Uncollected Poems of James Russell Lowell

Many of my readers, and all my friends know that it was not by any desire of mine that this rather slim production is printed. Circumstances, known to all my readers, and which I need not dilate on here, considerably cooled my interest in the performance. Many of the lines, though in fact they would even then be indifferent good, I should prefer if possible to see in prose. Sed Dis aliter. Many were written merely as rough draughts, which I intended to have altered and revised, but the change of feeling, mentioned above, has prevented, and rough draughts they are still. There are a few grains of gold, or at least tinsel, in the composition, but the lead—oh word infaust to poets!—will I fear, far outweigh them. A few passages have been omitted, whose place is sufficiently well supplied by asterisks.

Paltry, however, as it is, I submit it (at their desire) to my readers, confident

“That never anything can be amiss,
When simpleness and duty tender it.”

Concord, Mass., August, 1838.

I

Brothers! you know that every passing year,
When it has dug enough in learning's mine,
Each class still meets to take its parting here,
To Alma Mater gives one farewell line,
And throws, perchance made fresher by a tear,
Its wreath of tribute blossoms on her shrine,—
Pray Heaven! she be not smothered by the flowers
That visit her with such perennial showers!

II

And eloquence and song are called to swell,
With music's dreamlike witchery and prayer,
The faltering cadence of the sad farewell,
And beauty's heart-inspiring smile is there,
And brilliant eyes more softly beam to tell,
That in the moment's sadness they too share,
Like stars, seen fainter through some filmy veil,
Which makes their light seem purer, though more pale.

219

III

Long years we've trod our dusty path together,
Years duller e'en than when retraced in rhyme,
Sharing alike Fate's storms and sunny weather,—
Three silently have floated through the void of time,
The fourth still stays his ruffled plumes to feather,
And make his last record of sin and crime,—
Fancy e'en now can hear his dusky wing
Flutter and flap at parting, while I sing.

IV

Oh! would I had a better voice for singing!
That I might plunge into a tide of song,
And, to some little plank of reason clinging,
Float gaily on the rushing waves along,
From side to side the glittering foam-drops flinging,
Bresting the yesty waves with purpose strong,
Until at last, far, far from either shore,
I sank in bathos-depths to rise no more!

V

Or, heavenward striking on unwearied wing,
Seek the star-broidered empyrean, thence,
Leaving to earth's dull clods each common thing,
As common metre, words, and common sense,
Soar on and upward, till each cracking string
Of feeling vibrate with a thrill intense,
And, wandering on, far out of mortal view,
Quite lose myself, alas! and hearers too!

VI

To those who understand me not, I'd say
“‘Haud tibi spiro,’ we want sympathy,
If you don't like me turn another way;”
Or else I'd grow pathetic, rub my eye,
And snivel out in half-choked words, “My day
Of triumph yet will come before I die;
So 't was with Milton, Shakspeare, and a host,
Unhonored all, till they gave up the ghost!”

VII

I might,—but I'm like one who turns a glass
Among those heavenly melodists the stars,

220

Nor knows while o'er his raptured gaze they pass,
Wheeling and turning in their golden cars,
Which fairest one to single from the mass,
Minerva, Venus, Juno, Vesta, Mars,
So lovely are they all to gaze upon,
Sweet, modest shunners of the garish sun.

VIII

Or more like one who makes his choice among
Some dozen garments in their latest stage,
Whose gaping mouths, could they have found a tongue,
Had told full many a tale of fortune's rage,—
So I,—for all things have been said or sung
In this long-winded pathobathic age,
Who let philosophers (God wot!) command 'em,
Because they (honest souls!) can't understand 'em.

IX

What they can't comprehend must be profound,
And so they toil along the same blind round,
Admiring all who talk in tropes and rant,
From heaven-high Fichte up to viewless Kant.
Kant! happy name! change but the K to C,
And I will wring my poem out of thee.
Thanks, vast Immanuel! thy name has given
The thing for which my brains so long have striven.
Who ever thought that thou could'st be of use
To give a subject to a puzzled muse?
Spread, Pegasus, thy wings! for thou and I
In one short hour have many leagues to fly,
Cant be my theme, and when she fails my song,
Her sister Humbug shall the lay prolong.

The subject was literally hit upon in the way stated, or rather hinted at, in the text.

X

Dim realm of shades! ere yet I take my flight,
To pierce the gloom of thy eternal night,
Where Cant, sublime upon her throne of brass,
Feeds every knave and feeds on every ass,
Oh let me breathe one last, one parting prayer,
To be my talisman of safety there.

221

Oh thou! to whom, where'er my footsteps roam,
My restless soul would spread its pinions home,—
Reality! more fair than any seeming
E'er blest the fancy of an angel's dreaming,—
Be thou my muse, in whose blue eye I see
The heaven of my heart's eternity!
Oh hover like a spirit at my side,
In all my wanderings a heavenly guide,
Then, if in Cant's dim mists I lose my way,
Thy blessed smile shall lead me back to day,
And, when I turn me from the land of night,
Thou, morning star of love, shalt herald light!

XI

Hail Cant's great watchword, quickstep march of mind!
Whose gallant leaders hurry on so fast,
They have no time to cast a look behind,
And take a lesson from the hoary past;
On, like a torrent in their pauseless course,
They rush, to bring Millennium by force,
And in the holy warfare growing warm,
Would take the New Jerusalem by storm!
Thee first I sing. Not mine the poet's fire,
Or hand that deftly strikes the sacred lyre,
Not mine the bays, and yet a muse like mine
Might wreath a rainbow round the dullest line.

Hail progress days! Farewell! thou good old age,
When talking nonsense did not make a sage,
Bacon and Locke, your day of empire's o'er,
To dust and bookworms sink for evermore!
The march of mind is going on too fast,—
So half the world run mad with some one's last,
(Would that it were indeed his last!) and then
With Teufelsdröckh run full as mad agen.
“Look! look!” they cry, “upon this book, and see
What a philosopher this man must be!
What quaint-mouthed sentences! and how profound!
You'll grant there's bathos in the very sound;
Such long and lofty nouns and verbs had well
Graced the high words between those giants fell,
Whom Scripture tells us poured out so much blood,

222

As nearly drowned the earth before the flood.
Johnson to this man was a fool 't is plain,—
In his great work you'll seek such words in vain.
Then too those other saints, this side the sea,
Already write as crooked words as he;
Now, as all arguments of words consist,
And everything is magnified by mist,
In all debates of course he gets the best
Who brings more words and mistier than the rest.”

