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163
VARIOUS POEMS.
164
MY MISSION.
Every spirit has its mission, say the transcendental crew:
“This is mine,” they cry; “Eureka! this the purpose I pursue;
For, behold, a god hath called me, and his service I shall do!
“This is mine,” they cry; “Eureka! this the purpose I pursue;
For, behold, a god hath called me, and his service I shall do!
“Brother, seek thy calling likewise, thou wert destined for the same;
Sloth is sin, and toil is worship, and the soul demands an aim:
Who neglects the ordination, he shall not escape the blame.”
Sloth is sin, and toil is worship, and the soul demands an aim:
Who neglects the ordination, he shall not escape the blame.”
O my ears are dinned and wearied with the clatter of the school:
Life to them is geometric, and they act by line and rule—
If there be no other wisdom, better far to be a fool!
Life to them is geometric, and they act by line and rule—
If there be no other wisdom, better far to be a fool!
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Better far the honest nature, in its narrow path content,
Taking, with a child's acceptance, whatsoever may be sent,
Than the introverted vision, seeing Self pre-eminent.
Taking, with a child's acceptance, whatsoever may be sent,
Than the introverted vision, seeing Self pre-eminent.
For the spirit's proper freedom by itself may be destroyed,
Wasting, like the young Narcissus, o'er its image in the void:
Even virtue is not virtue, when too consciously enjoyed.
Wasting, like the young Narcissus, o'er its image in the void:
Even virtue is not virtue, when too consciously enjoyed.
I am sick of canting prophets, self-elected kings that reign
Over herds of silly subjects, of their new allegiance vain:
Preaching labor, preaching duty, preaching love with lips profane.
Over herds of silly subjects, of their new allegiance vain:
Preaching labor, preaching duty, preaching love with lips profane.
With the holiest things they tamper, and the noblest they degrade,—
Making Life an institution, making Destiny a trade;
But the honest vice is better than the saintship they parade.
Making Life an institution, making Destiny a trade;
But the honest vice is better than the saintship they parade.
Native goodness is unconscious, asks not to be recognized;
But its baser affectation is a thing to be despised.
Only when the man is loyal to himself shall he be prized.
But its baser affectation is a thing to be despised.
Only when the man is loyal to himself shall he be prized.
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Take the current of your nature, make it stagnant if you will:
Dam it up to drudge forever, at the service of your mill:
Mine the rapture and the freedom of the torrent on the hill!
Dam it up to drudge forever, at the service of your mill:
Mine the rapture and the freedom of the torrent on the hill!
Straighten out your wavy borders: make a tow-path at the side:
Be the dull canal your channel, where the heavy barges glide,—
Lo, the muddy bed is tranquil, not a rapid breaks the tide!
Be the dull canal your channel, where the heavy barges glide,—
Lo, the muddy bed is tranquil, not a rapid breaks the tide!
I shall wander o'er the meadows where the fairest blossoms call:
Though the ledges seize and fling me headlong from the rocky wall,
I shall leave a rainbow hanging o'er the ruins of my fall!
Though the ledges seize and fling me headlong from the rocky wall,
I shall leave a rainbow hanging o'er the ruins of my fall!
I shall lead a glad existence, as I broaden down the vales,
Brimming past the regal cities, whitened with the seaward sails—
Feel the mighty pulse of ocean ere I mingle with its gales!
Brimming past the regal cities, whitened with the seaward sails—
Feel the mighty pulse of ocean ere I mingle with its gales!
Vex me not with weary questions: seek no moral to deduce:
With the Present I am busy, with the Future hold a truce:
If I live the life He gave me, God will turn it to His use.
With the Present I am busy, with the Future hold a truce:
If I live the life He gave me, God will turn it to His use.
168
RENUNCIATION.
I.
