one, and one is the soul of 
 
 Man. 
 
 63 
 
OF LIBERTY AND CHARITY 
 
 O, wherefore should ill ever flow from ill, 
 And pain still keener pain forever breed ? 
 
 We all are brethren ; even the slaves who kill 
 For hire are men ; and do avenge misdeed 
 On the misdoer, doth but Misery feed 
 
 With her own broken heart. 
 
 —Shelley. 
 
 I. 
 
 SO sang the wondrous singer all compact 
 Of inspiration and prophetic fire; 
 All built of instincts whose divineness tracked 
 
 Music to its first springs, and did acquire 
 The secret of the Everlasting Fact, 
 
 To which the poets of the world aspire, 
 And made the land which chased him o'er the seas 
 Drunk with the wine of his fierce melodies. 
 
 ii. 
 
 He, being dead, yet speaketh; his great songs 
 Run up and down the listening Universe 
 
 Whitening the cheeks of Tyrannies and Wrongs, 
 Smiting Oppression with a lyric curse; 
 
 Fusing the alien thoughts of alien throngs 
 So that they dwell in spiritual intercourse, 
 
 And breathing like a sweet wind of the south 
 
 On wan lips wasted by the troublous drouth 
 
 64 
 
Of Liberty and Charity 
 
 While lasts the language, his high hymns shall last; 
 
 While stirs the heroic impulse, he shall stir 
 The hearts of many like a bugle blast; 
 
 And as the steed doth quicken to the spur, 
 Men's souls shall quicken when his strains have passed 
 
 Into their pulses, and grow worthier 
 Of that ineffable beauty which he saw 
 With his clear eyes of tenderness and awe. 
 
 On him the sense of human brotherhood 
 Lay like a Prophet's burden; if there ran 
 
 Immortal maledictions in his blood 
 For whatsoever desecrated Man — 
 
 Nathless a lute-like voice of pity wooed 
 The foolish evil-doer. His stern ban 
 
 Was for the sin — upon the sinner's lips 
 
 He laid the kisses of clean fellowships. 
 
 To him the stature of a man was as 
 
 The stature of an angel; he could see — 
 
 Albeit but dimly, as through darkened glass — 
 Gleams of a dread and awful sanctity 
 
 Crowning the spotted foreheads, which, alas! 
 Scarce felt their solemn crowning. Equally 
 
 65 
 
Of Liberty and Charity 
 
 He looked on kings and beggars; on the attaint 
 As on the hero and the praying saint. 
 
 VI. 
 
 He saw Heaven's rivers of compassion roll 
 
 To the uttermost ends of Being; and he strove 
 
 With all the hoarded splendor of his soul 
 
 To make the lean earth bless itself with Love, 
 
 And crown itself with Love's grand aureole, 
 Whereby the rhythmic garlands which he wove 
 
 Were wonderful for beauty — iris-hued 
 
 With the great glow of God's infinitude. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Thou winged Spirit, eagle-plumed for power, 
 And flight beyond the daring of the eye! 
 
 We have sore need of thee in this dark hour, 
 When all the wells of kindness are drained dry, 
 
 And popular passion rages to deflower 
 
 The popular Conscience, and make Victory 
 
 The procuress of Vengeance, and the lusts 
 
 Of dragon-eyed suspicions and mistrusts. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Let Liberty run onward with the years, 
 And circle with the seasons; let her break 
 
 66 
 
Of Liberty and Charity 
 
 The tyrant's harshness, the oppressor's spears; 
 
 Bring ripened recompenses that shall make 
 Supreme amends for sorrow's long arrears; 
 
 Drop holy benison on hearts that ache; 
 Put clearer radiance into human eyes, 
 And set the glad earth singing to the skies. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Let her voice thunder at the doors of kings, 
 
 And lighten in black dungeons. Let her breath 
 
 Stir the dry bones of peoples till there springs 
 Life's fruitful vigor out of barren death, 
 
 And, roused, vast millions clap triumphant wings 
 O'er the mean devils which have hindered faith; 
 
 And men's tall growths of excellence express 
 
 Invincible, puissant nobleness. 
 
 But let her do all worthily; let not 
 
 The foul contagions of our selfishness 
 
 Stain her immaculate purity, nor blot 
 
 The brightness of her vesture, nor make less 
 
 The marvelous divineness of her thought, 
 Nor the rapt wisdom of her utterances, 
 
 Nor that orbed splendor of her perfect light, 
 
 Which is God's morning promised to the night. 
 
 67 
 
Of Liberty and Charity 
 
 XI. 
 
 And ye, O sovran people of the land, 
 
 Crowned with her benedictions, lifted up 
 
 From chaos and low tracts of shifting sand, 
 And owlish places wherein ye did grope, 
 
 To the delectable mountains which command 
 Far visions of your sanctuaries of hope — 
 
 Be yet to Mercy and to Love as true 
 
 As Love and Mercy have been unto you. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Behold! the things are possible to these 
 Which are not possible to wrath; they bear 
 
 The secret of the laden mysteries 
 
 Piled like packed doom in the thick-boding air; 
 
 At their fair girdles hang the mystic keys 
 
 Which unlock inmost meanings; their brows wear 
 
 The sole serenities that consecrate 
 
 The masters of the subtle sphinx of Fate. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Clean natures coin pure statutes. Let us cleanse 
 The hearts that beat within us; let us mow 
 
 Clear to the roots our falseness and pretense, 
 Tread down our rank ambitions, overthrow 
 
 Our braggart moods of puffed self-consequence, 
 Plow up our hideous thistles which do grow 
 
 68 
 
Retrospective and Introspective 
 
 Faster than maize in May-time, and strike dead 
 The base infections our low greeds have bred. 
 
 For lo! our climbing purpose is in vain, 
 
 In vain the vivid speech that glows and burns, 
 
 In vain our throes of sacrificial pain; 
 Empty of hand our Liberty returns 
 
 From the broad fields where waves her golden grain; 
 Balked of its future our sad presence mourns; 
 
 Baffled is all our being until we 
 
 On Freedom's august brows write Charity. 
 
 RETROSPECTIVE AND INTROSPECTIVE 
 
 I SIT alone in silentness, 
 And dream, and muse, and ponder; 
 Re-live the days of battle-stress, 
 Re-tread the fields of thunder; 
 Re-walk the wastes where Carnage fed 
 
 His hounds, with blood for water; 
 Re-view the cities of the dead, 
 The bivouacs of slaughter. 
 
 6 9 
 
Retrospective and Introspective 
 
 I see the desolated homes, 
 
 The ruined altar-places, 
 The symbols of dread martyrdoms 
 
 Written in women's faces; 
 I hear the sonless father's sighs, 
 
 The bereaved mother's praying, 
 The little children's sobbing cries, 
 
 Orphaned amid their playing. 
 
 I mark the myriad souls that swoon 
 
 Beneath War's cruel splinters; 
 The widowed lives that dwell alone 
 
 In everlasting winters; 
 The unkissed lips which never shall 
 
 Be kissed on any morrow; 
 The hopeless eyes so terrible 
 
 With unavailing sorrow. 
 
 I see the lifting of the ban 
 
 Our evil-doing brought us; 
 The clearer views of Life and Man 
 
 Which Heaven's swift justice taught us. 
 I watch the homeward-hastening feet 
 
 Of crowned and laureled legions, 
 And thrill beneath the calms that greet 
 
 The aching battle-regions. 
 
 70 
 
Retrospective and Introspective 
 
 O Northmen, brothers! were not we 
 
 Copartners in the sinning ? 
 Have we been leal to Liberty 
 
 Through all, from the beginning? 
 Did we upon no trembling slave 
 
 The shackles ever rivet ? 
 Give others that which ye I gave, 
 
 Saith God — but do we give it ? 
 
 If by the Lord's high Fatherhood 
 
 The black man is our brother, 
 Dare our unfilial arms exclude 
 
 The white man for another ? 
 Are we so clean that we dare scowl 
 
 On any one attainted ? 
 While we brand other hearts as foul, 
 
 Have ours indeed repented ? 
 
 Shall we who toadied to the Wrong 
 
 In sycophantic meekness, 
 What time its loins were broad and strong, 
 
 Play tyrant in its weakness ? 
 Have we who, in our by-gone days, 
 
 Ran liveried beside it, 
 No covert in the untrodden ways, 
 
 Where pitying Death may hide it? 
 
 71 
 
Retrospective and Introspective 
 
 Could we drain dry the bitter cup 
 
 Of life's humiliation. 
 Without one tender word of hope, 
 
 Or love's extenuation ? 
 Have we no honorable faith 
 
 For those whose swords are broken ? 
 Conditions ? — must our shibboleth 
 
 By all the world be spoken ? 
 
 No man can climb so close to God 
 
 But needeth to beseech Him, 
 Nor lapse so far toward devilhood 
 
 That mercy can not reach him; 
 We stand, with all, on level ground, 
 
 In equal human fashion, 
 Encompassed by the blue profound 
 
 Of Infinite Compassion! 
 
 Shake hands, then, o'er the rusted swords, 
 
 O, blood-bedraggled nation; 
 Smile down the past with sweet accords 
 
 Of reconciliation; 
 Walk brotherly and lovingly 
 
 The upward paths of duty, 
 And let the kings and tyrants see 
 
 A People's kingly beauty! 
 
 72 
 
10 TRIOMPHE! 
 
 NOT ever, in all human time, 
 Did any man or nation 
 Plant foot upon the peaks sublime 
 
 Of Mount Transfiguration, 
 But first, in long preceding hours 
 
 Of dread and solemn Being, 
 Crashed battle 'gainst Satanic powers, 
 Alone with The All-Seeing. 
 
 God's glory lights no mortal brows 
 
 Which sorrow hath not wasted; 
 No wine hath He for lips of those 
 
 His lees who never tasted. 
 Nor ever, till in bloodiest stress 
 
 The heart is well approved, 
 Does the All-brooding Tenderness 
 
 Cry, This is my Beloved! 
 
 O land through years of shrouded nights 
 
 In triple blackness groping 
 Toward the far prophetic lights 
 
 That beacon the world's hoping, — 
 
 73 
 
Io Triomphe! 
 
 Behold! no tittle shalt thou miss 
 
 Of that transforming given 
 To all who, dragged to hell's abyss, 
 
 Hold fast their grip on heaven. 
 
 The Lord God's purpose throbs along 
 
 Our stormy turbulences; 
 He keeps the sap of nations strong 
 
 With hidden recompenses. 
 The Lord God sows His righteous grain 
 
 In battle-blasted furrows, 
 And draws from present days of pain 
 
 Large peace for calm to-morrows. 
 
 Brothers! beneath our brimming tears 
 
 Lies nobler cause for singing 
 Than ever in the shining years 
 
 When all our vales were ringing 
 With happy sounds of mellow Peace, 
 
 And all our cities thundered 
 With lusty echoes, and our seas 
 
 By freighted keels were sundered. 
 
 For lo! the branding flails that drave 
 Our husks of foul self from us, 
 
 Show all the watching heavens we have 
 Immortal grain of promise; 
 
 74 
 
Io Triomphe! 
 
 And lo! the dreadful blasts which blew 
 
 In gusts of fire amid us, 
 Have scorched and winnowed from the true 
 
 The Falseness that undid us. 
 
 No floundering more, for mind or heart, 
 
 Among the lower levels; 
 No welcome more for moods that sort 
 
 With satyrs and with devils; 
 But over all our fruitful slopes, 
 
 On all our plains of beauty, 
 Fair temples for fair human hopes, 
 
 And altar-thrones for Duty. 
 
 Wherefore, O ransomed people, shout; 
 
 O banners, wave in glory; 
 O bugles, blow the triumph out, 
 
 O drums, strike up the story. 
 Clang! broken fetters, idle swords 
 
 Clap hands, O States, together; 
 And let all praises be the Lord's, 
 
 Our Savior and our Father! 
 
 75 
 
THE JOY GUN 
 
 BORNE on the wings of the Northern breeze, 
 Wafted on airs from happy seas, 
 The word of the Lord by His servant's mouth 
 Came to the bondsmen of the South, 
 And young and old, with a sudden cry, 
 Answered, "Yea, Master, here am I." 
 
 With the dread of his old life shuddering through him, 
 With the hope of his new life beckoning to him, 
 In his heart the goad of the troubled eyes 
 Of those whose prayers flew on before him, 
 And a vast, vague dream of broad free skies 
 Bending like God's dear pity o'er him, 
 The black man looked in our general's face, 
 Speaking his word for himself and race. 
 
 He was only a black man — grim and gaunt, 
 Torn and tattered, and lean from want, 
 Mixed with the slime of the oozing fen 
 Wherein he had crouched from tiger-men; 
 Poor and ignorant, mean and low, 
 Blossom of ages of shame and woe, 
 Cowed by scourges and chains and whips, 
 
 76 
 
The Joy Gun 
 
 Starved of bountiful fellowships; 
 
 Dull of feeling, heavy of brain, 
 
 Dead to the finer spiritual sense 
 
 Which through the white man's passion and pain 
 
 Sees that the heavens are clear, and thence 
 
 God shining on us. Only a slave 
 
 With the ache in his breast which dumb souls have. 
 
 But, as he stood there, bare of head, 
 
 Telling the Union general 
 
 How his people rose and fled 
 
 Out from the very gates of hell 
 
 Into the darkness, into the night, 
 
 Through terrible leagues of mortal flight, 
 
 Past forest and thicket, swamp and flood, 
 
 Leaving a trail of human blood; 
 
 And how he, too, had crawled and crept 
 
 Through the armed watch the enemy kept 
 
 To see for his brethren hidden there, 
 
 Down in the jungles' fastnesses, 
 
 Whether indeed a pathway were 
 
 Open to freedom for him and his; 
 
 And how they waited with straining ear, 
 
 And hearts on tiptoe of hope and fear, 
 
 To catch the throb of the " blessed gun " 
 
 Which he prayed might shout to them, all was won; 
 
 The general said it should be done. 
 
 77 
 
The Joy Gun 
 
 Oh ! it was wonderful to trace 
 
 How, o'er his black and stolid face 
 
 Shot, like an instant gleam from the sun, 
 
 A pained rapture, an awful grace, 
 
 An august look in his lifted eyes, 
 
 'Tranced with a vision through which there brake 
 
 The self-same Infinite voice which spake 
 
 To the dead Lazarus, saying, "Arise!" 
 
 So was the human soul within him 
 
 Drawn from its hideous sepulcher 
 
 To where archangels might woo and win him, 
 
 And the breath of the Lord be comforter. 
 
 So from his brow like a cowl there slid 
 
 The stagnate seeming of sullen care, 
 
 In the dark of which had the man lain hid — 
 
 A new life to the roots of his hair; 
 
 The glory of God eclipsed the brute, 
 
 And the slave fell dead at the freedman's foot. 
 
 Oh, gun of freedom! that then and there 
 Poured for the fainting fugitives 
 Oil of gladness upon despair, 
 Healing balm upon bruised lives. 
 Albeit thou speakest but once, I know 
 That thy grand thunder shall never die, 
 But gather an ampler voice, and grow 
 In greatening echoes around the sky, 
 
 78 
 
We Need You Not 
 
 Over the hurtling shouts of war, 
 
 Landward and seaward, near and far, 
 
 Till every tyranny reels and rocks, 
 
 Smitten to hell by mighty shocks, 
 
 And the wasted hearts of the weary rouse, 
 
 Springborn, from desolate wintry drowse, 
 
 And its blessed billows of music roll 
 
 To shackled body and thralled soul, 
 
 Slave and master, bond and free, 
 
 Till the whole earth, Lord, lies pure in Thee. 
 
 WE NEED YOU NOT 
 
 OUT of the way there! ye who stand 
 Between us and the blessed light 
 That streams up where the promised land 
 
 Dawns faint and far upon our sight. 
 Out of the way there! ye who call 
 
 Our faith and works too bold and hot; 
 ' We move in column like a wall! 
 
 Out of the way! We need you not. 
 
 Out of the way there! ye who give 
 Your free hopes reaching to the skies, 
 
 For that poor, trembling fugitive — 
 The thing ye call a " Compromise." 
 
 79 
 
We Need You Not 
 
 Out of the way there! ye who fear 
 
 To accept the right or choose the wrong! 
 
 Out of the way there — insincere! 
 And let the people pass along. 
 
 Out of the way there! ye who think 
 
 God's battles can be bought and sold; 
 God's voices silenced by the chink 
 
 Of silver, or the touch of gold! 
 Back to the safety which befits 
 
 Your smooth lips and your scented words; 
 Out of the way there — hypocrites! 
 
 For this is Truth's hour and the Lord's. 
 
 What! shall our souls that saw and heard 
 
 The living covenant of God, 
 And marked His Angel's flaming sword 
 
 In all the places that we trod, 
 Shall we tear off the crowns that press 
 
 Our foreheads as the touch of stars, 
 And, for your velvet littleness, , 
 
 Give up our grand old battle-scars ? 
 
 Out of the way! ye can not buy 
 
 Our Israel with your subtle creeds, 
 
 While all the wilderness doth lie 
 In manna for our human needs! 
 
 80 
 
The Question 
 
 Back to your fleshpots and your chains, 
 Your brackish waters and your thirst. 
 
 Thank God our manhood still remains! 
 Stand back! we will not be accurst. 
 
 THE QUESTION 
 
 AMEN!" I cried in battle time, 
 When my beautiful heroes perished, — 
 The earth of the Lord shall bloom sublime 
 
 By the blood of its martyrs nourished. 
 ' Amen! " I said, when their limbs were hewn, 
 And their wounds showed blue and ghastly; 
 The strength of a man may fail and swoon, 
 But the truth shall conquer lastly. 
 
 And "Amen!" I cried, when victory's hymn 
 
 Swelled over our crown'd banners; 
 When our eyes with the blinding tears were dim, 
 
 Because of our heart's hosannas; 
 But I will not basely stab my death 
 
 With a poniard-stroke whilst giving 
 Amen to the lie that seeks to spread 
 
 Its black wrong over the living. 
 
 81 
 
The Question 
 
 If you shake clean hands with the truth you shall 
 
 Read life's essential meaning, 
 And through the apocalyptical 
 
 Vineyards of light walk gleaming; 
 But not in the traffic-mongering marts 
 
 Where you place a market value 
 On the Christward aching of human hearts, 
 
 Hath His angel ought to tell you. 
 
 You think that your opaque eyes are one 
 
 With the eagle's eyes for vigor, 
 While you turn your back on the truth, and shun 
 
 Its light with a curse for the " nigger." 
 You prate of mercy and — cotton bales, 
 
 But I fancy you are not minded 
 That justice, holding the awful scales, 
 
 Being blind, is color-blinded. 
 
 Can you patch a cloak for your nakedness 
 
 With shreds of your own contriving ? 
 Will your shoddy endure the strain and stress 
 
 Of the looms that the gods are driving ? 
 Behold the winds of the Lord shall tear 
 
 Your beggarly rags in sunder, 
 And leave you shivering, shamed, and bare 
 
 To the search of its packed thunder. 
 
 82 
 
Our Wessons 
 
 Will you drowse your lives with a new pretense, 
 
 Ere the blood is dry in the valleys 
 That were lately soaked for the old offense; 
 
 Will you learn anew what hell is ? 
 Do you think that the grapes of God will slip 
 
 Out of reach when you are sated, 
 Or that of his sovran mastership 
 
 One jot will be abated ? 
 
 From the unsung graves where our heroes died 
 
 In a regnant scorn of dying; 
 From souls that out of the dark have cried 
 
 Through ages of bitter crying; 
 From the solemn heavens, where all must stand, 
 
 Calling to every spirit, 
 A voice sweeps warning across the land, — 
 
 O brothers! let us hear it! 
 
 OUR LESSONS 
 
 Read Before the Army of Potomac Society, Harrisburg, Pa., 
 May 12, 1874. 
 
 WELL, we acknowledge it; we admit 
 That peace is blessed, that war is awful, 
 And when we nobly compass it 
 The gain of commerce is fair and lawful. 
 
 S3 
 
Our Lessons 
 
 We grant that sickles and pruning hooks 
 Are better than swords and battle-axes; 
 
 And wine and honey, and art and books, 
 Sweeter than wounds and debts and taxes. 
 
 But still, if by treacherous yielding chance 
 
 The land hath trafficked its splendid anger 
 For only a lean inheritance 
 
 Of outward lustness and inward languor, 
 Why then, O comrades, it were full well 
 
 If the shocks of our armies were not over; 
 For the Lord made men to conquer Hell, 
 
 And not to fatten like kine in clover. 
 
 Our thrifts that crown us, our calms that fold 
 
 Our strength far stretching to the Equator, 
 Are less than our simplest hurts of old, 
 
 Except as Liberty makes them greater. 
 O riddled banners! O rusted guns! 
 
 Your grandeur moves in endless shining, 
 Because wherever our Empire runs 
 
 Manhood and law run intertwining. 
 
 If the loud paeans o'er shotless guns 
 Mean also glory unto the Father, 
 
 So that wherever our border runs 
 Justice and mercy may run together; 
 
 84 
 
Our Lessons 
 
 Why, then I answer that every song 
 
 You sing to the sweet peace brooding o'er us, 
 
 Cleaving the ether shall bear along 
 The added burden cf my weak chorus. 
 
 Behold! our culminant battle-cries 
 
 Climb to the sapphire-crested portals! 
 We hold clean covenant with the skies, 
 
 Fair faith with the pinnacled immortals! 
 And lo! the thunderous blasts that blew 
 
 In sulphurant gusts of fire amid us, 
 Scorched and winnowed the breasted true 
 
 From the frontal falseness that undid us. 
 
 The Master's purposes throb along 
 
 Our stoniest wraths of turbulences; 
 He stayeth the sap of Peoples strong 
 
 With hidden rigors and recompenses; 
 For He scatters His everlasting grain 
 
 In bloodiest, war-drenched field and furrows; 
 And reaps from Yesterday's woe and pain, 
 
 Peace for the larger world's to-morrows. 
 
 Let all the loud voices radiant shout! 
 
 Ye clustering flags move on in glory! 
 Brave bugles blow the victories out! 
 
 Beat drums, the knperishable story! 
 
 85 
 
Justice or Trade 
 
 While olden foemen, with new accords 
 Of knightliest reconciliation, 
 
 Clasp hands across innoxious swords 
 Wedded to our great hero-nation. 
 
 JUSTICE OR TRADE 
 
 THAN this no further, I am afeared. 
 I see an Infinite splendor waiting; 
 I see an Infinite Terror reared; 
 
 I see a people hesitating 
 Between a narrowing shibboleth 
 
 And a cry that climbs to the sapphire portals, 
 Between low pacts that are crammed with death 
 And a covenant with the Immortals. 
 
 For God's dread tongues of terrible fire, 
 
 Eating the darkness that plucked our vitals, 
 And cast us prone in the hungry mire, 
 
 Achoke with agony — what requitals? 
 Behold in lowliest human guise 
 
 The Master standeth; the hour is going; 
 We look with straight incredulous eyes; 
 
 Our false lips move, and the cock is crowing. 
 
 86 
 
The Grand Army 
 
 Certes, our creditors need their dues, 
 
 But also the Heavens will have just payment. 
 If they arraign us, I think we lose 
 
 All, and not merely food and raiment. 
 It hurts (does it not ?) when the flaming knives 
 
 Of a mad assasssin hew and stab us ? 
 Well, when the messenger arrives, 
 
 Shall we send the Nazarene or Barabbas ? 
 
 THE GRAND ARMY 
 
 Written for and sung in G. A. R. Posts as part of the RituaL 
 
 FROM eastern sea to western shore, 
 Loyally, right loyally, 
 And breasted like the knights of yore, 
 
 Royally, yes, royally, 
 Roused by the rebel cannon roar, 
 Our columns thickened more and more, 
 With prayers behind and faith before, 
 Rose the Union's Army Grand. 
 
 From hall and hut, from near and far, 
 
 Readily, most readily, 
 We sprang unto the cry of war, 
 
 Steadily, right steadily. 
 
 87 
 
The Grand Army 
 
 Stung by the crime that we abhor, 
 We girded on our armor for 
 Deliverance of the nation, or 
 
 Soldier's death on honor's field. 
 
 Through sun and gloom, through field and flood, 
 
 Gloriously, yes, gloriously, 
 We pressed our path in wounds and blood, 
 
 Victoriously, victoriously; 
 Graves grew beneath us where we stood; 
 By every vale, and mount, and wood, 
 They wait the reveille of God — 
 
 Soldiers of that Army Grand. 
 
 Heaven rest our comrades in their graves, 
 
 Lovingly, most lovingly; 
 Heaven beam upon our living braves, 
 
 Approvingly, approvingly; 
 And oh! where'er our banner waves, 
 Freedom shall beckon unto slaves, 
 So long as God protects and saves 
 
 What the Grand old Army won. 
 
THE DEFENSE OF LAWRENCE 
 
 [Written after hearing the account given the poet on his arrival 
 in Kansas, early in the fall of 1856, of the resistance made in 
 September of that year to the last pro-slavery attack on I<awrence, 
 Kansas, when a small number of Free State men successfully held 
 the place against 2,400 armed Missourians, and drove back their ad- 
 vance of 300 men.] 
 
 ALL night upon the guarded hill, 
 Until the stars were low, 
 Wrapped round as with Jehovah's will, 
 
 We waited for the foe; 
 All night the silent sentinels 
 
 Moved by like gliding ghosts; 
 All night the fancied warning bells 
 Held all men to their posts. 
 
 We heard the sleeping prairies breathe, 
 
 The forest's human moans, 
 The hungry gnashing of the teeth 
 
 Of wolves on bleaching bones; 
 We marked the roar of rushing fires, 
 
 The neigh of frightened steeds, 
 The voices as of far-off lyres 
 
 Among the river reeds. 
 
 89 
 
The Defense of Iyawrence 
 
 We were but thirty-nine who lay 
 
 Beside our rifles then; 
 We were but thirty-nine, and they 
 
 Were twenty hundred men. 
 Our lean limbs shook and reeled about, 
 
 Our feet were gashed and bare, 
 And all the breezes shredded out 
 
 Our garments in the air. 
 
 Sick, sick of all the woes which spring 
 
 Where falls the Southron's rod, 
 Our very souls had learned to cling 
 
 To freedom as to God; 
 And so we never thought of fear 
 
 In all those stormy hours, 
 For every mother's son stood near 
 
 The awful, unseen powers. 
 
 And twenty hundred men had met 
 
 And swore an oath of hell, 
 That, ere the morrow's sun might set, 
 
 Our smoking homes should tell 
 A tale of ruin and of wrath, 
 
 And damning hate in store, 
 To bar the freeman's western path 
 
 Against him evermore. 
 
 90 
 
The Defense of Lawrence 
 
 They came: the blessed Sabbath day, 
 
 That soothed our swollen veins, 
 Like God's sweet benediction, lay 
 
 On all the singing plains; 
 The valleys shouted to the sun, 
 
 The great woods clapped their hands, 
 And joy and glory seemed to run 
 
 Like rivers through the lands. 
 
 And then our daughters and our wives, 
 
 And men whose heads were white, 
 Rose sudden into kingly lives 
 
 And walked forth to the fight; 
 And we drew aim along our guns 
 
 And calmed our quickening breath, 
 Then, as is meet for Freedom's sons, 
 
 Shook loving hands with Death. 
 
 And when three hundred of the foe 
 
 Rode up in scorn and pride, 
 Whoso had watched us then might know 
 
 That God was on our side. 
 For all at once a mighty thrill 
 
 Of grandeur through us swept, 
 And strong and swiftly down the hill 
 
 Like Gideons we leapt. 
 
 9i 
 
The Defense of Lawrence 
 
 And all throughout that Sabbath day 
 
 A wall of fire we stood, 
 And held the baffled foe at bay, 
 
 And streaked the ground with blood. 
 And when the sun was very low 
 
 They wheeled their stricken flanks, 
 And passed on, wearily and slow, 
 
 Beyond the river* banks. 
 
 Beneath the everlasting stars 
 
 We bended child-like knees, 
 And thanked God for the shining scars 
 
 Of his large victories; 
 And some, who lingered, said they heard 
 
 Such wondrous music pass 
 As though a seraph's voice had stirred 
 
 The pulses of the grass. 
 
 * The Wakarusa, Kansas. 
 
 92 
 
"WE WILL SUBDUE YOU" 
 
 Reply to a Southern threat in 1856. 
 
 GO tell it to the slaves that quake 
 Amid your canefields and your swamps; 
 Go hiss it to the hearts you break 
 
 Beneath your scornful midnight lamps; 
 With curses out from cruel lips, 
 
 With tortures and with threats to kill, 
 And damned stripes from streaming whips 
 Subdue your chattels to your will. 
 
 But never speak these words to us 
 
 Who claim free breath on Freedom's soil, 
 Lest on your heads the slanderous 
 
 Black lie of infamy recoil. 
 We owe no fealty to you 
 
 Whose gold is slippery with the gore 
 Your cleaving knives and scourges drew 
 
 From the gashed souls you lord it o'er. 
 
 There breathes no driver in your clime, 
 
 Tho belted to the ribs with steel, 
 And choked with slavery's foul slime, 
 
 Of whom we dare not think and feel, 
 
 93 
 
"We Will Subdue You" 
 
 And speak, too, as the truth shall list, 
 
 In tones that scorch and words that warn, 
 
 Till pelted, pilloried and hissed, 
 
 He slinketh from the People's scorn. 
 
 Subdue ye those who spring from men 
 
 That Mayflower brought o'er the seas, 
 Who heard God talking with them, when, 
 
 Beneath their bent and praying knees, 
 The wintry rocks of Plymouth thrilled, 
 
 And startled like a living soul 
 At such deep cries of faith, that stilled 
 
 The lasht waves into calm control ? 
 
 Subdue the sons of those who fought 
 
 Their sturdy way on Bunker Hill, 
 Nor ever rested till they wrought 
 
 Heaven's meaning on a monarch's will! 
 Subdue the people who subdue 
 
 The forests and the mighty plains, 
 Who make the old earth ring anew 
 
 With nobler songs in higher strains! 
 
 Subdue us! well, perchance ye may 
 When, rising up to kindlier aims, 
 
 You cast your scowling pride away, 
 
 And wipe the tarnish from your names; 
 
 94 
 
Ireland's Misrule 
 
 Yea, when you win the highest place 
 Of honor in these peerless wars, 
 
 Of strength and truth and princely grace, 
 You shall be crowned as conquerors. 
 
 We give the grasp of loving hands, 
 
 We speak the word of kindly zeal, 
 To all who crown the swarming lands 
 
 With larger hopes of human weal. 
 But while your " chivalry " begets 
 
 Such ulcers on the Nation's heart, 
 We break like reeds your empty threats 
 
 And stand as strangers, wide apart. 
 
 IRELAND'S MISRULE 
 
 O ENGLAND, from thy glory and greatness of old, 
 So cankered with Commerce, so corrupted with 
 gold, 
 So hungry for Empire, so thirsty for blood, 
 So cruel to Man and so false to God! 
 
 Art thou the gemmed Island whose Liberty runs 
 
 Through circles of ages and cycles of suns; 
 
 From Arthur, and Alfred, and Harold, and all 
 
 The high sources whose grandeur but deepen thy fall? 
 
 95 
 
Ireland's Misrule 
 
 Art thou the brave land which the Poets have sung, 
 Round such a world's hopings have clustered and clung? 
 The beautiful land which earth's exiles hold dear ? 
 Was Sidney thy soldier — was Shakespeare thy seer ? 
 
 Did Wilberforce spring from thy loins ? Was it thou 
 Whom Hampden called Mother, and Milton did plow 
 The fields of his soul for, and Russell and Vane 
 Made the days of Aristides blossom again ? 
 
 O drugged with ambition, and sodden with pride, 
 
 And soaked with the tears which thy victims have cried, 
 
 Hypocrisy sweating from every pore, 
 
 And dabbled all over with splashes of gore! 
 
 Thy grip on the famishing throat of the Celt, 
 Thy foot on the shrines where his fathers have knelt; 
 Thy spies at his fireside, thy hounds on his track, 
 Thy sword in his bosom, thy stripes on his back ! 
 
 But the sigh of the parent, the sob of the child, 
 
 The breasts which are milkless, the eyes that look wild, 
 
 The hunger and nakedness, sorrow and pain, 
 
 The famine of body and fever of brain, 
 
 Which — piled like a pyramid unto the skies — 
 Convict thee of robbery, murder, and lies, 
 
 9 6 
 
Ireland's Misrule 
 
 Pluck bitterer woes upon thee than thy wrath, 
 At its blackest and worst, can hurl into his path. 
 
 Thy heel upon Ireland; but lo! upon thee 
 
 The curse of her children, wherever they be! 
 
 Thy chains on her limbs, thy clenched fist in her face, 
 
 But on thee the dark shame and damning disgrace! 
 
 Still with fire and falsehood defend as thou wilt 
 The wrong and the outrage, the crime and the guilt; 
 And still with glib rhetoric varnish the lie, 
 And still fling the flails of Oppression on high; 
 
 But the wrong will not prosper, the crime not endure; 
 For Fate — Heaven's stern headsmen — though silent, is 
 
 sure; 
 And never in all the long lapse of the past 
 Did a tyranny grow but it withered at last. 
 
 It withered and shriveled, it tottered and fell, 
 Mid bloody dishonor and ruin of hell; 
 With hisses for requiems, hootings for tears, 
 Accursed and abhorred through the evermore years. 
 
 Play fast and loose then, O England, and still 
 Make sharper the rack and more grievous the ill; 
 Bribe, bully and trample, defy and defraud, 
 Yet thou bribest not Justice, thou tramplest not God. 
 
 97 
 
SONGS OF 
 LOVE AND 
 CIRCUMSTANCE 
 
KANSAS 
 
 1856. 
 
 LIKE the soft hand of love falls the air on my brow, 
 And sweet are the memories clasping me now, 
 And holy as life is the beauty that thrills 
 Thro' the hearts of the valleys, the views of the hills, 
 
 And sacred my home o'er the far away sea; 
 Yet dearer than all is dear Kansas to me. 
 
 O she draws me and awes me with truth and with light, 
 As a Poet is drawn by the stars of the night, 
 
 And she touches the quick of my soul till it swims* 
 On a sea of pure glory and blossoming hymns. 
 
 And I love her with beauty that seems to excel 
 The grandeur of heaven and the terrors of hell. 
 
 But not for the lavishing riches she owns, 
 
 And not for the wealth of her mountainous thrones, 
 
 And not for the forests that girdle her streams, 
 Nor her plains that melt as the amber of dreams, 
 
 And not for the spirit-like swell of her slopes, 
 Do I crown her with all the delights of my hopes. 
 
Kansas 
 
 But for her queenliness, shown in the time 
 
 When her raiment was soiled by the fingers of crime, 
 
 When the green of her gardens was spattered with red, 
 And the terraces dripped with the blood of her dead, 
 
 And her widows and orphans sat wringing their hands, 
 While malice and murder stalked over her lands. 
 
 For the storm which flashed from her beautiful eyes 
 When her peerless affection was tempted with lies; 
 
 For the blow that she dealt in the treacherous face 
 Of the robber and spoiler who stood in her place; 
 
 And the joy of her tears, like the sun on the mists, 
 
 When she passed to the torture with chains on her 
 wrists. 
 
 For the majesty wreathing the steps of her youth, 
 And all of her loveliness, all of her truth; 
 
 For all the deep lessons of wisdom she taught, 
 
 And for all the great deeds which her strong hands 
 have wrought; 
 
 O, for this do I leap at the sound of her name, 
 
 And love her with love that mounts upward like flame. 
 
 102 
 
FATHER-LOVE 
 
 O EARTH is full of lovely things 
 Which our dear Father-God has made, 
 Of buds and blooms and gleaming wings, 
 And bursts of light and depths of shade. 
 
 O, thick across the purple skies 
 The wondrous flashing stars are strewn, 
 And bright with cherub-children's eyes 
 The glowing world is overgrown. 
 
 But never, in the woods at noon, 
 
 Or underneath the stars at night, 
 Or in the low sweet vales of June, 
 
 Or on the mountain's upper height, — 
 O, never thrilled my blood so much, 
 
 And never leaped my heart so wild, 
 As when I bowed my head to touch 
 
 The sweet lips of my first-born child. 
 
 O, in the unspeakable baptism 
 
 Of that strange love that o'er me stole, 
 
 How streamed the sacred, solemn chrism 
 Thro' all the fibers of my soul! 
 
 103 
 
Father-Love 
 
 And every silent yearning hope 
 Shot outward into sudden speech, 
 
 And when I drew my horoscope 
 
 The stars were close within my reach. 
 
 Ay! and I know that evermore 
 
 I have held higher talk with heaven, 
 In deeper whispers than before 
 
 That large new blessedness was given. 
 I could not part her precious hair 
 
 Nor look upon her sacred eyes, 
 And not within my full soul swear 
 
 To mark her steps in Paradise. 
 
 I hear her low voice in the hall, 
 
 Her liquid laugh among the flowers; 
 And pulse leaps unto pulse, and all 
 
 My life goes seeking her for hours. 
 And when she rises to my knee 
 
 And lightly nestles toward my cheek 
 With love that clings so utterly, 
 
 I clasp her, but I can not speak. 
 
 O, mid the tumult of the town, 
 
 The care the canker and the doubt, 
 
 And when the flaming sun goes down, 
 And when the holy stars are out; 
 
 104 
 
To a Friend 
 
 In the great stillness of the night, 
 And in the front of garish day, 
 
 She wraps me like a robe of light, 
 And turns to spirit all my clay. 
 
 God bless my child! I never knew 
 
 Life's vastness until she was born. 
 God bless my child! and keep her true 
 
 Through all her deeper-widening morn. 
 O, reach Thy Hand out through the years 
 
 And hold her near Thee undefiled; 
 And give her oil of joy for tears, 
 
 And Father, Father! bless my child. 
 
 TO A FRIEND 
 
 A MANY years have come and gone, 
 Dear friend, since you and I 
 First felt our two souls strangely drawn 
 Together utterly. 
 
