Eliot :: :: University of Virginia Library

Eliot

A Poem

Channing, William Ellery (1817-1901)

[section]

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

ELIOT.

I. IN THE CAVE.

Where once the lynx and panther made his house,
Or the fat bear brought up his family,
Poor nurslings of the Wild, I find my place
Of shelter from the world, and man remote.
Nearly two decades of this mortal coil
Run off; my sands of life mostly run out;
And yet the everlasting voice I hear,
And never find the silence.
On these rocks,
Old as the pillars of the earth, I make
My couch, table, and seat; and the iron door
Grates on its hinges to my touch alone,—

Alone, alone, alone by night, by day.
No friendly voice e'er sweetness to my ear;
No friendly thought e'er warming to my heart;
Scared by misfortune, with its life-blood scant,
And soon to stop!
Alone! Yes. But I hear!
Was that a human step, or a dry leaf
Dropped from the oak-tree? And that echo soft,—
Was it the splinter of the waterfall
That down the glen flies from the moonlight's clutch?
This awful silence! And I ever hear
Sounds that surprise me,—born, I feel, of fear;
Sounds faint and far, that drench me with affright,
Here as I sit, and see the bloodstained scroll,—
Those letters that I plucked from out his breast,

As slowly from his heart the red drop oozed,—
Those, and her portrait, and his own!
Lisa!
I see her near me! 'T is her hand I touch!
Her soft brown hair, her gentle hazel eyes.
Cruel, say you, was something in her smile,
And sensual or vindictive? Oh! to me
The very sweetness of God's deepest love
Beamed from those faithful orbs; and when that mouth
Was pressed to mine I never felt its scorn.
Thus, thus to live,—should this, indeed, be life,—
Within this cavern which my hands have scooped
To the convenient largeness for my wants;
Hight enough, and so secured that none can come
Without I know them here. And this, my rifle,
Time once, that was a joy,—far off, indeed,—

But now one loathsome thing, since flowed his blood.
And yet to know that from this dungeon here
I still must roam the tall wood's broken gloom;
Far down the glen, where the sharp ripple glides
Of the cold stream, like arrows in its haste,
Curving and curving fast,—and kill the deer,
Most graceful of their kind. For I have vowed,
In this self-punishing, I will not steal my life;
And naught but these fair creatures make me live.
'T is late; the night draws on; no human love
To cheer me in my grief. Society!
Oh, well I do remember in those days
When I had Lisa, and I owned a home,
How dear the firelight blaze lit up the walls
Of our Kentucky house,—that ample hall,

There where our mother dwelt, and he, the judge,
My father,—all the children round, the dogs
Stretched out along the floor, and often heard
The flying hoof-beats of the full-blood steed;
Some social neighbor, on his round of calls,
Proud of his good gray mare; the kindly hopes,
The tidings from the town, the postman's shout;
And heard afar that soothing Sabbath bell,
Sweet in my childish heart!—
Hush! Was it a step?
Again? Something along the leaves; the night
Crawling in the cool air amid the oaks,
Or the soft panther's foot seeking the meat
That's hanging at the door. Again! the whisper!
Can it be? Who comes? 'T is Gordon's form.
His hand across his heart, as on that day;

Slowly the red drop oozing from the spot.
See! and he shot as well as I; closer!
O God! why was it not his ball through mine,
Not mine in his? And Lisa at his side!
I often say it: Eliot, the blow was yours.
And now you live, frozen to the heart, for life,
Until on yonder heap of leaves you rest,
Mourned for by none unless some wandering wind.
Yes, 't is midnight; I feel it in my soul.
Yon star that strikes beyond the cavern's roof
Brings me that fated hour, the time to sleep.
I call it sleep, but all along my mind
Hovers the contribution of the day.
The curse of Cain weighs worlds upon my soul,—
Whoso sheds human blood, his own shall flow.
How often have I sought the fatal stroke;

How often bared my breast to the lightning's stab,
Or begged the wild man of the woods to dart
His arrow through me; and the venomous snake,
Whose measured warnings in the grass I hear,
As oft I thread the glade, his rattle shrill.
No, no; they harm me not, fated to live.
The sweetest draught that ever touched my lips
Will be the wine of death, a cordial draught.
Would but the sisters brew it speedily,
And let me drain that glass.
And yet I live!
As now, to meet this midnight hour and say,—
One more, one more, another sun must rise;
Another day, the same as all that go;
Tied to myself, and these dread, pitiless thoughts,
As when Prometheus lay and felt the eagle

Lapping his blood, chained on the Caucasus.
'T is silence sears my brain. No pleasant words:
No smile over her lips; no gentlest parting
When she ope'd the door, and lingered long,
Waiting to hear my latest foot-tread fall;
No glance upon her face, as oft she sat
Wondering at my strange fancies and strange acts.
I vainly stretch my hands. I meet the air
Empty and wan and cold and pitiless.
I ask for mercy! On the rocks I kneel,
Long ere this hour is passed, hoping for mercy:
That some voice will say, “Go forth, this penance o'er.”
Hoping, I say, Yes; but my hope's despair.
Decades have fled, and yet my prayers remain,
Like some dull, hollow sphere, untenanted.

When I was young, how oft I sang some catch,
Some merry song, when I was left alone,
Gay as the callow bird upon the bough;
My innocent heart responding to the joy
That broods o'er all things. Since that awful hour,
Doomed as the frozen stream, its ripples sunk
To icy stillness.
Hark! That foot again!
'T is Lisa's, at the door. I see her soft brown hair,
Lighter than faintest glass spun at the flame.
How waves it in the moonlight's deadly glow!
And oh! her gentle eyes, they melt the gloom;
And her kind voice, “Eliot! my love, I come.
I never loved but you,—no one as much.
But I was one not framed to love, save one.

Not of the class of women whose shrunk hearts
Feel but a single friend, and have no more
Than one emotion; and I thought that you
Should still be mine. Oh! Eliot, oh! my love,
Was jealousy more worth than all my love?
And those poor letters, bathed in his last blood,
A proof that I less loved you than of yore?
I know the date's the same. I know I wrote
That day to you and him. But my true love,
Might you not spare his life? I hear the gun!
I see the fearful flash! the ringing shot
Is pressing through my heart! I cannot breathe!
I go with Gordon to that other land!
But I will come to you. I will not leave
You, dearest, in that lonely world; but come

Sometimes, at hollow midnight, when your ear,
Attuned to finer silence, claims new sounds.
'T is I; 't is Lisa! Eliot, do not fire!”
What did I hear?
Was it the oak-leaf falling in the frost?
Was it the torrent whispering down the glen?
Methought I heard a voice, like Lisa's voice.
There! There! My God! that sound again!
“Eliot, my love,
The nearest to my heart of those I love,
Would that this hand could take and lead you up
In this still land, beyond that temporal day.
I cannot, cannot; no, my child! No hour,
No moment can my loving heart come near
To stanch your wounds; nor this frail form
One touch of consolation to your days

Ever afford. Eliot, why was it I who died
When Gordon fell, doomed by the fatal hand?
Because I loved him thus, you fondly deemed,
Even as I loved yourself. Why look so faint
Across those bloodstained scrolls? My heart is yours,—
Here in the hollow grave,—all yours, the same.”

II. MORNING.

'T is almost sunrise; I had long to wait.
I hear the early birds begin their songs;
Would 't were the last. Yet I believe and feel
That life grows weaker, and so it must end,
Nor far away.
How foolish in me still
These shallow, hurried notes to scrawl.
Here will they mold, with those,—the letters!
And the faithful books that true remain,
Silent though speaking, ranged upon the stones,
Facing the long procession of the years,—
Schiller and Shakspere, Spenser, with their kin,
And courtly Addison. Never they dreamed

That things they wrote should float thus far away,
And in such places, here in these rank woods
Nourish an outlaw's breast, haggard with crime,
Save mine, far from all human eyes;
For in your trade-mad town, on Como's street,
Who lives who ever read them? Know I not.
Would I could live and yet destroy no life;
Yet neither roots nor nuts, nor berries scant,
Will save me from destruction. These dim wilds
In their game furnish a thin subsistence,
And I have sworn to breathe till my last sigh
Falls wretchedly to death. Live must I call it?
Once did I live, and knew the morning break
As the sweet herald of auspicious day,

Wherein my thoughts should bloom even as its blush.
Like radiance o'er the east my hopes shot forth.
The world was all before me and its friends,—
Those polite liars, those true, faithful friends.
On no man yet I ever turned my back.
I was affectionate, or so I thought;
I trusted all, and trustful, tried to please.
They shook me from them like the poisoned snake
Whose venom drops when none affects the cause.
My warm affections, my soft sympathies,
They rated oddity, named them brief whim,
Caprices, and the wiser called me mad,
The least reprieve they gave, to glance aside,
Neglect me; cold contempt, indifference,
Silent aversion, indolent remark,
Their sole returns.—

Was that a figure
Moving among the trees, there, where the sun
Begins to gild their moss? Like Gordon's form,—
Just crossing through the glade from where I sit.
Why, 't is a deer, and bends this way to me.
I'll get my gun, shut to my dungeon's door.
And I can feel its soft and liquid eye
Beam on this gloomy cell in friendly fear.
I could not shoot if this viper at my heart
Consumed its blood. Shoot, poor thing! Never till now,
Driven by hunger was I weeping forced
To slay one living creature, nor to harm.
Nor should I now; 't is part of this dread penance,
And I live by murder.
Could be that Gordon's soul
Impressed itself upon that silly deer,
To tempt a hunter's thought? Its liquid eye,

Perhaps, prefigures happier days in store?
No, no! the same, the gnawing at my heart,
And carking care from anguish unappeased.
Why do I keep those letters yet, so near?
Near, ever in my eyes, and the twin portraits,—
Lisa's and his,—ever, forever there!
Was there no God with pity in his heart
When I lay cradled on my mother's breast?
Or was this fiend who tears my life to shreds
The One who made me, blasted and obscured?
I dreamed in calmer days of pleasing thoughts,
Blest recollections, which like soothing lights
O'ershot my morbid glooms, and made a hope
Of earth, lit up the dark, cold lakes with joy.
And touched the freezing foliage till it laughed;
Honeyed remembrances of good deeds done,

Like angel hymns soft fluting o'er the mind,
Banishing sin and binding up time's wounds.
The unappeasable sky above me shuts
Its iron lids 'gainst every cheerful thought;
No day nor night, nor early morn nor eve,
Nor shapes of things to come nor those all gone,
Are neighbor to my cause.
What moves yon bush?
'T is but the frost-work lightening in the sun,
That gives it verge to move, to right its stems
From the cold grasp of night. These things are loved.
The glade that stoops across the long-drawn wood,
Its unshorn grasses for the deer's supply,
I sought again; a little sylvan temple,
With sober front carved by the wood-god's taste,
For Dryad meetings comfortably adorned.
Around the graceful trees move sensible

To the sweet whisperings of the wind; the spring
Where nightly come the wild inhabitants,
To touch their lips, adorned with mossy stones,
Might please some hermit's mind.
Was I happy then?
Was there an hour deep in the past when life
Half kept some smiling dreams? My memory fails.
I fancy, as I seek that glade, my mind
Might, if 't were gracious, partly call again
Some thing or day that smiled across my path,
Ripe with humanity, before that blow
At my own race had shadowed all my soul,
And rooted out all trace of blest emotion.
Why did I love? Had I no joy in that?
I looked in Lisa's face; I saw her shape,
Light and convenient beyond Nature's art,
Made for our race; those hands that did her thought
Before my clumsy brain presumed her act;

That step so sure and sweet; that modest eye,
Ever self-humbling, ever soothing me.
I loved her all. Was not there, then, a joy?
Then, but how far off now! I am no more
Of life; all's fled, all's lost.—
Again,—her form!
As I was sitting in the glade, herself
Passed at the further end and near the spring.
Watching for deer I sat, for food is scarce.
My eyes were on the earth, my heart was faint,
And then I heard a voice. I raised my eyes.
Was it the oak-leaf falling in the frost?
Was it the torrent whispering down the glen?
She speaks, soft as the child who prays at night
His mother's blessing:
“Eliot! thou thread'st alone
The shadowy vale, save that my memory
Its penance bears along thy weary road.

Child to my heart all dear, I loved thee ever!
Nay, thou knew'st not that all my soul was thine.
Frenzied with jealousy, that maddening draught,
The aloes of the heart, and now rusted
With solitude, that by its acid eats
Away the truth; thought's vitriol, chasing
The fine conceit to ashes, rubbing out
The burnished silver of the social glass,
Reducing every pleasure to a mask;
A filmy skeleton, through which the breath
Of an unformed despair glides ghostly up,
As midnight's sigh in the cathedral's vault
Where overhead the falling ruins soar.”

Methought I knew that voice. Was that his form?
This hunger at my heart and this fatigue!
I surely saw a figure cross the glen,
As I glanced back, its hands upon its heart.
Gordon, no! no! It was not murder, no!

At twenty paces, killed—was he killed by me?
Oh, mockery! I am frenzied with this life.
Hunger and cold and weariness steal all sense,
An everlasting faintness in my frame,
And in my mind the fatal consequence,
Brings forth its ghosts and dreams and fearful thoughts.
Were I not here alone in these wild woods,
Exiled from all which social life holds dear,
Locked in that burial vault, a diseased mind,
Malady naught can cure,—might not one heart,
One human heart with a brief tenderness,
E'en for me, say one half word of comfort,—
Breathe just one sigh, and with a faltering mind
Touch for an instant to my bleeding soul,
A hope of mercy!
My God! I ask for pardon.

But thou art just! Justice was made for me,
This miserable doom becomes me well.
A weaker nature might have sought its life;
But I, whose fibres, like the shattered oak's,
Wedged to the core with lightning, wreathe
Their pale, white phantoms to the angry sky,
And roots entwined in earth's unmeasured halls
Claim property their own; thus I, all scarred
And blasted, rained on, spat upon by hail,
And winter's silent moons, and still her voice,
Loud as the earthquake's trump, her still small voice:
“Eliot, my child, believe me to the end.”

I know I saw the sun rise; I believe
That somewhere in that distance was a world,

And once the woods lay green at summer's breath,
And soft the toying winds that danced in May.
There must have been a world, and human life.
I think I might remember childish forms,—
Their soft, wan hair; their little, lovely words;
Questions that break a grown man's heart with joy,
To think that God lets Innocence appear,
And in the weary, worn-out stage of life,
Paint her sweet dreams, the bliss of ignorance.
I had a sister once, cold as yon snow-crowned peak;
A friend, than Judas baser, who did worse,
Than sin, inexpiable crime, who blundered.
Thoughts had I once, anterior to that hour;
Once I had hopes, before all hopes were dead.

I half remember these things!
I must away!
Heavens! how faint I feel. The deer range far;
Slippery the frost shines gleaming down the trail.
That thought was rough, that I need kill these things,
So sacred in these haunts. I dare not keep a hound;
I cannot meet the glances of their eyes,
More than all human. When they lick my hand
They shudder at the touch; there's blood upon it,
Which naught can wash away. No misery and no wrongs,
Nor day nor night, nor the unutterable voice
That yet forever asks me to repent,
Nor any strength that ever I possessed,
Nor these wild forms that glance across my path,
Can take the stains and clear them from my soul.

A deer! Hush! My rifle jarred! If it should fail
(I did not fail that day), then should I die
A hunter's death,—die, and the deer should live.
'T were better so; they never kill their friends.

III.—NIGHT AGAIN.

I wrestled with the hight,
Then on the rocky, upland ridge found food.
Perhaps another week my breath may spend.
But my limbs falter; methinks they are swollen.
I heard my mother say death lay not far
When that began.
Death! All men fear to die!
To change, to be crushed out into the darkness,
Or sheeted off the scaffolding that swings
Across the deep, unfathomable gulf,
Where all we love and all we hate are dashed,—
No, no, not all! save to themselves, not all,
To such as dream.—

Her blood stains all my soul!
I did not pause; of her I never thought.
'T was all myself, accursed self; her frail
And delicate life I disregarded then.
Soothing, I did not heal her tender fears,
Caress her yielding smile, born of delight;
But rudely swept her faithful heart away.
You tell me Gordon struck me; said I flung
The dice foully, the cards were marked, he struck;
And what was that? One midnight of this life
Would clean wash out centuries of insult,—
Baffled by secret foes, nailed to the Cross,
Far happier than this slowly dropping rust
Curdling about my unprotected thoughts.

Oft, ere I sought these ebon shades, I went
In villages as twilight took their streets,
And saw the laborer halting to his home,
His long day's toil misfigured in the glebe,
And heard his children cry their father's name.

Might I not, too, have had a home, a life,
My children's love? Yes! ere these viler fiends
Than all hell's lowest pit supplies, despoiled
My home, murdered my wife, kidnapped my darlings,
Children,—all, flung into one common grave;
And I to weep and see them till I die!
That sound again! Was it the breath of moonlit air?
“Eliot! it might have been,” I list it still;
“But might is not, in some men's decalogue.
Mark how the noon of night silvers yon spray,
That tears the crashing cataract in twain,
Then 'mid the dim ravines crushed to wild flakes,
And ever writhing, hurled on heaven again!
See, in the vale beneath, the placid pool
Wherein the tall trees muse and view themselves,

Narcissus like, built in supremer grace
E'en than their own, Nature's prevailing portraits,
The which she draws to emulate her skill.
Eliot! they never change. The whirlpool roars;
The tender, silent rivulet pursues
The even tenor of its noiseless way;
Down, down forever smites the tortured fall,
Its broken agony on life's last beat!
But mark, the stroke of twelve. Dear love, farewell!”
Her voice? Was it a voice? How my heart beats!
I thought I heard a voice! My veins are chill.
Twelve did it say? Who knows the hour of twelve
Here in this solitude, where never fell
The solemn music of the churchyard tower;
Here in this fiendish cave, the wild man's lair,

The maniac's cell? Why, I could rend my heart
From out my breast, and crush it 'neath my feet!
But I am doomed to live, my own revenge,
And Gordon's death must feast upon my blood.
That voice again! Eliza's? I did dream!
Yet in these dreams of life I meet with death.
I live when I am dead, when life is gone;
And when I wake, I die!
My limbs are cold;
I feel the frost,—'t is stealing near my heart.
More wood upon the fire; but no! Who's here,—
Here in my seat? And on the table,—What?
“All false cards, marked, you say, and loaded dice?
Well, well, 't is much for you to say to me,—
Eliot, that never bent to mortal man.”

“Yes, loaded all, false, cheating; 't is your trade.
Take that.” A blow, a blow! Why, what is this?
'T is the cold firelight mocking at the stones;
They did not hear. My limbs are freezing now,
I'll build the fire. “Rifles, to-morrow,
At twenty paces! Eliza will be there.”
'T is Gordon's voice, or yet one other dream.

I cannot love such nights; never I may.
Their spirit is a poison to my sense,
And most of them, I fear the moonlight's spell.
What does it comfort? Not my breaking heart.
No shrub or flower profits its palsied glare.
Silence and gliding phantoms fill the woods,
And the dim forest glimmers with affright,—

Less like the human life I thought to live
Than all things else, and more like him I hate.
Myself I mean, most hated of my race!
I must endure it; but when I was young
Then moodish patience was to me a charm.
He who is patient lacks no more; he's passed
The precipice; aloft he does not hang
Over the dizzy, threatening gulf, but glides
In peaceful currents down the greensward vale.
The night wears on. The fire has sought my limbs;
Would it could burn this heart, beyond all warmth
That mortal lips can blow into a flame.
I'll seek my bed again.—
I loved but once.
He who loves twice has never loved that once;
Like coldly torpid hearts that slowly drag
(A long paralysis from birth to death),

Their small expedient selves. All else to them,
Save their own earnest cant, is rottenness,
Feeling some whim; sorrow a lie, so wise
And temperate their cherished self-esteem;
And they succeed in all, and blazon forth
Most godlike, in the senate halls, in law,
In camps, in literature prevailing.
I was not of them; yet I sought the seats
Where eloquence should rule, and might have played,
Had I not fallen, myself the canting knave.
Was it not better thus to fall and fade
To all things human, than to live and lie?
I know not. What an endless night! Sleep, sleep
Deserts me! Once I loved to muse and think,—
Live o'er the happy hours of past delight;
Think of that creature folded in my heart,
As I in hers; and mark the long night build
Its Spaniard's castle on a dreamer's brain.

Why, 't was a kind of rarer sleep; and when
The glorious morning broke my waking dream,
I did not feel the want, but flung abroad
As light as any bird. 'T is strangely wronged;
Confusion follows swift these sleepless nights,
When nothing goes to cheat me of the loss
That drains my waking hours, nothing to part,
No veil, no dark concealment from those shapes.
Oh, I would die within some happy dream;
I cannot wish to pass and feel the steel
Stirring in my cold heart with its last beat.
But I shall die, as I do live, alone;
This solitude detains no human guests;
No reverend father, with his beads in hand,
Or prayer from trembling lips, or mother's tears,
Or the soft heads of children o'er their sire,—

All 's dark and dumb and chilled.
Paylight! So dark?
The notes of early birds! I must have dreamed.
Have then the sands of night dashed off the hours
In a swift torrent, night that is my prayer?
For then I part forget my outlaw's watch;
Or, if remembered, there hangs o'er the veil,—
That gauzy, thin oblivion men name sleep.—
A breathless falsehood, intermixed among
That which we are, yet are not. Never yet
Since I first faced these woods has the midnight
Found me consoled by this false opiate;
Never the morning light has blotted out,
From off this crime-worn soul, its weight of woe.
Let fate be thanked, 't is not Eliza's soul!
She died, she went to peace; she sleeps the sleep
That should forever soothe her contrite thought.

Bless Heaven! it is not hers the frenzy eats,
The solitude devours, its sweetest prey
Some human heart!
Why should I save those letters?
A moment in that blaze, safely consumed;
And the rude scribbling of this traitorous pen,
Were it not handsomer, with them to the dust,
As I shall fall myself? What interest,
What word of good have they for mortal ear?
But these red stains,—these will not let me burn them.
Between their life and mine there stands a wall,
Fatality, that says: “Live! These shall live,
Even as you shall live, cursed, ever cursed,
Fate's brand across your deeds.”

IV. IN THE PAST.

Not always this.
My words are frenzy; none can feel them here;
This corse a prey to the green mold, to dust.
Here may the wild-cat crouch and suck my veins,
And the slow snake, the Massasauga, coil
About my throat, or drag his rattles o'er
My harmless bones. I never injured him,
Nor touched his race, no more than if his form
Had been my clannish totem; yet methinks,
So wild is Nature, or so self-sustained,
She shows no difference to the cruelest boor

And him who tends her creatures like his own.
At times I seem to swim along the past,
Yet without pleasure; grief's too near. Could I
But plunge beneath that golden dream, and sleep
Upon the pillow of forgotten days!
I seem to see the city by the shore,
Sullen and tame, where laps the Atlantic wave;
Her gloating palaces, her scornful mites
Hating the poor, but loving much the rich.
Was there a breath of judgment in this world,
That senseless wrack of misers and buffoons
Flung to the simmering billows, served far more
As driftwood to the naked islander,
Crushed in his wrecker's cabin, than 't is now,—
A prison of the soul, where genius dies,
Love withers, and all 's damned.

I do but dream!
Methinks I see the hill-tops round me swell,
And meadow vales that kiss their tawny brooks,
And fawn the glittering sands that hug the grass;
Old valleys shorn by farmers numerous years,
Some mossy orchards murmuring with perfume,
And our red farm-house,—what a wreck that was!—
Its rotten shingles peeling 'neath the winds,
When roaring March fell in the offshore breeze;
Its kitchen with the salt box full of eggs,
And Taylor's “Holy Living” on the lid;
And clammy cellar, redolent of rats,
Had not Grimalkin bought his ticket there,
Braced on lean vermin like a banker's clerk.

Our parlor kept its buffet, rarely oped.
Much did I wonder at yon glassy doors,
And stacks of crockery sublimely piled,—
Hills of blue plates, and teapots sere with age,
And spoons, old silver, tiniest of that breed.
It was a sacred place, and save I whisked
Sometimes a raisin or a seed-cake thence,
With furtive glance I scanned the curious spot.
The curtains to the windows kept all dark,—
Green paper was the compound. And the floor,
Well scrubbed, showed its vacuities, content
With modest subterfuge of mats, the work
Of some brave aunt, industrious as a fly,
And interwove of rags, yet things to me
I hardly dared intrude on them my shoe.
Such fictions of that past, to-day seem naught;
And there prefigured lay the ruthless crimes

That later years have summed up in my count,
Made me the outlaw of these thick-set woods,
And bribed the solitude to craze my brain.
Within, within; for things without are void.
I can remember, on my path to school,
There was upon the road a ledge of rocks,
And on its side red stains. I thought them blood,
And shuddered when I passed, and sometimes ran,
Ploughed in my conscience by a glittering pang.
Yet then I was unhappy, my thoughts sad;
My heart was soft, I was not loved enough;
I felt all tender impulse; but without,
I found dull answers or averted looks,—
The pale, the selfish, and the worldly crowd
Who block the paths of life, and drop their slime
Along the doorways, and bar hope away.

My heart was made to love. I loved the trees;
The livelong fields, slow slumbering 'neath the sun;
The barberry thickets, where the cat-bird builds;
And the green privet's shade, the robin's house.
I loved the long, low beach that kept the shore;
The eternal billow, turning in its dream;
The sparkling kelp, slow-moving thro' the spray,
And the small beach-birds, piping their faint hymn
Amid the cannon of the o'erhanging brine.
I loved the tall white clouds that the blue hills
Around my birthplace took to Heaven with them,
And sailed away upon that azure vault
Till hours made centuries.
And fain I loved
The victories of the mind, that fervent pens

Secured in verse or rhyme; idols to some,
Butts for the jest or jeer; the students' tale,
Read crouching o'er the fire in still midnight,
And poring o'er their books to give the race
Dominion, not themselves. And art became
A passion to my soul; and they who taught
In lands Italian or in Grecian fanes,
Discoverers to cold Nature of herself;
Wheel within wheel, fresh beauty still evolved,
As from the rushing sea sprang Venus forth,
And smiled, till the blue bays grew golden,
And shrines melodious gave soft music forth.
But how chill my race to my emotions!
For such as I encountered most each day,
Low-bent and shrunk, their narrow foreheads carved

Deep by their avarice, scanning each word,
Ringing their twopence on the grocer's weight,
Always the leading quest, “What will you do?”
And “How much can you make?”
I spake of verse,
I praised the master-minds, I praised their works.
Were not great poets something, artists naught?
Dante's dark dream, and flowing Shakspere's light,
And sweet Correggio swooning in his saint,
And Newton gazing like the stars he told!
“Fool!” was the word; “fool, go read the almanac,
Teach you to multiply and foot your sums,
Learning is rank confusion. Science swims
Upon the floating gulf-weed, and its dream
Flies at the tempest which devours its strand.”

There lived a few who laid a claim to me,
Who cried: “This world is vain; here conscience falls
To meanness. Set down your priest, your advocate,
With carp and venison plump his greedy skin.
On couches soft rear his luxurious sleep,
And bring congestion from voluptuous wines,—
That is what science means; to us not that.
Time hath a higher meaning to our hearts.
You can foot a rhyme; chant the right thing, the Good,
Sing friendship, praise the scholar's life, the poet's.”
Thus did they brag, and then showed me their gums.
Accursed rot their treacherous, craven breed!
Worshippers of success, idols to themselves,
Bound in conventions, who keep up the church,

And cut each sour malignant who prefers
His unwashed cant to their soaped liturgies.
Such fancy that the law is in the state.
And do not reck of Him who put it there,—
Who made the law and made the state to fit.
If there be one thing in these pathless woods,
One gleam of sunshine o'er their flying streams,
'T is that they are not here,—the human vipers,
Warmed in my breast till dawned the hour to sting,
And turn the innocent blood to madness
That had sustained their life, and painted soft
A long and sunny day of true attachment;
Like the Samaritan binding up my veins,
Then stabbing to the heart.
And if I showed aught to the crowd,
They laughed to scorn, or with indifference,

Strangled my offspring. What's the search of fame?
Why should man care for the applause of man,
Knowing the painted pageant that he is?—
Is that the moonlight gleaming on the lid
That shuts the letters? There it falls across
In a long, narrow line of icy light.
That hand, white and sepulchral,—is 't a hand,
Fringed with its shroud, that lifts the dust-strown lid?
“Eliot! scourge not the past; your heart was locked;
You thought friends loved you not. Not so; 't was you
That did not love them, for your heart was chilled
By its inherent coldness. You were vain;
Yourself you loved. You thought your verse was well,—
Now mark this letter; 't is this hand that wrote.

You do not read my letters now; let me:—

‘There is an hour when justice seeks her own;
There is a day when love shall find its love.
Thou shalt not pace the shores of life alone,
See the stars shining from that Heaven above!

‘Eliot! the child of that relentless fate,—
It must relent. There is a better land,
Smile on thy wounds, and be not desolate;
And find an anchor on time's lonely strand.’”

Her voice! The moonlight sinks!
The hand is gone! A cloud's across the sky!
A flash,—the lightning breaks above the cave,
And strikes the vision like the shot that kills.
Her voice again,—an echo to the flash:

“Thou shalt not wait me long; there is a place
To which thy steps are bent, and I go there,—
I wait for thee: not many mornings more
Thy palsied eyes life's blackened sun shall read.”

V. COMO—THE SETTLEMENT.

They know me well,—
My long, lank, ebon locks, and still, set face.
(And think me proud, alas!) Once 't was not so.
Como! they call their place. Strange names they take,
As some might deem, for spots along the prairie.
And yet the lake shows fair, and sweet the view,
Broad in its graceful swells and rolling green,
The deep seclusion of the inland world.
On the bare outskirts of this Kansas life
They prize the leaven in the sea-shore news;

As the neat shop-boy deals his costly silks,
Christened at Paris in fantastic French,—
Soiled with the Hoosier's patois. I must come,
Twice in the long twelve months, to purchase lead
And powder for my guns, and trade away,
Poor spoil, the lovely furs I robbed in sooth
From our poor cousins of the ambushed wood.
And oh! how slow did twenty winters fall,
And twenty summers deck the grove with green,
Since constant to the Precinct, shadow dim
Of man's civilities, I needs resort;
See the log-cabins fading off the streets,
See the old settlers sloping toward the west,
Mark the new stations, view the flying train
Glide o'er the dangerous slough, where erst the crane
Stretched his white neck and turned his wary head,

(A hundred rods,) split on my rifle's flash.
Why, all doth change, all goes, all flits but me.
Their faultless curiosity ne'er cools.
As when the first day I stalked o'er the plain,
The children stared me, and the drowsy curs,
A red-eyed swarm, peevish with idleness.
Snarled in my track, scenting the game I lugged,
To-day the same.
“Who's he?” “Why, do you know,
He lives within the forest, miles afar,
Alone,—a hunter. He can spoil a deer
At eighty rod.” “What! alone there in the bush?
He looks it. What a face, and eyes so deep
Sunk in his head. I should not care to meet
Him in the shadows of his forest lair,
And in a cave!” “It takes all sorts of men
To make a world.”
“For the last time!”

Strangely that thrilled me. 'T was a showman's puff.
At once the presage to myself I linked;
And some one cried amid the gaping crowd:
“He'll never come this road again” (a clown,
The favorite of the circus, for his wit
And shining heel, potential). I once thought
These callow omens mattered most little.
Such as the blood-red circle at the west
I saw last eve, when tardy sunset slid,
That seemed to carve some gory creature there.
Questions are native here. If so, my mind
Is tasked why they ne'er ask me of myself:
They never question me! Has destiny
Scarred on my form, “This being's beyond life,
And all that draws to life, its interest”?
Ask of the desert sands why lone they bask,
Dreary and bleaching in the lidless sun;
Ask of the surf that's combing o'er the beach

When the tall breakers lift their awful forms;
Ask the tornado, as it cuts the trees,
The whirling windrow of the prairie wood,
Like a long swath of hay, to answer questions,—
Or of me, why I live and suffer still,
Who am I, or what?
I would I knew them,
If they need me not. Simply a vagrant
To their laws, I come, at these far intervals,
Tossed like the winter goldfinch on a breeze
In ricochets, against their household gods,
And they are barred from me. I am not bought,
As they are, day by day, nor sold. I learn
The lessons taught in Nature's school, her creeds;
My code is but the stream that shuts the glen;
My market is the herb-field, or the trunk
Where the industrious bee lodges his sweets;

The lights of my saloon are mournful stars.
That shine and say, “We would, we cannot come,
To warm your pale complexion by our fires.”
My living suits not them, nor with me theirs,
Fenced off and barricaded from my race;
And yet would I could please them. I could take
Not merely of their kindness. If my heart
Would open, it might warm as a new sun.
Their help I ne'er shall seek again. Rest there,
Ye implements of hunger, fit for such
As I. Death will come sweet; hunter no more.
I shall not weep to slay the timorous deer;
Nor clutch her turquoise and her sapphires forth,
Nature's wet gems, from her cold emerald streams.
“Eliot,”—I read my name upon a sign,

After I heard the warning,—“for the last time.”
I am not stooped in form, or shuffling yet;
My hair unbleached, my gaze unerring flies.
Is misery, then, a styptic for Time's wounds?
Does sorrow, like Arabian gums, o'erspread,
Infix these poisoned images, and mask
A clear transparency that shows all light,
When there's within a Upas sure to slay?
Perchance there's wisdom in that outward life,
In the red circle on the sunset sky;
And, as I neared my cell, the owlet's cry
Shook through the pines that weep the torrent's roar,—
That weird, unearthly knell. They say, in sooth,
That men have heard that sob brief ere their deaths,—
Yea, as they died!
My life is foul and poor,
And hunger-bitten, where my sorry bones

Peer through the tightened flesh. And yet this frame
Seems strong, and I might keep another century,
If 't were not for the plague-spot at my breast.
I could embrace the sunshine as it falls,
And list the pleasant song of matin birds,
As if the joys of children tugged my heart,—
Children! those human birds, with trills of love.
And when the gems of eve silver the fields
With their soft shower of starlight barely guessed,
And lay aside the loud and dissonant day,
Which like a noisy school-boy whistled long
His brawling catch, the old devotion dawns
In figures born of faith. That I might fly,—
There is no flight for him whose memory
Burns like a meteor through all times and scenes,

And as a nerve of everlasting pain,
Eats on the rusting shroud he hates—himself!
How light I made of omens, called them cheap,
Foolish dreams; in happier days laughed them to scorn.
I once could mock at them. Sorrow doth teach
Such lessons as our gayer hours forget.
I see events prefigured in each mote,—
It floats across my passage, shapes from dark
And awful regions. I am now become
A sailor on the invisible sea of fate,
That the mist covers.
With man my peace is sealed;
Again I shall not visit Como's shore,—
Not in my living form; but they will find
My bones after some days, and put them there,
In sad November, when the heart is slow,
Under the prairie, “Eliot, a stranger,” marked

Upon the place. 'T is right that men outlay
Their compliments on things, to them which are
No more than the thin purple grass that flaunts,
Across the graveyard's swale; for 't is so human!
It floats upon the current of my thought,
When in such places, one of Eliza's rhymes:
“Fear not the end, the quickening hour draws near;
Rise upward, hope, dispel this earthly fear;
The shepherd waits his flock to gather in;
A truce to worldliness, good-bye to sin.”—
Little of me could find the villagers,
As mutely on their narrow gaze I dawned,
Denizen of the forest; lean my scrip,
Nothing my business to the eager race.
I trafficked with them, followed up the trail
Across the rolling prairie, struck the ridge,

Took the Oak-barrens, and beneath the woods
Sank, with the deer I hunted. 'T is near night;
The journey's long; the day hangs heavy on me;
My toil is mostly o'er. Far to the north,
Vibrate the waving lights, that o'er their ice
Alarm the Eskimo, and furnish forth
Their freezing calendars. To me they look
Repugnant; there's no warmth, no heart to them,—
Brilliant and bending as the polished friends,
Who most me wounded. Hark! the owl's low sobs
Quiver from out the grove! What world lies yon,
To whose depths I pass? Do spirits look therefrom
On such as I, and touch their fading hours
With the brief, borrowed moonlight of the grave?

VI. LISA.

Child of some happier fate, for love's lost hours!
Treasure of household good, of golden days!
The sunshine of all hearts! Torn on the thorns
Wherewith my path was strewn, she sank to death!
Lisa! upon thy grave some violet's breath
Shall softly sigh; and there be set a crown,
As a perpetual token of thy grace,
Rustling upon the banners of our life,
From the gross weight of custom shaken forth.
You see her portrait and her letters there.
I never dare to take them in my hand,
Till now my time's most spent; and I should look

Through the blank, palsied vacuum of the past,
And then be crushed to silence, by the will
Of ruthless fate.
And 't is the same sweet face?
With half a touch of sadness at the mouth
Gathered, as if the angel smiling there
Might say: “Children of time, bard is our lot;
Yet am I yours. I will not leave you lonely.
But I will come to you, and smile on you.
For I'm a soul,—the cause of pleasure still!
With my devotions, smiles and tears are blent.
Both joys and sorrows keen kindle my lovers.
With me shall sing the unmelodious air,
Sparkle with foam the cold and boundless sea,
And swiftly-fleeting clouds arrest their march,
Till the soft raliance of my pulses thrill

Their mutely-folded sunshine. I must cull
The odor of the rose, bloom of the peach,
And wave across the forehead in a tress.
I will claim beauty! Take, oh, take, the rest,
You clumsy man!—the war, the weariness.
If you but look at me, in that one look,—
A glance, a touch, one pressure of my hand,—
Shall all your manhood fall within myself,
Yet not to dissonance. And wonder on!
For to myself I am a mystery still.
That I attract is true,—the secret's kept.
You come to kneel,—you worship. Love has lent
Me to the office. I could not refuse;
Though, sometimes, I have thought, ‘If I had scope
For a few selfish hours, with Love's consent!’
Why is a woman's dawn thus toned in spells
Of music that dissolve, in age, to noise?
Beauty is youth! For youth forgets herself!”

She looks as if she spoke. I ne'er forget
When her pale portrait left the artist's hand.
And oft I saw that joyous look of life
Upon her face at the faint glow of twilight.
When the dim wood fire lit her pure features,
As in a fairy vision, she would smile.
The past and future were one happy dream;
The present like the laughter of a child.
Eliza! 't is the hour!
And I must ope the casket ere I sleep!
I may unloose the thread. This lock of hair,
Dabbled in gore, Gordon's,—I know the stain,—
I saw you cut it from his head, the morn,
In the cold sunshine of December's scorn.
He did not move, nor lift those loving eyes!
Why do I prate of this? What's here? A flower!
A withered rose,—a soft, pale rose, your hands

Had placed upon his breast! Be merciful!
That was a sad revenge I took on you!
I loved but thee! Ever within my heart
The murmur ran: Lisa, my darling child!
The idol of my heart! my heart of hearts!
No drop of blood steals ever through my veins
That does not throb with thine! No nerve obeys
A sweet emotion, save of thee it comes.
I saw Time's gorgeous pageant drape the west,
When the low summer sunshine bent the lakes
To fiery gold, and thought, “Were Lisa here!”
Night crystalled on her zenith! Stars blazed high!
Myriads of orbs rolling their myriad rounds!
I said: “Does Lisa see them?” Was it song,
Picture or statue, grove or shrine, one hope

Beat its soft love-march in my faithful breast.
Did with me Lisa look, that day was bliss.
I dare no more! What words are these? What sounds?
'T is nigh the midnight hour! This withered scroll,
My hand and spots upon it, Gordon's name,—
Yes! yes! the challenge! I recall it now!
And here is hers to him and hers to me,
That morning, both one date. And then, how sweet
And thoughtful of her kind, considerate heart:
“Gordon, our life is brief! We are to prove
A blessing or an evil to our friends.
God, in his mercy, gently lays upon
Our path, the opportunity to good.
O Gordon, take it up! Oh, clasp the right!
Think of my heart, and pardon. Be my friend.

I know the lawless blood, the frontier feud,—
But there's a better way. 'T is Love's pure law,—
Never can bloodshed right a human wrong.”
And but a line—
The least faint line, the smallest hair—divides
A life of anguish from a life of joy.
And there's no power to keep a human soul
From passing it.—The wolves across the slough!
I fear their thrilling yell. It chills my veins,
And forces out a gasp. Why do they howl?
An echo to my heart, poor hungry knaves!
I humor the least sound. 'T is in myself
The answers must be given. If heard not there,
No gold can taste, no justice purchase them.

There is a star, by which we pledged our faith;
I see it shining through yon glittering sky.
That lamp of promise guides my tearful heart
To calmer regions of unvanquished bliss.
It falls; the cloud is rife. This further page:
“Never despair! for laboring storm-clouds fly,
Softly the west is bathed in Heaven's pure light,
There is a place, beyond Time's sullen sky,
With stars of mercy filled, and ever bright.
Thou gentle heart! Surely thy love was born
To meet return, and find its equal sphere.
The ship glides into port, the streamers torn;
And yet her voyage made good, her record clear,

So thine! The mist is fading off the hills;
Sunshine and verdure light the wintry tree,
Love! in my heart confide thy store of ills;
My faith shall firmly lift thy destiny!”

I read no more!
I must abroad, and soothe me with the air!
The mist is dallying o'er the cataract's tomb;
This hour tastes chill. There is a world within
That outward show the vulgar miscall life.
Why should we then, year after year, submit
To Time's ingratitude? One touch, and all
Was done and ended. We must go one day.
What maddening thoughts! Lisa! I see thy star!
Fondly it climbs that sky's lone zenith far?
The watery clouds tend its pale, soothing light!
Lisa! my heart! Thou idol of my love!

If in the planet's soul thine own is set,
If 't is thy figure I see floating there,
Upon a wretched outlaw in these woods,
Look down in mercy from thy spheral throne.
Oh, to be leagued with me, a vagrant's bride!
Cast out, spurned off, detested by his kin;
His children worse than dead, his heart a den
Wherein the furies writhe! Where am I strayed?
So near the edge of the black precipice,—
The slippery rock, the dread, uncertain height.
And there, sleeping in peace, the silvery gulf
Whereto the whirlpool reels, maddened at the rush.
Away! away! It tempts me to its plunge! Away!

VII. LIGHT AND SHADOW.

A load of weariness!
And shall I drag it hence? I loathe the thought.
Must I destroy a life in order to save mine?
I'm almost at the cave (not home) at last.
There breathes no home to me o'er life's lone wave.
The door half open; so there's some within.
And she comes forth,—a female, verily.
Now I can scan her,—wondrously antique,
Stooping and scant of weight, and with a staff
Attuning her frail postures. I'll touch her quietly,
And then conduct her in the den again.
Her voice:

“I am your debtor. 'T is your home;
I tried your deerskin couch. Surely, I found
Sweet visions there of sleep. Early the morn
I loitered out, plucking strong roots and herbs
Spiced for decoction and for sovereign cures.—
Things that amuse these woods, and white-oak bark,—
That, is a powerful remedy. I tottered on,
Till overhead the vagrant, laughing sun
Had spilled his aureate license o'er the vault,
(In age the sun-god smites my wrinkled brow,)
And far I lingered still. I dearly love
The woods, and sometimes tell them at the Farm
That I could nothing better ask of life,
Than, as a wanderer, down the woods to roam.
The spicy odors would appease my sense,

And by their keen promotion fill my thoughts
With a more sinewy aspect. Light my feet
Then danced along the bed of time-strewn leaves,
The forest loom twines in perennial carpet.
I might seem young those days. The crafty air
Would hazard with my bones, and risk his suit
On the persuasion of my new-laid youth.
Friend, I surmise that here you dwell too blest,
Glad 'mid the soft seclusion of the trees.
And you maintain traditional respect,
Coined for high places and for whirling streams,—
The death-shroud of the rainbow, where he paints
Devices o'er his tombstone manifold.
At early sunrise you must love to kneel
And lift the prayer: ‘Oh, God of love! of life!’
But what a fount of loveliness is this,

Each morn surrendered to uncounted bliss;
Record of perfect tones that thrill the air
With their warm, flashing cymbal-dance of hope.
Chasten this heart. I kneel. Take, take my life,
And bathe it in thy peace, the silent sun
So softly pours across you mountain's breast,
And, like a lawn of pure diaphanous good,
Embalm it with thy mercy!

“A hermit here,
Or fasting penitent, might fitly dwell,
And greet the heavenly carols in the sigh
Of the soft-falling echo from the brook,
That murmurs moisture to the grateful trees.
Our thoughts are sweet in solitude,
And most at eve. There is a twilight faith
Would steal the foulest wrong, and bear it cleansed
Into the Invisible Presence; stanch the curse,

And with the floating glow that stills the west
In its euphonious cradle of the spheres,
Touched in the love of all things, purge the soul
Of every dark emotion. Life brings care.
We love, we are deceived,—most in ourselves.
Our plans deceive us,—they were too ill laid.
The dread omniscient wand that opes the tomb,
Touches her forehead, and the loved one falls.
(Heaven was not heaven before.) I think that pain
Bears, like a vase of beauty carved with skill
In high-born figures of Palladian art,
A homely storax that embalms our stars.
Come weal or woe, come fame or ignominy,
Weaving our colors, dark or bright the thread,
There is a base within us, something given,

More than all things without, may sear or stain.
If this be not called Heaven, I deem it called
By its inferior title, as it rates
The low inhabitant of sin and shame,
With true Olympian wealth, banishes care,
Makes desolation friendly, knits the skein
Of our all-ravelled hangings, smooth and soft,—
I must away! I scent the evening air!”
What, gone?
Such words of life fled off her liquid tongue,—
I could nor speak nor think. I'll note her trace.
'T was there she meant to go. I see her not.
No one! I heard a voice! What's here? this veil,
She left a veil upon the stones, of gauze,
And now it floats, and on the hem letters:
“Fly, youth, fly!” Now the firelight touches it,—

It brightens fast. A speechless form arises,—
My mother! Then 't was she who raised my dream.
Mother, long lost, forgive thy erring son!
If in that awful realm the spirit hold
Communion with the past, or mortal thought,
Feel for thy son, thy wretched, homeless son,
Doomed to unsated penance for his sins.
Feel with the mercy which thou hadst on earth
For all his failings! Raise him to thyself!
She fades, the spirit's risen, the veil is air,
“Fly, youth, fly!” The same as Meister's warning.
It is too late for flight; the wind is loud,
I hear the forest creaking in its shroud.
The shadow of the torrent drowns the glen!
And, then, that fisherman?
Could he have been a spy shot from the town

To watch my movements? For he asked me thrice
As to my privilege in the idle woods,
And how I dragged the leaden hours along.
He spake of Nature,—said there was to him,
Bating humanity, a hollow there.
I felt his thought, I marvel at his words,—
The same old things I said this many a year.
I judge he was the shadow of myself,
Fretted to space on weary monologue.
I kept his words: “Here, in this sylvan shade,
Alone, always alone, dim as my thoughts,—
Wondering at that which chiefly went before,
Wondering at that which mostly is to come,—
I find myself attempting at the bud
The inner life of Nature,—what men call
By that insidious title. Without man,
Or human life to cheer me in the dark,

That thing called Nature (if it be a thing)
Shrinks into paint. All is so shallow there,
These bankrupt days of time, loose as a fly;
Rather than beg my dole from Nature's dish,
Procrastinated on her solitudes,
Pray let me die a thousand deaths of pain.
How credulous was my youth, when feeling danced
Elastic in my veins, and I prepared
To hymn the deep oblivion of the groves,
Of Nature,—whate'er its name,—the somewhat there,
The promise and design I cannot steal.
Struck in confusion from the light of sense,
I call myself a man, and am the puppet
Of a cheating show.”
My brain is turning!
My reason lowers! That spectre of the stream,
And those poor children's voices that I hear,

And that pale girl, with her soft, flossy hair,
A soft, pink blush across her waxen cheeks,
Who spoke for them: “Father! We love you still!
Oh! do not curse us, your poor children still,
Though in the forest, in an outlaw's cave,
You dimly dwell, and nevermore our eyes
Shall see your mournful form, drenched in your tears,
And nevermore our tender hands shall part
Your griefs away, and bring your joys to view.
Father! though we are parted for this life,
And only in the grave can ever meet,
We love you still! Our hearts are quite the same,
Still yours, and all that makes our hearts is yours.
And she, our mother, resolute and pure,
Ne'er ceased to cherish you, nor ceased to love.

And we shall come to you once more in life,
Once ere you go from hence. Once more to hear
Our childish voices, as you used before
These days of parting fell upon our love.”
Was that a song?
Or the light, infant lisping of the year,
Rocked in the leafy garniture of spring?
There seems a searching inquest at the heart
Of this sad panorama. At the door
He lingers still, that fisherman I mean.
He speaks again: “Come! Come and fly with me!
This mausoleum of the mind is death.
Come! let us fly and touch the dreams of France,
Where gay Garonne pours forth her lively dance,
And dare the meadows that destroy old Rome,
Admire the Stone-pines leaning o'er her hills;

And bright Cycladean suns, all wine and figs,
Shall steep our noontide fancies for their hour.
Such closeness in this cave I cannot breathe,—
All spectres haunting here, and this most dull,
And gray predicament of thought.” Then ceased.
I voyaged once,—he must have tracked my road.
I read or dreamed that sometimes ere men die,
There comes a figure like themselves, and blabs
Of things they did, or suffered, in their lives,—
To that intent the shadow speaks. That sigh,—
The owl again is humming from his tower,
Ancient and dark upon the tall pine's dome,

His gossip since some months; and this last sprite;
And that cold Hecuba who twitched the herb;
There are strange things in life. I never guessed
I should become the property of ghosts,
Chime with the scanty brethren of the tomb,
And take moralities from their weak eyes.
How loud the rapid roars; the wind has veered,
Raised off the generous sea; the salt-fed breeze
Loans its luxuriance to our bankrupt main.
I see the bay softly with islands rimmed,
The dark old fort, the wave with vessels white;
That wind is but the shadow of my thoughts!

VIII. THE TESTAMENT.

“O'er hill, o'er dale; the careless morning's sun
Binds up the wounds of night and makes all sweet.
New flowers flow forth and wander o'er the ground,
Like paradise encumbered by its wealth,
As the ancestral twain delighted roamed.”

A boy's fond verses, when my days were rich
In happiness. Careless I threw away
A long life's joy, in one emotion blest,
Not reckoning on the future creeping in,
Stooped and forlorn, a beggar with his scrip.
And later thus: “In youth, we feel so rich,

We draw uncounted sums, we fling about
The revenues of a king, we live and spend
As if unfathomable mines of ore
Gleamed on our bidding. Fame steps smiling in,
Her bonnet on her head, her silken scarfs,
Her laces point device! Sweet fame, good fame!
We do not feel the goblin in the shade,
The pale indifference that leers at hope.
Youth is the glass of fortune, blithe in form.
I follow where you lead, the bridge I cross
That leads to Hela's depths, where Baldred went;
And still hope cheats. Alas! our feet too slow
Go trailing helpless as the future flies.
Success so hovers past the shores of life,
Half seems to light, half touches the cold wave;
We view his bright reflections in the ooze,
Where the slow stream crawls sadly through her weeds,

With newts and sodden tortoises of old,
Or stagnant mosses. The small light that shot
Across our painted youth, and showed her curls,
Was a faint, flickering moonbeam, was the end.
And then comes moldering age, prudent and lame,
A skeptic manifold.” And was it I
Who shaped this hollow revery?
Could this be mine?
The page is with her letters, in my hand.
Such days were joy, when I had thoughts like those,
When I had thoughts at all; for now I shrink,
And strive to dam the flow of sentiment,
And leave the turbid pool to clear itself.
There is a grave that opens while we live,
There is a life that ends ere we are dead.
I'm passing hence; I shall not live the week.
But on this tattered scroll I would express,

Like the brave surgeon who at life's last beat
Held at his pulse his hand, and dying said:
“It fails, it ceases,” then indeed he died.—

Another verse: “Spirit of the wood,
Who build your bowers amid the forests tall,
And paint the banks of water-courses green
With delicate ferns, or feathery grass, that sways
Like cobwebs at the sighing of the stream,
And the high clouds that gaze below, at peace,
Far by ethereal culture raised from care!”

In those my early days, amid the trees,
I thought to raise an altar to the Muse,
And with these lines to consecrate its front,—
The Muse that haunts these bowers and bends their lives.

Time rubs away the outward, leaves within,
Merely the cerements that once owned life.
And, when my numbers failed me, I essayed
To dwell as might some anchorite austere;
O'er the cold stones to drag the nights with prayer,
And mortifying arts the convent knew.
Questions I may not answer, may not ask
In this vain world, track my slow flight to death.
I can but make my will,—what things to leave,
And to whom, to be left. Who are my heirs?
Beating upon the sphere no human heart
Claims the least hope in mine; all stone alike,
Corroded by their unbelief in me.
I see them joyous o'er their cottage fire,
Encased in peace, fretted in comfort's robes;

Bright shines the ruby blaze upon the group,—
Domestic, cheerful, see the children go,
Playing their evening games, the dance, the jest,—
Who spoke for me, their father, cast away,
A fettered outlaw, to the forest drear.
To them shall aught be left? To them my couch,
Yon pile of deerskins that have warmed my limbs,
In the extremity that winter dares;
And my poor books, sallow with damp and years.
What! could they read the poets, with such hearts,
(Pimping with hollow lies for selfish greed,)
Shakspere and Spenser. And my gun, whose sight,
Baffled by naught, would be a hunter's pride.
Give these,—to hearts like theirs?
I wake once more.
Since those last words a dizziness came up

And took possession of my soul. I went
From out this region of old woods, afar;
I fled this dreary day, this drearier night;
Thought for to-morrow's food, the hunter's watch,
The lurking foe, the chill mistrust of time,—
All these were buried in that swooning fear,
That came upon me as a sudden night
Falls on the face of Nature, when the sun
By interruption dies. I wake so long
I dreamed I ne'er should sleep.
Farewell! thou world!
Unpaid I owe thee naught,—no gratefulness,
No debts of love, no balance of delight.
Thou didst not smile on me, nor crook thy brows
To the contemptuous mockery which poor fools
Adore, and great men name Success! not mine
The Halls of Fame, nor sons nor maids, who prize

Their father's life. Only within the grave
One faithful thing, Eliza's sunny heart.
Wealth never fawned on me, and men forbore
To press their knees to flatness before him,
Who could not coin such suppliance. Not a friend,
I ever had upon the fields of time,
Who was not false to me, but him I killed.
And oh! was not that fearful act from God?
Could I, this crouching shadow, in the dust,
With the chill avalanche of fate to bear,
Of my own purpose, shatter Gordon's form?
It might have been. I should have bent
Had I been different; but in this life
Men take upon the wild and boundless pulse
That floats our frontier world, there is a calm,
And it will bear through all things, till it bends,

And then the blow; the shot, fierce as remorse,
Flashed in a second to infinity.
I shall not see this night. The dying eve
Will take me to itself and be my shroud;
And there upon my skins I will compose
My form as if for slumber, to be found
By whom I know not,—hunters in a storm,
Or some foot-weary traveller in the bush,
Who not infrequent tempt the iron door.
All is in order, all that Lisa had,
All that she ever gave me. Be it so;
I could not die should I destroy her gifts.
What is repentance? Can it outwear sin?
Vengeance is Thine, and on the worms of earth
It blighting falls, and blinding all things else.
We are made by Thee, predestined from the womb;
Nor shrine of peaceful monk, nor convent-bell
Tolled up the Alpine passes of the soul,

To lead the blinded traveller through the snows,
Can keep one sob of anguish from his heart
Who's doomed to suffering! Days shall go and come,
And seasons fade and fall, and life renew
More intermittently its palsied beats;
Still woe survives to wring the dying thought,
And on the Cross of Doom the sufferer nail!

The End.