 | The poetical works of Bayard Taylor |  |
331
ODES
1869–1878
GETTYSBURG ODE
DEDICATION OF THE NATIONAL MONUMENT, JULY 1, 1869
I
After the eyes that looked, the lips that spakeHere, from the shadows of impending death,
Those words of solemn breath,
What voice may fitly break
The silence, doubly hallowed, left by him?
We can but bow the head, with eyes grown dim,
And, as a Nation's litany, repeat
The phrase his martyrdom hath made complete,
Noble as then, but now more sadly-sweet:
“Let us, the Living, rather dedicate
Ourselves to the unfinished work, which they
Thus far advanced so nobly on its way,
And save the perilled State!
Let us, upon this field where they, the brave,
Their last full measure of devotion gave,
Highly resolve they have not died in vain!—
That, under God, the Nation's later birth
Of Freedom, and the people's gain
Of their own Sovereignty, shall never wane
And perish from the circle of the earth!”
From such a perfect text, shall Song aspire
To light her faded fire,
And into wandering music turn
Its virtue, simple, sorrowful, and stern?
His voice all elegies anticipated;
For, whatsoe'er the strain,
We hear that one refrain:
“We consecrate ourselves to them, the Consecrated!”
II
After the thunder-storm our heaven is blue:Far-off, along the borders of the sky,
In silver folds the clouds of battle lie,
With soft, consoling sunlight shining through;
And round the sweeping circle of your hills
The crashing cannon-thrills
Have faded from the memory of the air;
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Her bliss on yonder mountains:
The camps are tenantless, the breastworks bare:
Earth keeps no stain where hero-blood was poured:
The hornets, humming on their wings of lead,
Have ceased to sting, their angry swarms are dead,
And, harmless in its scabbard, rusts the sword!
III
O, not till now,—O, now we dare, at last,To give our heroes fitting consecration!
Not till the soreness of the strife is past,
And Peace hath comforted the weary Nation!
So long her sad, indignant spirit held
One keen regret, one throb of pain, unquelled;
So long the land about her feet was waste,
The ashes of the burning lay upon her,
We stood beside their graves with brows abased,
Waiting the purer mood to do them honor!
They, through the flames of this dread holocaust,
The patriot's wrath, the soldier's ardor, lost:
They sit above us and above our passion,
Disparaged even by our human tears,—
Beholding truth our race, perchance, may fashion
In the slow process of the creeping years.
We saw the still reproof upon their faces;
We heard them whisper from the shining spaces:
“To-day ye grieve: come not to us with sorrow!
Wait for the glad, the reconciled To-morrow!
Your grief but clouds the ether where we dwell;
Your anger keeps your souls and ours apart:
But come with peace and pardon, all is well!
And come with love, we touch you, heart to heart!”
IV
Immortal Brothers, we have heard!Our lips declare the reconciling word:
For Battle taught, that set us face to face,
The stubborn temper of the race,
And both, from fields no longer alien, come,
To grander action equally invited,—
Marshalled by Learning's trump, by Labor's drum,
In strife that purifies and makes united!
We force to build, the powers that would destroy;
The muscles, hardened by the sabre's grasp,
Now give our hands a firmer clasp:
We bring not grief to you, but solemn joy!
And, feeling you so near,
Look forward with your eyes, divinely clear,
To some sublimely-perfect, sacred year,
When sons of fathers whom ye overcame
Forget in mutual pride the partial blame,
And join with us, to set the final crown
Upon your dear renown,—
The People's Union in heart and name!
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V
And yet, ye Dead!—and yetOur clouded natures cling to one regret:
We are not all resigned
To yield, with even mind,
Our scarcely-risen stars, that here untimely set.
We needs must think of History that waits
For lines that live but in their proud beginning,—
Arrested promises and cheated fates,—
Youth's boundless venture and its single winning!
We see the ghosts of deeds they might have done,
The phantom homes that beaconed their endeavor;
The seeds of countless lives, in them begun,
That might have multiplied for us forever!
We grudge the better strain of men
That proved itself, and was extinguished then—
The field, with strength and hope so thickly sown,
Wherefrom no other harvest shall be mown:
For all the land, within its clasping seas,
Is poorer now in bravery and beauty,
Such wealth of manly loves and energies
Was given to teach us all the freeman's sacred duty!
VI
Again 't is they, the Dead,By whom our hearts are comforted.
Deep as the land-blown murmurs of the waves
The answer cometh from a thousand graves:
“Not so! we are not orphaned of our fate!
Though life were warmest, and though love were sweetest,
We still have portion in their best estate:
Our fortune is the fairest and completest!
Our homes are everywhere: our loves are set
In hearts of man and woman, sweet and vernal:
Courage and Truth, the children we beget,
Unmixed of baser earth, shall be eternal.
A finer spirit in the blood shall give
The token of the lines wherein we live,—
Unselfish force, unconscious nobleness
That in the shocks of fortune stands unshaken,—
The hopes that in their very being bless,
The aspirations that to deeds awaken!
