The poetical works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in six volumes |
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THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE |
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The poetical works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | ||
THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE
DEDICATION.
Hears round about him voices as it darkens,
And seeing not the forms from which they come,
Pauses from time to time, and turns and hearkens;
I hear your voices, softened by the distance,
And pause, and turn to listen, as each sends
His words of friendship, comfort, and assistance.
Has ever given delight or consolation,
Ye have repaid me back a thousand-fold,
By every friendly sign and salutation.
Thanks for each kindly word, each silent token,
That teaches me, when seeming most alone,
Friends are around us, though no word be spoken.
Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history,
In which we feel the pressure of a hand,—
One touch of fire,—and all the rest is mystery!
Our household treasures take familiar places,
And are to us as if a living tongue
Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces!
With eye of sense, your outward form and semblance;
Therefore to me ye never will grow old,
But live forever young in my remembrance!
Your gentle voices will flow on forever,
When life grows bare and tarnished with decay,
As through a leafless landscape flows a river.
Being oftentimes of different tongues and nations,
But the endeavor for the selfsame ends,
With the same hopes, and fears, and aspirations.
Saddened, and mostly silent, with emotion;
Not interrupting with intrusive talk
The grand, majestic symphonies of ocean.
At your warm fireside, when the lamps are lighted,
To have my place reserved among the rest,
Nor stand as one unsought and uninvited!
BY THE SEASIDE
THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP.
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”
Delighted the Master heard;
For his heart was in his work, and the heart
Giveth grace unto every Art.
A quiet smile played round his lips,
As the eddies and dimples of the tide
Play round the bows of ships,
That steadily at anchor ride.
And with a voice that was full of glee,
He answered, “Erelong we will launch
A vessel as goodly, and strong, and stanch,
As ever weathered a wintry sea!”
And first with nicest skill and art,
Perfect and finished in every part,
A little model the Master wrought,
Which should be to the larger plan
What the child is to the man,
Its counterpart in miniature;
That with a hand more swift and sure
The greater labor might be brought
And as he labored, his mind ran o'er
The various ships that were built of yore,
And above them all, and strangest of all
Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall,
Whose picture was hanging on the wall,
With bows and stern raised high in air,
And balconies hanging here and there,
And signal lanterns and flags afloat,
And eight round towers, like those that frown
From some old castle, looking down
Upon the drawbridge and the moat.
And he said with a smile, “Our ship, I wis,
Shall be of another form than this!”
It was of another form, indeed;
Built for freight, and yet for speed,
A beautiful and gallant craft;
Broad in the beam, that the stress of the blast,
Pressing down upon sail and mast,
Might not the sharp bows overwhelm;
Broad in the beam, but sloping aft
With graceful curve and slow degrees,
That she might be docile to the helm,
And that the currents of parted seas,
Closing behind, with mighty force,
Might aid and not impede her course.
With the model of the vessel,
That should laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!
Covering many a rood of ground,
Lay the timber piled around;
And scattered here and there, with these,
The knarred and crooked cedar knees;
Brought from regions far away,
From Pascagoula's sunny bay,
And the banks of the roaring Roanoke!
Ah! what a wondrous thing it is
To note how many wheels of toil
One thought, one word, can set in motion!
There 's not a ship that sails the ocean,
But every climate, every soil,
Must bring its tribute, great or small,
And help to build the wooden wall!
And long the level shadows lay,
As if they, too, the beams would be
Of some great, airy argosy,
Framed and launched in a single day.
That silent architect, the sun,
Had hewn and laid them every one,
Ere the work of man was yet begun.
Beside the Master, when he spoke,
A youth, against an anchor leaning,
Listened, to catch his slightest meaning.
Only the long waves, as they broke
In ripples on the pebbly beach,
Interrupted the old man's speech.
Beautiful they were, in sooth,
The old man and the fiery youth!
The old man, in whose busy brain
Many a ship that sailed the main
Was modelled o'er and o'er again;—
The heir of his dexterity,
The heir of his house, and his daughter's hand,
When he had built and launched from land
What the elder head had planned.
Lay square the blocks upon the slip,
And follow well this plan of mine.
Choose the timbers with greatest care;
Of all that is unsound beware;
For only what is sound and strong
To this vessel shall belong.
Cedar of Maine and Georgia pine
Here together shall combine.
A goodly frame, and a goodly fame,
And the Union be her name!
For the day that gives her to the sea
Shall give my daughter unto thee!”
Enraptured the young man heard;
And as he turned his face aside,
With a look of joy and a thrill of pride
Standing before
Her father's door,
He saw the form of his promised bride.
The sun shone on her golden hair,
And her cheek was glowing fresh and fair,
With the breath of morn and the soft sea air.
Like a beauteous barge was she,
Still at rest on the sandy beach,
Just beyond the billow's reach;
But he
Ah, how skilful grows the hand
That obeyeth Love's command!
It is the heart, and not the brain,
That to the highest doth attain,
And he who followeth Love's behest
Far excelleth all the rest!
Was the noble task begun,
And soon throughout the ship-yard's bounds
Were heard the intermingled sounds
Of axes and of mallets, plied
With vigorous arms on every side;
Plied so deftly and so well,
That, ere the shadows of evening fell,
The keel of oak for a noble ship,
Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong,
Was lying ready, and stretched along
The blocks, well placed upon the slip.
Happy, thrice happy, every one
Who sees his labor well begun,
And not perplexed and multiplied,
By idly waiting for time and tide!
The young man at the Master's door
Sat with the maiden calm and still,
And within the porch, a little more
Removed beyond the evening chill,
The father sat, and told them tales
Of wrecks in the great September gales,
Of pirates coasting the Spanish Main,
The chance and change of a sailor's life,
Want and plenty, rest and strife,
His roving fancy, like the wind,
That nothing can stay and nothing can bind,
And the magic charm of foreign lands,
With shadows of palms, and shining sands,
Where the tumbling surf,
O'er the coral reefs of Madagascar,
Washes the feet of the swarthy Lascar,
As he lies alone and asleep on the turf.
And the trembling maiden held her breath
At the tales of that awful, pitiless sea,
With all its terror and mystery,
The dim, dark sea, so like unto Death,
That divides and yet unites mankind!
And whenever the old man paused, a gleam
From the bowl of his pipe would awhile illume
The silent group in the twilight gloom,
And thoughtful faces, as in a dream;
And for a moment one might mark
What had been hidden by the dark,
That the head of the maiden lay at rest,
Tenderly, on the young man's breast!
With timbers fashioned strong and true,
Stemson and keelson and sternson-knee,
Till, framed with perfect symmetry,
A skeleton ship rose up to view!
And around the bows and along the side
The heavy hammers and mallets plied,
Till after many a week, at length,
Sublime in its enormous bulk,
Loomed aloft the shadowy hulk!
And around it columns of smoke, upwreathing,
Rose from the boiling, bubbling, seething
Caldron, that glowed,
And overflowed
With the black tar, heated for the sheathing.
And amid the clamors
Of clattering hammers,
He who listened heard now and then
The song of the Master and his men:—
Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”
Lay the rudder on the sand,
That, like a thought, should have control
Over the movement of the whole;
And near it the anchor, whose giant hand
Would reach down and grapple with the land,
And immovable and fast
Hold the great ship against the bellowing blast!
And at the bows an image stood,
By a cunning artist carved in wood,
With robes of white, that far behind
Seemed to be fluttering in the wind.
It was not shaped in a classic mould,
Not like a Nymph or Goddess of old,
Or Naiad rising from the water,
On many a dreary and misty night,
'T will be seen by the rays of the signal light,
Speeding along through the rain and the dark,
Like a ghost in its snow-white sark,
The pilot of some phantom bark,
Guiding the vessel, in its flight,
By a path none other knows aright!
