The poetical works of John Townsend Trowbridge

We are two travellers, Roger and I.
Roger 's my dog.—Come here, you scamp!
Jump for the gentlemen,—mind your eye!
Over the table,—look out for the lamp!—
The rogue is growing a little old;
Five years we 've tramped through wind and weather,
And slept out-doors when nights were cold,
And eaten and drank—and starved—together.

We 've learned what comfort is, I tell you!
A bed on the floor, a bit of rosin,
A fire to thaw our thumbs (poor fellow!
The paw he holds up there 's been frozen),
Plenty of catgut for my fiddle
(This out-door business is bad for strings),
Then a few nice buckwheats hot from the griddle,
And Roger and I set up for kings!

No, thank ye, Sir,—I never drink;
Roger and I are exceedingly moral,—
Are n't we, Roger?—See him wink!—
Well, something hot, then,—we won't quarrel.
He 's thirsty, too,—see him nod his head?
What a pity, Sir, that dogs can't talk!
He understands every word that 's said,—
And he knows good milk from water-and-chalk.

The truth is, Sir, now I reflect,
I 've been so sadly given to grog,
I wonder I 've not lost the respect
(Here 's to you, Sir!) even of my dog.

But he sticks by, through thick and thin;
And this old coat, with its empty pockets,
And rags that smell of tobacco and gin,
He'll follow while he has eyes in his sockets.

There is n't another creature living
Would do it, and prove, through every disaster,
So fond, so faithful, and so forgiving,
To such a miserable, thankless master!
No, Sir!—see him wag his tail and grin!
By George! it makes my old eyes water!
That is, there 's something in this gin
That chokes a fellow. But no matter!

We'll have some music, if you 're willing,
And Roger here (what a plague a cough is, Sir!)
Shall march a little—Start, you villain!
Paws up! Eyes front! Salute your officer!
'Bout face! Attention! Take your rifle!
(Some dogs have arms, you see!) Now hold your
Cap while the gentlemen give a trifle,
To aid a poor old patriot soldier!

March! Halt! Now show how the rebel shakes
When he stands up to hear his sentence.
Now tell us how many drams it takes
To honor a jolly new acquaintance.
Five yelps,—that 's five; he 's mighty knowing!
The night 's before us, fill the glasses!—
Quick, Sir! I'm ill,—my brain is going!—
Some brandy,—thank you,—there!—it passes!

Why not reform? That's easily said;
But I 've gone through such wretched treatment,
Sometimes forgetting the taste of bread,
And scarce remembering what meat meant,
That my poor stomach 's past reform;
And there are times when, mad with thinking,
I 'd sell out heaven for something warm
To prop a horrible inward sinking.

Is there a way to forget to think?
At your age, Sir, home, fortune, friends,
A dear girl's love,—but I took to drink;—
The same old story; you know how it ends.
If you could have seen these classic features,—
You need n't laugh, Sir; they were not then
Such a burning libel on God's creatures:
I was one of your handsome men!

If you had seen HER, so fair and young,
Whose head was happy on this breast!
If you could have heard the songs I sung
When the wine went round, you would n't have guessed
That ever I, Sir, should be straying
From door to door, with fiddle and dog,
Ragged and penniless, and playing
To you to-night for a glass of grog!

She 's married since,—a parson's wife:
'T was better for her that we should part,—
Better the soberest, prosiest life
Than a blasted home and a broken heart.
I have seen her? Once: I was weak and spent
On the dusty road: a carriage stopped:
But little she dreamed, as on she went,
Who kissed the coin that her fingers dropped!

You 've set me talking, Sir; I'm sorry;
It makes me wild to think of the change!
What do you care for a beggar's story?
Is it amusing? you find it strange?
I had a mother so proud of me!
'T was well she died before—Do you know
If the happy spirits in heaven can see
The ruin and wretchedness here below?

Another glass, and strong, to deaden
This pain; then Roger and I will start.
I wonder, has he such a lumpish, leaden,
Aching thing in place of a heart?

He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if he could,
No doubt, remembering things that were,—
A virtuous kennel, with plenty of food,
And himself a sober, respectable cur.

I'm better now; that glass was warming.—
You rascal! limber your lazy feet!
We must be fiddling and performing
For supper and bed, or starve in the street.—
Not a very gay life to lead, you think?
But soon we shall go where lodgings are free,
And the sleepers need neither victuals nor drink;—
The sooner, the better for Roger and me!

THE FROZEN HARBOR

When Winter encamps on our borders,
And dips his white beard in the rills,
And lays his broad shield over highway and field,
And pitches his tents on the hills,—
In the wan light I wake, and see on the lake,
Like a glove by the night-winds blown,
With fingers that crook up creek and brook,
His shining gauntlet thrown.

Then over the lonely harbor,
In the quiet and deadly cold
Of a single night, when only the bright,
Cold constellations behold,
Without trestle or beam, without mortise or seam,
Is swiftly and silently spread
A bridge as of steel, which a Titan's heel
In the early light might tread.