 A many glorious promise-days, 
 And sacred star-crowned heights, 
 
 Since we stood thrilling in the blaze 
 Of new love's golden lights. 
 
 105 
 
A Picture 
 
 And purely as a Sabbath psalm, 
 
 And grandly as the sea, 
 Throughout all moods of storm and calm, 
 
 Your soul has clung to me. 
 
 And I, amid the whirl and roar 
 Of strifes where I have striven, 
 
 Have kept unsinned forever more 
 The glory it hath given. 
 
 So, when the great waves separate 
 
 Our closely clasped hands, 
 And we go forth to work and wait 
 
 In far off hopeful lands; 
 
 Then in all times of ill and good, 
 
 All hours of joy and woe, 
 God bless our holy brotherhood 
 
 Wherever we may go. 
 
 A PICTURE 
 
 BEAUTIFUL! beautiful! The great round moon 
 Hangs among the stars upon the verge of heaven, 
 Like a vast hope within a boundless soul 
 
 1 06 
 
A Picture 
 
 Brimful of lofty majesty; the stars 
 
 Wait on her steps, as glowing pages wait 
 
 Upon a gorgeous queen. 
 
 Onward she sweeps, 
 With regal footsteps up the vaulted sky, 
 Beaming fair smiles on all her satellites 
 As on a meek suitor beams a peerless maid. 
 Far in the West the glowing heavens bend down 
 Kissing the sunset hills, as one betrothed 
 Embraces his beloved. 
 
 To the South and dim, 
 The grand old Ocean, dark and deep, 
 Spreads out like an eternity; one ship 
 With her white folded wings lies anchored there, 
 Like an angel sleeping on the breast of God. 
 Hidden in yon thicket, hark! the nightingale 
 Pours her wild music in the ear of night, 
 Till it seems drunk with joy. Hark! how the excess 
 Of her sweet song streams thrilling from her soul 
 Sweet as the music of an angel's harp 
 Attuned by Gabriel's hand. 
 
 How mystical 
 And dreamlike comes the murmur of the stream 
 That babbles through the valley! It is like 
 A virgin beauty, who in bridal dreams 
 Vaguely and in half words tells unto the night 
 The secret of her soul. 
 
 107 
 
Burns 
 
 The panting breeze 
 Throbs tremulous on yon green hill of pines, 
 Like the hopeful shuddering of a stripling's heart, 
 Earnest, yet all untried. 
 
 Far-off I see 
 The red fires gleaming in the village homes, 
 Flashing their strange lights even at my feet, 
 As prophets flash their stirring flaming thoughts 
 Across the mists of time. 
 
 The green earth sleeps 
 ' Neath the eye of Heaven, like a fair girl 
 On whose white finger the betrothal ring, 
 Graven with her lover's name and set with gems, 
 Lies glittering like the stars. For thus hath God 
 Put this high name upon the virgin Earth 
 Whom he will some day wed! 
 
 BURNS 
 
 A LITTLE bird with gorgeous wing 
 And notes of sweet imagining, 
 Carolled away one sunny spring 
 
 Carelessly wild. 
 In truth, he was a wanton thing, 
 Nature's own child! 
 
 108 
 
Burns 
 
 Beneath a shady tree one day- 
 Were met some lords and ladies gay 
 Who came to pass the hours away 
 
 And time beguile, 
 While he upon the leanest spray 
 Sang all the while. 
 
 So soft his song, and aye so free, 
 
 So full of nature's melody 
 
 And truth and trust and sympathy, 
 
 That those who heard 
 Marveled such magic notes should be 
 
 Found in a bird. 
 
 The rich command when they entreat, 
 For he who sang so passing sweet 
 Flew down upon the ground to meet 
 
 Their specious smiles, 
 And soon, alas! his little feet 
 
 Were in the toils. 
 
 They took him to the town, and there 
 Displayed their wondrous prisoner 
 To all the noble and the fair 
 
 Who chose to see 
 That native of the mountain air. 
 
 That prodigy, 
 
 109 
 
Burns 
 
 So every one who came would bring 
 More flattery for that songster-thing! 
 And then they'd ask to hear him sing. 
 
 While he complied, 
 They'd pluck a feather from his wing 
 
 And slyly hide! 
 
 At length, as human nature will, 
 
 They tired when they had had their fill, 
 
 Cared not to know his matchless skill, 
 
 But passed him by; 
 When he, disgusted with his ill, 
 
 Essayed to fly. 
 
 But ah! he could not. Never more, 
 Whilst sweetly singing, might he soar 
 Heavenward, as oft he did before. 
 
 Man's praise he drank. 
 Flattery from him his pinions tore 
 
 And so — he sank! 
 
 Alas! alas! Such was the fate 
 Of Burns, the noble, not the great. 
 He grasped at flattery's cursed bait, 
 
 And so his life 
 Was crushed beneath fell sorrow's weight 
 
 And sickening strife! 
 
TWO 
 
 To Mary P. Nimmo 
 
 I WAS a poet; and sometimes, 
 When the lyric impulse touched my lips, 
 I sang my cheery and homely rhymes 
 
 Of simple loves and fellowships. 
 She w T as of those whose presence brings 
 
 A sense of the peace we can recall 
 
 In our far-off, angel-haunted springs, — 
 
 So I stood dreaming; that was all. 
 
 My heart was parched with terrible drouth, 
 
 Her heart with pity was dewy-sweet, 
 And ever around her sacred youth 
 
 All things holy and fair did meet. 
 O, in what meek unconscious mood 
 
 She wore the beautiful coronal 
 Of her perfect gracious womanhood! — 
 
 So I stood dreaming; that was all. 
 
 Closer and closer, nigher and nigher, 
 Something drew me each day to her, 
 
 And I dreamed (O passionate heart of fire!) 
 That I was not shut in a sepulcher, 
 
Two 
 
 Stifling forever a moaning cry, 
 
 Lest haply my heaviness should fall 
 Upon brooding lovers passing by — 
 
 Thus I stood dreaming; that was all. 
 
 O tender face I kiss in the night, 
 
 When I glide in sleep through my prison bars, 
 And my spirit walks erect in the light, 
 
 In the dawn of the everlasting stars! 
 O, eyes of sweet austerity! 
 
 O tender voice that thrilled in the hall 
 Like the sound of flutes on the open sea! — 
 
 So I stand dreaming; that is all. 
 
 serene lowliness of mien, 
 
 balmy spiritual effluence, 
 That made the air about her clean 
 
 With smells of Eden-innocence, 
 So that all evil things in the street 
 
 Crouched, when she passed, in the shade of the wall, 
 That else were stricken dead at her feetl — 
 
 Yet am I dreaming; that is all. 
 
 1 stand here now in the dark and think; 
 
 1 kneel here now in the dark, and pray: 
 " O Father! I will be strong to drink 
 
 My bitter aloes, if thou alway 
 
 112 
 
Byron 
 
 Wilt shine on the paths her feet must tread, 
 So that no hurt nor harming shall 
 
 Vex one dear hair of her precious head." 
 This is my covenant; that is all. 
 
 BYRON 
 
 HE was a wild, proud youth, with fiery eyes 
 Which but ensphered the image of his soul, 
 A thing of boundless passion, all unwise 
 As tameless steed impatient of control, 
 One of those strange incarnate mysteries 
 Whose lives like waves in headlong fury roll 
 Until, arrested by some sullen rock, 
 Their hearts are smote in pieces with the shock. 
 
 A burning fever lay within his hearty 
 
 Heating like fire the blood in every veir^ 
 
 And ever and anon a flash would start 
 
 Like lightning from his heart into his brain, 
 
 And lie there scorching, like a fiery dart, 
 
 Till, in the terrible madness of his pain, 
 
 In thoughts like those by which himself was riven, 
 
 He'd hurl his enmity at God and Heaven. 
 
 113 
 
Life and Love 
 
 But he was wretched! Poor child, he could not pray. 
 He could not own that he was weak and vile. 
 He might have revelled in the light of day, 
 Yet hugged his darkness closer all the while. 
 And so he let life's grandeur glide away, 
 And never on him fell one hope, one smile. 
 And then he died! As he had lived he died, 
 His white lips curled in bitterness and pride. 
 
 On a lone rock, amid a sea of souls, 
 
 His memory like a solemn specter stands, 
 
 And as in mighty waves it swells and rolls 
 
 There — in the tempest with uplifted hands 
 
 It warns them wildly off the reefs and shoals. 
 
 And so the tide streams on to other lands, 
 
 And evermore within its memory lies 
 
 That haggard phantom with its burning eyes. 
 
 LIFE AND LOVE 
 
 THERE is something to live for and something to 
 love 
 Wherever we linger, wherever we rove 
 There are thousands of sad ones to cheer and sustain 
 Till hopes that were hidden beam o'er them again. 
 
 114 
 
Song of Spring 
 
 There is something to live for and something to love, 
 For the spirit of Man is like garden or grove, 
 
 It will yield a sweet fragrance, but still you must toil, 
 And cherish the blossoms, and culture the soil. 
 
 There is something to live for and something to love, 
 'Tis a truth which the misanthrope ne'er can disprove, 
 
 For tho' thorns and thistles may choke up the flower, 
 Some beauty will grace the most desolate bower. 
 
 Then think on it, brother, wherever thou art, 
 
 Let the life be for men and the love for the heart, 
 
 For know that the pathway which leads us above 
 Is something to live for and something to love. 
 
 SONG OF SPRING 
 
 MY heart goes forth to meet the Spring 
 With the step of a bounding roe, 
 For it seems like the touch of a seraph's wing 
 When the pleasant south winds blow. 
 
 O, I love the loneliness that lies 
 
 In the smiling heart of May, 
 The beauty throbbing in violet eyes, 
 
 The breath of the fragrant hay. 
 
 ii5 
 
Letters from Home 
 
 There's a great calm joy in the song of birds, 
 And in the voice of the streams, 
 
 In the lowly peace of flocks and herds, 
 And our own soul's quiet dreams. 
 
 So my heart goes forth to meet the Spring 
 
 As a lover to his bride; 
 And over us both there broods the wing 
 
 Of the angel at her side. 
 
 LETTERS FROM HOME 
 
 LETTERS from my father's household, 
 Isled amid the far-off sea, 
 Swift-winged messengers of gladness, 
 
 Bearing rest and peace to me. 
 Father's calm and sacred counsel, 
 
 Mother's large and shining tears, 
 And my sister's brimming blessings 
 Flung across the mighty years. 
 
 Oh, the dear and loving letters! 
 
 Oh, my childhood's thronging dreams! 
 Oh, the ancient low-roofed cottage, 
 
 With its quaint old oaken beams ! 
 
 116 
 
Letters from Home 
 
 Oh, the haunts among the meadows, 
 And the moss-crowned garden seat, 
 
 Where the scented apple blossoms 
 Swept in waves about my feet. 
 
 And I sit and muse upon it 
 
 Till I seem to see it all; 
 See the rich grapes' purple clusters 
 
 Drooping from the leafy wall; 
 See the mellow pears a-ripening, 
 
 Breathe the breath of well-known flowers, 
 Watch the steady house clock marking 
 
 All the pulses of the hours. 
 
 Father's hair is growing whiter, 
 
 Mother's step is feebler now, 
 But the olden queen-like beauty 
 
 Lingers yet around her brow; 
 And the low, sweet tones that thrilled me, 
 
 And the lips I used to press, 
 Oh, the years can never win them 
 
 From their holy tenderness! 
 
 And the flashing eyes of laughter, 
 And the speech of merry scorn, 
 
 And the rippling auburn ringlets 
 Of our household's youngest born, 
 
 117 
 
Annunciation 
 
 These have melted and have deepened 
 
 To the glory and the grace 
 Of a tranquil maiden moving 
 
 Thoughtfully amid the place. 
 
 Letters from my father's household, 
 
 Isled amid the far-off sea, 
 Swift-winged messengers of gladness, 
 
 Bearing rest and peace to me. 
 Let the foaming world roar onward, 
 
 Let the sinless children play, 
 And the young bride clasp her husband, 
 
 I am wealthiest to-day. 
 
 ANNUNCIATION 
 
 IS the grave deep, dear? Deeper still is Love. 
 They can not hide thee from thy Father's heart. 
 Thou liest below, and I stand here above, 
 Yet we are not apart. 
 
 The lyric patter of the little feet 
 
 That made a poem of the nursery floor, 
 Thy sweet eyes dancing toward me down the street, 
 Are with me evermore. 
 
 118 
 
Annunciation 
 
 My breath is balmy with thy clinging kiss, 
 
 My hand is soft where thy soft fingers lay, 
 And yet there is a something which I miss 
 And mourn for night and day. 
 
 Mine eyes ache for thee; God's heaven is so high 
 
 We cannot see its singers, when thou dost 
 With thy lark's voice make palpitant all the sky, 
 I moan and pain the most. 
 
 Because the hunger of my spirit runs 
 
 Most swift in its swift asking after thee, 
 I yearn through all the systems and the suns, 
 But none doth answer me. 
 
 O, might I with thee fondle for an hour! 
 
 But now thou art too sacred; I must stand 
 
 Silent and reverent: thou hast grown to power, 
 
 And fitness and command. 
 
 And I walk here. Thou art above me now: 
 
 I may not longer teach thee anything. 
 Thou dost not heed my kisses on thy brow, 
 Nor any comforting. 
 
 How changed! How changed! A little while ago 
 And all the beautiful vast care was mine: 
 
 IIQ 
 
Inspection 
 
 Out from my bosom gushed the overflow 
 Of sacrificial wine; 
 
 And now thou art God's angel unto me. 
 
 Thus His ways mix, and he is ever good. 
 Reach me thy hand, Wife; we are held all three 
 In his Infinitude. 
 
 INSPECTION 
 
 LET them rave and let them lie: 
 What is that to you and I, 
 Soul of mine — we see the sky. 
 
 In these silences we hark 
 Something singing, and do mark 
 Something shining in the dark. 
 
 Though we bleed beneath the knives 
 Of the butcher, in our lives 
 Something fragrant yet survives, 
 
 Far beyond their blades of ill, 
 Brooding very calm and still, 
 Something which they can not kill. 
 
Inspection 
 
 Though the worn flesh fail and waste, 
 Though the lees have bitter taste, 
 Though the past be interlaced, 
 
 Well I know that at the last, 
 When the sudden hurt is past, 
 Solemn peace, serene and vast, 
 
 In my heart will nestle so, 
 That I shall not feel nor know 
 Any harm or any woe. 
 
 Sorrow is a little thing, 
 
 Is it not, Soul, when we bring 
 
 Conscience unto suffering ? 
 
 Though at first we swooned in death, 
 Yet when we had caught our breath, 
 And were squared fourfold in faith, 
 
 In our speech was no more moan, 
 For our feet were firmly grown, 
 And we did not stand alone. 
 
 Comrade-soul, we see and hear 
 
 Far beyond the mists unclear 
 
 Of the dark world's doubt and fear. 
 
 121 
 
Inspection 
 
 Round our heads the great stars glow, 
 We can hear Life's mystic flow, 
 See its widening cycles grow. 
 
 And the Sages and the Seers 
 
 Of the immemorial years, 
 
 Since the earth first groaned in tears, 
 
 Speak unto us from the height, 
 Summered in the Infinite, 
 Where it evermore is light. 
 
 Wherefore kissed by hallowing lips, 
 Held in strong assuring grips 
 Of anointed fellowships, 
 
 What to us are gibe and frown ? 
 What have we to cast us down? 
 Soul, arise, assume thy crown: 
 
 Turn thy features from the wall, 
 Make thy stature proud and tall: 
 See; the Lord is over all. 
 
 122 
 
DENUNCIATION 
 
 OUT upon this hollow worship 
 Of the grandeur of our time; 
 Out upon its little greatness, 
 
 And the age's false sublime; 
 Out upon the brainless braggarts 
 
 Who are boasting evermore 
 Of the World's emancipation 
 
 From the thralling gloom of yore. 
 
 What is mind save when it giveth 
 
 Wider blessings, deeper good ? 
 What is Love but that which liveth 
 
 For a human brotherhood ? 
 Who among us is so lowly 
 
 That " himself " is but a name ? 
 Whose the soul so pure and holy 
 
 That it never fawned for fame ? 
 
 Does no leper robe in purple ? 
 
 Sits no villain on a throne ? 
 Lives no Dives in this present, 
 
 And is Lazarus unknown ? 
 Hath the Truth a patient hearing ? 
 
 Spurns no one a mighty thought? 
 
 123 
 
Denunciation 
 
 Passion, reason, impulse, feeling, 
 Do we use them as we ought ? 
 
 There are seething hells of torment, 
 
 When the worm that never dies 
 Revels in the writhing madness 
 
 Of the doomed one's agonies: 
 There are fields of crimson horror, 
 
 There be Golgothas of woe, 
 And a sea of sin and sorrow 
 
 Surges wheresoe'er we go. 
 
 Sycophants still sell their manhood, 
 
 Human things that cringe and crawl; 
 Purse-proud beggary still jostles 
 
 Threadbare merit 'gainst the wall: 
 But Life's Carnival moves onward 
 
 To the music and the mirth; 
 So the underlying madness 
 
 Seemeth but as little worth. 
 
 Out, then, on this hollow worship 
 
 Of the grandeur of our times; 
 Out upon our little greatness, 
 
 And the age's false sublime: 
 Whoso breathes the breath of boasting 
 
 He is traitor to his trust; 
 He alone who, toiling ever, 
 
 Fainteth nevermore, is just. 
 
 124 
 
VOICE OF PROGRESS 
 
 BY Heaven! it is a shameful thing 
 That, in this age of deepening might, 
 There live so few whose souls dare cling 
 
 Forever to the right! 
 By Heaven! it is a crying sin 
 
 That, in this hour of ripening thought. 
 Where so much greatness lies within, 
 So little is outwrought. 
 
 The world is full of puling fools 
 
 Who prate of love in sickening rhymes, 
 Or bring stale tomes of trusty rules 
 
 To curb the chafing times ; 
 But where be they whose prophet-souls 
 
 Outlooking on life's Ocean waves, 
 Do warn us of the rocks and shoals 
 
 Which else become our graves ? 
 
 What care we for our father's creed ? 
 
 What reck we of the ancient themes? 
 Is Truth less true in newer deeds 
 
 Than in decrepit dreams ? 
 125 
 
Voice of Progress 
 
 All honor to our brave old Sires — 
 The unforgotten, worthy dead; 
 
 Yet shall our loftier desires 
 Be on their dulness fed ? 
 
 Give us new Truth altho' it break 
 
 Upon us with the lightning's flash! 
 Give us new Truth! The Nations quake 
 
 Beneath the shifting crash. 
 Give us new Truth! Our souls despise 
 
 This blinding rush of deadly strife. 
 Past forms of Truth are present lies 
 
 Which canker all our life. 
 
 Therefore, new Truth! And let it burst 
 
 Like red-hot thunderbolts on those 
 In whom this fair world stands a curse 
 
 With such a hell of woes! 
 New Truth! Which ever more shall right 
 
 Earth's wronged and patient multitude; 
 And robe us all in rare delight 
 
 Of deep and earnest good. 
 