If aught of finer virtue ye allow
To us, that faith alone its like shall win you;
So, trust like ours shall ever lift the brow;
And strength like ours shall ever steel the sinew!
We are the blossoms which the storm has cast
From the Spring promise of our Freedom's tree,
Pruning its overgrowths, that so, at last,
Its later fruit more bountiful shall be!—
Content, if, when the balm of Time assuages
The branch's hurt, some fragrance of our lives
In all the land survives,
And makes their memory sweet through still expanding ages!”
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VII
Thus grandly, they we mourn, themselves console us;And, as their spirits conquer and control us,
We hear, from some high realm that lies beyond,
The hero-voices of the Past respond.
From every State that reached a broader right
Through fiery gates of battle; from the shock
Of old invasions on the People's rock;
From tribes that stood, in Kings' and Priests' despite;
From graves, forgotten in the Syrian sand,
Or nameless barrows of the Northern strand,
Or gorges of the Alps and Pyrenees,
Or the dark bowels of devouring seas,—
Wherever Man for Man's sake died,—wherever
Death stayed the march of upward-climbing feet,
Leaving their Present incomplete,
But through far Futures crowning their endeavor,—
Their ghostly voices to our ears are sent,
As when the high note of a trumpet wrings
Æolian answers from the strings
Of many a mute, unfingered instrument!
Platæan cymbals thrill for us to-day;
The horns of Sempach in our echoes play,
And nearer yet, and sharper, and more stern,
The slogan rings that startled Bannockburn;
Till from the field, made green with kindred deed,
The shields are clashed in exultation
Above the dauntless Nation,
That for a Continent has fought its Runnymede!
VIII
Aye, for a Continent! The heart that beatsWith such rich blood of sacrifice
Shall, from the Tropics, drowsed with languid heats,
To the blue ramparts of the Northern ice,
Make felt its pulses, all this young world over!—
Shall thrill, and shake, and sway
Each land that bourgeons in the Western day,
Whatever flag may float, whatever shield may cover!
With fuller manhood every wind is rife,
In every soil are sown the seeds of valor,
Since out of death came forth such boundless life,
Such ruddy beauty out of anguished pallor!
And that first deed, along the Southern wave,
Spoiled not the sister-land, but lent an arm to save!
IX
Now, in her seat secure,Where distant menaces no more can reach her,
Our land, in undivided freedom pure,
Becomes the unwilling world's unconscious teacher;
And, day by day, beneath serener skies,
The unshaken pillars of her palace rise,—
The Doric shafts, that lightly upward press,
And hide in grace their giant massiveness.
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And precious blood cements the deep foundation!
Never by other force have empires grown;
From other basis never rose a nation!
For strength is born of struggle, faith of doubt,
Of discord law, and freedom of oppression:
We hail from Pisgah, with exulting shout,
The Promised Land below us, bright with sun,
And deem its pastures won,
Ere toil and blood have earned us their possession!
Each aspiration of our human earth
Becomes an act through keenest pangs of birth;
Each force, to bless, must cease to be a dream,
And conquer life through agony supreme;
Each inborn right must outwardly be tested
By stern material weapons, ere it stand
In the enduring fabric of the land,
Secured for these who yielded it, and those who wrested!
X
This they have done for us who slumber here,—Awake, alive, though now so dumbly sleeping;
Spreading the board, but tasting not its cheer,
Sowing, but never reaping;—
Building, but never sitting in the shade
Of the strong mansion they have made;—
Speaking their word of life with mighty tongue,
But hearing not the echo, million-voiced,
Of brothers who rejoiced,
From all our river vales and mountains flung!
So take them, Heroes of the songful Past!
Open your ranks, let every shining troop
Its phantom banners droop,
To hail Earth's noblest martyrs, and her last!
Take them, O Fatherland!
Who, dying, conquered in thy name;
And, with a grateful hand,
Inscribe their deed who took away thy blame,—
Give, for their grandest all, thine insufficient fame!
Take them, O God! our Brave,
The glad fulfillers of Thy dread decree;
Who grasped the sword for Peace, and smote to save,
And, dying here for Freedom, also died for Thee!
SHAKESPEARE'S STATUE
CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK, MAY 23, 1872
I
In this free Pantheon of the air and sun,Where stubborn granite grudgingly gives place
To petted turf, the garden's daintier race
Of flowers, and Art hath slowly won
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What alien Form doth stand?
Where scarcely yet the heroes of the land,
As in their future's haven, from the stress
Of all conflicting tides, find quiet deep
Of bronze or marble sleep,
What stranger comes, to join the scanty band?
Who pauses here, as one that muses
While centuries of men go by,
And unto all our questioning refuses
His clear, infallible reply?
Who hath his will of us, beneath our new-world sky?
II
Here, in his right, he stands!No breadth of earth-dividing seas can bar
The breeze of morning, or the morning star,
From visiting our lands:
His wit, the breeze, his wisdom, as the star,
Shone where our earliest life was set, and blew
To freshen hope and plan
In brains American,—
To urge, resist, encourage, and subdue!
