--.—.— z—- LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, ;i- Cqiyririijl T)a. ShelfT.S 1007 a in m 1:1:1/1. UNITED STATES PROSE IDYLS BY JOHN ALBEE NOV 18 1892 BOSTON AND NEW YORK [ HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1892 U T 'I Copyright, 1892, By JOHN ALBEE. All rights reserved. : The Riverside Press, Camfrridce, .' ' < A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. TO E. A. and L. S. A. CONTENTS PAGH White Thoughts i Helen's Trees 4 Nieban and Launa 9 Grammarian in Love 15 Pain and Pleasure 20 The Cracked Bell 24 The Mind Curer 27 Creation 29 Poeta Nascitur ; . . 32 The Egoists 34 A Reminiscence of Virgil 36 The Bird Sang 39 The Madonna 44 March Meeting 46 The Statue of my Friend 53 A Child of God 58 The Faith Curer 61 The Queen's Handkerchief 65 The Mask Veil : A Dream Story 69 The Red House 82 Love Letters 93 The Devil's Bargain . . — f 96 The Soul of Things 104 The House Door 109 The Voice 112 The Writer's Walk 121 vi Contents The Secret of Authorship 12S The Pool: A Socialistic Apologue 135 The Governor 143 Pigmies 146 Brethren of the Common Lot 14S The Superfluous Man 156 The Family Mirror 160 A Mountain Maid 166 The Divided House 170 PROSE IDYLS WHITE THOUGHTS The young maiden looks out be- tween the curtains of her window in the early morning before she is half dressed. She is still nearly all in white ; her lips and cheeks are flushed with joy- ous dreams ; and, luminous under her marble brow, they resemble the pink blossoms of the arbutus among its white sisters. She looks out of the window and sees the earth buried in snow. The roofs are covered with a white thatch that bends under the eaves like a giant's hands curled up with the cold. The trees, too, bear great plumes of snow at the extreme ends of their 2 Prose Idyls branches ; they hang almost to the ground with the weight. The sky itself is no longer blue ; it is the color of milk. Why should winter and cold clothe themselves always in such pale robes ? mused the maiden. Even the winter sun is white. She resumes her dressing. But her thoughts look out of the window. The snow-robed earth makes her think of weddings, of brides, of the long satin train, the white veil coming down almost to the feet and flowing over the head like a mist. Her cheeks grow more rosy. Then she thinks of the dead in their winding-sheets ; the same whiteness, the pale face, the blanched lips, death's pallor, which is but an extinguished white ; the shroud almost as long and full as a bridal dr. Why should love and death alike be decked in white 5 she mused. Is it then only that we become wholly pure ? White T ho icghts Then she completes her toilet. But she lingers as having forgotten some- thing. She draws the curtains wide apart and gazes long, out upon the milky sky, upon the snow glittering in the sun like an immense tapestry wrought with pearls and diamonds. Once more she returns to the mirror, as if she had just remembered some- thing. She selects the whitest flower from her lover's bouquet and arranges it over her bosom. She thinks no more of the white winter, the buried earth, the pallid ghosts. It is summer in her heart. HELEN'S TREES. I own a thousand trees ; yes, a forest — a forest that extends from the mountain to the valley which opens into the world. My trees, full of leafiness and sweet with unnamed perfumes, reflect their gigantic shadows in the lake ; they softly wave their topmost sprays be- fore the inexorable blue doors of the sky, down there in that silent, silver mirror. Yet because of Helen's trees mine no longer satisfy me. Hers she has named with names she loves. Mine stand nameless ; and futile it is for them to shoot upward, or flaunt a bolder instep as their feet sink deeper beneath the moss-covered mould. Y shall be cut down, you nameless ones, if you continue thus vainly to grow ; Helen s Trees 5 nor shall the duplicity of your images in the lake flatter me any longer ; and as you have no names, you shall not be remembered ; nor shall the Dryads shriek as you fall, for they dwell not in my forest. The subtle-minded Helen has shepherded them all into hers ; and Diana hunts there, and Pan pipes, and even the bears from the moun- tain she has made welcome. I, alas ! never remembered the di- vinities, nor did I name any tree after the goddesses whom I adore. Deftly I trained them, lopping away the lower limbs for unwished light, unminded of the wonted retreats of the timid satyrs and the fauns that love to crop the tender, shaded sprouts. So I made all like a park, wherein men walk who fear beasts and are in dread to meet the wood nymphs. And I bethought me of all the manifold uses of the trunks of my trees, when they should be scarfed by the woodman's axe ; I rejoiced when I saw them shorn and 6 Prose Idyls hewn and