 | The Wanderer |  |
75
SEA.
77
V.
THE ISLAND.
Dreaming the sea the elder, I must search
In her for tidings of the olden days,—
Oldest and newest. For how fresh the breeze
That blows along the beaches! and the cry
Of the small glancing bird who runs before,
And still before me, as I find my way
Along the salt sea's ooze, seems like the frail
Admonitor of all the birds: and mark,
Forever turning, that green-crested wave,
Curve of the gleaming billows, and the weed
Purple and green and glistering, the long kelp
Swaying for ages towards the foaming strand;
For here the world is endless. On the marge
I sit of that small Island in the bay,
As an observatory anchored there,
And view the shores receding, where afar
The long sand-beach pursues his lonely way.
Sweet the scene adorned with early sunrise,
Or when a golden hour lifts the faint mist
Of the retreating dawn, and half reveals
The far green hillsides, or the scattered town,
And bits of lovely wood, a moment seen,
Like beauty smiling in her curtained couch.
And then we turn, and meet the curling swell
Roll crashing o'er his sands,—unending Surge,
Voice of another life in worlds how far!
In her for tidings of the olden days,—
Oldest and newest. For how fresh the breeze
That blows along the beaches! and the cry
Of the small glancing bird who runs before,
And still before me, as I find my way
Along the salt sea's ooze, seems like the frail
Admonitor of all the birds: and mark,
Forever turning, that green-crested wave,
Curve of the gleaming billows, and the weed
Purple and green and glistering, the long kelp
Swaying for ages towards the foaming strand;
For here the world is endless. On the marge
I sit of that small Island in the bay,
As an observatory anchored there,
78
The long sand-beach pursues his lonely way.
Sweet the scene adorned with early sunrise,
Or when a golden hour lifts the faint mist
Of the retreating dawn, and half reveals
The far green hillsides, or the scattered town,
And bits of lovely wood, a moment seen,
Like beauty smiling in her curtained couch.
And then we turn, and meet the curling swell
Roll crashing o'er his sands,—unending Surge,
Voice of another life in worlds how far!
Even like the sea himself, torn down the past,
That wrecker shows, Antonio, an old man,
Patched and repainted like his time-worn craft,
An odd tarpaulin o'er his wild gray locks,
And ever in his hand his wrecking-hook.
Cold as the strand whereon he walks he seems;
His eyes put out with gazing on the deep,
Together with the wear of seventy years,
And scanty food, chill breezes, and the spray
Running their courses in his life. Nor less
The ocean is his friend; that mystery
Still stranger as he studies it the more.
With tempests often striking o'er his path
Linked to the wrecker's eyes with the far heaven,
Upon whose omens patiently he pores,
And dreams of crashing decks or corpses pale
Washing alone Time's melancholy shore:
Thus are they filled with wisdom who compute
The sea as their companion. Books to them
Are the faint dreams of students, save that one,—
The battered Almanac,—split to the core,
Fly-blown, and tattered, that above the fire
Devoted smokes, and furnishes the fates,
And perigees and apogees of moons.
Despite the rolling temper of the main,
He knows by sternest laws the tide revolves,
And mows his marsh disdainful of the flood:
Held by firm rules, old ocean shall obey,
Indifferently fatal, friend or foe.
Her things so new, her creatures so unlike
All which the dull unmoving shore concerns,
Amid her briny passion pledged to be
Sailors unsocial, darlings of the sea.
That wrecker shows, Antonio, an old man,
Patched and repainted like his time-worn craft,
An odd tarpaulin o'er his wild gray locks,
And ever in his hand his wrecking-hook.
Cold as the strand whereon he walks he seems;
His eyes put out with gazing on the deep,
Together with the wear of seventy years,
And scanty food, chill breezes, and the spray
79
The ocean is his friend; that mystery
Still stranger as he studies it the more.
With tempests often striking o'er his path
Linked to the wrecker's eyes with the far heaven,
Upon whose omens patiently he pores,
And dreams of crashing decks or corpses pale
Washing alone Time's melancholy shore:
Thus are they filled with wisdom who compute
The sea as their companion. Books to them
Are the faint dreams of students, save that one,—
The battered Almanac,—split to the core,
Fly-blown, and tattered, that above the fire
Devoted smokes, and furnishes the fates,
And perigees and apogees of moons.
Despite the rolling temper of the main,
He knows by sternest laws the tide revolves,
And mows his marsh disdainful of the flood:
Held by firm rules, old ocean shall obey,
Indifferently fatal, friend or foe.
Her things so new, her creatures so unlike
80
Amid her briny passion pledged to be
Sailors unsocial, darlings of the sea.
How smooth the seal's complexion! finely haired
To shed the searching moisture as if oiled,
Like brave Mahomet's, that unhappy sheik;
Awfully human, the seal's bearded face
Lifts in the cold green current. On the tide
That rakes the channel, there he bolts his horse;
Then stretches off his bulk on the black rocks,
Spread on the seaweed with his heated pile;
Or on the polar cake, politely warm,
Expires his fat. Nor scorn the coots that take
Cold-water treatment, riding on the surf
That combing breaks now spilt upon the sand;
All swimming as one coot from pole to pole.
Nor scare the little beach-birds, dainty thing
Mounted on stilts above the long sea-sands,
Skipping and piping by the whirling tide;
And one, neatest of all, the peep, whose nes
In the remote recesses of the north
That bird constructs, scarcely by Brewer robbed.
A manless thing, a creature with no heart
For human prayers, the cold unfeeling brine.
That tale survives all annals of the past,—
Of an old-fashioned flood, when earliest boat,
An ark, was fairly launched, victualled and stocked,
With patriarch Noah and his constant dove.
Chinese or Persian, old or newly made,
In all the creature's legends I may hear
The same relation, the same flabby tale.
'Tis Ocean's independence. “Launch your ark;
Get out the long-boat; tow a raft astern,”
Cries Ocean to her sons; “for sure am I
I cannot oil your coats, nor stamp your seals.”
And man obeys, and in cork-jackets swims.
They dam the restless beach, they stone and pile.
Alack! the sea pours on its flood the same,
Turning us back, and bowing its regret.
To shed the searching moisture as if oiled,
Like brave Mahomet's, that unhappy sheik;
Awfully human, the seal's bearded face
Lifts in the cold green current. On the tide
That rakes the channel, there he bolts his horse;
Then stretches off his bulk on the black rocks,
Spread on the seaweed with his heated pile;
Or on the polar cake, politely warm,
Expires his fat. Nor scorn the coots that take
Cold-water treatment, riding on the surf
That combing breaks now spilt upon the sand;
All swimming as one coot from pole to pole.
Nor scare the little beach-birds, dainty thing
Mounted on stilts above the long sea-sands,
Skipping and piping by the whirling tide;
And one, neatest of all, the peep, whose nes
81
That bird constructs, scarcely by Brewer robbed.
A manless thing, a creature with no heart
For human prayers, the cold unfeeling brine.
That tale survives all annals of the past,—
Of an old-fashioned flood, when earliest boat,
An ark, was fairly launched, victualled and stocked,
With patriarch Noah and his constant dove.
Chinese or Persian, old or newly made,
In all the creature's legends I may hear
The same relation, the same flabby tale.
'Tis Ocean's independence. “Launch your ark;
Get out the long-boat; tow a raft astern,”
Cries Ocean to her sons; “for sure am I
I cannot oil your coats, nor stamp your seals.”
And man obeys, and in cork-jackets swims.
They dam the restless beach, they stone and pile.
Alack! the sea pours on its flood the same,
Turning us back, and bowing its regret.
Where the Ægean on its cerule wave
Bore forth the Grecian fleets, what green parade
Was that, to populate the sea with gods,
And tossing heroes, who the mortal state
Had raised diviner! There in peace they rolled,—
Tridental Neptune and his spouting team,
Tritonia, and the Nereids cool
Taking perpetual baths, and who the first,
(Above description) from the sea spumed forth,—
Idalian Venus, on her pink conch-shell,
Smoothing the lovely wave, and throwing smiles
Over the laughing billows. But to-day
To the depths descend the gods of ocean,
When mackerel fishers ride the hollow main,
And in the room of Phosphor, worship gold.
Honest Herodotus who marched afar
O'er Egypt's sands and Babylonia's fall,
Telling strange stories of the deaths of kings,
Gives out that Homer made the gods for men,
Some few short centuries before his time.
How vivid the Greek fancy took the sea!
Making the grave of waters yield its dead,
And in its splendid figures live and burn.
Bore forth the Grecian fleets, what green parade
82
And tossing heroes, who the mortal state
Had raised diviner! There in peace they rolled,—
Tridental Neptune and his spouting team,
Tritonia, and the Nereids cool
Taking perpetual baths, and who the first,
(Above description) from the sea spumed forth,—
Idalian Venus, on her pink conch-shell,
Smoothing the lovely wave, and throwing smiles
Over the laughing billows. But to-day
To the depths descend the gods of ocean,
When mackerel fishers ride the hollow main,
And in the room of Phosphor, worship gold.
Honest Herodotus who marched afar
O'er Egypt's sands and Babylonia's fall,
Telling strange stories of the deaths of kings,
Gives out that Homer made the gods for men,
Some few short centuries before his time.
How vivid the Greek fancy took the sea!
Making the grave of waters yield its dead,
And in its splendid figures live and burn.
83
Afar upon the sky the unmoving ship
Stands leaning, her place unchanged, still leaning;
And so she stands until below the line
Of that lone horizon she silent falls;
And some fond mother's heart watching her sail,
And children's prayers that guard a father's life.
He hears the billows grating on the keel,
With their gay sheets of foam and splashing lights,
The gulf-stream past, where over Pico's cap
Sail the rich odors of the Western Isles,
And sweeping showers that cut like wings of steel;
And the long steady gale that never lulls,
Drawn through the rigging with its awful moan,
Most like the concert of the monarch-pines
That line Katahdin's walls, when the nor'westers
Scourge that woodland brig: these sounds he hears,
These sights, unmoving, sees; Neptune forgot,
Thinks of his mother knitting by the fire
In his far-sheltered cot, his wife, who lists
As o'er his cottage-roof tears the wild gale,
And hears the children, “Mother, the storm!
Will father feel the gale?”—“My child, my child!”
And folds them to her heart. Oh, mother dear!
Stands leaning, her place unchanged, still leaning;
And so she stands until below the line
Of that lone horizon she silent falls;
And some fond mother's heart watching her sail,
And children's prayers that guard a father's life.
He hears the billows grating on the keel,
With their gay sheets of foam and splashing lights,
The gulf-stream past, where over Pico's cap
Sail the rich odors of the Western Isles,
And sweeping showers that cut like wings of steel;
And the long steady gale that never lulls,
Drawn through the rigging with its awful moan,
Most like the concert of the monarch-pines
That line Katahdin's walls, when the nor'westers
Scourge that woodland brig: these sounds he hears,
These sights, unmoving, sees; Neptune forgot,
Thinks of his mother knitting by the fire
In his far-sheltered cot, his wife, who lists
As o'er his cottage-roof tears the wild gale,
And hears the children, “Mother, the storm!
84
And folds them to her heart. Oh, mother dear!