Each tall and tapering mast
Is swung into its place;
I wish to anticipate a criticism on this passage, by stating that sometimes, though not usually, vessels are launched fully sparred and rigged. I have availed myself of the exception as better suited to my purposes than the general rule; but the reader will see that it is neither a blunder nor a poetic license. On this subject a friend in Portland, Maine, writes me thus:—
“In this State, and also, I am told, in New York, ships are sometimes rigged upon the stocks, in order to save time, or to make a show. There was a fine, large ship launched last summer at Ellsworth, fully sparred and rigged. Some years ago a ship was launched here, with her rigging, spars, sails, and cargo aboard. She sailed the next day and—was never heard of again! I hope this will not be the fate of your poem!”
Shrouds and stays
Holding it firm and fast!
In the deer-haunted forests of Maine,
When upon mountain and plain
Lay the snow,
They fell,—those lordly pines!
Those grand, majestic pines!
'Mid shouts and cheers
The jaded steers,
Panting beneath the goad,
Dragged down the weary, winding road
Those captive kings so straight and tall,
To be shorn of their streaming hair,
And naked and bare,
To feel the stress and the strain
Of the wind and the reeling main,
Whose roar
Would remind them forevermore
Of their native forests they should not see again.
The slender, graceful spars
Poise aloft in the air,
And at the mast-head,
White, blue, and red,
A flag unrolls the stripes and stars.
Ah! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless,
In foreign harbors shall behold
That flag unrolled,
'T will be as a friendly hand
Stretched out from his native land,
Filling his heart with memories sweet and endless!
Has come the bridal day
Of beauty and of strength.
To-day the vessel shall be launched!
With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched,
And o'er the bay,
Slowly, in all his splendors dight,
The great sun rises to behold the sight.
Centuries old,
Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled,
Paces restless to and fro,
Up and down the sands of gold.
His beating heart is not at rest;
And far and wide,
With ceaseless flow,
His beard of snow
Heaves with the heaving of his breast.
He waits impatient for his bride.
With her foot upon the sands,
Decked with flags and streamers gay,
In honor of her marriage day,
Her snow-white signals fluttering, blending,
Round her like a veil descending,
Ready to be
The bride of the gray old sea.
Is standing by her lover's side.
Shadows from the flags and shrouds,
Like the shadows cast by clouds,
Broken by many a sunny fleck,
Fall around them on the deck.
The service read,
The joyous bridegroom bows his head;
And in tears the good old Master
Shakes the brown hand of his son,
Kisses his daughter's glowing cheek
In silence, for he cannot speak,
And ever faster
Down his own the tears begin to run.
The worthy pastor—
The shepherd of that wandering flock,
That has the ocean for its wold,
That has the vessel for its fold,
Leaping ever from rock to rock—
Spake, with accents mild and clear,
Words of warning, words of cheer,
But tedious to the bridegroom's ear.
Of the sailor's heart,
All its pleasures and its griefs,
All its shallows and rocky reefs,
All those secret currents, that flow
With such resistless undertow,
And lift and drift, with terrible force,
The will from its moorings and its course.
Therefore he spake, and thus said he:—
Outward or homeward bound, are we.
Before, behind, and all around,
Floats and swings the horizon's bound,
Seems at its distant rim to rise
And climb the crystal wall of the skies,
And then again to turn and sink,
As if we could slide from its outer brink.
Ah! it is not the sea,
It is not the sea that sinks and shelves,
But ourselves
That rock and rise
With endless and uneasy motion,
Now touching the very skies,
Now sinking into the depths of ocean.
Ah! if our souls but poise and swing
Like the compass in its brazen ring,
Ever level and ever true
To the toil and the task we have to do,
We shall sail securely, and safely reach
The Fortunate Isles, on whose shining beach
Will be those of joy and not of fear!”