forever imprisoned under my feet and over my head. Now, alas ! the beams of my house afflict me like ghosts, and they wave long supplicating or deprecatory arms toward me, even as yonder winter-worn trees toss their baffled branches in the windy night against the cold and rigid stars. I will retract all my thoughts of the utilities of my forest ; for Helen's trees are not beams ; their august spires touch the heavens — the Ura- nian heavens which Pan and all the Muses gave to her when they conse- crated her groves. Too late — too late I saw the good of disuse and unprofit- ableness. And I envy them their names. But I cannot do what another has done. Neither can anything be done twice that is beautiful ; and my trees may outgrow and overtop hers — they will still be common tree I know what I will do. I will dis- Helen s Trees own them ; and even the white birches that stand at the portal of my forest, like brides coming out of their cham- bers, shall have cause to weep for neg- lect. It is because of Helen's trees that I weary of the long wooded slopes with their undulating dark green waves, the trim spruces and glossy hemlocks, an indistinguishable assemblage ; they fill me with languor like the salons of the city. I will go and walk among Helen's trees, and perchance I shall divine which one it was she signified and named for me. If I cannot find it, surely it will beckon to me with its friendly arms. It does not idly re- flect itself against the counterfeit sky imprisoned in the lake, nor swing in every wind, but like her soul it is agi- tated by the breath of the celestial sphere. Come, Helen, sing that song of thine, under the beech-tree which thou hast 8 Prose Idyls named for me, for now I have found upon the bark the postil of thy hand ; and thy band of maidens shall join their undersong ; while I, voiceless, contemplate with silent scorn, such as no other poet ever felt before for his own possessions, my herd of unlettered oaks and inarticulate pines. NIEBAN AND LAUNA With the sweetness of a flower that has just unfolded itself for the first time in the spring of the year, the maiden Launa smiled ; and at that moment I chanced to stand where her smile fell upon me. After that mo- ment chance was no more the pro- curess of smiles. To mortals the destinies appear but once, for an instant. In their fleet, impalpable passages over the earth they enter only portals already opened ; but carefully do they close and bar them, once entered. I lived a thousand years ; I became gray as the Theban Apollo. My skin was like an ancient palimpsest, and my bones rattled like chips upon a floor. Launa Probana smiled upon me, and I arose from my ruins with the vigor io Prose Idyls and vivacity of a boy. Such was I, Nieban, the companion of Launa, be- fore the world was, before the double stars had selected their mates ; such I continue through the ages. Hear me, O gray Theban Apollo ! I will tell you of our life upon the earth, since thou knowest that before, and that which shall be. Mortals are not as they seem even in the first years. We had knowledge even then ; but we had not then, nor ever after, the wish to reveal it, no, not even to each other ; and we passed among other mortals as children need- ing instruction and the tuition of the elder bards. Under the long rows of elms we went hand in hand to the schools for children ; we stood side by side before the magicians appointed to unfold our minds ; their charms, their miracles could not deceive us. We read from the same page that which we already knew. If there was anything dark, or Nieban and Launa n if I became languid from the sum of the ignorance continually presupposed for us, Launa' s smile restored me ; and the same serene light appeared in my soul as when I first stood in its path- way. If there was knowledge, we knew it when we arrived at it ; and what we learned, O Apollo, from thy chosen ones, that we became, Launa first and I not long afterwards. Or if there were then such things as wisdom and beauty beyond the walls that men build to confine them, beyond the tomes of the sages and the experiences of hoary ancestors, these we drank in at many a hidden fountain. In the morning we gathered flowers ; at noontide we exchanged the fruits of the earth prepared for each of us. In the afternoon, prone upon the hillside under the young birches, we sailed with the high, translucent cloudlets, or sent messages by them to the even- ing stars. In secret places we built I 2 Prose Idyls houses of boughs and roofs of brake, not large enough for company, nor pleasant enough for more than one day. These now, later generations of children discover as the seats of a remote and extinct civilization. Under the low arched bridge we waded among the ripples, and under them saw our bare feet become