Poems by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

'Tis nearly night,—a healing night,
As Carro's words last-spoken,
“And will the day be blue and bright?
A whole bright day, unbroken?”
You ask of me, who walk to learn;
Regardless wealth amassing,
And take no charge of tide or turn,
And scarcely keep, in passing,

A watch on wind and weather-gleam,—
Of these things no recorder;
Yet o'er the dark I almost seem
To see its golden border.
Behind the night is hid the day:
I cannot find the reason
In rule or rhyme; but all things say
'Twill be a day of season.

And Carro, too, will softer smile,
And Carro's frown be rarer,
But leave your fair a little while,—
You'll find her all the fairer,—
To walk with me; not by the road,
(A little breathing give her,)
And we will keep the winding wood
Until we strike the River.

And I will tell, where Love, though loath,
A fuller harvest heapeth
Than yours: yet I have known the growth
And followed where he reapeth;
And this, though now to heaven you cast,
Appealing, death-defiant,
A passion pitiless and vast
As love of god or giant!

For one is beat with blasting tears,
And burned with raging weather,
And reapt in fiery haste,—the ears
Half-ripe, dead-ripe, or neither:

The other hangs with dim rain prest,
All greenly wet, and groweth
Forever in the realms of rest,
Nor end nor seedtime knoweth.

Yet some, who cannot help to see,
Refuse the day, and many,
Where faintest strokes of sunlight be,
Peep hard for pin and penny,
Who sneer at what the meadow spreads
And what the woods environ,
And, like the sons of Use, with heads
And hands and feet of iron

Would grasp the Titan's scythe to wound,
To sweep the hill asunder.
And shear the groves at one swing round
And tread the Muses under:
Yet still best-pleased amid the roar,
I find myself a debtor,
Love men not lesser than before,
And nature more than better.

There be, with brains no folding shroud
Of grief, can wean or widow
Of vacant mirth, who bear the cloud,
Yet shrink from shade of shadow;
Would flit for ever in the shine,
Despite of burns and blisters,
And add another to the Nine,
More foolish than her sisters:

A denary of graceful girls,
That carol, dance, and sidle
Through chaffering crowds, and giddying whirls
Of Life, all loud and idle.
But I, who love the graver Muse,
And Minna more than Brenda,
Walk not with these, nor find my views
Writ down in their credenda.

Why, for some peep of meaning clear,
Should we ourselves deliver
Up to the stream, which even here
Roars past us like a River?

But bend, and let the hurly pass,—
Pedant and fop, chance-hitters!
Whilst, in the fields of faded grass,
The cricket ticks and twitters;—

With those that loose the languid page,
Nor let the life o'erflow it,
But pick and copy, sap and sage:
Part wit, and parcel poet,
They follow fast some empiric,
Nor heed for watch or warden;
But go in crowds, and settle thick
Like crows in Nature's garden.

They chew the sweet, and suck the sour,
And know not which is sweeter,—
The cowslip, and calypso flower,
Bald breath, and burning metre,
Milton, or Skelton,—all is one;
None darkle dim where none shine:
And with a blindness of their own
They blot the breeze and sunshine.

Oh, might I plunge beneath the flow
For one forgetful minute,
And, leaving all my dreams below,
Rise like a bubble in it,
And sweep along to lose myself
With all the current seizes;
But in the blows of brass and delf
I fear to go to pieces!

Perhaps my hand would urge the cup
To press apart a nation,
Or, where the Fountain forces up,
Drop tears of congelation;
Or pull with them that strain to drag
The chords of Union tauter,
Stream to the poles with club and flag,
And crossed with sacred water.

But hold! nor cloud our night with these:
Why should we crowd or quarrel?
Look! in the west, the Golden Bees
Hang o'er the mountain laurel;

And, see! in every spot of wet,
The coltsfoot groups and glistens;
While, with a dew,—the holiest yet,—
Young Night her children christens.

Why should I set my feeble strength
A bitter blame to cancel,
Or hold a traitor up at length,
Or tear away a tinsel,
Or beat about for bribe or boon;
When here, in pool and shallow,
I see the fragment of a moon,
Rimmed with a fragment halo?

University of Virginia Library

To the River.