LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Xl2tic8 of t^e 3|i)eal anD t^e meal BY COAXES KINNEY Copyrisrht 1W7 PESSIM AND OPTIM PESSIM To think! to think and never rest from thinking! To feel this great globe flying through the sky And reckon by the rising and the sinking Of stars how long to live, how soon to die! This, this is life. Is life, then, worth the Hving? This plotting for his freedom by the slave! This agony of loving and forgiving ! This effort of the coward to be brave ! Our freedom! We are sin-scourged into being, And ills of birth enslave us all our days ; No chance of flying and no way of fleeing, Until the last chance and the end of ways. We are walled in by darkness — wall behind us, From whose sprung dungeon -gates Fate dragged us in, And wall before us, where Fate waits to bind us And thrust us out through swinging gates of sin. But what is Fate? It is a mere breath spoken, To echo clamoring between the walls Of darkness — blind phrase uttered to betoken This blind Unreason which our life enthralls. Out through abysmal depths of heaven round us We think our way past orbs of day and night, Till skies of empty outer darkness bound us And place and time are fixed pin-points of light ; But nowhere from the silent planets wheeling, And nowhere from the thundering hell of suns. And nowhere in the darkness comes revealing Itself a Fate that through all being runs. 6 All worlds of matter, all the world of spirit, How these are one, eternal, increate — Soul can not clutcli it, sense come never near it; It is unthinkable, and it is Fate! This awful riddle, wherewith we have struggled Since the dim dawn of human consciousness, With whatsoever dread words we have juggled — Ptah, Zeus, Jove, God — we fail, we fail to guess. Whether there be of all intelligences A total sum, a comprehending whole — Great sea, wherefrom rise all these mists, the senses. And back whereto flow all the streams of soul? Whether this lives, a selfexistent Essence, With its own passions, wiUs, imaginings. Or is but everlasting evanescence. But perfume of the bloom of living things? How cosmic spirit can take hold of matter And give dead elements the living breath? How gather into selfhoods, and how scatter, To work the miracles of life and death? Poets in grand imagination's trances Conceive the gods and give them wondrous birth, And martyrs bleed for Faith's divine romances, And priests go forth to proselyte the earth ; But what terrestrial religion reaches Out into heaven's majesty so far That it can guess what god strange nature teaches To the strange dwellers on the nearest star? Is Buddha known to denizens of Saturn? Is Jesus preached upon the Jovian moons? And what are gods of any earthly pattern To far spheres drifting in the Force-monsoons? Yon sun's flame, in whose glare our worlds go darkling To eyes that from another system gaze — Yon flaming sun is but a glimmer sparkling To like worlds blotted in the Dogstar's blaze. And, howsoever gravitation labors, It lets a million suns from vision slip; While the ten million world-groups are not neighbors Even by light's fine far swift fellowship. How these immensities dwarf and obscure us! AVhat, what are we amid such scenes as these? Our earth unguessed in planets of Arcturus, Undreamed in orbs around the Pleiades! By such infinitudes of distance bounded (These chasms of darkness that no light can leap), AVe seem a dream with glooms of sleep surrounded — * Our little life is rounded with a sleep ! ' OPTIM Ay, we are dreamed ; and, if ever the Dreamer Wake from the sleep to remember the dream, We of His waking shall thrill in the tremor, Dawn with His memory, mingle and stream. What though He slumber through eon on eon? When He has dreamed all the infinite full. Dreamed all the worlds and the lives there to be on, Out to dreamed gravity's uttermost pull; Dreamed forth of matter and force interblended (Storm-drifts of matter and torrents of force) Cyclones of flame, globed, exploded, and rended — Wide wild beginnings of Time's endless course ; Dreamed out of chaos the suns in the spaces. Dreamed down the suns to their white molten cores, Dreamed off the worlds in their systemal places. Over them dreaming the continent-floors 13-> Whatso has ever with being been gifted, Since the first givings of being began, Living again shall be gathered and lifted Into the sovereign consciousness, Man. He shall remember all living and dying, He shall think back to life's origin here- in ay, shall recall when he hither came flying, Seed of life ripened in some other sphere — Brought by some inter-world wind accidental. Or by some gravity's fated monsoon, Hence to be traced by that form rudimental Haply through all forms of life on the moon. So shall he read the soul's mystery-story, Turning the pages from star back to star, Now in the gloom and again in the glory. Till he shall come where the last secrets are. o-14o Then, thus with insight illumined to seeing All that has been, he shall see all that is — Thrill with the pulses of all the world's being. Make all the God of the universe his. Yet shall he, ere that divine consummation, All the career of existence have run, World after world, to his last habitation — Seraph of light on the ultimate sun; Sun, of the globes of all systems compacted, Orb, of all motion the center and rest (Time to a moment eternal contracted), Goal of all spirits immortal and blest. They shall be one, though their number be legion. And with one consciousness they shall revive Into the bliss of that radiant region All of the past that was ever alive. ■0-15 0- Thus we shall share in the last resurrection; So shall the mind of the angels recall Us and all creatures, and that recollection Be the salvation in heaven for all. PESSIM But this longing to live! This tragical strife Of us mortals to give Our lives more of life! Give us new! give us more! We hunger, we thirst, We aspire, we implore — Give most, best or worst! We inherit the ages Of human desire ; Ay, within us yet rages The older brute -fire. <-16-o- All that is we have been, Of air, earth, or sea ; Whether wing, foot, or fin, One kindred are we. In our blood flowing down From primitive man, Savage, saint, sage, and clown Have blent as it ran. All their lives are our life. Their lusts are our lust; And we strive with their strife, Then — dust to their dust! OPTIM Dust to dust? No, that doom We will not endure! Us the prisoning tomb Shall never immure! <- 17o When the star-stuff of