Where Morning over the waters
Her net of splendor spun,
Till the web, all a-twinkle with ripple and wrinkle,
Hung shimmering in the sun,—

Where the liquid lip at the breast of the ship
Whispered and laughed and kissed,
And the long, dark streamer of smoke from the steamer
Trailed off in the rose-tinted mist,—

Now all is gray desolation,
As up from the hoary coast,
Over snow-fields and islands her white arms in silence
Outspreading like a ghost,
Her feet in shroud, her forehead in cloud,
Pale walks the sheeted Dawn:
The sea's blue rim lies shorn and dim,
In the purple East withdrawn.

Where floated the fleets of traffic,
With proud breasts cleaving the tide,—
Like emmet or bug with its burden, the tug
Hither and thither plied,—
Where the quick paddles flashed, where the dropped anchor plashed,
And rattled the running chain,
Where the merchantman swung in the current, where sung
The sailors their wild refrain;—

Where, aloft in the sunlit cordage,
I watched the climbing tar,
With his shadow beside on the sail white and wide,
Climbing a shadow spar;
While, weaving the union of cities,
With hoar wakes belting the blue,
From slip to slip, past schooner and ship,
The ferry's shuttles flew;—

Now the hulls at their anchors are frozen,
From rudder to sloping chain:
Rock-like they rise: the low sloop lies
An oasis in the plain;
Loosed from its stall, on the yielding wall
The ferry-boat paws and rears;
Citizens pass on a pavement of glass,
And climb the frosted piers.

With the ebb and the flow, strange moanings
Come up from the burdened bay:
As a camel that kneels for his burden, reels,
And cannot bear it away,
The mighty load is slowly
Upheaved with struggle and pain
From centre to side, then the groaning tide
Sinks heavily down again.

Flown are the flocks of commerce,
Like wild swans hurrying south;
The coaster, belated, is frozen, full-freighted,
Within the harbor's mouth;
The brigantine, homeward bringing
Sweet spices from afar,
All night must wait with its fragrant freight
Below the lighthouse star.

Where, in the November gloaming,
To the ribs of the skeleton bark
That stranded lay in the bend of the bay,
Motionless, low, and dark,
Came ever three shags, like three lone hags,
And sat o'er the desolate water,
Each nursing apart her shrivelled heart,
With her mantle wrapped about her,—

Now over the ancient timbers
Is built a magic deck;
Children run out with laughter and shout
And dance around the wreck;
The fisherman near his long eel-spear
Thrusts in through the ice, or stands
With fingers on lips, and now and then whips
His sides with mittened hands.

Far out from the wharves I wander,
By the ships in their frozen chains,
To the buoy below in its cap of snow,
While the wintry daylight wanes;

And I think of the hopes belated,
Like fleets in their leaguer of ice,
Of lives that wait for Love's sweet freight
And the spices of Paradise!—

I linger and muse till, at twilight,
The town-roofs, towering high,
Uprear in the dimness their tall, dark chimneys,
Indenting the sunset sky,
And the pendent spear on the icicled pier
Signals my homeward way,
As it gleams through the dusk like a walrus's tusk
On the floes of a polar bay.

OUR LADY

Our lady lives on the hillside here,
Amid shady avenues, terraced lawns,
And fountains that leap like snow-white deer,
With flashing antlers, and silver fawns;
And the twinkling wheels of the rich and great
Hum in and out of the high-arched gate;
And willing worshippers throng and wait,
Where she wearily sits and yawns.

I remember her pretty and poor,—
Now she has servants, jewels, and land:
She gave her heart to a poet-wooer,—
To a wealthy suitor she bartered her hand.
A very desirable mate to choose,—
Believing in viands, in good port-juice,
In solid comfort and solid use,—
Things simple to understand.

She loves poetry, music, and art,—
He dines, and races, and smokes, and shoots;
She walks in an ideal realm apart,—
He treads firm ground, in his prosperous boots:

A wise design; for you see, 't is clear,
Their paths do not lie so unsuitably near
As that ever either should interfere
With the other's chosen pursuits.

By night, as you roam through the rich saloons,
When music's purple and crimson tones
Float, in invisibly fine festoons,
Over the hum of these human drones,
You are ready to swear that no happier pair
Have lived than your latter-day Adam there,
And our sweet, pale Eve, of the dark-furrowed hair,
Thick sown with glittering stones.

But I see, in the midst of the music and talk,
A shape steal forth from the glowing room,
And pass, by a lonely cypress walk,
Far down through the ghostly midnight gloom,
Sighing and sorrowful, wringing its hands,
And bruising its feet on the pointed sands,
Till, white, despairing, and dumb it stands,
In the shadowy damp of a tomb.

The husband sprawls in his easy-chair,
And smirks, and smacks, and tells his jest,
And strokes his chin with a satisfied air,
And hooks his thumbs in his filagreed vest;
And the laugh rings round, and still she seems
To sit smiling there, and nobody deems
That her soul has gone down to that region of dreams,
A weary, disconsolate guest.

Dim ghosts of happiness haunt the grot,
Phantoms of buried hopes untold,
And ashen memories strew the spot
Where her young heart's love lies coffined and cold.
With her burden of sin she kneels within,
And kisses, and presses, with fingers thin,
Brow, mouth, and bosom, and beautiful chin
Of the dead that grows not old.

He is ever there, with his dark wavy hair,
Unchanged through years of anguish and tears;
His hands are pressed on his passionate breast,
His eyes still plead with foreboding and fears.
O, she dwells not at all in that stately hall!
But, day and night, by the cypresses tall,
She opens the coffin, uplifts the pall,
And the living dead appears!

THE MILL-POND

The linden, maple, and birch-tree bless,
With cooling shades, the banks I press
In the midsummer sultriness;
And under the thickest shade of all
Singeth a musical waterfall.

The burnished breast of a silver pond
In the sunlight lieth beyond,—
Clear, and calm, and still as death,
Save where the south-wind's blurring breath,
Like an angel's pinion, fluttereth.

The south-wind moveth, but maketh no noise,
Nor ever disturbeth the delicate poise
Of the little fishing floats the boys
Sit idly watching on log and ledge:
It toucheth but softly the languid sedge,
Drooping all day by the water's edge.

In the thickets shady and cool
The white sheep tear their tender wool;
Shaking and clashing the heavy boughs,
The limber colts and the sober cows
Down from the woody hillside come,
To stand in the shallows, and hark to the hum
Of the waterfall beating its airy drum.

Deep in the shadowy dell at noon
I lie, and list to the drowsy tune,

Fanned by the sweet south-wind;
And I think how like to the poet's mind
Are the skyey depths of the silver pond,
That in the sunlight lieth beyond
These lindens tall, and the slimy wall
Over which poureth the waterfall.

When the angry March winds blow,
And rains descend, and freshets flow
In torrent and rill from mountain and hill,
And the ponderous wheels of the sunken mill
Go round and round, with a sullen sound,
Rumbling, mumbling, half under ground,—
Hoarsely the waterfall singeth all day,
And the waters are streaked with marl and clay.

But when these shaded banks I press,
In the midsummer sultriness,
Standeth all still the mumbling mill;
The quiet pond doth seem to thrill
With joys which all its windings fill;
And in its depths the eye may view
A world of soft and dreamy hue,—
Banks, and trees, and a sky of blue.

Willow and sedge, by the water's edge,
And children fishing from log and ledge;
Flags and cresses and wild swamp grasses,
And every butterfly that passes,
The lakelet's placid bosom glasses.

THE RESTORED PICTURE

In later years, veiling its unblest face
In a most loathsome place,
The cheap adornment of a house of shame,
It hung, till, gnawed away
By teeth of slow decay,
It fell, and parted from its mouldering frame.

The rotted canvas, faintly smiling still,
From worldly puff and frill,
Its ghastly smile of coquetry and pride,
Crumpling its faded charms
And yellow jewelled arms,
Mere rubbish now, was rudely cast aside.

The shadow of a Genius crossed the gate:
He, skilled to re-create
In old and ruined paintings their lost soul
And beauty,—one who knew
The Master's touch by true,
Swift instinct, as the needle knows the pole,—

Looked on it, and straightway his searching eyes
Saw, through its coarse disguise
Of vulgar paint and grime and varnish stain,
The Art that slept beneath,—
A chrysalis in its sheath,
That waited to be waked to life again.

Upon enduring canvas to renew
Each wondrous trait and hue,—
This is the miracle, his chosen task!
He bears it to his house,
And there from lips and brows
With loving touch removes their alien mask.

For so on its perfection time had laid
An early mellowing shade;
Then hands unskilled, each seeking to impart
Fresh tints to form and face,
With some more modern grace,
Had buried quite the mighty Master's Art.

First, razed from the divine original,
Brow, cheek, and lid, went all
That outer shape of worldliness; when, lo!
Beneath the varnished crust
Of long imbedded dust
A fairer face appears, emerging slow,—

The features of a simple shepherdess!
Pure eyes, and golden tress,
And, lastly, crook in hand. But deeper still
The Master's work lies hid;
And still through lip and lid
Works the Restorer with unsparing skill.

Behold at length, in tender light revealed,
The soul so long concealed!
All heavenly faint at first, then softly bright,
As smiles the young-eyed Dawn
When darkness is withdrawn,
A shining angel breaks upon the sight!

Restored, perfected, after the divine
Imperishable design,
Lo now! that once despised and outcast thing
Holds its true place among
The fairest pictures hung
In the high palace of our Lord the King!

THE PEWEE

The listening Dryads hushed the woods;
The boughs were thick, and thin and few
The golden ribbons fluttering through;
Their sun-embroidered, leafy hoods
The lindens lifted to the blue:
Only a little forest-brook
The farthest hem of silence shook:
When in the hollow shades I heard,—
Was it a spirit, or a bird?
Or, strayed from Eden, desolate,
Some Peri calling to her mate,
Whom nevermore her mate would cheer?
“Pe-ri! pe-ri! peer!”

Through rocky clefts the brooklet fell
With plashy pour, that scarce was sound,

But only quiet less profound,
A stillness fresh and audible:
A yellow leaflet to the ground
Whirled noiselessly: with wing of gloss
A hovering sunbeam brushed the moss,
And, wavering brightly over it,
Sat like a butterfly alit:
The owlet in his open door
Stared roundly: while the breezes bore
The plaint to far-off places drear,—
“Pe-ree! pe-ree! peer!”

To trace it in its green retreat
I sought among the boughs in vain;
And followed still the wandering strain,
So melancholy and so sweet
The dim-eyed violets yearned with pain.
'T was now a sorrow in the air,
Some nymph's immortalized despair
Haunting the woods and waterfalls;
And now, at long, sad intervals,
Sitting unseen in dusky shade,
His plaintive pipe some fairy played,
With long-drawn cadence thin and clear,—
“Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!”

Long-drawn and clear its closes were,—
As if the hand of Music through
The sombre robe of Silence drew
A thread of golden gossamer:
So pure a flute the fairy blew.
Like beggared princes of the wood,
In silver rags the birches stood;
The hemlocks, lordly counsellors,
Were dumb; the sturdy servitors,
In beechen jackets patched and gray,
Seemed waiting spellbound all the day
That low, entrancing note to hear,—
“Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!”

I quit the search, and sat me down
Beside the brook, irresolute,
And watched a little bird in suit
Of sober olive, soft and brown,
Perched in the maple-branches, mute:
With greenish gold its vest was fringed,
Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged,
With ivory pale its wings were barred,
And its dark eyes were tender-starred.
“Dear bird,” I said, “what is thy name?”
And thrice the mournful answer came,
So faint and far, and yet so near,—
“Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!”

For so I found my forest bird,—
The pewee of the loneliest woods,
Sole singer in these solitudes,
Which never robin's whistle stirred,
Where never bluebird's plume intrudes.
Quick darting through the dewy morn,
The redstart trilled his twittering horn,
And vanished in thick boughs: at even,
Like liquid pearls fresh showered from heaven,
The high notes of the lone wood-thrush
Fall on the forest's holy hush:
But thou all day complainest here,—
“Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!”

Hast thou, too, in thy little breast,
Strange longings for a happier lot,—
For love, for life, thou know'st not what,—
A yearning, and a vague unrest,
For something still which thou hast not?—
Thou soul of some benighted child
That perished, crying in the wild!
Or lost, forlorn, and wandering maid,
By love allured, by love betrayed,
Whose spirit with her latest sigh
Arose, a little wingéd cry,
Above her chill and mossy bier!
“Dear me! dear me! dear!”

Ah, no such piercing sorrow mars
The pewee's life of cheerful ease!
He sings, or leaves his song to seize
An insect sporting in the bars
Of mild bright light that gild the trees.
A very poet he! For him
All pleasant places still and dim:
His heart, a spark of heavenly fire,
Burns with undying, sweet desire:
And so he sings; and so his song,
Though heard not by the hurrying throng,
Is solace to the pensive ear:
“Pewee! pewee! peer!”

MIDSUMMER

Around this lovely valley rise
The purple hills of Paradise.

O softly on yon banks of haze
Her rosy face the Summer lays!

Becalmed along the azure sky,
The argosies of cloudland lie,
Whose shores, with many a shining rift,
Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift.

Through all the long midsummer-day
The meadow-sides are sweet with hay.
I seek the coolest sheltered seat,
Just where the field and forest meet,—
Where grow the pine-trees tall and bland,
The ancient oaks austere and grand,
And fringy roots and pebbles fret
The ripples of the rivulet.

I watch the mowers, as they go
Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row.
With even stroke their scythes they swing,
In tune their merry whetstones ring.

Behind the nimble youngsters run,
And toss the thick swaths in the sun.
The cattle graze, while, warm and still,
Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill,
And bright, where summer breezes break,
The green wheat crinkles like a lake.

The butterfly and humble-bee
Come to the pleasant woods with me;
Quickly before me runs the quail,
Her chickens skulk behind the rail;
High up the lonely wood dove sits,
And the woodpecker pecks and flits.
Sweet woodland music sinks and swells,
The brooklet rings its tinkling bells,
The swarming insects drone and hum,
The partridge beats his throbbing drum.
The squirrel leaps among the boughs,
And chatters in his leafy house.
The oriole flashes by; and, look!
Into the mirror of the brook,
Where the vain bluebird trims his coat,
Two tiny feathers fall and float.

As silently, as tenderly,
The down of peace descends on me.
O, this is peace! I have no need
Of friend to talk, of book to read:
A dear Companion here abides;
Close to my thrilling heart He hides;
The holy silence is His Voice:
I lie and listen, and rejoice.

MY COMRADE AND I

We two have grown up so divinely together,
Flower within flower from seed within seed,
The sagest astrologer cannot say whether
His being or mine was first called and decreed.

In the life before birth, by inscrutable ties,
We were linked each to each; I am bound up in him;
He sickens, I languish; without me he dies;
I am life of his life, he is limb of my limb.

Twin babes from one cradle, I tottered about with him,
Chased the bright butterflies, singing, a boy with him;
Still as a man I am borne in and out with him,
Sup with him, sleep with him, suffer, enjoy with him.
Faithful companion, me long he has carried
Unseen in his bosom, a lamp to his feet;
More near than a bridegroom, to him I am married,
As light in the sunbeam is wedded to heat.

If my beam be withdrawn he is senseless and blind;
I am sight to his vision, I hear with his ears;
His the marvellous brain, I the masterful mind;
I laugh with his laughter and weep with his tears
So well that the ignorant deem us but one:
They see but one shape and they name us one name.
O pliant accomplice! what deeds we have done,
Thus banded together for glory or shame!

When evil waylays us, and passion surprises,
And we are too feeble to strive or to fly,
When hunger compels or when pleasure entices,
Which most is the sinner, my comrade or I?
And when over perils and pains and temptations
I triumph, where still I should falter and faint,
But for him, iron-nerved for heroical patience,
Whose then is the virtue, and which is the saint?

Am I the one sinner? of honors sole claimant
For actions which only we two can perform?
Am I the true creature, and thou but the raiment?
Thou magical mantle, all vital and warm,
Wrapped about me, a screen from the rough winds of Time,
Of texture so flexile to feature and gesture!
Can ever I part from thee? Is there a clime
Where Life needs no more this terrestrial vesture?

When comes the sad summons to sever the sweet
Subtle tie that unites us, and tremulous, fearful,
I feel thy loosed fetters depart from my feet;
When friends gathered round us, pale-visaged and tearful,
Beweep and bewail thee, thou fair earthly prison!
And kiss thy cold doors, for thy inmate mistaken;
Their eyes seeing not the freed captive, arisen
From thy trammels unclasped and thy shackles downshaken;

O, then shall I linger, reluctant to break
The dear sensitive chains that about me have grown?
And all this bright world, can I bear to forsake
Its embosoming beauty and love, and alone
Journey on to I know not what regions untried?
Exists there, beyond the dim cloud-rack of death,
Such life as enchants us? O skies arched and wide!
O delicate senses! O exquisite breath!

Ah, tenderly, tenderly over thee hovering,
I shall look down on thee empty and cloven,
Pale mould of my being!—thou visible covering
Wherefrom my invisible raiment is woven.
Though sad be the passage, nor pain shall appall me,
Nor parting, assured, wheresoever I range
The glad fields of existence, that naught can befall me
That is not still beautiful, blessed, and strange.

LA CANTATRICE

By day, at a high oak desk I stand,
And trace in a ledger line by line;
But at five o'clock yon dial's hand
Opens the cage wherein I pine;
And as faintly the stroke from the belfry peals
Down through the thunder of hoofs and wheels,
I wonder if ever a monarch feels
Such royal joy as mine!

Beatrice, with her little banquet, waits;
I know she has heard that signal-chime;

And my strong heart leaps and palpitates,
As lightly the winding stair I climb
To her fragrant room, where the winter's gloom
Is changed by the heliotrope's perfume,
And the shaded lamp's soft crimson bloom,
To love's own summer prime.

She meets me there, so strangely fair
That my soul aches with a happy pain.—
And now—a touch of her true lips, such
As a seraph might give and take again;
A lingering pressure: “Adieu! adieu!
They wait for me while I stay for you!”
And a parting smile of her dark eyes through
The glimmering carriage-pane.

O, not as we parted once, we part!
Then, years of waiting and sacrifice;
Exile for her, while her glorious art
Unfolded and flowered in sunnier skies:
The slow, laborious, lonely years,
The nights of longing, of doubts and fears,—
Her heart's sweet debt, and the long arrears
Of love in those dear dark eyes!

O night! be friendly to her and me!—
To floor and aisle and balcony swarm
The expectant throngs;—I am there to see;—
And now she is bending her radiant form
To the clapping crowd;—I am thrilled and proud;
My dim eyes look through a misty cloud,
And my joy mounts up on the plaudits loud,
As a sea-bird on a storm!

A murmur and ripple of strings, as the rush
Of applause sinks down: then silverly
Her voice glides forth on the quivering hush,
As the white-robed moon on a tremulous sea!
And wherever her shining influence calls,
I swing on the billow that swells and falls,—

I know no more,—till the very walls
Seem joining the jubilee!

Little she cares for the fop who airs
His glove and glass, or the gay array
Of fans and perfumes, of jewels and plumes,
Where wealth and pleasure have met to pay
Their nightly homage to her sweet song;
But over the bravas clear and strong,
Over all the flaunting and fluttering throng,
She smiles my soul away.

Why am I happy? why am I proud?
Can it be true she is all my own?—
I make my way through the ignorant crowd;
I know, I know where my love has flown.
Again we meet; I am here at her feet,
And with kindling kisses and promises sweet,
Her glowing, victorious lips repeat
That they sing for me alone!

BEAUTY

Fond lover of the Ideal Fair,
My soul, eluded everywhere,
Is lapsed into a sweet despair.

Perpetual pilgrim, seeking ever,
Baffled, enamored, finding never;
Each morn the cheerful chase renewing,
Misled, bewildered, still pursuing;
Not all my lavished years have bought
One steadfast smile from her I sought,
But sidelong glances, glimpsing light,
A something far too fine for sight,
Veiled voices, far-off thridding strains,
And precious agonies and pains:
Not love, but only love's dear wound
And exquisite unrest I found.

At early morn I saw her pass
The lone lake's blurred and quivering glass;
Her trailing veil of amber mist
The unbending beaded clover kissed;
And straight I hasted to waylay
Her coming by the willowy way;—
But, swift companion of the Dawn,
She left her footprints on the lawn,
And, in arriving, she was gone.

Alert I ranged the winding shore;
Her luminous presence flashed before;
The wild-rose and the daisies wet
From her light touch were trembling yet;
Faint smiled the conscious violet.
Each bush and brier and rock betrayed
Some tender sign her parting made;
And when far on her flight I tracked
To where the thunderous cataract
O'er walls of foamy ledges broke,
She vanished in the vapory smoke.

To-night I pace this pallid floor,
The sparkling waves curl up the shore,
The August moon is flushed and full;
The soft, low winds, the liquid lull,
The whited, silent, misty realm,
The wan-blue heaven, each ghostly elm,
All these, her ministers, conspire
To fill my bosom with the fire
And sweet delirium of desire.
Enchantress! leave thy sheeny height,
Descend, be all mine own this night,
Transfuse, enfold, entrance me quite!
Or break thy spell, my heart restore,
And disenchant me evermore!

SERVICE

When I beheld a lover woo
A maid unwilling,
And saw what lavish deeds men do,
Hope's flagon filling,—
What vines are tilled, what wines are spilled,
And madly wasted,
To fill the flask that 's never filled,
And rarely tasted:

Devouring all life's heritage,
And inly starving;
Dulling the spirit's mystic edge,
The banquet carving;
Feasting with Pride, that Barmecide
Of unreal dishes;
And wandering ever in a wide,
Wide world of wishes:

For gain or glory, lands and seas
Endlessly ranging,
Safety and years and health and ease
Freely exchanging:—
When, ever as I moved, I saw
Pride and privation,
Then turned, O Love! to thy sweet law
And compensation,—

Well might red shame my cheek consume!
O service slighted!
O Bride of Paradise, to whom
I long was plighted!
Do I with burning lips profess
To serve thee wholly,
Yet labor less for blessedness
Than fools for folly?

The wary worldling spread his toils
Whilst I was sleeping;

The wakeful miser locked his spoils,
Keen vigils keeping:
I loosed the latches of my soul
To pleading Pleasure,
Who stayed one little hour, and stole
My heavenly treasure.

A friend for friend's sake will endure
Sharp provocations;
And knaves are cunning to secure,
By cringing patience,
And smiles upon a smarting cheek,
Some dear advantage,—
Swathing their grievances in meek
Submission's bandage.

Yet for thy sake I will not take
One drop of trial,
But raise rebellious hands to break
The bitter vial.
At hardship's surly-visaged churl
My spirit sallies;
And melts, O Peace! thy priceless pearl
In passion's chalice.

Yet never quite, in darkest night,
Was I forsaken:
Down trickles still some starry rill
My heart to waken.
O Love Divine! could I resign
This changeful spirit
To walk thy ways, what wealth of grace
Might I inherit!

If one poor flower of thanks to thee
Be truly given,
All night thou snowest down to me
Lilies of heaven!
One task of human love fulfilled,
Thy glimpses tender

My days of lonely labor gild
With gleams of splendor!

One prayer,—“Thy will, not mine!”—and bright,
O'er all my being,
Breaks blissful light, that gives to sight
A subtler seeing;
Straightway mine ear is tuned to hear
Ethereal numbers,
Whose secret symphonies insphere
The dull earth's slumbers.

“Thy will!”—and I am armed to meet
Misfortune's volleys;
For every sorrow I have sweet,
O, sweetest solace!
For me the diamond dawns are set
In rings of beauty,
And all my paths are dewy wet
With pleasant duty.

AT SEA

The night is made for cooling shade,
For silence, and for sleep;
And when I was a child, I laid
My hands upon my breast and prayed,
And sank to slumbers deep:
Childlike as then, I lie to-night,
And watch my lonely cabin light.

Each movement of the swaying lamp
Shows how the vessel reels:
As o'er her deck the billows tramp,
And all her timbers strain and cramp,
With every shock she feels,
It starts and shudders, while it burns,
And in its hingéd socket turns.

Now swinging slow, and slanting low,
It almost level lies;
And yet I know, while to and fro
I watch the seeming pendule go
With restless fall and rise,
The steady shaft is still upright,
Poising its little globe of light.

O hand of God! O lamp of peace!
O promise of my soul!—
Though weak, and tossed, and ill at ease,
Amid the roar of smiting seas,
The ship's convulsive roll,
I own, with love and tender awe,
Yon perfect type of faith and law!

A heavenly trust my spirit calms,
My soul is filled with light:
The ocean sings his solemn psalms,
The wild winds chant: I cross my palms,
Happy as if, to-night,
Under the cottage-roof, again
I heard the soothing summer-rain.

REAL ESTATE

The pleasant grounds are greenly turfed and graded;
A sturdy porter waits beside the gate;
The graceful avenues, serenely shaded,
And curving paths, are interlaced and braided
In many a maze around my fair estate.

Here blooms the early hyacinth, and clover
And amaranth and myrtle wreathe the ground;
The pensive lily leans her pale cheek over;
And hither comes the bee, light-hearted rover,
Wooing the sweet-breathed flowers with soothing sound.

Intwining, in their manifold digressions,
Lands of my neighbors, wind these peaceful ways.

The masters, coming to their calm possessions,
Followed in solemn state by long processions,
Make quiet journeys these still summer days.

This is my freehold! Elms and fringy larches,
Maples and pines, and stately firs of Norway,
Build round me their green pyramids and arches;
Sweetly the robin sings, while slowly marches
The stately pageant past my verdant doorway.

O, sweetly sing the robin and the sparrow!
But the pale tenant very silent rides.
A low green roof bends over him;—so narrow
His hollowed tenement, a schoolboy's arrow
Might span the space betwixt its grassy sides.

The flowers around him ring their wind-swung chalices,
A great bell tolls the pageant's slow advance.
The poor alike, and lords of parks and palaces,
From all their busy schemes, their fears and fallacies,
Find here their rest and sure inheritance.

No more had Cæsar or Sardanapalus!
Of all our wide dominions, soon or late,
Only a fathom's space can aught avail us;
This is the heritage that shall not fail us:
Here man at last comes to his Real Estate.

BY THE RIVER

I

In the beautiful greenwood's charméd light,
And down through the meadows wide and bright,
Deep in the silence, and smooth in the gleam,
For ever and ever flows the stream.

Where the mandrakes grow, and the pale, thin grass
The airy scarf of the woodland weaves,
By dim, enchanted paths I pass,
Crushing the twigs and the last year's leaves.

Over the wave, by the crystal brink,
A kingfisher sits on a low, dead limb:
He is always sitting there, I think,—
And another, within the crystal brink,
Is always pendent under him.

I know where an old tree leans across
From bank to bank, an ancient tree,
Quaintly cushioned with curious moss,
A bridge for the cool wood-nymphs and me:
Half seen they flit, while here I sit
By the magical water, watching it.

In its bosom swims the fair phantasm
Of a subterraneous azure chasm,
So soft and clear, you would say the stream
Was dreaming of heaven a visible dream.

Where the noontide basks, and its warm rays tint
The nettles and clover and scented mint,
And the crinkled airs, that curl and quiver,
Drop their wreaths in the mirroring river,
Along its sinuous shining bed
In sheets of splendor it lies outspread.

In the twilight stillness and solitude
Of green caves roofed by the brooding wood,
Where the woodbine swings, and beneath the trailing
Sprays of the queenly elm-tree sailing,—
By ribbed and wave-worn ledges shimmering,
Gilding the rocks with a rippled glimmering,
All pictured over in shade and sun,
The wavering silken waters run.

Upon this mossy trunk I sit,
Over the river, watching it.
A shadowed face peers up at me;
And another tree in the chasm I see,
Clinging above the abyss it spans;
The broad boughs curve their spreading fans,

From side to side, in the nether air;
And phantom birds in the phantom branches
Mimic the birds above; and there,
Oh! far below, solemn and slow,
The white clouds roll the crumbling snow
Of ever-pendulous avalanches,
Till the brain grows giddy, gazing through
Their wild, wide rifts of bottomless blue.

II

Through the river, and through the rifts
Of the sundered earth I gaze,
While Thought on dreamy pinion drifts,
Over cerulean bays,
Into the deep ethereal sea
Of her own serene eternity.

Transfigured by my trancéd eye,
Wood and meadow, and stream and sky,
Like vistas of a vision lie:
The World is the River that flickers by.

Its skies are the blue-arched centuries;
And its forms are the transient images
Flung on the flowing film of Time
By the steadfast shores of a fadeless clime.

My Soul leans over the murmuring flow,
And I am the image it sees below.

THE NAME IN THE BARK

The self of so long ago,
And the self I struggle to know,
I sometimes think we are two,—or are we shadows of one?
To-day the shadow I am
Returns in the sweet summer calm
To trace where the earlier shadow flitted awhile in the sun.

Once more in the dewy morn
I came through the whispering corn;
Cool to my fevered cheek soft breezy kisses were blown;
The ribboned and tasselled grass
Leaned over the flattering glass,
And the sunny waters trilled the same low musical tone.

To the gray old birch I came,
Where I whittled my schoolboy name:
The nimble squirrel once more ran skippingly over the rail,
The blackbirds down among
The alders noisily sung,
And under the blackberry-brier whistled the serious quail.

I came, remembering well
How my little shadow fell,
As I painfully reached and wrote to leave to the future a sign:
There, stooping a little, I found
A half-healed, curious wound,
An ancient scar in the bark, but no initial of mine!

Then the wise old boughs overhead
Took counsel together, and said,—
And the buzz of their leafy lips like a murmur of prophecy passed,—
“He is busily carving a name
In the tough old wrinkles of fame;
But, cut he as deep as he may, the lines will close over at last!”

Sadly I pondered awhile,
Then I lifted my soul with a smile,
And I said, “Not cheerful men, but anxious children are we,
Still hurting ourselves with the knife,
As we toil at the letters of life,
Just marring a little the rind, never piercing the heart of the tree.”

And now by the rivulet's brink
I leisurely saunter, and think
How idle this strife will appear when circling ages have run,
If then the real I am
Descend from the heavenly calm,
To trace where the shadow I seem once flitted awhile in the sun.

THE SWORD OF BOLIVAR

With the steadfast stars above us,
And the molten stars below,
We sailed through the Southern midnight,
By the coast of Mexico.

Alone, on the desolate, dark-ringed,
Rolling and flashing sea,
A grim old Venezuelan
Kept the deck with me,

And talked to me of his country,
And the long Spanish war,
And told how a young Republic
Forged the sword of Bolivar.

That it might shine the symbol
Of law and light in the land,
Dropped down as a star from heaven,
To flame in a hero's hand,

And be to the world a token
Of eternal might and right,
For the chaste, bright steel was chosen
A sky-born aerolite.

For the fair states, New Granada
And Venezuela, they pour

From twin crucibles the dazzling
White meteoric ore.

In two ingots it is moulded,
And welded into one,
For an emblem of Colombia,
Proud daughter of the sun!

In the din of the forge it is fashioned,
It is heated and hammered and rolled,
It is tempered and edged and burnished,
And set in a hilt of gold;

For thus by the fire and the hammer
Of war a nation is built,
And ever the sword of its power
Is swayed by a golden hilt.

Then with pomp and oratory
The mustachioed señores brought
To the house of the Liberator
The weapon they had wrought;

And they said, in their stately phrases,
“O mighty in peace and war!
No mortal blade we bring you,
But a flaming meteor.

“The sword of the Spaniard is broken,
And to you in its stead is given,
To lead and redeem a nation,
This ray of light from heaven.”

The gaunt-faced Liberator
From their hands the symbol took,
And waved it aloft in the sunlight,
With a high, heroic look;

And he called the saints to witness:
“May these lips turn into dust,

And this right hand fail, if ever
It prove recreant to its trust!

“Never the sigh of a bondman
Shall cloud this gleaming steel,
But only the foe and the traitor
Its vengeful edge shall feel.

“Never a tear of my country
Its purity shall stain,
Till into your hands, who gave it,
I render it again.”

Now if ever a chief was chosen
To cover a cause with shame,
And if ever there breathed a caitiff,
Bolivar was his name.

From his place among the people
To the highest seat he went,
By the winding paths of party
And the stair of accident.

A restless, weak usurper,
Striving to rear a throne,
Filling his fame with counsels
And conquests not his own;—

Now seeming to put from him
The sceptre of command,
Only that he might grasp it
With yet a firmer hand;—

His country's trusted leader,
In league with his country's foes,
Stabbing the cause that nursed him,
And openly serving those;—

The chief of a great republic
Plotting rebellion still,—

An apostate faithful only
To his own ambitious will.

Drunk with a vain ambition,
In his feeble, reckless hand,
The sword of Eternal Justice
Became but a brawler's brand.

And Colombia was dissevered,
Rent by factions, till at last
Her place among the nations
Is a memory of the past.

Here the grim old Venezuelan
Puffed fiercely his red cigar
A brief moment, then in the ocean
It vanished like a star:

And he slumbered in his hammock;
And only the ceaseless rush
Of the reeling and sparkling waters
Filled the solemn midnight hush,

As I leaned by the swinging gunwale
Of the good ship, sailing slow,
With the steadfast heavens above her,
And the molten heavens below.

Then I thought with sorrow and yearning
Of my own distracted land,
And the sword let down from heaven
To flame in her ruler's hand,—

The sword of Freedom, resplendent
As a beam of the morning star,
Received, reviled, and dishonored
By another than Bolivar!

The Republic of Colombia, comprising New Granada and Venezuela, was proclaimed by Bolivar in 1819 and dismembered, soon after his death, in 1831. The story of the sword forged from meteoric ore has a foundation in fact; and the character of the so-called Liberator—who has been likened to our Washington, and who is honored with a monument in his native city of Caracas—is, I believe, not unfairly sketched in the lines, allowance being made for some political bias on the part of the “grim old Venezuelan.” Still larger allowance must be craved for the too pointed application of the fable to Lincoln's unfortunate successor in the Presidency, disappointment and indignation at whose weak, undignified, reactionary conduct in office formed the shaping motive of the poem,—feelings long since softened by time and a juster perspective. The poem, first printed in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1866, was written in the August or September of that year, now almost thirty-seven years ago.

Arlington, August, 1903.

University of Virginia Library

THE VAGABONDS AND OTHER POEMS

THE VAGABONDS