With a gesture of command,
Waved his hand;
And at the word,
Loud and sudden there was heard,
All around them and below,
The sound of hammers, blow on blow,
Knocking away the shores and spurs.
And see! she stirs!
She starts,—she moves,—she seems to feel
The thrill of life along her keel,
And, spurning with her foot the ground,
With one exulting, joyous bound,
She leaps into the ocean's arms!
There rose a shout, prolonged and loud,
That to the ocean seemed to say,
“Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray,
Take her to thy protecting arms,
With all her youth and all her charms!”
She lies within those arms, that press
Her form with many a soft caress
Of tenderness and watchful care!
Sail forth into the sea, O ship!
Through wind and wave, right onward steer!
The moistened eye, the trembling lip,
Are not the signs of doubt or fear.
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
'T is of the wave and not the rock;
'T is but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee,—are all with thee!
SEAWEED.
Originally published in Graham's Magazine, January, 1845, and then in the collection The Belfry of Bruges and other Poems, but transferred by Mr. Longfellow to this division in his latest collective edition.
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,
Laden with seaweed from the rocks:
Of sunken ledges,
In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing
Surges of San Salvador;
The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting
On the desolate, rainy seas;—
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main;
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.
Strike the ocean
Of the poet's soul, erelong
From each cave and rocky fastness,
In its vastness,
Floats some fragment of a song:
Heaven has planted
With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams Elysian
In the tropic clime of Youth;
That forever
Wrestle with the tides of Fate;
From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,
Tempest-shattered,
Floating waste and desolate;—
On the shifting
Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart.
CHRYSAOR.
As the day grows fainter and dimmer,
Lonely and lovely, a single star
Lights the air with a dusky glimmer.
Falls the trail of its golden splendor,
And the gleam of that single star
Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender.
Showed thus glorious and thus emulous,
Leaving the arms of Callirrhoe,
Forever tender, soft, and tremulous.
Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly;
Is it a God, or is it a star
That, entranced, I gaze on nightly!
THE SECRET OF THE SEA.
As I gaze upon the sea!
All the old romantic legends,
All my dreams, come back to me.
Such as gleam in ancient lore;
And the singing of the sailors,
And the answer from the shore!
Haunts me oft, and tarries long,
Of the noble Count Arnaldos
And the sailor's mystic song.
Where the sand as silver shines,
With a soft, monotonous cadence,
Flow its unrhymed lyric lines;—
With his hawk upon his hand,
Saw a fair and stately galley,
Steering onward to the land;—
Chant a song so wild and clear,
That the sailing sea-bird slowly
Poised upon the mast to hear,
And he cried, with impulse strong,—
“Helmsman! for the love of heaven,
Teach me, too, that wondrous song!”
“Learn the secret of the sea?
Comprehend its mystery!”
In each landward-blowing breeze,
I behold that stately galley,
Hear those mournful melodies;
For the secret of the sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me.
TWILIGHT.
The wind blows wild and free,
And like the wings of sea-birds
Flash the white caps of the sea.
There shines a ruddier light,
And a little face at the window
Peers out into the night.
As if those childish eyes
Were looking into the darkness
To see some form arise.
Is passing to and fro,
Now bowing and bending low.
And the night-wind, bleak and wild,
As they beat at the crazy casement,
Tell to that little child?
And the night-wind, wild and bleak,
As they beat at the heart of the mother
Drive the color from her cheek?
SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT.
Sailed the corsair Death;
Wild and fast blew the blast,
And the east-wind was his breath.
Glisten in the sun;
On each side, like pennons wide,
Flashing crystal streamlets run.
Dripped with silver rain;
But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o'er the main.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;
“When the wind abated and the vessels were near enough, the Admiral was seen constantly sitting in the stern, with a book in his hand. On the 9th of September he was seen for the last time, and was heard by the people of the Hind to say, ‘We are as near heaven by sea as by land.’ In the following night, the lights of the ship suddenly disappeared. The people in the other vessel kept a good lookout for him during the remainder of the voyage. On the 22d of September they arrived, through much tempest and peril, at Falmouth. But nothing more was seen or heard of the Admiral.”—
Belknap's American Biography, i. 203.Three days or more seaward he bore,
Then, alas! the land-wind failed.