as large as those of our elders. The friendly spiders looked down from the roof, and water-flies gave over their perpetual gyrations and watched us with delight. I carried Launa over many a brook at whose depth she pre- tended to be affrighted. Did she wish to feel her arms around my neck ? You know, ye blessed gods, who knew the heart of Launa Probana. But I knew it not. Clasping her firmly and stepping cautiously among the reeds and peplis, I felt only the emotion, the agitation of a hero. Together we explored the further side of every stream, hill, wood ; for Nieban and Launa 13 was it not there that the mystery, the secret lurked which we were per- petually looking for? — the secret which only allured us to the next. Thus did we come afresh to the ap- prehension of the myths of the olden times, which penumbrate divine be- ings and their thoughts. To us they dissembled not, but took us by the hand and disclosed to us the arcana of forest and waters and mountain pin- nacles ; and we became like-minded, and held intercourse with such of their company as yet retained remembrance of their mortal state, doomed for yet awhile to the condition of demigods. From them we learned to be silent and impassive when we approached that which was in its inner being di- vine. Ever as before, this too seemed but the intuition of our own souls ; for never had we spoken of ourselves to each other, while drawing more and more near. Thy smile, Launa Pro- 14 J 'rose Idyls bana, smote across rooms, between the faces of friends and comrades, over fields and waters, through a thousand years, and communicated to me the whole of life and the path of immortal- ity. The bow of thy lips encompassed me. And whether our breath made frost figures on the same window pane, or whether, leaning over the rail of the boat, we beheld our faces in the shoul- dering waves run into one, we under- stood these as the emblem of that which was, which had been, and which would be forever. GRAMMARIAN IN LOVE Who knows when he is wholly in love ? Not I. My mother said I was in love with Candide ; and I believed it myself. For a long time my mother had wished me to find a bride. She said I was getting dusty like my books, that we both needed some one to brush us up and keep us from moths — moths she calls them, experienced housewife as she is ; she knows not the little creature that vermiculates the choicest passages in my rarest tomes. Those tomes, I was already wedded to them. Yet when I beheld Candide's white teeth and the rubicund curve of her lips, and heard her voice that trebled like a bird's, I forgot study. Hand in hand we studied nature. 1 6 Prose Idyls Candide's voice trebled like a bird's, among flowers, in the groves, over brooks and meadows where the cow- slip enamels her six sepals and her lux- uriant leaves alike. How dusty are books ! thought I. " Wore it not better done as others use?" kept ringing in my ears. And Candide's voice trebled like a bird's. I heard it now when alone, we did not permit each other to be alone ; and others — there were none ! We indulged ourselves in the egoism of two. Only there was nature, on which we threw ourselves, like the alchemist's last projection, and changed all to gold. Silent, patient nature ! What met- amorphoses hast thou to bear from lovers, what flatteries ! Didst thou, too, hear Candide's trebling voice and believe it one of thine own ? Dost thou never weary of the monotonies of thine external iterations from bird and wind and water and leaves ? And, ah me, from thy bar Grammarian in Love \J Candide trebled on. When she was not talking she was singing, and at length I could not distinguish one from the other. In any case the words were of no moment in my ears. I heard only a certain music, of which I thought I should never tire. Does one tire of a street song, filtered down from I know not where — the grand opera, perhaps ? I was the first to hear her voice ; it was not the world's yet. And the words — we never mind them ; we make them to suit the instant emo- tion. Nevertheless, one evil day I brought my bird to book. We left nature, her mossy seats and pillows, her leafy branches, and bowers too large for one, her hilltops, and heaven over all, and we sat down in chairs — the chairs, alas ! of this un- derworld. The treble of Candide's voice dimin- ished, grew broken, sober, embarrassed. 