heaven From God was outwhirled It was stirred with the leaven Of life of the world. PESSIM God? And where then was man? OPTIM Lo, God and man one Ere the fire-mist began To swirl in to sun ! For man's wills and desires Kepeat and rehearse Those which motived the gyres Of this universe. Ay, and not only his, But those of the whole Life that was and that is Of God, the One Soul. <>18o Life eternally must Be motion of Him — From dull worms in the dust To keen seraphim. Every pleasure and pain, Of stir in the clod Or of thrill in the brain, Is living of God. Life shall vanish away And finish its course When He ceases to play With matter and force. PESsm WiU He cease? OPTIM No, He never, Till matter is hurled Into naught, can dissever Himself from the world. All delights and all doles — Thought, passion, and strife — Are the Infinite Soul's Large living of life. PESSIM Then, on whom Faith has leaned Lives not; for it seems We are whims of some Fiend That slumbers and dreams! Unimaginable Demon! With cosmic fire-storms In His crazed sleep to dream on And dream into forms! Lo, a huge fancy runs Athwart His vast sleep, And ten millions of suns Blaze out in the deep. o20<- His deliriums dim In meteors flock, And with whimseys of Him Wild stars intershock. All the rocks are one tomb Of moods of His mind, Cast away to make room For us living kind; Phantoms! dancing and hymning, While here where we dwell Is but film overswimming An ocean of hell ! Smoking peaks burst in thunder And shower down death. And the plains gape asunder With doom in a breath. <-21-> Commerce rises and dips With east and west sun, As her shuttles, the ships, Weave states into one; But the sea, the brute sea, That swings round the sphere, Never heeds the wild plea Of man in his fear : Him and his its rude surges Toss, buffet, and drown, As it yawns in its gurges And ravens them down. And the beasts of the deep, Like phantoms that form In the nightmares of sleep — Grim monsters that swarm o22 In the darkness of waters, And gorge mouth and maw With their mutual slaughters By snout, tooth, and jaw — How the swift silent beasts In combat partake Of the fattening feasts The mad billows make! 'Lord of life and of death, Have mercy on me ! ' Cry that squanders the breath On storm, night, and sea. Cry for God's mercy where. In maniac bout With the powers of the air. The gre-at waters shout? Where from mountains' pent hollows Hell bursts out on men? Where earth opens and swallows And closes again? Cry for mercy where thunder Drops death from the clouds? Where the ghosts rise from under And mix with the crowds Of the living, unheard, Unseen, and unknown, Till with mortal plague stirred The scared cities groan? Mercy! No, there is none In whatever force Wherewithal the Lord Sun Gives life and death source. o24 *Fire!' A cry in the night — One cry, and no more Ere the streets fill with fright And clamor and roar. To the flames all the city! Stop not now to call That Almighty have pity — The water has all. 'O my husband! — my child A mother and wife In the first terror wild Has fled for her life From the room where she kept Love's wake by dead love, And her innocent slept Unfathered above. \ ' Dead ! — dear love ! ' Off she flings Whoever delays Her mad purpose, and springs Back into the blaze. Through the flame and the smoke, Past him lying dead, Up the stair, scorch and choke, To find the babe's bed! Scarce a moment to speak One vain phrase of prayer Ere the woman's death-shriek, And, framed in the glare Through the window revealed, A picture that robbed Men of breath, apd down kneeled The women and sobbed; ->2G- Picture, flaslied upon flame, Of two forms in white ! Then picture and frame One red blur of night ! Was it rage, was it ire Of some god above? Or, mad hunger of fire For woman's mad love? Woman's love! Love belongs To Force, and is part Of the rights and the wrongs Of dull Nature's heart. How is Force when it burns And flares out its breath Worse than Force when it yearns And dares unto death? o27o- What is better or worse, Where all only seems? What is blessing or curse, In drama of dreams ? What is saintship or sin? To climb or to fall, Or to lose or to win? The One lives it all. 'All delights and all doles — Thought, passion, and strife- Are the Infinite Soul's Large living of life ! ' Is it living of thought Or living of trance ? And is purpose outwrought From chance upon chance? <>-2S*> What purpose in killing ^ly darling, my boy? What demoniac thrilling Of infinite joy From the little life lying In fever's hot flame And in last anguish crying The mother's fond name? Stricken wife of my youth! * O, how from that day Didst thou pine for what truth Death's morrow might say! In the hope of that morrow, Thou, patient and brave With thy burden of sorrow, Soon went to the grave o29o- In the travail of mother Of that little-one Who should follow the brother Ere one year were done. O, the faint pulses' warning! O, loving last words! In the spring, in the morning, With songs of the birds! I explore all the dark, I search sleep for her; But there comes not a spark, Or whisper, or stir From all hearing, all seeing. All feeling of Force, Hinting whether her being Holds conscious its course, So that still might be shown Her dear form and face And herself still be known In time and in space. As the rose, as the lily, Yield up scent and hue, Yield their ghosts to the chillj White death of the dew, Did my home's living flowers So fade and exhale? And have these lives of ours No other avail Than to feel, love, and think One moment of light. And then suddenly sink In morningless ni^rht? 'o- O31-0- Is existence too rife In earth's human hives, That the Life of all life Should so lavish lives? Lives of men, lives of brutes, They crowd to their tombs, Like the leaves, like the fruits, Which fall for new blooms. OPTIM Famine, pestilence, flood. Fire, thunder, and quakes Of the earth, and the blood Volcanic that breaks From the hot veins of mountains, And tempests that plow The great deep to its fountains — Does God, thinkest thou, Heed of thee in thy plaint That these never choose Between sinner and saint Where life is to lose? Holy Jews, ye that priced God's life, and decried The immaculate Christ, And him crucified ; Ye, with credos for charters To hunt and to slay, That re-sainted with martyrs Bartholomew's day; Ye that bloodied the ages With myriad lives' loss In religion's blind rages Of Crescent and Cross : ->33o Ye that fire martial leaders With adulant breath, Making mothers proud breeders Of doers of death — All the civilizations Of man standing armed, Nation fronting each nation's Blood-hunger, alarmed, — How would dare ye appeal To God that He make The brute elements feel For your human sake? God is you and in you, As they and in them ; And shall one of His two The other condemn? 