Thus they, infatuate as the Jews of old,
Worship a calf, though not a calf of gold,
And on their godship's heads take monstrous pains
With laurel wreaths to hide the want of brains.
“Omne ignotum pro mirifico,”
They know that's grand whose sense they cannot know;
And, proving thus that bombast is profound,
Through works of deepest mist they grope around,
Staring at sentences so vastly high,
That all their meaning quite escapes the eye,
So lengthy too, that rhyme must own it fears,
Nothing can match them but their author's ears,
So strange, that Murray would have wept to hear,
Unless indeed while writhing through his ear,
They put the good old grammatist to sleep,
Ere he could pull his kerchief out to weep,—
And so immensely deep—the reader's head
In vain tries soundings with its native lead.
Thus they wade on, now measuring some word
Of which no other Christian ever heard,
Now toiling slowly up some premise steep
To pitch, half-drowned, in some conclusion deep,
Until at length they end their march in nought,
Or break their shins by stumbling on a thought.

“And there were giants in those days and after.” Genesis.

XII

Hail too great drummer in the mental march,
Teufelsdröckh! worthy a triumphal arch,
Who send'st forth prose encumbered with jackboots,
To hobble round and pick up raw recruits,
And, able both to battle and to teach,

223

Mountest thy silent kettledrum to preach.
Great conqueror of the English language hail!
How Caledonia's goddess must turn pale
To hear thy German-Greeco-Latin flung
In Revolutions from a Scottish tongue!

Yet here the muse would fold her wing to weep
O'er genius buried in lethargic sleep,
O'er talents misapplied, o'er heavenly fire
Smothered beneath a mass of wordy mire,
And only bursting forth at times to show
How much still lies to sorrow for below.
Oh! better that the sombre cypress wave
Its mourning branches o'er a fameless grave,
Than gain a name by talents thus applied
To a base intellectual suicide.
Burst, prisoned eagle, burst thy chains and soar
Where soulless eye can track thy flight no more;
Where shafts of satire, feathered from thy wing,
No more can gall thee with their insect sting!
Proud bird of Jove! seek Heaven's purest air,
And dwell forever with thy compeers there;
Go sit at Shakspeare's sainted feet, and see
How man can trample on mortality!

No one admires Mr. Carlyle's genius more than I do; but his style is execrable, though, for a change, entertaining. His tying himself down to such a diction, &c. reminds one of a punishment still practised in China, chaining a living criminal to a dead body. Of course the ridicule is meant for his imitators—the “servum pecus,” as Horace calls them.

Ah, Clothes Philosophers, you'd better try
To make the garments you but mar in prose,
You'd find a tailor's wages much more high
And profitable too, as this world goes;
No doubt the balance on your printer's book
Will add its counsel—if you dare but look;
Those winged words, of which you prate so much,
Cannot be yours, and had you any such,
Off from your pens they'd spread their wings and fly
To seek, elsewhere, for better company.
Lay down the goosequill then—take up the goose,
And put your talents to their proper use.

224

XIII

Alas for poor Philosophy! that she
In her old age should come to beggary
And turn a tailoress, who from her throne
Once ruled fair Greece, and called the world her own.
Those days are gone, when poet, hero, sage
In rapture brooded o'er her speaking page,
And fixed in breathless wonder, silent hung
On the proud lessons swelling from her tongue,
Then spread her truths to earth's remotest bound
Till haughty Error trembled at the sound.
Those days are gone, and now her only friends
Are misty rhapsodists, whom Heaven sends
To form a contrast with the blessed light,
And make Truth's holy lustre seem more bright.
Who, blessed with souls scarce larger than a broker's,
Would furnish them to pots and pans and pokers,
And, having made a “universal soul,”
Forget their own in thinking of the whole;
Who, seeking nothing, wander on through space,
Flapping their half-fledged wings in Reason's face,
And if they chance the vestal flame to find,
That burns a beacon to the storm-tost mind,
Like senseless insects dish within the fire,
And sink forgotten in their funeral pyre.
Few ever meet with such a glorious end,
Or towards the light their aimless ramblings bend;
But, having fretted out their little age,
Sink into chaos, and their sleepy page,
Lining some trunk, shall be the only note
That what's-his-name their author lived and wrote.

Woe for Religion too, when men, who claim
To place a “Reverend” before their name,
Ascend the Lord's own holy place to preach
In strains that Kneeland had been proud to reach,
And which, if measured by judge Thatcher's scale,
Had doomed their author to the county jail!
When men just girding for the holy strife,

225

Their hands just cleansed to break the bread of life,
Whose souls, made whole, should never count it loss
With their own blood to witness for the cross,
Invite a man their Christian zeal to crown
By preaching earnestly the gospel—down,
Applaud him when he calls of earthy make
That ONE who spake as never yet man spake,
And tamely hear the anointed Son of God
Made like themselves an animated clod!

They call such doctrines startling, strange, and new,
But then they're his, you know, and must be true;
The universal mind requires a change,
Its insect wings must have a wider range,
It wants no mediator—it can face
In its own littleness the Throne of Grace;
For miracles and “such things” 't is too late,
To trust in them is now quite out of date,
They're all explainable by nature's laws—
Ay! if you only could find out their CAUSE!
I know in these wise days 't is very flat
To ask for any thing so small as that,
But all mankind are not transparent eyes,
They only see things of their usual size,
And, when the very grass beneath their feet
Grows by a law that only God can mete,
Strive not to analyze that mighty will
Which raised the dead, and made the tempest still.
Such doctrines new! they've been repeated oft
Since first the Jews at their Redeemer scoffed,
Stained their vile hands with the Messiah's gore,
And filled the bitter cup to running o'er!
Alas! that Christian ministers should dare
To preach the views of Gibbon and Voltaire!
Alas! that one whose life, and gentle ways,
E'en hate could find it in its heart to praise,
Whose intellect is equalled but by few,
Should strive for what he'd weep to find were true!

The “most melancholy Jaques” seems to have had a prophetic voice, when he said,

“My lungs began to crow like Chanticleer
That fools should be so deep-contemplative.”

XIV

Alas for Poesy! her brightness gone,
With draggled plume she flutters lamely on,
Pelted and scoffed at by the rabble rout,

226

Who mock her heartfelt shame with ribald shout,
And, at each turn their illmatched verses pour,
Struggling to get apart, (when not too weak,)
While grammar, sense, and taste for mercy roar,
And metre howls a supplicating shriek,
Buried alive beneath the weight of lead
That pours in masses from the poet's head.
Apollo! crush this milk-and-water school,
Rhymesters by rote and rhapsodists by rule,
Who boldly plagiarize from Mother Goose,
And never grant poor common sense a truce;
Who hunt one little, frightened thought to death,
(At least till they themselves are out of breath,)
And, when recovered from the fruitless chase,
Too stupid e'en to play the fool with grace,
Exclaim, “There's not the slightest use for thought,
If poets would but rhyme as poets ought!”
Fools! in the duck-pond at their kitchen door,
As muddy as their own dull brains or more,
A Hippocrene they discern, and count
Their duly fingered feet beside their fount!
Poor hapless bards! misfortune's eldest sons,
Whose only real followers are duns,
Whose “highest heaven of invention” is
The garret where they spin their quiddities!

