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3
TO HENRY.
Henry! though with thy name a nobler verse,
Of theme heroic, or devotion's prayer,
Might fitlier blend, and more inspire
Than these low, halting strains, and lead the way
To more sublime emotions and entrance
The listening city or the landward town,
That spots afar the toppling mountain's base,—
Still let thy name here stand, of one the name,
Who to no meaner service, nobly walked,
Than virtue's service!
Who, by his virtue,
Might compel, from even a reed so low,
Or a weak life consumed in trivial thought,
Spent on the tricks of show, on time's reprieves,
Fate's half-forgiveness for forgotten deeds;
Might still compel from this dull-sounding reed,
In some strange moment truant to its jar,
One note of music that might touch the stars,
O'ercrown oblivious eras of long night.
And so, half live.
Be, then, to me a muse,
And while the day roars downward in the dust
Of crowded cities, and afar on seas
Uplifted rifts the tall hoar billows,
Mid its surge (surge all its own), the blast,—
May I pursue, with thee, thy peaceful walks;
O'er the low valleys seamed by long-past thrift,
And crags that beetle o'er the base of woods,
Which lift their mild umbrageous fronts to Heaven.
By rock and stream, low hill and surly pitch
Of never-opening oaks, let me essay,
To teach their worth, meed of a poet's life.
Of theme heroic, or devotion's prayer,
Might fitlier blend, and more inspire
Than these low, halting strains, and lead the way
To more sublime emotions and entrance
The listening city or the landward town,
That spots afar the toppling mountain's base,—
Still let thy name here stand, of one the name,
Who to no meaner service, nobly walked,
Than virtue's service!
Who, by his virtue,
Might compel, from even a reed so low,
Or a weak life consumed in trivial thought,
Spent on the tricks of show, on time's reprieves,
Fate's half-forgiveness for forgotten deeds;
Might still compel from this dull-sounding reed,
4
One note of music that might touch the stars,
O'ercrown oblivious eras of long night.
And so, half live.
Be, then, to me a muse,
And while the day roars downward in the dust
Of crowded cities, and afar on seas
Uplifted rifts the tall hoar billows,
Mid its surge (surge all its own), the blast,—
May I pursue, with thee, thy peaceful walks;
O'er the low valleys seamed by long-past thrift,
And crags that beetle o'er the base of woods,
Which lift their mild umbrageous fronts to Heaven.
By rock and stream, low hill and surly pitch
Of never-opening oaks, let me essay,
To teach their worth, meed of a poet's life.
Yes! be to me a muse, if so, that thought
Which is in thee, the king, that royal truth
Spurning all commonplace details of lie,—
All far-fetched harrowing curb-stones
Of excuse, that fit men's actions to their
Consciences, and so achieve content
At the expense of honor; all low hopes,
Apologies for self where weakness hides,
And those worst virtues that the cozening world
Pimps on her half-fledged brood; old shells and worms
That saw ere deluged Noah at the plough,—
If so, e'en in its faintest radiation
Thy abiding faith in God's great justice
Might arise, and so might I be just,
And trust in him!
For chiefly here, thy worth,—
Chiefly in this, thy unabated trust,—
Ample reliance on the unceasing
Truth that rules the nether sphere about us,
That drives round the unthinking ball,
And buds the ignorant germs on life and time
Of men and beasts and birds, themselves the sport
Of a most healthy fortune, still unspent,
So that all individual sorrows
Butts for jest, leap down the narrow edge
Of thy colossal wit, and shattered hide,
There, at its base.
Modest and mild, and kind,
Who never spurned the needing from thy door,
(Door of thy heart which is a palace gate);
Temperate and faithful, in whose word, the world
Might trust, sure to repay, unvexed by care,
Unawed by Fortune's nod, slave to no lord
Nor coward to thy peers, long shalt thou live,
Not in this feeble verse, this sleeping age,
But in the roll of Heaven; and at the bar
Of that high court, where virtue is in place!
Then, thou shalt fitly rule, and read the laws
Of that supremer state, writ Jove's behest,
And even old Saturn's chronicle,
Works ne'er Hesiod saw, types of all things
And portraitures of all, whose golden leaves
Roll back the ages' doors, and summon up
Unsleeping truths, by which, wheels on Heaven's prime.
Which is in thee, the king, that royal truth
Spurning all commonplace details of lie,—
All far-fetched harrowing curb-stones
Of excuse, that fit men's actions to their
5
At the expense of honor; all low hopes,
Apologies for self where weakness hides,
And those worst virtues that the cozening world
Pimps on her half-fledged brood; old shells and worms
That saw ere deluged Noah at the plough,—
If so, e'en in its faintest radiation
Thy abiding faith in God's great justice
Might arise, and so might I be just,
And trust in him!
For chiefly here, thy worth,—
Chiefly in this, thy unabated trust,—
Ample reliance on the unceasing
Truth that rules the nether sphere about us,
That drives round the unthinking ball,
And buds the ignorant germs on life and time
Of men and beasts and birds, themselves the sport
Of a most healthy fortune, still unspent,
So that all individual sorrows
Butts for jest, leap down the narrow edge
Of thy colossal wit, and shattered hide,
6
Modest and mild, and kind,
Who never spurned the needing from thy door,
(Door of thy heart which is a palace gate);
Temperate and faithful, in whose word, the world
Might trust, sure to repay, unvexed by care,
Unawed by Fortune's nod, slave to no lord
Nor coward to thy peers, long shalt thou live,
Not in this feeble verse, this sleeping age,
But in the roll of Heaven; and at the bar
Of that high court, where virtue is in place!
Then, thou shalt fitly rule, and read the laws
Of that supremer state, writ Jove's behest,
And even old Saturn's chronicle,
Works ne'er Hesiod saw, types of all things
And portraitures of all, whose golden leaves
Roll back the ages' doors, and summon up
Unsleeping truths, by which, wheels on Heaven's prime.
7
NEAR HOME.
Still burns at Heaven's gate thy golden torch,
All-conquering Sun, and in thy flame at morn
The wearied nations rise; thyself, unwearied,
Urging on the year, and pouring down thy fires
On the delicate flowers, that still trusting ope
Their little half-shut bells.
Above us far
The painter of the dark floods her cold light
Across the dewy meads, with the still stars
Companions of her coil. So the first day,
Had burnt both sun and star, so burnt, so cooled,
As now they lend a virtue to our fields,
Where slow thro' modest valleys creep the streams,
Nor leap to cataracts. So, to the first,
They spoke in kindred voices, and compelled
Just admiration. And, to the last,
If e'er the race die out, they still may speak,
Thus, in an outward dialect. Of this,
We phrase not here; neither how from their seeds
Sprang out the progenies of things, and rose
To haughty empire or commanding state.
All-conquering Sun, and in thy flame at morn
The wearied nations rise; thyself, unwearied,
Urging on the year, and pouring down thy fires
On the delicate flowers, that still trusting ope
Their little half-shut bells.
Above us far
The painter of the dark floods her cold light
Across the dewy meads, with the still stars
Companions of her coil. So the first day,
Had burnt both sun and star, so burnt, so cooled,
As now they lend a virtue to our fields,
Where slow thro' modest valleys creep the streams,
Nor leap to cataracts. So, to the first,
They spoke in kindred voices, and compelled
8
If e'er the race die out, they still may speak,
Thus, in an outward dialect. Of this,
We phrase not here; neither how from their seeds
Sprang out the progenies of things, and rose
To haughty empire or commanding state.
On the low hills that skirt the River's side,
Where feebly waves through half-felt joy the grass,
Couched at their frugal cheer a savage host
Held banquet high, nor doubt not in their ire,
Here smoked forbidden dainties, though the fire
Lit by the white men had not scorched their wits.
How silent all! save the lone Sandpiper,
Whose plaintive call a little echo stirs,
When on the brink he idly plagues his mate.
Soft sways around the Spring's consoling air,
And up the sallows, like a distant camp,
The never-ceasing hum of bees; birds soar,
And gay the insect tribe flit in the beams
Of the low-falling orb.
I do not walk alone;
For still I feel thy arm is round me,
And thy law above, Thou, who art all in all,—
Whose goodness guides, whose truth endears the whole,
Without whose presence what were all to man,
Save a far clouded gleam of deepening night.
I do not walk alone, for still the Spring
Calls up my old companions; and I see
The old familiar faces: once more hear
Notes that I once had heard, touches of joy,
Beyond all words of mine expressions glad,
Thoughts linked to brightness, and joys twined with joys,
So that the far-off chimneys, as they rear
Their tall unmoving pillars to the sky,
Permit from their broad roofs sweet in the sun,
A solace in their hospitable thoughts,
Intent on home.
That was my thought, my Home!
And those dear memories that with thee build,
Like youth's first love throned in unfading light.
For like this Spring's soft sunshine, like the kiss
Of this first sunlight, like these smiling hours,
That never seem to bid farewell to day,
Safe in my heart is home with all its joys;
The blessed security of love that in one place
There, I am truly loved; and there no thought
Of usury upon the warm affections of the soul
Ever may come, no blinding doubt, no frost,
But in the laughing faces of our kin,
Glad in the children dear and matron blest,
And trust that knew no bane, we so shall live,
So die,—then gathered to our graves.
And see,
How quietly the dimpling river laves,
Safe in its pure seclusion, the green base
Of yonder hill, bleached to its core with shells,
Things of the Indian, who, in this retreat
Bent their small wigwams, when the spring's first thought
Jetted the shad up from the usurping sea,
And taught them near to lay their numerous spawn.
Gone, like those leaping fish, that Indian tribe,
Falling like autumn leaves drift o'er the soil,
Where, for unnumbered centuries they chased
The graceful deer, wild bear, and cumbrous moose.
To thoughtful eye, their arrow-heads appear,
Turned with the furrows of the farmer's plough,—
Or pestle smooth, or chisel sharp of slate,
And soap-stone pot, the heirlooms of a Race
That owned these lands.
So fared the fatal Indian,
So decayed, so fell like grasses unrenewed,
Down, where the white man builds. Thus drop the races,
Annihilate and spoiled, not to return.
Yet at their base the dimpling river laves,
Base of these low, lone hills. The blackbird's trill
Calls up his dusky mate, from the stiff twigs
Of copse, the Button-bush that brings no leaf
As yet, and on his wing the stripe of flame,
Darts like a crimson meteor o'er the blue.
On floating logs grave tortoises enjoy
The watery dream, for hope returns, to all,—
The everlasting hope returns with Spring.
Save that the Indian bow no longer twangs
Along the meadow, nor his watch-fires light
The lonely tresses of the ambushed wood,
Even as for countless ages all pursue
The same immeasurable round. Why fear
The pangs of penury, the student's curse,—
Or love abandoned when some victim's heart
Tears up from thine its fibres, and so graves
A wake of living anguish in thy soul?
Why live and droop beneath the weight of woe,
That unsuccessful effort piles o'er pride,
Half measuring its strength, thence prone to earth
Hurled by self-accusation? Could not thou,
Leagued with the universal law pursue
Like it, a sympathetic journey;
Nor fail thy sunshine to the sun, as he
Ne'er to thee fails; bud as the laurel buds
Deep in the hidden swamp, like the pinxter
Hang flowers along the edges of the wood,
Where save the savage hunter none delights,
Or the green bittern brooding from the light?—
Alone, deserted? then art thou alone,
On some near hill-top, ere the orb of day
In early summer, tints the floating heaven,
And far around thy sleeping race endow
With their oblivion the dim village roofs;
Nor yet the wakeful herdsman folds his kine
So to prolong their hours?
Alone, then listen hushed!
A living hymn awakes the studious air!
A myriad sounds that to one song converge,
As the added light shows the far hamlet
And the distant wood. These, are the voices
Of the unnumbered birds that fill the sphere
With their delicious harmony, prolonged
And ceaseless, so that at no time it dies,
Vanquishing the expectation by delay.
Still added notes, from the first Robin's 'larum
On the walnut's bough, to the Veery's flute,
Who from the furthest deep of the wet wood,
In martial trills rallies his liquid lay,
And the blithe whistling Oriole pours his joy.
O! mark the molten flecks along the skies
That move not, floating in those rosy heights
Of clear celestial radiance, so far pure
That not the artist in all color skilled,
The English Turner, faintly them could picture.
Where feebly waves through half-felt joy the grass,
Couched at their frugal cheer a savage host
Held banquet high, nor doubt not in their ire,
Here smoked forbidden dainties, though the fire
Lit by the white men had not scorched their wits.
How silent all! save the lone Sandpiper,
Whose plaintive call a little echo stirs,
When on the brink he idly plagues his mate.
Soft sways around the Spring's consoling air,
And up the sallows, like a distant camp,
The never-ceasing hum of bees; birds soar,
And gay the insect tribe flit in the beams
Of the low-falling orb.
I do not walk alone;
9
And thy law above, Thou, who art all in all,—
Whose goodness guides, whose truth endears the whole,
Without whose presence what were all to man,
Save a far clouded gleam of deepening night.
I do not walk alone, for still the Spring
Calls up my old companions; and I see
The old familiar faces: once more hear
Notes that I once had heard, touches of joy,
Beyond all words of mine expressions glad,
Thoughts linked to brightness, and joys twined with joys,
So that the far-off chimneys, as they rear
Their tall unmoving pillars to the sky,
Permit from their broad roofs sweet in the sun,
A solace in their hospitable thoughts,
Intent on home.
That was my thought, my Home!
And those dear memories that with thee build,
Like youth's first love throned in unfading light.
For like this Spring's soft sunshine, like the kiss
10
That never seem to bid farewell to day,
Safe in my heart is home with all its joys;
The blessed security of love that in one place
There, I am truly loved; and there no thought
Of usury upon the warm affections of the soul
Ever may come, no blinding doubt, no frost,
But in the laughing faces of our kin,
Glad in the children dear and matron blest,
And trust that knew no bane, we so shall live,
So die,—then gathered to our graves.
And see,
How quietly the dimpling river laves,
Safe in its pure seclusion, the green base
Of yonder hill, bleached to its core with shells,
Things of the Indian, who, in this retreat
Bent their small wigwams, when the spring's first thought
Jetted the shad up from the usurping sea,
And taught them near to lay their numerous spawn.
Gone, like those leaping fish, that Indian tribe,
Falling like autumn leaves drift o'er the soil,
11
The graceful deer, wild bear, and cumbrous moose.
To thoughtful eye, their arrow-heads appear,
Turned with the furrows of the farmer's plough,—
Or pestle smooth, or chisel sharp of slate,
And soap-stone pot, the heirlooms of a Race
That owned these lands.
So fared the fatal Indian,
So decayed, so fell like grasses unrenewed,
Down, where the white man builds. Thus drop the races,
Annihilate and spoiled, not to return.
Yet at their base the dimpling river laves,
Base of these low, lone hills. The blackbird's trill
Calls up his dusky mate, from the stiff twigs
Of copse, the Button-bush that brings no leaf
As yet, and on his wing the stripe of flame,
Darts like a crimson meteor o'er the blue.
On floating logs grave tortoises enjoy
The watery dream, for hope returns, to all,—
The everlasting hope returns with Spring.
Save that the Indian bow no longer twangs
12
The lonely tresses of the ambushed wood,
Even as for countless ages all pursue
The same immeasurable round. Why fear
The pangs of penury, the student's curse,—
Or love abandoned when some victim's heart
Tears up from thine its fibres, and so graves
A wake of living anguish in thy soul?
Why live and droop beneath the weight of woe,
That unsuccessful effort piles o'er pride,
Half measuring its strength, thence prone to earth
Hurled by self-accusation? Could not thou,
Leagued with the universal law pursue
Like it, a sympathetic journey;
Nor fail thy sunshine to the sun, as he
Ne'er to thee fails; bud as the laurel buds
Deep in the hidden swamp, like the pinxter
Hang flowers along the edges of the wood,
Where save the savage hunter none delights,
Or the green bittern brooding from the light?—
Alone, deserted? then art thou alone,
On some near hill-top, ere the orb of day
13
And far around thy sleeping race endow
With their oblivion the dim village roofs;
Nor yet the wakeful herdsman folds his kine
So to prolong their hours?
Alone, then listen hushed!
A living hymn awakes the studious air!
A myriad sounds that to one song converge,
As the added light shows the far hamlet
And the distant wood. These, are the voices
Of the unnumbered birds that fill the sphere
With their delicious harmony, prolonged
And ceaseless, so that at no time it dies,
Vanquishing the expectation by delay.
Still added notes, from the first Robin's 'larum
On the walnut's bough, to the Veery's flute,
Who from the furthest deep of the wet wood,
In martial trills rallies his liquid lay,
And the blithe whistling Oriole pours his joy.
O! mark the molten flecks along the skies
That move not, floating in those rosy heights
Of clear celestial radiance, so far pure
14
The English Turner, faintly them could picture.
Yet not this color, not these lovely forms,
That chiefly should engross and ask thy praise;
Rather the revelation of abiding grace
Continuous, as the morning's voice
Lifts up the chant of universal faith,
Perpetual newness and the health in things.
This, is the startling theme, the lovely birth
Each morn of a new day, so wholly new,
So absolutely penetrated by itself,
The fresh, the fair, the ever-living grace,—
The tender joy, that still forever clothes
This orb of Beauty, this, of bliss the abode!
Therefore, fling off poor slumberer, thy dark robe
Woven of night, ungird the dream-claspt brew,
And freely forth exulting in thy joy,
Launch out and taste the dewy twilight hour,
Come ere the latest stars have fled, ere dawn
Perfectly seen, unveil the outlined charm
Of bosky wood, deep dells, and odorous copse,
Where blazed with more than gold, some slow-drawn mist
Retreats its distant arm from the cool meads!
Forth, forth, and see what thou hast never seen,
Nor thought, nor in thy wildest fancy touched,
The charms of earliest life, the act of Love,
Still in each day repeated, when from the dark
And sleeping chaos sprang all fair, proud forms.
To even express in faintest hints this birth,
This resurrection of the buried earth,
This weaving of new garments in an hour
For our else naked orb, her fairest moment
In the whole long day, must fail the wariest hand.
Yet what these few faint touches may convey,
Be that conveyed.
Is it pure morning light,
And dewy dawn within thy soul upheld,
Who, from the world retired beholds the day,
Creep with slow fingers from the utmost verge
Of the remote horizon; notes of joy,
Do these prelude within thy thought new life,
When the thick cloud of being veiled in dust,
Drops its obscure concealments and renewed
Shoots like the eagle to new-risen orbs,
Far-spent upon the eternal cope?
Or dost thou never soar, and feebly soiled
With matter's low terrestrial cerements,
Conceal by them that dawn which in thy heart,
Gives prophecy of heaven?
These thoughts not here;
Our simple rustic garb for such befit not,—
More that soaring bard, rapt to a sphere beyond
Time's fallible. Rather, let us pursue
The shaded path, that in the thicket ends;
Where in the blueberry the Cat-bird builds
Shapely of twigs his nest, and mewing near
Proclaims his royal emeralds to all eyes.
Here would the mischief-loving boy, a pest,
Deal prompt confusion, dragging to earth,
Remorseless as the fates, the frail design;
Wreck in a moment the neat finished house,
And with capricious finger smash o'erjoyed
The oval of the egg, short funeral!
Nor trust to lesson him, with brass his nerves
Tight-twisted might appal whole decalogues.
That chiefly should engross and ask thy praise;
Rather the revelation of abiding grace
Continuous, as the morning's voice
Lifts up the chant of universal faith,
Perpetual newness and the health in things.
This, is the startling theme, the lovely birth
Each morn of a new day, so wholly new,
So absolutely penetrated by itself,
The fresh, the fair, the ever-living grace,—
The tender joy, that still forever clothes
This orb of Beauty, this, of bliss the abode!
Therefore, fling off poor slumberer, thy dark robe
Woven of night, ungird the dream-claspt brew,
And freely forth exulting in thy joy,
Launch out and taste the dewy twilight hour,
Come ere the latest stars have fled, ere dawn
Perfectly seen, unveil the outlined charm
Of bosky wood, deep dells, and odorous copse,
15
Retreats its distant arm from the cool meads!
Forth, forth, and see what thou hast never seen,
Nor thought, nor in thy wildest fancy touched,
The charms of earliest life, the act of Love,
Still in each day repeated, when from the dark
And sleeping chaos sprang all fair, proud forms.
To even express in faintest hints this birth,
This resurrection of the buried earth,
This weaving of new garments in an hour
For our else naked orb, her fairest moment
In the whole long day, must fail the wariest hand.
Yet what these few faint touches may convey,
Be that conveyed.
Is it pure morning light,
And dewy dawn within thy soul upheld,
Who, from the world retired beholds the day,
Creep with slow fingers from the utmost verge
Of the remote horizon; notes of joy,
Do these prelude within thy thought new life,
When the thick cloud of being veiled in dust,
16
Shoots like the eagle to new-risen orbs,
Far-spent upon the eternal cope?
Or dost thou never soar, and feebly soiled
With matter's low terrestrial cerements,
Conceal by them that dawn which in thy heart,
Gives prophecy of heaven?
These thoughts not here;
Our simple rustic garb for such befit not,—
More that soaring bard, rapt to a sphere beyond
Time's fallible. Rather, let us pursue
The shaded path, that in the thicket ends;
Where in the blueberry the Cat-bird builds
Shapely of twigs his nest, and mewing near
Proclaims his royal emeralds to all eyes.
Here would the mischief-loving boy, a pest,
Deal prompt confusion, dragging to earth,
Remorseless as the fates, the frail design;
Wreck in a moment the neat finished house,
And with capricious finger smash o'erjoyed
The oval of the egg, short funeral!
Nor trust to lesson him, with brass his nerves
17
Time is the cenotaph of things, of men.
Nature renews with touch incessant,—Death,—
Rears to decay, creates her round on round
Of still rejected being, scaling heaven,
To lay her vast perfection at its feet.
Numbers and dates, shoals of existences,
Myriads of ages to her hand are nought,—
Absolute artist in her least design
As in her greatest. With her rapid eye
She steals with lightning dash from worm to man,
Wriggles in the atom, walks along the brute,
Still to extend her still-extending plan.
Thou need not ask her, wherefore, why hawks
In mad descent dash at the sparrow's brain,
Or leaping pikes the little pikes engulf,—
Why in the volley of the surging main,
Man's fleets blow off like apples and o'erstrew
The Alps and Andes of the sunken world?
Not if she knew herself, where she was bent,
(That some have doubted) could she e'er reply.
Why should she answer,—thee?—or canst thou probe
With thy perfection, the unformed expanse
Of anxious fortune where thy being swims,
Even if its elements league with eternity,
And curvet on the blast sweeping the halls
Of the remotest heaven; or if the cup
Of thy existence vapours with the breath
That filled the clay, whence sprang all living forms?
With spines and veins, with hairs and nervatures,
Joints and articulations, leaves and cells,
She calls her varied creatures into space.
But what behind the ever-changeful thought,
If thus the checkers on her board arranged,
With what intention deals she her shrewd game,
And where shall man, feigning his ignorance
To be in league with her, at last arrive,—
Or is he but a leaf tossed on the wave
Creative, one more joint to pass along
To-morrow, to a meaner thing, a throw
Of her wise finger, then displaced.
Forbear!
Such speculation idling fools admit,
But in thy heart of hearts that truth discern,—
God to no worm denies his saving grace,
And in thy darkest hour of mental anguish,
Before his throne fall humbled, there fall,
With thy brief sorrow and thy infant thought,
Let drop the penury of self, and pray
That his true light that never set nor will
Upon the meanest, may o'erbloom thy dust,—
And heal the torture of thy narrow heart.
Nature renews with touch incessant,—Death,—
Rears to decay, creates her round on round
Of still rejected being, scaling heaven,
To lay her vast perfection at its feet.
Numbers and dates, shoals of existences,
Myriads of ages to her hand are nought,—
Absolute artist in her least design
As in her greatest. With her rapid eye
She steals with lightning dash from worm to man,
Wriggles in the atom, walks along the brute,
Still to extend her still-extending plan.
Thou need not ask her, wherefore, why hawks
In mad descent dash at the sparrow's brain,
Or leaping pikes the little pikes engulf,—
Why in the volley of the surging main,
Man's fleets blow off like apples and o'erstrew
The Alps and Andes of the sunken world?
Not if she knew herself, where she was bent,
(That some have doubted) could she e'er reply.
18
With thy perfection, the unformed expanse
Of anxious fortune where thy being swims,
Even if its elements league with eternity,
And curvet on the blast sweeping the halls
Of the remotest heaven; or if the cup
Of thy existence vapours with the breath
That filled the clay, whence sprang all living forms?
With spines and veins, with hairs and nervatures,
Joints and articulations, leaves and cells,
She calls her varied creatures into space.
But what behind the ever-changeful thought,
If thus the checkers on her board arranged,
With what intention deals she her shrewd game,
And where shall man, feigning his ignorance
To be in league with her, at last arrive,—
Or is he but a leaf tossed on the wave
Creative, one more joint to pass along
To-morrow, to a meaner thing, a throw
Of her wise finger, then displaced.
Forbear!
19
But in thy heart of hearts that truth discern,—
God to no worm denies his saving grace,
And in thy darkest hour of mental anguish,
Before his throne fall humbled, there fall,
With thy brief sorrow and thy infant thought,
Let drop the penury of self, and pray
That his true light that never set nor will
Upon the meanest, may o'erbloom thy dust,—
And heal the torture of thy narrow heart.
How like a girl that into maiden glides
The spring has melted into June! O how
She dashed her May of life away, and tied
Her long uncumbered tresses in these knots,
These neat confinèd braids that gird her brow,
Put off her girlish figure springing free,
Her loose attire half-gathered to a plan,
Soothed her capricious form panting with play,
And 'neath the trees her fair companions round
Told them this charming tale to end the day.
Could she not shout a little longer wild,
And in her dark and roguish eyes proclaim
The graver secret, that the half-staid girl
Carelessly cool reserves, when on her tongue,
As if a breath would from its tip, throw off
The sudden meaning? There's no stay to life,—
We thought to pause on May, to hold the world
One moment to itself, to keep her fast,
One long long joyous day, all Spring, and lo!
The foliaged June sways her soft drapery
O'er the waving mead, smiles in the grass,
And pranks Senecios on the side
Of the consumptive ditch.
Yet the Rice-bird,
From the murky south come speeding fast,
Flings from his yellow crown a pulse of heat,
And if the Blue-bird and his mellow trill,
(A kind of joy half-uttered) brings the year,
The hardy Bobolink profuse of notes
O'erflowing, deluges the liberal air,
Exuberant, as if his compact frame
Could not contain his sounds, but in his pang
Of never-ceasing melody his throat
Too rash distended, might defect and end
By one intense crescendo all his strain!
So, it is fabled, that in contest, rare,
The ambitious nightingale expires, her power
Crushed by some instrument that to man's touch,
Volumed a nobler music.
On every hand
Now wakes an insect world, raised from close sheaths,
Strange transformations and unnoticed silks,
Spun in low marshes by imperial worms.
Their scaly lances on the wood-path dash,
Glittering like men-at-arms, the Dragon-flies,
Nerved to the core, and Whirligigs in maze
Weave their continual circles o'er the pool
With their dusk boat-like bodies, things of joy.
Nor fail to note the thick Empheridæ,
That dance along the stream, food for a tribe
Almost as countless of quick-leaping fish.
The Swifts on cutting wing dash through the swarm,
And the familiar Swallow, poet birds.
There are no poor in Nature; only man,
And mostly he who lumbers in the train
Of the commercial city, pride of power,
Where from low allies and thick reeking lanes
The putrid mass of slow corruption breathes,
Infests the air, and with its sallow host
Spawns ragged children for as ragged sire.
Yet man, with his strange ills, deems himself first,—
Lord of the world, and calls the orbs his own,
Because with artificial eye he sweeps their round,
Poor phantom of an hour, graved in the dust;
While bee and beetle his interment make,
And even the owls from some perpetual oak
More stately and ancestral piles inhabit
Than all his short-span race!
But yesterday,
Our fathers pulled their boats ashore and touched
The rock, and now we are an empire, free,—
So free, so utterly free, that never,
No, not in Rome's barbaric hour, when slaves
Of lust, were garnered in from all her lands,
Did such a base and cruel wrong e'er soil
The purple of her conquerors, as spots
The unstained ermine of these blood-dyed States.
I speak of Afric's wrongs, unnumbered wrongs!
So that the summer o'er their wretched huts
Wakes but a fiercer fire of wild revenge,
And shrivels up the mind that rightly sees,
How yet that desolation must ensue,
Fruit of long-chosen sin that could be shunned,
But would not!
Not on the high road, not in dusty cars
Loud-thundering o'er their iron vertebræ,
Where in close boxes sweltering with the speed
Nod in newspaper dreams the broadcloth world;—
Nor with capricious haste of foaming steeds,
Essay thou, rather along the river's smooth
Untenanted domain gliding in peace,
Steal with soft fancies in a silent bark.
On every side the green contrivings wave,
The friendly Willows nodding all their plumes,
Carved Arrowheads and Calla broadly-leaved,
And burr-reed spined, nor slight the floating orbs,
Anchored companions of thy moving thought,
The life of lilies, where the Nuphar's disk
In richest yellow floats its gold repose,
And smaller yet as brave, the Kalmian buds.
O holy rest, O ripe tranquillity!
For who shall dream in what uncounted years,
These realms of peace e'er bent at ruin's knee,
Or when that primal burst, the ancient chaos
Racked these courteous aisles? Rather the arches,
Where the King-bird rears his grassy throne,
And strikes the nerve-fly, strong in tyrant-pride,
Amply excepted from the general roar,
When in the whirling war all seeds of things
Together mixt, shook to their base old empires,—
These soft scenes, wholly at peace still smiled,
As now they smile, and took the sunsets
In their peaceful arms and rocked them sleeping.
The spring has melted into June! O how
She dashed her May of life away, and tied
Her long uncumbered tresses in these knots,
These neat confinèd braids that gird her brow,
Put off her girlish figure springing free,
Her loose attire half-gathered to a plan,
Soothed her capricious form panting with play,
And 'neath the trees her fair companions round
Told them this charming tale to end the day.
Could she not shout a little longer wild,
And in her dark and roguish eyes proclaim
20
Carelessly cool reserves, when on her tongue,
As if a breath would from its tip, throw off
The sudden meaning? There's no stay to life,—
We thought to pause on May, to hold the world
One moment to itself, to keep her fast,
One long long joyous day, all Spring, and lo!