31 PESSIM Where is fault, then, or sin In them or in us — We and all we are in Unpurposed as thus? For be all forms and motions Divine, and they seem But the miscreate notions Of God in a dream. OPTIM No! the seeming is thine; For, could all the mass Of the universe shine Through thy little glass; Could the AUbeing flow Entire into thee. So that Substance might show And Essence might see ; ■o35<- Couldst thou know what beginning To what end belongs ; Couldst thou witness Fate spinning The Right out of wrongs, — Thou wouldst rise from the dark Wherein flesh is born, And with song like the lark Soar into the morn. No! the dreaming is ours; God's life is not trance, But the sum of the powers Of all lives' advance. How we struggle to live! God urges the strife Of all beings to give Their lives more of life. From the instinct that lurked In plasm of old seas He and we have upworked Through myriad degrees, Chmbing higher and higher, With gain upon gain, Till at last the soul's fire Is lit in the brain. In this upward progression, Humanity's birth Is the highest expression Of God on the earth. Yet the heavens are swarmed "With worlds older far; And what lives, angel-formed, May people a star, 37 Neither spectroscope's feel Nor telescope's ken Shall avail to reveal To senses of men. But these five senses grew, As others may grow — Senses so searching-through, Brain facultied so. Seized of force by such arts, That mind may embrace Other mind in far parts Of infinite space. Other mind may be there With powers so strange That our own would not dare Imagine their range. Can these pinholes of sight Of ours comprehend With what uses of light High beings may send The quick soul through the dense Vast darkness of naught, And by some inner sense See us and our thought? And to what fuller blowth This flesh shall unfold, What the grandeur of growth Its energies hold, Man can now no more dream Than through his life dim In the worm there could stream A prescience of him. But we know that we climb; We see that we rise — See how time unto time We widen the skies. From the ten fingers' count Of numbers, begun In the savage, we mount And measure the sun. Fabled Jupiter's nods, That Nature obeyed, And those gorgonish gods, Her forces, which played Chiefest part in mankind's Last dream before day — All the myths from all minds Have faded away. Where the Self-Revelator Immanuel stands As the human creator By human love's hands. God is with us and in us (Within is above), And our lives work to win us His life by our love. Whether I will or whether Will not as He would, All with all things together Work only for good. All the wrong I commit. Mankind so unite To exterminate it They strengthen all right. o41o So, we grow by our sins: Iscariot betrays, And the Nazarene wins Through all after days. Lo, the Wrong that hath died To Hades is hurled. While the Eight, crucified, Redeemeth the world. PESSIM But redemption to come! What boots that to thee, Thou for eons then dumb, Deaf, ' dead soul of me ? What is this we have dreamed? Whereto have we raved? When the world is redeemed Shall my soul be saved? And, if far-future man Remember so me, From the hour I began Till ceasing to be — So revive me, so live me. So breathe my soul's breath- What is that but to give me Sure triumph o'er death? O immortal my soul! To live and to know And flow on with the whole Divine Being's flow! O my soul! from the dark Wherein flesh is born Soar and sing like the lark! For here is the morn ! SANE I lusband — What! liavo I been Hlcoping? Jluvc 1 dreamed? Was he not liore?— ' I )cad ' ? Should I not know that ? Murdered 1 — start not, all my brain ia clear ; Listen, Agnea, to tiio Hccrct I have kci)t ho many a year. For I must not keep it longer; no, when 1 am lying dead, When tlio next year'a grasa in growing green above my dreamless head, r would have you tell my darling what her dying mother said. T(^II h(T I was madly jc^aloua- could not bear that there should be Any shadow of a turning in her precioua love for me; liut the lapse from love to pity! this I dnred not live to see. 47 48 <- So I charge you, so I swear you, wait until the grass above Him and me has thrown one mantle and the cooing turtledove Mourned for me there all the summer, ere you rob my grave of love. For my sleep must be beside him — keeper, you will promise this? — Close beside him, in some semblance of the old remembered bliss When I lay in those arms folded and all heaven was his kiss. That sweet love of me was first love, and it wrought in him like pain, Earnest so, and sad, and tender — O I the thought burns through my brain- Fear not, Agnes ! — I am dying — dying, and I will be sane. Heavens, how that dear heart loved me ! But I was a favored child, Whom the fondness of weak parents had to selfishness beguiled — Had made willful, proud, exacting, and with wayward passions wild. Yet I loved him all my nature ; and with tears mine eyes would swim Oft in thinking, were there needed such a sacrifice for him, I would gladly give my body to be rended limb from limb. 49 -> But right soon I felt the distance of his thought from thought of mine- Felt his purpose to uplift me (true, it gave no outward sign), And my selflove flashed resentful toward that love so all benign. To my mother I was angel ; to my father I was queen ; ^Vhy to husband should there failing, fault, or flaw in me be seen ? Why to him was I not perfect, with this perfect love between ? With such questions in my bosom rose my anger and my pride ; All my will I set against him, all his will for me defied. And disdained to live his living, though for him I would have died. I would be my self-creator, not a creature of his own, In the fashion of his fancy made by him for him alone ; He should have me as he took me, crowned and set upon a throne! Keeper, think what secret devil must have whispered in my heart ! I conceived he did not love me, deemed his fondness was but art To conceal from me his feeling that we were so fiir apart. Dreams they were, at first, of Zilpah ; changed from dreams to days at last— What ! ' all days of all the five years Zilpah here with me has passed ' ? O my darling! can death bear it from such love to be outcast? What ! * you have an opened letter, writ to Zilpah by his hand ! Left for me to read if ever I should come to understand In her absence ' ! Read it, Agnes, though it me with murder brand ! HIS LETTER * Darling little daughter Zilpah : Now let not your dear heart bleed ! Think of me at peace and happy when these lines you come to read ; Think how you were all my solace ; think of mother in her need. ' She will feel the shock more deeply , since, you know, we have not dared Tell her of these fatal bleedings, and she will not be prepared ; So her pain will be the greater by the pain our love has spared. * You, my Zilpah, you expect it; and I catch your anxious eye Always following your father; even now you hover nigh Where this letter I sit writing, to be read not till I die. -> 55 o * When the last comes, you will bravely for sweet mother's sake upbear ; I foresee how she will need you — if she die — or when or where — Fail not thou to lay her by me ' Agnes, lift me! air, more air! Dying— but the letter ! Keeper, help me live to hear it all ! Higher— so ! Now read on !— Hold me !— no, no, Agnes, let me fall ! Zilpah ! — Husband ! — in the darkness 1 groping, groping to — your — call I RAIN ON THE ROOF When the humid shadows hover Over all the starry spheres And the melancholy darkness Gently weeps in rainy tears, What a bliss to press the pillow Of a cottage-chamber bed And lie listening to the patter i Of the soft rain overhead ! Every tinkle on the shingles Has an echo in the heart; And a thousand dreamy fancies Into busy being start, 57 And a thousand recollections Weave their air-threads into woof, As I listen to the patter Of the rain upon the roof. Now in memory comes my mother, As she used in years agone, To regard the darling dreamers Ere she left them till the dawn: O! I feel her fond look on me As I list to this refrain Which is played upon the shingles By the patter of the rain. Then my little seraph-sister, With the wings and waving hair, And her star-eyed cherub-brother— A serene angelic pair — Glide around my wakeful pillow. With their praise or mild reproof, As I listen to the murmur Of the soft rain on the roof O-59 0- And another comes, to thrill me With her eyes' delicious blue ; And I mind not, musing on her, That her heart was all untrue: I remember but to love her With a passion kin to pain, And my heart's quick pulses quiver To the patter of the rain. Art hath naught of tone or cadence That can work with such a spell In the soul's mysterious fountains, Whence the tears of rapture well. As that melody of Nature, That subdued, subduing strain Which is played upon the shingles By the patter of the rain. 1849. THE END OF THE RAINBOW There is a rare region Whose heavenward scope Holds legion on legion Of angels of hope — At the end of the rainbow. Endure the dull present, Its toil, moil, and sorrow ! We shall all find that pleasant Elysium tomorrow — At the end of the rainbow. ->62<- There the sky never varies From glory to gloom; There groves and green prairies Eternally bloom — At the end of the rainbow. The bees hive no honey In that happy land; For the days are all sunny, The air always bland, At the end of the rainbow. There Hope climbs the mountains And rests in the sky; There Peace drinks at fountains That never go dry — At the end of the rainbow. There joys above measure Are blisses benign ; There life's ruby, pleasure, Melts into sweet wine — At the end of the rainbow. There Love from its madness Of longing and moan Leaps whole in the gladness Of finding its own — At the end of the rainbow. No shadow Cimmerian Of ignorance there ; But full the Pierian Spring jets in the air — At the end of the rainbow. There glitter the riches That time never rusts; There glory's proud niches Are filled with our busts — At the end of the rainbow. Endure the dull present, Its toil, moil, and sorrow; We shall all find the pleasant Elysium tomorrow — At the end of the rainbow. THE HEROES OF THE PEN In the old time gone, ere came the dawn To the ages dark and dim, Who wielded the sword with mightiest brawn The world bowed down to him ; The hand most red with the slaughtered dead Most potent waved command, And Mars from the sky of glory shed His light like a blazing brand. But fiery Mars among the stars Grew pale and paler when. At the morn, came Venus ushering in The Heroes of the Pen. 65 66 -> Not with sword and flame these heroes came, To ravage and to slay, But the savage soul with thought to tame And with love and reason sway; Nor good steel wrought that battles fought In the centuries of yore Was ever so bright as they burnished thought To cut into error's core; And in the fight for truth and right Not a hundred thousand men Of the heroes old were match for one Of the Heroes of the Pen. For the weapon they wield nor armor nor shield Endures for a single dint, Nor glave withstands, nor bayonet steeled, Nor powder and ball and flint. It touches the thing called Slave or King, And the Man doth reappear. ->67<»- As did from the toad the seraph spring At the touch of Ithuriel's spear ; And wherever down it strikes a crown, Says sovereign to serf, 'Amen ! ' *Amen and hurra,' the people cry, *For the Heroes of the Pen!* Hurra for the true, of old or new, Who heroes lived or fell ! Thermopylae's immortal few! Hurra for the Switzer Tell! Upvoice to sky the brave Gracchi! Hurra for the Pole and the Hun! For the men who made the Great July! Hurra for Washington! Yet old Time-Past would triumph at last- But hurra, and hurra again. For the heroes who triumph over Time, The Heroes of the Pen ! INNERVALE At the base of a marvelous mountain, Whose hights human foot never trod, There gushes a crystalline fountain And makes a briglit l)rook in tlie sod. And the sod greens away o'er a valley That opens where blue waters be ; And the brook with meandering dally Goes babbling along to the sea. There, snowy sails pass like the lazy White clouds of a summer-blue sky- Appear and evanish where hazy Infinity fences the eye. 69 70 -> Here, asleep upon Pan's mossy pillows- By Pan piped asleep in these groves,- Dreaming Poesy hears the low billows Breeze-babbled from echoing coves. And here, while the leaves sift the sunny Swift sands of the day from above, The wild bee gads hunting for honey. With wings wove of whispers of love. Here the ripples make music like olden Weird monotones thrummed on a lute; Here the dark skies of green are starred golden