 126 
 
COMFORT 
 
 ONE by one World's harms are smitten; 
 One by one its ripe wrongs fall; 
 One by one are carved and written 
 
 Man's sure triumph over all. 
 One by one the desert places 
 
 Grow with green and gush with light, 
 One by one God's finger traces 
 Moons and stars across the night. 
 
 One by one the cruel fetters 
 
 Of the tyrant flesh slide off; 
 One by one we learn the letters 
 
 Of the alphabet of love. 
 One by one the propped pretenses 
 
 Of usurping falsehoods die; 
 One by one new recompenses 
 
 Fill our voids up in the sky. 
 
 One by one our days of weaning 
 
 From things earthly go toward 
 Gorgeous harvest-days of gleaning 
 
 In the full tracts of the Lord. 
 
 127 
 
Comfort 
 
 One by one the needs and gnawings 
 Of old hungers fail and pass; 
 
 One by one the Heaven's dear strawings 
 Bless our fields of barren grass. 
 
 Spite of weary months of sorrow, 
 
 Spite of long and laden years, 
 Bitter waitings for the morrow 
 
 Wherein lieth joy for tears; 
 Spite of tired hearts plowed with trouble, 
 
 Spite of blighting and of blame, 
 Spite of wastes of stones and stubble, 
 
 Spite of paths of woe and shame, 
 
 Spite of whatsoever evils 
 Make the sacred places foul, 
 
 Spite of whatsoever devils 
 Dog the footsteps of the soul, 
 
 Though the earth be still unshriven, 
 Though the years seem still undone, 
 
 Yet shall all, save man and Heaven, 
 Pass and perish, one by one. 
 
 128 
 
LIFE'S DOWER 
 
 IN truth it is a lovely dower — 
 This nerve and brain, and blood and bone, 
 This leaping sense of kingly power 
 
 In hearts which be full grown. 
 In truth but they be glorious things — 
 
 These loves and hates and deep desires, 
 The thoughts that stride the lightning wings, 
 The spirit's gleaming fires. 
 
 'Tis a rare gift — this fresh warm life, 
 
 This upward yearning of the eye, 
 This soul that thrills unto the strife 
 
 That rolls like thunder by. 
 By Heaven! I can not understand 
 
 How breathe these ideas of our time, 
 These cowards of the lily hand, 
 
 When life is so sublime. 
 
 O, is it not a deep delight 
 
 To hurl the death at crime and wrong, 
 And, black and bloody with the fight, 
 
 Grow stronger and more strong ? 
 
 129 
 
Life's Dower 
 
 To spur right on the weltering heaps 
 Of cloven sins and gasping lies, 
 
 And mark the quivering limbs and lips, 
 The dull and glaring eyes ? 
 
 O, brings it not a boundless bliss 
 
 To snatch some pale and trembling truth 
 From leprous lust whose hellish kiss 
 
 Had poisoned all of youth ? 
 To wash her feet and bathe her eyes, 
 
 And smooth her wild dishevelled hair, 
 And rain our hottest sympathies 
 
 Like oil on her despair? 
 
 Ay brothers! 'tis a blessed thing — 
 
 This leaping life, this mounting blood, 
 These subtile fires that do cling 
 
 To God's infinitude: 
 And, brothers, shall we live like drones, 
 
 And let the rust gnaw out our night, 
 While all the green earth's royal sons 
 
 Form battle for the right? 
 
 130 
 
THE INAUGURATION 
 
 March Fourth, 1857 
 
 VERY wanly to the eastward breaks the morning- 
 cold and gray, 
 Very spectral seem the shadowed people moving down 
 
 the way, 
 Very feebly will the sunlight chance upon the hills 
 to-day. 
 
 Very loudly do the silver trumpets ring throughout the 
 street, 
 
 Very grandly fall the measured marches of the throng- 
 ing feet, 
 
 Very hoarse are all the voices of the beings whom I 
 meet. 
 
 And the mighty thunderous echoes of the cannon crash 
 
 and boom 
 Like the roar of coming people speaking to us through 
 
 the gloom, 
 And the startling noises shake the pictures hanging in 
 
 my room. 
 
 131 
 
The Inauguration 
 
 Very proudly float the silken colors on the Capitol, 
 Very firmly does the old man tread across the Senate 
 
 Hall, 
 Very bland and very gracious is the smile he smiles on 
 
 all. 
 
 Lo! before our sacred Country's solemn altar see him 
 
 stand, 
 With the Book of flaming wisdom lying open in his 
 
 hand, 
 Swearing that in calm-souled justice he will judge and 
 
 rule the land. 
 
 And the eyes of staring thousands bend in wonder on 
 
 the sight, 
 And the hum of human voices cleaveth upward thro' 
 
 the light, 
 And the maddening waves of music drown the moan- 
 
 ings of the night. 
 
 Very courtly are the courtiers who have snatched the 
 
 gifts of chance, 
 Very brightly gleam the jewels of the movers in the 
 
 dance, 
 Very calmly from the fresco does the unknown hand 
 
 advance. 
 
 132 
 
The Inauguration 
 
 And the naked fiery fingers write upon the ballroom 
 
 wall: 
 Lo! it is the song of many god-like spirits held in thrall, 
 Suffering deadly damning scourges for the human rights 
 
 of all. 
 
 In the newer fields of Freedom, where its last apostles 
 
 stood, 
 Glare the serpent eyes of Hatred, lie the pools of clotted 
 
 blood ; 
 And a stifling cry of murder shudders at the gates of 
 
 God. 
 
 And the Mother with her children sits and starves upon 
 
 the plain, 
 As the ghastly gory gash that cast her husband with 
 
 the slain 
 Swings before her eyes forever, splitting thro' her heart 
 
 and brain. 
 
 And the smoke of burning hamlets blackens all the 
 blessed air, 
 
 While the savage shouts of reeking devils in their 
 slaughter-lair 
 
 Mingle with the shivering shrieks of trampled virgin- 
 hood's despair. 
 
 133 
 
The Inauguration 
 
 And the clattering fetters fester on the brothers and the 
 
 sons 
 Who have battled for their Israel in the later Ajalons, 
 And the purple darkly trickles down the swooning 
 
 champions. 
 
 Foemen smear upon our foreheads bitter marks of fear 
 and shame; 
 
 And they trail their leprous fingers o'er our Mother- 
 Freedom's name, 
 
 Till the hot blood driving through us sets our very 
 breath aflame. 
 
 Where is judgment that it lingers through the years 
 
 thus overlong ? 
 Where is Justice that she comes not fronting the 
 
 accursed wrong, 
 In whose choking grasp her righteous infant struggles 
 
 to be strong ? 
 
 O, not evermore with triumph shall inhuman feet be 
 
 shod, 
 Nor our heart's dewdrip forever from the slaver's evil 
 
 rod, 
 And not always shall hell's scoffing banner flout the 
 
 skies of God. 
 
 134 
 
A Soul's Despair 
 
 For through all the mournful midnights, keeping solemn 
 
 watch and ward, 
 Stands the silent sleepless Angel noting all the deeds 
 
 abhorred; 
 And the hour of wrath and ransom ripens surely, saith 
 
 the Lord! 
 
 A SOUL'S DESPAIR 
 
 I THINK God's ban is on me. I believe. 
 For some unknown wrong which doth make me foul, 
 His dread retributive thunders cling and cleave, 
 
 Closer than Nessus' shirt did, to my soul, 
 Which, like a hounded felon fugitive, 
 
 Goes staggering over beds of burning coal, 
 In lands where dragons howl and serpents hiss, 
 And no green grass or blessed water is. 
 
 All blessings which enrich the lives of men 
 
 Dissolve from me like phantoms. Kith or kin, 
 
 Wife, child, nor any one to love me, when 
 I cry out from the coils of pain wherein 
 
 My breath is strangled, have I; no, nor then, 
 When the worst devils tempt me, can I win 
 
 One pitying gleam from the stern heavens, which fling 
 
 My prayer back to me as a leprous thing. 
 
 135 
 
A Soul's Despair 
 
 The benedictions which I give bring down 
 On beings whom I love a woe instead; 
 
 My smile is darker than a mother's frown; 
 Whatever flowers I look upon fall dead, 
 
 Blasted by my hot dreariness; if I crown 
 
 A forehead with my kiss, straightway is spread 
 
 A pall across it ; and whene'er I thirst 
 
 God smites me backward, reeling and accurst. 
 
 Before my lips are moistened, round my feet, 
 Black horror on conflagration of hell-fire 
 
 Scares off, with dread plenipotence of heat, 
 Whatever tender human hands aspire 
 
 To touch me softly, or what lips would greet, 
 With confronting whispers of calm hopes, the dire 
 
 Dumb aching of the life that only craves 
 
 A little room among the Earth's dear graves; 
 
 A little mound among the hillocks, where 
 In quiet peace the sacred daisies grow, 
 
 And all the noises that perplex the air, 
 
 The sobs and shoutings eddying to and fro, 
 
 World's harm, and hunger, and sublime despair, 
 Unto the placid sleepers there below, 
 
 Are as if such things were not, pillowed so 
 
 In that great rest which but the dead can know. 
 
 136 
 
A Soul's Despair 
 
 O, happy dead! for whom the solemn feuds 
 Of the immortal soul with flesh and clay, 
 
 The infinite reaching toward far altitudes, 
 
 The downward dragging lapses, the mad sway 
 
 Of the wild passions, and the interludes 
 In which all holy props are stricken 'way, 
 
 And the world spins in darkness, have given place 
 
 To an unruffled calm of heart and face. 
 
 There wronged and wronging, conqueror and slave, 
 All anguish over, in sweet concord lie, — 
 
 The poet with the soaring wings that clave 
 The subtle ether of the intensest sky; 
 
 They whom the bitter poisoned arrows drave 
 To desperation and were slain thereby; 
 
 Young child and hoary grandsire: O, ye dead, 
 
 How by the living are ye envied. 
 
 Lo, also, through these heavy laden years, 
 My feet have sought you reverently; not 
 
 Because I shrank back from the strain that wears 
 The heart out slowly, nor because the lot 
 
 Assigned me was sown thickly with salt tears. 
 In all my past my spirit never sought 
 
 Surcease from sorrow by the trick of fear; 
 
 What I have borne I still am strong to bear. 
 
 137 
 
A Soul's Despair 
 
 Nathless, because a voice I could not still 
 
 Pleaded within me like a little child 
 Against the sense of failure to fulfil 
 
 My meanings, and the promptings that defiled 
 The white ideals which I could not kill 
 
 Nor thrust out from my vision; balked and foiled 
 Alike in hopes that climbed and aims that crept, 
 I sought if haply I might intercept 
 
 My travail with sound sleeping. Therefore I 
 (And partly that the cause was beautiful), 
 
 When the thick smoke of battle quenched the sky 
 And the air shrieked with flame, and terrible 
 
 Lightnings of wrath blazed in the human eye, 
 
 And the breath heaved with vengeance, and the dull 
 
 Soul of the slave shot blossoming into fire, 
 
 And cowards were kings beneath the sovran ire 
 
 That crowned their foreheads royally, have been 
 Among the foremost in the bloody gaps 
 
 Where foot set fixedly to foot, and keen 
 Opposing steel played, while the thunder 
 
 Of the hot cannon made the hills careen 
 
 To their uttermost foundations, and the laps 
 
 Of the green valleys were piled deep with those 
 
 Whom nevermore the bugle-call might rouse; 
 
 138 
 
Death and Desolation 
 
 Nor the torn banners, reared along the line, 
 Set their blood tingling grandly in the shock 
 
 Of charging hosts made drunken with the wine 
 Compelled from grapes of that immortal stock 
 
 God plants in all men's vineyards, for a sign 
 That there is vintage in us which doth mock 
 
 The mildew of all ages, and ferments 
 
 As the wine which the gods drank in the rents. 
 
 DEATH AND DESOLATION 
 
 DEAD— DEAD! 
 I shall never die I fear. 
 O heart so sore bestead, 
 O hunger never fed, 
 O life uncomforted. 
 
 It is drear, very drear! 
 I am cold. 
 
 The sunshine glorifying all the hills; 
 The children dancing 'mong the daffodils; 
 The thrush-like melodies of maidens' lips, 
 Brooding thanksgiving o'er dear fellowships ; 
 The calm compassions and benignities 
 
 139 
 
Death and Desolation 
 
 Of souls fast anchored in translucent seas; 
 The visible radiance of the Invisible, 
 Far glimpses of the Perfect Beautiful, 
 Haunting the Earth with Heaven — they warm not me; 
 The low-voiced winds breathe very soothingly, 
 Yet I am cold. 
 
 Years — years. 
 So long the dread companionship of pain. 
 So long the slow compression of the brain, 
 So long the bitter famine and the drouth, 
 So long the ache for kisses on the mouth, 
 So long the straining of hot tearless eyes 
 In backward looking upon Paradise, 
 So long tired feet dragged faltering and slow, 
 So long the solemn sanctity of woe\ 
 
 Years — years. 
 
 Perhaps 
 There was a void in Heaven, which only she 
 Of all God's saintliest could fill perfectly; 
 Perhaps for too close clinging — too much sense 
 Of loving and of Love's Omnipotence, 
 I was stripped bare of gladness, like a tree 
 By the black thunder blasted. It may be 
 I was not worthy — that some inner flaw, 
 Which but the eye of the Omniscient saw, 
 
 140 
 
Death and Desolation 
 
 Ran darkling through me, making me unclean. 
 I know not; but I know that what hath been, 
 The thrill, the rapture, the intense repose 
 Which but the passion-sceptered spirit knows, 
 The heart's great halo lighting up the days, 
 The breath all incense and the lips all praise, 
 Can be no more forever; that what is. 
 Drear suffocation in a drear abyss, 
 Lean hands outstretcht toward the dark profound, 
 Starved ears vain listening for a tender sound, 
 The set lips choking back the desolate cry 
 Wrung from the soul's forlornest agony, 
 Will last until the props of Being fall, 
 And the green grave's deep quiet covers all. 
 Perhaps the violets will blossom then 
 O'er me as sweetly as o'er other men. 
 Perhaps. 
 
 It is most sad, 
 This crumbling into chaos and decay. 
 My heart aches; and I think I shall go mad 
 
 Some day — some day. 
 
 141 
 
HYMN OF PITTSBURG 
 
 MY father was a mighty Vulcan; 
 I am Smith of the land and sea; 
 The cunning spirit of Tubal-Cain 
 
 Came with my marrow to me. 
 I think great thoughts, strong-winged with steel, 
 
 I coin vast iron acts, 
 And orb the impalpable dreams of seers 
 Into comely, lyric facts. 
 
 I am Monarch of all the Forges, 
 
 I have solved the riddle of fire, 
 The Amen of Nature to cry of Man, 
 
 Answers at my desire. 
 I search with the subtle soul of flame 
 
 The heart of the rocky Earth, 
 And hot from my anvils the prophecies 
 
 Of the miracle-years leap forth. 
 
 I am swart with the soots of my furnace, 
 
 I drip with the sweats of toil; 
 My fingers throttle the savage wastes, 
 
 I tear the curse from the soil. 
 I fling the bridges across the gulfs 
 
 That hold us from the To-Be, 
 And build the roads for the bannered march 
 
 Of crowned humanity. 
 
 142 
 
ENTREATY 
 
 "Written on leaving New York for Kansas in 1856 
 
 SOMETIMES when the wind goes roaring 
 Thro' the city's streets and lanes. 
 And the homeless night is pouring 
 
 Blind tears on your window panes; 
 When you shudder for the sailor, 
 
 Cast on the moaning sea, 
 And the stranger in the forest — 
 Then, beloved, think of me. 
 
 Sometimes when the poet's verses 
 
 Thrill you with a sudden awe, 
 And dim, yearning depths of wonder 
 
 Throb on every breath you draw; 
 When his mighty anthem singing 
 
 Of our high humanity, 
 Parts your lips with fear and trembling — 
 
 Then, beloved, think of me. 
 
 Sometimes when you chance on stories 
 
 Of a calm-eyed little band, 
 Who, in frost and fire and famine, 
 
 Were still faithful to the land; 
 
 143 
 
Expectancy 
 
 Who, through all the bloody tortures 
 Of a damning tyranny, 
 
 Bore the draggled robes of Freedom- 
 Then, beloved, think of me. 
 
 Think of me! I hear the voices 
 
 Of the struggle sweeping on, 
 And I feel my mounting spirit 
 
 Leap within me to be gone; 
 But beneath no crown of sorrow, 
 
 In no pride of victory, 
 Can my heart forget its yearnings — 
 
 So, beloved, think of me. 
 
 EXPECTANCY 
 
 I WAIT in the street for my darling. 
 Strange that I have not marked before 
 The wonderful lights which clasp and crown 
 The brows of the people passing down 
 
 The street I stand in, and that the roar 
 Of the crowded marts and thronging ways 
 
 Swell with a musical resonance — 
 Traffic blossoming into praise 
 
 With a divine significance, 
 As I wait in the street for my darling. 
 
 144 
 
Expectancy 
 
 I wait in the street for my darling: 
 
 How changed the shops and houses are; 
 Only this morning they stood there stark 
 In the sooty vapors, grim and dark, 
 
 Their windows flinging a sudden glare; 
 While now it seems that the brick walls glow, 
 
 And now it seems that the windows shine 
 With an almost human overflow 
 
 Of happy gladness — which is the sign, 
 That I wait in the street for my darling. 
 
 I wait in the street for my darling: 
 
 There's a smell of purity in the air, 
 There's a flush of splendor along the skies, 
 There's a sweeter look in the people's eyes, 
 
 There's a sense of beauty everywhere; 
 There's a hymn in my heart, and on my feet 
 
 Winged sandals of blessed light; 
 And I know by a touch so soft and sweet 
 
 Of a tender hand, so fair and white, 
 I have met my love — my darling. 
 
 145 
 
FAREWELL 
 
 GREAT tears are glistening in my eyes, 
 Washed hither by the large excess 
 Of your full-hearted lovingness, 
 And thy soul's meek serenities. 
 
 My spirit overflows its banks 
 
 With yearning that I can not stay; 
 And yet my lips can only say, 
 " Dear friend, I give thee many thanks 
 
 " For beauty of thy quiet speech, 
 The happy calmness of thy face, 
 Thy sweet smile lighting up the place 
 With pleasant warmth for all and each; 
 
 " The voice that sounded in my ears 
 With such a strange serenity, 
 As though my mother spoke to me, 
 Across the silence of the years " 
 
 146 
 
THE SPIRIT OF REST 
 
 OH, come to me then when the Spirit of Rest 
 Breathes soft over my soul like the breath of a 
 dove, 
 And the pride and passion that burns in my breast, 
 Lie asleep 'neath the wings of the Angel of Love. 
 
 When my heart wanders back to the mystical past, 
 Where the sunlight of pleasure fell full on the hours, 
 
 And a gust of glad memories, swelling and vast, 
 Sweep over my soul as a whirlwind of flowers — 
 
 O! then as the brightest, where all things are bright, 
 Comes back the remembrance, dear sister, of thee; 
 
 And a calmness of bliss, like the calmness of light, 
 Leads my soul as the moon leads the passionate sea. 
 