Had but those ancients ventured o'er the wave
Like patient Colomb, urging vessels small
Across the ocean's heap, and thus surpassed
Their shining bays and sands of Punic cape,
Where still bold rovers from the Grecian isles
Dart their swift galiots at the opiate Turk;
Then had the Muse of Homer taken flight
In things cosmopolite, leaving the gods
To curl their locks unsung. But so a race
Born on that midland sea achieved new fates,
And first essayed the arts of culture there,
Founding vast cities on the mud of Nile,
Where the great river, treasure of the earth,
Spawned affluence. If old Egypt be
The creature of the river, or reverse,
Becomes me not; if mimic Palestine
Took its first lessons off Egyptian stones,
As that Sidonian with Astarte's name,
On Eshmunezzar's soros found so late;
Or when great Nineveh threw up its halls
Cased with prodigious bulls and bearded saints,
And conquering tyrants trampling on their slaves;
Whatever prescience or rank assigned
To those veiled dynasties sunk in the sleep
Of superstitious gods, and what the priest
That worshipped Moloch sprang from: grant the sea
Gave impulse to those countries, and from that
They flowed with fresh existence. Yes! that sea
And its expanse of isles blest by each other;
In azure waves where rugged Rhodes piles up
Eternal sunshine, and Telmessus sweet,
With Lycian bays, the wood-nymphs' chosen haunt,
(For here the mainland floats upon the sea);
Or Cyprus, where the Paphian goddess built
Her tall melodious shrine, and, as some think,
Called from the tree to Aphrodite vowed,
And earlier to Astarte, whence it passed
From proud Phœnicia's Tyre to Carthage bronzed;
These isles, good halfway-houses to new shores,
Nurtured the mariner on fruit and wines,
Honey and figs, and more, the grace to touch
New customs, and deport novel religions
'Mid a hulk of freight.
Like patient Colomb, urging vessels small
Across the ocean's heap, and thus surpassed
Their shining bays and sands of Punic cape,
Where still bold rovers from the Grecian isles
Dart their swift galiots at the opiate Turk;
Then had the Muse of Homer taken flight
In things cosmopolite, leaving the gods
To curl their locks unsung. But so a race
Born on that midland sea achieved new fates,
And first essayed the arts of culture there,
Founding vast cities on the mud of Nile,
Where the great river, treasure of the earth,
Spawned affluence. If old Egypt be
The creature of the river, or reverse,
Becomes me not; if mimic Palestine
Took its first lessons off Egyptian stones,
As that Sidonian with Astarte's name,
85
Or when great Nineveh threw up its halls
Cased with prodigious bulls and bearded saints,
And conquering tyrants trampling on their slaves;
Whatever prescience or rank assigned
To those veiled dynasties sunk in the sleep
Of superstitious gods, and what the priest
That worshipped Moloch sprang from: grant the sea
Gave impulse to those countries, and from that
They flowed with fresh existence. Yes! that sea
And its expanse of isles blest by each other;
In azure waves where rugged Rhodes piles up
Eternal sunshine, and Telmessus sweet,
With Lycian bays, the wood-nymphs' chosen haunt,
(For here the mainland floats upon the sea);
Or Cyprus, where the Paphian goddess built
Her tall melodious shrine, and, as some think,
Called from the tree to Aphrodite vowed,
And earlier to Astarte, whence it passed
From proud Phœnicia's Tyre to Carthage bronzed;
These isles, good halfway-houses to new shores,
86
Honey and figs, and more, the grace to touch
New customs, and deport novel religions
'Mid a hulk of freight.
The timid sailors
Made small prime essays, and, venturing forth,
Amused themselves with colonies. At first
How limited the risk! The single ship
Bore off from Egypt's shores the chosen troop.
Soon, to the Grecian palm directly steered;
Where o'er Morea's hills the setting sun
Shames our opaque seclusion in its pomp;
There with the Corybants, or Bacchic priests
Lighting on Latmos, or by Delphi's shrine,
Unnamed, unknown, in those anterior days,
They sowed the seed upon the rolling heights
Of new religions, whence Olympus sprang;
And oaks Dodonian, comedy of creeds
Bred on the banks of Nile; and the tall stones
Now standing in her deserts, lone, not mute,
Bear witness that the race, forever one,
As on Mount Serbal, worships in high place,
Or still preserves the forest as its shrine,
And builds its altars on erected hills,
That mark Cholula's platform, to this hour.
Spring and fruit and fall the like traditions.
See the bold ranks of sepulchres that mask the vale
Of Kedron, line Telmessian hills; their doors,
Oblivious still, sealed up for ages.
As o'er the plains of Memphis, and the tomb
Of royal Cheops, where the Grecian stood,
That flaming star of Macedon, whose trail
Burnt from the shores of Greece to India's vale
Of far Cashmere, dreaming 'mid snowy crags,—
And wondered at the mass, what ages gone,
Whose ignorance shall boast? or by whose hands
The placid sphinxes fronting Karnak's mass,
Or Memnon's figure, musical at morn.
Ever the tomb, the dead, the mummied faith,
As if our race, the phantom of a day,
Spurning their nature's flight, had haughtily fixed
Upon our frame, cheap mirror of the dust,
For great enduring; scattered pyramids,
Sculptured the soros, and o'er Euxine's plain
Marched out the line of tumuli that stalks
Across the steppés, league on league afar,
Thoughts for Herodotus and Strabo dead,
And Clarke! that proudest of the Anglic race;
Or Calmuc, with his brandies made of milk;
And equine Cossacks, from whose hairy lip
Norse or Icelandic vocals lingering fall.
Made small prime essays, and, venturing forth,
Amused themselves with colonies. At first
How limited the risk! The single ship
Bore off from Egypt's shores the chosen troop.
Soon, to the Grecian palm directly steered;
Where o'er Morea's hills the setting sun
Shames our opaque seclusion in its pomp;
There with the Corybants, or Bacchic priests
Lighting on Latmos, or by Delphi's shrine,
Unnamed, unknown, in those anterior days,
They sowed the seed upon the rolling heights
Of new religions, whence Olympus sprang;
And oaks Dodonian, comedy of creeds
Bred on the banks of Nile; and the tall stones
Now standing in her deserts, lone, not mute,
87
As on Mount Serbal, worships in high place,
Or still preserves the forest as its shrine,
And builds its altars on erected hills,
That mark Cholula's platform, to this hour.
Spring and fruit and fall the like traditions.
See the bold ranks of sepulchres that mask the vale
Of Kedron, line Telmessian hills; their doors,
Oblivious still, sealed up for ages.
As o'er the plains of Memphis, and the tomb
Of royal Cheops, where the Grecian stood,
That flaming star of Macedon, whose trail
Burnt from the shores of Greece to India's vale
Of far Cashmere, dreaming 'mid snowy crags,—
And wondered at the mass, what ages gone,
Whose ignorance shall boast? or by whose hands
The placid sphinxes fronting Karnak's mass,
Or Memnon's figure, musical at morn.
Ever the tomb, the dead, the mummied faith,
As if our race, the phantom of a day,
Spurning their nature's flight, had haughtily fixed
88
For great enduring; scattered pyramids,
Sculptured the soros, and o'er Euxine's plain
Marched out the line of tumuli that stalks
Across the steppés, league on league afar,
Thoughts for Herodotus and Strabo dead,
And Clarke! that proudest of the Anglic race;
Or Calmuc, with his brandies made of milk;
And equine Cossacks, from whose hairy lip
Norse or Icelandic vocals lingering fall.
Thus did life's youthful mood vouchsafe,
Glimpses unknown to us, when Grecian isles
Were first discoveries, and all westward lay
Regions unkempt, the haunt of wolf or elk;
Seas unmolested, where no keel e'er trod,
Save of the savage proa, flying thing,
With long outriders propping up her sides.
Grand opened on the lids of Carthage fierce,
Sicilian isles, the granaries of Rome;
Vast to the spoiling Romans towered the snows
Of Alpine glaciers, or the rushing shaft
Where the unfathomable crevasse
Nurses her torrents,—feeders of Lucerne,
And wild moraine, slow moving to the foot,
Lifts not its head, nor heeds the avalanche
Crashed o'er its face. From Asia's heated soil
A fiery race wide roving spread around,
Whate'er their famed progenitors enjoyed;
At Suez, where the Red Sea ends its toil,
Or through the gate of tears pursued their way
Into that Indian Ocean. The great king,
Famed for his tastes barbaric, fetched his pearls,
And peacocks, apes, and Sheba's queen, be sure,
From fertile islands in spice-wafting-roads,
Whate'er distortion later critics paste
Upon the Hebrew story.
Glimpses unknown to us, when Grecian isles
Were first discoveries, and all westward lay
Regions unkempt, the haunt of wolf or elk;
Seas unmolested, where no keel e'er trod,
Save of the savage proa, flying thing,
With long outriders propping up her sides.
Grand opened on the lids of Carthage fierce,
Sicilian isles, the granaries of Rome;
Vast to the spoiling Romans towered the snows
89
Where the unfathomable crevasse
Nurses her torrents,—feeders of Lucerne,
And wild moraine, slow moving to the foot,
Lifts not its head, nor heeds the avalanche
Crashed o'er its face. From Asia's heated soil
A fiery race wide roving spread around,
Whate'er their famed progenitors enjoyed;
At Suez, where the Red Sea ends its toil,
Or through the gate of tears pursued their way
Into that Indian Ocean. The great king,
Famed for his tastes barbaric, fetched his pearls,
And peacocks, apes, and Sheba's queen, be sure,
From fertile islands in spice-wafting-roads,
Whate'er distortion later critics paste
Upon the Hebrew story.
So the page
Of human action prints the rolling trait.
So, in the Malay races Vedic creeds,
Cut on rock temples of the Indian main,
Transport by sea, revive the Brahmin's faith;
So, o'er the yellow desert's weary sand
The fainting legend flies its thirsty way,
Flows down Euphrates' valleys, or encamps
On her flat shores. And wandering tribes of men,
Gypsies that rob all nations of the orb,
And Arabs, whose sharp letters serve the Turk
And Persian, Indian, Hebrew, all as one,
Drifting the seeds of knowledge o'er the lands,
Reflex portray in all the human symbols.
As in the Indian's Veda, so to us.
Even if beneath a cloak of legend
Supernaturally strange, whate'er the Greek
Raised to devotion, yet o'ermastering thrills;
The Pythian shrine, its oracle we hear,
Whether from hempen drug or nitrous air
Frankly diffuse, or trance mesmeric deemed,
Coming in dress of spirits, or such things
As nervous Macbeth played through Shakspeare's brain,
Or writing morals on the mountain wall,
And raising circles from Druidic stones;
Yet must the curious instinct of the race
Demand its mystery. Still St. Peter's shrine
Holds its portentous shadow o'er old Rome,
And Abraham's oak at Mamre blossoms on.
Of human action prints the rolling trait.
So, in the Malay races Vedic creeds,
Cut on rock temples of the Indian main,
90
So, o'er the yellow desert's weary sand
The fainting legend flies its thirsty way,
Flows down Euphrates' valleys, or encamps
On her flat shores. And wandering tribes of men,
Gypsies that rob all nations of the orb,
And Arabs, whose sharp letters serve the Turk
And Persian, Indian, Hebrew, all as one,
Drifting the seeds of knowledge o'er the lands,
Reflex portray in all the human symbols.
As in the Indian's Veda, so to us.
Even if beneath a cloak of legend
Supernaturally strange, whate'er the Greek
Raised to devotion, yet o'ermastering thrills;
The Pythian shrine, its oracle we hear,
Whether from hempen drug or nitrous air
Frankly diffuse, or trance mesmeric deemed,
Coming in dress of spirits, or such things
As nervous Macbeth played through Shakspeare's brain,
Or writing morals on the mountain wall,
91
Yet must the curious instinct of the race
Demand its mystery. Still St. Peter's shrine
Holds its portentous shadow o'er old Rome,
And Abraham's oak at Mamre blossoms on.
Where'er the glass you hold, reflected clear,
Priesthood and king,—names of the fatal powers,—
On most the nation's signets stamped full deep.
Always the nations marvel at themselves;
Responsive to the past, serve king and priest;
Such as the hoary Shagpat on the slab
That Layard at Koyunjik dug, and sent
To English halls, one like this mitred saint
From learned seats and colleges to us
Preaches obedience to our cherished creeds,
A secular law, or an unlovely prince;
Drawing glazed portraits of the Prussian king
Who took Silesia, justice in his strength.
Forever cutting in the claw of might,—
The sword, that hell-born cruelty, our race,
Crudely regarded human, venerate!
Kingdoms are bolted to this butcher-sword;
And poor defenceless knaves, wrenched from their hearths,
Soon at the cannon's mouth blown into rags.
The ruling princes searching swift (those sateless wolves!)
More means of shedding blood, and their poor tools
Hang up in Heaven their dismal reeking corpse,—
Glory and murder burden of their strain.
Priesthood and king,—names of the fatal powers,—
On most the nation's signets stamped full deep.
Always the nations marvel at themselves;
Responsive to the past, serve king and priest;
Such as the hoary Shagpat on the slab
That Layard at Koyunjik dug, and sent
To English halls, one like this mitred saint
From learned seats and colleges to us
Preaches obedience to our cherished creeds,
A secular law, or an unlovely prince;
Drawing glazed portraits of the Prussian king
Who took Silesia, justice in his strength.
Forever cutting in the claw of might,—
The sword, that hell-born cruelty, our race,
92
Kingdoms are bolted to this butcher-sword;
And poor defenceless knaves, wrenched from their hearths,
Soon at the cannon's mouth blown into rags.
The ruling princes searching swift (those sateless wolves!)
More means of shedding blood, and their poor tools
Hang up in Heaven their dismal reeking corpse,—
Glory and murder burden of their strain.
From Macedonia's chief to the last wolf
That ravaged Roman earth, or what the race
Who people the new world have there essayed
To emulate the elder, whence they sprang;
Age after age the red procession goes,
Sateless, unsated, lapping at the pool
Of useless carnage, as if thus alone
The humane soul, born to the noblest thoughts,
Bred on choice reasons, and devoutly tasked,
Could found their best religion, raised to heaven,
By multiplying human miseries.
To try how clean the whizzing shell impelled
Shall shear in twain the hamlets of the poor;
Or by what law of steam and iron, ships
May smite, and with their fiery rain submerse
Walls of civility and cultured works;
Then, maddened on the wave, in frenzied strife
Sink with their crews to Pluto's tireless arm.
Noble the ghoul who swills most human blood,
Who makes the solitude, and calls it peace!
Would glory, honor, or the crimson chain
Scored on the conqueror's lurid brow, pour forth
Their ruddy flame as signet-rings of Oude,
If the grim field, planted with loathsome trunks
Of what this morning were the living pride
Of happy nations, now in sackcloth clad,
Got its true name,—the shambles of a king?
There see the sad array of captives march,
Sent to the cruel prison, long to bide,
Till the two angry monarchs, murder-tired,
Cease battling, all their recompense a grave!
Then mayst thou hear the anthem of the Church,
The proud Te Deum echoing to the skies,
As in Vienna's walls, when Pandours wild
Burnt some lean village on Bavaria's front,
Roasting the peasants in their frenzied rage.
That ravaged Roman earth, or what the race
Who people the new world have there essayed
To emulate the elder, whence they sprang;
Age after age the red procession goes,
Sateless, unsated, lapping at the pool
Of useless carnage, as if thus alone
The humane soul, born to the noblest thoughts,
Bred on choice reasons, and devoutly tasked,
Could found their best religion, raised to heaven,
By multiplying human miseries.
To try how clean the whizzing shell impelled
93
Or by what law of steam and iron, ships
May smite, and with their fiery rain submerse
Walls of civility and cultured works;
Then, maddened on the wave, in frenzied strife
Sink with their crews to Pluto's tireless arm.
Noble the ghoul who swills most human blood,
Who makes the solitude, and calls it peace!
Would glory, honor, or the crimson chain
Scored on the conqueror's lurid brow, pour forth
Their ruddy flame as signet-rings of Oude,
If the grim field, planted with loathsome trunks
Of what this morning were the living pride
Of happy nations, now in sackcloth clad,
Got its true name,—the shambles of a king?
There see the sad array of captives march,
Sent to the cruel prison, long to bide,
Till the two angry monarchs, murder-tired,
Cease battling, all their recompense a grave!
Then mayst thou hear the anthem of the Church,
The proud Te Deum echoing to the skies,
94
Burnt some lean village on Bavaria's front,
Roasting the peasants in their frenzied rage.
On Nineveh's long wall in sculpture huge,
Where'er the regal pageant of the time—
Nebuco or Semiramis—crawls forth,
Upon the patent of the numerous wars
Done by the bearded peacock and his tail,
Behold, always with special emphasis,
Slaves trailing their chains. So downward far
To Rome's triumphant hours, the slave.
There Cleopatra in her beauty gleams,
And dark Jugurtha facing Rome goes by.
On Afric's sand, as well where Bornou's lake
Through the green sedges bears the fellah's boat;
As in the desert, when the caravan,
Bound for Morocco, marks its deathly trail
By the bleached bones of fainting youth and maid,
(Slaves captured for Numidia); or where Nile,
Wrenched from the Abyssinian mountains
Black and wild, whirls down the cataract
The coffle swart of wretches stolen to sell,—
With war, its source, treads human slavery!
Should a free Roman dig, or press the grape,
Save as Falernian to his weary lips,
With the scourged victim of his cruel wars
Crouched in the atrium, shuddering o'er his scars?
So triumphed down the demon; so espoused
The cause of blood: and from our shores, slavers,
Firing their guns along the Guinea coast,
Signal to send their human freight aboard;
Where the ripe culture of the Portuguese
In Christian morals and the Holy Faith,
Is the slave-factory, and its horrid field,
On which the corpses of the victims, flung
To Hades at the fever's mad command,
Bleach in the pestilent suns; and those who live
(Worse doom), wafted to states of liberty,
Employ the constant lash, and sate the hound
Brought from good Spain with all his native taste
For human gore; then shall they hoe and plant
For the North, till the white fields of cotton,
The government maintain, and on the cross,
Bleeding and nailed for life, die in their tears.
That fatal freedom to this hour ruled all!
But for a son of justice, lent from heaven,
Great Ossawatomie; who dashed his own,
His children's hearts against the demon-power,
And broke the captive's chain, and gave his name
Such glory as shall still less fade from thought,
(As time demanding damns the slavish fiends
Who drank his blood), but all the more blaze forth!
Where'er the regal pageant of the time—
Nebuco or Semiramis—crawls forth,
Upon the patent of the numerous wars
Done by the bearded peacock and his tail,
Behold, always with special emphasis,
Slaves trailing their chains. So downward far
To Rome's triumphant hours, the slave.
There Cleopatra in her beauty gleams,
And dark Jugurtha facing Rome goes by.
On Afric's sand, as well where Bornou's lake
Through the green sedges bears the fellah's boat;
As in the desert, when the caravan,
Bound for Morocco, marks its deathly trail
By the bleached bones of fainting youth and maid,
(Slaves captured for Numidia); or where Nile,
Wrenched from the Abyssinian mountains
95
The coffle swart of wretches stolen to sell,—
With war, its source, treads human slavery!
Should a free Roman dig, or press the grape,
Save as Falernian to his weary lips,
With the scourged victim of his cruel wars
Crouched in the atrium, shuddering o'er his scars?
So triumphed down the demon; so espoused
The cause of blood: and from our shores, slavers,
Firing their guns along the Guinea coast,
Signal to send their human freight aboard;
Where the ripe culture of the Portuguese
In Christian morals and the Holy Faith,
Is the slave-factory, and its horrid field,
On which the corpses of the victims, flung
To Hades at the fever's mad command,
Bleach in the pestilent suns; and those who live
(Worse doom), wafted to states of liberty,
Employ the constant lash, and sate the hound
Brought from good Spain with all his native taste
For human gore; then shall they hoe and plant
96
The government maintain, and on the cross,
Bleeding and nailed for life, die in their tears.
That fatal freedom to this hour ruled all!
But for a son of justice, lent from heaven,
Great Ossawatomie; who dashed his own,
His children's hearts against the demon-power,
And broke the captive's chain, and gave his name
Such glory as shall still less fade from thought,
(As time demanding damns the slavish fiends
Who drank his blood), but all the more blaze forth!
Oft on the marge of that small isle I sat,
Recalling all I knew about the sea,
And how much pleasure I to it had owed,—
A sheltered island tenderly caressed
In the soft billows, parted from the main
By a continuous beach, that miles along
Lists to the wail of ocean, and the cry
Of the light sand-piper: daintily his way
He picks along the cobbles of the marge,
Nor fears the wild commotion. In these frail,
These touching correspondences of love
In nature's vast dominion, man should build,
If anywhere, foundations for his creed,
And find on Alpine summits daisies bright,
And beds in bloom, fragrant of strawberry,—
There, on the concave of the eternal snow!
Recalling all I knew about the sea,
And how much pleasure I to it had owed,—
A sheltered island tenderly caressed
In the soft billows, parted from the main
By a continuous beach, that miles along
Lists to the wail of ocean, and the cry
Of the light sand-piper: daintily his way
He picks along the cobbles of the marge,
97
These touching correspondences of love
In nature's vast dominion, man should build,
If anywhere, foundations for his creed,
And find on Alpine summits daisies bright,
And beds in bloom, fragrant of strawberry,—
There, on the concave of the eternal snow!
At times, I traced the fast foam-speeding boats
Whirl like the herring gulls along their track,
As if about to sink in ocean's maze,
Then in the narrowing pass obscurely lost,
I saw them turn, and with forecasting skill
Against the wind, a sinuous course retrace.
Not the mysterious voice that Hugo hears
Comes forth to them from ocean; not to them,
But a poor rag their canvas stilled the gale;
To such the sea is but another field,
Their saving care like the dry husbandman's,—
Fishers of men? That voice they seldom hear.
Save the old cedars eying the four winds,
Pledged to the azure sky and the gray stones,
And russet fields, parched in the July sun,
Upon that isle, Poseidon more is king,
Than lobster-fishers skimming o'er the wave.
Here, in the rudest clime of all our year,—
In stern December,—touched the Pilgrim boat,
Shallop then called; just where I muse, perchance;
And onward marched the crew, and sought the rock
Loftiest of all, to view the neighboring bay,
Albeit the isle should then in thickset wood
Have closed their view,—came off the Mayflower,
While their worn vessel lay outside the beach.
O'erhead December's frown, ice at their feet,
And the old ghostly cedars whispering, “Peace!”
Grandly they raised a hymn of cheerful faith;
The sacred chorus mixing with the gale,
And stormy snow-cloud trailing down the path.
Far lay their homes,—those English homes so dear;
Vacant their hearthstones, and their fields untrod;
Soft with Atlantic mist their vaporous skies
Draping with mossy wreaths the churchyard-stones;
Their hallowed abbeys sweet with eglantine
And old traditions in the English heart,
Built up of love. Oh, unlike this, so drear!
A savage air they never felt before
Amid the ice-clad bowlders on the snows;
The owl far hooting and the panther's scream,
And Indian war-cry echoing down the wood,
And fears, in courage quenched forevermore.
Whirl like the herring gulls along their track,
As if about to sink in ocean's maze,
Then in the narrowing pass obscurely lost,
I saw them turn, and with forecasting skill
Against the wind, a sinuous course retrace.
Not the mysterious voice that Hugo hears
Comes forth to them from ocean; not to them,
But a poor rag their canvas stilled the gale;
To such the sea is but another field,
Their saving care like the dry husbandman's,—
Fishers of men? That voice they seldom hear.
Save the old cedars eying the four winds,
98
And russet fields, parched in the July sun,
Upon that isle, Poseidon more is king,
Than lobster-fishers skimming o'er the wave.
Here, in the rudest clime of all our year,—
In stern December,—touched the Pilgrim boat,
Shallop then called; just where I muse, perchance;
And onward marched the crew, and sought the rock
Loftiest of all, to view the neighboring bay,
Albeit the isle should then in thickset wood
Have closed their view,—came off the Mayflower,
While their worn vessel lay outside the beach.
O'erhead December's frown, ice at their feet,
And the old ghostly cedars whispering, “Peace!”
Grandly they raised a hymn of cheerful faith;
The sacred chorus mixing with the gale,
And stormy snow-cloud trailing down the path.
Far lay their homes,—those English homes so dear;
Vacant their hearthstones, and their fields untrod;
Soft with Atlantic mist their vaporous skies
Draping with mossy wreaths the churchyard-stones;
99
And old traditions in the English heart,
Built up of love. Oh, unlike this, so drear!
A savage air they never felt before
Amid the ice-clad bowlders on the snows;
The owl far hooting and the panther's scream,
And Indian war-cry echoing down the wood,
And fears, in courage quenched forevermore.
