University of Virginia Library

Search this document 

collapse section 
  
expand section 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
collapse section 
 1. 
 2. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
expand section 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
expand section 
SONNETS.
expand section 



SONNETS.


287

THE HIGHER LAW.

Man was not made for forms, but forms for man.
And there are times when law itself must bend
To that clear spirit always in the van,
Outspeeding human justice. In the end
Potentates, not humanity, must fall.
Water will find its level, fire will burn,
The winds must blow around the earthly ball,
The earthly ball by day and night must turn;
Freedom is typed in every element.
Man must be free, if not through law, why then
Above the law, until its force be spent,
And justice brings a better. But, O, when,
Father of Light, when shall the reckoning come
To lift the weak, and strike the oppressor dumb?
1850.

288

CIRCUMSTANCE.

There are dark spots on yonder mountain-side,
So black that they seem fixed and rooted there:
But they will not, believe me, long abide;
The clouds that cast them vanish into air.
So are there mountain minds who sometimes dare
Lift to the world their seeming blemishes,
Shadows of circumstance. Do not compare
These with the vices the eye daily sees,
Blighting the bloom of spirits tamely hedged
In the unwholesome swamps that sleep below,
Where the malaria of accepted lies
Thins the dull blood to meagre virtues pledged.
Better endure the clouds that come and go,
Than court the infected shades where freedom dies.

289

SHAKESPEARE.

It needs no bow o'erstrained to wing the shaft
Of wit and wisdom. When great poets sing,
Into the night new constellations spring,
With music in the air that dulls the craft
Of rhetoric. So when Shakespeare sang or laughed,
The world with long, sweet Alpine echoes thrilled,
Voiceless to scholars' tongues no muse had filled
With melody divine. Athirst, men quaffed
His airy, electric words like heavenly wine.
The mountain summits of that Orient land
Outsoar the level of our praises fine.
All others lie around like hills of sand,
With here and there a green isle or a palm,
That whispers pleasantly when days are calm.

290

THE GARDEN.

Naught know we but the heart of summer here.
On the tree-shadowed velvet lawn I lie,
And dream up through the close leaves to the sky,
And weave Arcadian visions in a sphere
Of peace. The steaming heat broods all around,
But only lends a quiet to the hours.
The aromatic life of countless flowers,
The singing of a hundred birds, the sound
Of rustling leaves, go pulsing through the green
Of opening vistas in the garden walks.
Dear Summer, on thy balmy breast I lean,
And care not how the moralist toils or talks;
Repose and Beauty preach a gospel too,
Deep as that sterner creed the Apostles knew.

291

THE GARDEN (CONTINUED).

Is there no praise of God amid the bowers
Of summer idleness? Still must we toil
And think, and tease the conscience, and so soil
With over-careful fingering the flowers
That blow within the garden of the heart?
Still must we be machines for grinding out
Thin prayers and moralisms? Much I doubt,
Pale priest of a thorn-girded church, thy part
Is small in this wide breathing universe.
Least can I find thy title and thy worth
Here, where with myriad chords the musical earth
Is rhyming to the enraptured poet's verse.
Better thy cowl befits thy cloister's gloom;
Its shadow blots the garden and its bloom.
1852

292

TO G. W. C.

Giorgione mio! In your brilliant books,
Spiced through with odors from the balmy East,
And musical as winds and woodland brooks,
Pages for fragrance as for solid feast,
You have touched sweetly on a few bright days
Under the blue dome of Italia's sky,
When side by side we drank the golden haze
Whose wondrous light from us can never die;
And sweetly, covertly, you twined my name
In the rich wreath you flung before the world.
Dear Friend! for you I fain would do the same;
And when this small bouquet that I have twirled
Upon the stage where you are gathering fame,
Catches your eye, you'll know from whom it came.
1853.

293

TO W. W. S.

I did not think to sail with you, dear friend,
Over the waters of this charméd bay,
And bring you to my summer home, to spend
Together such a sweet and sunny day.
As we sped on, a shadowy fear there lay
Half o'er my hope, that accident might scrawl
The new-turned leaf in this fair book of May.
But thanks to the kind powers, I tasted all
For which I longed; and in these grape-vine bowers
Upon the terrace by the sea, I felt
All harmonies of nature blend with ours,
And in the fleeting moments calmly melt,
While yon blue waves and purple mountain stood
Wrapt in the soft light of our genial mood.
Sorrento, Italy, May, 1848.

294

TO W. W. S.

So many years have passed, so far away
You seem, since arm in arm and eye to eye
We talked together, while the great blue sky
Of Rome smiled over us day after day,
Or on the flower-starred villa grounds we lay
Beneath the pines, while poesy and art
And mirth lent us one common mind and heart
So long ago! while we are growing gray,
And neither knows the life the other leads,
Shut in our separate spheres of thought and change.
Friend of my youth, how oft my spirit needs
The old, responsive voice! Silence is strange,
That so conspires with Time. O, let us break
The spell, and speak, at least for old love's sake!
New York, April 9, 1870.

295

TO O. B. F.

To you, rejected by the church which most
Vaunts its own outgrowth from the older creeds,
Yet, jealous of God's boundless Pentecost,
Disowns all plants from its own flying seeds,
And props its stalk on formulas and texts,
Close shut from blowing winds of freer thought,—
To you, O friend, we turn, who, leaving sects
And rites outworn, have ever bravely sought
To find and lead the way to ampler heights
Of vision and of faith. Your voice we hear,
Rich with the earnest eloquence of truth;
And, following where its cheering tone invites,
The fogs of doubt disperse, the sky is clear,
And the wide prospect smiles with hope and youth.

296

TO O. B. F. (CONTINUED.)

Alone you stand, a herald of the morn
Of reason, faith, and large humanity,—
Auroral airs of earth and heaven born,
Blown from the east across time's changeful sea.
One day the world will know you, ranked with those
Who foremost in the nation's honor stand,—
The poet seers, who, as the century grows,
Give it a shape, with heart and brain and hand
Pledged to the truth. I only say what all
Will know, when clearer lamps are lit than now
In Christendom's dim crypts stand flickering low;
And fain to you would bring some coronal
Worthier than this small wreath of song I weave:
The fuller praise the riper times will give.
1870

297

YOUTH AND AGE.

When young, I slighted art, yet sighed for fame;
Dashed into careless rhyme, and toyed with thought.
When art and thoughts with age and wisdom came,
I laid aside the verse that youth had wrought.
These fruits, I said, were green, that from my bough,
When windy fancies swept, so lightly fell;
A mellower autumn sun is shining now,
That shames the cruder crop once loved so well.
Yet when it chanced some tender hearts had found
A sweeter flavor in the juiceless things
That lay in heaps neglected on the ground,
Than in the fruits the ripening season brings,
I thought, Must life retrace its pilgrimage,
And youth sing songs for youth, and age for age?
1874