Words are but headstones o'er the grave of thought.When some gigantic passion grasps the heart
Until its powers, to utmost tension brought,
Tug at the roots of life, no speech may start
The spell of silence. Deepest moods are dumb,
Nor song, nor picture, nor the spells of sound
Fathom their dark profound,
The secret of their language overcome.
But farthest, subtlest, most elusive still
Are those dim shapes that haunt the Poet's brain,
Beyond all wish, or any grasp of will,
That come unsought—and, sought, retreat again:
The independent fantasies that fall
As meteors fall in clear November nights,
Sometimes a showery burst of wayward lights,
Or singly trailing gold celestial,
Or in auroral blushes fused afar,
Drowning the steady torch of every star!
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II.
There was a time when, like a child, I dreamedThe gold lay hidden where the meteor fell:
When some divine interpretation seemed
Unto the speech of Poets possible:
When Nature's face a mask of brightness wore,
Beyond the brightness of the moon or sun:
The hills I knew, their skyey temples bore;
I heard the streams to other music run.
I saw a fairer morn within the morn,
And would have painted it for other eyes;
I heard the harmonies of twilight skies,
The rippling idylls of the harvest corn.
The gray old mountains many a rainbow spanned,
And trumpets clamored on the ocean-sand:
The summer valleys sang a minor strain,
Dying away in far, aerial blue,
Until, divinely saddened through and through,
I tried their song to echo, but in vain!
Why speak of that for which there is no speech?
Why sing of light to those who cannot see?
All that the Poet's noblest song may reach
Is the regret for what unsung must be.
170
III.
I gave to Nature more than she gave back:The dreams that, vanished once, return no more;
Passion that left her colder than before,
And the warm soul her stubborn features lack.
It was an echo of my heart I heard
Sing in the sky, and chant along the sea:
My life the affluence of her own conferred,
And gave her seeming sympathy with me.
O stars! whose light was dimmed with tears of mine!
O sun, that smiled with more than May-day joy!
Ye do not sit upon your thrones divine
To feed the tender fancies of a boy.
Ye see the stern eyes weep, the strong heart break,
The courage conquered by a fate unkind,
In your own brightness blind,
Unmoved, unchanged for any creature's sake.
The voices which encouraged me, are dumb;
The Soul I recognized in Earth is fled;
I wait for answers which have ceased to come:
I press the pulse of Nature: she is dead.
The early reverence I gave her fails,
To know her apathy for human ills;
I only see the bleak, unpitying hills,
The drear, indifferent vales,
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The stolid sky in cold serenity,—
Cold as the ceilings are of palace-halls,
Above their painted walls,
To some hot life, that beats in passion there,
Barred in alone, with eyes all wet and blind,
Which in the splendid frescoes only find
The staring mockery of their own despair!
IV.
Earth is our palace, and her zoned arrayOf forms and colors its adornments are:
She gives the soul its garments of display;
She draws the wheels of its triumphal car.
But does the victor kiss the threshold-stone,
Or clasp the heartless pillar at his door?
And does the bush whereon his bays have grown,
Shine with a glossier emerald than before?
No—no! His sun is risen in kindred eyes;
His morn, the brighter flush of friendly cheeks:
The music of his day of triumph speaks
In human voices, and the sullen skies,
When, palm to palm, beloved pulses kiss,
Beam with the splendid sunshine of his bliss!
172
The vanquished gives her his defeat and shame:
Her chimes, to different fates, at once proclaim
The bridal pæan and the burial hymn!
V.
O, not to know, the sunny mist that gildsThe mountain tops, my breath had thither blown!
O, not to feel that loftiest Beauty builds
In Man her temple, and in Man alone!
Henceforward I renounce the vain pursuit
To find without the secret hid within,—
To chase a phantom thin,
Masked in our own divinest attribute,
While rosy life, the beating Heart of God,
The dayspring of the glory of the earth,
Supplies the Poet's dearth,
If o'er its fountains move his wizard rod.