1 8 Prose Idyls It tried to speak in my language. I had had no difficulty in being silent in hers. Here now we sat in chairs, de- corous like those in other chairs, con- ing in something called speech, prose, strict, intelligible, the terrible dialect of this under-world, which I, like a galley slave, am doomed to clank about in, while I hear afar off the speech of Candide's native realm, its long vowels, its words of benedic- tion that raise the heart and put reason to sleep. Fool that I was ! to think that Candide's treble could be confined in four walls and a chair, and attested bv my learned tomes of ancient and uninspired sages. Fool ! that I should wish mv humming-bird to alight like another, and to speak as my books, without solecisms and tautolo. What is love but never-ending tautol- So much grammar and Candide have taught me. But no one had taught Candide ; no, not even I. Alas ! now the dust settles upon my Gram7narian in Love 19 books and upon me, and my mother is hopeless. But Candide goes trebling through the world ; she is happy, and she will never learn grammar. Would that I might again hear her voice, though in a solecism. I listen ; all is so still here among voices that once made such a stir. I listen — I hear only the little creatures vermiculating the vellum of Philostra- tus at his twenty-fourth letter. Ah, the epicures ! How well they scent the good things ! PAIN AND PLEASURE We were begotten twins of a mo- ther who, having suffered more than mortal anguish, expired at our birth with excess of joy. YVe were separated as soon as we were brought forth. Thenceforth pur- suing each other through the worlds and among the spaces of the most distant stars, never have we been re- united for a single instant, but where one came the other had just departed. Well we know each other's trail, paved with pearls that once were tears and bordered with stems once in bloom, undeviating, ever returning upon itself ; and our camps are n< wanting the presence of one or other of us. The signal of departure is the al of arrival. The monotony of our journey: Pain and Pleasure 21 would be more wearisome, but that as guests we are sometimes mistaken one for the other. In the house of lovers we are often thus confounded, and in the chambers of first-born babes. In the house of music also the inmates are never certain which to call us ; be- cause, in truth, under some mysterious conditions our natures become inter- changeable, and tears and smiles are but false criterions. In the houses of poets we seldom remain long enough at one time to be identified. It is through them we make our quickest yet most frequent flights ; so that if any one should find either heralded there, let him not be too confident ; it is as likely to be the other. But the poets sometimes boast that we are indistinguishable, and give us equal welcome, equal praise. There is only one abode we avoid — where more than mortal fortitude is professed ; where hang our pretended portraits in a portico devoted to mod- 22 Prose Idyls erate pleasures and majestic pains. The Stoics believe not in us, and we reciprocate their skepticism. For the time is not yet when men can know themselves without a knowledge of both of us. Nature makes the lives of most ani- mals brief as a compensation for all that they endure from their masters, and also because they can make little use of the experience gained of us. It is I, the twin brother of Pleasure, that dictate this memorial by the hand of my intimate. I surrender for some years the lives of children and many youths and maids to my brother, knowing that in due season they will be subjected to me. If by chance they escape, I await the moment when such blessed beings, departing hence, will leave me the procession which follows them to the tomb. I claim tribute in the last and usually in the first breath of all that exists. Thus everywhere and at all times is our Pain and Pleasure 23 sovereignty divided in a just divi- sion. Men testify that this is not the truth, and that some are always my victims and others the life-long favor- ites of my brother. They know not that where the seed of one is planted, it bears not its own fruit but that of the other. As night follows the day, as tides ebb and flow, as season gives place to season, so do we follow each other in the life of man that he may be fitted for final repose. But well do I know that I am mor- tal, and that at last I shall be over- taken, dissolved, and lost in the glo- rious being of my immortal brother. THE CRACKED BELL It is a breach of manners to enter late a Protestant service. At a Cath- olic you drop on your knees, you are forgiven, you stand where you are, or go boldly forward to your seat. In my village the Protestant bell was cracked ; it did not send its call as far as was its wont, and the punctual Margaret was late. Others began to be; in short, it came about that all were late, even the clergyman. For on the Sabbath no one trusts his own watch ; he waits to hear the bell. It is the Sentinel of Heaven. But it was cracked, and souls were in danger. As if in sympathy with the bell, its tower was rent ; howbeit, the bell fell not ; there it hung almost by a splinter. They rang it no more ; some said it The Cracked Bell 25 would widen the crack, others that it would bring down the tower, even to toll it. People now came to church accord- ing to the time of their several watches and clocks; some midway of the ser- vices, some almost at the close; others did not come at all. It was the fault of the bell ; yes, every one said it was the fault of the bell. By some strange accident the mind of the clergyman was beclouded and changed ; he knew not what to think or speak for fear of leading his flock away from heaven. He no longer de- livered with authority simple and im- pressive precepts. They were colored and lengthened by various beautiful but uncertain lights. The forlorn people now came to church according to their several in- clinations ; some from habit, some for a walk, some with nothing else to do ; most came not at all. It was the fault of the bell ; yes, all confessed it was 26 Prose Idyls the fault of the bell in the beginning, and now another evil had befallen, the clergyman's voice, that, too, gave an uncertain sound. An old woman, who had enjoyed and suffered the entire fortunes of life, continued to come at the appointed hour. She was partly deaf ; she could not have heard the bell, even when not cracked. She did not know that it hung by a splinter. She was sim- ple, and though in a front pew, she could not have understood the subtle doubts of her clergyman ; she only came to worship God ! And when alone of all the congre- gation she was left the sole worshiper, the bell suddenly sounded forth its ancient clear call, the rent tower closed, the clergyman himself forgot his doubts. THE MIND CURES. It would be well, said the sage to me one day, to go to college ; it would be better to go round the world ; but best of all to go look everything thou meetest with in the face and ask of it some question that is in thine own heart. If thou art patient, but withal importunate, then after many years thou wilt find the answers written everywhere, in a pre-Cadmean alpha- bet — such were his very words — over all waste places and in the dust under thy feet. Thus spoke the sage, and many other things of similar import, speak- ing like the Pythoness across the cen- turies, regardless of age, time, and circumstances. As I had gone clandestinely, had hired a chaise and traveled twenty 28 Prose Idyls miles at the expense of all my sub- stance to consult the oracle, I held it to be mine, and I treasured it up for manv years without comprehending it. Vet generally I felt it, like Soc- rates' demon, restraining me from many things. I know not how, but the lofty words and their very vagueness elevated the soul and made it expect- ant of wonderful revelations. If I sought honor, ease, riches, love, some- thing said, Seek them not ! and at length they palled before a life, not mine, but whose existence I could divine. As the astronomer knew an unseen star by the perturbations of some other visible, so I conjectured of a higher life by the agitations, the attractions and repulsions of this. Thus did the sage and the master of many centuries cure the uncertain, adolescent mind ere yet it had reached to follies or prevented the entrance of wisdom. CREATION I have long envied the sculptor who, through extreme fondness, brought a soul into his statue. It is wonderful, but not improbable. All good statues desire to come to life. It happens often. It happens as often as there is a conjunction of genius with the requisite skill. Then is given life and immortality under the material tissues, under the semblances which art invents in marble, on paper and on canvas. I also, like Pygmalion, have wor- shiped the work of my own hands ; and that which I passionately loved, working upon it with the whole force of my nature, in seclusion, without am- bition, without emulation or rewards, has often become a living thing, and returned with gratitude and affection the effort or the prayer which gave 30 Prose Idyls to it release from the prison house of matter. Thus have I surrounded myself with a family of children. The great artist has need of no other instrument than his imagination. What he imagines leaps into existence full-formed, only requiring nurture and culture, which the dexterity of his art is already pre- pared to supply. There they stand or sit, my children, obedient to my most inexpressible thought, until I give them their free- dom by some magic word, for which I and they alike await in silence and expectancy. Then at length I ex- claim, "Awake, advance, live!" But it is also true that I am incom- moded by many half-formed, inchoate, yes, even mal-formed beings. They will neither allow themselves to be re- manded to the void, to nothingness, nor will they take the one step which I urge, which I demand with loud voice and