100
VI.
THE CAPE.
On native soil, pushing yet southernward,
Where the gay sand-dunes color Wellfleet's brow,
And earlier some few years adventuring brave,
Old Gosnold struck the land, searching this way
For treasure; and despatched a company,
Who viewed off Truro's height the Atlantic wave
Far reaching down the cast its purple shades,
Chasing the green with red, and the low moon
Trail her soft radiance o'er the glimmering sea.
Then, too, the unceasing music of the surf,
Heard in our waking dream, disturbs the air
Not merely with its sound, but that salt savor
Dear to inland minds. Brave Champlain earlier
Touched these golden sands, castles afar
Skirting the icy bay, then sped his flight
Across to Acadie; while Gosnold, lingering,
Found Naushawn, and Indian isles he gave
Eliza's name, where in the currents build
The coral insects, as on Omai's shore,
Their curving foliage for the gracile sea,
Warm from the Gulf Stream. Seeking here, he met
Groves built of sassafras, then filled his bark,
And sped an ocean flight. But Champlain bold
Tracked the great river, there where Cartier sailed,
Long ere those days, to Montmorenci's fall,
And where, o'er all the land, her piercing gaze,
Proud of her shining bulwarks, Quebec throws,
And eyes afar the trackless brush that sweeps
Its wilderness far north, where Baffin steered;
And near, the vast St. Lawrence, a deep tide
Coursing from inland seas than it more vast;
Waters like greenest gems of ocean mass
Compact, that proudly roll their emerald sheets
Over Niagara's edge; and farther down,
Below fair Orleans isle, the traveller seeks
Thy roar, St. Anne, hymn to the voyageur,—
Clad in primeval Thuyas, ghostly trees,
Where thy uncounted fall shakes the dark earth:
So Verrazani and Sebastian stern,
With brave Sir Humphrey, sailed our baffling shores.
Then, even to the lake that loves his name,
And holds the haughty Adirondacks glassed
Within its mirror, where the Iroquois,
A race sepulchral battling for their scalps,
Swept clean the war-path, Champlain fearless went.
Far greater than them all, that trusting soul,
The patient Genoese, whose name this land
Most fitly bore. How are they sped to nought!—
All save the Mayflower's children, or their race;
And, if not done, surviving in lean tribes
Haunting the Cordilleras and the Plain,
And such as 'neath Potosi dig the ore,
Or for their Cuban slave-pen fiercely strike.
Where the gay sand-dunes color Wellfleet's brow,
And earlier some few years adventuring brave,
Old Gosnold struck the land, searching this way
For treasure; and despatched a company,
Who viewed off Truro's height the Atlantic wave
Far reaching down the cast its purple shades,
Chasing the green with red, and the low moon
Trail her soft radiance o'er the glimmering sea.
Then, too, the unceasing music of the surf,
Heard in our waking dream, disturbs the air
Not merely with its sound, but that salt savor
Dear to inland minds. Brave Champlain earlier
Touched these golden sands, castles afar
Skirting the icy bay, then sped his flight
101
Found Naushawn, and Indian isles he gave
Eliza's name, where in the currents build
The coral insects, as on Omai's shore,
Their curving foliage for the gracile sea,
Warm from the Gulf Stream. Seeking here, he met
Groves built of sassafras, then filled his bark,
And sped an ocean flight. But Champlain bold
Tracked the great river, there where Cartier sailed,
Long ere those days, to Montmorenci's fall,
And where, o'er all the land, her piercing gaze,
Proud of her shining bulwarks, Quebec throws,
And eyes afar the trackless brush that sweeps
Its wilderness far north, where Baffin steered;
And near, the vast St. Lawrence, a deep tide
Coursing from inland seas than it more vast;
Waters like greenest gems of ocean mass
Compact, that proudly roll their emerald sheets
Over Niagara's edge; and farther down,
Below fair Orleans isle, the traveller seeks
Thy roar, St. Anne, hymn to the voyageur,—
102
Where thy uncounted fall shakes the dark earth:
So Verrazani and Sebastian stern,
With brave Sir Humphrey, sailed our baffling shores.
Then, even to the lake that loves his name,
And holds the haughty Adirondacks glassed
Within its mirror, where the Iroquois,
A race sepulchral battling for their scalps,
Swept clean the war-path, Champlain fearless went.
Far greater than them all, that trusting soul,
The patient Genoese, whose name this land
Most fitly bore. How are they sped to nought!—
All save the Mayflower's children, or their race;
And, if not done, surviving in lean tribes
Haunting the Cordilleras and the Plain,
And such as 'neath Potosi dig the ore,
Or for their Cuban slave-pen fiercely strike.
If, now, a fable held, the legend old,
That gives the hardy Norse, seafaring men,
The true discovery of our rock-bound world,
And the strange name of Vineyard to the sound,
From Vinland and the Dane, perchance is truth.
So the first human craft seen on this coast,
A Biscay shallop with its crew, one clad
In seaman's costume and their copper pot,
That welcomed Gosnold on the Eastern shore,
Spake of another captain, other ship,
As sea-King Norse from Iceland's fords, whose words,
Household to us, flow in the English tongue.
What unknown ages, what crude centuries,
Since first New England's cape and that Blanche bay,
Our Massachusetts water, flowed with life!
Since first Cape Cod kept the tautog secure
From the cold ocean north his narrow stripe,
Or bade the crowd of shells south of his sands,
Never to pass that line; what eras past
Had the hot Gulf Stream, torn from Carib seas,
Rounded Nantucket's shore, and warmed the wave
That sweeps Fairhaven ere the trembling sloop,
Product of human labor, touched her strand!
And when shall ride a future deluge forth,
Back to the royal Proteus sweeping all?
Man questions deep in nature; but the plan,
Darkly significant of struggling chance,
Repeats the conflict of a rising world;
Ages where he did not participate,
With one-horned donkies and wing-fingered bats
Shuffled together, and the type obscured;
Lizards that flow; and armadilloes vast
Flopping in orchid-swamps, or dreaming out
Primeval leisures beneath tree-fern bowers.
Then came a page scrawled with hyena lines,
Species of bears and hairy elephants
Lumped at the pole, as if, prolific mind,
The generous mother never could enough.
In vain she crept, she flew at large, she crawled,
And sought to bridge the swamps by making peat,
Age after age, or sketched patterns of trees,
Pine after beech, and beeches after oak;
Beast following beast she tried, and nice
Condensed her shelly refuse into hills;
Then pushed the flashing quartz and granites red
Up the volcano's spout, or earthquake's scar.
Yet she succeeded crudely, striving on,
In this life-struggle for new living forms,
To mould superior creatures, and a globe
Better contrived for permanence to fill.
Vast was the stride from creatures without spine,
To upright columns, and a pivot crown,
The termination of the cord: here she rested;
Here she said, as 'twere, “The work is done.
Thus much my ages bring.” Yet beings stride
Ever to brighter regions, struggling through
The ranks of species to complexer form.
May not the winged prototypes be joined
To human structure, now too much embayed,
Collapsed in its own gravity, fixed to support,
Or hang upon the orb, a two-legged thing;
For slowly up, a downcast race, man trod:
Tried the gorilla rough and clumsy built,
Or, on all fours, protrusive crept about
Till times of principle evoked back-bone.
Years ere the Pilgrim Mayflower came and found
Those Plymouth treasures, Gosnold with his men,
As oft we say, landed on Wellfleet's sands;
And Brereton and Arthur crossed the cape
To scan the broad Atlantic, where to-day
The Beacon stands: the Highland light upon
The clay pit's brink, well should the sailor know,
Lest he confuse this Pharos with the next,
That stars its long Cape Race, or that more east,
With Nauset. Often have I dwelt content,
Pleased with the extending scene, and loved the man
Of genial nature and observant eye,
Who kept the light.
As old tradition lives
Along this coast, like those who came of old
(Danes or bold Norse), and named it Wonder Strand,
The men are fishers. Venturous their craft,
Quick-speeding schooners ploughing the blue main;
And rightly in its bud they named this shore,—
A silent hamlet sown on lonely sands,
Watered with widows' tears and children's sobs,
The fisher's home,—calling it Dangerfield.
And if the gale from George's in its wrath
Rolls o'er these passive fields, as if its power
Would sweep the humble houses off the land,
And make new barks of them to search the seas,
Well may the hamlet shudder in the gale.
That fatal line upon the graveyard sod,
That far amid the lonely wastes is set,
Where fifty souls out from this little flock,
Sunk in one fatal storm, buried alive,—
There in the mountains of the ingulfing wave,
Reads the dread lesson common on these hills!
Ask of your guide, who in the modest house
On that side lives, or this. Each house alike
Widow and children left to mourn the loss
Of him buried at sea. And nothing less,
Each fresh recurring season views the sails,
Bent forth, whiten the azure circumstance,—
The fleet just parting off for George's banks.
From that high cliff I looked o'er Truro's beach,
And saw beneath, the far unending strand
Coping with all the waves, and never wrecked.
There, too, town of the Province, built on sand,
Like Venice, lovely, sheltered in the wave,
With all its spires bright looming in the air,
When the mirage puts forth a playful arm,
And draws the smiling pageant through the haze.
Here first the pilgrim touched; he praised her soil;
He sung about her groves, like mariners
Hungry for inward pleasures, emerald green,
To whom the sward is heaven.
There's no place
I ever wandered in upon this earth,
Sweeter at sunset than the little vale
Crossing above the lighthouse, where is seen
No trace of human dwelling, nor a track
Scooped by the toilsome wagon in those sands;
So still, so fragrant with the fresh sea-air
Caught from the beach. The broad-leaved golden-rod;
And grass ill-named of poverty; and that plant,
The perfumed Mayflower, with the long beach-grass;
And copses blushing all of bright wild rose,—
Enhance the scene; and the soft sparrow's note
Comes from the ground, so well Savanna named,
As if her song in that pure element,
Blest in seclusion, welled up from the herb,
One with the peaceful cricket's twilight strains.
Yet ever haunts the ear a hush of sounds,
Making the silence sweeter; and how soon,
(If your adventurous foot demand,
And standing on the verge) you see beneath,
The sparkling lines of ever-rolling surf,
On the patient sand crashing their cannon!—
The glistening sprays torn off the breaking waves,
Bright lights and changeful greens, and floating wrack,
And that unwearying breeze. Oh! yet withdraw,
And in sweet contrast find the silence deep,
As if the pulses of the earth were stilled
Beyond the power of thought, or dream to speak,
Communing with the spirit of the sea,
Most like the mountain's voice when evening greets
You, silent, on his cliffs.
That gives the hardy Norse, seafaring men,
The true discovery of our rock-bound world,
103
From Vinland and the Dane, perchance is truth.
So the first human craft seen on this coast,
A Biscay shallop with its crew, one clad
In seaman's costume and their copper pot,
That welcomed Gosnold on the Eastern shore,
Spake of another captain, other ship,
As sea-King Norse from Iceland's fords, whose words,
Household to us, flow in the English tongue.
What unknown ages, what crude centuries,
Since first New England's cape and that Blanche bay,
Our Massachusetts water, flowed with life!
Since first Cape Cod kept the tautog secure
From the cold ocean north his narrow stripe,
Or bade the crowd of shells south of his sands,
Never to pass that line; what eras past
Had the hot Gulf Stream, torn from Carib seas,
Rounded Nantucket's shore, and warmed the wave
That sweeps Fairhaven ere the trembling sloop,
Product of human labor, touched her strand!
104
Back to the royal Proteus sweeping all?
Man questions deep in nature; but the plan,
Darkly significant of struggling chance,
Repeats the conflict of a rising world;
Ages where he did not participate,
With one-horned donkies and wing-fingered bats
Shuffled together, and the type obscured;
Lizards that flow; and armadilloes vast
Flopping in orchid-swamps, or dreaming out
Primeval leisures beneath tree-fern bowers.
Then came a page scrawled with hyena lines,
Species of bears and hairy elephants
Lumped at the pole, as if, prolific mind,
The generous mother never could enough.
In vain she crept, she flew at large, she crawled,
And sought to bridge the swamps by making peat,
Age after age, or sketched patterns of trees,
Pine after beech, and beeches after oak;
Beast following beast she tried, and nice
Condensed her shelly refuse into hills;
105
Up the volcano's spout, or earthquake's scar.
Yet she succeeded crudely, striving on,
In this life-struggle for new living forms,
To mould superior creatures, and a globe
Better contrived for permanence to fill.
Vast was the stride from creatures without spine,
To upright columns, and a pivot crown,
The termination of the cord: here she rested;
Here she said, as 'twere, “The work is done.
Thus much my ages bring.” Yet beings stride
Ever to brighter regions, struggling through
The ranks of species to complexer form.
May not the winged prototypes be joined
To human structure, now too much embayed,
Collapsed in its own gravity, fixed to support,
Or hang upon the orb, a two-legged thing;
For slowly up, a downcast race, man trod:
Tried the gorilla rough and clumsy built,
Or, on all fours, protrusive crept about
Till times of principle evoked back-bone.
106
Those Plymouth treasures, Gosnold with his men,
As oft we say, landed on Wellfleet's sands;
And Brereton and Arthur crossed the cape
To scan the broad Atlantic, where to-day
The Beacon stands: the Highland light upon
The clay pit's brink, well should the sailor know,
Lest he confuse this Pharos with the next,
That stars its long Cape Race, or that more east,
With Nauset. Often have I dwelt content,
Pleased with the extending scene, and loved the man
Of genial nature and observant eye,
Who kept the light.
As old tradition lives
Along this coast, like those who came of old
(Danes or bold Norse), and named it Wonder Strand,
The men are fishers. Venturous their craft,
Quick-speeding schooners ploughing the blue main;
And rightly in its bud they named this shore,—
A silent hamlet sown on lonely sands,
Watered with widows' tears and children's sobs,
107
And if the gale from George's in its wrath
Rolls o'er these passive fields, as if its power
Would sweep the humble houses off the land,
And make new barks of them to search the seas,
Well may the hamlet shudder in the gale.
That fatal line upon the graveyard sod,
That far amid the lonely wastes is set,
Where fifty souls out from this little flock,
Sunk in one fatal storm, buried alive,—
There in the mountains of the ingulfing wave,
Reads the dread lesson common on these hills!
Ask of your guide, who in the modest house
On that side lives, or this. Each house alike
Widow and children left to mourn the loss
Of him buried at sea. And nothing less,
Each fresh recurring season views the sails,
Bent forth, whiten the azure circumstance,—
The fleet just parting off for George's banks.
From that high cliff I looked o'er Truro's beach,
And saw beneath, the far unending strand
108
There, too, town of the Province, built on sand,
Like Venice, lovely, sheltered in the wave,
With all its spires bright looming in the air,
When the mirage puts forth a playful arm,
And draws the smiling pageant through the haze.
Here first the pilgrim touched; he praised her soil;
He sung about her groves, like mariners
Hungry for inward pleasures, emerald green,
To whom the sward is heaven.
There's no place
I ever wandered in upon this earth,
Sweeter at sunset than the little vale
Crossing above the lighthouse, where is seen
No trace of human dwelling, nor a track
Scooped by the toilsome wagon in those sands;
So still, so fragrant with the fresh sea-air
Caught from the beach. The broad-leaved golden-rod;
And grass ill-named of poverty; and that plant,
The perfumed Mayflower, with the long beach-grass;
And copses blushing all of bright wild rose,—
109
Comes from the ground, so well Savanna named,
As if her song in that pure element,
Blest in seclusion, welled up from the herb,
One with the peaceful cricket's twilight strains.
Yet ever haunts the ear a hush of sounds,
Making the silence sweeter; and how soon,
(If your adventurous foot demand,
And standing on the verge) you see beneath,
The sparkling lines of ever-rolling surf,
On the patient sand crashing their cannon!—
The glistening sprays torn off the breaking waves,
Bright lights and changeful greens, and floating wrack,
And that unwearying breeze. Oh! yet withdraw,
And in sweet contrast find the silence deep,
As if the pulses of the earth were stilled
Beyond the power of thought, or dream to speak,
Communing with the spirit of the sea,
Most like the mountain's voice when evening greets
You, silent, on his cliffs.
110
And often came
To this consoling valley one whose bloom
Partly had faded off a cheek of rose,
When not yet twenty summers for her form
Had wound their wreaths of beauty. She had known
The city's culture, nursed by ceaseless love,
And that devoted heart to mothers lent,
And unto them alone. But oft her thoughts,
In the proud mansion on the city street,
Strewed with the loans of luxury that time
Wafts down o'erpowering from the burdened past,
Wandered to this seclusion. And she saw
The rolling wave tossing its sand and shells;
The shining pebbles murmuring at her feet,
And felt the breath of the pure living waters
Thrill her reviving frame. Her song she raised:
“Oh, I would be a daughter of the sea!
On the dull land I feel the death of life,
That bars away my soul from all I love,
Where sleeps the heart I never thought to lose.
The open air, the bright and cheerful day,
Bringing my frame their reasonable toil,—
They make repose, seem joy. But in these streets,
On custom pensioned, and constraint in form,
My thoughts feel feverish as an imprisoned bird
Against life's narrow bars,—narrow and steeled.
Oh, I would be a daughter of the sea!
To list its ceaseless song, and think no more
Of all this weary and incessant shore;
Hiding a breaking heart behind a mask
Made of conspicuous trifles, pointed fine,
And wounding to the last. Afar my boat
Should ride the foaming distance, as the prow
Tossed off the whitening rancor of the wave,
And let the breeze blow free, and my wild speed
Shall emulate its own.”
To this consoling valley one whose bloom
Partly had faded off a cheek of rose,
When not yet twenty summers for her form
Had wound their wreaths of beauty. She had known
The city's culture, nursed by ceaseless love,
And that devoted heart to mothers lent,
And unto them alone. But oft her thoughts,
In the proud mansion on the city street,
Strewed with the loans of luxury that time
Wafts down o'erpowering from the burdened past,
Wandered to this seclusion. And she saw
The rolling wave tossing its sand and shells;
The shining pebbles murmuring at her feet,
And felt the breath of the pure living waters
Thrill her reviving frame. Her song she raised:
“Oh, I would be a daughter of the sea!
On the dull land I feel the death of life,
That bars away my soul from all I love,
Where sleeps the heart I never thought to lose.
The open air, the bright and cheerful day,
111
They make repose, seem joy. But in these streets,
On custom pensioned, and constraint in form,
My thoughts feel feverish as an imprisoned bird
Against life's narrow bars,—narrow and steeled.
Oh, I would be a daughter of the sea!
To list its ceaseless song, and think no more
Of all this weary and incessant shore;
Hiding a breaking heart behind a mask
Made of conspicuous trifles, pointed fine,
And wounding to the last. Afar my boat
Should ride the foaming distance, as the prow
Tossed off the whitening rancor of the wave,
And let the breeze blow free, and my wild speed
Shall emulate its own.”
112
VII.
HILLSIDE.
Eve coming slowly down, at peace we marked
From higher places the low sun decline
Across the bay, pouring o'er Monimet
A flood of ruddy light that made more rich,
Her decorous robe of crimson,—autumn's robe
Of berry-bearing plants and changing trees,
Responsive to that glory. Thence I gazed
With a more fond emotion; for the hills
Contained, or rather might conceal, that house,—
Mansion I fitlier call it. Gothic hall,
With colonnade like Reinsberg's own, contract
To a more private scale; and slated roofs
So purely French, pierced with such frames, that one
Not comely in herself, thence looking, gained
A face. Below were sheltering lattices,
With ample steps beat from the granite legde,
That borders the fleet brook, most merrily
And in all seasons running down the lawn,—
Stream like Voltaire's, heard in the cheerful rooms.
Far and in lavish taste were ranged around
The labyrinthine walks, their ample shades
Contrived from growths of cultured affluence.
The medlar here pursued his quaint decay,
Near by the chalky hazel's stunted limb,
Or loaded figs sweet as e'er Smyrna grew;
Bohemian olive, orange-scented joy,
And sunny laburnum. Here shrubs divine,
Noble wigelia, roseate-blushed and white,
A summer wreath of glory, clothed the copse;
Or rich forsythia glittering like the fall,
And delicate as lace the pure white fringe,—
Each in its season on the enamoured air,
Breathed its soft beauty. And such flowers unveiled
As might adorn the Psyche in her bower,—
Gay-leaved geraniums, with rich fuchsias lake,
Pendant as graceful drop in loveliest ears;
And Scottish daisies like the peasant's song,
That taught its tender fame, Eolian Burns,
A flower to shine beneath the Scottish birch,—
Tree Wordsworth calls, “the lady of the wood.”
The gardens delicate with quality
Of luscious spoil, from Eastern realms conveyed,—
From Japan's fields her lilies' golden gleam,
Or whate'er Fortune in his pleasant trips
O'er China, thought an English charm; all lands,
And farthest skies raining their splendors down.
On the two sides touching the garden, fields
Social in grain, or lapped in orchard-wealth,
The succulent pear, braced apples, or blue plum,
Nor less there bloom, dusk clusters of ripe grapes
Rounding the vines, and walnuts stately gold,
As tallest column of Sierra's stone,
On mellow autumn's hillside.
So within
Genially spread presides refining taste.
The buoyant day, forth wheeling in his car,
Revealed in Guido's dream, here lights the wall
Upon soft Phosphor's blush; and near, the gaze
Instinct with manly genius and young strength,
Of Raphael; his hand so sensitive,
Ne'er touched the pencil but to lift the art
Above the saint he drew,—St. Barbara,
Or holy Catherine bending on the tomb.
And copies of the famous or the fine,
From graver ages ferried to compel
Our admiration,—Dante's shrunken form
Thinking immensely, aquiline and spare;
And polished Milton, creature of the court,
Munificent in diction; and the one
Whose face, traditionally drawn, reveals
To thirsty hearts Judea's loveliest soul.
While from the humble shelves mild rural books,
As liquid Maro dulcet on his flute,
And timorous Cowper with his three pet hares,
Regale the evening circle in their verse;
Unless the sweet piano fill the ear
Blithe in its strings, or with some soft-toned voice;
The courtly grandam, nodding o'er her glass,
And famished girlhood studying out her eyes.
On the same spot, led down the sallow years
From the first impress of the Pilgrim's foot,
Mark this home, succeeding generations;
Cordial descent, more with each added stock
Perfecting the true kind; more mellow fruit,
More culture of the mind, by skilful grafts.
Thus even in the comforts of the house,
The early architecture swept remote,
A costly and convenient mansion stands.
And as in England, skilful heralds rate
The arms and quarterings of good families,
So here the annals of the line descend,
By ladies treasured up, who knit composed
In quiet corners; or by robust sons,
Walking behind their ploughshares; and wise clerks,
Who trace the lineage from town histories.
So that the workmen on such peasant farms,
If never king with garter violet,
And sword of diamond hilt, impressed the blood
With knightly crest, yet by well-ordered work,
Or what the patient mind contrives to raise,
Keep memory and pride about the place:
In these plebeian homesteads is the stamp
Of true nobility. A lettered boy,
Drilled in collegiate walls, perchance, ascends
The pulpit's height, or thunders at the bar;
Another to new shores ordains his wit,
Viewing Calcutta's halls,—a traveller;
The gentler fabric softly weaving in
With other households similar in gift;
Till from the fragile and short-lived estate,
As thought in foreign lands where entail holds,
Rises the solid profit of the farm.
And time above the dear familiar place
Depends in venerable elms;
Like citron bright their lichen-painted trunks,
Fruit of parmelia's skill; meantime the house,
Pride of aspiring builders, slowly brings
The right results. For in our tragic clime
The keen north-west drives through the gaping boards;
Nor less the east, rich with the sea it loves,
Undoes the shingle, and abstracts the nail;
Slates bloom instead, and rocks of trust,
Replace the wood-foundation; blithe the flowers
Drawn on the wainscots, and the Indian vase
Floating from Canton's river tints the porch.
When evening calls the family within,
Social and warm the ruddy curtains fall
Around the dreamy casements, till the war
Of the continuous surf upon the ledge,
That shores the ocean's ingress, whispering, lulls,
And fancy brings the forms of other days.
From higher places the low sun decline
Across the bay, pouring o'er Monimet
A flood of ruddy light that made more rich,
Her decorous robe of crimson,—autumn's robe
Of berry-bearing plants and changing trees,
Responsive to that glory. Thence I gazed
With a more fond emotion; for the hills
Contained, or rather might conceal, that house,—
Mansion I fitlier call it. Gothic hall,
With colonnade like Reinsberg's own, contract
To a more private scale; and slated roofs
So purely French, pierced with such frames, that one
Not comely in herself, thence looking, gained
A face. Below were sheltering lattices,
113
That borders the fleet brook, most merrily
And in all seasons running down the lawn,—
Stream like Voltaire's, heard in the cheerful rooms.
Far and in lavish taste were ranged around
The labyrinthine walks, their ample shades
Contrived from growths of cultured affluence.
The medlar here pursued his quaint decay,
Near by the chalky hazel's stunted limb,
Or loaded figs sweet as e'er Smyrna grew;
Bohemian olive, orange-scented joy,
And sunny laburnum. Here shrubs divine,
Noble wigelia, roseate-blushed and white,
A summer wreath of glory, clothed the copse;
Or rich forsythia glittering like the fall,
And delicate as lace the pure white fringe,—
Each in its season on the enamoured air,
Breathed its soft beauty. And such flowers unveiled
As might adorn the Psyche in her bower,—
Gay-leaved geraniums, with rich fuchsias lake,
Pendant as graceful drop in loveliest ears;
114
That taught its tender fame, Eolian Burns,
A flower to shine beneath the Scottish birch,—
Tree Wordsworth calls, “the lady of the wood.”
The gardens delicate with quality
Of luscious spoil, from Eastern realms conveyed,—
From Japan's fields her lilies' golden gleam,
Or whate'er Fortune in his pleasant trips
O'er China, thought an English charm; all lands,
And farthest skies raining their splendors down.
On the two sides touching the garden, fields
Social in grain, or lapped in orchard-wealth,
The succulent pear, braced apples, or blue plum,
Nor less there bloom, dusk clusters of ripe grapes
Rounding the vines, and walnuts stately gold,
As tallest column of Sierra's stone,
On mellow autumn's hillside.
So within
Genially spread presides refining taste.
The buoyant day, forth wheeling in his car,
Revealed in Guido's dream, here lights the wall
115
Instinct with manly genius and young strength,
Of Raphael; his hand so sensitive,
Ne'er touched the pencil but to lift the art
Above the saint he drew,—St. Barbara,
Or holy Catherine bending on the tomb.
And copies of the famous or the fine,
From graver ages ferried to compel
Our admiration,—Dante's shrunken form
Thinking immensely, aquiline and spare;
And polished Milton, creature of the court,
Munificent in diction; and the one
Whose face, traditionally drawn, reveals
To thirsty hearts Judea's loveliest soul.
While from the humble shelves mild rural books,
As liquid Maro dulcet on his flute,
And timorous Cowper with his three pet hares,
Regale the evening circle in their verse;
Unless the sweet piano fill the ear
Blithe in its strings, or with some soft-toned voice;
The courtly grandam, nodding o'er her glass,
And famished girlhood studying out her eyes.
116
From the first impress of the Pilgrim's foot,
Mark this home, succeeding generations;
Cordial descent, more with each added stock
Perfecting the true kind; more mellow fruit,
More culture of the mind, by skilful grafts.
Thus even in the comforts of the house,
The early architecture swept remote,
A costly and convenient mansion stands.
And as in England, skilful heralds rate
The arms and quarterings of good families,
So here the annals of the line descend,
By ladies treasured up, who knit composed
In quiet corners; or by robust sons,
Walking behind their ploughshares; and wise clerks,
Who trace the lineage from town histories.
So that the workmen on such peasant farms,
If never king with garter violet,
And sword of diamond hilt, impressed the blood
With knightly crest, yet by well-ordered work,
Or what the patient mind contrives to raise,
117
In these plebeian homesteads is the stamp
Of true nobility. A lettered boy,
Drilled in collegiate walls, perchance, ascends
The pulpit's height, or thunders at the bar;
Another to new shores ordains his wit,
Viewing Calcutta's halls,—a traveller;
The gentler fabric softly weaving in
With other households similar in gift;
Till from the fragile and short-lived estate,
As thought in foreign lands where entail holds,
Rises the solid profit of the farm.
And time above the dear familiar place
Depends in venerable elms;
Like citron bright their lichen-painted trunks,
Fruit of parmelia's skill; meantime the house,
Pride of aspiring builders, slowly brings
The right results. For in our tragic clime
The keen north-west drives through the gaping boards;
Nor less the east, rich with the sea it loves,
118
Slates bloom instead, and rocks of trust,
Replace the wood-foundation; blithe the flowers
Drawn on the wainscots, and the Indian vase
Floating from Canton's river tints the porch.
When evening calls the family within,
Social and warm the ruddy curtains fall
Around the dreamy casements, till the war
Of the continuous surf upon the ledge,
That shores the ocean's ingress, whispering, lulls,
And fancy brings the forms of other days.
O loved and gone, the darling of our hearts!
With thy soft winning ways, caressing smiles,
And step more light than tracks the forest fawn;
Who taught the old how kind the young might be;
How often thy soft figure, wandering o'er
The breezy lawn, or couched within the shade,
Made sweeter music than all sounds beside!
Gone, oh, forever gone! alone she sleeps
Upon the hillside looking o'er the sea;
Alone? when every heart, full of thy worth,
Enchanting Julia, sends its love to thee.
With thy soft winning ways, caressing smiles,
And step more light than tracks the forest fawn;
Who taught the old how kind the young might be;
How often thy soft figure, wandering o'er
The breezy lawn, or couched within the shade,
Made sweeter music than all sounds beside!
Gone, oh, forever gone! alone she sleeps
Upon the hillside looking o'er the sea;
119
Enchanting Julia, sends its love to thee.
Safe is this peaceful haunt, far from the town,
With all its noise forgot, and steeped in silence.
No shrieking train let forth pants rumbling by;
No factory-bell, the presage of man's toil,
Infects the ear. Soft in its sovereign groves
The dwelling stands of one I knew of yore,—
He truly for seclusion framed, yet graced
With kindly instincts and delightful tastes,
I ever valued, as a hope for them,
Who love the simple scenes of rural bliss.
In cities' throngs might he have haply moved,
And held conspicuous reins in civil crowds,
Had not the charitable God supreme,
With lovelier council given him space to be,
The happiest man of all this earthly state,—
A valued scholar, and, addition blest!
Who made his hillside lovely to his friends,
And, loving, was beloved.
With all its noise forgot, and steeped in silence.
No shrieking train let forth pants rumbling by;
No factory-bell, the presage of man's toil,
Infects the ear. Soft in its sovereign groves
The dwelling stands of one I knew of yore,—
He truly for seclusion framed, yet graced
With kindly instincts and delightful tastes,
I ever valued, as a hope for them,
Who love the simple scenes of rural bliss.
In cities' throngs might he have haply moved,
And held conspicuous reins in civil crowds,
Had not the charitable God supreme,
With lovelier council given him space to be,
The happiest man of all this earthly state,—
A valued scholar, and, addition blest!
Who made his hillside lovely to his friends,
And, loving, was beloved.
120
There, in soft dreams
Of hope, I half forgot the old complaint
Against the ambitious crowd who throng the mart,
Supreme each in his own conceit, or first
Might prove, if but allowed due scope, and ripe
For quick promotion. So the centuries flit;
And yet the god admires to people cities,
Arch over arch rebuilds their gates, and fills
The gaps cut by besiegers with their guns,
When the hot fight, on Prague or Warsaw fell,
Or Wolfe outdid Montcalm, and sealed his days.
How fulgent speed the suburbs, once the torch
Of Hecate to the walls applied! Sudden
In empty air the granaries fly aloft,
The year's tanned labor wasted on a spark,
Leaving the land disconsolate, where peace
Just softly cradled raised her Saviour's head.
Not from poor hamlet's sheds go forth the ranks,
But Potsdam rich in palaces, or Ghent
And Paris, camp supreme since Julian's days,
Where yet his thermæ fast by Cluny's halls
Attest the spot, where the vague soldiery
Of latter Rome, swore fealty to their lord.—
Clustered together much like bees in cells,
Close, if unmingled, the associates dwell,
Where meagre penury hitches the skirt
Of silken grandeur, and hungry beggars
Swarm, gathering up cast-out bones, envious
Of the dogs well-fed. Just God! my heart
Bleeds to its depth to feel the children's woe,
Nurtured in rags, uncombed, unwashed, and starved,
Squalid by brutal license, reared in pain,
Old ere their youth has come, to steal and beg
Their joyous privilege. Who grateful sees
The scarlet carriole and the pampered steeds,
With a bedizened load of sickly dames?—
A tatter from their lace enough support
For poor folks half the month, good Christians too;
Fatal such contrast, accident at best.
No farthing wasted on the shivering child;
Then to the prison haled, the wretched thief
Plaything of grizzly sinners, learns his task,
Bible of righteousness, preached in those schools,
And graduates soon fine scholar.
One I knew,
A thinking man, his days in mercy spent,
Who sought to mitigate these carrion forms,
And raise some fresh emotion in the heart,
For them, cast out to ignorance and vice.
But then the o'ercrowded city crowding grows,
And breeds the plague that riots in its squares;
Builds up foul court-yards and unholy lanes,
The fountains of pollution; and endows
The university of thirst and lust
Patron of wickedness,—the lodger's crib; swiftly
The prison's cell receiving its refuse.
What are the costly prints that hide the walls
Where swelling Angelo his prophet seats,
And sibyls, big in muscle; what the stone
Smooth in Canova's taste, or gaslit throng
Clapping the tiresome Hamlet?
Can we sink
The dark and dangerous classes in the mire,
Safely obliterate? and at our ease
Napping behind the curtains, and delight
With spendthrift opulence of ill-got wealth,
And sideboard blazed with plate, omit the claim
Of human misery, fainting at the door?
Or shall we haunt the porches, taste the cool
And philosophic shade where wisdom sits
Upon its nodding throne, and heaps the page
With fruit luxuriant from the spells of Greece,
What Gorgias taught? There, in those seas of froth,
On which the unballast mind pursues
Its vagrant theories, with helm suppressed,
Heaping its dust in weary sophistries
To pamper future pedants;—there forget
In our release, the sufferings of the wretch
In tattered garb, his letters never learned,
Who rakes the city gutter for his meal?
Of hope, I half forgot the old complaint
Against the ambitious crowd who throng the mart,
Supreme each in his own conceit, or first
Might prove, if but allowed due scope, and ripe
For quick promotion. So the centuries flit;
And yet the god admires to people cities,
Arch over arch rebuilds their gates, and fills
The gaps cut by besiegers with their guns,
When the hot fight, on Prague or Warsaw fell,
Or Wolfe outdid Montcalm, and sealed his days.
How fulgent speed the suburbs, once the torch
Of Hecate to the walls applied! Sudden
In empty air the granaries fly aloft,
The year's tanned labor wasted on a spark,
Leaving the land disconsolate, where peace
Just softly cradled raised her Saviour's head.
Not from poor hamlet's sheds go forth the ranks,
But Potsdam rich in palaces, or Ghent
And Paris, camp supreme since Julian's days,
Where yet his thermæ fast by Cluny's halls
121
Of latter Rome, swore fealty to their lord.—
Clustered together much like bees in cells,
Close, if unmingled, the associates dwell,
Where meagre penury hitches the skirt
Of silken grandeur, and hungry beggars
Swarm, gathering up cast-out bones, envious
Of the dogs well-fed. Just God! my heart
Bleeds to its depth to feel the children's woe,
Nurtured in rags, uncombed, unwashed, and starved,
Squalid by brutal license, reared in pain,
Old ere their youth has come, to steal and beg
Their joyous privilege. Who grateful sees
The scarlet carriole and the pampered steeds,
With a bedizened load of sickly dames?—
A tatter from their lace enough support
For poor folks half the month, good Christians too;
Fatal such contrast, accident at best.
No farthing wasted on the shivering child;
Then to the prison haled, the wretched thief
Plaything of grizzly sinners, learns his task,
122
And graduates soon fine scholar.
One I knew,
A thinking man, his days in mercy spent,
Who sought to mitigate these carrion forms,
And raise some fresh emotion in the heart,
For them, cast out to ignorance and vice.
But then the o'ercrowded city crowding grows,
And breeds the plague that riots in its squares;
Builds up foul court-yards and unholy lanes,
The fountains of pollution; and endows
The university of thirst and lust
Patron of wickedness,—the lodger's crib; swiftly
The prison's cell receiving its refuse.
What are the costly prints that hide the walls
Where swelling Angelo his prophet seats,
And sibyls, big in muscle; what the stone
Smooth in Canova's taste, or gaslit throng
Clapping the tiresome Hamlet?
Can we sink
The dark and dangerous classes in the mire,
123
Napping behind the curtains, and delight
With spendthrift opulence of ill-got wealth,
And sideboard blazed with plate, omit the claim
Of human misery, fainting at the door?
Or shall we haunt the porches, taste the cool
And philosophic shade where wisdom sits
Upon its nodding throne, and heaps the page
With fruit luxuriant from the spells of Greece,
What Gorgias taught? There, in those seas of froth,
On which the unballast mind pursues
Its vagrant theories, with helm suppressed,
Heaping its dust in weary sophistries
To pamper future pedants;—there forget
In our release, the sufferings of the wretch
In tattered garb, his letters never learned,
Who rakes the city gutter for his meal?
Mother of arts and arms the City stands,
Bred by long centuries to lead the race,
And resting on her hero's head the crown,
Who makes the great occasion civil named,
Term by the learned, fashioned; civil,
Almost polite. Old temples line her streets,
Palace and arch, and Trajan's theatre
Where the Christian fed the starved lioness,
Caught in Numidia, with his lean flesh,
That thus Rome's emperors, applaud by sweaty palms,
Might drink a bloodier triumph. Now, it serves
The pardoning popes. Simply, if handed down,
Race worships most, the custom of the race,
Preserving man, and for long ages pets
The dead prerogative as if man's doom;
In Copan or Palenque, from strange shrines
Plump out new gods; or giant from its mud
Cardiff displays, there near the shallow stream,
Mutely forlorn, half asking to be spared,
Appropriate transcript of the natural man,
Hero of the old days! There he dreams,—
The antique figure, carted from his bed,
Dreams of the time he shot the hippogriff
Trooping about his plains heavy with nightshade;
Or in his torrid swamps bestrode that beast,
The ichthyosaur, and listens to the yells
Of sharp hyena with the savans' talk,
As they debate his bones, and draw the plan
On which young nature laid his wide expanse.
Now drifted to the cities, he may hear
The swarm of pygmies buzzing at the door,
And, for the peal of ages on his case,
Remark the civic clock, politely tuned,
Shoot forth meridian time; the frantic crowd
That worry by his weight breathless to add
A blossom to their days, while his fell off,
Or ever Adam gave the palm to Eve.
Fearing the myth, they ridicule his age;
Less credible, they deem a hero dead
Than insects scarce conceived.
Bred by long centuries to lead the race,
And resting on her hero's head the crown,
124
Term by the learned, fashioned; civil,
Almost polite. Old temples line her streets,
Palace and arch, and Trajan's theatre
Where the Christian fed the starved lioness,
Caught in Numidia, with his lean flesh,
That thus Rome's emperors, applaud by sweaty palms,
Might drink a bloodier triumph. Now, it serves
The pardoning popes. Simply, if handed down,
Race worships most, the custom of the race,
Preserving man, and for long ages pets
The dead prerogative as if man's doom;
In Copan or Palenque, from strange shrines
Plump out new gods; or giant from its mud
Cardiff displays, there near the shallow stream,
Mutely forlorn, half asking to be spared,
Appropriate transcript of the natural man,
Hero of the old days! There he dreams,—
The antique figure, carted from his bed,
Dreams of the time he shot the hippogriff
Trooping about his plains heavy with nightshade;
125
The ichthyosaur, and listens to the yells
Of sharp hyena with the savans' talk,
As they debate his bones, and draw the plan
On which young nature laid his wide expanse.
Now drifted to the cities, he may hear
The swarm of pygmies buzzing at the door,
And, for the peal of ages on his case,
Remark the civic clock, politely tuned,
Shoot forth meridian time; the frantic crowd
That worry by his weight breathless to add
A blossom to their days, while his fell off,
Or ever Adam gave the palm to Eve.
Fearing the myth, they ridicule his age;
Less credible, they deem a hero dead
Than insects scarce conceived.
Far eras gone,
Magnificoes like this, old earth put forth,
That pave the brooks in Cardiff to this hour.
Races cropped out, and steady came the dream,—
The giant; the Goliaths fought and fell;
Vain was the search, while every shape of beast
Reckoned incredible the soil produced.
The civil congregation fed and died
In war and peace conceiving; but no work
Of sculpture ere the flood, or man of mould
Twice in his stature topping o'er the kind,
Till that good farmer of the Cardiff vale
Flat in the boggy drain barely concealed,
The fossil creature found. Model the form;
Brow of Caucasian eminence and depth;
His figure average in Camper's scale;
And neck and skull right as a theory.
Magnificoes like this, old earth put forth,
That pave the brooks in Cardiff to this hour.
Races cropped out, and steady came the dream,—
126
Vain was the search, while every shape of beast
Reckoned incredible the soil produced.
The civil congregation fed and died
In war and peace conceiving; but no work
Of sculpture ere the flood, or man of mould
Twice in his stature topping o'er the kind,
Till that good farmer of the Cardiff vale
Flat in the boggy drain barely concealed,
The fossil creature found. Model the form;
Brow of Caucasian eminence and depth;
His figure average in Camper's scale;
And neck and skull right as a theory.
Behold the entrance of a form in light,
From nations gone ere China or Japan
Baked clay pagodas, and, delightful gleam,
Bushels of Indian hatchets sank to please
Detective Lyell in the Amiens sand,
Or Switzer lake enjoyed the pile-built town.
Form water-worn; the mouth half eaten out,
And half the arm; the soles all honey-combed;
The stone of easy grain, and wrought with art.
More as some serious Roman looks it there
Than the brief creatures flitting on the streets
Bandaged in narrow garments fit to hide
Their scanty moulding. For that native drape
(Such as it is) outdoes the Roman baldness
Ere wig or peruke troubled the occiput.
And never in the brilliant forms of stone
That crowd the Vatican more royal shape
Of young Augustus, or Vespasian stern,
Or Sophocles,—the tall, commanding Greek.
From nations gone ere China or Japan
Baked clay pagodas, and, delightful gleam,
Bushels of Indian hatchets sank to please
Detective Lyell in the Amiens sand,
Or Switzer lake enjoyed the pile-built town.
Form water-worn; the mouth half eaten out,
127
The stone of easy grain, and wrought with art.
More as some serious Roman looks it there
Than the brief creatures flitting on the streets
Bandaged in narrow garments fit to hide
Their scanty moulding. For that native drape
(Such as it is) outdoes the Roman baldness
Ere wig or peruke troubled the occiput.
And never in the brilliant forms of stone
That crowd the Vatican more royal shape
Of young Augustus, or Vespasian stern,
Or Sophocles,—the tall, commanding Greek.
Go search the page lucid with polished fiction,
Note the dim fable darkly lengthening down
From Tyre's first castle to the hour that cuts
Our dusty sunshine,—history bereft
Of combination. Selfish crowds still fret
The frosty streets, humanity obscured;
The grating wheel creaks in the iron rut;
Never will man his individual brass
Melt in a common pot, nor stretch the roof
For a whole people. Oft the married twain,
Engaged in private broil, deplore the scratch.
Thou crazy Frenchman with a ciphering pen,
Fourier! so scantly fed, yet firmly bent,
Attraction-mad, on sea of lemonade
To float the ripe community, where, knit
In genial temper, the attractive band
Of cohort butterflies, sunning their wings
Along the phalanx walls, and self forgot,
Thus must collapse labor competitive.
Alas! the butterflies loved colored gauze,—
This purple and that brown, for which they struck;
And cider-lemonade became small beer.
This legion envied that; the pivot stood
Slow rooted in the wheel,—a general sleep,
Attractive industry, thy tribes possessed.
Note the dim fable darkly lengthening down
From Tyre's first castle to the hour that cuts
Our dusty sunshine,—history bereft
Of combination. Selfish crowds still fret
The frosty streets, humanity obscured;
The grating wheel creaks in the iron rut;
Never will man his individual brass
128
For a whole people. Oft the married twain,
Engaged in private broil, deplore the scratch.
Thou crazy Frenchman with a ciphering pen,
Fourier! so scantly fed, yet firmly bent,
Attraction-mad, on sea of lemonade
To float the ripe community, where, knit
In genial temper, the attractive band
Of cohort butterflies, sunning their wings
Along the phalanx walls, and self forgot,
Thus must collapse labor competitive.
Alas! the butterflies loved colored gauze,—
This purple and that brown, for which they struck;
And cider-lemonade became small beer.
This legion envied that; the pivot stood
Slow rooted in the wheel,—a general sleep,
Attractive industry, thy tribes possessed.
Much men enjoy the anxious strife and jar,
And scheme demonstrative for pelf and power:
The toughest rules the trade. In its stone bank
On yonder corner, the Napoleon brain
Controls the dancing stocks, and in a twist
Of its persuasive lid depletes the bond,
And undermines its rate. Such heaven is this,—
The sharp and pungent sniff 'twixt man and man;
The neighbor's hand pressing the neighbor's throat,
Then fathoming his purse. The bright-rouged clerk
His equipage complete, flown on blood coursers,
Forges his master's check to sate his duns;
The decimated globule teased to fame,
And grown profuse on the self-seeking puff,
Carries a simile to beauty's lip.
Books pass by binding; the tame laurelled bard
Wire-drawing out the pretty, shallow line,
Nurses at Spenser's fount his conscious babe.
And scheme demonstrative for pelf and power:
The toughest rules the trade. In its stone bank
129
Controls the dancing stocks, and in a twist
Of its persuasive lid depletes the bond,
And undermines its rate. Such heaven is this,—
The sharp and pungent sniff 'twixt man and man;
The neighbor's hand pressing the neighbor's throat,
Then fathoming his purse. The bright-rouged clerk
His equipage complete, flown on blood coursers,
Forges his master's check to sate his duns;
The decimated globule teased to fame,
And grown profuse on the self-seeking puff,
Carries a simile to beauty's lip.
Books pass by binding; the tame laurelled bard
Wire-drawing out the pretty, shallow line,
Nurses at Spenser's fount his conscious babe.
Angel of Liberty in simple robe,
The dame, now past her youth, discourses much
Of rights and equities, and asks the urn.
Haste! let her trail those ribbons in the crush
Of unbribed patriots blushing from the bar,
And drop her vote. Freedom for all decrees
Laws unrestricted; end this imprisoning sex.
As grand Theresa, Austria's fondest boast,
To whose young babe the nation made the vow,
“Yes! for our king as one man shall we die;”
Her woman's breast, too sensitively proud,
And crossed by shadows from an aching nerve,
Drowned in a sea of blood the Austrian land,
Then for peace kneeled; and Cleopatra's heart,
And Helen's, Homer's flame, the woman's right
Held in the throbbing pulse, of blood so frail!
One fruit of civic finesse there emerged,
Conceived in fearful phrase, the pompous laws,
Tradition of the Romans, when there sprang
Diana's temple new from St. Paul's yard;
Narrow old precedents a Cæsar's craft
Bred in his thought to mask his scheming hand,
And into codes fused by Justinian.
Then hurried o'er the Atlantic, by our saints,
The righteous Puritans, their heads as dry
As the remainder biscuit; laws and states
What ages more, riveted to the crowd!
Such bred the deeds of witchcraft, that his muse,
Our gentle-hearted Hawthorne's, touched so well,
Drawing a beauty out of all their cant,
And the self-lauding sect, moral in sin.
Headlong fall arch and fane, Silenus musing
Happy o'er his tun, and gay Bacchus tipped
In Ariadne's garlands; down with heaven,
And blue Olympus and its flashing court
Coming to wine in fashionable vests;
And Persian splendor at Persepolis,
Raised in its burning sunshine on the steps
With bands of dancing girls and horsemen fierce
Darting the jerrid; them we dream no more.
The dame, now past her youth, discourses much
Of rights and equities, and asks the urn.
Haste! let her trail those ribbons in the crush
Of unbribed patriots blushing from the bar,
130
Laws unrestricted; end this imprisoning sex.
As grand Theresa, Austria's fondest boast,
To whose young babe the nation made the vow,
“Yes! for our king as one man shall we die;”
Her woman's breast, too sensitively proud,
And crossed by shadows from an aching nerve,
Drowned in a sea of blood the Austrian land,
Then for peace kneeled; and Cleopatra's heart,
And Helen's, Homer's flame, the woman's right
Held in the throbbing pulse, of blood so frail!
One fruit of civic finesse there emerged,
Conceived in fearful phrase, the pompous laws,
Tradition of the Romans, when there sprang
Diana's temple new from St. Paul's yard;
Narrow old precedents a Cæsar's craft
Bred in his thought to mask his scheming hand,
And into codes fused by Justinian.
Then hurried o'er the Atlantic, by our saints,
The righteous Puritans, their heads as dry
As the remainder biscuit; laws and states
131
Such bred the deeds of witchcraft, that his muse,
Our gentle-hearted Hawthorne's, touched so well,
Drawing a beauty out of all their cant,
And the self-lauding sect, moral in sin.
Headlong fall arch and fane, Silenus musing
Happy o'er his tun, and gay Bacchus tipped
In Ariadne's garlands; down with heaven,
And blue Olympus and its flashing court
Coming to wine in fashionable vests;
And Persian splendor at Persepolis,
Raised in its burning sunshine on the steps
With bands of dancing girls and horsemen fierce
Darting the jerrid; them we dream no more.
Surest of all the facts of mortal life
Men symbolize the meaning of the thoughts;
The Indian on his skin painting his bears,
And strange Peruvian on his quipo knots
Writing his stanza, down to Europe's pride,
Even to demonic Goethe, feats in words;
Great that Sanscrit's worth, who made the grammar,
Leaving the rest to follow as it might,
And Fin, with sixteen cases to one noun,
And Chinese calm, who wants no alphabet.
Where roams the tribe that never found its tongue?
While the poor beast, squeezed in one fettered strain,
Squeals inaccessible. Oh! should we not
As Indians with each spring consume the town,
Seeking new hunting-grounds and larger game?
Men symbolize the meaning of the thoughts;
The Indian on his skin painting his bears,
And strange Peruvian on his quipo knots
Writing his stanza, down to Europe's pride,
Even to demonic Goethe, feats in words;
132
Leaving the rest to follow as it might,
And Fin, with sixteen cases to one noun,
And Chinese calm, who wants no alphabet.
Where roams the tribe that never found its tongue?
While the poor beast, squeezed in one fettered strain,
Squeals inaccessible. Oh! should we not
As Indians with each spring consume the town,
Seeking new hunting-grounds and larger game?
Homeless and hopeless in those cruel walls,
Sybilla went, her heart long since bereaved.
She heard the footfalls sear the crowded streets,
Her fatal birthright, where no human pulse
To hers was beating. There she shunned the day!
Tall churches and rich houses draped in flowers,
And lovely maids tricked out with pearls and gold,
Barbaric pomp, and crafty usurers bent,—
All passed her by, the terror in her heart.
So sped she on the train,—a reindeer-course,—
Day's dying light painting the quiet fields,
The pale green sky reflected in the pools.
Oh! why was earth so fair? was love so fond
Ever consumed within the ring of fire?
That soft clear light that marks that heaven afar,
The emerald waters, and the evening star.
Sybilla went, her heart long since bereaved.
She heard the footfalls sear the crowded streets,
Her fatal birthright, where no human pulse
To hers was beating. There she shunned the day!
Tall churches and rich houses draped in flowers,
And lovely maids tricked out with pearls and gold,
Barbaric pomp, and crafty usurers bent,—
All passed her by, the terror in her heart.
So sped she on the train,—a reindeer-course,—
Day's dying light painting the quiet fields,
133
Oh! why was earth so fair? was love so fond
Ever consumed within the ring of fire?
That soft clear light that marks that heaven afar,
The emerald waters, and the evening star.
No more the tales that once the race of bards
Inspired,—of heaven's high court, or hell,
Of gods or god, Venus, and Mars; no more
The solitude of the high mountain's shrine;
Faded to night, irrevocably passed,
Where they may never be unloosed again:
A simpler and a sweeter lay demands
A new-born age, faintly demanding verse,
(For verse too high, or modulated prose),
The scholar's song, whom thought has made its own.
New times demand new powers; new powers, new men;
The old seems but a pale hypocrisy,
That myth of Serapis or Jupiter,
Vain word for us, and Brahma's holy grass,
Or Om (forbidden word), and Odin's skull
Rich with Valhalla's, and metheglin's fume.
But we might launch our gods, as they sang theirs,
Even as our clime and seasons native spring,
So now from us upsprings the myth to-day,
Or shall ere morning gild yon russet field?
Each holds his office, each his native skill,
By self in one part poised, by fate as much:
The rose can never bloom the lily's white,
Nor a still day usurp the whirlwind's roar.
Thus man is but a tool, that yet can draw
His one design on a wide-waving sea;
And though he sails on various voyages,
In different ships, and to as many ports,
The same sagacity, firm will, and faith,
Or luckless chance, yet guides his vessel on.
Inspired,—of heaven's high court, or hell,
Of gods or god, Venus, and Mars; no more
The solitude of the high mountain's shrine;
Faded to night, irrevocably passed,
Where they may never be unloosed again:
A simpler and a sweeter lay demands
A new-born age, faintly demanding verse,
(For verse too high, or modulated prose),
The scholar's song, whom thought has made its own.
New times demand new powers; new powers, new men;
The old seems but a pale hypocrisy,
That myth of Serapis or Jupiter,
Vain word for us, and Brahma's holy grass,
Or Om (forbidden word), and Odin's skull
134
But we might launch our gods, as they sang theirs,
Even as our clime and seasons native spring,
So now from us upsprings the myth to-day,
Or shall ere morning gild yon russet field?
Each holds his office, each his native skill,
By self in one part poised, by fate as much:
The rose can never bloom the lily's white,
Nor a still day usurp the whirlwind's roar.
Thus man is but a tool, that yet can draw
His one design on a wide-waving sea;
And though he sails on various voyages,
In different ships, and to as many ports,
The same sagacity, firm will, and faith,
Or luckless chance, yet guides his vessel on.
The glittering bait of power obstructs the mass,—
Mass we may frequent think, so few they stand,
Who, bent on higher ventures, tread Time's shore.
Around us weaves a thought we dimly feel,
As faint some moonlit shadow, flitting fast,
When the mild planet pearls our watery clouds,
And scarce reveals the light herself has made.
A thought is in the trees and seas and skies;
Lurks on the river's breast, or skims the grove;
Glitters at twilight off the folding clouds;
Speaks from young eyes, and throbs within the heart,
Nameless, unfathomed, dark, yet loving light.
This life the scholar loves, this life he breathes;
Without this life he could not tread the path
Of the low-falling world, to heaven the heir.
Who, then, might fitly chant of him whose eye
Is set so firmly in its parent cause?—
Not one of these plain fields and modest lot
The child, but some resplendent bard, whose verse,
Lit with celestial radiance, flashed the skies,
As sunset in her purples bathes the east
With a fore-painted morning.
Mass we may frequent think, so few they stand,
Who, bent on higher ventures, tread Time's shore.
Around us weaves a thought we dimly feel,
As faint some moonlit shadow, flitting fast,
135
And scarce reveals the light herself has made.
A thought is in the trees and seas and skies;
Lurks on the river's breast, or skims the grove;
Glitters at twilight off the folding clouds;
Speaks from young eyes, and throbs within the heart,
Nameless, unfathomed, dark, yet loving light.
This life the scholar loves, this life he breathes;
Without this life he could not tread the path
Of the low-falling world, to heaven the heir.
Who, then, might fitly chant of him whose eye
Is set so firmly in its parent cause?—
Not one of these plain fields and modest lot
The child, but some resplendent bard, whose verse,
Lit with celestial radiance, flashed the skies,
As sunset in her purples bathes the east
With a fore-painted morning.
From the grave he leads
Old glories to new life. His memory throws
Its still soft light across a heavenly path.
With saints, with priests, the wise, the great, he holds
A dread communion, and his thought embalms
Like amber, sweetness of all times. His hope
Hangs in the future; and his aim so high,
That yet through infinite ages vast
He still beholds a stream, where man shall sweep
To excel the glory of his present reign,
And thrones and empires stand where'er a man
Plants his firm tread on the subjected globe.
Make, then, his function saint-like and superb!
Be his the good to teach more than the old,
Revolving new society, new laws,
As in her frolic, nature upward soars
Through bush and glen and cedar-copses dark,
Where the blue berries show like ocean's bloom,
And o'er the chestnut hills whose gray rocks peep,
And far below, beyond, the sandy lake
Bears her retreating skies, and clouds the earth:
Where'er the face of things smiles or grows sad,
The scholar gleans, his faithful eye profound
To read the secret in each thing he sees,—
To love, if not to know.
Old glories to new life. His memory throws
Its still soft light across a heavenly path.
136
A dread communion, and his thought embalms
Like amber, sweetness of all times. His hope
Hangs in the future; and his aim so high,
That yet through infinite ages vast
He still beholds a stream, where man shall sweep
To excel the glory of his present reign,
And thrones and empires stand where'er a man
Plants his firm tread on the subjected globe.
Make, then, his function saint-like and superb!
Be his the good to teach more than the old,
Revolving new society, new laws,
As in her frolic, nature upward soars
Through bush and glen and cedar-copses dark,
Where the blue berries show like ocean's bloom,
And o'er the chestnut hills whose gray rocks peep,
And far below, beyond, the sandy lake
Bears her retreating skies, and clouds the earth:
Where'er the face of things smiles or grows sad,
The scholar gleans, his faithful eye profound
To read the secret in each thing he sees,—
To love, if not to know.
137
His soul outbursts
The feebly measured current of his fate.
He rises like the sun in roseate pomp;
Like him, he sinks in splendor down 'mid stars;
As subjects to his throne, the learned haste,—
Focus for all their rays. For him the seas
They furrow with the sparkling keel of ships,
For him they iron o'er the land with flame,
And glass in lightning his projectile thought.
Nor less the star him pleasures in her speech,
Whether in volcan fierce she lifts the heavens,
Or casts in golden sand the river's chain.
His logic suits to each the prize he draws,
In great or less proportions. Let him rise
So long as the race rises, and in him
Its wise perfecting skilled creation claim!
The feebly measured current of his fate.
He rises like the sun in roseate pomp;
Like him, he sinks in splendor down 'mid stars;
As subjects to his throne, the learned haste,—
Focus for all their rays. For him the seas
They furrow with the sparkling keel of ships,
For him they iron o'er the land with flame,
And glass in lightning his projectile thought.
Nor less the star him pleasures in her speech,
Whether in volcan fierce she lifts the heavens,
Or casts in golden sand the river's chain.
His logic suits to each the prize he draws,
In great or less proportions. Let him rise
So long as the race rises, and in him
Its wise perfecting skilled creation claim!
| The Wanderer | |