The spirit of the mountains, sought in vain,
Sits on the forehead of the mountaineer;
The forest's voice is heard in every strain
Of hunters' bugles, and the restless main
Sings in the sailor-songs it loves to hear.
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Stands, the completed beauty of the wild;
The sweet-brier blooms not with so sweet a balm
Beside the cottage, as the cotter's child.
The whirls of windy fire, on desert sands,
But faintly Man's infuriate wrath express;
The desolation of the Arctic lands
Is warm beside his icy selfishness.
Love, passion, rapture, terror, grief, repose,
Through him alone the face of Nature knows:
There is no aspect of the changing zones
But springs from something deeper in the heart:
Then, let me touch its chords with tender art,
And cease to chant in wind-harp monotones!
185
ANASTASIA.
Too pure thy lips for passion's kiss;
Too fair thy cheek love's rose to be:
The brightest dream of Beauty's bliss
Is dark beside the dream of thee.
Thine eyes were lit from other skies;
Thy limbs are made of purer clay;
And wandering airs of Paradise
Before thee breathe the mists away.
Too fair thy cheek love's rose to be:
The brightest dream of Beauty's bliss
Is dark beside the dream of thee.
Thine eyes were lit from other skies;
Thy limbs are made of purer clay;
And wandering airs of Paradise
Before thee breathe the mists away.
Go, Angel! on thy path serene,
The lily-garland in thy hair:
I shall not crown thee as my queen,
Or vex thee with my hopeless prayer.
Love follows those whose dancing feet
Like rose-leaves warm the summer sod:
Thy brow foretells the winding-sheet;
The coffin waits thee, and the clod.
The lily-garland in thy hair:
I shall not crown thee as my queen,
Or vex thee with my hopeless prayer.
Love follows those whose dancing feet
Like rose-leaves warm the summer sod:
Thy brow foretells the winding-sheet;
The coffin waits thee, and the clod.
186
OVER-POSSESSION.
With beating heart and crowded brain,
I wait the touch of song in vain.
The coy, capricious Muse retires
Before the flame herself inspires,
And for a calmer, colder hour,
Reserves her passion and her power.
I wait the touch of song in vain.
The coy, capricious Muse retires
Before the flame herself inspires,
And for a calmer, colder hour,
Reserves her passion and her power.
The sweetness of the autumn skies,
The light that on the landscape lies,
Where yonder sloping wood-side nods
The sunshine of the golden-rods,
The noise of children at their play,
The crickets chirping out the day,
The music breathing from the Past,
The Future's pictures, vague and vast;
The beauty men but rarely seek,
The secret truths they never speak;
The double life,—the outward show,
The hell and heaven that hide below;
The hopeless whirl of woe and wrong;
Eternal Wisdom's under-song,—
All these, by turns, possess my mind,
Yet none of these mine art can bind:
For she, my goddess, will be wooed
Alone in calm and solitude.
The light that on the landscape lies,
Where yonder sloping wood-side nods
The sunshine of the golden-rods,
The noise of children at their play,
The crickets chirping out the day,
The music breathing from the Past,
The Future's pictures, vague and vast;
The beauty men but rarely seek,
The secret truths they never speak;
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The hell and heaven that hide below;
The hopeless whirl of woe and wrong;
Eternal Wisdom's under-song,—
All these, by turns, possess my mind,
Yet none of these mine art can bind:
For she, my goddess, will be wooed
Alone in calm and solitude.
So, cheerfully, the weight I bear
Of hot emotions which outwear
The crowded brain, and dim the eye
Of single-sighted Poesy.
She, when the throngs around her hum,
Stands in the centre, blind and dumb;
But to the One unveils her charms,
And clasps him in immortal arms.
Of hot emotions which outwear
The crowded brain, and dim the eye
Of single-sighted Poesy.
She, when the throngs around her hum,
Stands in the centre, blind and dumb;
But to the One unveils her charms,
And clasps him in immortal arms.
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