 MARRIAGE HYMN 
 
 IN the still chambers of our souls 
 We softly walk alway! 
 We let no tumult enter in, 
 No noise by night or day; 
 But listen very reverently 
 To what the voices say. 
 
 147 
 
A Birthday Lily 
 
 A touch upon our clasped hands, 
 
 Light as a falling hair; 
 
 The sacred sweetness on us blows 
 
 Of newer breaths of air, 
 
 And in our great and holy calm 
 
 We know that they are there. 
 
 A BIRTHDAY LILY 
 
 IN May, the rosebud of the flowering year, 
 A stainless lily came; 
 Earth shone with light, and every starry sphere 
 Burned with diviner flame. 
 
 Art, brooding o'er her large beatitudes, 
 
 Felt a creative thrill 
 Run tingling through her splendid varying moods 
 
 And consentaneous will. 
 
 Song, praised amid her high interpretings, 
 Knew a seraphic fire 
 Ache in her bosom, and her startled wings 
 Shook music as a lyre. 
 
 And round the awful soul of virginhood 
 
 A whiter glory played, 
 And babes unto their mothers crawled and cooed, 
 
 More softly unafraid. 
 
 148 
 
A GOLDEN TRESS 
 
 AH me! how slight a circumstance 
 May move our being's deepest springs. 
 Ah me ! how simple-seeming chance 
 
 Can clutch forgotten passion strings 
 And wake the old remembered tones, 
 
 Till memory maddens to the stir, 
 And all the past's oblivious bones 
 Leap living from the sepulcher! 
 
 I found to-day a golden tress 
 
 Of one who has been dead for years, 
 And such a sudden loneliness 
 
 Fell on my heart and on the spheres, 
 I well-nigh feared the Christ of faith 
 
 Had gathered all his sunshine in 
 And left us nothing but the wraith 
 
 Of our sad selfishness and sin. 
 
 The seat beneath the hazel bougns, 
 
 The woodlands where our feet did stray, 
 
 The quick warm thrill of whispered vows 
 That wore the precious time away; 
 
 149 
 
A Pictured Face 
 
 The twilight depths of those dear eyes, 
 The reverent lips, the saintly brow, 
 
 The Eden hours of low replies, — 
 Beloved! how they haunt me now! 
 
 Almost my heart had bridged across 
 
 The solemn waters which did roll 
 Between my fearful sense of loss 
 
 And every other human soul; 
 But nothing now surmounts the waves 
 
 That wash my barren island shore, 
 Moaning like dead hopes from their graves — 
 
 Ah, nevermore! Ah, nevermore! 
 
 A PICTURED FACE 
 
 NOT quite a faultless face; 
 Yet something of a nameless grace, 
 A radiance from a higher place, 
 
 About the comfort-giving eyes, 
 And brown hair worn Madonna wise 
 Across the tender forehead, lies, 
 
 150 
 
A Pictured Face 
 
 And round the lips that are so calm; 
 While loving words of healing balm 
 Float like the singing of a psalm, 
 
 Sung where the singing censers go 
 
 Before the altar, to and fro, 
 
 And all the people's heads are low, 
 
 Awing the stormful turbulence 
 
 Of my rough manhood, with the sense 
 
 Of meekness, and the affluence 
 
 Of that high-heartedness that springs 
 From Martyr-wisdom, and the things 
 Learned in vast silent communings; 
 
 With that pure sanctity that broods 
 Divine above our changeful moods, 
 Turning to uses and to goods 
 
 All loves, and hates, and smiles, and tears, 
 And downward from celestial spheres 
 Streams all along our earthly years. 
 
 With folded reverential hands, 
 1 look up to her where she stands, 
 Interpreting the large commands 
 
 151 
 
A Pictured Face 
 
 With which her days are held and led, 
 And which with glory and with dread 
 Have crowned the soul they followed. 
 
 I look up to her, and I know 
 
 That years may come and years may go, 
 
 And life may ebb and life may flow; 
 
 Yet still above the sweep and surge 
 Of pain and passion that doth urge 
 The hot time upon horrors' verge, 
 
 She will behold the Hand displayed, 
 She will stand ever undismayed; — 
 Wherefore my heart is not afraid. 
 
 INDIRECTION 
 
 FAIR are the flowers and the children, but their 
 subtle suggestion is fairer; 
 Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps 
 
 it is rarer; 
 Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that pre- 
 cedes it is sweeter; 
 And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning QM/i 
 mastered the meter. 
 
 152 
 
Indirection 
 
 Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the 
 
 growing; 
 Never a river that flows, but a majesty scepters the 
 
 flowing; 
 Never a Shakespeare that soared, but a stronger than 
 
 he did enfold him, 
 Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer hath 
 
 foretold him. 
 
 Back of the canvas that throbs the painter is hinted and 
 
 hidden; 
 Into the statue that breathes the soul of the sculptor is 
 
 bidden; 
 Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issues of 
 
 feeling; 
 Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns 
 
 the revealing. 
 
 Great are the symbols of being, but that which is sym- 
 
 boled is greater; 
 Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward 
 
 creator; 
 Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift 
 
 stands the giving; 
 Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive 
 
 nerves of receiving. 
 
 153 
 
Advice Gratis 
 
 Space is as nothing to spirit, the deed is outdone by the 
 
 doing; 
 The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart 
 
 of the wooing; 
 And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from 
 
 the heights where those shine, 
 Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the 
 
 essence of life is divine. 
 
 ADVICK GRATIS 
 
 DO you mean what you say ? Did I hear aright ? 
 Were you in earnest or in sport ? 
 In love with a poet ? Are you quite 
 
 At odds with sanity, to assert 
 That you, with beauty, and wit, and grace, 
 
 Instead of the station these might buy, 
 Have smilingly set your feet and face 
 
 Toward paths where such low choosings lie ? 
 
 A poet— a maker of verses — one 
 
 Who daily coins, for his daily bread, 
 
 The blood of his heart in rhymes that run 
 His brain to fever with fear and dread, 
 
 154 
 
Advice Gratis 
 
 Lest that he mar, in speaking it, 
 
 The tone of the Voice that comes to him 
 
 Somewhere out from the infinite, 
 
 Somewhere out from the vast and dim. 
 
 You need not answer; I know your thought. 
 
 You tell me that, since there must be those 
 Whose lips, like the throats of birds, are wrought 
 
 Chiefly for singing, it follows close 
 That God, attuning them to such pitch, 
 
 Accepts their songs for service — thus 
 Making our sneers at a soul on which 
 
 He has laid his pressure perilous. 
 
 And this in a sense is true. But this 
 
 Is also mystical: we should take 
 The world in the gross; we must not miss 
 
 Of ease and elegance for the sake 
 Of dreams and dreamers; and I opine 
 
 It would strike fresh heat in your poet's verse 
 If you- dropped some aloes into his wine — 
 
 They write supremely under a curse. 
 
 Will that invisible truth of things 
 
 Which shines on your minstrel compensate 
 
 The lack of the visible comfortings, 
 The tangible gifts and goods that wait 
 
 155 
 
Advice Gratis 
 
 On stocks and dividends ? Which are best — 
 
 These vagabond inspirations, or 
 Hard cash in hand, and the sense in the breast 
 
 That you have gained what you bargained for? 
 
 It is good, no doubt, that a man should be 
 
 Cast in such weird and singular mold 
 As dowers his vision with power to see 
 
 God's splendors flaming, where you behold 
 Only the flaring of lighted gas; 
 
 But with a husband we demand 
 (Letting the gift of prophecy pass) 
 
 The coin that is current in the land. 
 
 Therefore I should advise you, dear, 
 
 To give your lyrical vagrant such 
 Sufficient hint of a prudent fear, 
 
 As — without wounding him overmuch— 
 May serve to smite his insolent hopes 
 
 Down to levels of lesser range; 
 Sending him back to his crowding tropes 
 
 Wiser and sadder for that change. 
 
 156 
 
AN OLD MAN'S IDYL 
 
 BY the waters of Life we sat together, 
 Hand in hand in the golden days 
 Of the beautiful early summer weather, 
 
 When skies were purple and breath was praise; 
 When the heart kept tune to the carol of birds, 
 
 And the birds kept tune to the songs which ran 
 Through shimmer of flowers on grassy swards, 
 And trees with voices /Eolian. 
 
 By the rivers of Life we walked together, 
 
 I and my darling unafraid; 
 And lighter than any linnet's feather 
 
 The burdens of being on us weighed. 
 And love's sweet miracles o'er us threw 
 
 Mantles of joy outlasting time, 
 And up from the rosy morrows grew 
 
 A sound that seemed like a marriage chime. 
 
 In the gardens of Life we strayed together; 
 
 And the luscious apples were ripe and red, 
 And the languid lilac and honeyed heather 
 
 Swooned with the fragrance which they shed. 
 And under the trees the angels walked, 
 
 And up in the air a sense of wings 
 Awed us tenderly while we talked 
 
 Softly in sacred communings. 
 
 157 
 
An Old Man's Idyl 
 
 In the meadows of Life we strayed together, 
 
 Watching the waving harvests grow; 
 And under the benison of the Father 
 
 Our hearts, like the lambs, skipped to and fro. 
 And the cowslips, hearing our low replies, 
 
 Broidered fairer the emerald banks, 
 And glad tears shone in the daisies' eyes, 
 
 And the timid violets glistened thanks. 
 
 Who was with us, and what was round us, 
 
 Neither myself nor my darling guessed; 
 Only we knew that something crowned us 
 
 Out from the heavens with crowns of rest; 
 Only we knew that something bright 
 
 Lingered lovingly where we stood. 
 Clothed with the incandescent light 
 
 Of something higher than humanhood. 
 
 O the riches Love doth inherit! 
 
 Ah, the alchemy which doth change 
 Dross of body and dregs of spirit 
 
 Into sanctities rare and strange! 
 My flesh is feeble and dry and old, 
 
 My darling's beautiful hair is gray; 
 But our elixir and precious gold 
 
 Laugh at the footsteps of decay. 
 
 158 
 
The Prize Fight 
 
 Harms of the world have come unto us, 
 
 Cups of sorrow we yet shall drain; 
 But we have a secret which doth show us 
 
 Wonderful rainbows in the rain. 
 And we hear the tread of the years move by, 
 
 And the sun is setting behind the hills; 
 But my darling does not fear to die, 
 
 And I am happy in what God wills. 
 
 So we sit by our household fires together, 
 
 Dreaming the dreams of long ago: 
 Then it was balmy summer weather, 
 
 And now the valleys are laid in snow. 
 Icicles hang from the slippery eaves; 
 
 The wind blows cold, — 'tis growing late; 
 Well, well! we have garnered all our sheaves, 
 
 I and my darling, and we wait. 
 
 THE PRIZE FIGHT 
 
 EIGHTEEN hundred and sixty years 
 Of Christward leverage under the spheres; 
 And what is the thing that now appears ? 
 
 Troops of golden prophecies come 
 Up from the bountiful martyrdom 
 That struck the jeering world so dumb. 
 
 159 
 
The Prize Fight 
 
 Wherefore, far on the outer verge 
 
 Of tangled cycles of sorrow and scourge, 
 
 Where, mid the passionate ages' surge, 
 
 I catch the shining of those white days 
 For which the universe moans and prays — 
 Soft hours wherein is no dispraise. 
 
 But what of beautiful and of sweet 
 
 Doth the earth, made green by touch of His feet, 
 
 Yield to the Holy Paraclete? 
 
 The lips of a glorious brotherhood 
 
 Fling to the jasper gates of God 
 
 A cry that sounds as a voice of blood. 
 
 Under the clear compassionate skies 
 Two men glare in each other's eyes; 
 And yet they are not enemies- 
 Amethyst pure are their affluent veins, 
 Royal their strength of loins and reins, 
 Dark their ghastly gashes and stains. 
 
 Poet, whose super-sensual ken 
 Cleaves to the souls of things and men, 
 Where was your scorn of scorning then ? 
 
 1 60 
 
The Prize Fight 
 
 Priest, in the shadow of the Cross, 
 Naming the things of the earth for dross, 
 Why did you stand at such utter loss ? 
 
 Mother-queen of the isles and seas, 
 
 Throned in purple regalities, — 
 
 You, with your children round your knees, 
 
 Singing of love and of innocence — 
 Where was your law's just vehemence, 
 And where your own large woman-sense? 
 
 The poet withheld his awful breath; 
 The craven priest was still as death; 
 He did not whisper of Nazareth. 
 
 The queen sate silent: the strong law slept: 
 
 And a roar of horrible laughter leapt 
 
 From the throat of hell to the heavens that wept. 
 
 Eighteen hundred and sixty years 
 
 Of Christward leverage under the spheres; 
 
 And this is the thing that now appears. 
 
 161 
 
GOING HOME 
 
 I THINK that in the time of year 
 When all the earth is white with snow, 
 And men run shivering to and f i o 
 About the frozen hemisphere; 
 
 When all the lakes are fast asleep, 
 And all the forest trees are bare, 
 And cold amid the icy air 
 
 The pale skies can no longer weep, 
 
 I will gird up my loins to make 
 A journey o'er the sluggish seas, 
 That, kneeling at my mother's knees, 
 
 I may a little while forsake 
 
 This deadly time of uncontrol, 
 The weary toiling of the brain, 
 The voice that like a moan of pain 
 
 And darkness lingers in my soul. 
 
 There are fine yearnings in the breath, 
 Deep pulses in the silent heart. 
 Which, cast aside or rent apart, 
 
 Like poor gashed veins will bleed to death. 
 
 162 
 
A Man's Name 
 
 And I, who am sore parched with drought, 
 Have strangely hungered overmuch 
 For Father's slightest finger-touch, 
 
 And kisses from my mother's mouth. 
 
 I see two sister-faces shine 
 
 Around my footsteps more and more; 
 
 And on the river and the shore 
 I hold a brother's hand in mine. 
 
 So, when the early sunsets come, 
 
 And, blazing on the household hearth. 
 The ruddy yule-logs sparkle forth, 
 
 I will go forward to my home. 
 
 A MAN'S NAME 
 
 In memoriam, David Simmons, Railroad Engineer. Died Febru- 
 ary 6th, 1871, near New Hamburgh, N. Y. 
 
 THROUGH the packed horror of the night 
 It rose up like a star, 
 And sailed into the infinite, 
 Where the immortals are. 
 
 " Down brakes ! " One splendid hard-held breath, 
 An lo! an unknown name 
 Strode into sovereignty from death, 
 Trailing a path of flame. 
 
 163 
 
A Man's Name 
 
 " Jump!" — " I remain." — No needless word, 
 No vagueness in his breast; 
 Along his blood the swift test stirred — 
 He answered to the test, 
 
 Gripped his black peril like a vice, 
 
 And, as he grappled, saw 
 That life is one with sacrifice. 
 
 And duty one with law. 
 
 Home: — but his feet grew granite fast; 
 
 Wife: — yet he did not reel; 
 Babes: — ah, they tugged! but to the last 
 
 He stood there true as steel. 
 
 Above his own heart's lovingness, 
 
 Above another's crime, 
 Above the immitigable stress, 
 
 Above himself, and time, 
 
 Smote loving comfort on the cheek, 
 
 Gave quibbling Fear the lie, 
 Taught ambling fluence how to speak, 
 
 And brave men how to die. 
 
 Who said the time of kings was gone ? 
 
 Who said our Alps were low, 
 And not by God's airs blown upon ? 
 
 Behold it is not so. 
 
 164 
 
The Children 
 
 Out from the palace and the hut 
 Dwarf-fronted, lame of will, 
 
 Limp our marred Joves and giants — but 
 Sceptered for mastery still, 
 
 And clothed with puissance to quell 
 
 Whatever mobs of shame 
 Are leagued within us, with such spell 
 
 As David Simmons' name. 
 
 THE CHILDREN 
 
 DO you love me, little children ? 
 O sweet blossoms that are curled 
 (Life's tender morning glories) 
 
 'Round the casement of the world ! 
 Do your hearts climb up toward me, 
 
 As my own heart bends to you, 
 In the beauty of your dawning 
 And the brightness of your dew ? 
 
 When the fragrance of your faces 
 And the rhythm of your feet, 
 
 And the incense of your voices 
 Transform the sullen street, 
 
 165 
 
The Children 
 
 Do you see my soul move softly 
 Forever where you move, 
 
 With an eye of benediction 
 And a guarding hand of love ? 
 
 O my darlings! I am with you 
 
 In your trouble, in your play, 
 In your sobbing and your singing, 
 
 In your dark and in your day, 
 In the chambers where you nestle, 
 
 In the hovels where you lie, 
 In the sunlight where you blossom, 
 
 And the blackness where you die. 
 
 Not a blessing broods above you, 
 
 But it lifts me from the ground; 
 Not a thistle-barb doth sting you, 
 
 But I suffer with the wound; 
 And a chord within me trembles 
 
 To your lightest touch or tone, 
 And I famish when you hunger, 
 
 And I shiver when you moan. 
 
 Can you tell me, little children, 
 
 Why it is I love you so ? 
 Why I'm weary with the burthens 
 
 Of my sad and dreary woe ? 
 
 166 
 
Esoteric 
 
 Do the myrtle and the aloes 
 Spring blithely from one tree ? 
 
 Yet I love you, O my darlings! 
 Have you any flowers for me ? 
 
 I have trodden all the spaces 
 
 Of my solemn years alone, 
 And have never felt the cooing 
 
 Of a babe's breath near my own, 
 But with more than father passion, 
 
 And with more than mother pain, 
 I have loved you, little children: 
 
 Do you love me back again ? 
 
 ESOTERIC 
 
 ART is nne, but love is finer; 
 Can you paint a soul? 
 What if beauty is diviner, 
 Fragrant, or the whole ? 
 
 Song is sweet, but love is sweeter; 
 
 Was there ever hymn 
 That for compass and for meter, 
 
 Bowed the Seraphim ? 
 
 167 
 
A Woman's Breath 
 
 Thought is great, but love is greater; 
 
 Who can search out truth ? 
 Love alone is revelator, 
 
 Love is love, in sooth. 
 
 A WOMAN'S BREATH 
 
 "I certainly should not advise any poor man to marry me."- 
 [Frorn a letter.] 
 
 WHAT fatal mastery of indirection 
 Lurks in a woman's breath; 
 A courteous phrase, a gracious genuflexion, 
 And hope is stabbed to death. 
 
 And love moans reeling down the vast abysses 
 
 Of horrible despair, 
 Maddened by memory of immortal kisses, 
 
 And sounds of tones that were. 
 
 The torture of the ghostly touch of fingers 
 
 That hold you passion-tight, 
 And torment of a lilac dawn that lingers 
 
 About your lurid night; 
 
 168 
 
A Voice from the Condemned 
 
 While, over all these desolations, 
 
 She walks in serene guise, 
 With not a shiver in her heart's pulsations, 
 
 Nor in her level eyes. 
 
 A VOICE FROM THE CONDEMNED 
 
 I THINK, by the streak of gray 
 Just over my window-bars, 
 And the waning of the stars, 
 It must be the break of day. 
 
 I hear the murmur of words 
 
 Close by on the courtyard stones; 
 I guess 'tis the workmen's tones, 
 
 As they fix the scaffold boards. 
 
 In three hours I shall be dead — 
 Last week I hiked my knife 
 To the heart of a rich man's life, 
 
 And spent his money for bread. 
 
 A dozen summers ago 
 
 (I was then a child, cast forth 
 Without a friend on the earth) 
 
 He struck me a bitter blow, 
 
 169 
 
A Voice from the Condemned 
 
 A blow and a coward's curse, 
 
 When I asked for a crust of food; 
 And so I remembered his mood, 
 
 And settled the wrong with worse. 
 
 My vengeance was that which waits; 
 So I let him fatten and fume 
 Till I thought him ripe for doom, 
 
 When I kicked him out to the fates. 
 
 A murderer, ay! — who cares? 
 
 I let out the blood of his heart — 
 
 So, having acted my part, 
 I leave you not unawares. 
 
 He sowed the seed in my soul, 
 And he reaped the ripened grain; 
 No doubt, were he here again, 
 
 He would speedily give the dole. 
 
 I shall meet him to-day at seven — 
 And yet, is it really well 
 To strike me at once to hell, 
 
 When both might have gone to heaven? 
 
 170 
 
NOBILITY 
 
 CAN'T man be noble unless he be great, 
 With a patrimonial hall; 
 And heaps of gold and vast estate, 
 And vassals at his call ? 
 
 Can't man be noble unless there be 
 
 A title to his name, 
 Unless he live in luxury 
 
 Or loll in the seats of fame ? 
 
 Can't man be noble unless his voice 
 
 Be heard in the senate band; 
 Or his eye flash bright and his words breathe light, 
 
 Through all his native land ? 
 
 Ah yes! at the forge and the weaver's loom, 
 
 As well as in hall of state, 
 At the desk and in the cottage room, 
 
 There are noble ones and great. 
 
 They are springing up on every side, 
 
 In hamlet and in town; 
 Where the stream pours and ocean roars, 
 
 They are wreathing a laurel crown. 
 
 171 
 
Reconciliation 
 
 They are weaving the mighty robe of truth, 
 And bold are the throws they make, 
 
 As they are teaching age and guilt 
 Oppressive bonds to break. 
 
 Yes, these are the noble and the great, 
 Who will shine at a distant day, 
 
 Where titled ones of hall and state, 
 Shall have been but far away. 
 
 RECONCILIATION 
 
 NO man can climb so close to God 
 But needeth to beseech Him, 
 Nor lapse so far to devilhood 
 
 That mercy can not reach him. 
 We stand, with all, on level ground. 
 
 In equal human fashion, 
 Encompassed by the blue profound 
 Of infinite compassion! 
 
 Shake hands then on the rusted swords, 
 
 O blood-bedraggled nation! 
 Smite down the past with sweet accord 
 
 Of reconciliation; 
 
Fragments 
 
 Walk brotherly and lovingly 
 The upward paths of duty, 
 
 And let the kings and tyrants see 
 A people's kingly beauty! 
 
 FRAGMENTS 
 
 CLASPED by the glory of her face 
 Death looked so beautiful and meek, 
 I knew at once he came to seek, 
 For God's sweet offices of grace, 
 The soul that lately passed to Him 
 
 Thro' this white gate of blessed flowers, 
 Which now I wet with tearful showers 
 While waiting for the Seraphim. 
 
 I love the starlight so with a love 
 
 Strange as the heart of woman! In my soul 
 
 There are no feelings lying so deep, 
 
 Save the yearnings toward my mother: I do mind 
 
 How, when the nights were gloomy, I have watched 
 
 With earnest patience waiting for the light 
 
 Shining behind the dark of driving clouds; 
 
 173 
 
Fragments 
 
 And I remember how the unconscious tears 
 Would tremble on my eyelids, when a star 
 Looked on me thro' the tempest. T'was a joy 
 Just like my joy in childhood, when I felt 
 The sweet eyes of my mother touch my soul, 
 And her lips kiss my forehead; O, the stars! 
 
 I know that when the shadows deepen, and the world 
 
 Goes like an infant to its proper rest, 
 
 The human heart grows holier, and the soul 
 
 Speaks with a purer language, and a voice 
 
 Which is not of the noonday, makes us thrill 
 
 With its strange subtleties; 
 
 Some fibers in all hearts hold fast to heaven; — 
 
 I could not live without the stars. 
 
 Here she stood 
 With her white finger pointing to the skies, 
 Thick sown with majesties as earth is sown 
 With troubled human love ! " Walter," she said, 
 " These are my witnesses "; then burst in tears 
 Like a full cloud, pouring out its heart in rain. 
 
 174 
 
Sentinel Thoughts 
 
 She kissed me, my beautiful darling, 
 
 I drank the delight of her lips; 
 The universe melted to ether, 
 
 Mortality stood in eclipse. 
 A spirit of light stood before me, 
 
 I heard a far rustle of wings; 
 The kings of the earth were as beggars, 
 
 And the beggars of earth were as kings. 
 
 SENTINEL THOUGHTS 
 
 (Unfinished) 
 
 I PACE my beat in silentness 
 Of dream, and nurse and ponder, 
 Re-live the days of battle stress, 
 Re-tread the fields of thunder; 
 Re-walk the wastes where carnage gave 
 
 His mad hounds blood for water, 
 Review the cities of the grave, 
 The bivouacs of slaughter. 
 
 I see the desolated homes, 
 
 The ruined altar places, 
 The symbols of dread martyrdoms 
 
 Written in women's faces. 
 
 175 
 
Magdalena 
 
 I hear the sonless father's sighs, 
 The bereaved mother praying, 
 
 The little children's sobbing cries, 
 Orphaned amid their playing. 
 
 I mark the myriad souls that swoon 
 Beneath war's cruel splinters; 
 
 The widowed lives that dwell alone, 
 In everlasting winters. 
 
 MAGDALENA 
 
 WHEN a poor forsaken sister, 
 Whom we name a fearful name, 
 From the leprous life that kissed her, 
 
 Shudders back, all bound with shame; 
 When her weary soul is yearning 
 
 For the light of God's own skies, 
 And, far off, a dim discerning 
 Of a purer morrow lies; 
 
 Do not thou who, less believing, 
 
 Loving less, hast conquered more, — 
 
 Do not thrust her backward grieving 
 To the life she lived before; 
 
 176 
 
Magdalena 
 
 Do not pass her by and whisper 
 Bitter words of scorn and pain; 
 
 Make her crisp, hot heart grow crisper, 
 And the red hell burn again. 
 
 Who art thou that passest sentence 
 
 On a bleeding human soul ? 
 Could'st thou drain full-dregged repentance 
 
 If no love were in the bowl ? 
 Is not she, poor, stricken weeper, 
 
 Loved of Heaven, alike with thee ? 
 Fool! thy pride hath thrust thee deeper 
 
 Than thy sister — Pharisee! 
 
 Nighest to the great, calm splendor 
 
 Of our first poor innocence, 
 Is the halo, sadly tender, 
 
 Of a warm heart's penitence. 
 Wherefore, brothers, since transgression 
 
 Shrouds each spirit like a pall, 
 Is not meek and full confession 
 
 Best and noblest for us all ? 
 
 Go! and when, proud soul, thou learnest 
 
 Thou, and I, and all are one, 
 Then shall beauty, deep and earnest, 
 
 Greet thee like a newer love. 
 
 177 
 
Mother Remembrance 
 
 And the love that lights thy features, 
 In thy wider eyes should be 
 
 Unto all God's living creatures 
 Even as it is to thee. 
 
 MOTHER REMEMBRANCE 
 
 AS soon as the clock in the hall strikes eight, 
 'Twill be thirteen lonely years 
 Since my heart's lost darling, fair-haired Kate, 
 
 Looked into these eyes of tears. 
 I did not dream when she went away 
 
 To pass a month in the town, 
 She would make such a long and bitter stay, 
 And so sink my spirit down. 
 
 I only thought of the city sights, 
 
 Of the things that she would learnj 
 Of the morrow's ever-new delights, 
 
 And her womanly return. 
 I only thought how my life would gush 
 
 When I kissed her lips again; 
 I did not dream of the weary crush 
 
 Of these thirteen years of pain. 
 
 178 
 
Mother Remembrance 
 
 God pity thee, my beautiful child, 
 
 For the love which thou has spilt; 
 And the pure white hopes thou hast defiled 
 
 With thy fearful spots of guilt! 
 God pity thee, in thy gilded halls 
 
 Of sorrow and shame and sin, 
 Where the shadows of death forever falls 
 
 On the lips of all within. 
 
 There is no one now when your temples leap, 
 
 And the fire shoots through your brain, 
 To fold you close in the sweet warm sleep 
 
 You will never know again! 
 There is no one now when the nights are long, 
 
 And the tempests walk the skies, 
 To sing you the happy fireside song 
 
 We have sung with thankful eyes. 
 
 Do you never think of our dreary home ? 
 
 Of your father's thin, gray hair? 
 Of the voice we miss in the little room, 
 
 And my broken-hearted prayer ? 
 Do you never wring your delicate hands, 
 
 Nor clench your shuddering teeth, 
 When your soul's shrill whispers stir the brands 
 
 Of the burning hell beneath ? 
 
 179 
 
Nameless 
 
 Have you never wished you could come at night, 
 
 When all in the house was still, 
 And watch us sit by the candle light, 
 
 From the little window-sill ? 
 To lift the latch of the half-closed door ? 
 
 And, with a passionate cry, 
 Kneel down at our tottering feet once more, 
 
 And fall on our necks, and die ? 
 
 Come back, my beautiful desolate one, 
 
 Come back to thy native place, 
 Where the healing air may breathe upon 
 
 The hurt of thy haggard face! 
 There's a vacant bed and an empty chair, 
 
 In the silent room above; 
 Come back, dear child, to thy father's care 
 
 And my all-forgiving love. 
 
 NAMELESS 
 
 JUDGE, I plead guilty; he speaks the truth: 
 I am what he says, and what you see. 
 So old in a damned, unhallowed youth, 
 
 That your wrinkled years seem young to me. 
 
 1 80 
 
Nameless 
 
 Don't preach — don't lecture. I know it all: 
 The easy canting, the fluent words, 
 
 The solemn drivel of text from Paul, 
 
 And a mangled phrase or two of the Lord's. 
 
 Moreover you err if you suppose 
 
 That even a harlot, soaked in sin, 
 Slides down the darkness without some throes 
 
 Of the marred meek purities within. 
 O sir! you wrong even our disgrace, 
 
 To think that we never wail and cry 
 Out from the foulness with lifted face 
 
 To an awful Something up in the sky. 
 
 Do you think I never dream of home, 
 
 Of a weary man with whitening hair? 
 Of a missing voice in a vacant room, 
 
 And the sobs a-choke in a woman's prayer? 
 That nothing has ever prompted flight, 
 
 Swift as my hungry feet could fly, 
 Fatherward, motherward — that I might 
 
 Fall on their necks, break heart, and die? 
 
 My God, my God! when the masked brows must 
 Be clothed with a false forged radiance, while 
 
 The bloom of the soul is burnt to dust, 
 And under a fabricated smile 
 
 181 
 
Nameless 
 
 Dead ghosts of murdered innocence glare 
 
 Devils from their accusing eyes, 
 And a babe's chirrup thrown on the air 
 
 Scares like thunder out of the skies; 
 
 When the sweet sanctities set to guard 
 
 The inner whiteness from outer stain, 
 Tricked of their holy watch and ward, 
 
 Moan and madden in heart and brain; 
 And a howling fury hunts and hounds 
 
 Wherever a clean thought hides away; 
 And a dreadful voice of dooming sounds 
 
 Through the haunted chambers night and day; 
 
 And a Something mocks you w T hen you laugh, 
 
 And a Something jeers you when you weep; 
 And hell-fire lurks in the wine you quaff, 
 
 And a fiend grins at you in your sleep; 
 And a coiling horror sucks you down 
 
 Through a black and bottomless abyss — 
 Judge, do you think your legal frown 
 
 Can augur punishment worse than this ? 
 
 Bah, what a horrible fool am I 
 
 To talk like this to a man like you! 
 
 Someday the toughest of us must die, 
 
 And we shall be sifted, through and through, 
 
 182 
 
 
A Voice from a City Cellar 
 
 Sifted and sorted. Judge, have you thought 
 
 That possibly to the sorted, then, 
 Something that now is may be naught, 
 
 When the cowards' shrieks steam up from men ? 
 
 A VOICE FROM A CITY CELLAR 
 
 IT is true I am very poor, 
 And yet I love my child 
 With a love as deep and wild, 
 As full of the brimming o'er 
 
 Of its passionate bursting waves, 
 As if silver handles were on my door 
 And my house were filled with slaves. 
 
 Do you think that because I live 
 
 In a cellar underground, 
 
 From poverty's yelping hound 
 A sort of fugitive, 
 
 That the angels never come 
 And look with love on the love I give ? 
 
 Do you think my heart is dumb ? 
 
 I know I can hardly clothe 
 My dear babe's body and feet, 
 While scarcely ever we eat 
 
 A meal which you would not loathe; 
 
 183 
 
A Voice from a City Cellar 
 
 But I tell you, milk-faced miss, 
 That e'er God severs our double growth, 
 He must send more pain than this. 
 
 I wash his hands and his face 
 And patch up his trowser rents, 
 Then send him to gather pence 
 
 From men in the market place. 
 
 He comes home covered with dirt, 
 
 But think you I think him less in grace 
 Because he hasn't a shirt ? 
 
 Our bed in the corner there 
 
 (That's it, the bundle of straw 
 
 Which the rats have begun to gnaw — 
 'Tis rather a poor affair) 
 
 Is a resting place for two 
 Who own just as much of the boundless air 
 
 As our Father giveth to you. 
 
 What, going? well, go; and learn 
 
 That the living infinite spark 
 
 Shot out in the mighty dark 
 May light up a cellar and burn 
 
 In a beggar's heart and eyes, 
 With as fixed a flame as thou canst discern 
 
 In thy shining, affluent skies. 
 
 184 
 
SONG OF THE OUTCAST 
 
 HOW coldly the shuddering night wind moans 
 In gusts thro' the glimmering street, 
 And how drearily echo the dismal stones 
 
 To the tread of my listless feet. 
 And the hollow voice of the sobbing rain 
 
 And the talk of the sounding sea 
 Seem only as terrible tongues of pain 
 That hiss like the fiends at me. 
 
 " I can bear the horrible fiery rain 
 
 Men pelt from their scornful eyes, 
 And stand untouched by the mournful mien 
 
 That comes from the good and wise; 
 But, oh! when the passing rain and wind 
 
 And the very ocean's swell 
 Do burn and blast in my inmost mind, 
 
 I could wish myself in hell. 
 
 " I am very glad that mother died 
 Ere the desolation came, 
 When, drunken with flaming dreams of pride, 
 I clasped to my soul the shame. 
 
 185 
 
Song of the Outcast 
 
 Thank God! Thank God! she is dead and gone, 
 For 't would splinter her heart in twain 
 
 To know that the leper they spit upon 
 Drew life from her blood and brain. 
 
 " I wonder if father loves me yet, 
 
 And whether the blessed child, 
 The life that rose on the life that set, 
 
 Still lives, and is undefiled. 
 O, mother! I think I see her now 
 
 With the new babe on her breast, 
 The glory clasping her pure white brow 
 
 And the angel bringing rest. 
 
 " How, many a time, when my drenched soul swims 
 
 In bitter and blinding tears, 
 And there comes a sound of tender hymns 
 
 Across these blasphemous years, 
 Do I rush forth into the great dark night 
 
 And cover my burning face, 
 To shut from my vision the ghastly blight 
 
 I have breathed in my native place. 
 
 " O dark, dark past, must it always glare 
 With dreadful and damning eye ? 
 Do none of the beautiful angels care 
 For such fallen ones as I ? 
 
 186 
 
Song of the Seamstress 
 
 I could clasp whole worlds of deadliest pain, 
 
 Kiss every stroke of the rod 
 That should scourge my poor soul back again 
 
 To its early love for God. 
 
 But it may not be; for on every side 
 
 I am spurned and unforgiven, 
 And trampled beneath the heels of pride 
 
 By the very sons of heaven. 
 So I needs must cling to my fearful life 
 
 With the curse upon my head, 
 In the Christless doom of this dreadful strife 
 
 For a sheltering roof and bread." 
 
 SONG OF THE SEAMSTRESS 
 
 IT is twelve o'clock by the city's chime, 
 And my task is not yet done; 
 Through two more weary hours of time 
 
 Must my heavy eyes ache on. 
 I may not suffer my tears to come, 
 
 And I dare not stop to feel; 
 For each idle moment steals a crumb 
 From my sad to-morrow's meal. 
 
 187 
 
Song of the Seamstress 
 
 It is very cold in this cheerless room, 
 
 And my limbs are strangely chill; 
 My pulses beat with a sense of doom, 
 
 And my very heart seems still; 
 But I shall not care for this so much, 
 
 If my fingers hold their power, 
 And the hand of sleep forbears to touch 
 
 My eyes for another hour. 
 
 I wish I could earn a little more, 
 
 And live in another street, 
 Where I need not tremble to pass the door, 
 
 And shudder at all I meet. 
 "Tis a fearful thing that a friendless girl 
 
 Forever alone should dwell 
 In the midst of scenes enough to hurl 
 
 A universe to hell. 
 
 God knows that I do not wish to sink 
 
 In the pit that yawns around; 
 But I cannot stand on its very brink, 
 
 As I could on purer ground; 
 I do not think that my strength is gone, 
 
 Nor fear for my shortening breath; 
 But the terrible winter is coming on, 
 
 And I must not starve to death. 
 
Hashish 
 
 I wish I had died with sister Rose, 
 
 Ere hunger and I were mates; 
 Ere I felt the grip of the thought that grows 
 
 The hotter the more it waits. 
 I am sure that He whom they curse to me, 
 
 The Father of all our race, 
 Did not mean the world He made to be 
 
 Such a dark and dreary place. 
 
 I would not mind if they'd only give 
 
 A little less meager pay, 
 And spare me a moment's time to grieve, 
 
 With a little while to pray. > 
 But until these far-off blessings come, 
 
 I may neither weep nor kneel; 
 For, alas! 'twould cost me a precious crumb 
 
 Of my sad to-morrow's meal. 
 
 HASHISH 
 
 IF ever you should desire to gain 
 A glimpse of the primal regions where 
 The vital tissues o' the heart lie bare, 
 The intricate coils of life are plain; 
 
 If you have strength enough to dare 
 The apocalypse which turns the brain 
 
 189 
 
Hashish 
 
 With too much peering of mortal eyes 
 
 Into the immortalities, 
 And — stabbed with splendors that hurt like pain- 
 Wake from the gorgeous dream at last 
 
 Dogged by phantoms which cleave and cling 
 
 Closer than any living thing, 
 Haunting your future with their past, 
 
 Liming you in a charmed ring. 
 
 Cutting you with a wizard wing 
 
 Out from the darkness, till you die — 
 
 Eat of the hashish, as did I. 
 
 It was not the drug of the Orient, 
 
 With which the poet simulates 
 A warmth in his veins when the fires are spent, 
 
 A flight in the blue when the bitter weights 
 Of the world have broken his wings; it was 
 More beautiful, awful, terrible! 
 Clothed on with fantasies which surpass 
 
 Whatever is known of heaven or hell, 
 
 When, under the touch of the other spell, 
 
 Back the mystical curtains roll, 
 
 And up, unscreened, to the seeing soul, 
 
 Past and present and future rise, 
 
 Bearing the secrets in their eyes. 
 
 She could not help that she distilled 
 A blessed aroma all around; 
 
 190 
 
Hashish 
 
 She could not help it that she filled 
 My arid silence with cooing sound; 
 
 She could not help that her sweet face 
 Was as a reverential hymn; 
 
 She could not help that round her place 
 Lingered the Lord God's cherubim. 
 
 Was it so strange that, brooding thus, 
 
 Over her saintly humanhood, 
 Deliriums multitudinous 
 
 Wrought in my pulses and my blood ? 
 That I dreamed dear dreams of a wedded wife? 
 
 That some one walked in my sleep by my side ? 
 That I stood in a tremulous hush of life, 
 
 Content to stand so until I died ? 
 Oh, the clear beneficent days! 
 
 Oh, the calm and reverent nights! 
 Oh, the mornings of perfect praise! 
 
 Oh, the evenings of pure delights! 
 Oh, the whispers in which we talked! 
 
 Oh, arch replies of merry lips! 
 Oh, the trances wherein we walked! 
 
 And the beautiful fellowships! 
 Spirit with spirit so ingrooved, 
 
 Sympathies so divinely blent, 
 My blessing watched the flowers she loved, 
 
 And made my poverty opulent, 
 
 191 
 
"Mollie" 
 
 The well-pleased angels smiling on 
 That most ineffable unison! 
 
 No trance is life-long; all dreams flee — 
 
 I am awake now; something cut 
 The path of the currents lifting me, 
 
 And close the inscrutable blankness shut 
 Down on my mount Delectable; 
 
 Down on my fields Elysian; 
 Down on my Palace Beautiful! 
 
 Over the universe something ran 
 Which trod the gold and the amethyst 
 
 Out from the mornings and the eves; 
 
 Something withered the grass and leaves; 
 Out from the vastness something hissed; 
 
 And something within me moans and grieves, 
 Like a lost soul's wail for something missed. 
 
 "MOLUE" 
 
 IS the grave deep, dear? Deeper still is love. 
 They cannot hide thee from thy father's heart, 
 Thou liest below, and I stand here above; 
 Yet are we not apart. 
 
 192 
 
"Mollie" 
 
 The lyric patter of thy blessed feet 
 
 That made a poem of the nursery floor — 
 The sweet eyes dancing toward me down the street — 
 Are with me evermore. 
 
 My breath is balmy with thy clinging kiss, 
 My hand is soft wherein thy soft palm lay; 
 And yet there is something which I miss 
 And mourn for night and day. 
 
 My eyes ache for thee. God's heaven is so high 
 We can not see its singers: when thou dost 
 With thy lark's voice make palpitant all the sky, 
 I moan and pain the most. 
 
 Because the hunger of my vision runs 
 Most swift in its swift seeking after thee, 
 I yearn through all the systems and the suns, 
 But none doth answer me. 
 
 And then I grow a-weary, and do tire; 
 And not my darlings in their earthly place 
 Can wean the passion with which I desire 
 Thy lips upon my face. 
 
 If I could fondle with thee for an hour! — 
 But now thou art too sacred. I must stand 
 Silent and reverent: thou hast grown to power, 
 And fitness, and command; 
 
 193 
 
"He Giveth His Beloved Rest" 
 
 And I walk here. Thou art above me now. 
 I may not longer teach thee anything. 
 Thou dost not need my blessing on thy brow, 
 Nor any comforting. 
 
 How changed — how changed! A little while ago, 
 And all the beautiful vast care was mine. 
 Out from my bosom gushed the overflow 
 Of sacrificial wine. 
 
 And now thou art God's angel unto me. 
 Thus His ways mix, and He is ever good. 
 Reach me thy hand, wife; we are held all three 
 In His infinitude. 
 
 HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED REST" 
 
 O'ER mile-long tracks of ice and snow 
 And endless sodden wastes of woe, 
 It came a little while ago. 
 
 My life stood so much at the worst, 
 I seemed so bitterly accurst, 
 I hardly knew it at the first. 
 
 194 
 
"He Giveth His Beloved Rest" 
 
 It grew not on me suddenly, 
 
 With such swift shining as might lie 
 
 In light down-streaming from the sky — 
 
 A great and mighty rushing thrill 
 Of glory flooding at my will, 
 And into good transforming ill. 
 
 But with such saintly-meek degrees 
 
 Of motherly-sweet influences 
 
 As softly pressed me to my knees, 
 
 And warmly touched my praying lips 
 With words of strange new fellowships 
 Strong-winged like homeward-freighted ships; 
 
 And with white hands of tenderness 
 So led me forth from my distress 
 To places that were sorrowless, 
 
 That at the last I could but say, 
 ' O Spirit, lead me night and day, 
 And I will follow thee alway. 
 
 Thou art more gentle to me now 
 In this great grief whereto I bow, 
 Than mother-kisses on my brow; 
 
 195 
 
"He Giveth His Beloved Rest' 
 
 Fuller of solace and of rest 
 
 Than place upon my mother's breast 
 
 When I was wearily opprest. 
 
 " Her sacred eyes were tender-bright 
 With large excess of love and light, 
 In the sweet time of her good-night; 
 
 " But thy calm orbs with greater store 
 Of holy warmth are suffused o'er, 
 And they do thrill me more and more. 
 
 " Her voice was very soothing-low; 
 But thine doth overfill me so 
 With such a wonder-clasping glow, 
 
 " And so much beautiful increase 
 Of luminous seraphic peace 
 Is in thy patient utterances, 
 
 *' That I can only kneel and pray, 
 O Spirit, guide me night and day, 
 And I will follow thee alway." 
 
 196 
 
I REMEMBER 
 
 I REMEMBER— I remember 
 In the dying of the year, 
 When I used to pine and sicken 
 
 For a little human cheer; 
 How unto my crazy letters 
 
 Came her answers warm and true, 
 Quickening all the blood within me — 
 I remember — yes I do. 
 
 I remember — I remember 
 
 When I reached my home once more, 
 How I hurried thro' the city 
 
 'Till I stood before her door; 
 How I leaped along the stairway, 
 
 How the staring servant flew 
 With the message of the stranger — 
 
 I remember — yes I do. 
 
 I remember — I remember 
 
 How my foolish pulses shook, 
 When she met me in the parlor 
 
 With the old beloved look; 
 How my full eyes wet their lashes, 
 
 How it thrilled me through and through 
 When her dark orbs leaned toward me — 
 
 I remember — yes I do. 
 
 197 
 
Communion 
 
 I remember — I remember 
 
 All our earnest poet-talks, 
 All our mystic music-dreamings, 
 
 Held in blessed city-walks; 
 How we sat among the pictures 
 
 Which the prophet-painters drew; 
 And the speech of marble statues 
 
 I remember — yes I do. 
 
 I remember — I remember 
 
 How her sacred counsellings 
 Went across my moody nature 
 
 Like a sweep of angel wings; 
 All the fellowship she gave me, 
 
 All the peace that from it grew, 
 And the weary, weary parting — 
 
 I remember — yes I do. 
 
 COMMUNION 
 
 THE somber daylight dies, mother, 
 It is the quiet even — 
 The hour when thy dear eyes, mother, 
 Are brooding toward heaven. 
 
 198 
 
Communion 
 
 Thy life is lifted there, mother, 
 For all thy scattered sheep: 
 
 mind! O soul! O care, mother, 
 A mother's prayer is deep. 
 
 Across the aching sea, mother, 
 
 Is drawn a mystic chain 
 Which lengthens unto me, mother, 
 
 And back to thee again, 
 And skyward then doth grow, mother, 
 
 Beyond the utmost star; 
 Ah! only angels know, mother, 
 
 How many links there are. 
 
 It tightens round me now, mother, 
 
 I feel my spirit come 
 Swifter than speeding prow, mother, 
 
 To thee, and peace, and home. 
 
 1 walk the hallowed ground, mother, 
 I see thee turn, and start — 
 
 And now, with one vast bound, mother, 
 I fall upon thy heart. 
 
 We sing the olden hymn, mother, 
 
 Unto the olden strain: — 
 What makes our eyes grow dim, mother, 
 
 With beatific rain ? 
 
 199 
 
Impatience 
 
 How far the world removes, mother, 
 What soft spells o'er me creep: — 
 
 O, in thy love of loves, mother, 
 I wrap me up and sleep! 
 
 IMPATIENCE 
 
 OGod, the earth is trampled down, 
 In sin and shame it lieth; 
 From every land beneath the sun 
 
 A voice accusing crieth. 
 The nations strive in deadly wars, 
 The cannon speaks in thunder: 
 Arise, and break the prison bars, 
 And rend the chains asunder!" 
 
 The earth is worn by cries of death, 
 
 And vexed by petty tyrants; 
 Sad wailings rise on every breath; 
 
 Thou only keepest silence. 
 Where angels with the harp and song 
 
 In heaven's courts adore Thee, 
 Can ever mortal grief or wrong 
 
 Or prayers come up before Thee ? 
 
Impatience 
 
 Yes; the deep mystery unfolds 
 
 In light of Revelation; 
 Sealed for the latter times He holds 
 
 His wine of indignation. 
 Earth's wanderers murmur in their night: 
 
 " His chariot-wheels turn slowly;" 
 Angels that see Him in the light 
 
 Make answer: " Holy, holy!" 
 
 Justice sits throned overhead, 
 
 Beyond the highest places; 
 It is not for our feet to tread 
 
 Where angels veil their faces; 
 Before the burning of the Seven 
 
 We earthly well may falter; 
 We only know the answer given 
 
 The souls beneath the altar. 
 
 In white robes stand the witnesses, 
 
 Mid incense-clouds enwreathing; 
 " How long ? " they cry — a little space 
 
 Before the sword's unsheathing. 
 Daily with that accusing band 
 
 The earth's down-trodden gather; 
 And ministers of vengeance stand 
 
 Ever before the Father. 
 
* ' My Love is Deep ' ' 
 
 Faith sees His purpose shining pure 
 
 Beyond our sight's discerning. 
 O, just and equal, slow and sure 
 
 The mills of God are turning! 
 Even so, Great Ruler! on whose crown 
 
 Eternal years are hoary; 
 We lay in dust our wisdom down — 
 
 Thy patience is Thy glory. 
 
 202 
 
MISCELLANEOUS 
 
"MY LOVE IS DEEP" 
 
 SOME wild things have I dared, and some 
 Strange things have hoped. I cannot see 
 If these high hopes are doomed to be 
 Dashed from the heights they've clomb. 
 
 The wind is raging very high, 
 
 The earth is strewn with autumn leaves, 
 Mournful as when the spirit grieves 
 
 Its summer hopes should die. 
 
 It's midnight now! And flickering low 
 The wasted wick burns drear and dim. 
 About my brain strange fancies swim, 
 
 Strange feelings round me flow. 
 
 I cannot sigh, I cannot weep; 
 
 I smile not, yet I am not sad. 
 
 I mourn not, yet I am not glad 
 I've learned my love is deep. 
 
 205 
 
LOVE'S FEAR 
 
 1LONG, yet fear to love! for I have seen 
 So much of falsehood and so much of guile, 
 And I have known such dark and deadly sin 
 
 Lurk in the silence of a beaming smile, 
 And in my own heart-chambers there have been 
 
 So many sorrows rankling all the while, 
 That when my soul sits brooding like a dove 
 I think of this — and long, yet fear to love! 
 
 I long, yet fear to love! I could not bear 
 To fling my rich affections unto one 
 
 Whose inmost spirit was not wholly fair 
 
 In love less pure and lavish than mine own; 
 
 And then my heart would break in its despair 
 To find the visions it had dreamed o'erthrown; 
 
 So, when my heart to pulses wildly move, 
 
 I think of this — and long, yet fear to love. 
 
 I long, yet fear to love! My soul hath bled 
 From its too perfect trust in vows unkept, 
 
 And I had deemed that all my love was dead. 
 Yet now I know that it hath only slept; 
 
 206 
 
To Harriet 
 
 But, oh! if evermore about my head 
 
 There sweeps the tempest that before hath swept, 
 
 Heart, mind and brain would wrecked and shattered 
 
 prove, 
 And knowing this — I long, yet fear to love! 
 
 I long, yet fear to love! Oh! who will come 
 And speak the words I am athirst to hear? 
 
 O, who will make this yearning heart her home 
 And lie there, thrilling thro' each mystic year? 
 
 And who will touch these lips so cold and dumb 
 With the live coal from love's own altar clear? 
 
 Is there no answer? Must my spirit rove 
 
 Unwoke as now ? and long, yet fear to love ? 
 
 TO HARRIET 
 
 SHE was not lovely, but to me 
 She was as holy as the night, 
 When the strange stars are flinging light 
 Thro' heaven's eternity. 
 
 I have turned from them to her and wept; 
 And when I saw her earnest eyes 
 
 207 
 
To Harriet 
 
 Flashing such solemn sympathies, 
 Jesu! I could have leapt 
 
 Right thro* her eyes into her heart, 
 And ask'd no higher heaven than this, 
 To closely nestle in my bliss 
 
 And never more depart. 
 
 O, Harriet! thou hast been to me 
 Like a pale crystalline tear 
 Set round with smiles. I cannot hear 
 What I am unto thee! 
 
 I know not, but my brain is wild! 
 And yet I have been sometimes blest 
 With visions of thyself, and rest 
 
 Have on my day-dreams smiled. 
 
 And I have seen thee weep, and then 
 I longed to kiss the tears away, 
 And see thee like an April day 
 Change into joy again. 
 
 And I have held thy hand in mine! 
 I would have pressed it to my heart, 
 
 208 
 
The Faint Adieu 
 
 But that I feared it might impart 
 Some bitterness to thine. 
 
 And I have dared to place my fingers 
 On thy sweet forehead and thy hair, 
 And aye, I marvel much if there 
 
 One mark of mine still lingers. 
 
 One mark of mine, one thought of me! 
 Harriet, it is not much I ask, 
 But, oh! 'twill be a bitter task 
 
 To tear my heart from thee! 
 
 THE FAINT ADIEU 
 
 SHE hung upon his neck, suffused in tears 
 Like a flower bending with its weight of dew, 
 Weeping as tho' the griefs of all her years 
 Lay in the fountains of her orbs of blue; 
 And then there came — scarce heard by their own ears, 
 
 Whispers of constancy — the faint adieu, 
 At last one long, rapt kiss, a stifled moan, 
 Receding footsteps, and she stood — alone! 
 
 209 
 
Summer Night 
 
 They parted all too soon! just when the fire 
 Of each heart's passion sparkled in their eyes; 
 
 Just when the bloom of all young life's desire 
 
 Had tinged their warm cheeks with its tell-tale dyes; 
 
 Just when love's finger struck the trembling lyre 
 And woke the sound that all too quickly dies, 
 
 Yet never died with them that hour they parted, 
 
 And each past on in silence, weary-hearted. 
 
 They never met again! The world was cold, 
 
 And fate was haughty while their friends were stern, 
 
 As life passed quickly and they soon grew old, 
 Laying their young hopes in its funeral urn. 
 
 Both hands are clasped around it! Both hearts fold 
 Beneath their wings that past to which they turn; 
 
 The ruined shrine where all their sympathies 
 
 Worship forevermore with streaming eyes. 
 
 SUMMER NIGHT 
 
 COME here and look at God ! The great round moon 
 Hangs 'mong the stars upon the verge of heaven 
 Like a vast hope within a boundless soul 
 Brimful of lofty majesty; the stars 
 Wait on her steps as blooming pages wak 
 Upon a reigning queen. Onward she sweeps 
 
 210 
 
Summer Night 
 
 With regal footsteps up the vaulted sky, 
 
 Beaming her smiles upon her satellites 
 
 As on her suitors beams a peerless maid. 
 
 Far in the west the glowing heaven bends down, 
 
 Kissing the sunset hills — like a rapt youth 
 
 Embracing his beloved. In the south 
 
 The boundless ocean, slumbering peacefully, 
 
 Looks like eternity at rest. Our ship 
 
 With her white folded wings lies anchored there 
 
 Like an angel sleeping on the breast of God. 
 
 Hid in yon thicket's heart, the nightingale 
 
 Pours her wild music in the ear of night 
 
 Till it seems drunk with joy. Hark! How her song 
 
 Wells forth delicious from a joyous heart, 
 
 Sweet as the music of an angel's harp 
 
 Attuned by Gabriel's hand. How mystical 
 
 And dream-like comes the murmur of the stream 
 
 That babbles thro' the meadows; it is like 
 
 A virgin beauty who in bridal dreams 
 
 Vaguely, and in half words, tells to the night 
 
 The secret of her soul! 
 
 The panting breeze 
 Throbs tremulous on yon green hill of pines, 
 Like the hopeful trembling of a stripling's heart, 
 Earnest, yet all untried. Far off I see 
 The red fires gleaming in the village homes, 
 Flashing their strange lights even at my feet, 
 As prophets flash their gorgeous flaming thoughts 
 
On Receipt of a Daguerreotype 
 
 Across the nick of time. The green earth sleeps 
 Beneath the eye of heaven, like a fair girl, 
 O'er whose white finger the betrothal ring, 
 Graven with her lover's name and set with gems, 
 Lies glittering like the stars — for thus hath God 
 Writ his solemn name upon the virgin earth, 
 Whom he will one day wed. 
 
 ON RECEIPT OF A DAGUERREOTYPE 
 
 THE flashing light may liven thy form 
 In living lines of breathing grace, 
 May give each tint a tone as warm 
 
 As that which melts o'er thy dear face; 
 But in my soul and on my heart 
 With deeper colors, truer aim, 
 A loftier power than meager art 
 
 Hath graved thy image and thy name. 
 
 And rain or wind, and storm or shine 
 
 May mar the sunlight's subtlest skill, 
 While all the floods and frosts of time 
 
 But cut thine image deeper still; 
 For love is not like earthly things, 
 
 To die when it is old and hoar; 
 With its true heart and buoyant wings 
 
 It swells and soars forevermore. 
 
"BUT LET IT PASS" 
 
 " Do not write in my album; write separately.''' 
 
 AY, it is well! my fierce and fiery mood 
 Would ill beseem its wealth of whispered hopes. 
 Aye, it is well! for Etna's molten flood 
 
 And the deep greenery of summer slopes — 
 Things utterly apart — like love and hate, 
 Should, as thou say'st, be far and separate. 
 
 And yet perchance their love must yield to mine 
 In height and depth and madding earnestness, 
 
 For when a poet drinks of love's strong wine 
 His calmest dreams are passionate excess: 
 
 Wherefore — but let that pass! I am thy brother, 
 
 And yet I love thee as I love none other. 
 
 None other, no, not one: there was a time — 
 Let that too pass — her grave is o'er the sea 
 
 Among the purple billows of a clime 
 
 That broke her heart, and crushed and maddened me; 
 
 But that it is my Mother's biding place, 
 
 I should ere this have curst it and its race! 
 
 213 
 
"But Let It Pass" 
 
 I had some things to say: I know not what, 
 
 I am as one who wanders in a trance; 
 I only know my brain is wild and hot, 
 
 That my blood swiftens, and my proud heart pants 
 With a new madness, sweet, yet terrible, 
 I reck not if it be of heaven or hell. 
 
 I had some things to say; but let them pass, 
 I will not wrong thy heart with selfish words; 
 
 And more — my life is withering as the grass 
 Withers away on sunny slopes and swards, 
 
 'Neath the keen edge of the remorseless scythe: 
 
 Well — let it cut: thou hast not seen me writhe. 
 
 And yet remember me as one whose soul 
 Was not all fret, or phantasy, or flame, 
 
 But write me on thy heart, as on a scroll, 
 
 One whose strange spirit sorrow could not tame, 
 
 Rash — yet no craven; his own nature's slave, 
 
 And headlong as a fierce careering wave. 
 
 Farewell! and do not utterly forget 
 Him who would peril his immortality, 
 
 For one close kiss of thine; when our eyes met, 
 Didst thou not think mine own looked yearningly ? 
 
 Gleamed they not hotly — even as molten brass ? 
 
 Ay! and thine own were calm: but let it pass. 
 
 214 
 
A FRAGMENT 
 
 [From an unfinished poem.] 
 
 TO-NIGHT the moon is pale! Twelve moons 
 to-night 
 And at this hour and on this spot, I stood 
 Thrilling with manly pride. I'd set a gem 
 On the forehead of the world, and as I stood 
 Looking far out into the pensive night, 
 I saw it throbbing on man's stately brow 
 As a star throbs on the arched front of heaven. 
 And on the wings of the hushed and stilly air 
 There came a murmur of applause from men 
 Whose wondering hearts ensphered its flushing light. 
 
 She, too, was here — o'ercharged with earnest love, 
 
 Like a young angel brimming o'er with bliss, 
 
 Leaning on me with such a fervent trust 
 
 As holy saints lean on the arm of God! 
 
 I was her God! her spirit lay in mine 
 
 All pure and pearly, as a dewdrop lies 
 
 Emboldened in a rose's heart. She clung 
 
 Unto my soul with such a jealous love 
 
 As a young mother clings unto the babe 
 
 That made her first a matron; here she stood 
 
 215 
 
The Palace of Thought 
 
 With her white finger pointing to the sky, 
 Thick sown with lustrous stars, as earth is sown 
 With cherub children's eyes. 
 
 " Clement," she said, 
 These are thy witnesses," then burst in tears 
 Like a full cloud pouring its heart in rain. 
 
 THE PALACE OF THOUGHT 
 
 1DO believe a grand thought never dies, 
 I do believe that after-love is best, 
 When the strange fire that lay within the eyes 
 
 And the wild singing of the heart's unrest 
 Have passed away, and we are calm and wise, 
 And think upon the love that makes us blest; 
 I do believe there's more of heaven in this 
 Than all the eloquence of earlier bliss. 
 
 We reel beneath the first as from a blow; 
 
 We watch its splendor till our eyes are dim; 
 We revel in its nectar till we grow 
 
 Dizzy and drunken, faint in every limb; 
 And so we sleep and dream, then wake to know 
 
 Our rapturous songs have deepened to a hymn, 
 Whose sweeter music, like a heavenly psalm, 
 Freshens our souls with drops of holy balm. 
 
 216 
 
The Palace of Thought 
 
 Ay; there it stands, crowning the grand old woods 
 Like a white angel on a hill of thought, 
 
 Peopling the song-birds' ancient solitudes 
 With deeper joy than spring-time ever brought, 
 
 As, full of lofty majesty, it broods 
 
 O'er the fair images that are unwrought 
 
 In its transparent soul, while serfs and kings 
 
 Rest in the cool shade of its mighty wings. 
 
 Thou'rt wedded to our years, and it is well. 
 
 We are impulsive, and do need a bride 
 Whose rapt affection lives unchangeable 
 
 Thro' all our days of loneliness and pride; 
 So we may lean upon her love, and dwell 
 
 In the pure heart where rest is, till the tide 
 That o'er our being flings its boisterous waves 
 Rolls surging back into the sullen caves. 
 
 As a fond mother, with o'er-brimming heart 
 Stands up and gospels all her sons with truth, 
 
 While the warm tears that all unbidden start 
 Throb back an answer from the soul of youth; 
 
 So stand thou up forever, and impart 
 
 To the world's heart all fair things that may 
 smoothe 
 
 The rugged heights of that stupendous shore, 
 
 O'er which we hasten on for evermore! 
 
 217 
 
' ' There is Hope for Thee" 
 
 A stream of souls runs thro' thee, and I hear 
 The dreamy murmur of their sympathies, 
 
 And how, like pealing thunder on my ear, 
 
 There burst the solemn, grand old symphonies 
 
 Which, like the music of the upper sphere, 
 Are but the lofty-languaged utterances 
 
 Of highest yearnings, and all earnest dreams 
 
 That lie in thy pure heart, like pearls in streams. 
 
 But now, adieu! Thy greatness is so vast, 
 I cannot grasp its wide immensity; 
 
 I muse upon the grandeur that thou hast 
 Till I am lost as on a boundless sea; 
 
 And so, farewell! My heart is throbbing fast, 
 Its hopes, like tears, run streaming into thee; 
 
 I see them pulsing on thy leaves and flowers 
 
 As on earth's greenery hang the joyous showers. 
 
 < ' THERE IS HOPE FOR THEE" 
 
 THERE is hope for thee, poor erring one 
 With sin and sorrow curst and crushed, 
 Through the thick darkness gleams the sun, 
 With a pale, sad beauty flushed. 
 
 218 
 
''There is Hope for Thee M 
 
 The lone wind sobbeth not so loud, 
 Heaven's breath is kissing flower and tree, 
 The blue sky bursts through yonder cloud — 
 There is hope, poor soul, for thee! 
 
 There is hope for thee, poor erring heart 
 All torn and bleeding and unblest, 
 There are balm-leaves to anoint the part 
 
 That's festering in thy breast. 
 There are aids for all thy trembling limbs 
 Till they are firm and strong and free, 
 There are tearful hopes and prayerful hymns 
 
 Breathed forth, poor heart, for thee! 
 
 Yes! there is hope for thee, poor soul, 
 All wild and wayward as thou wast, 
 So let the future moments toll 
 
 The death-knell of the past. 
 There are eyes that strain to see thee start, 
 And bosoms panting like a sea, 
 Press onward then, poor sorrowing heart, 
 
 For there is hope for thee! 
 
 219 
 
"DEAL GENTLY" 
 
 DEAL gently with the fallen one, 
 Thou who hast kept thy higher birth; 
 Pray for the erring heart, nor shun 
 
 The outcast of the earth. 
 Thou knowest not the heavy waves 
 Of agony which o'er him roll, 
 Thou canst not tell the woe that laves 
 Forever round his soul. 
 
 Deal gently with the fallen one, 
 Speak lovingly to the unwise, 
 Perchance repentance hath begun 
 
 Its work of tears and sighs. 
 And kindly words in earnest given, 
 With gentle hopes in love expressed, 
 May win a soul from earth to heaven, 
 
 And give the wearied rest. 
 
 Deal gently with the fallen one, 
 All dark and guilty tho he be, 
 For scorn is not of heaven, and none 
 Are from the tempter free; 
 
 220 
 
My Lost One 
 
 We all may sin ; thou mightest err, 
 Should syren tongues thy ears accost, 
 O friend, be then a comforter 
 Unto the lonely lost! 
 
 MY LOST ONE 
 
 I am young in years, yet old in woe, 
 And my hair is necked with gray, 
 And I pass thro' life like a dreamer now, 
 While none may read from eye or brow 
 That the light hath passed away. 
 
 I have lived with a love as high as heaven 
 
 And deep as the lowest hell, 
 
 I have seen my life's hopes crusht and riven, 
 Till, aye, like a bolt of burning levin, 
 
 The agony on me fell. 
 
 I have lain on the bosom of one as fair 
 
 As a dream of young delight; 
 
 I have felt her hand on my dark brown hair, 
 And the touch of her lips was pure and rare 
 
 As the thrill of starry night. 
 
My Lost One 
 
 The passionate gush of her wild, sweet song, 
 
 And the light of her loving eye 
 
 With the flame in her heart were all mine own, 
 For our joyous loves had grown so strong 
 
 They never more might die. 
 
 But a wrinkled wordling, ripe for hell, 
 Came in with his hoard of gold, 
 
 And robbed my heart of its Annabel. 
 
 God! How my soul did burn and swell 
 As I stood and saw her sold. 
 
 Ay! Bartered off with a broken heart 
 
 At mammon's damned shrine, 
 
 But the chords of her young life snapped apart, 
 And she felt no more the terrible dart 
 
 That's thrust forever in mine. 
 
 So, I live along in a strange wild trance, 
 And await my time to die. 
 
 1 am often thrilled with an eloquent glance, 
 And my soul leaps up and my spirit pants, 
 
 'Neath glance of a luminous eye. 
 
 But oh! When the midnight hour is on 
 
 And the past goes flitting by, 
 
 With its fearful eyes and its hollow moan, 
 I hold my heart by a smothered groan 
 
 And pray that I may die. 
 
THE POET'S WEALTH 
 
 WHO says the poet's lot is hard ? 
 Who says it is with misery rife? 
 Who pities the deluded bard 
 
 That dreams away his life ? 
 Go thou and give thy sympathy 
 
 Unto the crowd of common men ; 
 The poet needs it not, for he 
 Hath joys beyond thy ken. 
 
 Yea, he hath many a broad domain 
 
 Which thou, O man, hath never seen, 
 Where never comes the pelting rain 
 
 Or stormy winter keen. 
 There ever balmy is the air, 
 
 And ever smiling are the skies, 
 For beauty ever blossoms there — 
 
 Beauty that never dies. 
 
 There sportive fancy loves to roam 
 And cull the sweets from every flower, 
 
 While meditation builds her home 
 Beneath some forest-bower; 
 
 223 
 
My Lost Tones 
 
 There, too, the poet converse holds 
 With spirit of the long ago, 
 
 And dim futurity unfolds 
 Secrets for him to know. 
 
 Then say not that in wretchedness 
 
 The poet spends his weary days, 
 Say not that hunger and distress 
 
 Are guerdon for his lays; 
 But rather say that lack of gold 
 
 Unto the bard is greatest bliss, 
 And say, he is not earth-controlled 
 
 Whilst owning wealth like this. 
 
 MY LOST TONES 
 
 I AM old, perchance, before my time, 
 And my heart is wet with tears, 
 While on my life is the frost and rime 
 Of the gathered storms of years. 
 
 There is many a ruined shrine that lies 
 In the paths which I have trod, 
 
 And much that's buried from human eyes 
 And only known to God. 
 
 224 
 
My Lost Tones 
 
 There is many a love that hath grown cold, 
 
 And many an unkept vow, 
 And much — oh! how much, that I would fold 
 
 To my lonely spirit now. 
 
 There is wild, vague music floating down 
 
 Thro' the dim departed days, 
 But I can not note whence comes the tone, 
 
 So thick is the tearful haze. 
 
 Perchance 'tis the wail of wild unrest 
 From the years that have passed by, 
 
 Or it may be discord from the sobbing breath 
 Of some dream I left to die. 
 
 Ah well! there's a shadow across my brow, 
 
 There's a mist before my sight, 
 Yet the beautiful thought is o'er me now 
 
 That the stars are with the night. 
 
 I know that the seeming ills of fate 
 Are but love's in strange disguise, 
 
 And that even the terrible specter, hate, 
 May have soft and motherly eyes. 
 
 So I wait; and perchance in the Far-to-be 
 I shall find that the mystic hymn 
 
 Which seemed so solemn and sad to me, 
 Was the voice of the cherubim. 
 
 225 
 
AGONY 
 
 ONCE when I and Sorrow pondered 
 O'er the wealth my soul had squandered, 
 In the days when pride and passion 
 
 Burned within me like a hell; 
 Then my life grew pale and haggard, 
 And my spirit reeled and staggered 
 With the agony that tore it, 
 In the dream that on me fell. 
 
 In the calm of summer even, 
 When the angels unperceiven 
 Come and wave their snowy pinions 
 
 O'er our fetter-furrowed brows; 
 Ere the morn had yet arisen 
 I had set myself to listen 
 For the stars, whose eyes would watch me 
 
 Thro' the green-leaved chestnut boughs. 
 
 And I waited long, and longer. 
 And the yearning still grew stronger 
 For the coming of the starlight 
 
 Out into the quiet skies. 
 Then my soul was wet and glistening, 
 And my spirit ached with listening, 
 Till at last like madden'd famine 
 
 Flashed the yearning thro' my eyes. 
 
 226 
 
Agony 
 
 Like a rare and queenly maiden 
 With a wealth of beauty laden, 
 Moving with a grace imperial 
 
 Rose the golden-tressed moon; 
 But her calm and stately glory 
 Unto me seemed old and hoary, 
 For the stars alone I waited 
 
 On that solemn night in June. 
 
 And the lengthening shadows lengthened,. 
 And the famine grew and strengthened, 
 As the soft winds smote my forehead, 
 
 Swept like kisses thro' my hair; 
 But the deep and earnest gladness 
 Came like mockery to my madness, 
 When I turned to heaven, imploring — 
 
 But the stars were never there! 
 
 And the gracious moon kept brightening 
 As my spirit leapt like lightning, 
 And my eyeballs were consuming 
 
 With the agonizing heat; 
 And a white dove settled near me, 
 Neither did the songbirds fear me, 
 For a robin came and warbled 
 
 In a rosebush at my feet. 
 
 227 
 
Agony 
 
 And I quivered like an aspen 
 When the whirlwind hath it claspen, 
 And the hells of aspiration 
 
 Flamed with thousand-fold desire; 
 But upon my strange perdition 
 Fell no sanctifying vision, 
 So the molten anguish mounted 
 
 Till my soul was all on fire. 
 
 Then this feeling wakened slowly, 
 That my soul had grown unholy, 
 And I knew I was a leper 
 
 As my waning life grew dim; 
 And the wind rose wild and tearful, 
 Then again fell low and fearful, 
 With a broken-hearted wailing 
 
 Like an unloved orphan's hymn. 
 
 And I knew that I was dying, 
 As the solemn wind kept sighing, 
 In its prelude to the requiem 
 
 It should utter o'er my soul; 
 While my strained eyes grew leaden 
 And my limbs began to deaden, 
 As a torment writhed throughout me- 
 
 'Twas the last dreg in the bowl. 
 
 228 
 
The Human Statue 
 
 Then a blessed dream came to me, 
 And I heard my first love woo me, 
 Till her warm tears rained like music 
 
 On my swoll'n and livid lips; 
 And her sweet and low-voiced breathing 
 Quenched the fire within me seething, 
 And I knew my soul had trembled 
 
 Thro' its terrible eclipse. 
 
 So my soul awoke from dreaming, 
 While the holy stars were beaming 
 Like the gentle eyes of mothers, 
 
 When their trust is all in heaven; 
 So, my trembling spirit's sadness 
 Melted into blessed gladness, 
 As I 'rose and bowed my forehead, 
 
 For I knew I was forgiven. 
 
 THE HUMAN STATUE 
 
 An address delivered before the students of Warnersville 
 Academy, New York, June 2, 1855. 
 
 WE all do carve as statues evermore! 
 And some are sculptured with most living 
 skill, 
 And some are rude and lowly; while some seem 
 
 229 
 
The Human Statue 
 
 So strangely fair in their deformity 
 We weep, and loathe, and cling unto them still: 
 And thus are shaped life's subtle essences, 
 And thus all things do symbolize the soul. 
 
 Therefore, O friends — in this your earnest youth — 
 
 When loftiest visions of the future stand 
 
 Throbbing before your sight, note every line 
 
 In their high-thoughted features, and so carve 
 
 The grand hope into form, that it shall stand 
 
 Through all the years majestic 'fore your sight 
 
 As a white statue from its pedestal 
 
 Smiles on the sculptor whose large skill has wrought 
 
 Thus into wondrous symmetry the thought 
 
 That erst lay in his soul. 
 
 Dig deep for truth, 
 And when your hands have struck the hidden vein 
 Its waters shall gush up to meet your lips 
 With a most tempting loveliness, whereof 
 Your souls may sate their thirst forevermore. 
 So live, and ye shall nourish; and, perchance, 
 When your green springtime, with its buds and 
 
 blooms, 
 Passes to the ripe autumn, there shall be 
 Such mellow plenty of rich-flavored fruit 
 That the old epicure — the world — shall bend 
 
 230 
 
The Human Statue 
 
 And stagger beneath her treasures, as a vine 
 Totters beneath its luscious load of grapes. 
 
 So live, and ye shall flourish! And if all 
 
 The fibers of each heart do cling to heaven; 
 
 If all your wealth of sympathies be flung 
 
 Above the skies — above the burning stars — 
 
 Above all glories up to our own God, 
 
 Then shall your souls have prescience of all time, 
 
 And stand among the angels! 
 
 Ye shall speak 
 And men shall hear in wonder, for your voice 
 Shall sway the nations as a shaken reed; 
 The long, long suffering then shall come to you, 
 And the heart-broken — all the tearless ones — 
 With those who writhe in bondage; and your souls 
 Shall kneel before their sorrows, and shall weep, 
 Then rise up stern and mighty! When your eyes 
 Shall loose their leaping lightnings, and your lips 
 Unroll their crashing thunders, till all wrong 
 Trembles like creeping murder in the night. 
 
 And smiles shall be about you, and warm tears, 
 And gladness as the sunshine. You shall rest 
 Your love upon all children, and gray hairs 
 Shall thrill your hearts like music! Ye shall be 
 
 231 
 
The Human Statue 
 
 Children of poesy, loving all flowers, 
 Rejoicing in all tempests! Ye shall speak 
 The meaning of the mountains, and unfold 
 The mysteries that do lie within the stars, 
 And wait in quiet valleys! Unto you 
 The winds shall be a languaged utterance, 
 And streams shall have in you another voice, 
 And seas, and roaring torrents! 
 
 Ye shall read 
 And render in our tongue the solemn hymn 
 Anthemed by all the ages! And our souls 
 Shall garner up the kingdom of your thought, 
 And form a mighty universe of mind. 
 
 Therefore, O friends, in this your earnest youth, 
 
 " Excelsior" be ever on your lips; 
 
 Tell out your message boldly in the ear 
 
 Of the great world, and from the dark eclipse 
 
 Drag forth the hidden light. Then ye shall hear 
 
 The harmony of angels, and the strain 
 
 Of the high One's own choristers; and then 
 
 The voice ye breathe unto the sons of men 
 
 Shall catch the music of the other sphere 
 
 And back to your own hearts return in love again. 
 
 232 
 

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