upraised, threatening quill, Creation 3 1 the one step from seeming to being, from sleep and dream to animation and self - existence. There they sit dumb in the corner, like a guest who has been somehow invited, but whom you know not how to entertain. The worst of it is that they take up too much room in a house so small as mine. Shall I also confess that sometimes even those creations which have at- tained to a life of their own, and are capable of mobility, will not separate themselves from my household, but hover about and afflict me with terrible tedium and melancholy ? Is it possible they can find no other home, that no one will receive and adopt them ? If so, they should not have lived ; for what is the good of a family of children whom you cannot send out into the world to better it, and per- chance themselves, but who must always remain in the nest, unfledged, with no note, no voice, no song, strictly their own ? POETA XASCITUR Not to-day, nor yesterday, but in an unremembered time, lived a man who was an unconscious poet. He pos- ted also, and much in the same way. a great estate ; nevertheless he dwelt in one little corner of it. Far away, on the extreme confines of his domain, arose the peak of a lofl mountain. It was so distant and so blue that he thought it was a part of the sky. He never dreamed it was his ; he never attempted to explore the summit ; least of all did it occur to him to make any use of his Parnassian mountain pastures. Others herded their fat flocks there, and piped and sang after the manner of furtunate and happy shepherds. All the while he enjoyed contem- plating it ; that alone made him happy Poeta Nascitur 33 and blest ; made him dear to all folks ; and more beloved by his friends and the gods of his own mountain. No one knew he was a poet, al- though all who had intercourse with him immediately became poets. No one who saw him plodding about his obscure little corner suspected that his estate inclosed the very summit of the mountain, so distant and so blue that it was scarcely distinguish- able from the heavens. Down deep in his soul, behind a thin but impenetrable veil, hid the poet ; and every one went on believing he knew all about the gentle and friendly neighbor dwelling contentedly in his little corner under the high stars. THE BGOIS In those impitiable e;.es I beheld no retraction of her disdainful, taci- turn words ; and methought ur. purple fillet shot forth little resilient tongues of flames, like those that es- cape from the wheels of an electric car. Beware ! they seemed to hiss, those viperous, sleided tongues of poison- &re Beware I could not, and I would not And that which threat- ened to destroy enticed me on with threefold enchantment e devil casts out another in the infernal comedy of my life. For I no longer breathed the bacchanal air of self-flatter)' and of an egoism high as the dome of the s ich I seemed to touch, where I neither per- mitted nor perceived any otlu ence than my own. The Egoists 35 She, it was she who had dethroned me, and filled up the universe with herself and her sorceries. Thus thrust out mv heaven, more false than that fabled of brass, I fell — fell into the sea, the insatiable sea of her being ; until with the surrender of self-love I was abandoned to a soul so like my own in its egoism, but being woman's so far surpassing man's as the subtlety of her nature exceeds his, that I was at last destroyed by it. Yet I lived on, con- scious, unresistingly conscious, that in slavery to her I was ministering to the same devil that formerly possessed myself. Yes ; in the infernal comedy of false love there are two players, but a single part. A REMINISCENCE OF VIRGIL I opened the grammar at the wrong place. Surely the exception was there; but I could not find the one that Mas- ter Virgil has so adroitly slipped into the verse, just to plague a schoolboy. Let it go, said I ; it will come in some other fellow's passage. " Sir, you may sit ! you do not un- derstand it ;" and the great Professor's eyes, raised just above his spectacles, dropped back behind them again like two bullets, as he called up from the bench of trembling boys the next pro- tagonist. What a bad thing is the Latin gram- mar ! He had also to sit down, over- whelmed with shame. This time the Professor did not speak ; he only raised his eyes above the A Reminiscence of Virgil 37 square, gold-bowed spectacles, and re- fracting their powerful dioptric glasses methought I detected a faint line of blue light, like a strand of fading rain- bow, or the nether fringe of a thunder cloud, under which the horizon strug- gles against extinction. This time, but more emphatically, he dropped them like two bullets ; and the champion of the class, he who knew every exception, fell back into his seat as if the battle were lost. The battle was lost ; we were in confusion and retreat ; the little we knew fled through the windows, rushed out of the doors, ran up the chimney, and the fourth book of the ^Eneid was lost, buried deeper than vanquished Troy. What then ! did not Master Virgil compose those beautiful caesuras to discipline us in grammar — that we might become expert grammarians ? But for all that I loved Master Vir- gil. I loved him when I read the 38 Prose Idyls Bucolics under a tree, and also when I recited his heroics to my brothers, the drapers and tanners. Ah, you will divine why ; I did not construe them very well, and I had forgotten paradigms and exceptions, and most of all that most erudite of grammatistical Professors who threw out of the window the flowers of the ^Eneid. For all that, I felt only the happi- ness of shepherds and shepherdesses ; the Saturnian age and the sufferings of heroes. I forgot even short syllables and long, and those voluptuous words and blushing tropes which nibbed such a salacious pen for Montaigne, as he am- bled up and clown his sixteen-paced tower. THE BIRD SANG A little bird sang to me from her gilded cage, hung in the top of the window. She sang, but I could not catch her words ; notwithstanding, as in some strange human speech, half knowing what it wishes to say, so I knew not the words of the little songster, but I comprehended her meaning. She sang, and this was her song : " Water and seeds have I enough ; and a fig and a pale green lettuce leaf ; a hoop to swing, and one above another three perches ; on one I sleep and on one I eat and on this I sing. But, ah me ! my cage is so round, and I never come by the end of it. Round and round and still the same ! Never a corner, never a covert from observa- tion ; never shade nor recess whither 4: Prose Id I may fly and hide — I who love seclu- sion and sometimes not to be seen, sn I sing. u There is no place of retreat, save when I put my head under my v. and dream that I am alone. I should a square ca^e, whose limits would not seem so hop. . .nd mo- notonous as this wearisome circle ; or one like many-storied houses with lock and curtain ; or as the dog's kennel, where he sleeps and ruminates ; or like that of my brother, the caged squirrel, that has a cave in which, if he only imagines he hides himself, he seems happy. " But this inclosure — is it meant to resemble your world, to simulate free- dom and be still a prison ? " Then I pondered ; and I answered the song of the little bird as much as I could : " No, little bird ; thy song is sweet, and sweet even thy complaint But there are no more any corners in the world ; no more any seclusions ; no The Bird Sang 41 more any privacies. Alas ! the world was created round like thy cage, al- though not in its present rotundity ; but every day it grows rounder. There was a time when it was even flat, and men of old days walked to the end of it and touched the sky. O happy men ! But now all is seen, all without moving is revealed ; there is no longer any secret place. As through the bars of thy gilded cage, we peer into each other's unfenceless world. The human eye has become akin to God's. There is no more any escape for thee and me. As thou puttest thy head under thy wing as a last refuge from sight, so do I withdraw my soul only from the gaze of the world. " My cage is round and open on all sides like thine. Sometimes, too, it is gilded ; sometimes it is black as the bars at the entrance of tombs. But al- ways it is on all sides like thine ; like the earth round and round ; and like the earth worn slowly down, every- 42 Prose Idyls thing that dares thrust itself beyond the indomitable circle. And evermore equality, monotony, mediocrity, pub- licity, rejoice over their conquests. " Like the spheres, we touch but do not meet ; there is no longer need of meeting, since all are all alike and all is visible, as in a house of glass ; and windows are set in the inmost man- sions of men. My dearest friend al- ready knows what I am about to say to her ; she has divined it, she has said it ! We know each other so well ! all know all. Youth knows as much as age, and age knows no more. The world is round and rounder, and all things grow plain. Light irradiates the invisible, the mysterious, the vi- sionary. Color has faded away from the human panorama, crowded with etio- lated cosmopolites. "Thou dear illusionist, wonder-eyed, credulous, singing gladsome strains of gods and heroes to their progeny, the men of ancient days, go hence ; thy The Bird Sang 43 world is broken, there is no room for thee. "And thou, little prisoner in thy gilded cage, sing thy song and thy plaint ; and when thou wouldst be alone, put thy head beneath thy wing, as I withdraw my soul, my soul only, from the ever-advancing myrmidons." THE MADONNA I was standing before Murillo's Ma- donna. Twice, have I traveled afar to see it. This was the second time. I stood now a long time before the Madonna, trying hard to raise the vi- sion of my soul where I might look down into her upturned eyes. She would not suffer it, although I raised myself to the pinnacle of heaven. Then I said, conscious of my just repulse, " Thou art well worthy to be the Mother of a God ! " I turned at the echo of my words, but they died away along the sid< the gallery and from behind man}' ad- mirable pictures. Silence is better in this presence, thought I. Once more I turned my gaze upon the Madonna's face. The Madonna 45 But now, letting my eyes wander, I saw other faces in the painting, cher- ubs, angels of infancy, nascent forms, from which the promised God was to be chosen. Even as I thought this I heard their sweet infantine tones imploring the expectant Mother to be taken to her embrace. Then knew I why those eyes up- turned to heaven, beyond mortal re- sponse ; and why those hands clasped tightly her bosom, as yet clasping no- thing. For they were appealing to the Lord of Heaven, those looks, those arms, not for her own choice, but his. And as I looked now steadfastly in a new knowledge, the lot was cast, the choice made. Under her arms was the Child, and her eyes looked down into mine and into those of all the world, filling them with joy. MARCH MEETING O happy days of the March town- meeting, ere the boy is a man and a maker of laws ! Happy days ! when one goes to the polls, but does not vote. This theme, at least, was never before attempted in song. Come, teach me the measure, muse of Ascra and the Catonian farm. For never could I in a straight course round the stake of the sonnet fourteen times and barely reach the goal ; nor with my rustic lyre swing in song like a bird from tree to tree without once flapping a heavy wing ; nor yet could my short arm wield the hvpermeters of Walt Whitman, that stretch across the page like a prairie furrow. Not Athens, nor Alexandria, nor Lutetiacan teach me ; but my masters shall come from Heotian ploughlands, March Meeting 47 from oldest Aryan fields, the wattled Saxon acre, the stone walls and red houses of New England. Come, then, all ye rural muses that sit so prim and plain on the roofs and belfries of all the little town-houses and meeting-houses of my native land : come ! and I will sing the song of free- dom learned on jewsharp and whistle, turned now to triumphant trumpet and drum, while I, a white-handed poet, am proud to march with the myrmidons of democracy. But chiefly my voice is heard in the March town-meeting and in the annals of my island home. There, like Ulysses, I have ever cared more for Penelope than fame, and all my nurture was derived from the school, the farm and the town- meeting. We played about the houses of free- dom ; we heard the voices within ; we saw the stern faces of our fathers as they went to and fro. We entered the aisles and listened. Leaning on 48 Prose Idyls rail and post we beheld the little state in motion. Speech was brief ; it was awkward and slow ; intention and ac- tion were clear as the noon and strong as mountains. The fathers arose ; with one upward swing of their hands they made schools, churches, the pound, the train-band, the house for the poor. Then for a year they rested ; then they assembled again ; and after many years the great King and all the world knew the meaning of the town-meeting. But too late ! We too were kings ! On the second Tuesday of March we make ridiculous the pomposities and bombast of senates and forums. We open the meeting without cere- monial, and before the day is done we have regulated the calendar of the year, and gone home to live it out. The recusants, although they swear and scoff, will abide by it. The boys play about the doors of the house of freedom until it is time March Meeting 49 for them to enter and take the places allotted them below their elders, and learn to vote and to act. But until that time they play about the door. And on that March Tuesday, the great secular Sabbath of the yeomen, with twenty-five cents, the savings of a whole winter, the boy is richer and happier than when he owns a farm and yokes his own oxen. For a month before he deliberates on what he shall buy — for twenty-five cents will buy so many things when one is twelve years old ! Not until the very day and after his arrival does he settle on three buns, some sticks of striped and twisted candy, and an imitation cigar made of dark sugar with a fiery end. At the other end of that cigar he mocks the jaunty manners of elder boys. He swaggers and pretends to spit. A red and tingling ear reminds him that he is only twelve. He eats a bun and is himself again. When the day is done, the year is 5