XV

Farewell, great Shakspeare! nature's second self,
Compose thyself with care to grace a shelf,
The world now worships bards of that new school
Who show us Nature duly squared by rule,
Who give the length and breadth of every tree
That shades the desert of their poetry,
And sound each brook, whose music as it flows,
Draws notes in concert from the reader's nose.
So in the gardens in Queen Bess's time,
The streams did all that's natural but climb,
And every rock, shrub, flower, tree, and limb,
Was nature bettered by the owner's whim.

Yet memory with mournful smile would turn
Where earth still weeps o'er Shakspeare's sacred urn,
Where Freedom twines fresh wreaths around the bust

227

Whose sightless orbs watch Milton's holy dust,
And Nature still with drooping eyelid mourns
Her nurseling buried in the tomb of Burns.
Oh Poetry! best gift to mortals given
To color earth with hues that rival Heaven,
Thou hast breathed life in all created things,
And clothed bright Fancy with her roaming wings;
There's not a leaf that frolics on the tree
But has it its tiny cherisher from thee,
There's not a breeze that dances through the air
But thou hast placed some sweet musician there,
And not a flower in whose honeyed mine
Dwells not some sylphid pensioner of thine.
Thine are the fays that trip the verdant ring,
And the sweet spirits of the crystal spring,
Where the worn pilgrim, ere he bend to drink,
Blesses the shape that loves its mossy brink;
Thine are the Peris nursed with rich perfume
Of India's blossoms in their freshest bloom,
Who in the fleeting tints of heaven's bow
Find fitting shelter for their limbs of snow;
Thine are the forms that haunt the ocean cave
Gemmed with the dewdrops of the restless wave;
Thine are the witches, and the elves are thine
Who guard the treasures of the sunless mine;
Thine are the gay processions yearly seen
In fairy carnival at Hallowe'en;
Thine are the legends round the old hall fire
That made young hearts for knightly deeds beat higher,
As the shrill tones of some old withered crone
Told deeds of sin that well might seem her own.
Thine are they all—Oh let us cherish still
The hallowed sprites of fountain, dell, and hill!
Cling fondly to these lovely dreams of eld,
Nor fling away the faith our fathers held
For all that now for deepest pathos passes,
For fifty Peter Bells and half-starved asses!

228

Long may the wave-worn sailor love to tell
Of maids that bless old ocean's dreary swell,
And long the plaided shepherd thrill to hear
The gude folks' silver bridles ringing clear,
And elfin music stealing through the trees,
Borne on the pinions of the listening breeze!
Lives there a man so cold, that has not felt
With song too deep for words his bosom melt,
When reading something in a woman's eye,
Might tell a skeptic soul could never die,—
Or when his spirit wings its way afar,
To dwell with Fancy in some heavenlit star,—
Or when he sees the demon of the storm
Folding the clouds about his giant form,
Flapping his raven pinions in the west,
The thunder brooding o'er his wind-tost crest,
Nursing the lightnings 'neath his shaggy wing,
Like startled serpents coiled and prompt to spring?
Whose soul so dead but hears in hours like these
A more than common music in the breeze?
Oh! pure as Venus rising from the foam,
Or thoughts that call my muse's bosom home,
Bright as the tear of thanks for comfort spoken,
Or memory's falling on some cherished token,
Fair Poesy, from all thy foes seek rest,
Within the cell of each whole-hearted breast!

See Burns's “Hallowe'en”:—

“Upon that night, when fairies light,
---dance,” &c.

The day has long past when any one would think of ridiculing Wordsworth. As Carlyle says of Fichte, “What is the wit of a thousand wits to him? The cry of a thousand choughs assaulting that old cliff of granite.” But his fame as a poet does not rest on Peter Bell, (though it contains passages as beautiful as almost any in the language,) nor on any of his “Nursery” poetry, as it has been termed. A man may be a great genius and yet be mistaken, and so apparently Wordsworth thought himself, for he gradually shook off the style of his younger poetry. He probably saw that what was silly in prose no verse would ever make wiser.

And yet we have floods of verses with all the childishness and none of the redeeming points of Wordsworth's earlier style. For instance, Tennyson's “Oh darling Room!” of which one verse will be a sufficient speciman.

“Oh darling room, my heart's delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight,
With thy two couches soft and white,
There is no room so exquisite,
No little room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.”

The last four lines are considered “so exquisite,” that they are repeated in the course of the piece. Some men seem to think, to use Byron's words,

“That Christmas stories tortured into rhyme
Contain the essence of the true sublime.”

XVI

Farewell, bright realm of Poesy! I grieve,
With downward wing, thy purer air to leave;

229

But canting fanatics next pour along,
Claiming a tribute from my halting song,
And first and greatest, those who roar and rave
O'er the exaggerate tortures of the slave.
Not mine the heart that would not keenly feel
A fellow's moans 'neath slavery's iron heel,
Nor mine the eye which could unquivering see
Oppression grind the weak that clasp his knee,
But still I own no sympathy with those
Whose stony hearts can count the falling blows,
Who, standing at safe distance, boldly gnash
Their teeth in concert with the whistling lash,
And make a sermon on each purple drop,
Which shrill invectives strive in vain to stop.
Shall Britain too ship saintly cargoes o'er,
To add their whinings to the general roar,
(With maids who, finding flattery too tame,
Mistake their eartrumps for the trump of fame,)
And stop her ears to Erin's mournful cry
Of babes and mothers in their agony,
Where blood of hue as crimson as her own
Cries from the ground to the Almighty's throne,
And famine grinning o'er each cheerless hearth
Mocks shrinking misery with her fiendish mirth?
Oh, England! England! while thy snowy sails
Swell to the kiss of earth's remotest gales,
And all beneath thy meteor flag is free,
As the wild wave that wafts it o'er the sea,
When 't is thy pride that chains can gall no more,
The wretch whose fettered foot hath touched thy shore,
When every Briton, be he ne'er so mean,

230

Claims rights as sacred as thy virgin queen,
Shall it be whispered to thy endless shame,
Thy bounds held worse than slaves without the name?
Slaves whom no duller current in their veins,
Or different skin had doomed to scourge and chains?
And dost thou talk of mercy? dread the rod
In the red hand of an offended God!

But to my theme,—I would not call him knave,
Who breaks the hated fetters of the slave,
But I do blame that man who takes his place
The self-made benefactor of his race,
Who in his zeal his neighbor's eye to free
From motes that calumny can hardly see,
Dreams not that aught can shadow his clear sight,
Showing him all things in a jaundiced light,
And in his care about another's sins,
On Satan's threshold breaks his own sweet shins.
Bold saints! why tell us here of those who scoff
At law and reason thousands of miles off?
Why punish us with your infernal din,
For what you tell us is the planter's sin?
Why on the North commence the fierce crusade,
And war on them for ills the South has made?

“What! would you have them run the risk to mar
Their saintly sleekness with a coat of tar?
When they can gain the name of martyrs here
With half the breath they'd gasp for there with fear?
Did blest St. Paul e'er turn his footsteps south,
Or in the slave-states even open his mouth?
We do not find he risked his life at all,
Pray why should our saints go beyond St. Paul?”

Gone are those days when Christians held it grace,
To treat like Christians all the human race;
But lives there one whose calm and manly pen
Can lash the vice, yet scorn to wound the men,
Whose temperate zeal would liberate the slave,

231

Yet shrink to desecrate the master's grave,
Whose heart, with Christian mildness running o'er,
Disdains to curse whom God has cursed before,
Whose mind like purest crystal gives to view
Each ray of truth adorned with rainbow hue,
And in whose broad philanthropy find place,
Not slaves alone, but all the human race?
Yes! still thank God! some pilgrim blood remains
To stir the lazy current of our veins,
Thank God! that stout New England's rocky earth
To men of simple virtue yet gives birth!
And Truth may point to where no breath of blame
Can wilt the wreaths that circle CHANNING's name!

It is too late in the day now to sneer at Abolitionists. Even their enemies have come to that conclusion. For I suppose there is not a man in New England who is not an abolitionist at heart. But those fanatics who try to get up an excitement, and especially the females (if I may be allowed to call them so) who go round ranting, when they ought to be at home educating their children, are deserving of more than ridicule. For those who have reached what Dante calls the “mezzo cammin de nostra vita,” “In maiden meditation, fancy free,” there is more apology perhaps. Hamlet's advice to Polonius, not to let his daughter “walk i' the sun,” might be a great deal benefited by.

“'T is a pity when charming women
Talk about what they don't understand.”

George Thomson, being in dread of the bailiffs in Glasgow, hit upon the ingenious plan of drawing a revenue from, by blackguarding, us.

See the “Report on the Irish Poor Laws,” &c.

“The meteor flag of England

Shall yet terrific burn,” &c.—
CAMPBELL.

Cowper says,

“He finds
His fellow creature guilty of a skin
Not colored like his own”—

and dooms him to chains, &c. I forget his precise words.

XVII

But most of all my maiden muse would scorn
That hybrid race, nor man nor woman born,
Whose misplaced petticoats are all the claim
They have upon the latter hallowed name;
Who leave their zero husbands in the lurch,
To raise a riot at some new free church,
Who wish to prove by force of arms that they
With man should hold at least divided sway,
And so without regard to where or when,
They play the fool as wisely as the men.
Oh woman! gentle woman! given to show
How much man has to struggle for below,
Whose smile can well reward each action high,
And kindle courage in the quailing eye,
Who know'st untaught so well the minstrel's art,
To touch the strings of music in the heart,
And in whose spirit's calmer, purer tone,
There breathes a spell to harmonize our own,
Who that has ever read in almost trance
The soul's full language speaking in thy glance,
Who that has seen thy modest eyes just dare
To meet his own and read thine image there,
Who that has ever knelt before thy shrine

232

And murmured vows that only can be thine,
Would render up those magic master keys
That ope the inmost heart to claims like these?
Like stars, thy sphere is far above the strife
And petty turmoils of our work-day life,
Shrinking from public noisiness, as they
Fade from the glances of the “eye of day,”
Yet still, as old astrologers divined,
With all our fortune's windings close entwined.

I would remind the advocates of the “Rights” of Women of the ingenious expedient of a king of the Longobards, to get rid of the teazings of his wife and other ladies of his court for a share in the government of the state. There is another story extant in which the women actually raised the standard of revolt, and were only saved from bloodshed by an expedient as ingenious, though not quite so printable, as the other.

XVIII

Nor this the worst, the groves of academe
Have echoed to the Negroes' fancied scream,
And youths, the down upon whose cultured chins
Scarce lifts its head to blame the razor's sins,
Take up the cry in treble, tenor, bass,
To mourn the woes of Afric's fallen race.
Freshmen, just set at liberty from school,
Their palms still tingling for some broken rule,
Who stand quite speechless when they strive to scan,
Leave Zumpt, to squabble o'er the rights of man;
Nor need the prophet's eye look far to see,
In the dim vista of futurity,
Little enthusiasts mounting on their stools,
To curse the slave-states in our infant schools.
E'en where Religion mildly strives to teach
Her ward, the graver graduate, to preach,
Men, though forbidden, break the college laws
To meet and show their zeal in virtue's cause,
And fierce invectives in the chapel there
Jar with the music of the rising prayer.

XIX

Oh abolitionists, both men and maids,
Who leave your desks, your parlors, and your trades,
To wander restless through the land and shout,
But few of you could tell us what about!
Can ye not hear where on the Southern breeze
Swells the last wailing of the Cherokees?
Hark! the sad Indian sighs a last adieu
To scenes which memory gilds with brighter hue,
The giant trees whose hoary branches keep
Their quiet vigil where his fathers sleep,

233

'Neath the green sod upon whose peaceful breast
He too had hoped to lay him down to rest—
The woods through whose dark shades, unknown to fear,
He roamed as freely as the bounding deer,
The streams so well his boyish footsteps knew
Pleased with the tossings of the mock canoe,
And the vast mountains, round whose foreheads proud,
Curled the dark grandeur of the roaming cloud,
From whose unfathomed breast he oft has heard
In thunder tones the god Great Spirit's word.
Lo where he stands upon yon towering peak
That echoes with the startled eagle's shriek,
His scalptuft floating wildly to the gale
Which howls an answer to his mournful wail,
Leaning his arm upon an unbent bow,
He thus begins in accents sad and low—

1

“We must go! for already more near and more near
The tramp of the paleface falls thick on the ear—
Like the roar of the blast when the storm-spirit comes
Is the clang of the trumps and the death-rolling drums.
Farewell to the spot where the pine trees are sighing
O'er the flowery turf where our fathers are lying!
Farewell to the forests our young hunters love,
We shall soon chase the deer with our fathers above!

2

“We must go! and no more shall our council-fires glance
On the senate of chiefs or the warriors' dance,
No more in its light shall youth's eagle eye gleam,
Or the glazed sight of age become young in its beam.
Wail! wail! for our nation; its glory is o'er,
These hills with our war-songs shall echo no more,
And the eyes of our bravest no more shall look bright,
As they hear of the deeds of their fathers in fight!

3

“In the home of our sires we have lingered our last,
Our death-song is swelling the moan of the blast,
Yet to each hallowed spot clings fond memory still,
Like the mist that makes lovely yon far distant hill.
The eyes of our maidens are heavy with weeping,

234

The fire 'neath the brow of our young men is sleeping,
And the half-broken hearts of the aged are swelling,
As the smoke curls its last round their desolate dwelling!

4

“We must go! but the wailings ye wring from us here
Shall crowd your foul prayers from the Great Spirit's ear,
And when ye pray for mercy, remember that Heaven
Will forgive (so ye taught us) as ye have forgiven!
Ay slay! and our souls on the pinions of prayer
Shall mount freely to Heaven and seek justice there,
For the flame of our wigwams points sadly on high
To the sole path of mercy ye've left us—to die!

5

“God's glad sun shone as warm on our once peaceful homes
As when gilding the pomp of your proud swelling domes,
And his wind sang a pleasanter song to the trees
Than when rustling the silk in your temples of ease;
For He judges not souls by their flesh-garment's hue,
And his heart is as open for us as for you;
Though he fashioned the Redman of duskier skin,
Yet the Paleface's breast is far darker within!

6

“We are gone! the proud Redman hath melted like snow
From the soil that is tracked by the foot of his foe;
Like a summer cloud spreading its sails to the wind,
We shall vanish and leave not a shadow behind.

235

The blue old Pacific roars loud for his prey,
As he taunts the tall cliffs with his glittering spray,
And the sun of our glory sinks fast to his rest
All darkly and dim in the clouds of the west!”

The cadence ends, and where the Indian stood
The rock looks calmly down on lake and wood,
Meet emblem of that lone and haughty race,
Whose strength hath passed in sorrow from its place.

Our policy towards the Indians has never been equalled, except by the Saracen disciples of Mahomet. We give them the Bible with one hand and the sword with the other. The Indian's remarks on this point in the text appear to me just and sensible. Here is a speciman of our humane policy. General Jesup writes to Mr. Poinsett, Secretary of War, as follows. “The villages of the Indians have all been destroyed; and their cattle, horses, and other stock, with nearly all their other property, taken or destroyed. ... They have nothing of value left but their rifles.

“These results, trifling as they are compared with those of the Creek campaign,” &c. Vide Boston Daily Advertiser, Aug. 2, 1838.

This man's heart must be of a very peculiar texture—“these results, trifling as they are”! How well prepared these poor fellows must be to “emigrate” into the Pacific Ocean! The coolness with which the General talks of burning and destroying is only to be equalled by that of the boys pelting frogs. Why,

“The common executioner,
Whose heart the accustomed sight of death makes hard,
Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck,
But first begs pardon.”—

My readers may think that I have kept the poor savage exposed rather too long on his elevated position. Those, who had the pleasure of seeing our Pawnee visitors last autumn, will not think much of their dread of exposure. The knight of the rueful countenance, when his gambols excited the holy horror of his faithful esquire, was nothing to them. Besides, his indignation would not allow him to think of cold or colds.

XX

Oppression, Famine, Pestilence, and Steam
Have done their worst upon this fated race—
They fade in silence, as a morning dream,
Before Improvement's forest-levelling pace;
And soon by mountain, valley, wood, and stream,
The stranger scarce shall find the Indian's trace:
The Whiteman's avarice asks a rood of earth—
And lo! the ploughshare rends the Redman's hearth!

The sinking of a steamboat, and drowning of “about three hundred” (for our government talks of them as if they were cattle) “emigrants,”—for such is the soft expression,—is probably fresh in every one's mind. “Emigrants,” good lack! a man might as well be called an “emigrant,” who was kicked out of his own door by some impudent interloper.

XXI

And yet his heart, though wilder, beats as warm,
And clings as fondly to his wigwam's hearth
As if its case were whiter, and his form
Steps nobler o'er the soil that gave him birth,
Ay, manlier bears the peltings of the storm—
And shall we grudge him six poor feet of earth
(His own by birthright) where to lay his head,
And sleep in quiet with the happier dead?

XXII

Has conscience never whispered in our ear,
The untutored Redman too has had a mother,
His brow is holy with a mother's tear—
Baptismal font more pure than any other—

236

He too has held some dark-eyed maiden dear,
His wayward heart has yearned towards a brother—
Nay, more—perchance the pure, undying light
Of sister's love has made his wigwam bright?

XXIII

Some thirst of vengeance slakes this side the tomb,
And ceases with the mournful bell's long toll
That calls the victim to his cell of gloom—
But we—oh deepest bloodspot on the scroll
Of God's recording angel! we would doom
Alike the Redman's body and his soul:
We sell him first our whiskey, then the Word,
Then punish Gospel-breaking with the sword!

XXIV

I've often wondered, and I often wonder
If God has ceased to look with wrath on crime,
If lifted hands, fresh from unholy plunder,
All red and reeking with their bloody slime,
Can rise in prayer, nor dread his angry thunder—
Our nation seems to think so—but will Time
Be of the same opinion? What will be
The juster verdict of Futurity?

XXV

Has the warm blood of seventy-six grown cold?
Has Freedom left her Cradle to rush in
And join the general scramble after gold?
One heart hath plead against a nation's sin;
Where Liberty's first blood was dearly sold,
One voice hath risen o'er the work-day din,
And told far better than my heavy song
Our Country's baseness and the Indian's wrong.

Rev. R. W. Emerson's letter—which does equal honor to his head and heart. There was a peculiar fitness in its being dated at Concord, where the first blood of the Revolution flowed.

Speaking of Concord—having spent most of my “vacation” in that town, I can recommend it as a residence for any student, whose precarious state of health requires a change of air. Though the situation is low, the air is salubrious.

The inhabitants (to whom I return my heartfelt thanks for their kind attention to a stranger) are hospitable and pleasant. Moreover, I can bestow the still higher commendation on them, that (which is rare in country towns) they mind their own business wonderfully. P.S. I have been informed that this last is only at one end of the town.

