The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier in four volumes |
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POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT |
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The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier | ||
POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT
MEMORIES.
With step as light as summer air,
Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl,
Shadowed by many a careless curl
Of unconfined and flowing hair;
A seeming child in everything,
Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms,
As Nature wears the smile of Spring
When sinking into Summer's arms.
Which melted through its graceful bower,
Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright,
And stainless in its holy white,
Unfolding like a morning flower:
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute,
With every breath of feeling woke,
And, even when the tongue was mute,
From eye and lip in music spoke.
Of memory, at the thought of thee!
Old dreams, come thronging back again,
And boyhood lives again in me;
I feel its glow upon my cheek,
Its fulness of the heart is mine,
As when I leaned to hear thee speak,
Or raised my doubtful eye to thine.
I feel thy arm within my own,
And timidly again uprise
The fringëd lids of hazel eyes,
With soft brown tresses overblown.
Ah! memories of sweet summer eves,
Of moonlit wave and willowy way,
Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves,
And smiles and tones more dear than they
My picture of thy youth to see,
When, half a woman, half a child,
Thy very artlessness beguiled,
And folly's self seemed wise in thee;
I too can smile, when o'er that hour
The lights of memory backward stream,
Yet feel the while that manhood's power
Is vainer than my boyhood's dream.
Of graver care and deeper thought;
And unto me the calm, cold face
Of manhood, and to thee the grace
Of woman's pensive beauty brought.
The school-boy's humble name has flown;
Thine, in the green and quiet ways
Of unobtrusive goodness known.
Diverge our pathways, one in youth;
Thine the Genevan's sternest creed,
While answers to my spirit's need
The Derby dalesman's simple truth.
For thee, the priestly rite and prayer,
And holy day, and solemn psalm;
For me, the silent reverence where
My brethren gather, slow and calm.
An impress Time has worn not out,
And something of myself in thee,
A shadow from the past, I see,
Lingering, even yet, thy way about;
Not wholly can the heart unlearn
That lesson of its better hours,
Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn
To common dust that path of flowers.
The shadows melt, and fall apart,
And, smiling through them, round us lies
The warm light of our morning skies,—
The Indian Summer of the heart!
In secret sympathies of mind,
In founts of feeling which retain
Our early dreams not wholly vain!
RAPHAEL.
The glow of Autumn's westering day,
A hazy warmth, a dreamy light,
On Raphael's picture lay.
The fair face of a musing boy;
Yet, while I gazed, a sense of awe
Seemed blending with my joy.
Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair,
And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow
Unmarked and clear, were there.
I saw the inward spirit shine;
It was as if before me rose
The white veil of a shrine.
The hidden life, the man within,
Dissevered from its frame and mould,
By mortal eye were seen.
The waving of that pictured hand?
Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky,
I saw the walls expand.
Broad, luminous, remained alone,
Through which all hues and shapes of grace
And beauty looked or shone.
The marvels which his pencil wrought,
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought.
O Mother, beautiful and mild!
Enfolding in one dear embrace
Thy Saviour and thy Child!
The awful glory of that day
When all the Father's brightness shone
Through manhood's veil of clay.
Dark visions of the days of old,
How sweetly woman's beauty smiled
Through locks of brown and gold!
Once more upon her lover shone,
Whose model of an angel's grace
He borrowed from her own.
But not the lesson which it taught;
The soft, calm shadows which it threw
Still rested on my thought:
Even in Earth's cold and changeful clime,
Plant for their deathless heritage
The fruits and flowers of time.
Of which the coming life is made,
And fill our Future's atmosphere
With sunshine or with shade.
We weave with colors all our own,
And in the field of Destiny
We reap as we have sown.
The shadows which it gathered here,
And, painted on the eternal wall,
The Past shall reappear.
On Milton's tuneful ear have died?
Think ye that Raphael's angel throng
Has vanished from his side?
Or warmly touched, or coldly dim,
Man's works shall follow him!
EGO.
WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF A FRIEND.
The cold and heartless commonplace,
A statue's fixed and marble grace.
Still with the thought of thee will blend
That of some loved and common friend,
His pilgrim tent with mine, or strayed
Beneath the same remembered shade.
In freedom which the heart approves,
The negligence which friendship loves.
For simple air and rustic dress,
And sign of haste and carelessness?
Of sentiment or studied wit,
A heart like thine should value it.
Unto thy book, if not to thee,
Of more than doubtful courtesy.
A lay unheard of Beauty's ear,
Forbid, disowned,—what do they here?
Came the sad captive's clanking chain,
The groaning from his bed of pain.
Which only wounded spirits know
When Pride's strong footsteps o er them go.
But from the temples of the Lord
Thrust out apart, like things abhorred.
In words which Prudence smothered long,
My soul spoke out against the wrong;
Of comfort to the poor and weak,
And dry the tear on Sorrow's cheek;
To pour the fiery breath of storm
Through the harsh trumpet of Reform;
From ermined robe and saintly gown,
While wrestling reverenced Error down.
Cool shadows on the greensward lay,
Flowers swung upon the bending spray.
Stretched the green slopes of Fairy-land,
With Hope's eternal sunbow spanned;
Which on the listener's ear will grow,
Of forest streamlets soft and low.
Their picture on the heart and brain,
Smiled, beckoning from that path of pain.
Remain for him who round him draws
The battered mail of Freedom's cause.
Of young Romance, and gentle Thought,
Where storm and tumult enter not;
The offerings Love requires of Song
In homage to her bright-eyed throng;
I turned to Freedom's struggling band,
To the sad Helots of our land.
Her notes of praise to those of scorn;
Her gifts reclaimed, her smiles withdrawn?
Life's surge so restless heretofore
Shall break upon the unknown shore!
The shadows which we follow here,
The mist-wreaths of our atmosphere!
Of human will or strength expand
The pearl gates of the Better Land;
Life to the sleeper of the grave,
Resteth the power to seek and save.
The vista of the past can view
One deed to Heaven and virtue true;
Of garlands wreathed from Folly's bowers,
Of idle aims and misspent hours,
By Pride and Self profanëd not,
A green place in the waste of thought,
The sum of human wretchedness,
And Gratitude looks forth to bless;
From sad hearts worn by evil-dealing,
For blessing on the hand of healing;
That green and blessed spot to me,
A palm-shade in Eternity!
The purified and spiritual sight
To rest on with a calm delight.
With their light wings my place of sleep,
And mosses round my headstone creep;
Upon the young heart's altars shine
The very fires they caught from mine;
In the calm faith and steadfast will
Of other hearts, their work fulfil;
These tokens, and its eye discern
The fires which on those altars burn;
The spirit hath its life again,
In the strong hearts of mortal men.
No gay and graceful offering,
No flower-smile of the laughing spring.
With Fancy's leaf-enwoven bay,
My sad and sombre gift I lay.
A sense of suffering human-kind,—
The outcast and the spirit-blind;
By Prejudice, and Scorn, and Pride,
Life's common courtesies denied;
Children by want and misery nursed,
Tasting life's bitter cup at first;
From fireless hearth, and crowded room,
And the close alley's noisome gloom,—
In mute beseeching agony,
Thou lend'st thy woman's sympathy;
Where Love, and Mirth, and Friendship twine
Their varied gifts, I offer mine.
THE PUMPKIN.
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run,
And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold,
With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold,
Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once grew,
While he waited to know that his warning was true,
And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain
For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain.
Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden;
And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold
Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of gold;
Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North,
Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines,
And the sun of September melts down on his vines.
From North and from South come the pilgrim and guest,
When the gray-haired New-Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored,
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before,
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune,
Our chair a broad pumpkin,—our lantern the moon,
Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam,
In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team!
E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter!
Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine,
Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than thine!
And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below.
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow,
And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie!
FORGIVENESS.
My heart was heavy, for its trust had beenAbused, its kindness answered with foul wrong,
So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,
One summer Sabbath day I strolled among
The green mounds of the village burial-place;
Where, pondering how all human love and hate
Find one sad level; and how, soon or late,
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,
And cold hands folded over a still heart,
Pass the green threshold of our common grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
Awed for myself, and pitying my race,
Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,
Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave!
TO MY SISTER,
WITH A COPY OF “THE SUPERNATURALISM OF NEW ENGLAND.”
The work referred to was a series of papers under this title, contributed to the Democratic Review and afterward collected into a volume, in which I noted some of the superstitions and folklore prevalent in New England. The volume has not been kept in print, but most of its contents are distributed in my Literary Recreations and Miscellanies.
Turn coldly from my playful page,
And count it strange that ripened age
Should stoop to boyhood's folly;
I know that thou wilt judge aright
Of all which makes the heart more light,
Or lends one star-gleam to the night
Of clouded Melancholy.
Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams!
Leave free once more the land which teems
With wonders and romances!
Where thou, with clear discerning eyes,
Shalt rightly read the truth which lies
Beneath the quaintly masking guise
Of wild and wizard fancies.
On still green wood-paths, twilight wet,
By lonely brooks, whose waters fret
The roots of spectral beeches;
Home's whitewashed wall and painted floor,
And young eyes widening to the lore
Of faery-folks and witches.
Which lights that holy hearth again,
And calling back from care and pain,
And death's funereal sadness,
Draws round its old familiar blaze
The clustering groups of happier days,
And lends to sober manhood's gaze
A glimpse of childish gladness.
A weary work of tongue and pen,
A long, harsh strife with strong-willed men,
Thou wilt not chide my turning
To con, at times, an idle rhyme,
To pluck a flower from childhood's clime,
Or listen, at Life's noonday chime,
For the sweet bells of Morning!
MY THANKS,
ACCOMPANYING MANUSCRIPTS PRESENTED TO A FRIEND.
The angels of the place have blessed
The pilgrim's bed of desert sand,
Like Jacob's stone of rest.
Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight sings
The song whose holy symphonies
Are beat by unseen wings;
The wayworn wanderer looks to see
The halo of an angel's head
Shine through the tamarisk-tree.
Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear,
So at the weary close of day
Hath seemed thy voice of cheer.
May pause not for the vision's sake,
Yet all fair things within his soul
The thought of it shall wake:
Seen on the far horizon's rim;
The dark eyes of the fleet gazelle,
Bent timidly on him;
Streams sunlike through the convent's gloom;
Pale shrines of martyrs young and fair,
And loving Mary's tomb;
From sunset cloud or waving tree,
Along my pilgrim path, recalls
The pleasant thought of thee.
In weal and woe my steady friend,
Whatever by that holy name
The angels comprehend.
Hast never failed the good to see,
Nor judged by one unseemly bough
The upward-struggling tree.
Poor common thoughts on common things,
Which time is shaking, day by day,
Like feathers from his wings;
To nurturing care but little known,
Their good was partly learned of thee,
Their folly is my own.
Its leaves still drink the twilight dew,
And weaving its pale green with gold,
Still shines the sunlight through.
And there at times the spring bird sings,
And mossy trunk and fading spray
Are flowered with glossy wings.
Root, branch, and leaflet fail and fade;
The wanderer on its lonely plain
Erelong shall miss its shade.
Keeps bright the last year's leaves and flow
With warm, glad, summer thoughts to fill
The cold, dark, winter hours!
May well defy the wintry cold,
Until, in Heaven's eternal spring,
Life's fairer ones unfold.
REMEMBRANCE.
WITH COPIES OF THE AUTHOR'S WRITINGS.
With me in the distant past;
Where, like shadows flitting fast,
Word and work, begin to seem
Like a half-remembered dream!
Yet I think of thee as when
We had speech of lip and pen.
To a path of discontent,
Rough with trial and dissent;
Softening blame where blame was true,
Praising where small praise was due;
For an ideal understood,
For thy Christian womanhood;
From our common life and dull
Whatsoe'er is beautiful;
Dropping sweetness; true heart's-ease
Of congenial sympathies;—
Memory, with her eyelids wet,
Fain would thank thee even yet!
Where the Queen of May's sweet hours
Sits, o'ertwined with blossomed bowers,
Gifts where gifts are overflowing,
So I pay the debt I'm owing.
Sunny-hued or sober clad,
Something of my own I add;
Even the offering which I make
Kindly for the giver's sake.
MY NAMESAKE.
Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend—
A green leaf on your own Green Banks—
The memory of your friend.
The sobered brow and lessening hair:
For aught I know, the myrtled sides
Of Helicon are bare.
The fabled founts of song to try,
They 've drained, for aught I know, the spring
Of Aganippe dry.
Proves often Folly's cap and bell;
Methinks, my ample beaver's shade
May serve my turn as well.
Be paid by those I love in life.
Why should the unborn critic whet
For me his scalping-knife?
One's vacant house of life about,
His faults and follies out?—
With chaff of words, the garb he wore,
As corn-husks when the ear is gone
Are rustled all the more?
The picture vanish from the eye,
And on the dim and misty main
Let the small ripple die.
To grateful thanks, dear friends of mine.
Hang, if it please you so, my name
Upon your household line.
Her chosen names, I envy none:
A mother's love, a father's pride,
Shall keep alive my own!
The young leaf wet with morning dew,
The glory where the sunbeams fall
The breezy woodlands through.
A spell to waken smile or sigh;
In many an evening prayer be heard
And cradle lullaby.
When asked the reason of thy name,
Shalt answer: “One 't were vain to praise
Or censure bore the same.
The truth lay doubtless 'twixt the two;
He reconciled as best he could
Old faith and fancies new.
And wisdom held with folly truce,
And Nature compromised betwixt
Good fellow and recluse.
And, if his words were harsh at times,
He spared his fellow-men,—his blows
Fell only on their crimes.
His human heart to all akin
Who met him on the common ground
Of suffering and of sin.
Of pain or grief his own became;
For all the ills he could not cure
He held himself to blame.
His evil not of forethought done;
Or finished as begun.
To turn the common mills of use;
And, over restless wings of song,
His birthright garb hung loose!
And his the ear which discord pains;
Few guessed beneath his aspect grave
What passions strove in chains.
No holiday was life to him;
Still in the heirloom cup we drain
The bitter drop will swim.
And there a flower beguiled his way;
And, cool, in summer noons, he heard
The fountains plash and play.
The patient peace of Nature stole;
The quiet of the fields and woods
Sank deep into his soul.
And kept the faith of childish days,
And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid,
He loved the good old ways.
The tranquil air, and gentle speech,
The silence of the soul that waits
For more than man to teach.
Provoked at times his honest scorn,
And Folly, in its gray respect,
He tossed on satire's horn.
And reverence for all sacred things;
And, brooding over form and law,
He saw the Spirit's wings!
He heard far voices mock his own,
The sweep of wings unseen, the loud,
Long roll of waves unknown.
Fell quenched in darkness; priest and sage,
Like lost guides calling left and right,
Perplexed his doubtful age.
Of its dropped pebbles in the well,
All vainly down the dark profound
His brief-lined plummet fell.
On old beliefs, of later creeds,
Which claimed a place in Truth's domains,
He asked the title-deeds.
In the long distance fair and dim;
And heard, like sound of far-off pines,
The century-mellowed hymn!
The Brahmin's rite, the Lama's spell;
God knew the heart; Devotion's pearl
Might sanctify the shell.
He faltered like the publican;
And, while they praised as saints, his prayers
Were those of sinful man.
The trembling faith alone sufficed,
That, through its cloud and flame, he saw
The sweet, sad face of Christ!
Heard the Divine compassion fill
The pauses of the trump and cloud
With whispers small and still.
Are mortal as his hand and brain,
But, if they served the Master's end,
He has not lived in vain!”
Child of my friends!—For thee I crave
What riches never bought, nor fame
To mortal longing gave.
God make thee beautiful within,
And let thine eyes the good behold
In everything save sin!
To serve, not rule, thy poisëd mind;
Thy Reason, at the frown or beck
Of Conscience, loose or bind.
Strong manhood crowning vigorous youth;
Life made by duty epical
And rhythmic with the truth.
Which trees of healing only give,
And green-leafed in the Eternal field
Of God, forever live!
A MEMORY.
The shroud of flowers and fountains,
I think of thee and summer eves
Among the Northern mountains.
And winds the lake were rude on,
And thou wert singing, Ca' the Yowes,
The bonny yowes of Cluden!
Our circle narrowed round thee,
And smiles and tears made up the wreath
Wherewith our silence crowned thee;
Of sisters and of brothers;
Ah! whose of all those kindly eyes
Now smile upon another's?
The waifs of life is flinging;
Oh, nevermore shall heart to heart
Draw nearer for that singing!
And twilight's fire is gleaming,
I hear the songs of Scotland's bard
Sound softly through my dreaming!
The glow of summer weather,—
Again I hear thee ca' the yowes
To Cluden's hills of heather!
MY DREAM.
Yesternight, a mountain road;
Narrow as Al Sirat's span,
High as eagle's flight, it ran.
With its weight of thunder bowed;
Underneath, to left and right,
Blankness and abysmal night.
Now and then a bird-song gushed;
Now and then, through rifts of shade,
Stars shone out, and sunbeams played.
Walking in that path with me,
One by one the brink o'erslid,
One by one the darkness hid.
Some with cheerful courage went;
But, of all who smiled or mourned,
Never one to us returned.
Questioning that shadow drear,
Never hand in token stirred,
Never answering voice I heard!
From my feet the pathway melt.
Swallowed by the black despair,
And the hungry jaws of air,
Strangled by the wash of waves,
Past the splintered crags, I sank
On a green and flowery bank,—
Lightly as a cloud is blown,
Soothingly as childhood pressed
To the bosom of its rest.
Green the grassy meadows spread,
Bright with waters singing by
Trees that propped a golden sky.
Old lost faces welcomed me,
With whose sweetness of content
Still expectant hope was blent.
Slowly brightened into day,
Pondering that vision fled,
Thus unto myself I said:—
Is our narrow path of life;
And our death the dreaded fall
Through the dark, awaiting all.
Up the dizzy ways of time,
Ever in the shadow shed
By the forecast of our dread.
Of the untried and unknown;
Yet the end thereof may seem
Like the falling of my dream.
All our fears of here or there,
Change and absence, loss and death,
Prove but simple lack of faith.”
Who didst stoop to our estate,
Drinking of the cup we drain,
Treading in our path of pain,—
Grant to us thy steps to see,
And the grace to draw from thence
Larger hope and confidence.
As of old, the angels sit,
Whispering, by its open door:
“Fear not! He hath gone before!”
THE BAREFOOT BOY.
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace,
From my heart I give thee joy,—
I was once a barefoot boy!
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,—
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild-flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine;
Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy,—
Blessings on the barefoot boy!
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
Like my bowl of milk and bread;
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
MY PSALM.
Beneath a tender rain,
An April rain of smiles and tears,
My heart is young again.
I hear the glad streams run;
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
I look in hope or fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.
To harvest weed and tare;
The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.
Aside the toiling oar;
The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door.
Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
Blow through the autumn morn;
Through fringëd lids to heaven,
And the pale aster in the brook
Shall see its image given;—
The south-wind softly sigh,
And sweet, calm days in golden haze
Melt down the amber sky.
Rebuke an age of wrong;
The graven flowers that wreathe the sword
Make not the blade less strong.
To build as to destroy;
Nor less my heart for others feel
That I the more enjoy.
To give or to withhold,
And knoweth more of all my needs
Than all my prayers have told!
Have marked my erring track;
That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved,
His chastening turned me back;
Of love is understood,
Sweet with eternal good;—
Which opens into light,
Wherein no blinded child can stray
Beyond the Father's sight;
Through Memory's sunset air,
Like mountain-ranges overpast,
In purple distance fair;
Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife
Slow rounding into calm.
And so the west-winds play;
And all the windows of my heart
I open to the day.
THE WAITING.
Methinks the night grows thin and gray;
I wait and watch the eastern skies
To see the golden spears uprise
Beneath the oriflamme of day!
I hear the day-sounds swell and grow,
And see across the twilight glance,
Troop after troop, in swift advance,
The shining ones with plumes of snow!
I know what mighty work is theirs;
I can but lift up hands unmeet,
The threshing-floors of God to beat,
And speed them with unworthy prayers.
The steps of progress wait for me:
The puny leverage of a hair
The planet's impulse well may spare,
A drop of dew the tided sea.
And yet not mine if understood;
For one shall grasp and one resign,
One drink life's rue, and one its wine,
And God shall make the balance good.
Oh prayer and action! ye are one.
Who may not strive, may yet fulfil
The harder task of standing still,
And good but wished with God is done!
SNOW-BOUND.
A WINTER IDYL.
The inmates of the family at the Whittier homestead who are referred to in the poem were my father, mother, my brother and two sisters, and my uncle and aunt both unmarried. In addition, there was the district school-master who boarded with us. The “not unfeared, half-welcome guest” was Harriet Livermore, daughter of Judge Livermore, of New Hampshire, a young woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic, eccentric, with slight control over her violent temper, which sometimes made her religious profession doubtful. She was equally ready to exhort in school-house prayer-meetings and dance in a Washington ball-room, while her father was a member of Congress. She early embraced the doctrine of the Second Advent, and felt it her duty to proclaim the Lord's speedy coming. With this message she crossed the Atlantic and spent the greater part of a long life in travelling over Europe and Asia. She lived some time with Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman as fantastic and mentally strained as herself, on the slope of Mt. Lebanon, but finally quarrelled with her in regard to two white horses with red marks on their backs which suggested the idea of saddles, on which her titled hostess expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend of mine found her, when quite an old woman, wandering in Syria with a tribe of Arabs, who with the Oriental notion that madness is inspiration, accepted her as their prophetess and leader. At the time referred to in Snow-Bound she was boarding at the Rocks Village about two miles from us.
In my boyhood, in our lonely farm-house, we had scanty sources of information; few books and only a small weekly newspaper. Our only annual was the Almanac. Under such circumstances story-telling was a necessary resource in the long winter evenings. My father when a young man had traversed the wilderness to Canada, and could tell us of his adventures with Indians and wild
In Padua beyond the sea,”
“As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common VVood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of VVood doth the same.”—
Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. v.Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”
Emerson. The Snow Storm.
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows:
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
The cock his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm,
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingëd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature's geometric signs,
In starry flake, and pellicle,
All day the hoary meteor fell;
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below,—
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
In its slant splendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa's leaning miracle.
Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy?)
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
To guard our necks and ears from snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through.
And, where the drift was deepest, made
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we had read
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
With many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp's supernal powers.
We reached the barn with merry din,
And roused the prisoned brutes within.
The old horse thrust his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about;
The cock his lusty greeting said,
And forth his speckled harem led;
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
And mild reproach of hunger looked;
The hornëd patriarch of the sheep,
Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep,
Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot.
The loosening drift its breath before;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
No church-bell lent its Christian tone
To the savage air, no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary-voicëd elements,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Beyond the circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown
To have an almost human tone.
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back,—
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art
The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are making tea.”
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the sombre green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where'er it fell
To make the coldness visible.
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed;
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's wood.
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.
O Time and Change!—with hair as gray
As was my sire's that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now,—
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.
We tread the paths their feet have worn
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o'er,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,
Or stammered from our school-book lore
“The Chief of Gambia's golden shore.”
The African Chief was the title of a poem by Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton, wife of the Hon. Perez Morton, a former attorney-general of Massachusetts. Mrs. Morton's nom de plume was Philenia. The school book in which The African Chief was printed was Caleb Bingham's The American Preceptor, and the poem contained fifteen stanzas, of which the first four were as follows:—
High-bounding o'er the violet wave,
Remurmuring with the groans of pain,
Deep freighted with the princely slave.
Forgetful of their guardian love,
When the white traitors of the deep
Betrayed him in the palmy grove?
Whose arm the band of warriors led,
Perhaps the lord of boundless power,
By whom the foodless poor were fed.
‘Claim the first right which nature gave;
From the red scourge of bondage fly,
Nor deign to live a burdened slave’?”
How often since, when all the land
Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand,
As if a far-blown trumpet stirred
The languorous sin-sick air, I heard:
“Does not the voice of reason cry,
Claim the first right which Nature gave,
From the red scourge of bondage fly,
Nor deign to live a burdened slave!”
Our father rode again his ride
On Memphremagog's wooded side;
Sat down again to moose and samp
In trapper's hut and Indian camp;
Beneath St. François' hemlock-trees;
Again for him the moonlight shone
On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
Again he heard the violin play
Which led the village dance away,
And mingled in its merry whirl
The grandam and the laughing girl.
Or, nearer home, our steps he led
Where Salisbury's level marshes spread
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;
Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
The low green prairies of the sea.
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head,
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals
The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;
The chowder on the sand-beach made,
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,
With spoons of clam-shell from the pot.
We heard the tales of witchcraft old,
And dream and sign and marvel told
To sleepy listeners as they lay
Stretched idly on the salted hay,
Adrift along the winding shores,
When favoring breezes deigned to blow
The square sail of the gundelow
And idle lay the useless oars.
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Cocheco town,
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free,
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days,—
She made us welcome to her home;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room;
We stole with her a frightened look
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book,
The fame whereof went far and wide
Through all the simple country side;
We heard the hawks at twilight play,
The boat-horn on Piscataqua,
The loon's weird laughter far away;
We fished her little trout-brook, knew
What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay
The ducks' black squadron anchored lay,
And heard the wild-geese calling loud
Beneath the gray November cloud.
And soberer tone, some tale she gave
From painful Sewel's ancient tome,
Beloved in every Quaker home,
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,
Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint,—
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint!—
Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,
And cruel, hungry eyes pursued
His portly presence mad for food,
With dark hints muttered under breath
Of casting lots for life or death,
Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,
To be himself the sacrifice.
Then, suddenly, as if to save
The good man from his living grave,
A ripple on the water grew,
A school of porpoise flashed in view.
“Take, eat,” he said, “and be content;
These fishes in my stead are sent
By Him who gave the tangled ram
To spare the child of Abraham.”
Chalkley's own narrative of this incident, as given in his Journal, is as follows: “To stop their murmuring, I told them they should not need to cast lots, which was usual in such cases, which of us should die first, for I would freely offer up my life to do them good. One said, ‘God bless you! I will not eat any of you.’ Another said, ‘He would die before he would eat any of me;’ and so said several. I can truly say, on that occasion, at that time, my life was not dear to me, and that I was serious and ingenuous in my proposition: and as I was leaning over the side of the vessel, thoughtfully considering my proposal to the company, and looking in my mind to Him that made me, a very large dolphin came up towards the top or surface of the water, and looked me in the face; and I called the people to put a hook into the sea, and take him, for here is one come to redeem me (I said to them). And they put a hook into the sea, and the fish readily took it, and they caught him. He was longer than myself. I think he was about six feet long, and the largest that ever I saw. This plainly showed us that we ought not to distrust the providence of the Almighty. The people were quieted by this act of Providence, and murmured no more. We caught enough to eat plentifully of, till we got into the capes of Delaware.”
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature's unhoused lyceum.
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine,
By many an occult hint and sign,
Holding the cunning-warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries;
Himself to Nature's heart so near
That all her voices in his ear
Of beast or bird had meanings clear,
Like Apollonius of old,
Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
Or Hermes, who interpreted
What the sage cranes of Nilus said;
Content to live where life began;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds
Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
Whereof his fondly partial pride
The common features magnified,
As Surrey hills to mountains grew
In White of Selborne's loving view,—
He told how teal and loon he shot,
And how the eagle's eggs he got,
The feats on pond and river done,
The prodigies of rod and gun;
Till, warming with the tales he told,
Forgotten was the outside cold,
The bitter wind unheeded blew,
From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink
Went fishing down the river-brink.
In fields with bean or clover gay,
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,
Peered from the doorway of his cell;
The muskrat plied the mason's trade,
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;
And from the shagbark overhead
The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.
And voice in dreams I see and hear,—
The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love's unselfishness,
A calm and gracious element,
Whose presence seemed the sweet income
And womanly atmosphere of home,—
Called up her girlhood memories,
The huskings and the apple-bees,
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,
Weaving through all the poor details
And homespun warp of circumstance
A golden woof-thread of romance.
For well she kept her genial mood
And simple faith of maidenhood;
Before her still a cloud-land lay,
The mirage loomed across her way;
The morning dew, that dries so soon
With others, glistened at her noon;
Through years of toil and soil and care,
From glossy tress to thin gray hair,
All unprofaned she held apart
The virgin fancies of the heart.
Be shame to him of woman born
Who hath for such but thought of scorn.
Her evening task the stand beside;
A full rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice.
O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best
That Heaven itself could give thee,—rest,
How many a poor one's blessing went
With thee beneath the low green tent
Whose curtain never outward swings!
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household bosom lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed in the unfading green
And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?
With me one little year ago:—
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south-winds blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where'er I went
With dark eyes full of love's content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life's late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?
The master of the district school
Held at the fire his favored place,
Its warm glow lit a laughing face
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared
The uncertain prophecy of beard.
He teased the mitten-blinded cat,
Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat,
Sang songs, and told us what befalls
In classic Dartmouth's college halls.
Born the wild Northern hills among,
From whence his yeoman father wrung
By patient toil subsistence scant,
Not competence and yet not want,
His cheerful, self-reliant way;
Could doff at ease his scholar's gown
To peddle wares from town to town;
Or through the long vacation's reach
In lonely lowland districts teach,
Where all the droll experience found
At stranger hearths in boarding round,
The moonlit skater's keen delight,
The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,
The rustic party, with its rough
Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff,
And whirling plate, and forfeits paid,
His winter task a pastime made.
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein
He tuned his merry violin,
Or played the athlete in the barn,
Or held the good dame's winding-yarn,
Or mirth-provoking versions told
Of classic legends rare and old,
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome
Had all the commonplace of home,
And little seemed at best the odds
'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;
Where Pindus-born Arachthus took
The guise of any grist-mill brook,
And dread Olympus at his will
Became a huckleberry hill.
But at his desk he had the look
And air of one who wisely schemed,
And hostage from the future took
In trainëd thought and lore of book.
Shall Freedom's young apostles be,
Who, following in War's bloody trail,
Shall every lingering wrong assail;
All chains from limb and spirit strike,
Uplift the black and white alike;
Scatter before their swift advance
The darkness and the ignorance,
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,
Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth,
Made murder pastime, and the hell
Of prison-torture possible;
The cruel lie of caste refute,
Old forms remould, and substitute
For Slavery's lash the freeman's will,
For blind routine, wise-handed skill;
A school-house plant on every hill,
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence
The quick wires of intelligence;
Till North and South together brought
Shall own the same electric thought,
In peace a common flag salute,
And, side by side in labor's free
And unresentful rivalry,
Harvest the fields wherein they fought.
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
The honeyed music of her tongue
And words of meekness scarcely told
A nature passionate and bold,
Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
Its milder features dwarfed beside
She sat among us, at the best,
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,
Rebuking with her cultured phrase
Our homeliness of words and ways.
A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs and drooped the lash,
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;
And under low brows, black with night,
Rayed out at times a dangerous light;
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
Presaging ill to him whom Fate
Condemned to share her love or hate.
A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense,
She blended in a like degree
The vixen and the devotee,
Revealing with each freak or feint
The temper of Petruchio's Kate,
The raptures of Siena's saint.
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
Had facile power to form a fist;
The warm, dark languish of her eyes
Was never safe from wrath's surprise.
Brows saintly calm and lips devout
Knew every change of scowl and pout;
And the sweet voice had notes more high
And shrill for social battle-cry.
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,
What convent-gate has held its lock
Against the challenge of her knock!
Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs,
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,
Or startling on her desert throne
The crazy Queen of Lebanon
With claims fantastic as her own,
Her tireless feet have held their way;
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray,
She watches under Eastern skies,
With hope each day renewed and fresh,
The Lord's quick coming in the flesh,
Whereof she dreams and prophesies!
The Lord's sweet pity with her go!
The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know.
Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters spun,
Through what ancestral years has run
The sorrow with the woman born,
What forged her cruel chain of moods,
What set her feet in solitudes,
And held the love within her mute,
What mingled madness in the blood,
A life-long discord and annoy,
Water of tears with oil of joy,
And hid within the folded bud
Perversities of flower and fruit.
It is not ours to separate
The tangled skein of will and fate,
Upon the soul's debatable land,
And between choice and Providence
Divide the circle of events;
But He who knows our frame is just,
Merciful and compassionate,
And full of sweet assurances
And hope for all the language is,
That He remembereth we are dust!
Sent out a dull and duller glow,
The bull's-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray,
And laid it tenderly away,
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love's contentment more than wealth,
With simple wishes (not the weak,
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
For bread and clothing, warmth and light.
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, and added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger folks
Then toiled again the cavalcade
O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine,
And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defence
Against the snow-ball's compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
And, following where the teamsters led,
The wise old Doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say,
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call,
Was free to urge her claim on all,
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother's aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer's sight
The Quaker matron's inward light,
The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!
Since the great world was heard from last.
The Almanac we studied o'er,
Read and reread our little store,
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score;
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid,
And poetry, (or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,)
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread;
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
And daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica's everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding bell and dirge of death;
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book;
The weird palimpsest old and vast,
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past;
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
The characters of joy and woe;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that slope to death,
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees
Shade off to mournful cypresses
With the white amaranths underneath.
Even while I look, I can but heed
The restless sands' incessant fall,
Importunate hours that hours succeed,
Each clamorous with its own sharp need,
And duty keeping pace with all.
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids;
I hear again the voice that bids
The dreamer leave his dream midway
For larger hopes and graver fears:
Life greatens in these later years,
The century's aloe flowers to-day!
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling's eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends—the few
Who yet remain—shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures of old days;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth,
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze!
And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,
Or lilies floating in some pond,
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond,
The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.
MY TRIUMPH.
On woods that dream of bloom,
And over purpling vines,
The low sun fainter shines.
The hazel's gold is paling;
Yet overhead more near
The eternal stars appear!
Insures the future's good,
And for the things I see
I trust the things to be;
And the long days of God,
My feet shall still be led,
My heart be comforted.
O dear ones gone above me!
Careless of other fame,
I leave to you my name.
Save it from evil phrases:
Why, when dear lips that spake it
Are dumb, should strangers wake it?
I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.
Let life be banned or sainted:
Deeper than written scroll
The colors of the soul.
My songs that found no tongue;
Nobler than any fact
My wish that failed of act.
Others shall right the wrong,—
Finish what I begin,
And all I fail of win.
Mine or another's day,
So the right word be said
And life the sweeter made?
Hail to the brave light-bringers!
Forward I reach and share
All that they sing and dare.
A glory shines before me
Of what mankind shall be,—
Pure, generous, brave, and free.
Diviner but still human,
Solving the riddle old,
Shaping the Age of Gold!
And equal-handed labor;
The richer life, where beauty
Walks hand in hand with duty.
The joy of unborn peoples!
Sound, trumpets far off blown,
Your triumph is my own!
I keep the festival,
Fore-reach the good to be,
And share the victory.
I join the great march onward,
And take, by faith, while living,
My freehold of thanksgiving.
IN SCHOOL-DAYS.
A ragged beggar sleeping;
Around it still the sumachs grow,
And blackberry-vines are creeping.
Deep scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;
Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing!
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window-panes,
And low eaves' icy fretting.
And brown eyes full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.
Her childish favor singled:
His cap pulled low upon a face
Where pride and shame were mingled.
To right and left, he lingered;—
As restlessly her tiny hands
The blue-checked apron fingered.
The soft hand's light caressing,
And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing.
I hate to go above you,
Because,”—the brown eyes lower fell,—
“Because you see, I love you!”
That sweet child-face is showing.
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing!
How few who pass above him
Like her,—because they love him.
MY BIRTHDAY.
Lies dead my latest year;
The winter winds are wailing low
Its dirges in my ear.
As if a loss befell;
Before me, even as behind,
God is, and all is well!
His low voice speaks within,—
The patience of immortal love
Outwearying mortal sin.
Of care and loss and pain,
My eyes are wet with thankful tears
For blessings which remain.
I will not count it dross,
Nor turn from treasures still my own
To sigh for lack and loss.
As sweet her voices call,
As fair her evenings fall.
Kind voices speak my name,
And lips that find it hard to praise
Are slow, at least, to blame.
How fields, once lost or won,
Now lie behind me green and still
Beneath a level sun!
The clamor of the throng!
How old, harsh voices of debate
Flow into rhythmic song!
Too soft in this still air;
Somewhat the restful heart foregoes
Of needed watch and prayer.
May founder in the calm,
And he who braved the polar frost
Faint by the isles of balm.
The outflung heart of youth,
Than pleasant songs in idle ears
The tumult of the truth.
And love for hearts that pine,
But let the manly habitude
Of upright souls be mine.
Dear Lord, the languid air;
And let the weakness of the flesh
Thy strength of spirit share.
The ear forget to hear,
Make clearer still the spirit's sight,
More fine the inward ear!
To soothe, or cheer, or warn,
And down these slopes of sunset lead
As up the hills of morn!
RED RIDING-HOOD.
Ridged o'er with many a drifted heap;
The wind that through the pine-trees sung
The naked elm-boughs tossed and swung;
While, through the window, frosty-starred,
Against the sunset purple barred,
We saw the sombre crow flap by,
The hawk's gray fleck along the sky,
The crested blue-jay flitting swift,
The squirrel poising on the drift,
Set to the north wind like a sail.
With flattened face against the glass,
And eyes in which the tender dew
Of pity shone, stood gazing through
The narrow space her rosy lips
Had melted from the frost's eclipse:
“Oh, see,” she cried, “the poor blue-jays!
What is it that the black crow says?
The squirrel lifts his little legs
Because he has no hands, and begs;
He 's asking for my nuts, I know:
May I not feed them on the snow?”
Warm-sheltered in her hood of red,
Her plaid skirt close about her drawn,
She floundered down the wintry lawn;
Now struggling through the misty veil
Blown round her by the shrieking gale;
Now sinking in a drift so low
Her scarlet hood could scarcely show
Its dash of color on the snow.
Her little store of nuts and corn,
And thus her timid guests bespoke:
“Come, squirrel, from your hollow oak,—
Come, black old crow,—come, poor blue-jay,
Before your supper 's blown away!
Don't be afraid, we all are good;
And I'm mamma's Red Riding-Hood!”
Who heedest even the sparrow's fall,
Keep in the little maiden's breast
The pity which is now its guest!
Let not her cultured years make less
The childhood charm of tenderness,
But let her feel as well as know,
Nor harder with her polish grow!
Unmoved by sentimental grief
That wails along some printed leaf,
But, prompt with kindly word and deed
To own the claims of all who need,
Let the grown woman's self make good
The promise of Red Riding-Hood!
RESPONSE.
On the occasion of my seventieth birthday in 1877, I was the recipient of many tokens of esteem. The publishers of the Atlantic Monthly gave a dinner in my name, and the editor of The Literary World gathered in his paper many affectionate messages from my associates in literature and the cause of human progress. The lines which follow were written in acknowledgment.
Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays
On word and work irrevocably done,
Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun,
I hear, O friends! your words of cheer and praise,
Half doubtful if myself or otherwise.
Like him who, in the old Arabian joke,
A beggar slept and crownëd Caliph woke.
I see my life-work through your partial eyes;
Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs
A higher value than of right belongs,
You do but read between the written lines
The finer grace of unfulfilled designs.
AT EVENTIDE.
Poor and inadequate the shadow-playOf gain and loss, of waking and of dream,
Against life's solemn background needs must seem
At this late hour. Yet, not unthankfully,
I call to mind the fountains by the way,
The breath of flowers, the bird-song on the spray,
Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy of giving
And of receiving, the great boon of living
In grand historic years when Liberty
Had need of word and work, quick sympathies
For all who fail and suffer, song's relief,
Nature's uncloying loveliness; and chief,
The kind restraining hand of Providence,
The inward witness, the assuring sense
Of an Eternal Good which overlies
The sorrow of the world, Love which outlives
All sin and wrong, Compassion which forgives
To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear eyes
Through lapse and failure look to the intent,
And judge our frailty by the life we meant.
VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE.
The picturesquely situated Wayside Inn at West Ossipee, N. H., is now in ashes; and to its former guests these somewhat careless rhymes may be a not unwelcome reminder of pleasant summers and autumns on the banks of the Bearcamp and Chocorua. To the author himself they have a special interest from the fact that they were written, or improvised, under the eye and for the amusement of a beloved invalid friend whose last earthly sunsets faded from the mountain ranges of Ossipee and Sandwich.
Deep in the Sandwich mountains,
Ran lakeward Bearcamp River;
And, between its flood-torn shores,
Sped by sail or urged by oars
No keel had vexed it ever.
To the dull axe Time is wielding,
The shy mink and the otter,
And golden leaves and red,
By countless autumns shed,
Had floated down its water.
Came a skilled seafaring man,
With his dory, to the right place;
Over hill and plain he brought her,
Where the boatless Bearcamp water
Comes winding down from White-Face.
I'm sure my pretty boat's worth,
On her painted side he wrote it,
And the flag that o'er her floated
Bore aloft the name of Jettie.
Elder guest and latest comer
Saw her wed the Bearcamp water;
Heard the name the skipper gave her,
And the answer to the favor
From the Bay State's graceful daughter.
Her charmëd voice uplifted;
And the wood-thrush and song-sparrow
Listened, dumb with envious pain,
To the clear and sweet refrain
Whose notes they could not borrow.
And from off the shelving shore,
Glided out the strange explorer;
Floating on, she knew not whither,—
The tawny sands beneath her,
The great hills watching o'er her.
As the meadows' margins by it,
Or widens out to borrow a
New life from that wild water,
The mountain giant's daughter,
The pine-besung Chocorua.
And pack of mountain lumber
That spring floods downward force,
Over sunken snag, and bar
Where the grating shallows are,
The good boat held her course.
Around the vine-hung islands,
She ploughed her crooked furrow;
And her rippling and her lurches
Scared the river eels and perches,
And the musk-rat in his burrow.
Every sage and grave pearl-grower,
Shut his rusty valves the tighter;
Crow called to crow complaining,
And old tortoises sat craning
Their leathern necks to sight her.
The misty mountain masses
Rising dim and distant northward,
And, with faint-drawn shadow pictures,
Low shores, and dead pine spectres,
Blends the skyward and the earthward,
With merry man and maiden
Sending back their song and laughter,—
While, perchance, a phantom crew,
In a ghostly birch canoe,
Paddled dumb and swiftly after!
Climbed the topmost crag to see
The strange thing drifting under;
And, through the haze of August,
Passaconaway and Paugus
Looked down in sleepy wonder.
In mimic sea-tones sung
The song familiar to her;
And the maples leaned to screen her,
And the meadow-grass seemed greener,
And the breeze more soft to woo her.
To her the freedom granted
To scan its every feature,
Till new and old were blended,
And round them both extended
The loving arms of Nature.
Henceforth is part and parcel;
And on Bearcamp shall her log
Be kept, as if by George's
Or Grand Menàn, the surges
Tossed her skipper through the fog.
Recall the morning gladness
Of life, at evening time,
By chance, onlooking idly,
Apart from all so widely,
Have set her voyage to rhyme.
Of song and laugh, in distance;
Alone with me remaining
The stream, the quiet meadow,
The hills in shine and shadow,
The sombre pines complaining.
Of voyagers on a stream
From whence is no returning,
Under sealëd orders going,
Looking forward little knowing,
Looking back with idle yearning.
The port of peace may enter,
That, safe from snag and fall
And siren-haunted islet,
And rock, the Unseen Pilot
May guide us one and all.
MY TRUST.
I look across the years and see
Myself beside my mother's knee.
My selfish moods, and know again
A child's blind sense of wrong and pain.
My childhood's needs are better known,
My mother's chastening love I own.
A child still groping for the light
To read His works and ways aright.
That as my mother dealt with me
So with His children dealeth He.
That pain itself was wisely planned
I feel, and partly understand.
The sweet pains of self-sacrifice,
I would not have them otherwise.
Knew not the dread rebuke within,
The pang of merciful discipline?
Crowned stoic of Rome's noblest mould!
Pleasure and pain alike I hold.
Of triumph over flesh and sense,
Yet trust the grievous providence,
By ways I cannot comprehend,
To some unguessed benignant end;
The clear-aired heights by steps of pain,
And never cross is borne in vain.
A NAME.
Addressed to my grand-nephew, Greenleaf Whittier Pickard Jonathan Greenleaf, in A Genealogy of the Greenleaf Family, says briefly: “From all that can be gathered, it is believed that the ancestors of the Greenleaf family were Huguenots, who left France on account of their religious principles some time in the course of the sixteenth century, and settled in England. The name was probably translated from the French Feuillevert.”
St. Malo! from thy ancient mart,
Became upon our Western shore
Greenleaf for Feuillevert.
Of leaves by light winds overrun,
Or read, upon the greening sward
Of May, in shade and sun.
Breathed softly with a mother's kiss;
His mother's own, no tenderer word
My father spake than this.
Be thou its keeper; let it take
New beauty for thy sake.
My halting footsteps seek and find—
The flawless symmetry of man,
The poise of heart and mind.
Of every wing that fancy flew,
See clearly where I groped my way,
Nor real from seeming knew.
Thy faith unswerved by cross or crown,
Like the stout Huguenot of old
Whose name to thee comes down.
Of that lone exile, haply mine
May in life's heavy hours impart
Some strength and hope to thine.
The hard-gained lessons of its day?
Each lip must learn the taste of truth,
Each foot must feel its way.
That touch or shun life's fateful keys;
The whisper of the inward voice
Is more than homilies.
Stars shine, and happy song-birds sing,
What can my evening give to morn,
My winter to thy spring!
With small desert of praise or blame,
The love I felt, the good I meant,
I leave thee with my name.
GREETING.
The old-time guests for whom I wait
Come few and slow, methinks, to-day.
Ah! who could hear my messages
Across the dim unsounded seas
On which so many have sailed away!
And let us meet, as we have met,
Once more beneath this low sunshine;
And grateful for the good we 've known,
The riddles solved, the ills outgrown,
Shake hands upon the border line.
From your indulgent ears, once more
I crave, and, if belated lays
The silent sympathy of love
To me is dearer now than praise.
My hearth and heart keep open room,
Come smiling through the shadows long,
Be with me while the sun goes down,
And with your cheerful voices drown
The minor of my even-song.
The wise Eternal oversight
And love and power and righteous will
Remain: the law of destiny
The best for each and all must be,
And life its promise shall fulfil.
AN AUTOGRAPH.
On sands by waves o'errun
Or winter's frosted pane,
Traces a record vain.
Wiser and better names,
And well my own may pass
As from the strand or glass.
Melt, noons, the frosty rime!
The silence that shall last!
And love me vanish so,
What harm to them or me
Will the lost memory be?
Through right of life divine,
Remain, what matters it
Whose hand the message writ?
Sit on my worst or best?
Why should the showman claim
The poor ghost of my name?
Its spectre lingers round,
Haply my spent life will
Leave some faint echo still.
Of praise or blame to death,
Soothing or saddening such
As loved the living much.
And fond I still would fain
A kindly judgment seek,
A tender thought bespeak.
Let this at least be said:
“Whate'er his life's defeatures,
He loved his fellow-creatures.
To hold he scarce was able
The first great precept fast,
He kept for man the last.
What lacks the Eternal Fulness,
If still our weakness can
Love Him in loving man?
Of the world's future faring;
In human nature still
He found more good than ill.
His tongue and pen he offered;
His life was not his own,
Nor lived for self alone.
He lived in days unquiet;
And, lover of all beauty,
Trod the hard ways of duty.
He sought the good of many,
May God forgive him wholly!”
ABRAM MORRISON.
Haunt an old man's memory still,
Drollest, quaintest of them all,
With a boy's laugh I recall
Good old Abram Morrison.
Ground and rumbled by Po Hill,
And the old red school-house stood
Midway in the Powow's flood,
Here dwelt Abram Morrison.
Bear-Hill, Lion's Mouth and Pond,
Marvellous to our tough old stock,
Chips o' the Anglo-Saxon block,
Seemed the Celtic Morrison.
Only knew the Yankee drawl,
Never brogue was heard till when,
Foremost of his countrymen,
Hither came Friend Morrison;
Kin of his had well withstood
Under Derry's leaguered wall,
As became the Morrisons.
With his household and his goods,
Never was it clearly told
How within our quiet fold
Came to be a Morrison.
That the Quaker he forgot,
When, to think of battles won,
And the red-coats on the run,
Laughed aloud Friend Morrison.
Bore his sires their family tree,
On the rugged boughs of it
Grafting Irish mirth and wit,
And the brogue of Morrison.
Blundering like an Irishman,
But with canny shrewdness lent
By his far-off Scotch descent,
Such was Abram Morrison.
Rode his cherished pig on wheels,
And to all who came to see:
“Aisier for the pig an' me,
Sure it is,” said Morrison.
With a humor quite his own,
Of our sober-stepping ways,
Speech and look and cautious phrase,
Slow to learn was Morrison.
Of a country strange and old,
Where the fairies danced till dawn,
And the goblin Leprecaun
Looked, we thought, like Morri
Witch and troll and second sight
Whispered still where Stornoway
Looks across its stormy bay,
Once the home of Morrisons.
Of the Powow's winding ways;
And our straggling village took
City grandeur to the look
Of its poet Morrison.
On the saddle-bags of Fame,
That they bring not to our time
One poor couplet of the rhyme
Made by Abram Morrison!
Rattled down our one-horse chaise,
To the old, brown meeting-house,
There was Abram Morrison.
Peered the queer old face of him;
And with Irish jauntiness
Swung the coat-tails of the dress
Worn by Abram Morrison.
Leaning o'er the elders' seat,
Mingling with a solemn drone,
Celtic accents all his own,
Rises Abram Morrison.
Dear young friends, to sight and show,
Don't run after elephants,
Learned pigs and presidents
And the likes!” said Morrison.
Simple, child-like, innocent,
Heaven forgive the half-checked smile
Of our careless boyhood, while
Listening to Friend Morrison!
Truth may speak in simplest phrase;
That the man is not the less
For quaint ways and home-spun dress,
Thanks to Abram Morrison!
Come the needed homilies,
With no lofty argument
Is the fitting message sent,
Through such lips as Morrison's.
Powow keeps to Merrimac,
While Po Hill is still on guard,
Looking land and ocean ward,
They shall tell of Morrison!
We are wiser now, perhaps,
But we miss our streets amid
Something which the past has hid,
Lost with Abram Morrison.
Characters of that old year!
Now the many are as one;
Broken is the mould that run
Men like Abram Morrison.
A LEGACY.
When the great silence falls, at last, on me,
Let me not leave, to pain and sadden thee,
A memory of tears.
Of one who was thy friendship's honored guest
And drank the wine of consolation pressed
From sorrows of thy own.
Of hands upheld and trials rendered less—
The unselfish joy which is to helpfulness
Its own great recompense;
As from the garments of the Master, stole
Calmness and strength, the virtue which makes whole
And heals without a sign;
That love, which fails of perfect utterance here,
Lives on to fill the heavenly atmosphere
With its immortal song.
The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier | ||