 | City Poems |  |
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INTRODUCTION.
We have been parted now for twenty years;Oft messages and gratulations kind
Have flown across the sea, and you have felt
A hand from England touch you 'neath the Palm;
At every little gift from you it seemed
As if my senses had been visited
By India's fragrant wind. With love like ours
These things are certain, as that in the spring
The rapture of the lark will fill the air,
The wind-flower light the woods. How strange will be
Our meeting, long expected, ere we die!
Both will be changed. The boat that forty years
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Is cracked by sun-fire, bent by rainy squalls,
Eaten by restless foam. We will peruse
Each other's faces, read the matter there,
In our grim northern silence—and all be told
In one long passionate wring of claspèd hands.
You can remember how we, in our youth,
Looked forward to the years that were to come.—
We stood upon the verge of a great sea;
An airy rumour of its mighty capes,
Its isles of summer, its lone peaks of fire,
Unknown Americas that lay asleep,
Charmed our fond ears; forthwith we launched from shore,
The wind sang in the hollows of our sails,
And wonder rose on wonder as we went.
We now have voyaged many a foamy league,
Sailed far beyond the curtain of the sky
Which mocked our vision gazing from the strand.
Have we secured a haven of repose
Where we may moulder plank by plank in peace?
Or with our shrivelled canvas, battered hull,
Must we steer onward through the waste of waves,
Beneath the closing night?
Looked forward to the years that were to come.—
We stood upon the verge of a great sea;
An airy rumour of its mighty capes,
Its isles of summer, its lone peaks of fire,
Unknown Americas that lay asleep,
Charmed our fond ears; forthwith we launched from shore,
The wind sang in the hollows of our sails,
And wonder rose on wonder as we went.
We now have voyaged many a foamy league,
Sailed far beyond the curtain of the sky
Which mocked our vision gazing from the strand.
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Where we may moulder plank by plank in peace?
Or with our shrivelled canvas, battered hull,
Must we steer onward through the waste of waves,
Beneath the closing night?
The streams that burst,
Companions, from the misty mountain top,
And hear each other's music for a while,
Are far divided ere they meet the sea.
Shut from the blinding sun-bath of the noon
I see you stretched; the only living sound
Within the tingling silence of the heat,
The long wave's drowsy tumble on the bar;
And in your heart you hear another shore;
Then, like a charger by the trumpet pricked,
You start erect, a flash upon your face—
A spirt of smoke, the thunder of a gun,
A ship from England!
Companions, from the misty mountain top,
And hear each other's music for a while,
Are far divided ere they meet the sea.
Shut from the blinding sun-bath of the noon
I see you stretched; the only living sound
Within the tingling silence of the heat,
The long wave's drowsy tumble on the bar;
And in your heart you hear another shore;
Then, like a charger by the trumpet pricked,
You start erect, a flash upon your face—
A spirt of smoke, the thunder of a gun,
A ship from England!
With much care and toil,
With something of the forethought of the squirrel
And labouring bee that ever works and sings,
I've laid up store, ere life became to me
Bare as a stubble-field. I've built a home
Beside the river which we used to love.
The murmur of the City reaches here,
And makes the silence more divinely still,
And the remembered turmoils of my youth
Sweeten this deep tranquillity of age.
If in a world that changes like a cloud,
A man may, in pure humbleness of heart,
Say he is happy, I am surely he.
Time unto me hath been the dearest friend;
For Time is like the peacefulness of grass,
Which clothes, as if with silence and deep sleep,
Deserted plains that once were loud with strife;
Which hides the marks of earthquake and of fire;
Which makes the rigid and the clay-cold grave
Smooth as a billow, tender with green light.
The world and I are friends. When I depart,
Upon the threshold I'll shake hands with Life
As with a generous and a cheerful host
Who gave me ample welcome 'neath his roof.
Now, in the sober evening of my days,
I do resemble in contentedness
An ancient grange half hid in harvest-home:
Though there is little warmth within my sky,
Though streaks of rain fall on the yellow woods,
Though wild winds clash my vanes—yet I have stored
A summer's sunshine in my crowds of stacks;
Although hoar frost at morn is on the brier,
With oil, and roaring logs, I can make blithe
The long long winter night. I've suffered much,
And known the deepest sorrow man can know.
That pain has fled upon the troubled years:
Although the world is darker than before,
There is a pathos round the daisy's head;
The common sunshine in the common fields,
The runnel by the road, the clouds that grow
Out of the blue abysses of the air,
Do not as in my earlier days, oppress
Me with their beauty; for the grief that dims
The eye and cheek, hath touched them too, and made
Them dearer to me, being more akin.
Death weaves the subtle mystery of joy:
He gives a trembling preciousness to love,
Makes stern eyes dim above a sleeping face
Half-hidden in its cloud of golden curls.
Death is a greater poet far than Love;
The summer light is sweeter for his shade.
The past is very tender at my heart;
With something of the forethought of the squirrel
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I've laid up store, ere life became to me
Bare as a stubble-field. I've built a home
Beside the river which we used to love.
The murmur of the City reaches here,
And makes the silence more divinely still,
And the remembered turmoils of my youth
Sweeten this deep tranquillity of age.
If in a world that changes like a cloud,
A man may, in pure humbleness of heart,
Say he is happy, I am surely he.
Time unto me hath been the dearest friend;
For Time is like the peacefulness of grass,
Which clothes, as if with silence and deep sleep,
Deserted plains that once were loud with strife;
Which hides the marks of earthquake and of fire;
Which makes the rigid and the clay-cold grave
Smooth as a billow, tender with green light.
The world and I are friends. When I depart,
Upon the threshold I'll shake hands with Life
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Who gave me ample welcome 'neath his roof.
Now, in the sober evening of my days,
I do resemble in contentedness
An ancient grange half hid in harvest-home:
Though there is little warmth within my sky,
Though streaks of rain fall on the yellow woods,
Though wild winds clash my vanes—yet I have stored
A summer's sunshine in my crowds of stacks;
Although hoar frost at morn is on the brier,
With oil, and roaring logs, I can make blithe
The long long winter night. I've suffered much,
And known the deepest sorrow man can know.
That pain has fled upon the troubled years:
Although the world is darker than before,
There is a pathos round the daisy's head;
The common sunshine in the common fields,
The runnel by the road, the clouds that grow
Out of the blue abysses of the air,
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Me with their beauty; for the grief that dims
The eye and cheek, hath touched them too, and made
Them dearer to me, being more akin.
Death weaves the subtle mystery of joy:
He gives a trembling preciousness to love,
Makes stern eyes dim above a sleeping face
Half-hidden in its cloud of golden curls.
Death is a greater poet far than Love;
The summer light is sweeter for his shade.
Full, as the memory of an ancient friend
When once again we stand beside his grave.
Raking amongst old papers thrown in haste
'Mid useless lumber, unawares I came
On a forgotten poem of my youth.
I went aside and read each faded page
Warm with dead passion, sweet with buried Junes,
Filled with the light of suns that are no more.
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Given by loving hands no more on earth,
And starts, beholding how the dust of years,
Which dims all else, has never touched its light.
I stood before the grave-door of the past,
And to these eyes my yet unmouldered youth
Came forth like Lazarus. Thou swallow, Love,
Which thus revisit'st thine accustomed eaves,
Return, return to climes beyond the sea!
This ruined nest can never nurse thy young;
Thy twitter, and thy silver-flashing breast,
But mock me with the days that are no more.
I have been bold enough to send you this,
Though little of the Poet's shaping art
Is in these sheets, and nothing more was sought
Than that most sweet relief which dwells in verse
To a new spirit o'er which tyrannized,
Like a musician o'er an instrument,
The sights and sounds of the majestic world.
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Was an unwindowed chamber of delight,
Deaf to all noise, sweet as a rose's heart:
A sudden earthquake rent it to the base,
And through the rifts of ruin sternly gleamed
An apparition of grey windy crag,
Black leagues of forest roaring like a sea,
And far lands dim with rain. There was my world
And place for evermore. When forth I went
I took my gods with me, and set them up
Within my foreign home. What love I had,
What admiration and keen sense of joy,
Unspent in verse, has been to me a stream
Feeding the roots of being; living sap
That dwelt within the myriad boughs of life,
And kept the leaves of feeling fresh and green.
Instead of sounding in the heads of fools,
Like wind within a ruin, it became
A pious benediction and a smile
On all the goings on of human life;
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In lone waste places, and the light of stars.
Now as the years wear on, I hunger more
To see your face again before I die.
Last night I dreamed I saw a mighty ship
Through a great sea of moonlight bearing on,
Its coil of smoke dissolving into mist
Beyond its shining track; and in my dream
I felt you on your way. May this be true!
Sometimes, in looking back upon my life,
I fear I have mistaken ill for good.
There are no children's voices in my house.
If I have never ventured from the strand,
Been spared the peril of the storm and rock,
I never have returned with merchandise.
I know that She has melted from your sight,
And that a colony of little graves
Makes that far earth as sacred as the sky.
Alone like me—your solitude is not
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I have but thoughts. It may be that you weep,
But I have not a sorrow worth a tear:
Methinks to-night mine seems the harder fate.
The fire I kindled warmed myself alone,
And now, when it is sinking red and low
Within the solemn gloom, there is no hand
To heap on fuel. Therefore let it sink.
Life cannot bring me more than it has brought.
The oft-repeated tale has lost its charm.
I would not linger on to age, and have
The gold of life beat out to thinnest leaf.
Like winds that in the crimson autumn eves
Pipe of the winter snow, my prescient thoughts
Are touched with sadness. Ay, the leaf must fall
And rot in the long rain. The stage is bare,
The actor and the critic have retired,
And through the empty house a hand I know
Is putting out the lights; 'twill soon be dark.
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