237

XXVI

That voice pealed out where first the Heavenly fire
Came down to light the altar of the free—
'T is fit the blaze should thus be kindled higher,
And spread its holy light from sea to sea;
Oh may it still descend from hoary sire
To son—a heritage of Liberty;
And may our maidens, as in ancient Rome,
Still nurse this vestal flame, whose shrine is—home!

XXVII

Oh for a voice of pleading like the roar
Of many waters—that its tones might sweep
In mournful deepness on from shore to shore,
And wake the heart of mercy from its sleep!
Rouse! Rouse ye! ere the hour for right is o'er,
Ere justice shall have nought to do but weep!
Rouse, ere the bloody vintage yet be trod
To fill the wine-cup of the wrath of God!

“The same shall drink the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation.

“And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

“And the winepress was trodden ... and blood ran out of the winepress.”—Rev. xiv. 10, 19, 20.

XXVIII

When the last dreaded trump of doom shall sound,
That calls us from our narrow place of rest
To meet our Judge—shall we be spotless found?
Will not the earth lie heavy on our breast,
Where cries our brother's heart's blood from the ground?
Will not the gold we've wrung from the opprest,
Though now it buy us friends and fools and power,
Weigh like a mountain on us in that hour?

XXIX

Oh ye who ship supplies to struggling Greece,
Or furnish flannel waistcoats for the slave,
And get a fraction of a thank apiece,
Telling the public just how much ye gave—
Do all your tender pricks of conscience cease,
Because there's none to call you “good” or “brave”?

238

Will not your hearts grow warm unless your name
Gain in the Newspapers a half-hour's “fame”?

XXX

'T is true our army didn't shed much blood,
(Unless beneath some cunning flag of truce,
When they nipt all our honor in the bud,)
In fact they were not of important use,
Except to lose the nation's shoes in mud,
And blackguard foes (when distant) like the deuce—
It would have spared the Treasury a groan,
Had General Jesup waded round alone.

General Hernandez is already so essentially damned to fame, that it is impossible that my voice should add at all to his unenviable celebrity. If I thought that my small voice could add at all to the greenness of his laurels, I would exert it most cheerfully.—With regard to the brave conduct of our army, I shall speak in the words of Falstaff. “I call thee coward! I'll see thee damned ere I call thee coward: but I would give a thousand pound I could run as fast as thou canst. You are straight enough in your shoulders, you care not who sees your back.” Most of the battles were fought, I suspect, “by Shrewsbury clock,” and more pains were taken by our army to save their own scalps than to take those of the enemy, who, most unfortunately, had a habit of carrying off their dead, much in the same way as their invaders always made it a principle to convey away their living. This they did with a “quick dexterity,” that “honest Jack” might have envied.

XXXI

He might have killed as many as he chose—
On paper —without losing e'en a man;
He might have brought the campaign to a close
(Had he but tried this economic plan)
Ere Brother Jonathan could blow his nose;
As 't was, indeed, the little blood that ran
Was shed with ink—which saved more lives than pence,
Since that was furnished at the State's expense.

This was the method of the “deep-contemplative” Touchstone—“Oh sir, we quarrel in print, by the book.” Perhaps Uncle Toby's plan of fighting his battles o'er again would be as cheap and more amusing.

XXXII

Time was when men were wont to show their scars,
When standing candidate for any place,

239

Telling of battles “quorum magna pars”
And so forth—now that's not the case,
Our heroes talk in tones might frighten Mars—
Should chance e'er bring them but before his face—
As yet they've never met him, though they saw
During the last campaign—one living Squaw!

“MENENIUS.
It then remains,
That you do speak to the people.
CORIOLANUS.
I do beseech you,
Let me o'erleap that custom; for I cannot
Put on the gown, stand naked, and entreat them,
For my wounds' sake to give me suffrage.”

If any of our soldiers should take up this plan, though it is scarce possible, they might use the same address that Coriolanus thought of—

“Look, sir!—my wounds!
I got them in my country's service, when
Some certain of your brethren roared, and ran
From the noise of our own drums.”

XXXIII

Immortal Cant! beneath thy sheltering wing
The ultra temperance men their pæans sing,
Inspired, as any man of sense would think,
By no peculiarly inspiring drink;
At least quite guiltless of those sparkling waters,
Which flow for all Apollo's sons and daughters,
Where Pegasus struck out with hoof of fire
That spring which ends its winding course in mire.
Full many poets seek this wondrous fount,
Where it rolls brightly down the muse's mount,
But getting wearied ere they reach its source,
Drink,—strive to sing,—and find their voices hoarse,
And oft when verse just spreads its opening bud,
Stick fast, and flounder in the fertile mud.
So 't is I fear with you, poor bards, who shape
Your couplets dull to hack the harmless grape,
Pray cease to shame fair water with your praise,
But pour it on your self-created bays,
Drown yourselves in 't,—do any foolish thing,
('T will be quite natural,) but do not sing!

“Be temperate in all things,” Scripture saith,
And there, there only, will I pin my faith.

240

Who damns another in the world to come
Because he drinks no dearer drink than rum,
While his own feet avoid a rectiline,
Led by the costlier blandishments of wine;—
Or loads his duller neighbor with abuse,
To show him poison in the grape's bright juice,
And runs stark mad in his indecent haste
To cure these sinners of their wretched taste,
Sins much as he who reeling through the street
Tramples his reason 'neath his drunken feet.
The worst intoxication man can feel
Is that which drains the burning cup of zeal;
This lights the fagots of the martyr's pile,
And eyes his writhings with a pious smile,
This fired the madness of that bloody train,
Who erewhile made a slaughter-house of Spain,
This mewed the heretic in dungeons damp,
Which knew no cheering but the jailor's lamp,
Tried mild conversion on his shrinking back,
Or used the Christian pleadings of the rack,
And strove with flame and carnage to increase
The holy army of the Prince of Peace!

Oh world-philanthropy! Oh cant and stuff!
Of thy blest influence we've seen enough,
Whether you prove war's ills by force of fist,
Make your own ends seem public good by mist,
In zeal to spread your temperance pledges wider
Fell apple-trees to stop the use of cider,
Or fill your purse and show your moral bravery
By suffering eggdom in abusing slavery.
Time was (dark age) ere men had oped their eyes
To see the good of being pennywise;
When women, men, yea, families might eat
Just what they pleased, or prudence thought most meet,
And did n't know (poor fools!) that half the time
They swallowed poison and committed crime.
'T is truly shocking to the feeling breast,
To think what nightmares must have broke their rest,
Turtles in aldermanic gowns and wigs

241

Walk side by side with ghosts of martyred pigs,
Geese,—stop! humanity the list gives o'er,
For Graham nerves such thoughts can bear no more!
What constitutions those men must have had!
It well-nigh drives Benevolence stark mad,
To think how long they might have stretched their span
Had they but lived on chips or even bran;
For as it was they often reached fourscore,
Nay, sometimes even lingered on still more,
In spite of all the meat and drink and mirth,
Which had been preying on them from their birth,
Slow poisons, it is true, but sure to send
Their victims to the graveyard in the end.
Now the philanthropists have changed all that,
No heresy's so damnable as fat,
And soon they trust no mortal will be seen
Whom decency or bran have not made lean.
Nor is the day far distant when mankind
Shall brush time's gathering cobwebs from the mind,
And, rising far above base nature's thrall,
Become too wise to eat or drink at all.
Full many men grow thin from year to year
On sawdust puddings and imagined beer,
And one great hero, (so his brethren say,)
Lessened his useless dinner day by day,
Until at length, as every wise man ought,
He tried the plan of living upon nought.
As grew the spirit strong the flesh grew weak,
And in eight days the patriot scarce could speak,
Two more rolled on and put him in his bed,
Another,—and he scarce could raise his head.
His thin disciples thronged to see and hear
The lessening progress of a man so dear,
When, just as the attempt had met success,
And proved man thrived on nullity or less,
The skeleton turned slowly on its side,
Muttered, “I live, you see, on nought!” and—died!
The bones of this improver of our race
Were thinly followed to their resting place,
By crowds of worshippers from far and near,
Who keep the anniversary every year,
And on that day convene a general meeting
“For the Suppression of superfluous eating.”

242

(N. B. The worms, not finding aught to eat,
Voted the man a “most notorious cheat.”)

Their verses put one in mind of Touchstone's remark: “I'll rhyme you so eight years together; dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted.”

“For God's sake stop, my friend! 't were best—
Non Di, non homines—you know the rest.”
BYRON'S Vision of Judgment.

“Penny wise and pound foolish.”—

Old proverb.

Mr. Buckingham's advice on the subject of diet contains sound doctrine,—“Eat your victuals, and go about your business.”

XXXIV

Shade of the past! recall that golden age,
The brightest line on Alma Mater's page,
When Massachusetts and her sisters young
Stood fair as Helen from her eggshell sprung,
Their red cheeks blushing on the passer by
In all the glow of maiden modesty!
Blest days! when Freshmen in the college yard
Trembled if Seniors did but eye them hard;
Compelled by law to walk uncovered there,
Their wigs grew restive with each breath of air,
And sometimes did, with all their weight of curls,
Perform with grace a few aerial twirls.
They dug Greek roots, nor joined in deep debate
On equal rights and great affairs of state.
Enough for them to carry down their bowls
Each morn and eve for Commons' milk and rolls,
At noon to gather round the frugal table
And get the lion's share if they were able;
They never shed a sympathetic tear
For Afric's sufferings o'er their daily beer,
Nor as they mixed the sugar in their cup
Groaned for slave-labor ere they drank it up.
No brighter light upon their brains had beamed,
Of other diet they had never dreamed;
They little thought that in their beef or roll,
They swallowed parts of “Universal Soul,”
(Unless indeed they thought of some such stuff,
And scraped to show it, when their meat was tough,)
Nor knew (poor ignoramuses!) how good
A knotty formula might be for food.
Those days are past; oh change thou rulest all,
From lofty Sophomore to Freshman small!

243

Poor Alma Mater feels thy withering blight
And even PROCTORS bow before thy might!

Where is that band,—Bellona tell me where,—
Whose banner once so proudly wooed the air,
And thrice a year on Exhibition days
Flung out its folds to bask in beauty's gaze?
Alas that banner, rent in many a fight,
No more shall greet the blushing ensign's sight,
No more shall kindle valor's fading eye
And lead the marshalled ranks to victory!
No more the braying trump and rattling drum
Tell the glad town-boy that the warriors come,
No more shall Freshman wipe his streaming eyes,
Swelling to reach the regulated size,
And hearts, for their small casings all too large,
Throb for the honor of the bloodless charge!
Brave band! how ardent was the serried line
When led to battle with good Kirkland's wine,
And how each manly bosom mocked at fear
In the fierce onset upon Quincy's cheer!
All this is gone, and graduates as they pass,
Can only shake their heads and sigh “Alas!”
The flag neglected darkly gathers dust,
The sword's bright eye grows dim with gathering rust,
Mars o'er the relics hangs with drooping head,—
The flower of Harvard's chivalry is dead!

But though old Harvard's gallant soldiers sleep,
Her navy still is queen upon the deep,
And still each year she spreads her swelling sail
To court the dalliance of the summer gale;
And still all those who do not take a part
In college honors, learn the seaman's art,
And when one qualm of sorrow gives them pain,
Cast all their burdens on the azure main.
Gently sweet Westernwind unfurl thy pinion,
To waft them through old Neptune's blue dominion,
Softly as calmest slumber rustle o'er
The wave that bears them from the lessening shore,
And bring in safety landward through the foam
These floating bulwarks of their country home!

244

Shades of Hippocrates and Galen! tell
Where are the youths who loved your art so well?
Gone,—like the snow before the Southwind's breath,
Gone,—like a patient to expectant Death,
Who wisely hopes to 'scape all human ills,
Not by a rope, but,—Doctor Brandreth's pills!
Weep Esculapius! weep above the tomb,
Where lie thy sons cut off in manhood's bloom!
None knew so well as they to trace the woes
Of sickly students, and prescribe repose,
None could administer with so much skill
A dose from Willard's, or an oyster pill;
For, unlike most practitioners who try
On some poor dog their skill in pharmacy,
These youthful heroes nobly dared the worst,
And boldly tried their own prescriptions first.
They brought the cold bath to its highest glory,
Testing its value from some upper story,
In all complaints of spirit or of flesh,
Particularly when the case was Fresh.

“And at all times the Freshmen were to keep their hats off in the yard, unless when it rained. The resident graduates and all the senior classes were allowed to send the Freshmen on errands as they saw fit.”—

See PEIRCE'S History, p. 309.

“The breakfast was two sizings of bread and a cue of beer.”—

PEIRCE, p. 219.

Alas! she didn't this year!

XXXV

Classmates, I've nearly done, and yet to day,
Our last together,—there is much to say,—
The strength of ties that twine around the heart
Is but half known till they are torn apart.
Four years we've been here making friends and foes,
With passable success, as this world goes,
And this perhaps is our last earthly chance,
To give a friendly or a chilling glance.
Four years, four long and seeming snailpaced years
Of revels, quarrels, friendships, smiles, and tears,
Have passed,—and do we gather here
As when the bell first smote our Freshman ear?
Has no sharp pang of common sorrow wrung us?
Has not Death's icy hand been stretched among us?
Has no loved voice become forever still?
No merry heart grown heavy, cold, and chill?
Has no bright eye waxed dim, no red cheek pale
At the dread horrors of the “shadowy vale”?
Ay! one there was, —alas for me that mine

245

Should be the task to trace this mournful line!—
Whose seat stands empty, whose brief journey's o'er,
The place that knew him knows him now no more.
Alas! too soon he left our saddened band,
An earlier pilgrim to a better land!
Yes! while our sojourn here hath lingered on,
One bright, pure spirit to his home hath gone,
Whose sunny smile, whose mind serenely gay,
Once cheered the dulness of our weary way,—
A heart more warm, more manly, and sincere,
More pure and gentle is not beating here.
That heart, when first we gathered here for prayer,
With youthful hope was dancing light as air,
And Alma Mater, were he with us now,
Had twined her wreath to grace his manly brow.

Classmate! while yet our trembling voices swell
The mournful melody of this farewell,
Oh, from thy spirit-home above descend,
And in the strain thy voice of music blend!
Brother! if pall and hearse and mourners' tread
Are all of death,—then thou indeed art dead;
But if thy sainted image deep imprest
Within the shrine of every Classmate's breast,
Entwined with evergreen,—if Memory's tear
Of tempered anguish o'er thine early bier,—
If to be cherished still with fond regret
Have aught of living,—here thou livest yet!
Pace Quiescas! may the wild flowers bloom
With fresher verdure round thy hallowed tomb,
Nurtured by dews, tears such as Heaven weeps
O'er the green pillow where her servant sleeps!

Watch o'er him Nature! truest friend of earth,
Who smilest on us ever from our birth,
And after death, when friends have all forgot,
Or scarce remember, still forgettest not!
Who, when affection's flowers have ceased to bloom,

246

Twinest thy yearly wreath around our tomb
Of blue-eyed violets and that flower pale,
That claims a parent in the summer gale.
Oh! mildly cherish him,—for he was mild,
And like a mother,—for he was thy child,
And wantonly ne'er crushed the meanest thing
That nestled 'neath thy all-protecting wing!

Edward Charles Mussey—drowned while bathing in Charles River in July, 1835.

“If friendship's smile, the better part of fame,
Should lend my song the only wreath I claim,
Whose voice would greet me with a sweeter tone,
Whose living hand more kindly press my own,
Than thine?”

XXXVI

Brothers! we part upon the sounding shore
That curbs the waters of life's heaving sea,
We part perchance to meet again no more
This side the haven of Eternity—
Then nerve to breast the billows' angry roar
Alone!—this moment breaks our company,
And though we shrink to hear the waters moan,
We now must sink or struggle on—alone!

XXXVII

Alone! Alone! oh what a mournful spell
One simple word may work upon the heart!
How many a tale one word—one look may tell
Of pathos far beyond the reach of art!
How much of untold agony may dwell
In those two little syllables—“We part!”
They touch a thrilling string within the breast,
No time—no sorrow e'er can put at rest.

XXXVIII

Each word of friendship lightly spoke to day
May be a resting-place for Memory—
Each silly jokelet, scattered by the way,
May call the woman to some graybeard's eye,
As Fancy wanders back in idle play
To these bright hours when boyish hopes were high.
Poor withered buds, nipt by the world's cold blast,
To deck the bosom of the mournful past!

XXXIX

Nay, e'en this silly, half-forgotten song
May win a smile upon some wrinkled cheek,
As some gray classmate slowly spells along,
Aloud (as old men will, whose wits grow weak)

247

With spectacles on nose, and voice half strong,
Half blending with an aged treble squeak—
Shaking his drowsy head as it recalls
Some long-lost dream of Alma Mater's halls.

XL

Those last lines make me think of Time and Fate,
Who, think you, will outlive the rest o' the class—
Perchance himself—and die at last too late?
Who shall sleep soundly 'neath next summer's grass?
Nay, smile not, Reader! that may be thy date—
For e'en these very moments, as they pass,
Carry some mother's son, with youthful form
As dear as thine, to pillow with the worm!

XLI

Enough of this—whate'er may be our lot,
We'll look with love upon our sojourn here,
And memory still shall hover round the spot,
Nor check the tender tribute of a tear,—
A Classmate—Brother—ne'er shall be forgot,
While one poor leaf makes glad life's waning year—
And though old Time in his provoking way
May change our locks—our hearts shall ne'er grow gray!

XLII

Now onward! single, and yet not alone,
But in the hollow of His mighty hand
Who yoked the planets in their boundless zone,
Who set the ocean and the steadfast land,
And yet who calls the meanest thing his own—
Launch out then boldly from the idle strand,
Where'er we wander on the pathless deep
His arm is nigh to guide us and to keep!

XLIII

Youth's morn shines clear, hurrah! the wave is bright,
The gleaming ripples dance right joyously,
And through the foam our barks shall bound as light
As floats yon vapor in its upper sea—
Hoist sail! we'll dare Misfortune's fellest spite,
And buffet stoutly with old Destiny,
Until we reach some pleasant sunny isle
In life's long voyage where to rest awhile!

248

XLIV

And now farewell! again—again farewell!
That word, though mournful, has a soothing tone,
Like the sad music of a passing bell,
Which, swelling from some hamlet far and lone,
Hath travelled long o'er forest, hill, and dell,
To warn us that some brother soul hath flown—
God bless you all! farewell yet once agen!
Plunge in the strife and quit yourselves like men!

Lady! whom I have dared to call my muse,
With thee my lay began, with thee shall end—
Thou can'st not such a poor request refuse
To let thine image with its closing blend!
As turn the flowers to the quiet dews,
Fairest, so turns my yearning heart to thee,
For thee it pineth—as the homesick shell
Mourns to be once again beneath the sea—
Oh let thine eyes upon this tribute dwell,
And think—one moment kindly think of me!
Alone—my spirit seeks thy company,
And in all beautiful communes with thine,
In crowds—it ever seeks alone to be
To dream of gazing in thy gentle eyne!

Concord, August 21, 1838.

By the advice of friends the original dedication of this performance is suppressed, so that now, gentle reader, as Grumio says, “it shall die in oblivion, and thou return unexperienced to thy grave.”

University of Virginia Library

CLASS POEM

PREFACE

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II

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IV

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VI

VII