The foliaged June sways her soft drapery
O'er the waving mead, smiles in the grass,
And pranks Senecios on the side
Of the consumptive ditch.
Yet the Rice-bird,
From the murky south come speeding fast,
Flings from his yellow crown a pulse of heat,
And if the Blue-bird and his mellow trill,
(A kind of joy half-uttered) brings the year,
The hardy Bobolink profuse of notes
O'erflowing, deluges the liberal air,
Exuberant, as if his compact frame
Could not contain his sounds, but in his pang
Of never-ceasing melody his throat
Too rash distended, might defect and end
By one intense crescendo all his strain!
21
The ambitious nightingale expires, her power
Crushed by some instrument that to man's touch,
Volumed a nobler music.
On every hand
Now wakes an insect world, raised from close sheaths,
Strange transformations and unnoticed silks,
Spun in low marshes by imperial worms.
Their scaly lances on the wood-path dash,
Glittering like men-at-arms, the Dragon-flies,
Nerved to the core, and Whirligigs in maze
Weave their continual circles o'er the pool
With their dusk boat-like bodies, things of joy.
Nor fail to note the thick Empheridæ,
That dance along the stream, food for a tribe
Almost as countless of quick-leaping fish.
The Swifts on cutting wing dash through the swarm,
And the familiar Swallow, poet birds.
There are no poor in Nature; only man,
And mostly he who lumbers in the train
Of the commercial city, pride of power,
Where from low allies and thick reeking lanes
22
Infests the air, and with its sallow host
Spawns ragged children for as ragged sire.
Yet man, with his strange ills, deems himself first,—
Lord of the world, and calls the orbs his own,
Because with artificial eye he sweeps their round,
Poor phantom of an hour, graved in the dust;
While bee and beetle his interment make,
And even the owls from some perpetual oak
More stately and ancestral piles inhabit
Than all his short-span race!
But yesterday,
Our fathers pulled their boats ashore and touched
The rock, and now we are an empire, free,—
So free, so utterly free, that never,
No, not in Rome's barbaric hour, when slaves
Of lust, were garnered in from all her lands,
Did such a base and cruel wrong e'er soil
The purple of her conquerors, as spots
The unstained ermine of these blood-dyed States.
I speak of Afric's wrongs, unnumbered wrongs!
So that the summer o'er their wretched huts
23
And shrivels up the mind that rightly sees,
How yet that desolation must ensue,
Fruit of long-chosen sin that could be shunned,
But would not!
Not on the high road, not in dusty cars
Loud-thundering o'er their iron vertebræ,
Where in close boxes sweltering with the speed
Nod in newspaper dreams the broadcloth world;—
Nor with capricious haste of foaming steeds,
Essay thou, rather along the river's smooth
Untenanted domain gliding in peace,
Steal with soft fancies in a silent bark.
On every side the green contrivings wave,
The friendly Willows nodding all their plumes,
Carved Arrowheads and Calla broadly-leaved,
And burr-reed spined, nor slight the floating orbs,
Anchored companions of thy moving thought,
The life of lilies, where the Nuphar's disk
In richest yellow floats its gold repose,
And smaller yet as brave, the Kalmian buds.
O holy rest, O ripe tranquillity!
24
These realms of peace e'er bent at ruin's knee,
Or when that primal burst, the ancient chaos
Racked these courteous aisles? Rather the arches,
Where the King-bird rears his grassy throne,
And strikes the nerve-fly, strong in tyrant-pride,
Amply excepted from the general roar,
When in the whirling war all seeds of things
Together mixt, shook to their base old empires,—
These soft scenes, wholly at peace still smiled,
As now they smile, and took the sunsets
In their peaceful arms and rocked them sleeping.
Here, thing eternal, day begins not, ends not!
And the night stealing half-ushered in,
Steeps in the trembling wave her pillowed stars,
Or with pellucid silver tints the wake
Of the retiring moon, when from her couch
She half withdraws, like some faint nymph
Flushed by the hunter's horn, her bath profaned.
Time nowise here, her rapine wakes, nor save
The spray-voiced toad or bull-frog deep, whose music
Half-finished, e'er it folds the ear,
The weary question of the living bears.
Nor can you here, voluptuous worldling,
Flaunt your silken train, nor in your gay
And Cleopatra-barges bear away
The old simplicity that breathes in things
Nought but the solitary fisher comes,
More like a weedy tuft than living man,
Lest he should lose his finny prey,
And half-concealed along the green copse side,
Or on the shore unmoving calmly spread,
Mimics the maple-stump and core of soil.
Strange fisherman! whose highest aim may soar
To whirl the pickerel on the grassy bank,—
With watery shoe unconscious of a leak,
Or hot rheumatic thrill or opulent gout
That rides the turtle-lord and shrieks his knell,—
Thou seem'st to own this world, and to despise
The lesser fry who dart about thy lines.
So that the brassy court-bell dinging clear,
Or whirr of engine-wheel, or news from wars,
Where o'er Crimea's fields the Tartar horde
Pours a red freshet on the Saxon steel,
Cannot distract thy cane-pole;—not old Greece
And all its pale, departing history,
Or that in later days they dream Rome was,
Or nearer conscious England, Shakspeare's tomb,
Thee worry;—so bite the fish, thy conquest.
Nor think his strange morality, a jest,
Superior beggar! who in Court or Church,
With braying tongue and curt suspicious eye
Demands romantic homage! think him not,
This ragged fisher, 'neath thy empty state.
What more hast thou, Life, Death, the Infinite,
Above unbounded Heaven, beneath old Earth,
And may be less repose of mind than he,
More aching emptiness, not more content,
And far more self-deception.
If it stood
So that the aspiring crowd, who with their pride,
Declare their thoughts are nice, and coax them down,
Lay o'er these fields long roads, proclaim club law,
And summon lesser virtues to their thrones,—
If these were all, if camp and church were all,
And broadcloth might decapitate green baize,
Then truly we were doomed, and life a dungeon.
With these clerks for bolts, into one slumber
All the social train softly might fall,
And creep supine beneath their awful knees,
Adore their wit, and pray the newspaper
To intermit one afternoon, next year, for sports.
But while the fisher dreams, or greasy gunner
Lank with ebon locks shies o'er the fences,
And cracks down the birds, game-law forgot,
And still upon the outskirts of the town,
A tawny tribe denudes the cranberry-bed,—
Or life remains, we still shall sign, that Time
Is not all sold like grains to the forestaller;—
Still that we, even as the Indian did,
Clasp palm to nature's palm, and pressure close
Deal with the infinite.
Thy estimate?
And wherefore is that thine, my moralist?
Or lays her eggs along the sandy shore
The painted Tortoise by thy section one,
Or on the naked oak long by the blow
Of splintering lightning leafless, does our bird
The white-crowned Osprey read thy paper code,
Sauce to his pouts?
And who shall scale the Heaven,
And with his microscopic eye
Discern, wherefore the Laurel pale adorns
The deep-set swamp fenced by declivities
And sombre woods, where the fierce Hen-hawk screams,
And Screech-owls rear from dusky egg the young?
Why not in trim parterres or shaven lawn,
Or the gay sunshine of the grassy meads?
Flowers of humanity! do ye too ope
Your soft attractions in the lonely shade,
Where the deep sphagnum coats a spongy soil,
And the old spruces hung with lichens gray,
Strive to outlast the annals of our race?
Thou didst not carve the flowers, Philosopher!
Thou, nor thy creed, thy saws, or reasoning forms,
Bred in the lazaar-house of Thought, and shade
Of tedious questions, dull and pale, fungi
Of the Understanding, mere type of Fruit.
O rather learn of the lone laurel, learn
To intermit unprofitable shows,
And harbor God's retirement in thy soul.
And the night stealing half-ushered in,
Steeps in the trembling wave her pillowed stars,
Or with pellucid silver tints the wake
Of the retiring moon, when from her couch
She half withdraws, like some faint nymph
Flushed by the hunter's horn, her bath profaned.
Time nowise here, her rapine wakes, nor save
The spray-voiced toad or bull-frog deep, whose music
25
The weary question of the living bears.
Nor can you here, voluptuous worldling,
Flaunt your silken train, nor in your gay
And Cleopatra-barges bear away
The old simplicity that breathes in things
Nought but the solitary fisher comes,
More like a weedy tuft than living man,
Lest he should lose his finny prey,
And half-concealed along the green copse side,
Or on the shore unmoving calmly spread,
Mimics the maple-stump and core of soil.
Strange fisherman! whose highest aim may soar
To whirl the pickerel on the grassy bank,—
With watery shoe unconscious of a leak,
Or hot rheumatic thrill or opulent gout
That rides the turtle-lord and shrieks his knell,—
Thou seem'st to own this world, and to despise
The lesser fry who dart about thy lines.
So that the brassy court-bell dinging clear,
Or whirr of engine-wheel, or news from wars,
Where o'er Crimea's fields the Tartar horde
26
Cannot distract thy cane-pole;—not old Greece
And all its pale, departing history,
Or that in later days they dream Rome was,
Or nearer conscious England, Shakspeare's tomb,
Thee worry;—so bite the fish, thy conquest.
Nor think his strange morality, a jest,
Superior beggar! who in Court or Church,
With braying tongue and curt suspicious eye
Demands romantic homage! think him not,
This ragged fisher, 'neath thy empty state.
What more hast thou, Life, Death, the Infinite,
Above unbounded Heaven, beneath old Earth,
And may be less repose of mind than he,
More aching emptiness, not more content,
And far more self-deception.
If it stood
So that the aspiring crowd, who with their pride,
Declare their thoughts are nice, and coax them down,
Lay o'er these fields long roads, proclaim club law,
And summon lesser virtues to their thrones,—
If these were all, if camp and church were all,
27
Then truly we were doomed, and life a dungeon.
With these clerks for bolts, into one slumber
All the social train softly might fall,
And creep supine beneath their awful knees,
Adore their wit, and pray the newspaper
To intermit one afternoon, next year, for sports.
But while the fisher dreams, or greasy gunner
Lank with ebon locks shies o'er the fences,
And cracks down the birds, game-law forgot,
And still upon the outskirts of the town,
A tawny tribe denudes the cranberry-bed,—
Or life remains, we still shall sign, that Time
Is not all sold like grains to the forestaller;—
Still that we, even as the Indian did,
Clasp palm to nature's palm, and pressure close
Deal with the infinite.
Thy estimate?
And wherefore is that thine, my moralist?
Or lays her eggs along the sandy shore
The painted Tortoise by thy section one,
Or on the naked oak long by the blow
28
The white-crowned Osprey read thy paper code,
Sauce to his pouts?
And who shall scale the Heaven,
And with his microscopic eye
Discern, wherefore the Laurel pale adorns
The deep-set swamp fenced by declivities
And sombre woods, where the fierce Hen-hawk screams,
And Screech-owls rear from dusky egg the young?
Why not in trim parterres or shaven lawn,
Or the gay sunshine of the grassy meads?
Flowers of humanity! do ye too ope
Your soft attractions in the lonely shade,
Where the deep sphagnum coats a spongy soil,
And the old spruces hung with lichens gray,
Strive to outlast the annals of our race?
Thou didst not carve the flowers, Philosopher!
Thou, nor thy creed, thy saws, or reasoning forms,
Bred in the lazaar-house of Thought, and shade
Of tedious questions, dull and pale, fungi
Of the Understanding, mere type of Fruit.
29
To intermit unprofitable shows,
And harbor God's retirement in thy soul.
Then, let us read in June, Boccaccio's stories,
Told in gardens fair hard by Firenze's walls,
And Shakspeare's mind, here we shall dedicate
To a new purpose, vowed to ampler homage.
Now, let us renew our vows to all delights,
That grow from noble roots, enhance the day,
And turn its passing glories to high purpose.—
She cannot fail us, nature cannot fail,
God's just expression through unrivalled form.
And if the shallow worldling may not join
With our true reverence for God's noble works,
Thoughts of religion, still let us endue
The transitory moment with that bloom,
That on the fruit of Paradise shows purple,—
Color unfading, tint of cloudless skies,
Sapphire and amethyst of burnished spheres,
That ope their crystalline beyond Time's grave.
He shall not mock us, ne'er shall he deceive,—
Nature's progenitor, who from the first,
O'er all presiding still reneweth all!
Told in gardens fair hard by Firenze's walls,
And Shakspeare's mind, here we shall dedicate
To a new purpose, vowed to ampler homage.
Now, let us renew our vows to all delights,
That grow from noble roots, enhance the day,
And turn its passing glories to high purpose.—
She cannot fail us, nature cannot fail,
God's just expression through unrivalled form.
And if the shallow worldling may not join
With our true reverence for God's noble works,
Thoughts of religion, still let us endue
The transitory moment with that bloom,
That on the fruit of Paradise shows purple,—
Color unfading, tint of cloudless skies,
Sapphire and amethyst of burnished spheres,
That ope their crystalline beyond Time's grave.
He shall not mock us, ne'er shall he deceive,—
Nature's progenitor, who from the first,
30
I see Rudolpho, cross our honest fields,
Collapsed with thought, cool as the Stagyrite
At intellectual problems; mastering
Day after day part of the world's concern.
Still adding to his list, beetle and bee,—
Of what the Vireo builds a pensile nest,
And why the Peetweet drops her giant egg
In wheezing meadows, odorous with sweet brake.
Nor welcome dawns, nor shrinking nights him menace,
Still girt about for observation, yet
Keen to pursue the devious lanes that lead
To knowledge oft so dearly bought.
For ne'er
Can nature give her secrets without toil,
And long inquiry and an anxious heart;
So that Rudolpho, like the midnight watch,
With eye and ear each strained to their full tension,
Thought and feeling bent keen on one purpose,
Who wonders that the flesh declines to grow
Along his sallow pits, or that his life
To social pleasure careless, pines away
In dry seclusion and unfruitful shade?
Martyr! for eye too sharp and ear too fine,
Hero of facts, who fills his pouch with all
Such life can furnish to a surface-fly,
I must admire thy brave apprenticeship,
To these dry forages, if the worldling
Laugh in his sleeve at thy compelled devotion,
And declare, an accidental stroke
Surpassed whole æons of Rudolpho's file.
Press out the cream of learning, cast away
The nicer sensibilities that fret
The o'er-passioned heart, and eat thy crust
Of brown unleavened dough off platters pine,
Wherewith a grosser cook might light his fire;—
Dust off the film of flattery and ambition,
Drown old conventions in thy acid wit,
Nor leave a peg whereon to hang the times!
So shalt thou learn, Rudolpho, as thou walk'st,
More from the winding lanes where nature leaves
Her unaspiring creatures, and surpass
In some fine saunter her declivity.
Why beats that court-bell on the liquid air
Of June's translucent prime, what caitiffs hold
Base trials in the smug design of wood,
Where sallow prisoners haled from grated walls,—
Dark cells and close confines of misery
Blink at the open daylight unconfined,
Or callous to their doom demand contempt?
Was it for this, he grew, yon thick-browed Murderer
In his mother's arms, nurst in her road-side
Cottage 'neath old elms, umbrageous place,—
And there his boyish days brought to the lore
That liberal nature shares amid the poor,—
Gave to a parent's heart its pulse of joy,
Bade elders smile to mark his urchin trick,
Promise fair for virtue; and for this, he
Walked along the adult's path and took
Another to his side as wife and friend,—
To end in this, felled in the dust ere dead?
Driven by the slave-whip, in dark passion's power,
He struck his bosom friend a murderous blow,
And now where's human sympathy? Will one
Lament, when the dread sentence from the mouth
Of some oblivious Judge, slow-falling, shears
Away ere dead, his once delightful form?
Yes! still in another heart, he lives, a life
Incessant; a simple girl, bride in her soul,
Wears faithfully her crown, and fears his name
Lest on his children's ear its presage fall.
And should not jar the ear that brassy peal,
Summoning these fearful woes to human hearts?
Collapsed with thought, cool as the Stagyrite
At intellectual problems; mastering
Day after day part of the world's concern.
Still adding to his list, beetle and bee,—
Of what the Vireo builds a pensile nest,
And why the Peetweet drops her giant egg
In wheezing meadows, odorous with sweet brake.
Nor welcome dawns, nor shrinking nights him menace,
Still girt about for observation, yet
Keen to pursue the devious lanes that lead
To knowledge oft so dearly bought.
For ne'er
Can nature give her secrets without toil,
And long inquiry and an anxious heart;
So that Rudolpho, like the midnight watch,
With eye and ear each strained to their full tension,
Thought and feeling bent keen on one purpose,
Who wonders that the flesh declines to grow
Along his sallow pits, or that his life
31
In dry seclusion and unfruitful shade?
Martyr! for eye too sharp and ear too fine,
Hero of facts, who fills his pouch with all
Such life can furnish to a surface-fly,
I must admire thy brave apprenticeship,
To these dry forages, if the worldling
Laugh in his sleeve at thy compelled devotion,
And declare, an accidental stroke
Surpassed whole æons of Rudolpho's file.
Press out the cream of learning, cast away
The nicer sensibilities that fret
The o'er-passioned heart, and eat thy crust
Of brown unleavened dough off platters pine,
Wherewith a grosser cook might light his fire;—
Dust off the film of flattery and ambition,
Drown old conventions in thy acid wit,
Nor leave a peg whereon to hang the times!
So shalt thou learn, Rudolpho, as thou walk'st,
More from the winding lanes where nature leaves
Her unaspiring creatures, and surpass
In some fine saunter her declivity.
32
Of June's translucent prime, what caitiffs hold
Base trials in the smug design of wood,
Where sallow prisoners haled from grated walls,—
Dark cells and close confines of misery
Blink at the open daylight unconfined,
Or callous to their doom demand contempt?
Was it for this, he grew, yon thick-browed Murderer
In his mother's arms, nurst in her road-side
Cottage 'neath old elms, umbrageous place,—
And there his boyish days brought to the lore
That liberal nature shares amid the poor,—
Gave to a parent's heart its pulse of joy,
Bade elders smile to mark his urchin trick,
Promise fair for virtue; and for this, he
Walked along the adult's path and took
Another to his side as wife and friend,—
To end in this, felled in the dust ere dead?
Driven by the slave-whip, in dark passion's power,
He struck his bosom friend a murderous blow,
And now where's human sympathy? Will one
33
Of some oblivious Judge, slow-falling, shears
Away ere dead, his once delightful form?
Yes! still in another heart, he lives, a life
Incessant; a simple girl, bride in her soul,
Wears faithfully her crown, and fears his name
Lest on his children's ear its presage fall.
And should not jar the ear that brassy peal,
Summoning these fearful woes to human hearts?
O rather would I hear in murmur slow,
The dying cadence of some funeral bell,
With melancholy echoes far
That lapse to silence, for the good man's soul,
Who, after a long life of righteous deeds,
Now has laid down the burden of his age,
And fitly summoned to his fathers, sleeps
With them, along the green hill-side. Such peal,
Methinks, need not disturb our dim retreats,
The depth of shaded forests robed in night,
Or the true faces of the upland hills,
Where nature wears even in her winter shroud
A look of joy, and calm content, unfading!
Let me hear that solemn-stealing bell,
And pause a moment in the whirling tide,
That bears me headlong on to the still regions
Where our fathers sleep, and reign o'er silence;
Let me reverence their lives, and so prepare
My soul, for higher duties.
If thy heart,
Pained by humanity, desire retreat,
This, thou may find and undisturbed secure,
Near the calm bosom of the inland pond,
For storms too sheltered and for forms too free,
Where no vexatious villa greets the eye,
Or blazing chateau proud with whited walls.
Here, save the lone Kingfisher rattling o'er,
Belted with blue, and half an azure wave,
Or the great Northern diver, laughing bird,
Saluting with her lonely peals the shore,
Nought thee shall trouble; here thou canst repose
And dream away the pains of ardent life,
Forego ambition and the world's applause,
Stretching along the bank, fanned by the wind
That even in summer heats, from the cool surface
Quaffs a breath of life, forget thy madness,
Thy contriving wit, that made thee stoop
To things beneath thyself. Around, the woods
Lift up most ample canopies; old Pines,
Yellow with spendthrift lichens, whispering groves
Where youthful Birches frolic in their prime,
And ever-graceful Maples with light leaves
That turn the zephyr's kiss. Nor fail to mark
The distant vision of the Hill-top blue,
Where through the trees a vista opening far,
Lets in a line of landscape on thy thought,
And shows its moral by a fairer scene,
More beautiful with distance.
No palace,
Rich in all Italia's art, e'er showed
Like this calm pond, a store of rivalries.
As if resolved, to outdo the bank,
The tranquil wave reflects in its deep bosom,
Or sleeping rock or soft and shaded hill,
More perfected than in their real shape.
So Nature plays the artist and defies
Human ambition to surpass her skill.
Here, sometimes gliding in his peaceful skiff
Climéne sails, heir of the World, and notes
In his perception that no thing escapes,
Each varying pulse along Life's arteries,
Both what she half resolves and half effects,
As well as her whole purpose.
To his eye,
The stars of many a midnight heaven
Have beamed tokens of love, types of the Soul,
And lifted him to more primeval natures,
Than adorn the lower sphere. He saw
In those far-moving barks on heaven's sea,
Radiates of force, and while he moved from man,
Lost on the eternal billow, still his heart
Beat with some natural fondness for his race.
Kind egotist, who still pursuing Art,
Turned with a half-felt joy to lesser things!
In other lands, they might have worshipt him,
Nations had stood and blocked their chariot wheels
At his approach, and cities stooped beneath his foot!
But here, in our vast wilderness he walks
Alone (if 'tis to be alone), when stars
And breath of summer mountain-airs and morn,
And the wild music of the untempered sea,
Consort with human genius, for his soul,—
Climéne's soul leagues with these sources,
These informing depths, and his pure mould
Was laid, in the great sunshine, of the universe.
O could not thou revere, bold Stranger, prone
To inly smile and chide at human power,
Our humble fields and lowly stooping hills,—
Yellow with Johnswort, bright with Blue-eyed grass,
When thou shall learn that here Climéne trod,
Here thought and from these modest surfaces
Plucked fruits of Hesperides.
Who are the great?
They, who compose the current of the state,—
War's conquerors, radiant with rapine,
Bleeding in their seats so that the longest peace
Can never still their memories, or they
Who build leagues of oblivion and their tombs,
Commercial cities! fettering the poor;
Or noisy babblers, in the weary halls
Where legislation crowns her acts with wind,
Or far beyond, Mechanics, who displace
Aged exertion with inventive skill;
Or rather he, whose Thought girds in the whole,
And like a sentinel on the outpost of time
Challenges Eternity and bids it speak?
I know not, let the world decide; but life
I feel, is never spent in vain, that leads
Man to revere himself and so his aim,
Be to rise higher towards the social good,
And so exalt at once with him, mankind.
The dying cadence of some funeral bell,
With melancholy echoes far
That lapse to silence, for the good man's soul,
Who, after a long life of righteous deeds,
Now has laid down the burden of his age,
And fitly summoned to his fathers, sleeps
With them, along the green hill-side. Such peal,
Methinks, need not disturb our dim retreats,
The depth of shaded forests robed in night,
Or the true faces of the upland hills,
Where nature wears even in her winter shroud
34
Let me hear that solemn-stealing bell,
And pause a moment in the whirling tide,
That bears me headlong on to the still regions
Where our fathers sleep, and reign o'er silence;
Let me reverence their lives, and so prepare
My soul, for higher duties.
If thy heart,
Pained by humanity, desire retreat,
This, thou may find and undisturbed secure,
Near the calm bosom of the inland pond,
For storms too sheltered and for forms too free,
Where no vexatious villa greets the eye,
Or blazing chateau proud with whited walls.
Here, save the lone Kingfisher rattling o'er,
Belted with blue, and half an azure wave,
Or the great Northern diver, laughing bird,
Saluting with her lonely peals the shore,
Nought thee shall trouble; here thou canst repose
And dream away the pains of ardent life,
Forego ambition and the world's applause,
Stretching along the bank, fanned by the wind
That even in summer heats, from the cool surface
35
Thy contriving wit, that made thee stoop
To things beneath thyself. Around, the woods
Lift up most ample canopies; old Pines,
Yellow with spendthrift lichens, whispering groves
Where youthful Birches frolic in their prime,
And ever-graceful Maples with light leaves
That turn the zephyr's kiss. Nor fail to mark
The distant vision of the Hill-top blue,
Where through the trees a vista opening far,
Lets in a line of landscape on thy thought,
And shows its moral by a fairer scene,
More beautiful with distance.
No palace,
Rich in all Italia's art, e'er showed
Like this calm pond, a store of rivalries.
As if resolved, to outdo the bank,
The tranquil wave reflects in its deep bosom,
Or sleeping rock or soft and shaded hill,
More perfected than in their real shape.
So Nature plays the artist and defies
Human ambition to surpass her skill.
36
Climéne sails, heir of the World, and notes
In his perception that no thing escapes,
Each varying pulse along Life's arteries,
Both what she half resolves and half effects,
As well as her whole purpose.
To his eye,
The stars of many a midnight heaven
Have beamed tokens of love, types of the Soul,
And lifted him to more primeval natures,
Than adorn the lower sphere. He saw
In those far-moving barks on heaven's sea,
Radiates of force, and while he moved from man,
Lost on the eternal billow, still his heart
Beat with some natural fondness for his race.
Kind egotist, who still pursuing Art,
Turned with a half-felt joy to lesser things!
In other lands, they might have worshipt him,
Nations had stood and blocked their chariot wheels
At his approach, and cities stooped beneath his foot!
But here, in our vast wilderness he walks
Alone (if 'tis to be alone), when stars
37
And the wild music of the untempered sea,
Consort with human genius, for his soul,—
Climéne's soul leagues with these sources,
These informing depths, and his pure mould
Was laid, in the great sunshine, of the universe.
O could not thou revere, bold Stranger, prone
To inly smile and chide at human power,
Our humble fields and lowly stooping hills,—
Yellow with Johnswort, bright with Blue-eyed grass,
When thou shall learn that here Climéne trod,
Here thought and from these modest surfaces
Plucked fruits of Hesperides.
Who are the great?
They, who compose the current of the state,—
War's conquerors, radiant with rapine,
Bleeding in their seats so that the longest peace
Can never still their memories, or they
Who build leagues of oblivion and their tombs,
Commercial cities! fettering the poor;
Or noisy babblers, in the weary halls
Where legislation crowns her acts with wind,
38
Aged exertion with inventive skill;
Or rather he, whose Thought girds in the whole,
And like a sentinel on the outpost of time
Challenges Eternity and bids it speak?
I know not, let the world decide; but life
I feel, is never spent in vain, that leads
Man to revere himself and so his aim,
Be to rise higher towards the social good,
And so exalt at once with him, mankind.
But if these July fervors sere thy brain,
Parch up thy heart and turn thee to a coal,
Then, rather seek the Sea's capacious verge.
There, stretch at length upon the ocean brink,
On some all-crowning headland, while the wind
Blows cool from off the bay, renew thy strength,
And coping with the element itself
Enjoy the exhilarating bath.
Vigor and pulse shall animate thy frame,
Caught from the wholesome perfume of the main,
New life and new emotions linking thine
To the vast spaces of the untrammelled deep.
Parch up thy heart and turn thee to a coal,
Then, rather seek the Sea's capacious verge.
There, stretch at length upon the ocean brink,
On some all-crowning headland, while the wind
Blows cool from off the bay, renew thy strength,
And coping with the element itself
Enjoy the exhilarating bath.
Vigor and pulse shall animate thy frame,
Caught from the wholesome perfume of the main,
New life and new emotions linking thine
39
Survey the sliding sands, that down the bank
Ever precipitate, next snatched away
By ceaseless waves, so lead a moving life,
Now for a little fixed to mother earth,
Then sweeping far, erect new shoals whereon
The hapless Mariner his chart revoked,
Sleeps his perpetual sleep! The tide-wave,
Whose strange vigor rolls the breaker onward,
Knows no pause, no halt, ever renewed the same,
Curling transparent to long lines of foam
When softer airs dally with summer hours,
Next hurled in surges like a cannonade,
Where worlds in contest join, battles the coast,
Tossing the ship a pebble in its palm.
Strange creature, unsuggestive element!
Forever from the mind that cannot fix
Thy form in horizontal grandeur vast,
Still without likeness, swept; I see the ships,
A never-ending company desert
Their places, onward, out of sight, and feel
That were it not for what there is of life,
Of human life and human hope in them,
But for thy freshening airs, consummate Sea!
And endless beauty and provoking change,
Thou wert a lonely waste.
And yet I link
With thee, fathomless Ocean, that dear child!
A summer child, flower of the world,
Rosalba! for like thee, she has no bound
Or limit to her beauty, framed to spell
Words that the gods might copy; Venus-zoned
She rather, like thy billows, bends with grace.
Nor deem the Grecian fable all a myth,
That Aphrodité from a shell appeared,
Soft spanned upon the wave, for o'er thy heart,
Unheeding stranger! thus Rosalba falls,
And by one entrance on thy privacy
Unrolls the mysteries, and gives them tongue.
Dearest Rosalba! could a clumsy hand
Or paint or shape thy image, thou, who art
Not only fair but good, not only good but true,
Not borrowing from artificial plans thy virtue;
Rather, like the sun that all things warms,
Life in thyself, breath of humanities
That take their rise from milky natures,
Soft and fine and pure, refined so far
Beyond all touch of art, or word of praise,
That an interior sunlight tones thy days
To one profound contentment. O my child!
Child of the poet's thought, if ever God
Made any creature that could thee surpass,—
The lightest sunset cloud that purpling swims
Across the zenith's lake, the foam of seas,
The roses when they paint the green sand-wastes
Of the remotest Cape, or hour ere dawn,
I cannot fathom it; how thou art made,
How these attempered elements that in the mass
Run to confusion and exhale in fault,
Beget all monstrous passions and dark thoughts,
Or slow contriving malice or cold spite,
Or leagues of dulness self persuaded rare,
Or old delusion in the maiden's breast,—
Should rise in thee like the vast ocean's grace,
Ne'er to be bounded by my heart or hope,
Yet ever decorous, modest and complete.
Forgive me, O most beautiful, if I have sinned,
If e'er one feeling in my heart had place,
To link thee to myself! Forgive this song,
That here presumptuous I should name thy name,
Or feebly dare to celebrate thy charm!
Rose on her cheeks, are roses in her heart,
And softer on the earth her footstep falls
Than earliest twilight airs across the wave,
While in her heart the unfathomed sea of love,
Its never-ceasing tide pours onward.—
Ever precipitate, next snatched away
By ceaseless waves, so lead a moving life,
Now for a little fixed to mother earth,
Then sweeping far, erect new shoals whereon
The hapless Mariner his chart revoked,
Sleeps his perpetual sleep! The tide-wave,
Whose strange vigor rolls the breaker onward,
Knows no pause, no halt, ever renewed the same,
Curling transparent to long lines of foam
When softer airs dally with summer hours,
Next hurled in surges like a cannonade,
Where worlds in contest join, battles the coast,
Tossing the ship a pebble in its palm.
Strange creature, unsuggestive element!
Forever from the mind that cannot fix
Thy form in horizontal grandeur vast,
Still without likeness, swept; I see the ships,
A never-ending company desert
Their places, onward, out of sight, and feel
40
Of human life and human hope in them,
But for thy freshening airs, consummate Sea!
And endless beauty and provoking change,
Thou wert a lonely waste.
And yet I link
With thee, fathomless Ocean, that dear child!
A summer child, flower of the world,
Rosalba! for like thee, she has no bound
Or limit to her beauty, framed to spell
Words that the gods might copy; Venus-zoned
She rather, like thy billows, bends with grace.
Nor deem the Grecian fable all a myth,
That Aphrodité from a shell appeared,
Soft spanned upon the wave, for o'er thy heart,
Unheeding stranger! thus Rosalba falls,
And by one entrance on thy privacy
Unrolls the mysteries, and gives them tongue.
Dearest Rosalba! could a clumsy hand
Or paint or shape thy image, thou, who art
Not only fair but good, not only good but true,
Not borrowing from artificial plans thy virtue;
41
Life in thyself, breath of humanities
That take their rise from milky natures,
Soft and fine and pure, refined so far
Beyond all touch of art, or word of praise,
That an interior sunlight tones thy days
To one profound contentment. O my child!
Child of the poet's thought, if ever God
Made any creature that could thee surpass,—
The lightest sunset cloud that purpling swims
Across the zenith's lake, the foam of seas,
The roses when they paint the green sand-wastes
Of the remotest Cape, or hour ere dawn,
I cannot fathom it; how thou art made,
How these attempered elements that in the mass
Run to confusion and exhale in fault,
Beget all monstrous passions and dark thoughts,
Or slow contriving malice or cold spite,
Or leagues of dulness self persuaded rare,
Or old delusion in the maiden's breast,—
Should rise in thee like the vast ocean's grace,
Ne'er to be bounded by my heart or hope,
42
Forgive me, O most beautiful, if I have sinned,
If e'er one feeling in my heart had place,
To link thee to myself! Forgive this song,
That here presumptuous I should name thy name,
Or feebly dare to celebrate thy charm!
Rose on her cheeks, are roses in her heart,
And softer on the earth her footstep falls
Than earliest twilight airs across the wave,
While in her heart the unfathomed sea of love,
Its never-ceasing tide pours onward.—
Yet if those high and echoing shores thee please not,
Seek again the tranquil river's bank.
July evokes new splendor o'er the stream,
In dulcet figures and diviner forms.
Yet more than all the Water-lily's pomp,
That star of creamy perfume, born to be
Consoler of thy solitary hours.
In vast profusion from the store of pads,
They floating rise, with their fine beauty decked,
The habitation of an insect host,
That here pursue and steal the core away.
Nor slight the Pickerel-weed, whose violet shaft
Completes the tall reed's beauty and endows
With a contrasted harmony, the shore.
No work of human art could faintly tell,
Much less repeat in words or colors, all
The unnoticed lustre of these summer plants,
The floating palaces of anchored orbs,
And spikes of untold beauty crowning earth,
Where save the lonely sportsman or some soul
Wandering from heated life and sick of toil,
No creature glides of human shape. Yet here
The Muskrat swims, and pout and perch display
Their arrowy swiftness, as the minnows dart
And break the filmy surface of the pool,
And the high-colored Bream, the fish of gems,
Their circular nests scoop from the yellow sand.
Nay, do not ask why was this beauty lavished
On these spots, do not believe that love in vain
Is poured upon the solitude, nor deem
Absence of Human life, absence of all!
Why is not here an answer to thy thought,
Contriving man, rearing the court-house,
Or rich pulpits lined, or deemest thou the charm
Of endless beauty might not thee avail,
More than a stuccoed wall where pictures hang,
Or rattling street, or state and camp, and town.
Seek again the tranquil river's bank.
July evokes new splendor o'er the stream,
In dulcet figures and diviner forms.
Yet more than all the Water-lily's pomp,
That star of creamy perfume, born to be
Consoler of thy solitary hours.
In vast profusion from the store of pads,
They floating rise, with their fine beauty decked,
The habitation of an insect host,
43
Nor slight the Pickerel-weed, whose violet shaft
Completes the tall reed's beauty and endows
With a contrasted harmony, the shore.
No work of human art could faintly tell,
Much less repeat in words or colors, all
The unnoticed lustre of these summer plants,
The floating palaces of anchored orbs,
And spikes of untold beauty crowning earth,
Where save the lonely sportsman or some soul
Wandering from heated life and sick of toil,
No creature glides of human shape. Yet here
The Muskrat swims, and pout and perch display
Their arrowy swiftness, as the minnows dart
And break the filmy surface of the pool,
And the high-colored Bream, the fish of gems,
Their circular nests scoop from the yellow sand.
Nay, do not ask why was this beauty lavished
On these spots, do not believe that love in vain
Is poured upon the solitude, nor deem
Absence of Human life, absence of all!
Why is not here an answer to thy thought,
44
Or rich pulpits lined, or deemest thou the charm
Of endless beauty might not thee avail,
More than a stuccoed wall where pictures hang,
Or rattling street, or state and camp, and town.
Or mark in August as the twilight falls,
Like wreaths of timid smoke, the curling mists
Poured from some smouldering fire across
The meadows cool, whose shadows thrown
So faintly, seem to fall asleep with day!
How softly pours the thin and curling mist!
Now shall the eye half lose in it all faith,
As it were but the mockery of the brain,
Then if it gather denser own its truth.
O twilight world! abode of Peace, how deep
Might we not envy him who in thee lives,
With that same quietness that lives in thee;
And like thy soft and gently-falling beauty
His repose,—dreams in the flood-tide of the world.
Alas! I fear but few who walk these streets,
That wear as deep tranquillity,
Poor slaves of fashion and the prints of form,
Or simply frivolous if first youth gild
An aimless brow with pleasure, or the dupe
Of little weak successes, that deceive
Their shallow owners, martyrs to mere cant,
If cant it be, to not perceive their vice.
And yet those nobler souls, whose hopes were wrecked
On some remote mischance, remote in time,
But nearest to their hearts.
Forbear such themes;
For now the upland Pastures draped with green,
Invite us to that pleasing task unsung,
The Berry-field, where in a frolic chain
Knit by gay industry, the healthy band
Of bounding children go, and glean the grain
That ripens without cost, to laboring steer,
Or dim domestic horse, the farmer's butt.
Not olden Crœsus in imperial wealth,
Nor the bright jewel-chambers of a crown
Famed for barbaric conquest, pulled from Ind
Wreaths for its queen, like these unnoticed moors,
Pregnant with Blueberries whose colors mock
The overhanging sky, all turquoise gems!
Not that Vitellius wooed or Horace sung
Praise of Falernian, or delightful mead
In Chaucer's time no mythus, could now win
From us a single sentence, while we pluck
The abundant fruit adapted to the hand,
And place and hour, while slowly o'er the hills
The unnerved day piles her prodigious sunshine.
Here, be gardens of Hesperian mould,
Recesses rare, temples of birch and fern,
Preserves of light-green Sumac, Ivy thick,
And old stone-fences tottering to their fall,
And gleaming lakes that cool invite the bath,
And most aerial mountains for the West!
Italy and Greece? and would ye fly to them,
Poor, rash, deluded travellers, art and fame
That they have built afar their gilded seats,—
Capricious children, in our berry-fields,
That bound the horizon's verge from where
Ye sit, near by at ease, here be your shrines!
With but a glistening pail, an honest hand,
And thought that loves the air and heart at home,
Ye safe may laugh at those poor foreign lands,
Where dilettanti apes go clad in weeds,
And ruined temples rear their weary moss.
Like wreaths of timid smoke, the curling mists
Poured from some smouldering fire across
The meadows cool, whose shadows thrown
So faintly, seem to fall asleep with day!
How softly pours the thin and curling mist!
Now shall the eye half lose in it all faith,
As it were but the mockery of the brain,
Then if it gather denser own its truth.
O twilight world! abode of Peace, how deep
Might we not envy him who in thee lives,
With that same quietness that lives in thee;
And like thy soft and gently-falling beauty
His repose,—dreams in the flood-tide of the world.
Alas! I fear but few who walk these streets,
That wear as deep tranquillity,
45
Or simply frivolous if first youth gild
An aimless brow with pleasure, or the dupe
Of little weak successes, that deceive
Their shallow owners, martyrs to mere cant,
If cant it be, to not perceive their vice.
And yet those nobler souls, whose hopes were wrecked
On some remote mischance, remote in time,
But nearest to their hearts.
Forbear such themes;
For now the upland Pastures draped with green,
Invite us to that pleasing task unsung,
The Berry-field, where in a frolic chain
Knit by gay industry, the healthy band
Of bounding children go, and glean the grain
That ripens without cost, to laboring steer,
Or dim domestic horse, the farmer's butt.
Not olden Crœsus in imperial wealth,
Nor the bright jewel-chambers of a crown
Famed for barbaric conquest, pulled from Ind
Wreaths for its queen, like these unnoticed moors,
Pregnant with Blueberries whose colors mock
46
Not that Vitellius wooed or Horace sung
Praise of Falernian, or delightful mead
In Chaucer's time no mythus, could now win
From us a single sentence, while we pluck
The abundant fruit adapted to the hand,
And place and hour, while slowly o'er the hills
The unnerved day piles her prodigious sunshine.
Here, be gardens of Hesperian mould,
Recesses rare, temples of birch and fern,
Preserves of light-green Sumac, Ivy thick,
And old stone-fences tottering to their fall,
And gleaming lakes that cool invite the bath,
And most aerial mountains for the West!
Italy and Greece? and would ye fly to them,
Poor, rash, deluded travellers, art and fame
That they have built afar their gilded seats,—
Capricious children, in our berry-fields,
That bound the horizon's verge from where
Ye sit, near by at ease, here be your shrines!
With but a glistening pail, an honest hand,
And thought that loves the air and heart at home,
Ye safe may laugh at those poor foreign lands,
47
And ruined temples rear their weary moss.
What leads our people, children of this land,
Born in New England, in New England bred,
To shun their native shores, and with sad eyes
Rehearse on Tiber's banks their homesick woe?
Here, where old races linger in the soil,
(The aspiring Indian elder to them all,
First in great Nature's heart), and where the scene
Is all a long and beautiful delay,
To round a finished life and steep the blood
In temperate pleasures, why should Egypt be
And her colossal mummies such a joy?
Or dusty Babylon where Arabs howl,
Or China's torpid teas, or English tombs.
May God forgive me! I had rather be,
The meanest worm that haunts our berry-fields,
Than wear the purple on those distant thrones,
And love far more the breath of Liberty
Across our poor, uncultured, sandy soils,
Than all the crumbling empires in their shrouds.
The wealth of Penury!—scant phrase indeed!—
Yet to be poor is ever the true wealth!
Poor to the worldly eye, and those who swim
And glitter in their pride cannot aspire
To the deep blessing that the Poor man knows,
Lord of himself, and health, and simple tastes.
And all our youth rush out to feed on whims,
Fashion craves their hours, low hopes their aim.
To win not noble women for their brides,
But titled slaves heirs to some teasing caste,
And beauty without culture seems mere show,—
As if great Nature laid not on her tints
With more contrivance than the brush of art,
Or schools where grammars bide the place of sense,
And shallow stammering drowns the native voice.
Here, in these shades, these deep seclusions hid
Beneath the whisp'ring leaves and o'er our moors
A ragged independence lives at ease,
Wearing those good adornments of the race,
Such as pure air, warm suns, and builds the Hero
Urban pens describe. Such have I seen,
Men to whom palaces might bow in vain,
Inferior to themselves; whose hearts and hands
Conjoined with Nature love the earth they smite,
And while they tease the globe for rye and corn,
Give still an hour to junketing and sport.
Born in New England, in New England bred,
To shun their native shores, and with sad eyes
Rehearse on Tiber's banks their homesick woe?
Here, where old races linger in the soil,
(The aspiring Indian elder to them all,
First in great Nature's heart), and where the scene
Is all a long and beautiful delay,
To round a finished life and steep the blood
In temperate pleasures, why should Egypt be
And her colossal mummies such a joy?
Or dusty Babylon where Arabs howl,
Or China's torpid teas, or English tombs.
May God forgive me! I had rather be,
The meanest worm that haunts our berry-fields,
Than wear the purple on those distant thrones,
And love far more the breath of Liberty
Across our poor, uncultured, sandy soils,
Than all the crumbling empires in their shrouds.
48
Yet to be poor is ever the true wealth!
Poor to the worldly eye, and those who swim
And glitter in their pride cannot aspire
To the deep blessing that the Poor man knows,
Lord of himself, and health, and simple tastes.
And all our youth rush out to feed on whims,
Fashion craves their hours, low hopes their aim.
To win not noble women for their brides,
But titled slaves heirs to some teasing caste,
And beauty without culture seems mere show,—
As if great Nature laid not on her tints
With more contrivance than the brush of art,
Or schools where grammars bide the place of sense,
And shallow stammering drowns the native voice.
Here, in these shades, these deep seclusions hid
Beneath the whisp'ring leaves and o'er our moors
A ragged independence lives at ease,
Wearing those good adornments of the race,
Such as pure air, warm suns, and builds the Hero
Urban pens describe. Such have I seen,
Men to whom palaces might bow in vain,
49
Conjoined with Nature love the earth they smite,
And while they tease the globe for rye and corn,
Give still an hour to junketing and sport.
So walked our fathers, when the English braves,
Who deemed they owned the land our fathers tilled,
Flush with red jackets, marched along the bank
Of this slow River creeping to the sea.
And said, doubt not, because the tide was slow,
The rustics on its banks had hearts as slow.
Then rang their shot and echoed through the Manse,
Scaring the red-wing, but that noon's brave hour,—
That little hour America endowed
With shores that bound Pacifics, wilds that touch
Base of the Rocky hills and prairies far
Where the fierce bison stalks, the Pawnee's game.
They came up from their ploughs; they fired their guns;
Crushed out the host of England, yet tame slaves,
And while grave queens and lords still on their necks
Weigh an usurping heel, our fathers' sons
May worship God as they list, and choose their best
Or worst to govern, as they will. Brave shot!
That echoes far across the wide St. Lawrence,
And India's depth of jungle, tigers' lair,
And fitfully o'er Westminster and Scotland's hills,
Though many a shot has scared the red-wing since,
Time and the men made of that ringing gun
The knell of empire, Freedom's best salute!
Who deemed they owned the land our fathers tilled,
Flush with red jackets, marched along the bank
Of this slow River creeping to the sea.
And said, doubt not, because the tide was slow,
The rustics on its banks had hearts as slow.
Then rang their shot and echoed through the Manse,
Scaring the red-wing, but that noon's brave hour,—
That little hour America endowed
With shores that bound Pacifics, wilds that touch
Base of the Rocky hills and prairies far
Where the fierce bison stalks, the Pawnee's game.
They came up from their ploughs; they fired their guns;
Crushed out the host of England, yet tame slaves,
And while grave queens and lords still on their necks
Weigh an usurping heel, our fathers' sons
50
Or worst to govern, as they will. Brave shot!
That echoes far across the wide St. Lawrence,
And India's depth of jungle, tigers' lair,
And fitfully o'er Westminster and Scotland's hills,
Though many a shot has scared the red-wing since,
Time and the men made of that ringing gun
The knell of empire, Freedom's best salute!
O why so soon, most princely Golden-rod,
So soon,—why yesterday all summer,
Now, thy nodding plumes convert our hopes
To Autumn, and endow the verdured lanes
With thy most royal gold? Yet like all wealth,
Thou hast a cold and hidden sorrow in thee,
As to say, Behold in me a flattery!
Think me like an ebbing of the tide,
When purer splendors o'er the curling wave
Seem down its long declivity, to glide.
Ye too, meek Asters, violets' late friends,
Pale tranquil constellations of the fall,
That mark a decadence, why do ye strew
Your fair amenities along the paths
Of these continuous woodlands, come so soon?
Ere half the flush of summer's rosy hours
Had lit the faces of the August hills,
Decked the broad meadows with their base of grass,
Forced Indian corn to flint, or ere the brood
Of the first April birds put on their dress.
Not mournful; no, the world, whate'er its sorrows be,
Will not disclose them. Silent and serene
The plastic soul emancipates her kind,
And leaves the generations to their fate,
Uncompromised by tears. She will not weep,—
She needs no grief for man, our mother Nature!
Is not rude or vexed, or rough or careless,
Out of temper never, still as sweet, though winds
Of Winter brush her leaves away, and life
To human creatures, breathes like frost.
Dear friend!
Learn from the joy of Nature, so to be
Not only quite resigned to thy worst fears,
But like herself superior to them all.
Not only superficial in thy smiles,
For down the inmost fibre of thy heart
Let goodness run, and fix in that
The ever lapsing tides, that lesser thoughts
Deprive of half their patience. Be throughout,
Warm as the inmost life that fills the world,
And in demeanor show thy safe content,
Annihilating change.
So Vernon lived,
Considerate to his kind! His love bestowed
Was not a thing of fractions, half-way done,
But with a mellow goodness like the sun,
He shone o'er mortal hearts, and brought their buds
To blossoms, thence to fruits and seed.
Forbearing too much counsel, yet with blows
In pleasing reason urged, he took their thoughts
As with a mild surprise, and they were good,
Even though they knew not whence it came,
Or once suspected that from Vernon's heart,
That warm o'er-circling heart, their impulse flowed.
So soon,—why yesterday all summer,
Now, thy nodding plumes convert our hopes
To Autumn, and endow the verdured lanes
With thy most royal gold? Yet like all wealth,
Thou hast a cold and hidden sorrow in thee,
As to say, Behold in me a flattery!
Think me like an ebbing of the tide,
When purer splendors o'er the curling wave
Seem down its long declivity, to glide.
Ye too, meek Asters, violets' late friends,
Pale tranquil constellations of the fall,
That mark a decadence, why do ye strew
51
Of these continuous woodlands, come so soon?
Ere half the flush of summer's rosy hours
Had lit the faces of the August hills,
Decked the broad meadows with their base of grass,
Forced Indian corn to flint, or ere the brood
Of the first April birds put on their dress.
Not mournful; no, the world, whate'er its sorrows be,
Will not disclose them. Silent and serene
The plastic soul emancipates her kind,
And leaves the generations to their fate,
Uncompromised by tears. She will not weep,—
She needs no grief for man, our mother Nature!
Is not rude or vexed, or rough or careless,
Out of temper never, still as sweet, though winds
Of Winter brush her leaves away, and life
To human creatures, breathes like frost.
Dear friend!
Learn from the joy of Nature, so to be
Not only quite resigned to thy worst fears,
But like herself superior to them all.
Not only superficial in thy smiles,
52
Let goodness run, and fix in that
The ever lapsing tides, that lesser thoughts
Deprive of half their patience. Be throughout,
Warm as the inmost life that fills the world,
And in demeanor show thy safe content,
Annihilating change.
So Vernon lived,
Considerate to his kind! His love bestowed
Was not a thing of fractions, half-way done,
But with a mellow goodness like the sun,
He shone o'er mortal hearts, and brought their buds
To blossoms, thence to fruits and seed.
Forbearing too much counsel, yet with blows
In pleasing reason urged, he took their thoughts
As with a mild surprise, and they were good,
Even though they knew not whence it came,
Or once suspected that from Vernon's heart,
That warm o'er-circling heart, their impulse flowed.
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