With thick constellations of fruit. In this valley, alone but not lonely, Beside where the brook-waters run. Stands one little cottage, one only, Dwells one little maid, only one. ^71-> Her bluo eyes are clear pools of passion, Her lips have the tremor of leaves, And the speech that her loving thoughts fashion Is sweeter than poetry weaves. Flirtation, gross, flippant, and cruel, Ne'er held in its tarnishing hold The troth that in her is a jewel For only love's setting of gold. Though the vale is by sleep so surrounded That her ne'er a wooer shall win, On the side by the sea of dreams bounded With her I sail out and sail in. EMMA STUART O, the voices of the crickets, Chirping sad along the lea, Seem the very tears of music Wept in vain despair for me; And the katydids' responses From among the locust-leaves Are the weak and wild regrettings Of far other autumn-eves. For they mind me, Emma Stuart, Of the bygone blessed times When our heartbeats paired together Like sweet syllables in rhymes; 73 ■o74o Ere the faith of love was broken- Ere our locked hands fell apart And the vanity of promise Left a void in either heart. Art thou happy, Emma Stuart? I again may happy be Nevermore: the insects crying In the grass and on the tree, As if singing songs of sorrow At the coming of the frost, Are to me love's fallen angels Wailing for their heaven lost. Often, often, Emma Stuart, On such solemn nights as this Have we sat and mused together Of the perfectness of bliss — Of the hope that lit the darkness Of the future with its ray. Shining like a star in heaven, Beautiful, but far away! 75 By the gateway, where the maple Of the moonlight made eclipse And the river-ripple sounded Like the murmur of fond lips, There a little maiden waited, Telling all the moments o'er — Emma Stuart! Emma Stuart! Waits the maiden there no more? No, ah, no! Along the pathway Grows the high untrampled grass, Where the cricket stops to listen For thy wonted feet to pass; But thy footsteps, Emma Stuart, Press no more the doorway-stone, Trip no more along the pathway — And the cricket sings alone! A SONG FOR THE CRATS There is hope on the banks of the Danube, There is hope in the grand tintamar Of cannon, and music, and clangor Where Sultan encounters with Czar; There is hope where the sway of the Tartar Is swept down the bloody Hoang; There is hope for the Isles of the Morning In Liberty's bugle-twang: 'Down, down with the Autocrat! Hurra for the Democrat ! ' Is Liberty's bugle-twang. 77 The blood that has flowed from old heroes And settled in Lord, Prince, or Don Shall be fetched to the level of manhood As the current of Freedom rolls on; For the world groweth weary of nobles, Who mourn when the people rejoice. Rejoice when the people are mourning. And shudder at Liberty's voice: 'Down, down with the Aristocrat! Hurra for the Democrat!' Is Liberty's righteous voice. Yet it were but a change of oppressors To fly from Blue Blood to the Burse — From the Aristocrat's power of birthright To the Plutocrat's power of purse; But all, they shall all be down-stricken 1 The thunder is in the sky; o79o- It waits but for Truth's invocation, It waits but for Liberty's cry: *Down, down with the Plutocrat! Hurra for the Democrat!' And this shall be Liberty's cry. The Autocrat rushes to ruin, The Aristocrat wax^s old. And mind, in Democracy's balance, Shall weigh down the Plutocrat's gold. In the turmoil of mad revolutions — Mobocracy's chaos of wrong — A firm world of order is forming, That shall to fair Freedom belong : Down, down with the Mobocrat! Hurra for the Democrat! And the world shall to Freedom belong! 1852. ASPIRATION AND INSPIRATION We weary waiting for these glimmerings Which struggle singly through the difficult rifts Of aspiration from the overworld. O for some breezy circumstance at once To take the cloud off from our starry thoughts And let their glory constellate the dark! The spirit's brightest outgrowths are of pain, As precious pearls are of disease in shells At bottom of the deep. The slow, obscure, Still process of the rain, distilling down The great sweat of the sea, is never seen In the consummate spectacle flashed forth A seven-hued arch upon the cloud of heaven : 81 82 o- So never sees the world those energies, Stern effort and long patience, which have stirred In toil's humility and slowly heaved Its darkness up, till sudden glory springs Forth on it, showing like the spanning rainbow. Think ye the lofty foreheads of the world. Which shine as full moons through the night of time, Holding their calm big splendor steadily Forever at the top of history. Think ye they rushed up with the suddenness Of rockets aimlessly shot into heaven, And flared to their eternal places there? The vulgar years through which ambition gropes, Reaching and feeling for its destiny. Are only years of chaos, tallied not On the memorial rocks, but covered deep Under the stratified history of a world. Celebrity by some great accident. Some single opportunity, is like Aladdin's palace in the Arabian tale. Vanished when envy steals the wizard's charm. But thought up-pyramids itself to fame ->83<- By husbandry of opportunities, Grade upon grade constructing, till its liight, Descried above time's far horizon, slopes With peak among the stars. Go mummify Thy name within that architectural pile Another's intellect has builded; none — For all the hieroglyphs of glory — none Save but the builder's name shall signify To the remembering ages. Heart and brain Of thine need resolutely yoke themselves To slow-paced years of toil — need feel and think (A bibulous memory sponging up the thoughts Of dead men is not thought) — else all the trumps Of hero-heraldry that ever twanged. Gathered in one mad blare above the graves, Shall not avail to resurrect thy name To the salvation of remembrance then When once the letters of it have slunk back Into the alphabet from off thy tomb. Ay, think or perish! Marble frets and crumbles Down into undistinguishable dust <- S4 -> At last, and epitaphs grooved into brass Yield piecemciU to the hungry elements; But thoughts that drop plumb to the depths of truth Anchor the name forever and forever. VICTRICE We walked where the grass was a checker Of the light and the leaves of May, When the Night in her white shroud of moonshine Was the beautiful ghost of Day. The presence that thrilled me with passion, There under the moon and the shade. Was a fond being, meek in her beauty, Half seraph and half loving maid. Her voice had the sorrowful cadence Of winds of the night in the pine ; And her soul, like the mild moon of heaven, Shone forth from her sad eyes to mine. 85 We had como unto whore the world ended; For out of the being of men And into the bliss of angels We had died and were born again. Deep we drank of love's river Lethean, Till the moon in the west grew white And along the gray shore of morning Broke the first purple billows of light. As the inswelling floodtide of sunrise Rose over pale Lucifer's gleam, She saw in the drowned star the symbol Of the end of our earthly dream. She knew — and, O God I to remember TIow she told me this with her cyes!- That she never again should behold me Till she met my soul in the skies. <-87o O the pain and the passion of parting I For she knew that I needs must go, Nor return till the year were dying And she lying under the snow. O the pang and the anguish of parting I When she saw, and I could not see, Saw the seraphim signaling to her. And her woman's-love hid it from me. She loved me too dearly to slay me With the tidings her heart had heard ; And sadly she blessed me and kissed me, But said me no saddening word. Sainted martyr of passion and victricc I How to memory now thou showst. In love like the dying Redeemer, In peace like the Holy Ghost! Didst thou hope I could bear it the better, Not to see thy beauty decline — Not to have the gall and wormwood Of memory mixed with the wine? Bear it better ! sweet sister of Jesus ! When the sorrow of all the race, The sorrow of loving and dying, I remember was in thy face! O the shock, and the fever and madness! When my soul, into darkness withdrawn. Felt only those eyes in the moonlight, Saw only that face in the dawn! But I came back to life and endured it; I said, I will bear my breath : Surely, I should bear love and remembrance, Since she has borne love and deatli. DISCONTENT A little bird with a scarlet coat Came fluting to me a silvery note, As though it said through its mellow throat, Isle-of- Willows ! Isle-of-Willows ! It perched alone on a lonely tree, And seemed that it longed and longed to be In the isle it sung of thus to me, Isle-of-Willows ! Isle-of-Willows ! It thought perhaps of a little isle Where blue the waters and heavens smile And green the willows wave all the while — Isle of Willows! Isle of Willows! <^90<* Is this thy memory or thy hope — Thy being's backward or forward scope, Whereto thy little heart-longings grope ?- Isle-of- Willows ! Isle-of-Willows I It said me never another word, But flitted away, this little bird; Yet aye in my soul its voice is heard — Isle-of-Willows ! Isle-of-Willows ! THRENODY A gap IS in our fireside-ring The wideness of a tiny tomb; A prattle sweet as birds can sing- Has left its hush in every room. Our hearts long for the pretty charms Of babish questions manifold, And for the little hugging arms Now locked across a bosom cold. The bright hair and the eyes that beamed So wondrously, O, how we miss! And, O, the loving lips! that seemed Fashioned so purposely to kiss. Sad memory drowned itself in those eyes — Fell into their liquid deeps and sunk; And the darkness of all the earth and skies To those two crystals of darkness shrunk. When we met our fate — rememberst the place ?- My day was barren, my dream was done; But the bright warm flush of thy raditint face On my frozen heart flamed like a sun. That look! it created the world anew: Thy presence came to me like the sweep Of a full white sail to the sudden view Of a shipwrecked man on the deep. I knew I was saved; I knew that thy voice Should sing the cries in the night to peace; But I felt it almost a guilt to rejoice That love from the dead had love's release. ■o97<^ Thou hadst never suffered, and couldst not know How past and present in me were whirled — How the breeze out of sunrise seemed to blow From the sundown of the underworld. But love is a god, and to him one day Is a thousand years that are past: I woke from the dreams that had flown away, And, behold, they were true at last. It seemed we had dwelt in the Morningstar Ere the soul of either was born ; And I saw thy face in glimmerings far Of memory's earliest morn. The barefooted little damsel that played With me in the plash on the marge Of the blue Ke-u-ka was flashed and rayed In the beam of this love so large. Thy passionate voice, so sweetly that robbed My soul of its will and made it slave, Was the girl Fanny Wolcott's when she sobbed My heart from me at her father's grave. The victorious eyes that once I had met And mistaken for heavenly blue Were dark as that night I remember yet. Because they were thine and were true. Thou seemed the soul after death from the eve When we strolled Miami's green shore And heard the cricket and katydid grieve That with them we should tryst no more. The two strong loves that had fought for my heart And at last laid them down and smiled To divide and rend it to graves apart Arose in thee and were reconciled. From kiss on the sweet sad face in the night, From tears for the night-wind's human moan, O! the waking to find, in love's new light, All faces, all voices thy own! 1883. THE SHEPHERDS OF THE ADVENT The tents of shepherds and their fleecy flocks Whitecapt the billowy summits of the hills Of Judah underneath tha starlight. Night, That solemn sorceress whose' witchery Conjures to view the mysteries of God, Still Night went westering over Israel, And Dead Sea, Jordan, and Lake Galilee, Bethesda, and the Pools of Solomon Glowed with her starry glory in their breast, Worshipful lovers of a passing queen. The breezes whispered softly in the palms. Seeming to breathe portentous revelations In the strange language of the spirit-world. 101 102 The brooks ran sobbing through the vales, low sobs, As if of angels stifling grief for man In the great hope of his redemption nigh. Bethlehem lay asleep. The starlight fell And splintered on her housetops. She dreamed not Of Heaven's preparation for her grandeur. The shepherds watched their flocks. Upon the higbts There of the lonely hills, there in the night. Where uttered patriotism was not treason Against the Empire — where the Brazen Eagles Had never come asserting Rome and Caesar — There sat the shepherds, talking of the past, The proud old times of Hebrew history; Of Father Abraham, who trusted God As trusts the little child its mother's love; Of that Nile-cradled hero, him whose arm Wielded the almightiness of great Jehovah ; Of Miriam, sweet singer of the host Of Israel, harping praises by the sea Of triumph ; of his voice that so prevailed In heaven as to stop the moving sun In middle firmament and stay the moon ol03 In Ajalon a day ; of that brave lad, The son of Jesse, whose right arm God nerved To smite the boastful huge Philistine dead With but a pebble ; of the heroes all, And bards, and seers, and kings — bright names that starred Their annals thick with glory; and, at last. Of that great name not risen yet, but soon To rise the sun of all their history ; — *And he shall strike our shackles off, and chase 'The Latin legions back, and fling from us * The tyranny of this Augustus Caesar ! *And he shall come in triumph' — Hah! a glare As all the stars were gathered to one blaze And flashed down on the hills! a rush of wings! And instant there before the shepherds stood An angel of the Lord. A great fear smote Their souls. They knew not but it was the dread Last day and Israel was summoned first To fiery judgment, as most favored, and Most sinful. But, with quick voice, like a harp Struck suddenly, the angel reassured O104 Their hearts, delivering the great Glad-Tidings; And 'Halleluiah! halleluiah! peace On earth, good will to men!* burst forth at once With apparition of majestic angels, That now, clad in the uniform of glory, Revealed their splendors like a lightning-flash Of rainbows, up, rank over rank, until The narrowing vista of their radiant lines Seemed closed upon the very throne of God; And ' Halleluiah ! halleluiah ! ' pealed With all their voices, wonderfully loud — Loud as a roar of mountain-thunderbolts, Yet swpeter than a silvery symphony Of quiring flutes at midnight on the sea. Quick as a change in dreams the vault was vacant Again of all except the stars. The shepherds Leapt from their kneehng. Heaven beckoned them To Bethlehem. They followed, groping through Their tears of joy; and where the star sank low And stopt they found the mother and the babe. 1859. IMMORTALITY How many of the bright names now that seem In fame's high heaven fixed eternal spheres Shall hold their faint reflections in the stream Of memory ten hundred thousand years? Who knows but we are in the night and yet There is a universal sun to rise, When all these twinkling stars of fame shall set, Or fade into the nothingness of skies? Mankind may climb the pyramid of soul, Up by the stairflight of the centuries. So high that they shall hear the anthems roll Of seraphim, and see where heaven is. 105 ol06-> And then the loud huzzas of these low times, That send up great names, may not strike their ears. Enraptured with the fugues of upper climes And with the silent music of the spheres. The highest peaks of glory now that rise May yet be whelmed rocks in that spirit-sea On whose floodtide upfloating toward the skies The ark of raised humanity shall be. Names, voices, die; ay, letters that enshrine Their corses have at last their burial-day; But thoughts, which are their spirits, hold divine Existence, and shall never pass away. No drop of thought once mingled with the sea Of soul shall perish, though it disappear; The vapor into which it dies may be Born into rainbow in some other year. ^107 Or, rising in its darkness, it may swell Some thundercloud of passion yet to loom; For thought, of heaven born or bom of hell, Doubles itself for aye in gleam or gloom. FREEDMEN'S BATTLE-HYMN O, to the Lord be glory! halleluiah to the Lord! He hath stricken off our shackles and hath given us the sword To do the righteous judgment of his everlasting Word, As we go marching on. Glory, glory Halleluiah! We had waited for his token of deliverance so long That we feared he had forgotten our two hundred years of wrong; But at last we hear his signal in the battle-bugle's song, And we go marching on. Ho! fathers, brothers, slaving in the cotton and the corn! O ! wives and daughters wishing that ye never had been born ! We are your armed redeemers, and we lead the hope-forlorn, As we go marching on. 109 For God hath made this people by the light of battle see That death is on the Nation if the bond do not go free — That by the sword of Freedmen shall the land regenerate be ; And we go marching on. Then watch and pray, dear kindred ! — when ye hear the battle-cry Look for Freedom's Dark Crusaders where the Union-banners fly, And to the Lord give glory! for his kingdom cometh nigh, As we go marching on. Glory, glory halleluiah! DUTY HERE AND GLORY THERE Darkness that my heart could feel of, Blackness that my soul could swim in, Drowned in me the living spirit, Strength to hope and will to dare; Murder-shrieks that shock the midnight. And that pierce, and pang, and sicken. Would have brought me grateful respite From that death, that death despair; When a preternatural whi-sper — Words that sounded not, but touched me — Seemed to utter through me to me, 'Duty here and glory there!* ui oU2o Where? My soul looked round and questioned Boom of thunder-throated cannon, Clash of steel, and clang of music Strove in vain to answer where. Then loud senatorial voices, Stormy with a people's passion. Swollen with a nation's power. Seemed grand answers in the air. But the cannon, and the clashing. And the music, and the voices Never echoed to that whisper, 'Duty here and glory there!' Showers of delicious praises. Falling on the panting spirit Like the cooling rains of summer, Cherishing great souls that bear Thought's immortal bloom of beauty, Wafting round the world the fragrance oll3-> Of their names — Ambition questioned, 'Worth not these the weary wear, Through a lifelong toil and patience. Wear of soul and wear of body ? ' No response in that felt whisper, 'Duty here and glory there!* Where? My soul looked up and questioned- Up to where the stars were burning In the grand and awful temple Of the midnight — up to where Vision stops against the curtain Of the infinite, but spirit Puts aside the vail and enters : It is there! O, it is there! Thrilled the whisper through my being, 'Duty here for little lifetimes, Glory there for endless ages — Duty here and glory there!' EPITHALAMIUM A brook and a river — A crystalline brook From a sybilline nook And a silvery river — Flow into a lake, In which beautiful lake Are mirrored all bright things above: The brook is a life, And the river a life,' And the lake is the Lake of Love. And out of its bosom A stream fills and flows And oceanward goes — From out the lake's bosom 115 <- 116 o One stream to the sea; And this infinite sea, That ever mysteriously rolls Against Time's either shore, It is named Evermore, And the stream named Espousal of Souls, So the two, brook and river. From the Lake of Love run ; Two lives from the Giver Giving back to Him one. When two lives, so wed, from single Into double being flow- When two soulsj so one, commingle, In their hearts this truth shall grow: Love is more than starry lusters Round the honeymoon at rise; Over all the skies it clusters. East and west and middle skies. THE BROOK-SONG In shadowy nook, Where the green leaves grow, Flow, beautiful brook, From thy cool fount flow: Brook, babble, babble, brook, Flow, flow, brook, flow — Flow, brook, babble, brook, From thy cool fount flow. How the foamy flocks Of thy waters go Along the rough rocks In a steep fleet flow! 117 Flocks, follow, follow flocks, Flow, flow, brook, flow — Flow, flocks, follow flocks In a steep fleet flow. With many a crook Through the vale below, Where the elms overlook And the wild flowers blow. Brook, murmur, murmur, brook, Flow, flow, brook, flow — Flow, brook, murmur, brook, Where the wild flowers blow. Flow • on to the sea. Silver brook, and show Our lives how they flee To the Dead-Sea's flow- Flee, stilly, fleetly flee— Flow, flow, brook, flow — Our lives how they flee To the Dead-Sea's flow. BABY FANNY Her hair was a cluster Of glooms and of gleams, And her eyes had the luster That stars have in dreams. The busiest rover That buzzes and sips Never found honeyed clover Like Fanny's red lips. Her cheeks were ripe peaches, Her voice was a bird's, Making sweet little speeches Without any words. 119 ^120 So near the dear lisper To heaven was kept That the angels could whisper To her as she slept. Too near! for her smiling, In dreams as she lay, Showed they were beguiling Her spirit away. *Come, heavenly sister!* One mild angel saith; But a bolder one kissed her — Bold Angel of Death! THE LAND REDEEMED Not always shall the good earth be To man's use under ban; The land shall be redeemed at last And rendered back to man: Then each shall of the acres hold Enough to make him free; None shall usurp more than his need, And none shall landless be. The system of old feudal wrong That makes the people pay For room to live upon the earth Shall fade and fall away; 121 ^122<- The name of landlord shall become A mockery and scoff, As rolls the tide of human rights To sweep his landmarks off. For man shall yet perceive the truth — Through old tradition dim — That record, scroll, nor parchment writ Can take the earth from him ; That nature makes a title-deed To each one for his time In his own want, and who takes more He perpetrates a crime. This living truth shall flush the cheek Of pale Starvation red. As over old ancestral parks The pauper's sheaves are spread; This truth shall wrest from blood and birth The scepter and the crown. And, leveling the Workers up. The Drones shall level down. 123 Then prince and peasant side by side Shall strive, with heart and brain, By doing highest work for man The highest rank to gain; For, when each has his human right Of home upon the soil, The Worker shall be prince and king — God's Nobleman of Toil! Glad time of earth's beatitude ! When none shall hoard or steal, But all mankind together work For universal weal; When war no more shall shock the land Or thunder on the sea, But by the Golden Rule of Christ All wrongs shall righted be. MY LORD Ennobled? O Lord Alfred Tennyson!— Now dare the curse, dig Shakspeare's bones From underneath the Stratford-stones And with a lordship prank the skeleton! Men well may jeer and ask how thou hast gained The right to have thy race renewed And thy old Saxon red blood blued By royal warrant, clarified, and strained. What hast thou done that goes to make a lord? The greatness by estate-in-tail Which Nature gives the first-born male Thou canst not claim as Art's reward. 125 Is not true greatness, like the poet, bom? Nobility of pedigree May well by birthright look on thee "With half a dozen centuries of scorn. Where are thy old manorial parks and halls, A king's gift to a courtier's smile, Or loot of French braves when the Isle Was theirs and Englishmen were churls and thralls? Where is the half-mile's length of corridor "Lined each side with thy pictured row Of ancestors, whose grand airs show The highness born above the need to soar? With none of these beginnings, dost thou dare To ape the greatness of the great? Can Genius ancestors create — Make old halls of its castles-in-the-air? ■^127133 Sun, moon, and stars! Lakes, woods with birds flying Through them, and the crying Of insects beneath the stars I Tiien life in love! Life's torrent-stream steadied, Stopt, flowed back, and eddied About in the pool of love. From boy to man! Bridge built of a rainbow — Love's luminous rainbow, Which fadeth from boy to man. Love's fading bow! Still following hither, I follow on whither It lures me and I must go. 134 Yes, follow on! Love's rainbow-ideal, So nigh and so real, Still flies, but I follow on. For love is all! Hope, pleasure, ambition, Fame's fullest fruition, Are nothing; for love is all. But age grows lone! For age is unlovely — Age wins not the lovely; — We go as we came, alone. Alone! alone! Forth out of the darkness, Back into the darkness, We come and we go alone. <^136<- SHIPS COMING IN. I lay upon a rock that jutted to the sea. Twilight came down out of the pine-woods back of me, And, stealing on the waters, met the sudden moon, Rushed into her kiss, and sank to a dead white swoon. Then forthwith all the ocean's flat marmorean floor Ran to a silver flux and melted to the shore. The light was an eddy of day back hither swirled (The haunting ghost of light from the tomb of a world), That made all the skied amphitheater a scene ol36 Of mystery in shadow and glory in sheen. I lay there on the rock and thought of all had been, I lay and watched my ships come in, my ships come in. Sail, O ships ! my home-voyaging ships ! Sail from the sunlit side of the world ; Climb the watery bulge of the globe ; Pass the line where the orient dips In the sea, and, with canvas unfurled, Take yon moon's glory on as a robe : From wherever your sailing has been. Sail, ships, hither, sail hither, sail in. 140o Then, as I lay there with the sick soul in my eyes, A thundercloud that had loomed up the western skies Went suddenly across the moon and made eclipse That blotted all the sea and those assembling ships. 1887. _Jiiii iiliil LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 016 117 963 2 ^ mmmm. ?;;'>';*; ■'I'l , ,",11