He came, a household ghost we could not ban:
He sat, on winter nights, by cabin fires;
His summer fairies linked their hands
Along our yellow sands;
He preached within the shadow of our spires;
And when the certain Fate drew nigh, to cleave
The birth-cord, and a separate being leave,
He, in our ranks of patient-hearted men,
Wrought with the boundless forces of his fame,
Victorious, and became
The Master of our thought, the land's first Citizen!
III
If, here, his image seemOf softer scenes and grayer skies to dream,
Thatched cot and rustic tavern, ivied hall,
The cuckoo's April call
And cowslip-meads beside the Avon stream,
He shall not fail that other home to find
We could not leave behind!
The forms of Passion, which his fancy drew,
In us their ancient likenesses beget:
So, from our lives forever born anew,
He stands amid his own creations yet!
Here comes lean Cassius, of conventions tired;
Here, in his coach, luxurious Antony
Beside his Egypt, still of men admired;
And Brutus plans some purer liberty!
A thousand Shylocks, Jew and Christian, pass;
A hundred Hamlets, by their times betrayed;
And sweet Anne Page comes tripping o'er the grass,
And antlered Falstaff pants beneath the shade.
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The locks of Rosalind;
Here some gay gloved the damnèd spot conceals
Which Lady Macbeth feels:
His ease here smiling smooth Iago takes,
And outcast Lear gives passage to his woe,
And here some foiled Reformer sadly breaks
His wand of Prospero!
In liveried splendor, side by side,
Nick Bottom and Titania ride;
And Portia, flushed with cheers of men,
Disdains dear, faithful Imogen;
And Puck, beside the form of Morse,
Stops on his forty-minute course;
And Ariel from his swinging bough
A blossom casts on Bryant's brow,
Until, as summoned from his brooding brain,
He sees his children all again,
In us, as on our lips, each fresh, immortal strain!
IV
Be welcome, Master! In our active airKeep the calm strength we need to learn of thee!
A steadfast anchor be
'Mid passions that exhaust, and times that wear!
Thy kindred race, that scarcely knows
What power is in Repose,
What permanence in Patience, what renown
In silent faith and plodding toil of Art
That shyly works apart,
All these in thee unconsciously doth crown!
V
The Many grow, through honor to the One;And what of loftier life we do not live,
This Form shall help to give,
In our free Pantheon of the air and sun!
Here, where the noise of Trade is loudest,
It builds a shrine august,
To show, while pomp of wealth is proudest,
How brief is gilded dust:
How Art succeeds, though long,
And o'er the tumult of the generations,
The strong, enduring spirit of the nations,
How speaks the voice of Song!
Our City, at her gateways of the sea,
Twines bay around the mural crown upon her,
And wins new grace and dearer dignity,
Giving our race's Poet honor!
If such as he
Again may ever be,
And our humanity another crown
Find in some equal, late renown,
The reverence of what he was shall call it down!
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GOETHE
NEW YORK, AUGUST 28, 1875
I
Whose voice shall so invade the spheresThat, ere it die, the Master hears?
Whose arm is now so strong
To fling the votive garland of a song,
That some fresh odor of a world he knew
With large enjoyment, and may yet
Not utterly forget,
Shall reach his place, and whisper whence it grew?
Dare we invoke him, that he pause
On trails divine of unimagined laws,
And bend the luminous eyes
Experience could not dim, nor Fate surprise,
On these late honors, where we fondly seem,
Him thus exalting, like him to aspire,
And reach, in our desire,
The triumph of his toil, the beauty of his dream!
II
God moulds no second poet from the clayTime once hath cut in marble: when, at last,
The veil is plucked away,
We see no face familiar to the Past.
New mixtures of the elements,
And fresh espousals of the soul and sense,
At first disguise
The unconjectured Genius to our eyes,
Till self-nursed faith and self-encouraged power
Win the despotic hour
That bids our doubting race accept and recognize!
III
Ah, who shall say what cloud of disregard,Cast by the savage ancient fame
Of some forgotten name,
Mantled the Chian bard?
He walked beside the strong, prophetic sea,
Indifferent as itself, and nobly free;
While roll of waves and rhythmic sound of oars
Along Ionian shores,
To Troy's high story chimed in undertone,
And gave his song the accent of their own!
What classic ghost severe was summoned up
To threaten Dante, when the bitter bread
Of exile on his board was spread,
The bitter wine of bounty filled his cup?
We need not ask: the unpropitious years,
The hate of Guelf, the lordly sneers
Of Della Scala's court, the Roman ban,
Were but as eddying dust
To his firm-centred trust;
For through that air without a star
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That kept him his and ours, the stern, immortal man!
What courtier, stuffed with smooth, accepted lore
Of Song's patrician line,
But shrugged his velvet shoulders all the more,
And heard, with bland, indulgent face,
As who bestows a grace,
The homely phrase that Shakespeare made divine?
So, now, the dainty souls that crave
Light stepping-stones across a shallow wave,
Shrink from the deeps of Goethe's soundless song!
So, now, the weak, imperfect fire
That knows but half of passion and desire
Betrays itself, to do the Master wrong;—
Turns, dazzled by his white, uncolored glow,
And deems his sevenfold heat the wintry flash of snow!
IV
Fate, like a grudging child,Herself once reconciled
To power by loss, by suffering to fame;
Weighing the Poet's name
With blindness, exile, want, and aims denied;
Or let faint spirits perish in their pride;
Or gave her justice when its need had died;
But as if weary she
Of struggle crowned by victory,
Him with the largesse of her gifts she tried!
Proud beauty to the boy she gave:
A lip that bubbled song, yet lured the bee;
An eye of light, a forehead pure and free;
Strength as of streams, and grace as of the wave!
Round him the morning air
Of life she charmed, and made his pathway fair;
Lent Love her lightest chain,
That laid no bondage on the haughty brain,
And cheapened honors with a new disdain:
Kept, through the shocks of Time;
For him the haven of a peace sublime,
And let his sight forerun
The sown achievement, to the harvest won!
V
But Fortune's darling stood unspoiled:Caressing Love and Pleasure,
He let not go the imperishable treasure:
He thought, and sported; carolled free, and toiled:
He stretched wide arms to clasp the joy of Earth,
But delved in every field
Of knowledge, conquering all clear worth
Of action, that ennobles through the sense
Of wholly used intelligence:
From loftiest pinnacles, that shone revealed
In pure poetic ether, he could bend
To win the little store
Of humblest Labor's lore,
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He taught, and governed,—knew the thankless days
Of service and dispraise;
He followed Science on her stony ways;
He turned from princely state to heed
The single nature's need,
And, through the chill of hostile years,
Never unlearned the noble shame of tears!
Faced by fulfilled Ideals, he aspired
To win the perished secret of their grace,—
To dower the earnest children of a race
Toil never tamed, nor acquisition tired,
With Freedom born of Beauty!—and for them
His Titan soul combined
The passions of the mind,
Which blood and time so long had held apart,
Till the white blossom of the Grecian Art
The world saw shine once more, upon a Gothic stem!
VI
His measure would we mete?It is a sea that murmurs at our feet.
Wait, first, upon the strand:
A far shore glimmers—“knowest thou the land?”
Whence these gay flowers that breathe beside the water?
Ask thou the Erl-King's daughter!
It is no cloud that darkens thus the shore:
Faust on his mantle passes o'er.
The water roars, the water heaves,
The trembling waves divide:
A shape of beauty, rising, cleaves
The green translucent tide.
The shape is a charm, the voice is a spell;
We yield, and dip in the gentle swell.
Then billowy arms our limbs entwine,
And, chill as the hidden heat of wine,
We meet the shock of the sturdy brine;
And we feel, beneath the surface-flow,
The tug of the powerful undertow,
That ceaselessly gathers and sweeps
To broader surges and darker deeps;
Till, faint and breathless, we can but float
Idly, and listen to many a note
From horns of the Tritons flung afar;
And see, on the watery rim,
The circling Dorides swim,
And Cypris, poised on her dove-drawn car!
Torn from the deepest caves,
Sea-blooms brighten the waves
The breaker throws pearls on the sand,
And inlets pierce to the heart of the land,
Winding by dorf and mill,
Where the shores are green and the waters still,
And the force, but now so wild,
Mirrors the maiden and sports with the child!
Spent from the sea, we gain its brink,
With soul aroused and limbs aflame:
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But rise no more the same.
VII
O meadows threaded by the silver Main!O Saxon hills of pine,
Witch-haunted Hartz, and thou,
Deep vale of Ilmenau!
Ye knew your poet; and not only ye:
The purple Tyrrhene Sea
Not murmurs Virgil less, but him the more;
The Lar of haughty Rome
Gave the high guest a home:
He dwells with Tasso on Sorrento's shore!
The dewy wild-rose of his German lays,
Beside the classic cyclamen,
In many a Sabine glen,
Sweetens the calm Italian days.
But pass the hoary ridge of Lebanon,
To where the sacred sun
Beams on Schiràz; and lo! before the gates,
Goethe, the heir of Hafiz, waits.
Know ye the turbaned brow, the Persian guise,
The bearded lips, the deep yet laughing eyes?
A cadence strange and strong
Fills each voluptuous song,
And kindles energy from old repose;
Even as first, amid the throes
Of the unquiet West,
He breathed repose to heal the old unrest!
VIII
Dear is the Minstrel, yet the Man is more;But should I turn the pages of his brain,
The lighter muscle of my verse would strain
And break beneath his lore.
How charge with music powers so vast and free,
Save one be great as he?
Behold him, as ye jostle with the throng
Through narrow ways, that do your beings wrong,
Self-chosen lanes, wherein ye press
In louder Storm and Stress,
Passing the lesser bounty by
Because the greater seems too high,
And that sublimest joy forego,
To seek, aspire, and know!
Behold in him, since our strong line began,
The first full-statured man!
Dear is the Minstrel, even to hearts of prose;
But he who sets all aspiration free
Is dearer to humanity.
Still through our age the shadowy Leader goes;
Still whispers cheer, or waves his warning sign;
The man who, most of men,
Heeded the parable from lips divine,
And made one talent ten!
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THE NATIONAL ODE
INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4, 1876
I.—1.
Sun of the stately DayLet Asia into the shadow drift,
Let Europe bask in thy ripened ray,
And over the severing ocean lift
A brow of broader splendor!
Give light to the eager eyes
Of the Land that waits to behold thee rise;
The gladness of morning lend her,
With the triumph of noon attend her,
And the peace of the vesper skies!
For, lo! she cometh now
With hope on the lip and pride on the brow,
Stronger, and dearer, and fairer,
To smile on the love we bear her,—
To live, as we dreamed her and sought her,
Liberty's latest daughter!
In the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places,
We found her traces;
On the hills, in the crash of woods that fall,
We heard her call;
When the lines of battle broke,
We saw her face in the fiery smoke;
Through toil, and anguish, and desolation,
We followed, and found her
With the grace of a virgin Nation
As a sacred zone around her!
Who shall rejoice
With a righteous voice,
Far-heard through the ages, if not she?
For the menace is dumb that defied her,
The doubt is dead that denied her,
And she stands acknowledged, and strong, and free!
II.—1.
Ah, hark! the solemn undertone,On every wind of human story blown.
A large, divinely-moulded Fate
Questions the right and purpose of a State,
And in its plan sublime
Our eras are the dust of Time.
The far-off Yesterday of power
Creeps back with stealthy feet,
Invades the lordship of the hour,
And at our banquet takes the unbidden seat.
From all unchronicled and silent ages
Before the Future first begot the Past,
Till History dared, at last,
To write eternal words on granite pages;
From Egypt's tawny drift, and Assur's mound,
And where, uplifted white and far,
Earth highest yearns to meet a star,
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Imperial heads, of old millennial sway,
And still by some pale splendor crowned,
Chill as a corpse-light in our full-orbed day,
In ghostly grandeur rise
And say, through stony lips and vacant eyes:
“Thou that assertest freedom, power, and fame,
Declare to us thy claim!”
I.—2.
On the shores of a Continent cast,She won the inviolate soil
By loss of heirdom of all the Past,
And faith in the royal right of Toil!
She planted homes on the savage sod:
Into the wilderness lone
She walked with fearless feet,
In her hand the divining-rod,
Till the veins of the mountains beat
With fire of metal and force of stone!
She set the speed of the river-head
To turn the mills of her bread;
She drove her ploughshare deep
Through the prairie's thousand-centuried sleep,
To the South, and West, and North,
She called Pathfinder forth,
Her faithful and sole companion
Where the flushed Sierra, snow-starred,
Her way to the sunset barred,
And the nameless rivers in thunder and foam
Channelled the terrible canyon!
Nor paused, till her uttermost home
Was built, in the smile of a softer sky
And the glory of beauty still to be,
Where the haunted waves of Asia die
On the strand of the world-wide sea!
II.—2.
The race, in conquering,Some fierce, Titanic joy of conquest knows;
Whether in veins of serf or king,
Our ancient blood beats restless in repose.
Challenge of Nature unsubdued
Awaits not Man's defiant answer long;
For hardship, even as wrong,
Provokes the level- eyed heroic mood.
This for herself she did; but that which lies,
As over earth the skies,
Blending all forms in one benignant glow,—
Crowned conscience, tender care,
Justice that answers every bondman's prayer,
Freedom where Faith may lead and Thought may dare,
The power of minds that know,
Passion of hearts that feel,
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Guarded by fire and steel,—
Hath she secured? What blazon on her shield,
In the clear Century's light
Shines to the world revealed,
Declaring nobler triumph, born of Right?
I.—3.
Foreseen in the vision of sages,Foretold when martyrs bled,
She was born of the longing of ages,
By the truth of the noble dead
And the faith of the living fed!
No blood in her lightest veins
Frets at remembered chains,
Nor shame of bondage has bowed her head.
In her form and features still
The unblenching Puritan will,
Cavalier honor, Huguenot grace,
The Quaker truth and sweetness,
And the strength of the danger-girdled race
Of Holland, blend in a proud completeness.
From the homes of all, where her being began,
She took what she gave to Man;
Justice, that knew no station,
Belief, as soul decreed,
Free air for aspiration,
Free force for independent deed!
She takes, but to give again,
As the sea returns the rivers in rain;
And gathers the chosen of her seed
From the hunted of every crown and creed.
Her Germany dwells by a gentler Rhine;
Her Ireland sees the old sunburst shine;
Her France pursues some dream divine;
Her Norway keeps his mountain pine;
Her Italy waits by the western brine;
And, broad-based under all,
Is planted England's oaken-hearted mood,
As rich in fortitude
As e'er went worldward from the island-wall!
Fused in her candid light,
To one strong race all races here unite:
Tongues melt in hers, hereditary foemen
Forget their sword and slogan, kith and clan:
'T was glory, once, to be a Roman:
She makes it glory, now, to be a man!
II.—3.
Bow down!Doff thine æonian crown!
One hour forget
The glory, and recall the debt:
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Of humbler mood,
For the pride of thine exultation
O'er peril conquered and strife subdued!
But half the right is wrested
When victory yields her prize.
And half the marrow tested
When old endurance dies.
In the sight of them that love thee,
Bow to the Greater above thee!
He faileth not to smite
The idle ownership of Right,
Nor spares to sinews fresh from trial,
And virtue schooled in long denial,
The tests that wait for thee
In larger perils of prosperity.
Here, at the Century's awful shrine,
Bow to thy Father's God, and thine!
I.—4.
Behold! she bendeth now,Humbling the chaplet of her hundred years:
There is a solemn sweetness on her brow,
And in her eyes are sacred tears.
Can she forget,
In present joy, the burden of her debt,
When for a captive race
She grandly staked, and won,
The total promise of her power begun,
And bared her bosom's grace
To the sharp wound that inly tortures yet?
Can she forget
The million graves her young devotion set,
The hands that clasp above,
From either side, in sad, returning love?
Can she forget,
Here, where the Ruler of to-day,
The Citizen of to-morrow,
And equal thousands to rejoice and pray
Beside these holy walls are met,
Her birth-cry, mixed of keenest bliss and sorrow?
Where, on July's immortal morn
Held forth, the People saw her head
And shouted to the world: “The King is dead,
But, lo! the Heir is born!”
When fire of Youth, and sober trust of Age,
In Farmer, Soldier, Priest, and Sage,
Arose and cast upon her
Baptismal garments,—never robes so fair
Clad prince in Old-World air,—
Their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor!
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II.—4.
Arise! Recrown thy head,Radiant with blessing of the Dead!
Bear from this hallowed place
The prayer that purifies thy lips,
The light of courage that defies eclipse,
The rose of Man's new morning on thy face!
Let no iconoclast
Invade thy rising Pantheon of the Past,
To make a blank where Adams stood,
To touch the Father's sheathed and sacred blade,
Spoil crowns on Jefferson and Franklin laid,
Or wash from Freedom's feet the stain of Lincoln's blood!
Hearken, as from that haunted Hall
Their voices call:
“We lived and died for thee;
We greatly dared that thou might'st be:
So, from thy children still
We claim denials which at last fulfil,
And freedom yielded to preserve thee free!
Beside clear-hearted Right
That smiles at Power's uplifted rod,
Plant Duties that requite,
And Order that sustains, upon thy sod,
And stand in stainless might
Above all self, and only less than God!
III.—1.
Here may thy solemn challenge end,All-proving Past, and each discordance die
Of doubtful augury,
Or in one choral with the Present blend,
And that half-heard, sweet harmony
Of something nobler that our sons may see!
Though poignant memories burn
Of days that were, and may again return,
When thy fleet foot, O Huntress of the Woods,
The slippery brinks of danger knew,
And dim the eyesight grew
That was so sure in thine old solitudes,—
Yet stays some richer sense
Won from the mixture of thine elements,
To guide the vagrant scheme,
And winnow truth from each conflicting dream!
Yet in thy blood shall live
Some force unspent, some essence primitive,
To seize the highest use of things;
For Fate, to mould thee to her plan,
Denied thee food of kings,
Withheld the udder and the orchard-fruits,
Fed thee with savage roots,
And forced thy harsher milk from barren breasts of man!
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III.—2.
O sacred Woman-Form,Of the first People's need and passion wrought,—
No thin, pale ghost of Thought,
But fair as Morning and as heart's-blood warm,—
Wearing thy priestly tiar on Judah's hills;
Clear-eyed beneath Athene's helm of gold;
Or from Rome's central seat
Hearing the pulses of the Continents beat
In thunder where her legions rolled;
Compact of high heroic hearts and wills,
Whose being circles all
The selfless aims of men, and all fulfils;
Thyself not free, so long as one is thrall;
Goddess, that as a Nation lives,
And as a Nation dies,
That for her children as a man defies,
And to her children as a mother gives,—
Take our fresh fealty now!
No more a Chieftainess, with wampum-zone
And feather-cinctured brow,—
No more a new Britannia, grown
To spread an equal banner to the breeze,
And lift thy trident o'er the double seas;
But with unborrowed crest,
In thine own native beauty dressed,—
The front of pure command, the unflinching eye, thine own!
III.—3.
Look up, look forth, and on!There 's light in the dawning sky:
The clouds are parting, the night is gone:
Prepare for the work of the day!
Fallow thy pastures lie,
And far thy shepherds stray,
And the fields of thy vast domain
Are waiting for purer seed
Of knowledge, desire, and deed,
For keener sunshine and mellower rain!
But keep thy garments pure:
Pluck them back, with the old disdain,
From touch of the hands that stain!
So shall thy strength endure.
Transmute into good the gold of Gain,
Compel to beauty thy ruder powers,
Till the bounty of coming hours
Shall plant, on thy fields apart,
With the oak of Toil, the rose of Art!
Be watchful, and keep us so:
Be strong, and fear no foe:
Be just, and the world shall know!
With the same love love us, as we give;
And the day shall never come,
That finds us weak or dumb
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In the great task, for thee to die,
And the greater task, for thee to live!
THE OBSEQUIES IN ROME
JANUARY 17, 1878
I
Victor Emanuel!—of prophetic name,Who, crowned in sore defeat,
Caught out of blood, disaster, and retreat,
With wounded hands, a soldier's simple fame,—
Content, had that been all,
And most content, victoriously to fall:—
Life saved thee for a people's holiest aim,
And leaves thee Victor, in thy pall!
“God WITH US” may that people say,
Who walk behind thy conquering dust, to-day:
Yea, all thine Italy
Made one, at last, and proudly free,
Blesses thy sire's baptismal prophecy!
II
Since, over-coarse to be the Empire's lord,Herulian Odoàker fell
Among spilled goblets, by the Gothic sword,
In old Ravenna's palace citadel;
And, after him, Theodoric strove
To own the land he could not choose but love;—
And both, from no deficiency of power,
But failing heart and brain
That might revivify the beauty slain.
Builded barbaric thrones for one brief hour;—
Since, in a glorious vision cast
By some narcotic opiate of the Past,
Rienzi sought to be
Brutus in deed, Cæsar in victory,—
The Italy, that once was Rome,
Dismembered, sighed for her deliverance,
Saw her Republics die,
Leaned vainly on the broken reed of France,
Till, when despair seemed nigh,
She knew herself, and, starting from her trance,
Summoned the Victor, who hath led her home!
III
He knew his people, and his soul was strongTo wait till they knew him:
The hand that holds a sceptre dare not shake
From the quick blood that burns at every wrong.
With Europe watchful, cold and grim
Behind him, and the triple-hooded snake
Coiled in his path, he went
Through changing gusts of doubt and discontent,
Till all he could have dreamed of, came to him!
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Since Death's pure coronet is on his brow,
Italian eyes are dim!
Now to her ancient glories sovereign Rome
Adds one more glory: sorrow falls
O'er all the circuit of the Aurelian walls,—
Even from Montorio on Saint Peter's dome:
And where on warm Pamfili-Dorian meads
Fresh dew the daisy feeds;
And breathes in every tall Borghese pine,
And moans on Aventine;
And—could the voice of all desire awake
That once was loud for Italy's dear sake,—
A hymn would burst from each dumb burial-stone
Beside the Cestian pyramid,
Where Keats's, Shelley's dust is hid,
In dithyrambic triumph o'er his own!
IV
Who walk behind his bier?Behold the solemn phantoms!—who are they,
The stern precursors that arise, to-day,
Breathing of many a fiery year
And clad in drapery of a darker time?
These are the dead who saw,
Too soon, the world's diviner law,—
Too early dreamed their people's dream sublime!
He follows them, who lived to make that dream
A principle supreme,
Dome-browed Mazzini,—he, who planted sure
Its corner-stone, Cavour!
Then, first among the living, that gray chief
Who wears, at last, his Roman laurel's leaf,
To conquer which he rent and shattered down
His rich Sicilian crown.
Ah, bend thee, Garibaldi!—be not loth
To trust the son of him thou gav'st a land,
Or kiss the stainless hand
Of her whose name is pearl and daisy both!
Such love, to-day, thy people give
To him who died, such trust to them who live.
V
Cunning nor Force shall overthrowThe State whose fabric has been builded so.
Under the Pantheon's dome,
The undying Victor still shall reign
O'er one free land that dare not feel a chain,—
Whose mighty heart is Rome!
Still, from the ramparts of the Rhætian snow,
Far down the realms of corn and wine,
Back-boned by Apennine,
To capes that breast the warm Calabrian Sea,
A single race shall know
One love, one right, one loyalty:—
Still from his ashes Italy shall grow,
Who made her Italy!
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EPICEDIUM
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
I
Say, who shall mourn him first,Who sang in days for Song so evil-starred,
Shielding from adverse winds the flame he nursed,—
Our Country's earliest Bard?
For all he sang survives
In stream, and tree, and bird, and mountain-crest,
And consecration of uplifted lives
To Duty's stern behest;
Till, like an echo falling late and far
As unto Earth the answer from a star,
Along his thought's so nigh unnoted track
Our people's heart o'ertakes
His pure design, and hears him, and awakes
To breathe its music back!
Approach, sad Forms, now fitly to employ
The grave, sweet stops of all melodious sound,
Yet undertoned with joy;
For him ye lose, at last is truly found.
II
Scarce darkened by the shadow of these hours,The Manitou of Flowers,
Crowned with the Painted-cup, that shakes
Its gleam of war-paint on his dusky cheek,
Goes by, but cannot speak;
Yet tear or dew-drop 'neath his coronal breaks,
And in his drooping hand
The azure eyelids of the gentian die
That loves the yellow autumn land
The wind-flower, golden-rod,
With phlox and orchis, nod;
And every blossom frail and shy
No careless loiterer sees,
But poet, sun and breeze,
And the bright countenance of our western sky.
They know who loved them; they, if all
Forgot to dress his pall,
Or strew his couch of long repose,
Would from the prairies and the central snows
The sighing west-wind call,
Their withered petals, even as tears, to bear,
And, like a Niobe of air,
Upon his sea-side grave to let them fall!
III
Next you, ye many Streams,That make a music through his cold green land!
Whether ye scour the granite slides
In broken spray-light or in sheeted gleams,
Or in dark basins stand,
Your bard's fond spirit in your own abides.
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Whose joy is in your wild and wanton flow,—
Chill, beautiful Undines
That flash white hands behind your thicket-screens,
And charm the wildwood and the cloven flumes
To hide you in their glooms!
But he hath kissed you, and his lips betray
Your coyest secrets; now, no more
Your bickering, winking tides shall stray
Through August's idle day,
Or showered with leaves from brown November's floor,
Untamed, and rich in mystery
As ye were wont to be!
From where the dells of Greylock feed
Your thin, young life, to where the Sangamon
Breaks with his winding green the Western mead,
Delay to hasten on!
Ask not the clouds and hills
To swell the veins of your obedient rills,
And brim your banks with turbid overflow;
But calmly, soothly go,
Soft as a sigh and limpid as a tear,
So that ye seem to borrow
The voice and the visage of sorrow,
For he gave you glory and made you dear!
IV
Strong Winds and mighty Mountains, sovereign Sea,What shall your dirges be?
The slow, great billow, far down the shore,
Booms in its breaking: “Dare—and despair!”
The fetterless winds, as they gather and roar,
Are evermore crying: “Where, oh where?”
The mountain summits, with ages hoar,
Say: “Near and austere, but far and fair!”
Shall ye in your sorrow droop,
Who are strong and sad, and who cannot stoop?
Two may sing to him where he lies,
But the third is hidden behind the skies.
Ye cannot take what he stole,
And made his own in his inmost soul!
The pulse of the endless Wave
Beauty and breadth to his strophes gave;
The Winds with their hands unseen
Held him poised at a height serene;
And the world that wooed him, he smiled to o'ercome it;
Whose being the Mountains made so strong,—
Whose forehead arose like a sunlighted summit
Over eyes that were fountains of thought and song!
V
And last, ye Forms, with shrouded faceHiding the features of your woe,
That on the fresh sod of his burial-place
Your myrtle, oak, and laurel throw,—
Who are ye?—whence your silent sorrow?
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Shall we, who knew him, borrow
Your unknown speech for Grief's august desire?
Lo! one, with lifted brow
Says: “Nay, he knew and loved me: I am Spain!”
Another: “I am Germany,
Drawn sadly nearer now
By songs of his and mine that make one strain,
Though parted by the world-dividing sea!”
And from the hills of Greece there blew
A wind that shook the olives of Peru,
Till all the world that knew,
Or, knowing not, shall yet awake to know
The sweet humanity that fused his song,—
The haughty challenge unto Wrong,
And for the trampled Truth his fearless blow,—
Acknowledge his exalted mood
Of faith achieved in song-born solitude,
And give him high acclaim
With those who followed Good, and found it Fame!
VI
Ah, no!—why should we mournThe noble life, that wore its crown of years?
Why drop these tender, unavailing tears
Upon a fate of no fulfilment shorn?
He was too proud to seek
That which should come unasked; and came,
Kindling and brightening as a wind-blown flame
When he had waited long,
And life—but never art—was weak,
But youthful will and sympathy were strong
In white-browed eye and hoary-bearded cheek;
Until, when called at last
That later life to celebrate,
Wherein, dear Italy, for thine estate,
The glorious Present joined the glorious Past,
He fell, and ceased to be!
We could not yield him grandlier than thus,
When, for thy hero speaking, he
Spake equally for us!—
His last word, as his first, was Liberty!
His last word, as his first, for Truth
Struck to the heart of age and youth:
He sought her everywhere,
In the loud city, forest, sea, and air:
He bowed to wisdom other than his own,
To wisdom and to law,
Concealed or dimly shown
In all he knew not, all he knew and saw,
Trusting the Present, tolerant of the Past,
Firm-faithed in what shall come
When the vain noises of these days are dumb;
And his first word was noble as his last!
Berlin, September, 1878.
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