And ice-cold grew the night;
And nevermore, on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the light.
The Book was in his hand;
“Do not fear! Heaven is as near,”
He said, “by water as by land!”
Without a signal's sound,
Out of the sea, mysteriously,
The fleet of Death rose all around.
Were hanging in the shrouds;
Every mast, as it passed,
Seemed to rake the passing clouds.
At midnight black and cold!
Heavily the ground-swell rolled.
They drift in close embrace,
With mist and rain, o'er the open main;
Yet there seems no change of place.
They drift through dark and day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream
Sinking, vanish all away.
THE LIGHTHOUSE.
And on its outer point, some miles away,
The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.
Upheaving, break unheard along its base,
A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides
In the white lip and tremor of the face.
Through the deep purple of the twilight air,
Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light
With strange, unearthly splendor in the glare!
And perilous reef along the ocean's verge,
Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape,
Holding its lantern o'er the restless surge.
Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave,
Wading far out among the rocks and sands,
The night-o'ertaken mariner to save.
Bending and bowing o'er the billowy swells,
And ever joyful, as they see it burn,
They wave their silent welcomes and farewells.
Gleam for a moment only in the blaze,
And eager faces, as the light unveils,
Gaze at the tower, and vanish while they gaze.
On his first voyage, he saw it fade and sink;
And when, returning from adventures wild,
He saw it rise again o'er ocean's brink.
Year after year, through all the silent night
Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame,
Shines on that inextinguishable light!
The rocks and sea-sand with the kiss of peace;
And hold it up, and shake it like a fleece.
Smites it with all the scourges of the rain,
And steadily against its solid form
Press the great shoulders of the hurricane.
Of wings and winds and solitary cries,
Blinded and maddened by the light within,
Dashes himself against the glare, and dies.
Still grasping in his hand the fire of Jove,
It does not hear the cry, nor heed the shock,
But hails the mariner with words of love.
And with your floating bridge the ocean span;
Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse,
Be yours to bring man nearer unto man!”
THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD.
Whose windows, looking o'er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold,
An easy entrance, night and day.
The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,
The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
The wooden houses, quaint and brown.
Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
Our voices only broke the gloom.
Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed, and who was dead;
When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
And never can be one again;
That words are powerless to express,
And leave it still unsaid in part,
Or say it in too great excess.
Had something strange, I could but mark;
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
As suddenly, from out the fire
Built of the wreck of stranded ships,
The flames would leap and then expire.
We thought of wrecks upon the main,
Of ships dismasted, that were hailed
And sent no answer back again.
The ocean, roaring up the beach,
The gusty blast, the bickering flames,
All mingled vaguely in our speech;
Of fancies floating through the brain,
The long-lost ventures of the heart,
That send no answers back again.
They were indeed too much akin,
The drift-wood fire without that burned,
The thoughts that burned and glowed within.
BY THE FIRESIDE
RESIGNATION.
But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
But has one vacant chair!
And mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted!
Not from the ground arise,
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.
Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
May be heaven's distant lamps.
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
But gone unto that school
Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ himself doth rule.
By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives, whom we call dead.
In those bright realms of air;
Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
Behold her grown more fair.
The bond which nature gives,
Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
May reach her where she lives.
For when with raptures wild
In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child;
Clothed with celestial grace;
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
Shall we behold her face.
And anguish long suppressed,
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean,
That cannot be at rest,—
We may not wholly stay;
By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
The grief that must have way.
THE BUILDERS.
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.
Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods see everywhere.
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky.
SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOUR-GLASS.
Of Arab deserts brought,
Within this glass becomes the spy of Time,
The minister of Thought.
About those deserts blown!
How many strange vicissitudes has seen,
How many histories known!
Trampled and passed it o'er,
When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight
His favorite son they bore.
Crushed it beneath their tread,
Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air
Scattered it as they sped;
Held close in her caress,
Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith
Illumed the wilderness;
Pacing the Dead Sea beach,
And singing slow their old Armenian psalms
In half-articulate speech;
With westward steps depart;
Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate,
And resolute in heart!
Now in this crystal tower
It counts the passing hour.
Before my dreamy eye
Stretches the desert with its shifting sand,
Its unimpeded sky.
This little golden thread
Dilates into a column high and vast,
A form of fear and dread.
Across the boundless plain,
The column and its broader shadow run,
Till thought pursues in vain.
Shut out the lurid sun,
Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain;
The half-hour's sand is run!
THE OPEN WINDOW.
Stood silent in the shade,
And on the gravelled pathway
The light and shadow played.
Wide open to the air;
But the faces of the children,
They were no longer there.
Was standing by the door;
He looked for his little playmates,
Who would return no more.
They played not in the hall;
But shadow, and silence, and sadness
Were hanging over all.
With sweet, familiar tone;
But the voices of the children
Will be heard in dreams alone!
He could not understand
Why closer in mine, ah! closer,
I pressed his warm, soft hand!
KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN.
Ere yet his last he breathed,
To the merry monks of Croyland
His drinking-horn bequeathed,—
And drank from the golden bowl,
They might remember the donor,
And breathe a prayer for his soul.
And bade the goblet pass;
In their beards the red wine glistened
Like dew-drops in the grass.
They drank to Christ the Lord,
And to each of the Twelve Apostles,
Who had preached his holy word.
Of the dismal days of yore,
And as soon as the horn was empty
They remembered one Saint more.
Like the murmur of many bees,
The legend of good Saint Guthlac,
And Saint Basil's homilies;
From their prison in the tower,
Guthlac and Bartholomæus,
Proclaimed the midnight hour.
And the Abbot bowed his head,
And the flamelets flapped and flickered,
But the Abbot was stark and dead.
He clutched the golden bowl,
In which, like a pearl dissolving,
Had sunk and dissolved his soul.
The jovial monks forbore,
For they cried, “Fill high the goblet!
We must drink to one Saint more!”
GASPAR BECERRA.
Pondered o'er his secret shame;
Baffled, weary, and disheartened,
Still he mused, and dreamed of fame.
That had tasked his utmost skill;
But, alas! his fair ideal
Vanished and escaped him still.
Had the precious wood been brought;
Day and night the anxious master
At his toil untiring wrought;
Sat he now in shadows deep,
And the day's humiliation
Found oblivion in sleep.
From the burning brand of oak
Shape the thought that stirs within thee!”—
And the startled artist woke,—
Seized and quenched the glowing wood;
And therefrom he carved an image,
And he saw that it was good.
Take this lesson to thy heart:
That is best which lieth nearest;
Shape from that thy work of art.
PEGASUS IN POUND.
Without haste and without heed,
In the golden prime of morning,
Strayed the poet's winged steed.
Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves,
And, like living coals, the apples
Burned among the withering leaves.
From its belfry gaunt and grim;
'T was the daily call to labor,
Not a triumph meant for him.
In its gleaming vapor veiled;
Not the less he breathed the odors
That the dying leaves exhaled.
By the school-boys he was found;
And the wise men, in their wisdom,
Put him straightway into pound.
Ringing loud his brazen bell,
Wandered down the street proclaiming
There was an estray to sell.
Rich and poor, and young and old,
Came in haste to see this wondrous
Winged steed, with mane of gold.
Fell, with vapors cold and dim;
But it brought no food nor shelter,
Brought no straw nor stall, for him.
Looked he through the wooden bars,
Saw the moon rise o'er the landscape,
Saw the tranquil, patient stars;
Sounded from its dark abode,
And, from out a neighboring farm-yard,
Loud the cock Alectryon crowed.
Breaking from his iron chain,
And unfolding far his pinions,
To those stars he soared again.
Woke to all its toil and care,
Lo! the strange steed had departed,
And they knew not when nor where.
Where his struggling hoofs had trod,
Pure and bright, a fountain flowing
From the hoof-marks in the sod.
Gladdens the whole region round,
Strengthening all who drink its waters,
While it soothes them with its sound.
TEGNÉR'S DRAPA.
“Balder the Beautiful
And through the misty air
Passed like the mournful cry
Of sunward sailing cranes.
Of the dead sun
Borne through the Northern sky.
Blasts from Niffelheim
Lifted the sheeted mists
Around him as he passed.
“Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!”
And died away
Through the dreary night,
In accents of despair.
God of the summer sun,
Fairest of all the Gods!
Light from his forehead beamed,
Runes were upon his tongue,
As on the warrior's sword.
Bound were by magic spell
Never to do him harm;
Even the plants and stones;
All save the mistletoe,
The sacred mistletoe!
Whose feet are shod with silence,
Pierced through that gentle breast
With his sharp spear, by fraud,
Made of the mistletoe,
The accursed mistletoe!
With horse and harness,
As on a funeral pyre.
Odin placed
A ring upon his finger,
And whispered in his ear.
It floated far away
Over the misty sea,
Till like the sun it seemed,
Sinking beneath the waves.
Balder returned no more!
But out of the sea of Time
Rises a new land of song,
Fairer than the old.
Over its meadows green
Walk the young bards and sing.
O ye bards,
Fairer than before!
Ye fathers of the new race,
Sing the new Song of Love!
The law of love prevails!
Thor, the thunderer,
Shall rule the earth no more,
No more, with threats,
Challenge the meek Christ.
O ye bards of the North,
Of Vikings and of Jarls!
Of the days of Eld
Preserve the freedom only,
Not the deeds of blood!
SONNET ON MRS. KEMBLE'S READINGS FROM SHAKESPEARE.
O precious evenings! all too swiftly sped!Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages
Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages,
And giving tongues unto the silent dead!
How our hearts glowed and trembled as she read,
Interpreting by tones the wondrous pages
Anticipating all that shall be said!
O happy Reader! having for thy text
The magic book, whose Sibylline leaves have caught
The rarest essence of all human thought!
O happy Poet! by no critic vext!
How must thy listening spirit now rejoice
To be interpreted by such a voice!
THE SINGERS.
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again.
Held in his hand a golden lyre;
Through groves he wandered, and by streams,
Playing the music of our dreams.
Stood singing in the market-place,
And stirred with accents deep and loud
The hearts of all the listening crowd.
Sang in cathedrals dim and vast,
While the majestic organ rolled
Contrition from its mouths of gold.
Disputed which the best might be;
For still their music seemed to start
Discordant echoes in each heart.
No best in kind, but in degree;
I gave a various gift to each,
To charm, to strengthen, and to teach.
And he whose ear is tuned aright
Will hear no discord in the three,
But the most perfect harmony.”
SUSPIRIA.
Whatever thou canst call thine own!
Thine image, stamped upon this clay,
Doth give thee that, but that alone!
Folded upon thy narrow shelves,
As garments by the soul laid by,
And precious only to ourselves!
Our little life is but a gust
That bends the branches of thy tree,
And trails its blossoms in the dust!
HYMN FOR MY BROTHER'S ORDINATION.
If thou wouldst perfect be,
Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor,
And come and follow me!”
Those sacred words hath said,
And his invisible hands to-day have been
Laid on a young man's head.
The unseen Christ shall move,
That he may lean upon his arm and say,
“Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?”
To make the scene more fair;
Beside him in the dark Gethsemane
Of pain and midnight prayer.
Like the beloved John
To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast,
And thus to journey on!
The poetical works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | ||