The poetical works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in six volumes |
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THE BELFRY OF BRUGES AND OTHER POEMS |
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The poetical works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | ||
THE BELFRY OF BRUGES AND OTHER POEMS
CARILLON.
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet's rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
Calmly answering their sweet anger,
When the wrangling bells had ended,
Slowly struck the clock eleven,
And, from out the silent heaven,
Silence on the town descended.
Silence, silence everywhere,
On the earth and in the air,
Save that footsteps here and there
Of some burgher home returning,
By the street lamps faintly burning,
For a moment woke the echoes
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
Still I heard those magic numbers,
And stolen marches of the night;
Till their chimes in sweet collision
Mingled with each wandering vision,
Mingled with the fortune-telling
Gypsy-bands of dreams and fancies,
Which amid the waste expanses
Of the silent land of trances
Have their solitary dwelling;
All else seemed asleep in Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city.
Are the poet's airy rhymes,
All his rhymes and roundelays,
His conceits, and songs, and ditties,
From the belfry of his brain,
Scattered downward, though in vain,
On the roofs and stones of cities!
For by night the drowsy ear
Under its curtains cannot hear,
And by day men go their ways,
Hearing the music as they pass,
But deeming it no more, alas!
Than the hollow sound of brass.
Lodging at some humble inn
In the narrow lanes of life,
When the dusk and hush of night
Shut out the incessant din
Of daylight and its toil and strife,
May listen with a calm delight
Till he hears, or dreams he hears,
Intermingled with the song,
Thoughts that he has cherished long;
Hears amid the chime and singing
The bells of his own village ringing,
And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes
Wet with most delicious tears.
In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Blé,
Listening with a wild delight
To the chimes that, through the night,
Rang their changes from the Belfry
Of that quaint old Flemish city.
THE BELFRY OF BRUGES.
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.
And the world threw off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood.
Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay.
Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like, into air.
But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower.
And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky.
With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes,
And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar.
They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again;
The title of Foresters was given to the early governors of Flanders, appointed by the kings of France. Lyderick du Bucq, in the days of Clotaire the Second, was the first of them; and Beaudoin Bras-de-Fer, who stole away the fair Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, from the French court, and married her in Bruges, was the last. After him the title of Forester was changed to that of Count. Philippe d'Alsace, Guy de Dampierre, and Louis de Crécy, coming later in the order of time, were therefore rather Counts than Foresters. Philippe went twice to the Holy Land as a Crusader, and died of the plague at St. Jean-d'Acre, shortly after the capture of the city by the Christians. Guy de Dampierre died in the prison of Compiégne. Louis de Crécy was son and successor of Robert de Béthune, who strangled his wife, Yolande de Bourgogne, with the bridle of his horse, for having poisoned, at the age of eleven years, Charles, his son by his first wife, Blanche d'Anjou.
Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy, Philip, Guy de Dampierre.
Stately dames, like queens attended,
When Philippe-le-Bel, king of France, visited Flanders with his queen, she was so astonished at the magnificence of the dames of Bruges, that she exclaimed: “Je croyais être seule reine ici, mais il paraît que ceux de Flandre qui se trouvent dans nos prisons sont tous des princes, car leurs femmes sont habillées comme des princesses et des reines.”
When the burgomasters of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres went to Paris to pay homage to King John, in 1351, they were received with great pomp and distinction; but, being invited to a festival, they observed that their seats at table were not furnished with cushions; whereupon, to make known their displeasure at this want of regard to their dignity, they folded their richly embroidered cloaks and seated themselves upon them. On rising from table, they left their cloaks behind them, and, being informed of their apparent forgetfulness, Simon van Eertrycke, burgomaster of Bruges, replied, “We Flemings are not in the habit of carrying away our cushions after dinner.”
Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.
I beheld the gentle Mary,
Marie de Valois, Duchess of Burgundy, was left by the death of her father, Charles le Téméraire, at the age of twenty, the richest heiress of Europe. She came to Bruges, as Countess of Flanders, in 1477, and in the same year was married by proxy to the Archduke Maximilian. According to the custom of the time, the Duke of Bavaria, Maximilian's substitute, slept with the princess. They were both in complete dress, separated by a naked sword, and attended by four armed guards. Marie was adored by her subjects for her gentleness and her many other virtues.
Maximilian was son of the Emperor Frederick the Third, and is the same person mentioned afterwards in the poem of Nuremberg, as the Kaiser Maximilian, and the hero of Pfinzing's poem of Teuerdank. Having been imprisoned by the revolted burghers of Bruges, they refused to release him, till he consented to kneel in the public square, and to swear on the Holy Evangelists and the body of Saint Donatus that he would not take vengeance upon them for their rebellion.
And the armed guard around them, and the sword unsheathed between.
Marching homeward from the bloody battle of the Spurs of Gold;
This battle, the most memorable in Flemish history, was fought under the walls of Courtray, on the 11th of July, 1302, between the French and the Flemings, the former commanded by Robert, Comte d'Artois, and the latter by Guillaume de Juliers, and Jean, Comte de Namur. The French army was completely routed, with a loss of twenty thousand infantry and seven thousand cavalry; among whom were sixty-three princes, dukes, and counts, seven hundred lords-banneret, and eleven hundred noblemen. The flower of the French nobility perished on that day; to which history has given the name of the Journée des Eperons d'Or, from the great number of golden spurs found on the field of battle. Seven hundred of them were hung up as a trophy in the church of Notre Dame de Courtray; and, as the cavaliers of that day wore but a single spur each, these vouched to God for the violent and bloody death of seven hundred of his creatures.
When the inhabitants of Bruges were digging a canal at Minnewater, to bring the waters of the Lys from Deynze to their city, they were attacked and routed by the citizens of Ghent, whose commerce would have been much injured by the canal. They were led by Jean Lyons, captain of a military company at Ghent, called the Chaperons Blancs. He had great sway over the turbulent populace, who, in those prosperous times of the city, gained an easy livelihood by laboring two or three days in the week, and had the remaining four or five to devote to public affairs. The fight at Minnewater was followed by open rebellion against Louis de Maele, the Count of Flanders and Protector of Bruges. His superb château of Wondelghem was pillaged and burnt; and the insurgents forced the gates of Bruges, and entered in triumph, with Lyons mounted at their head. A few days afterwards he died suddenly, perhaps by poison.
Meanwhile the insurgents received a check at the village of Nevèle; and two hundred of them perished in the church, which was burned by the Count's orders. One of the chiefs, Jean de Lannoy, took refuge in the belfry. From the summit of the tower he held forth his purse filled with gold, and begged for deliverance. It was in vain. His enemies cried to him from below to save himself as best he might; and, half suffocated with smoke and flame, he threw himself from the tower and perished at their feet. Peace was soon afterwards established, and the Count retired to faithful Bruges.
Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon's nest.
The Golden Dragon, taken from the church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, in one of the Crusades, and placed on the belfry of Bruges, was afterwards transported to Ghent by Philip van Artevelde, and still adorns the belfry of that city.
The inscription on the alarm-bell at Ghent is, “Mynen naem is Roland; als ik klep is er brand, and als ik luy is er victorie in het land.” My name is Roland; when I toll there is fire, and when I ring there is victory in the land.
And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin's throat;
“I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!”
Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more.
Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square.
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE.
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been.
Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.
There the green lane descends,
O gentlest of my friends!
Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
A shadow, thou didst pass.
And thy heart as pure as they:
One of God's holy messengers
Did walk with me that day.
Bend down thy touch to meet,
The clover-blossoms in the grass
Rise up to kiss thy feet.
Of earth and folly born!”
Solemnly sang the village choir
On that sweet Sabbath morn.
Poured in a dusty beam,
Like the celestial ladder seen
By Jacob in his dream.
Sweet-scented with the hay,
Turned o'er the hymn-book's fluttering leaves
That on the window lay.
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For he spake of Ruth the beautiful,
And still I thought of thee.
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For in my heart I prayed with him,
And still I thought of thee.
Thou art no longer here:
Part of the sunshine of the scene
With thee did disappear.
Like pine trees dark and high,
Subdue the light of noon, and breathe
A low and ceaseless sigh;
As when the sun, concealed
Behind some cloud that near us hangs,
Shines on a distant field.
THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD.
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal Miserere
Will mingle with their awful symphonies!
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song,
And loud, amid the universal clamor,
O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din,
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis
Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder
The diapason of the cannonade.
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies?
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals or forts:
And every nation, that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain!
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,
I hear once more the voice of Christ say, “Peace!”
The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise.
NUREMBERG.
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng:
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old;
That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime.
Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand;
Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise.
Melchior Pfinzing was one of the most celebrated German poets of the sixteenth century. The hero of his Teuerdank was the reigning Emperor, Maximilian; and the poem was to the Germans of that day what the Orlando Furioso was to the Italians. Maximilian is mentioned before, in the Belfry of Bruges. See page 191.
Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart;
By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own.
The tomb of Saint Sebald, in the church which bears his name, is one of the richest works of art in Nuremberg. It is of bronze, and was cast by Peter Vischer and his sons, who labored upon it thirteen years. It is adorned with nearly one hundred figures, among which those of the Twelve Apostles are conspicuous for size and beauty.
And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust;
Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air.
Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art;
Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.
Dead he is not, but departed,—for the artist never dies.
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!
Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains.
Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.
And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime;
In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.
Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters,
The Twelve Wise Masters was the title of the original corporation of the Mastersingers. Hans Sachs, the cobbler of Nuremberg, though not one of the original Twelve, was the most renowned of the Mastersingers, as well as the most voluminous. He flourished in the sixteenth century; and left behind him thirty-four folio volumes of manuscript, containing two hundred and eight plays, one thousand and seven hundred comic tales, and between four and five thousand lyric poems.
And a garland in the window, and his face above the door;
As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long.
Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair.
Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry.
As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay:
The nobility of labor,—the long pedigree of toil.
THE NORMAN BARON.
Was the Norman baron lying;
Loud, without, the tempest thundered,
And the castle-turret shook.
Spite of vassal and retainer,
And the lands his sires had plundered,
Written in the Doomsday Book.
Who in humble voice repeated
Many a prayer and pater-noster,
From the missal on his knee;
Sounds of bells came faintly stealing,
Bells, that from the neighboring kloster
Rang for the Nativity.
Held, that night, their Christmas wassail;
Many a carol, old and saintly,
Sang the minstrels and the waits;
Sang to slaves the songs of freemen,
That the storm was heard but faintly,
Knocking at the castle-gates.
Reached the chamber terror-haunted,
Where the monk, with accents holy,
Whispered at the baron's ear.
As he paused awhile and listened,
And the dying baron slowly
Turned his weary head to hear.
Born and cradled in a manger!
King, like David, priest, like Aaron,
Christ is born to set us free!”
Figures on the casement painted,
And exclaimed the shuddering baron,
“Miserere, Domine!”
He beheld, with clearer vision,
Through all outward show and fashion,
Justice, the Avenger, rise.
Falsehood and deceit were banished,
Reason spake more loud than passion,
And the truth wore no disguise.
Every serf born to his manor,
All those wronged and wretched creatures,
By his hand were freed again.
He recorded their dismissal,
Death relaxed his iron features,
And the monk replied, “Amen!”
Since in death the baron slumbered
By the convent's sculptured portal,
Mingling with the common dust:
Living in historic pages,
Brighter grows and gleams immortal,
Unconsumed by moth or rust.
RAIN IN SUMMER.
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise
And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Ingulfs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!
The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
And the vapors that arise
From the well-watered and smoking soil.
For this rest in the furrow after toil
Their large and lustrous eyes
Seem to thank the Lord,
More than man's spoken word.
From under the sheltering trees,
The farmer sees
His pastures, and his fields of grain,
As they bend their tops
To the numberless beating drops
He counts it as no sin
That he sees therein
Only his own thrift and gain.
The Poet sees!
He can behold
Aquarius old
Walking the fenceless fields of air;
And from each ample fold
Of the clouds about him rolled
Scattering everywhere
The showery rain,
As the farmer scatters his grain.
Things manifold
That have not yet been wholly told,—
Have not been wholly sung nor said.
For his thought, that never stops,
Follows the water-drops
Down to the graves of the dead,
Down through chasms and gulfs profound,
To the dreary fountain-head
Of lakes and rivers under ground;
And sees them, when the rain is done,
On the bridge of colors seven
Climbing up once more to heaven,
Opposite the setting sun.
With vision clear,
In the perpetual round of strange,
Mysterious change
From birth to death, from death to birth,
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth;
Till glimpses more sublime
Of things, unseen before
Unto his wondering eyes reveal
The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel
Turning forevermore
In the rapid and rushing river of Time.
TO A CHILD.
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Whose figures grace,
With many a grotesque form and face,
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.
Thou shakest in thy little hand
The coral rattle with its silver bells,
Making a merry tune!
Thousands of years in Indian seas
That coral grew, by slow degrees,
Until some deadly and wild monsoon
Dashed it on Coromandel's sand!
Those silver bells
Reposed of yore,
As shapeless ore,
Far down in the deep-sunken wells
Of darksome mines,
In some obscure and sunless place,
Beneath huge Chimborazo's base,
Or Potosí's o'erhanging pines!
And thus for thee, O little child,
Through many a danger and escape,
The tall ships passed the stormy cape;
For thee in foreign lands remote,
Beneath a burning, tropic clime,
The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat,
In falling, clutched the frail arbute,
The fibres of whose shallow root,
Uplifted from the soil, betrayed
The silver veins beneath it laid,
The buried treasures of the miser, Time.
Thou hearest footsteps from afar!
And, at the sound,
Thou turnest round
With quick and questioning eyes,
Like one, who, in a foreign land,
Beholds on every hand
Some source of wonder and surprise!
And, restlessly, impatiently,
Thou strivest, strugglest, to be free.
Are now like prison walls to thee.
No more thy mother's smiles,
No more the painted tiles,
Delight thee, nor the playthings on the floor,
That won thy little, beating heart before;
Thou strugglest for the open door.
Thy pattering footstep falls.
The sound of thy merry voice
Makes the old walls
Jubilant, and they rejoice
With the joy of thy young heart,
O'er the light of whose gladness
From the sombre background of memory start.
One whom memory oft recalls,
The Father of his Country, dwelt.
And yonder meadows broad and damp
The fires of the besieging camp
Encircled with a burning belt.
Up and down these echoing stairs,
Heavy with the weight of cares,
Sounded his majestic tread;
Yes, within this very room
Sat he in those hours of gloom,
Weary both in heart and head.
Out, out! into the open air!
Thy only dream is liberty,
Thou carest little how or where.
I see thee eager at thy play,
Now shouting to the apples on the tree,
With cheeks as round and red as they;
And now among the yellow stalks,
Among the flowering shrubs and plants,
As restless as the bee.
Along the garden walks,
The tracks of thy small carriage-wheels I trace;
And see at every turn how they efface
Whole villages of sand-roofed tents,
That rise like golden domes
Above the cavernous and secret homes
Of wandering and nomadic tribes of ants.
Who, with thy dreadful reign,
Dost persecute and overwhelm
These hapless Troglodytes of thy realm!
And voice more beautiful than a poet's books
Or murmuring sound of water as it flows,
Thou comest back to parley with repose!
This rustic seat in the old apple-tree,
With its o'erhanging golden canopy
Of leaves illuminate with autumnal hues,
And shining with the argent light of dews,
Shall for a season be our place of rest.
Beneath us, like an oriole's pendent nest,
From which the laughing birds have taken wing,
By thee abandoned, hangs thy vacant swing.
Dream-like the waters of the river gleam;
A sailless vessel drops adown the stream,
And like it, to a sea as wide and deep,
Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.
Of life's great city! on thy head
The glory of the morn is shed,
Like a celestial benison!
Here at the portal thou dost stand,
And with thy little hand
Thou openest the mysterious gate
Into the future's undiscovered land.
I see its valves expand,
As at the touch of Fate!
Into those realms of love and hate,
By some prophetic feeling taught,
I launch the bold, adventurous thought,
Freighted with hope and fear;
As upon subterranean streams,
In caverns unexplored and dark,
Men sometimes launch a fragile bark,
Laden with flickering fire,
And watch its swift-receding beams,
Until at length they disappear,
And in the distant dark expire.
Dare I to cast thy horoscope!
Like the new moon thy life appears;
A little strip of silver light,
And widening outward into night
The shadowy disk of future years;
And yet upon its outer rim,
A luminous circle, faint and dim,
And scarcely visible to us here,
Rounds and completes the perfect sphere;
A prophecy and intimation,
A pale and feeble adumbration,
Of the great world of light, that lies
Behind all human destinies.
Should be to wet the dusty soil
With the hot tears and sweat of toil,—
To struggle with imperious thought,
Until the overburdened brain,
Weary with labor, faint with pain,
Only its motion, not its power,—
Remember, in that perilous hour,
When most afflicted and oppressed,
From labor there shall come forth rest.
On thy advancing steps await,
Still let it ever be thy pride
To linger by the laborer's side;
With words of sympathy or song
To cheer the dreary march along
Of the great army of the poor,
O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous moor.
Nor to thyself the task shall be
Without reward; for thou shalt learn
The wisdom early to discern
True beauty in utility;
As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith's door,
And hearing the hammers, as they smote
The anvils with a different note,
Stole from the varying tones, that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,
The secret of the sounding wire,
And formed the seven-chorded lyre.
I will no longer strive to ope
The mystic volume, where appear
The herald Hope, forerunning Fear,
And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope.
Thy destiny remains untold;
The swift thought kindles as it flies,
And burns to ashes in the skies.
THE OCCULTATION OF ORION.
The balance in the hand of Time.
O'er East and West its beam impended;
And Day, with all its hours of light,
Was slowly sinking out of sight,
While, opposite, the scale of Night
Silently with the stars ascended.
In that bright vision I beheld
Greater and deeper mysteries.
I saw, with its celestial keys,
Its chords of air, its frets of fire,
The Samian's great Æolian lyre,
From earth unto the fixed stars.
And through the dewy atmosphere,
Not only could I see, but hear,
Its wondrous and harmonious strings,
In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere,
From Dian's circle light and near,
Onward to vaster and wider rings,
Where, chanting through his beard of snows,
Majestic, mournful, Saturn goes,
And down the sunless realms of space
Reverberates the thunder of his bass.
This music sounded like a march,
And with its chorus seemed to be
Preluding some great tragedy.
Sirius was rising in the east;
And, slow ascending one by one,
The kindling constellations shone.
Begirt with many a blazing star,
Stood the great giant Algebar,
Orion, hunter of the beast!
His sword hung gleaming by his side,
And, on his arm, the lion's hide
Scattered across the midnight air
The golden radiance of its hair.
And beautiful as some fair saint,
Serenely moving on her way
In hours of trial and dismay.
As if she heard the voice of God,
Upon the hot and burning stars,
As on the glowing coals and bars,
That were to prove her strength and try
Her holiness and her purity.
And triumph in her sweet, pale face,
She reached the station of Orion.
Aghast he stood in strange alarm!
And suddenly from his outstretched arm
Down fell the red skin of the lion
Into the river at his feet.
His mighty club no longer beat
The forehead of the bull; but he
Reeled as of yore beside the sea,
When, blinded by Œnopion,
He sought the blacksmith at his forge,
And, climbing up the mountain gorge,
Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun.
An angel with a trumpet said,
“Forevermore, forevermore,
The reign of violence is o'er!”
And, like an instrument that flings
Its music on another's strings,
The trumpet of the angel cast
Upon the heavenly lyre its blast,
And on from sphere to sphere the words
Reëchoed down the burning chords,—
“Forevermore, forevermore,
The reign of violence is o'er!”
THE BRIDGE.
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o'er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.
In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet falling
And sinking into the sea.
Of that lovely night in June,
The blaze of the flaming furnace
Gleamed redder than the moon.
The wavering shadows lay,
And the current that came from the ocean
Seemed to lift and bear them away;
Rose the belated tide,
And, streaming into the moonlight,
The seaweed floated wide.
Among the wooden piers,
A flood of thoughts came o'er me
That filled my eyes with tears.
In the days that had gone by,
I had stood on that bridge at midnight
And gazed on that wave and sky!
I had wished that the ebbing tide
Would bear me away on its bosom
O'er the ocean wild and wide!
And my life was full of care,
And the burden laid upon me
Seemed greater than I could bear.
It is buried in the sea;
And only the sorrow of others
Throws its shadow over me.
On its bridge with wooden piers,
Like the odor of brine from the ocean
Comes the thought of other years.
Of care-encumbered men,
Each bearing his burden of sorrow,
Have crossed the bridge since then.
Still passing to and fro,
The young heart hot and restless,
And the old subdued and slow!
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes;
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.
TO THE DRIVING CLOUD.
“October 17, 1845. Retouched The Bridge and the lines To the Driving Cloud in hexameters,—better than the translation from Tegnér”—
The Children of the Lord's Supper.Gloomy and dark as the driving cloud, whose name thou hast taken!
Wrapped in thy scarlet blanket, I see thee stalk through the city's
Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers
Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their footprints.
What, in a few short years, will remain of thy race but the footprints?
How canst thou breathe this air, who hast breathed the sweet air of the mountains?
Looks of disdain in return, and question these walls and these pavements,
Claiming the soil for thy hunting-grounds, while down-trodden millions
Starve in the garrets of Europe, and cry from its caverns that they, too,
Have been created heirs of the earth, and claim its division!
There as a monarch thou reignest. In autumn the leaves of the maple
Pave the floors of thy palace-halls with gold, and in summer
Pine-trees waft through its chambers the odorous breath of their branches.
There thou art strong and great, a hero, a tamer of horses!
There thou chasest the stately stag on the banks of the Elkhorn,
Or by the roar of the Running-Water, or where the Omaha
Calls thee, and leaps through the wild ravine like a brave of the Blackfeet!
Is it the cry of the Foxes and Crows, or the mighty Behemoth,
Who, unharmed, on his tusks once caught the bolts of the thunder,
“A delegation of warriors from the Delaware tribe having visited the governor of Virginia, during the Revolution, on matters of business, after these had been discussed and settled in council, the governor asked them some questions relative to their country, and among others, what they knew or had heard of the animal whose bones were found at the Saltlicks on the Ohio. Their chief speaker immediately put himself into an attitude of oratory, and, with a pomp suited to what he conceived the elevation of his subject, informed him that it was a tradition handed down from their fathers, ‘that in ancient times a herd of these tremendous animals came to the Big-bone licks, and began an universal destruction of the bear, deer, elks, buffaloes, and other animals which had been created for the use of the Indians: that the Great Man above, looking down and seeing this, was so enraged that he seized his lightning, descended on the earth, seated himself on a neighboring mountain, on a rock of which his seat and the print of his feet are still to be seen, and hurled his bolts among them till the whole were slaughtered, except the big bull, who, presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook them off as they fell; but missing one at length, it wounded him in the side; whereon, springing round, he bounded over the Ohio, over the Wabash, the Illinois, and finally over the great lakes, where he is living at this day.’”—
Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, Query VI.Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the Crows and the Foxes,
Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the tread of Behemoth,
Lo! the big thunder-canoe, that steadily breasts the Missouri's
Merciless current! and yonder, afar on the prairies, the camp-fires
Gleam through the night; and the cloud of dust in the gray of the daybreak
Marks not the buffalo's track, nor the Mandan's dexterous horse-race;
It is a caravan, whitening the desert where dwell the Camanches!
Ha! how the breath of these Saxons and Celts, like the blast of the east-wind,
Drifts evermore to the west the scanty smokes of thy wigwams!
SONGS
THE DAY IS DONE.
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY.
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.
The buried fences
Mark no longer
The road o'er the plain;
Like fearful shadows,
Slowly passes
A funeral train.
And every feeling
Within me responds
To the dismal knell;
My heart is bewailing
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.
TO AN OLD DANISH SONG BOOK.
Welcome to a foreign fireside,
While the sullen gales of autumn
Shake the windows.
Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee,
Since, beneath the skies of Denmark,
First I met thee.
There are thumb-marks on thy margin,
Made by hands that clasped thee rudely,
At the alehouse.
Yellow are thy time-worn pages,
As the russet, rain-molested
Leaves of autumn.
Scattered from hilarious goblets,
As the leaves with the libations
Of Olympus.
Days departed, half-forgotten,
When in dreamy youth I wandered
By the Baltic,—
The old ballad of King Christian
Shouted from suburban taverns
In the twilight.
Who, in solitary chambers,
And with hearts by passion wasted,
Wrote thy pages.
Where thy songs of love and friendship
Made the gloomy Northern winter
Bright as summer.
In his bleak, ancestral Iceland,
Chanted staves of these old ballads
To the Vikings.
At the court of old King Hamlet,
Yorick and his boon companions
Sang these ditties.
Sang them in their smoky barracks;—
Suddenly the English cannon
Joined the chorus!
Sailors on the roaring ocean,
Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics,
All have sung them.
They, alas! have left thee friendless!
Yet at least by one warm fireside
Art thou welcome.
In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys,
So thy twittering song shall nestle
In my bosom,—
Sheltered from all molestation,
And recalling by their voices
Youth and travel.
WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID.
When he left this world of ours,
Laid his body in the cloister,
Under Würtzburg's minster towers.
Gave them all with this behest:
They should feed the birds at noontide
Daily on his place of rest;
I have learned the art of song;
Let me now repay the lessons
They have taught so well and long.”
And, fulfilling his desire,
On his tomb the birds were feasted
By the children of the choir.
In foul weather and in fair,
Day by day, in vaster numbers,
Flocked the poets of the air.
Overshadowed all the place,
On the poet's sculptured face,
On the lintel of each door,
They renewed the War of Wartburg,
Which the bard had fought before.
Sang their lauds on every side;
And the name their voices uttered
Was the name of Vogelweid.
Murmured, “Why this waste of food?
Be it changed to loaves henceforward
For our fasting brotherhood.”
From the walls and woodland nests,
When the minster bells rang noontide,
Gathered the unwelcome guests.
Clamorous round the Gothic spire,
Screamed the feathered Minnesingers
For the children of the choir.
On the cloister's funeral stones,
And tradition only tells us
Where repose the poet's bones.
By sweet echoes multiplied,
Still the birds repeat the legend,
And the name of Vogelweid.
DRINKING SONG.
INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER.
From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!
Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.
Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,
And possessing youth eternal.
Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses,
Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's
Vineyards, sing delirious verses.
Bloodless victories, and the farmer
Bore, as trophies and oblations,
Vines for banners, ploughs for armor.
Much this mystic throng expresses:
Bacchus was the type of vigor,
And Silenus of excesses.
Of a faith long since forsaken;
Now the Satyrs, changed to devils,
Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken.
Point the rods of fortune-tellers;
Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,—
Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.
And huge tankards filled with Rhenish,
From that fiery blood of dragons
Never would his own replenish.
Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys,
Never drank the wine he vaunted
In his dithyrambic sallies.
Wreathed about with classic fables;
Ne'er Falernian threw a richer
Light upon Lucullus' tables.
As it passes thus between us,
How its wavelets laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!
THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat.
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw;
And from its station in the hall
An ancient timepiece says to all,—
“Forever—never!
Never—forever!”
And points and beckons with its hands
From its case of massive oak,
Like a monk, who, under his cloak,
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!
With sorrowful voice to all who pass,—
“Forever—never!
Never—forever!”
But in the silent dead of night,
It echoes along the vacant hall,
Along the ceiling, along the floor,
And seems to say, at each chamber-door,—
“Forever—never!
Never—forever!”
Through days of death and days of birth,
Through every swift vicissitude
Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood,
And as if, like God, it all things saw,
It calmly repeats those words of awe,—
“Forever—never!
Never—forever!”
Free-hearted Hospitality;
His great fires up the chimney roared;
The stranger feasted at his board;
But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased,—
“Forever—never!
Never—forever!”
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;
O precious hours! O golden prime,
And affluence of love and time!
Even as a miser counts his gold,
Those hours the ancient timepiece told,—
“Forever—never!
Never—forever!”
The bride came forth on her wedding night;
There, in that silent room below,
The dead lay in his shroud of snow;
And in the hush that followed the prayer,
Was heard the old clock on the stair,—
“Forever—never!
Never—forever!”
Some are married, some are dead;
And when I ask, with throbs of pain,
“Ah! when shall they all meet again?”
As in the days long since gone by,
The ancient timepiece makes reply,—
“Forever—never!
Never—forever!”
Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death, and time shall disappear,—
Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,—
“Forever—never!
Never—forever!”
THE ARROW AND THE SONG.
“October 16, 1845. Before church, wrote The Arrow and the Song, which came into my mind as I stood with my back to the fire, and glanced on to the paper with arrow's speed. Literally an improvisation.”
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
SONNETS
MEZZO CAMMIN.
Half of my life is gone, and I have letThe years slip from me and have not fulfilled
The aspiration of my youth, to build
Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.
THE EVENING STAR.
Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines,
Like a fair lady at her casement, shines
The evening star, the star of love and rest!
And then anon she doth herself divest
Of all her radiant garments, and reclines
Behind the sombre screen of yonder pines,
With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed.
O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus!
My morning and my evening star of love!
My best and gentlest lady! even thus,
As that fair planet in the sky above,
Dost thou retire unto thy rest at night,
And from thy darkened window fades the light.
AUTUMN.
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Charlemagne may be called by preëminence the monarch of farmers. According to the German tradition, in seasons of great abundance, his spirit crosses the Rhine on a golden bridge at Bingen, and blesses the cornfields and the vineyards. During his lifetime, he did not disdain, says Montesquieu, “to sell the eggs from the farmyards of his domains, and the superfluous vegetables of his gardens; while he distributed among his people the wealth of the Lombards and the immense treasures of the Huns.”
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!
Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended
So long beneath the heaven's o'erhanging eaves;
Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended;
Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;
And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,
Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!
DANTE.
Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms of gloom,With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes,
Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise,
Like Farinata from his fiery tomb.
Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom;
Yet in thy heart what human sympathies,
What soft compassion glows, as in the skies
The tender stars their clouded lamps relume!
By Fra Hilario in his diocese,
As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks,
The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease;
And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks,
Thy voice along the cloister whispers “Peace!”
CURFEW.
I.
Dealing its dole,
The Curfew Bell
Is beginning to toll.
And put out the light;
Toil comes with the morning,
And rest with the night.
And quenched is the fire;
Sound fades into silence,—
All footsteps retire.
No sound in the hall!
Sleep and oblivion
Reign over all!
II.
And closed, like the day;
And the hand that has written it
Lays it away.
Forgotten they lie;
Like coals in the ashes,
They darken and die.
The story is told,
The windows are darkened,
The hearth-stone is cold.
The black shadows fall
Sleep and oblivion
Reign over all.
The poetical works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | ||