Poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne :: :: University of Virginia Library

Lived to drink in with every wondering breath,
A consciousness beyond all human ken,
That clothed in flesh, as long conceived in faith,
We viewed the Lord of life and Lord of death,—
Ah! had we lived but then:

To mark all Nature quickening where He trod,
Whether thro' golden field, or shadowy glen,
While a strange sweetness breathed from leaf and clod,
As thro' man's image they divined their God;—
Ah! had we lived but then!

Wild birds above him passed on reverent wing,
And savage sovereigns of dark dune or den,
Out stole to greet Him with mild murmuring,
Soft as a nested dove's song in the spring—
Ah! had we lived but then!

At “peace: be still!” the storm-wind ceased to roar,
And the lulled waters seemed to sigh “amen!”
Fear—the soul's mightier tempest—surged no more,
But a strange stillness fell on sea and shore;—
Ah! had we lived but then!

With our own ears to hear the words He said,
(Their music pondering o'er and o'er again!)
The wine of wisdom quaff from wisdom's head,
View the lame leap, and watch the uprising dead:
Ah! had we lived but then!

The world grows old. Faith, once a mountain stream,
Now crawls polluted down a poisonous fen;
The Bethlehem star hath lost its morning beam;
Thy face, dear Christ, wanes like a wasted dream,—
How changed, how cold since then.

Ah! 'tis our sordid lives whose promise fails:
These languorous lives of low, lost, aimless men;
Thro' mockery's mist our Lord's pure aureole pales,
Yet tenderer than the Syrian nightingales,
His voice sounds now as then.

II.
HARVEST-HOME.

O'er all the fragrant land this harvest day,
What bounteous sheaves are garnered, ear and blade!
Whether the heavens be golden-glad, or gray,—
And the swart laborers toil in sun or shade:—

Like some fair mother in time's morning beams,
When mortal beauty lured immortal eyes,
Here, Earth lies smiling in ethereal dreams,
While her deep-bosomed breathings fall and rise!

Through half-closed lids she views o'er lawn and lea,
Rich-fruited trees, vast piles of glimmering grain,—

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And from the mountain boundaries to the sea,
Hears the low rumbling of the loaded wain.

A magical murmur born of ocean-deeps,
Blent with the pine-tree's lingering music thrills
Up the brown pastures to the trackless steeps,
And ancient caverns of the lonely hills.

Far-flashing insects flicker thro' the grass;
The humble-bee with burly bass drones by;
Afar the plover pipes; the curlews pass
In long lithe lines across the violet sky:

A mellowed radiance rings creation round;
Plenty and peace the auspicious season bless;
The full year pauses proudly, clothed and crowned
In consummation of high queenliness:

All nature seems to throb with rhythmic fires;
Dawns rise harmonious; splendid sunsets roll
Down to the chorus of invisible choirs—
Strange winds in tune with Earth's victorious soul!—

Thus, on the verge of winter's dreary rest,
Nature rejoices in rare pomps of power;
To breeze and sunbeam bares her prodigal breast,
And robes in purple her last shadowless hour.

Ah, when Life's autumn nears the eternal main,
May the heart's granary its rich depths unfold,—
Brimmed with immaculate sheaves of heavenly grain,
And flushed with fruitage of unfading gold!

III.
RECONCILIATION.

[From the South to the North. Written in view of the new year.]

Land of the North! I waft to thee
The South's warm benedicite!
Thou camest when all was grief and pain,
The feverish blood, the tortured brain,
When through hot veins delirium ran,
Thou cam'st, the true Samaritan!

The charm of ruthful grace divine,
The golden oil and perfumed wine,
Have soothed far deeper wounds than those
Which harmed the body's hale repose;
On anguished souls dropped purely calm,
And sweet as Mary's “spikenard” balm!

Lo! now o'er all the world are drawn
Clear splendors of the New-year's dawn!
O North! O South! let warfare cease!
Hark! to that prince whose name is peace!
And ere time's new-born child departs,
Be joined in hands and joined in hearts!

Once wedded thus, O North! O South!
Should discord ope her Marah mouth,
Smite the foul lips so basely fain
To outpour hate's salt tides again:
Long raged the storm, long lowered the night,—
O faction, fly our morning light!

IV.
A VERNAL HYMN.

The fresh spring burgeons into bloom—
And Earth with all her vernal charms
Lies like a queenly bride enclasped
Within her heavenly bridegroom's arms;

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The storms that raved have sunk to peace;
Freed rivulets weave a blithesome lay,
And blissful Nature softly sings
Preludings of her perfect day!

Meanwhile there's not a breeze that thrills
Leaf, bud, and flower with genial kiss,—
Which does not breathe thy mystic hope,
Oh, soul of Palingenesis:—

Glance where we may, the symbols rise
Of loftier loves and lives to be:—
This marvellous spring-time seems to grasp
The skirts of immortality!

V.
CHRISTIAN EXALTATION.

O Christian soldier! shouldst thou rue
Life and its toils, as others do—
Wear a sad frown from day to day,
And garb thy soul in hodden-gray?
O rather shouldst thou smile elate,
Unquelled by sin, unawed by hate,—
Thy lofty-statured spirit dress
In moods of royal stateliness;—
For say, what service so divine
As that, ah! warrior heart, of thine,
High pledged alike through gain or loss,
To thy brave banner of the cross?

Yea! what hast thou to do with gloom,
Whose footsteps spurn the conquered tomb?
Thou that through dreariest dark can see
A smiling immortality?

Leave to the mournful doubting slave,
Who deems the whole wan earth a grave,
Across whose dusky mounds forlorn
Can rise no resurrection morn,
The sombre mien, the funeral weed,
That darkly match so dark a creed;
But be thy brow turned bright on all,
Thy voice like some clear clarion call,
Pealing o'er life's tumultuous van
The keynote of the hopes of man,
While o'er thee flames through gain, through loss,—
That fadeless symbol of the cross.

VI.
SOLITUDE; IN YOUTH AND AGE.

In youth we shrink from solitude!
Its quiet ways we shun,
Because our hearts are fain to dance
With others' in the sun;—
Life's nectar bubbling brightly up,
O'erfloweth toward our brother's cup.

In age we shrink from solitude,
Because our God is there;
And something in his “still, small voice”
Doth bid our souls “beware!”
Who flies from God and conscience, can
But seek his fellow-sinner—man!

VII.
DENIAL.

We look with scorn on Peter's thrice-told lie;
Boldly we say, “Good brother! you nor I,
So near the sacred Lord, the Christ, indeed,
Had dared His name and marvellous grace deny.”

Oh, futile boast! Oh, haughty lips, be dumb!
Unheralded by boisterous trump or drum,
How oft 'mid silent eves and midnight chimes,
Vainly to us our pleading Lord hath come—

Knocked at our hearts, and striven to enter there;
But we poor slaves of mortal sin and care,
Sunk in deep sloth, or bound by spiritual sleep,
Heard not the voice divine, the tender prayer!

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Ah! well for us if some late spring-tide hour
Faith still may bring, with blended shine and shower;
If through warm tears a late remorse may shed,
Our wakened souls put forth one heavenly flower!

VIII.
LESSON OF SUBMISSION.

Ben Youssuf, bound to Mecca, day by day
Toiled bravely o'er the desert's fiery way,
Till its hot sands and flint-sown courses sore
Pressed on the broidered sandals which he wore,
Scorching and cutting! at the last they fell
Loosely abroad;—he seemed to fare through hell,
So blistering now, the flame-hued rocks and dust:—
“O mighty Allah!” cried he, “art thou just,
To let thy faithful pilgrim, serving thee,
Pass onward, thus, in nameless agony?”
With bitter thoughts and half-rebellious mind
He left, at length, the desert sands behind,
And still in that dark temper—far from grace—
Went where his brethren midst the holy place
Kneeled, by the Caäba's sanctity enthralled;—
Lo! there he marked a smitten wretch who crawled
Nearer the shrine, on bleeding hands and knees,
Yet his deep eyes were stars of prayer and peace;—
And ah, how Youssuf's heart remorseful beat,
To find he lacked not only shoes, but—feet!

IX.
THE SUPREME HOUR.

There comes an hour when all life's joys and pains
To our raised vision seem
But as the flickering phantom that remains
Of some dead midnight dream!

There comes an hour when earth recedes so far.
Its wasted wavering ray
Wanes to the ghostly pallor of a star
Merged in the milky way.

Set on the sharp, sheer summit that divides
Immortal truth from mortal fantasie;
We hear the moaning of time's muffled tides
In measureless distance die!

Past passions—loves, ambitions and despairs,
Across the expiring swell
Send thro' void space, like wafts of Lethean airs,
Vague voices of farewell.

Ah, then! from life's long-haunted dream we part,
Roused as a child new-born,
We feel the pulses of the eternal heart
Throb thro' the eternal morn.

X.
A CHRISTMAS LYRIC.

Tho' the Earth with age seems whitened,
And her tresses hoary and old
No longer are flushed and brightened
By glintings of brown or gold,
A voice from the Syrian highlands,
O'er waters that flash and stir,
By the belts of their tropic islands,
Still singeth of joy to her!

A song which the centuries hallow!
Though softer than April rain
That soweth on field and fallow,
A spell that shall rise in grain—

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Yet deep as the sea-strain chanted
On the fluctuant ocean-lyre,
By the magical west-wind haunted,
With the pulse of his soul on fire!

A promise to lift the lowly,—
To weed the soul of its tares,
And change into harmonies holy
The discord of fierce despairs:
A glory of high Evangels,
Of rhythmical storms and calms;
All hail to the voices of angels,
Heard over the starlit palms!

A hymn of hope to the ages,
The music of deathless trust,
No frenzy of mortal rages
Can darken with doubt or dust;
A rapture of high evangels,
But centred in sacred calms!
Ah! still the chorus of angels
Thrills over the Bethlehem palms!

Still heralds the day-spring tender,
That never can melt or close,
Till the noon of its deepening splendor
Out-blooms, like a mystic rose,
Whose petals are rays supernal
Of love that hath all sufficed,—
And whose heart is the grace eternal,
Of the fathomless peace of Christ!

XI.
THE PILGRIM.

Through deepening dust and dreary dearth
I walk the darkened wastes of earth,
A weary pilgrim sore beset,
By hopeless griefs and stern regret.

With broken staff and tattered shoon
I wander slow from dawn to noon—
From arid noon till dew-impearled,
Pale twilight steals across the world.

Yet sometimes through dim evening calms
I catch the gleam of distant palms;
And hear, far off, a mystic sea
Divine as waves on Galilee.

Perchance through paths unknown, forlorn,
I still may reach an orient morn;
To rest when Easter breezes stir,
Around the sacred sepulchre.

XII.
PENUEL.

Near Jabbok Ford, endued with sacred might,
The patriarch strove-with one that silent came,
Obscurely limned against the twilight flame—
Strove thro' slow watches of the marvellous night!

“Ungird thine arms, for lo! 'tis morning light,”
Spake the weird stranger!—“nay, but grant the claim,
Made good thro' strife divine, and bless my name,
'Ere yet thou goest from doubtful clasp and sight!”

Thus Jacob, in the slowly ebbing swell
Of power and passion,—yearning still to mark
That wrestler's face between the dawn and dark:

Again, “wilt thou not bless me?” ... yea! and yea!”
Dropped a still voice, what time the new-born day
Haloed an angel's head at Penuel!

XIII.
PATIENCE.

She hath no beauty in her face,
Unless the chastened sweetness there
And meek long-suffering yield a grace
To make her mournful features fair.

Shunned by the gay, the proud, the young,
She roams through dim unsheltered ways;

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Nor lover's vow, nor flatterer's tongue,
Brings music to her sober days.

At best, her skies are clouded o'er,
And oft she fronts the stinging sleet,
Or feels on some tempestuous shore
The storm-waves lash her naked feet!

Where'er she strays, or musing stands
By lonesome beach, by turbulent mart,—
We see her pale, half-tremulous hands
Crossed humbly o'er her aching heart.

Within, a secret pain she bears,
A pain too deep to feel the balm
An April spirit finds in tears,—
Alas! all cureless griefs are calm!

Yet in her passionless strength supreme,
Despair beyond her pathway flies,
Awed by the softly steadfast beam
Of sad, but heaven-enamored eyes!

Who pause to greet her, vaguely seem
Touched by fine wafts of holier air,
As those who in some mystic dream
Talk with the angels unaware!

XIV.
THE LATTER PEACE.

We have passed the noonday summit,
We have left the noonday heat,
And down the hillside slowly
Descend our weary feet.
Yet the evening airs are balmy,
And the evening shadows sweet.

Our summer's latest roses
Lay withered long ago;
And even the flowers of autumn
Scarce keep their mellowed glow.
Yet a peaceful season woos us
Ere the time of storms and snow.

Like the tender twilight weather
When the toil of day is done,
And we feel the bliss of quiet
Our constant hearts have won—
When the vesper planet blushes,
Kissed by the dying sun.

So falls that tranquil season,
Dew-like, on soul and sight,
Faith's silvery star rise blended
With memory's sunset light,
Wherein life pauses softly
Along the verge of night.

XV.
GAUTAMA.

Seven weary centuries ere our star-like Christ
Rose on the clouded heavens of mortal faith
Gautama came, the stern high priest of death,
Oblivion's sombre, dark evangelist.
Millions of souls hath this dread creed enticed
To wander lost through realms of baleful breath,
Ghoul-haunted, rife with shapes of sin and scath,
Monstrous, yet dim, as births of midnight mist:

All life, he taught, hath been, all life must be
Accursed! the gift of demons! All delight
Lies at the far-off goal of pulseless peace.

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“Pray,” sighed he, “that this breath of men shall cease;
Our hell is earth, our heaven eternal night;
Our only godhead vague Nonentity!”

Note.—We yield to none in our cordial admiration of Mr. Edwin Arnold's “Light of Asia;” but we regard that most eloquent, pathetic, and beautiful poem, chiefly as a poem—and by no means as an absolutely authoritative presentation of Gautama's creed, or its tendencies. It even seems to us that Mr. Arnold is himself somewhat in the dark as to these matters. The “prodigious controversy among the erudite in regard to Gautama's doctrines,” Mr. Arnold confronts chiefly by his own firm conviction that “a third of mankind would never have been brought to believe in blank abstractions, or in nothingness, as the crown of Being!” Au contraire, we cannot fairly ignore the opinion of those Orientalists who maintain, that “Nirvana” is essentially nothingness; and moreover, that the idea involved in it has a peculiar charm for the Hindoo mind.

XVI.
CHRIST.

The soul's physician thus the soul would kill,
The soul's high priest its heaven-bound pinions stay,
Bring from fresh beauty chaos, night from day,
Despair from trust, from all good promise ill;
The outworn heart and sickened senses still
Must shroud heaven's life in fogs of foul decay,
Veil the swift angel, love, and hide the ray
Born of God's smile with masks of morbid will:—

But Truth, and Truth's great Master cannot die;
While Love, the seraph, free of wings and eyes,
Upsweeps the realm of calm immensity.
A thousand times our buried Christ shall rise
In prayerful souls to hush their anguished sighs,
And dawn, not darkness, rule o'er earth and sky.

XVII.
A WINTER HYMN.

O Weary winds! O winds that wail!
O'er desert fields and ice-locked rills!
O heavens that brood so cold and pale
Above the frozen Norland hills!

Nature is like some sorrowing soul,
Robed in a garb of dreariest woe;—
She cannot see her vernal goal
Through ghostly veils of mist and snow:—

Her pulse beats low; through all her veins
Scarce can the sluggish life-blood start;
What feeble, faltering heat sustains
The half-numbed forces of her heart!

Above, despondent eyes she lifts,
To view the sun-ray's dubious birth;
Beneath she marks the storm-piled drifts
About a waste bewildering earth!

Ah, stricken Mother! hast thou lost
All memory of the germs that rest
Untouched by tempest, rain, or frost,
Shrined in thine own immortal breast?

Bend, bend thine ear; yea, bend and hear,—
Despite the winds' and woodlands' strife,—
Deep in Earth's bosom, faint and clear,
The far-off murmurous hints of life:—

The sound of waves in whispering flow;
Of seeds that stir in dreams of light,
Whose sweetness mocks the shrouded snow,
Whose radiance smiles at death and night;

So, Christian spirit! wrapt in grief,—
Beneath thy misery's frozen sod,
Love works, to burst in flower and leaf,
On some fair spring-dawn fresh from God!

XVIII.
THE THREE URNS.

List to an Arab parable, wherein
The beauty of the Orient fancy shrines
A star-like truth, the iconoclastic West
Is blind to see, its shrewd material vision
Bent over on the foulest soils of earth,
If only gold may gild them! Hear and—learn!

Nimroud, the king to whom his fourscore years
Had brought a wisdom pure as his white locks,

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(And spotless they as snow on Caucasus!)
One morn commanded his three sons to grace
His presence chamber; there in front of each
A mighty urn, sealed with a mystic seal,
Was duly set—the one of burnished gold,
Blazed like an August noon—of amber fair
The other—but the third (dull as a cloud
Seen 'gainst the bright flash of a distant wave.
Or 'twixt the glittering tree-tops), seemed, in form,
A rugged mould wrought from the common earth.

“Choose thou, my eldest,” said the king, deep-breathed,
“Choose thou amongst these urns, the urn which seems
To thee most precious,”—whereupon he chose
The Vase of Gold, which bore in jewelled flame,
Clear leaping, the word “Empire,”—opened it,
And found beneath a deadly, vaporous fume,
(Which on the instant sickened heart and sense),—
Nought but a bubbling tide of vital blood,
Hot, as appeared, that moment from the veins
Of murdered manhood. The fair amber vase,
With “Glory” written on it—“this for me!”
Exclaimed the second prince, with eager eyes,
And feverish hands clasping his treasure close,—
Too close, alas! for as he spake, the urn
Crashed on his breast, and bruised and tortured it,
And a rare dust, the ashes of great men,
Dead centuries since, rose from its shattered bulk
Pungent, and yet so light the feeblest puff
Of failing wind hath shorn and scattered them
Into vague air. One vase alone remained,
Which the third son unsealing, found therein,
Deep-graven, glittering like a planet keen,
Thro' gulfs of envious darkness the sole name
Of God,—“which name, O! princes,” said the king,
“Doth sanctify yon vase of common earth
Above all precious metals sought of men,
Since but one letter of that sacred three,
Outweighs all worlds, from the mild star of eve,
Shining on love, to those mysterious orbs,
Which gird the pathway of the Pleiades.”

XIX.
ON THE DECLINE OF FAITH.

As in some half-burned forest, one by one,
We catch far echoes on the doleful breeze,
Born of the downfall of its ruined trees;
While even thro' those which stand, slow shudderings run,
As if Fate's ruthless hand were laid thereon;
So, in a world sore-smitten by foul disease,
—That Pest, called Doubt—we mark by slow degrees.
The fall of many a faith that wooed the sun:
Some, with low sigh of parting bough, or leaf,

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Strain, quivering downward to the abhorrèd ground;
Some totter feebly, groaning toward their doom;
While some broad-centuried growths of old Belief,
Sapped as by fire, defeatured, charred, discrowned,
Fall with a loud crash, and long reverberant boom!

Thus, fated hour by hour, more gaunt and bare,
Gloom the wan spaces, whence, a power to bless,
Up burgeoned once, in grace or stateliness,
Some creed divine, offspring of light and air;
What then? and must we yield to blank despair,
Beholding God Himself wax less and less,
Paled in the skeptical storm-cloud's whirl and stress,
Till all is lost—love, reverence, hope, and prayer.
O man! when faith succumbs, and reason reels,
Before some impious, bold iconoclast,
Turn to thy heart that reasons not, but feels;
Creeds change! shrines perish! still (her instinct saith),
Still the soul lives, the soul must conquer Death.
Hold fast to God, and God will hold thee fast!

XX.
THE ULTIMATE TRUST.

Though in the wine-press of thy wrath divine,
My crushed hopes droop, like crude and worthless must,
That love and mercy, Father! still are thine,
With reverent soul, I trust!

Though all my life be shattered by thine ire,
The mystic whirlwind of thy will august,
Still, from the din, the darkness and the fire,
I lift my song of trust!

Tho' foes assail me! yea, within, without!
Harrow my heart, and hurl its joys in dust,
No forceful fear, nor fraud of treacherous doubt,
Disarms my bucklered trust!

Though my lost years be wrapped in Arctic cloud,
And Grief on me hath wreaked her ruthless lust,
Still, like an angel's face above a shroud
Smiles my celestial trust!

Tho', Lord! thou wear'st a mask of hate ('twould seem),
And for a time, I think—as mortals must—
That mask shall melt, as melts a nightmare dream,
Before my Orient trust!

Yea! tho' Thou slay me, and supine, I cower,
Heart-pierced and bleeding from the fiery thrust,—
I know there bides in heaven a glorious hour,
To crown my sacred trust!

XXI.
“A LITTLE WHILE I FAIN WOULD LINGER YET.”

A little while (my life is almost set!)
I fain would pause along the downward way,
Musing an hour in this sad sunset-ray,
While, Sweet! our eyes with tender tears are wet;
A little hour I fain would linger yet.

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A little while I fain would linger yet,
All for love's sake, for love that cannot tire;
Though fervid youth be dead, with youth's desire,
And hope has faded to a vague regret,
A little while I fain would linger yet.

A little while I fain would linger here:
Behold! who knows what strange, mysterious bars
'Twixt souls that love, may rise in other stars?
Nor can love deem the face of death is fair;
A little while I still would linger here.

A little while I yearn to hold thee fast,
Hand locked in hand, and loyal heart to heart;
(O pitying Christ! those woeful words, “We part!”)
So ere the darkness fall, the light be past,
A little while I fain would hold thee fast.

A little while, when night and twilight meet;
Behind, our broken years; before, the deep
Weird wonder of the last unfathomed sleep.
A little while I still would clasp thee, Sweet;
A little while, when night and twilight meet.

A little while I fain would linger here;
Behold! who knows what soul-dividing bars
Earth's faithful loves may part in other stars?
Nor can love deem the face of death is fair:
A little while I still would linger here.

XXII.
TWILIGHT MONOLOGUE.

Can it be that the glory of manhood has passed,
That its purpose, its passion, its might,
Have all paled with the fervor that fed them at last,
As the twilight comes down with the night?

Can it be I have lived, dreamed, and labored in vain—
That above me, unconquered and bright,
The proud goal I had aimed at is taunting my pain,
As the twilight comes down with the night?

Can it be that my hopes, which seemed noble and fair,
Were predestined to mildew and blight?
Ah! sad disenchantment! that bids me beware
Of a twilight which heralds the night!

The glad days, the brave years that were lusty and long—
How they fade on vague memory's sight!
And their joys are like echoes of jubilant song,
As the twilight comes down with the night!

All the past is o'ershadowed, the present is dim,
And could earth's fairest future requite
The worn spirit that swoons, the racked senses that swim,
In this dread of the twilight and night?

There is dew on my raiment; the sea winds wail low,
As lost birds, wafted wave-ward in flight,

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And all Nature grows cold, as my heart in its woe,
At the advent of twilight and night!

From the realm of dead sunset scarce darkened as yet—
Over hills mist-enshrouded and white,
A deep sigh of ineffable, mournful regret,
Seems exhaled 'twixt the twilight and night!

O! thou genius of art! I have worshipped and blessed;
O! thou soul of all beauty and light!
Lift me up in thine arms, give me warmth from thy breast,
Ere the twilight be merged in the night!

Let me draw from thy bosom miraculous breath,
And for once, on song's uppermost height,
I may chant to the nations such music in death
As shall mock at the twilight and night!

XXIII.
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

I pray you, when the shadow of death draws nigh,
To bear me out beneath the unmeasured heaven;
I fain would hear the pine-trees' slumberous sigh,
And watch the cloud flotillas drifted high,
By slow, soft breezes driven
Due south, perchance toward realms of tropic balms,
And the warm fragrance of the Syrian palms.

I pray you, when the shadow of death comes down,
Oh! lay me close to nature's pulses deep,
Whether her breast with autumn tints be brown,
Or bright with summer, or hale winter's crown
Press on her brows in sleep;
So nigh the dawn of some new, mavellous birth,
I'd look to heaven, still clasped in arms of earth!

I pray you, when the shadow of death draws near,
Give, give me freedom for my last, faint breath;
Beneath God's liberal heaven I could not fear,
His merciful winds would dry my latest tear,
His sunshine soften death,
And some fair shreds of our dear earth's delight
Cling round the spirit in her upward flight.

XXIV.
FINIS.

A moment's gleam, a hint of sunnier weather,
Borne from the storm-clouds and the mists of fate;
Dawned, with a tender “Peradventure” hither,
A soft “Perchance it is not yet too late!”

And so a transient omen magnifying,
My soul would fain pass brightened, unto thine;
But to my half-formed thought comes truth replying:
“No life mounts backward from its wan decline.”

Would'st thou expect, drear winter, ashen, sober,
To burn with blushes of a spring-tide noon?
Would'st thou expect the hectic-cheeked October
To catch the virginal freshness of young June?

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All mortal lives like year's seasons ever
Pass from their May dawn and rare summer's bloom,
Down to the day when autumn winds dissever
Life's latest sheaves to strew them near a tomb.

And then death looms, that pitiless grim December.
Bringing cold tears, a winding sheet like snow,
Last, a carved stone, which bids the world remember
One of its countless myriads sleeps below.

XXV.
THE SHADOWS ON THE WALL.

What mournful influence chills my soul to-night?
I watch the expiring flames that fade and fall,
From which outleap vague shafts of arrowy light,
Pursued by spectral shadows on the wall.

My thoughts are wandering on the verge of dreams,
Mist-laden, gray, and sombre as a pall,
While lower, feebler, flit the fireside gleams,
And darker those quaint shadows on the wall.

336

The old sad voice (fraught with the centuries' tears)
That seems through infinite space and time to call,
Faint with the doubts and grief of antique years,
Years that are dim as shadows on the wall;

The old sad voice is whispering to my heart:
Man's life, phantasmal, vain, illusive all,
Beholds too soon its cloud-foundations part,
Melting like midnight shadows on the wall.

Too soon the noblest passions, worn and old,
Die, or grow dulled and languid past recall;
Even love may wane in memory's twilight cold,
Sad, wavering, wan, as shadows on the wall.

And oft the loftiest nature's loftiest aim,
Heaven-soaring once, wide as this earthly ball,
Sinks, a tamed eagle o'er whose eyes of flame
The death-films steal like shadows on the wall.

A subtler voice whispers the conscious soul,
“What of high hopes which held thy youth in thrall?
Where flash thy chariot wheels, where shines thy goal?”
The mocking shadows answer from the wall.

With deepening dusk and faded flame they grow
Fantastic phantoms, hovering over all
The tremulous space, or flickering to and fro
In wild unearthly antics on the wall.

Till as the last slow ember drops in gloom,
Like vassals hurrying through some wizard's hall,
Whirling they pass, and darkness haunts the room,
No life, not even a shadow on the wall!

XXVI.
CONSUMMATUM EST.

I've done with all the world can give,
Whate'er its kind or measure.
(O Christ! what paltry lives we live
If toil be lord, or pleasure!).
Alas! I only yearn for sleep,
Calm rest for fevered riot—
The sacred sleep, the shadows deep,
Of death's majestic quiet.

I've done with all our earth-life lends—
False hopes and wild ambitions,
Brilliant beginnings, futile ends,
And long-postponed fruitions,
Those hollow shows dissembling truth,
Vain myths that mock the real,
The dreary wrecks of peace and youth
Above a crushed ideal.

I've done with heavenly dreams that wane
At touch of earth-born dawnings,
With fervid passion, useless pain,
Brave aims and dim forewarnings;
I've done with alien tears or smiles,
Past days and vague to-morrows;
I've done with earth's unhallowed wiles,
Brief joys and helpless sorrows.

I've done with compacts sealed in dust,
Dull cares that overweighed me,
With promise of the Judas-trust,
That, while it kissed, betrayed me;
With all save love, whose matchless face
Midmost a life's undoing
Smiles in its tender angel's grace
To sanctify the ruin.

337

I've done with all beneath the stars,
O world! so wanly fleeting!
How long against time's ruthless bars
Have the soul's wings been beating,
Till even the soul but yearns for sleep,
Calm rest for fevered riot—
The sacred sleep, the shadows deep,
Of death's majestic quiet!

XXVII.
THE BROKEN CHORDS.

Like a worn wind-harp on a barren lea,
Unstirred by subtle breathings of the sea,
Though sweet south-breezes swell the floodtide's flow,
The lyric power in this worn heart of mine
Droops in the twilight of life's wan decline,
While the loosed chords of song grown lax and low,
Are dumb to all the heavenly airs that blow!

Only, sometimes along each shattered string
I hear the ghost of Memory murmuring
Old strains, as half in sadness half in scorn,
So faint, so far, they scarcely pass the bound
'Twixt sullen silence and ethereal sound,—
Mere wraiths of murmurous tone, that die forlorn
Ere yet we deem those faltering notes are born!

So, smitten chords, sink, wane, and pass away!
Yet have ye made soft music in your day
On many a sea-swept strand or breezy lawn.
Once more I hear that yearning music rise;
Once more I see deep tears in tender eyes;
And all my soul melts in me, fondly drawn
Back to youth's love and youth's Arcadian dawn!

XXVIII.
THE RIFT WITHIN THE LUTE.

A tiny rift within the lute
May sometimes make the music mute!
By slow degrees, the rift grows wide,
By slow degrees, the tender tide—
Harmonious once—of loving thought
Becomes with harsher measures fraught,
Until the heart's Arcadian breath
Lapses thro' discord into death!

XXIX.
IN HARBOR.

I think it is over, over,
I think it is over at last,
Voices of foeman and lover,
The sweet and the bitter have passed:—
Life, like a tempest of ocean
Hath outblown its ultimate blast:
There's but a faint sobbing sea-ward
While the calm of the tide deepens leeward,
And behold! like the welcoming quiver
Of heart-pulses throbbed thro' the river,
Those lights in the harbor at last,
The heavenly harbor at last!

I feel it is over! over!
For the winds and the waters surcease;
Ah!—few were the days of the rover
That smiled in the beauty of peace!
And distant and dim was the omen
That hinted redress or release:—
From the ravage of life, and its riot
What marvel I yearn for the quiet
Which bides in the harbor at last?
For the lights with their welcoming quiver
That through the sanctified river
Which girdles the harbor at last,
This heavenly harbor at last?

338

I know it is over, over,
I know it is over at last!
Down sail! the sheathed anchor uncover,
For the stress of the voyage has passed:
Life, life a tempest of ocean
Hath outbreathed its ultimate blast:
There's but a faint sobbing sea-ward,
While the calm of the tide deepens leeward;
And behold! like the welcoming quiver
Of heart-pulses throbbed thro' the river,
Those lights in the harbor at last,
The heavenly harbor at last!

XXX.
FORECASTINGS.

When I am gone, what alien steps shall tread
This flowery garden-close?
What alien hands shall pluck the violets sweet,
Or gather the rich petals of the rose,
When I—drear thought!—am dead?

When I am gone, toward doubtful darkness led,
What voices, false or true,
Shall echo round these old, familiar haunts
My happiest days of tranquil manhood knew,
Ah me! when I am dead?

When I am gone, what museful eyes instead
Of these dimmed eyes of mine,
Beneath yon trellised porch shall mark thro' heaven,
On cloudless eves the summer sunsets shine,
When I, alas! am dead?

When I am gone, and all is done and said,
One life had wrought below—
'Mid these fair scenes what other souls shall thrill,
In turn, to love and anguish, joy and woe—
Dear Christ! when I am dead?

Though I be dead, perchance when Spring has shed
Her gentlest influence round—
Here, where love reigned, my ghostly feet may tread
The old accustomed paths without a sound,—
Perchance—when I am dead!

Though I be dead, earth's fragrant white and red
Here in spring roses met,
May to strange spiritual senses bring the balms
Of tender memory and divine regret,
Yea! even to me—though dead!

Though I be dead, with faded hands and head
Laid in unbreathing rest—
Dear cottage roof! thou still mayst lure me back,
Among the unconscious living a wan guest,
Veiled, as Fate veils the dead:

A guest of shadowy frame, ethereal tread,
Amongst them, yet apart—
A sombre mystery! in whose bosom throb
The faint, slow pulses of its phantom heart,
Ah, heaven! not wholly dead!

XXXI.
APPEAL TO NATURE OF THE SOLITARY HEART.

Dear mother, take me to thy breast!
I have no other place of rest
In all this weary world of men:
Ah! fold me in thy love again,
Sweet mother; clasp me to thy breast!

339

From out thy womb, long since, I came,
A creature wrought of dust and flame;
I knew no mortal mother's grace,
But only viewed thy mystic face,
That softly went, and softly came!

I knew thee in the sunset grand,
The waveless calm, the silvery strand;
From out the shimmering twilight-bars
I saw thee smile between the stars,
Divinely sweet, or softly grand!

I heard, beneath the sylvan arch,
Thy battling winds, led on by March,
Sweep where the solemn pine-tops close
About its ravaged, dim repose—
Hushed, awed, beneath the woodland arch!

I heard thee, 'mid some tender hour,
In lisping leaf and rustling flower,
In low lute-breathings of the breeze,
And tidal sighs o'er moonless seas
Star-charmed in midnight's mournful hour!

I thrilled at each far-whispered tone
That touched me from thy vast unknown,
At every dew-bright hint that fell
From out thy soul unsearchable,
Yea, each strange hint and shadowy tone!

I felt, through dim, awe-laden space,
The coming of thy veilèd face;
And in the fragrant night's eclipse
The kisses of thy deathless lips,
Like strange star-pluses, throbbed through space!

Now mine own pulses, beating low,
Whisper the spent life: “Thou must go;
Even as a wasted rivulet, pass
Beyond the light, beneath the grass,
For strength grows faint, and hope is low!”