Uncollected Poems of James Russell Lowell

Lowell, James Russell (1819-1891)

TEXT OF THE POEMS

Periodical and pamphlet poems

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TEXT OF THE POEMS

“These verses once seemed lava hot,
Or molten gold or God knows what;
Now, stiffened in the mould of print,
If fire there be, 'tis that of flint;
Therefore, good reader, steel thy brain;
To strike with lead were all in vain.”
Lowell MS.

Periodical and pamphlet poems

“YE YANKEES OF THE BAY STATE”

1

Ye Yankees of the Bay state,
With whom no dastards mix!
Shall Everett dare to stifle
The fire of seventy-six?
Up with the tough old pine-tree
As it proudly waved of yore,
Though its gnarled roots be watered
With the dearest of our gore!
Then up with the pine tree,
The tall New England pine!
We'll fight beneath its shadow,
As it waves above the line!

2

Where Warren fell for freedom,
His spirit lingers still,
And freemens' hearts beat proudly
Round glorious Bunker Hill.
The hireling foe would gladly
That death stained hill forget—
Their red coats shall be redder
Ere many suns have set.
The pine-tree! the pine-tree!
The tall New England pine!
We'll shrink but from dishonor
As it waves above the line!

3

The spirit of the pilgrims
Still liveth in their sons,
And it shall live forever—
Stern granite hearted ones!
Our motherland is rocky,
But we love her rugged face;
Like her she rears her children
A free and toughknit race.
Hurrah for the pine-tree!
The tall New England pine!
It tells us of the Pilgrims
As it waves above the line!

4

By every hill and valley
Where Pilgrim blood hath flowed,
And where their martyr spirit
Hath still its old abode—
We will not let the red coats
Set foot within our soil!
We'll teach them that we Yankees
Can FIGHT as well as toil!
Kneel, kneel round the pine-tree!
The tall New England pine!
Its strong trunk points to Heaven
As it waves above the line!

5

Then up with the pine-tree!
Its boughs shall wave again,
And quiver with the shoutings
Of lion-hearted men!
For while our fathers' hearts blood
Yet calleth us aloud,
Before the storm of battle
Its crest shall ne'er be bowed!
Shout, shout for the pine-tree!
It waveth o'er us now—
In the dreadful storm of battle
Its head shall never bow!

The pine was on the flags at Bunker Hill.

THE LOVER'S DRINK-SONG

“Drink to me only with thine eyes.”

Pour me a cup of sunniest hue,
Of woman's love, oh, let it be!
The ecstasies
Of thy great eyes,
Thine eyes divine of peaceful blue,
Pour out,that I may drink to thee!

And with those smiles the beaker wreathe
That grow within thine eyes for me;
Oh! scatter showers
Of those bright flowers,

Which in Love's sunshine live and breathe,
That I may fitly drink to thee!

And let eye-spoken thoughts be there,
That not in words may languaged be;
Rain, rain them down,
The cup to crown,
Of thy soul's valley lilies fair,
That I may fitly drink to thee!

Sing now of dear rememberings,
For love is born of harmony;
Sing with thine eyes
That I may rise
To thy soul's height on music's wings.
And be lift up beholding thee!

AGATHA

'Neath her long lashes veiled, her gentle eyes,
In deep and earnest thought, are downward bent,
Filled with her soul's own light, as the moonrise
Fills with pale gleams the ample firmament.
Mildness and meekness make their dwelling there,
And gentle feelings without variance;
While human firmness hath a generous share,
Which lifts the spirit out of change and chance.
Not from her weakness hath her mildness grown,
But from a deep, unsounded strength of will,
And a strange earnestness her soul doth fill,
Bearing the virtues of the bezoar stone,
To sin's foul poison antidote and test;
An inward instinct, lurking in her breast,
Deeper than all her judgments, doth she own,
Which, touching the marked form of specious good,
Detects it, as the fallen Satan stood
Before Ithuriel's heavenly spear confess'd.

Few rules hath she, for she believes, in sooth,
That our best safeguard is unconsciousness;—
That innocence hath a perpetual youth,
Which weareth not away 'neath Time's rough stress;
That all temptations which around us press,
Shine dazzled from the glorious shield of Truth.
Thus unsuspicious onward doth she move,
Without the dimmest shadow of a fear,
Through Love's serene and golden atmosphere.
A golden Hope shines ever on her path,
The clear reflection of a trustful Faith,
Which doubts not, wavers not, through joy and woe,
An inward light, which, whether tempests blow,
Or night come on, a flame forever hath.

Yet, though her spirit is so vast and full,
There is no sense of pride to mar and blot;
All souls agree that she is beautiful,
Yet she alone doth seem to know it not.
Herself she seemeth ever to forget,
And as the stars shine in the unfathom'd night,
Her virtues in an infinite Peace are set.
An understanding open, broad and bright,
Pierces through error at the instant sight,
So that her judgments never run astray,
While her mild temper, genial as the day,
Keeps the whole world in pure Elysian light.

She hath a natural sense of poetry,
Which weds her to the beautiful and true;
All noble deeds and thoughts that ever grew
Out of strong, fearless spirits, loveth she.
Nature is something other than a fact;
For love doth make from out each common thing
The fragrant blossom of a thought to spring,
Which lends a perfume to her every act.

Yet though so distant from the touch of sin,
The humblest spirit doth she not disdain,
But soothing with a tender care each pain,
The erring spirit gently doth she win
Into the path of duty back again.
Ever her best rebuke to sin is found

Within her piety,—a soul-sung psalm,
Breathed in her life, all undisturbed and calm,
That with its circle every act doth bound.
While through the saddest phase of human life,
And through the fret of every day's annoy,
The living token of her being,—Joy,—
Is borne upon the restless waves of strife,
Her anchored spirit's ever floating buoy.

Her utmost pleasure is self-sacrifice;
And though within her deep and saint-like eyes
The pensive shade of dreamy thought doth hover,
Yet it but softens, not obscures their light,
And hallows that which else had been too bright,
Like some blue haze that shrouds the landscape over.

Few be there upon earth more fair and sweet,
In whose ripe age so much of childhood lies,
So much of that strange fragrance from the skies
That circles every gentle child we greet.
For she is one the soul might rather meet
In the dim land of dreams and memories;
Like some fair picture hanging in the rare
And mournful twilight, doth her spirit seem,
When the young moon pales in the purple air,
And the heart, reaching out in many a dream,
Sees o'er the canvass many a shadowy gleam
Floating across the features strange and dim.

The steadfast path of duty doth she tread,
Strengthening her life of fact by that of thought,—
Ever the light into her spirit shed,
Into each common deed and act is wrought.
High doth her spirit fly, both strong and free,—
Clear, undismayed, whatever chances be;
No storm doth beat her down, her unquailing eye
Sees God through sorrow, smiling peacefully,
—Knows the stars shine behind the clouded sky.

But blessed is she, for she ever maketh
All virtue beautiful, all goodness fair,
And sin seems but a shadow while she speaketh,
That melts away into the thinnest air.

But dearest, happiest, in the quiet grace
She sendeth into life in every place,
Like some wild lute that lends the common breeze
Its own soul, filling it with harmonies.

THE TWO

Soon each the other knew,
But love grew up more slowly;
Firmly and fair it grew,
Watered with Heaven's dew,
That plant so pure and holy.

Thereon burst forth a flower,
To fuller beauty moulded
By sunshine, shade and shower,
In which all seeds of power
And mystery were folded.

They saw the flower rare,
And loved it for its beauty;
They watcht it with sweet care
Till, ere they were aware,
It grew to be a duty.

Then started they in fear
And gazed upon each other:
They said, “Why lose our cheer?
We only will be dear
As sister and her brother.”

So dwelt they late and soon
In love's unclouded weather:
They loved the self-same tune,
And underneath the moon
'T was bliss to be together.

From all the world so wide
Each soul the other singled;
Something within did guide
Their life-streams side by side
Until at length they mingled.

And now they cannot part,
But must flow on forever,—
Two streams that rose apart,
Joined in the mighty heart
Of one calm-flowing river.

CALLIRHÖE

Whence art thou bright Callirhöe,
Calm, Heré-eyed Callirhöe?
Art thou a daughter of this earth,
That, like myself, had life and birth,
And who will die like me?
Methinks a soul so pure and clear
Must breathe another atmosphere,
Of thought more heavenly and high,
More full of deep serenity,
Than circles round this world of ours;
I dare not think that thou shouldst die,
Unto my soul, like summer showers
To thirsty leaves thou art,—like May
To the slow-budding woodbine bowers.
Oh no! thou canst [not] pass away.
No hand shall strew thy bier with flowers!
Those eyes, as fair as Eve's, when they,
Untearful yet, were raised to pray,
Fronting the mellow sunset glow
Of summer eve in Paradise,
Those bright founts whence forever flow
Nepenthe-streams of ecstacies.
It cannot be that Death
Shall chill them with his winter breath,—
What hath Death to do with thee,
My seraph-winged Callirhöe?

Whence art thou? From some other sphere,
On which, throughout the moonless night,
Gazing, we dream of beings bright,
Such as we long for here,—
Or art thou but a joy Elysian,
Of my own inward sight,

A glorious and fleeting vision,
Habited in robes of light,
The image of a blessed thing,
Whom I might love with wondering,
Yet feeling not a shade of doubt,
And who would give her love to me,
To twine my inmost soul about?
No, no, these would not be like thee,
Bright one, with auburn hair disparted
On thy meek forehead maidenly,
No, not like thee, my woman-hearted,
My warm, my true Callirhöe!

How may I tell the sunniness
Of thy thought-beaming smile?
Or how the soothing spell express,
That bindeth me the while,
Forth from thine eyes and features bright,
Gusheth that flood of golden light?
Like a sun-beam to my soul,
Comes that trusting smile of thine,
Lighting up the clouds of doubt,
Till they shape themselves, and roll
Like a glory all about
The messenger divine.—
For divine that needs must be
That bringeth messages from thee.
Madonna, gleams of smiles like this,
Like a stream of music fell,
In the silence of the night,
On the soul of Raphael.
Musing with a still delight,
How meekly thou did'st bend and kiss
The baby on thy knee,
Who sported with the golden hair
That fell in showers o'er him there,
Looking up contentedly.
Only the greatest souls can speak
As much by smiling as by tears.
Thine strengthens me when I am weak,
And gladdens into hopes my fears.
The path of life seems plain and sure,
Thy purity doth make me pure

And holy, when thou let'st arise
That mystery divine,
That silent music in thine eyes.
Seldom tear visits cheek of thine,
Seldom a tear escapes from thee,
My Hebé, my Callirhöe!

Sometimes in waking dreams divine,
Wandering, my spirit meets with thine,
And while, made dumb with ecstacy,
I pause in a delighted trance,
Thine, like a squirrel caught at play,
Just gives one startled look askance,
And darteth suddenly away,
Swifter than a phosphor glance
At night upon the lonely sea,
Wayward-souled Callirhöe.
Sometimes, in mockery of care,
Thy playful thought will never rest,
Darting about, now here, now there,
Like sun-beams on a river's breast,
Shifting with each breath of air,
By its very unrest fair.
As a bright and summer stream,
Seen in childhood's happy dream,
Singing nightly, singing daily,
Trifling with each blade of grass
That breaks his riples as they pass,
And going on its errand gaily,
Singing with the self-same leap
Wherewith it merges in the deep.
So shall thy spirit glide along,
Breaking, when troubled, into song,
And leave an echo floating by
When thou art gone forth utterly.
Seeming-cheerful souls there be,
That flutter with a living sound
As dry leaves rustle on the ground;
But they are sorrowful to me,
Because they make me think of thee,
My bird-like, wild Callirhöe!

Thy mirth is like the flickering ray
Forthshooting from the steadfast light

Of a star, which through the night
Moves glorious on its way,
With a sense of moveless might.
Thine inner soul flows calm forever;
Dark and calm without a sound,
Like that strange and trackless river
That rolls its waters underground.
Early and late at thy soul's gate
Sits Chastity in maiden wise,
No thought unchallenged, small or great,
Goes thence into thine eyes;
Nought evil can that warder win,
To pass without or enter in.
Before thy pure eyes guilt doth shrink,
Meanness doth blush and hide its head,
Down through the soul their light will sink,
And cannot be extinguished.
Far up on poiséd wing
Thou floatest, far from all debate,
Thine inspirations are too great
To tarry questioning;
No murmurs of our earthly air,
God's voice alone can reach thee there;
Downlooking on the stream of Fate,
So high thou sweepest in thy flight,
Thou knowest not of pride or hate,
But gazing from thy lark-like height,
Forth o'er the waters of To Be,
The first gleam of Truth's morning light
Round thy broad forehead floweth bright,
My Pallas-like Callirhöe.

Thy mouth is Wisdom's gate, wherefrom,
As from the Delphic cave,
Great sayings constantly do come,
Wave melting into wave;
Rich as the shower of Danäe,
Rains down thy golden speech;
My soul sits waiting silently,
When eye or tongue sends thoughts to me,
To comfort or to teach.

Calm is thy being as a lake
Nestled within a quiet hill,

When clouds are not, and winds are still,
So peaceful calm, that it doth take
All images upon its breast,
Yet change not in its queenly rest,
Reflecting back the bended skies
Till you half doubt where Heaven lies.
Deep thy nature is, and still,
How dark and deep! and yet so clear
Its inmost depths seem near;
Not moulding all things to its will,
Moulding its will to all,
Ruling them with unfelt thrall.
So gently flows thy life along
It makes e'en discord musical,
So that nought can pass thee by
But turns to wond'rous melody,
Like a full, clear, ringing song.
Sweet the music of its flow,
As of a river in a dream,
A river in a sunny land,
A deep and solemn stream
Moving over silver sand,
Majestical and slow.

I sometimes think that thou wert given
To be a bright interpreter
Of the pure mysteries of Heaven,
And cannot bear
To think Death's icy hand should stir
One ringlet of thy hair;
But thou must die like us,—
Yet not like us,—for can it be
That one so bright and glorious
Should sink into the dust as we,
Who could but wonder at thy purity?
Not oft I dwell in thoughts of thine,
My earnest-souled Callirhöe;
And yet thy life is part of mine.
What should I love in place of thee?
Sweet is thy voice, as that of streams
To me, or as a living sound
To one who starts from fev'rous sleep,
Scared by the shapes of ghastly dreams,

And on the darkness stareth round,
Fancying dim terrors in the gloomy deep.
Then if it must be so,
That thou from us shalt go,
Linger yet a little while;
Oh! let me once more feel thy grace,
Oh! let me once more drink thy smile!
I am as nothing if thy face
Is turned from me!
But if it needs must be,
That I must part from thee,
That the silver cord be riven
That holds thee down from Heaven,
Not yet, not yet, Callirhöe,
Unfold thine angel wings to flee,
Oh! no, not yet, Callirhöe!

SONNET—TO KEATS

Thine eyes, I know, with earnestness were fraught,
Thy brow a pale and musing hue had ta'en,
And a mild frown, from watching not in vain
The patient dawn and sunrise of great thought;
Thy soul seemed listening still as if it caught,
Through castle hall, or arches dim and long,
The mail-clad tramp of old heroic song,
Or heard, through groves of moss-grown oak trees brought,
Mysterious tones from the lone pipe of Pan;
While thy dark eyes glowed mellowly to see
Coy nymphs, as down thick-leavèd dells they ran,
And backward glanced with longing eyes at thee,
Whose gracious heart, in its most Grecian mood,
Ran red and warm with right good English blood.

MERRY ENGLAND

Hurrah for merry England,
Queen of the land and sea,
The champion of truth and right,
The bulwark of the free!

Hurrah for merry England!
Upon thy seagirt isle
Thou sittest, clothed in righteousness,
Secure of Heaven's smile!

When ruled the fairhaired Saxon,
Yes, thou wert merry then;
And, as they girt their bucklers on,
Thy meanest serfs were men;
And merry was the castle-hall
With jest and song and tale,
When bearded lips with mead were white
And rang the loud Washael!

And, when grim Denmark's black-browed prows
Tore through thine Emerald sea,
And many a wild blue eye was turned
In savage lust on thee,—
When, in the greenest of thy vales,
The gusts of summer air
Blew out in long and shaggy locks
The sea-king's yellow hair,—

Yet Alfred was in England,
And merry yet again
Thy white-armed Saxon maidens were
When, on the drunken Dane,
The sudden thunders of thy war
With arrowy hail did pour,
And grim jaws dropt that quivered yet
With savage hymns to Thor.

Thy merry brow was fair and free,
Thine eye gleamed like a lance,
When thy good ash and yew did crush
The gilded knights of France;
When Paris shook within her walls
And trembled as she saw
Her snow-white lilies trampled down
Beneath thy lion's paw.

Queen Bess's days were merry days,
Renowned in song and tale,

Stout days that saw the last brown bead
Of many a tun of ale;
Queen Bess's days were golden days
And thou full proudly then
Did'st suckle at thy healthy breasts
The best of Englishmen.

Thou hast been merry, England,
But art thou merry now,
With sweat of agonizing years
Upon thy harlot brow,
Grimed with the smoke of furnaces
That forge with damned art
The bars of darkness that shut in
The poor man's starving heart?

Oh free and Christian England!
The Hindu wife no more
Shall burn herself in that broad realm
Saint George's cross waves o'er;
Thou art the champion of the right,
The friend of the opprest,
And none but freemen now shall tread
Thine Indies of the West.

But thou canst ship thy poison,
Wrung from lean Hindu slaves,
To fill all China with dead souls
That rot in living graves;
And, that thy faith may not be seen
Barren of goodly works,
At Saint Jean D'Acre thou sent'st up
To Heaven three thousand Turks.

Fling high your greasy caps in air,
Slaves of the forge and loom,
If on the soil ye're pent and starved
Yet underneath there's room;
Fling high your caps, for, God be praised,
Your epitaph shall be,
“Who sets his foot on English soil
Thenceforward he is free!”

Shout too for merry England
Ye factory-children thin,
Upon whose little hearts the sun
Hath never once looked in;
For, when your hollow eyes shall close
The poor-house hell to balk,
(Thank God for liberty of speech)
The parliament will talk.

Thank God, lean sons of Erin,
Who reverence the Pope,
In England consciences are free
And ye are free—to hope;
And if the Church of England priest
Distrain—why, what of that?
Their consciences are freer still
Who wear the shovel-hat.

The poet loves the silent past,
And, in his fruitful rhyme,
He sets the fairest flowers o'er
The grave of buried time;
But, from the graves of thy dark years,
The night-shade's ugly blue
And spotted henbane shall grow up
To poison Heaven's dew.

Woe to thee, fallen England,
Who hast betrayed the word,
And knelt before a Church when thou
Shouldst kneel before the Lord!
And, for that scarlet woman
Who sits in places high,
There cometh vengeance swift to quench
The lewdness in her eye.

Woe to thee, fallen England,
Who, in thy night-mare sleep,
O'er a volcano's heart dost toss
Whence sudden wrath shall leap
Of that forgotten Titan
Who now is trodden down
That one weak Guelphic girl may wear
Her plaything of a crown!

That Titan's heart is heaving now,
And, with its huge uprise,
On their sand basements lean and crack
The old moss-covered lies;
For freedom through long centuries
Lives in eternal youth,
And nothing can forever part
The human soul and truth.

“I LOVE THOSE POETS, OF WHATEVER CREED”

I love those poets, of whatever creed,
Who bring such holy tears into mine eyes
As are the pledge of sweetest charities,
And of a love wherein lies wrapt ripe seed
Of the white flow'r of high unconscious deed;
Who make me to hold up a manly head
And put a firmer muscle in my tread,
Even by one little word that fits my need:
And I must love such deep and solemn lines,
As give me that strong tenderness of heart

I feel within a wood of ancient pines,
For then I know that Nature did her part
Towards the filling of that harmony,
Which finds so true an answering chord in me.

SONNET

“To die is gain.”

Where are the terrors that escort King Death,
That hurl pale Reason from her trembling throne?
Why should man shudder to give up his breath?
Why fear the path, though naked and alone,
That must lead up to scenes more clear and bright,
Than bloom amid this world's dim clouded night?
Is not his God beside, around, above,
Shall he not trust in His unbounded love?
Oh, yes! Let others dread thee if they will,
I'll welcome thee, O death, and call thee friend,
Come to release me from these loads of ill,
These lengthened penances I here fulfil,
To give me wings, wherewith I may ascend,
And with the soul of God my soul may blend!

SONNET

Whene'er I read in mournful history
How all things crumble at the touch of time,
And even great deeds renowned in mighty rhyme
Show but as cities buried 'neath the sea
Which in calm days men gaze on awfully,
My heart grows heavy; but one thought sublime
Rises, and therewith the uplifting chime
Of morning stars comes back rememberingly;
Woman, thou art that thought, in whom I know
That I alone gave Time his tyrant might,
Drooping my foolish lids of clay too low,
For, looking up, I see great Love, far, far,
Above all changes, like a steadfast star
Behind the pulsings of the northern light.

SONNET

Like some black mountain glooming huge aloof,
Grassed with tall pines, friend of the thoughtful crowd
Of stars, yet thereof seeming nothing proud,
Calm granite pillar of God's own home-roof,
Thrilling me through with infinite reproof,
Yet so wrapt round with twilight's awful shroud
That I may wellnigh deem it but a cloud
Or even some strand of fantasy's vast woof
Wrought by the lurid moonrise,—even so
Stands the great asking for some afterwork,
Which Earth and Custom vainly strive to shirk,
Making all other toils seem mean and low,
And sweetest rhymes of what I am or was,
A cricket's chirp among the easeful grass.

THE LESSON—TO IRENE

I

Thou openest wide thy heart,
All-hopeful flower,
Thou dost not give a part
Nor askest aught for dower;
In sun or shower,
Like a true soul,
Thou giv'st the whole,
Not waiting for a better hour;
With thee I feel my earth
That it is full and fair,
And often muse upon my place of birth
Because my home's not there:
Thou sayest—‘The stars are far above me,
Are greater much than I,
Yet, if thou wilt not love me
As I love, I must die
And give my God the lie!’

II

Thou lookest with calm eyes,
Unwaning star,
On thee my spirit cries
For hopes that greatest are,
With thee it doth arise
And shine afar,
Knowing that wherewith its hope
At the strongest could not cope;
Thou sayest—‘Give me reverence
Or I must fade;
I was not made
To glimmer on a gross and bodily sense!’

III

The great soul pines alone;
How lonely only they,
True brother-souls, have known
But never yet could say,
Lone as a corpse on its death night,
When it first begins to have
Some fore-feeling of the grave,—
Lone as the first world, I wis,
That groped the yet unsunned abyss
Ere Love had smiled and it was light;
But when, in its fulfilling hour,—
Like the thought of some great poem,
When the bard, in calm of power,
Folds the vast heart of All unto him,—
Comes forth its spirit bride,
With a perfectness of dower
As the blue heaven wide,
Dear God, could it forget
The lessons thou had'st set
In thy star and flower?

BALLAD

Gloomily the river floweth,
Close by her bower door,
And drearily the nightwind bloweth
Across the barren moor.

It rustles through the withered leaves
Upon the poplars tall,
And mutters wildly 'neath the eaves
Of the unlighted hall.

The waning moon above the hill
Is rising strange and red,
And fills her soul, against her will,
With fancies lone and dread.

The stream all night will flow as drearful,
The wind will shriek forlorn,
She fears—she knows that something fearful
Is coming ere the morn.

The curtains in that lonely place
Wave like a heavy pall,
And her dead mother's pale, pale face
Doth flicker on the wall.

And all the rising moon about
Her fear did shape the clouds,
And saw dead faces staring out
From coffins and from shrouds.

A screech-owl now, for three nights past,
Housed in some hollow tree,
Sends struggling up against the blast
His long shriek fearfully.

Strange shadows waver to and fro,
In the uncertain light,
And the scared dog hath howled below
All through the weary night.

She only feels that she is weak
And fears some ill unknown,
She longs, and yet she dreads to shriek
It is so very lone.

Her eyeballs in their sockets strain,
Till the nerves seem to snap,
When blasts against the window-pane
Like lean, dead fingers tap.

And still the river floweth by
With the same lonely sound,
And the gusts seem to sob and sigh,
And wring their hands around.

Is that a footstep on the stair,
And on the entry-floor?
What sound is that, like breathing, there?
There, close beside the door!

Hush! hark! that was a dreadful sigh!
So full of woe, so near!
It were an easier thing to die
Than feel this deadly fear.

One of her ancestors she knew
A bloody man had been,
They found him here, stabb'd through and through,
Murdered in all his sin.

The nurse had often silenced her,
With fearful tales of him—
God shield her! did not something stir
Within that corner dim?

A gleam across the chamber floor—
A white thing in the river—
One long, shrill, shivering scream, no more,
And all is still forever!

“MY FATHER, SINCE I LOVE, THY PRESENCE CRIES”

My Father, since I love, thy presence cries
To me from every smallest thing I see;
There is no flower but hath its pray'r to thee,
No river but upon whose full heart lies
The skiey shadow of thy mysteries;
No leaf that fluttereth on any tree,
But thou thereon hast written wondrously
Thy gospels evident to loving eyes:

Thy truth I will not call thy testament,
For I most truly know that thou dost live;
Thy life is mine, for I on thee have leant,
And down Time's current all things fugitive
Have drifted from me, leaving me alone
(So best companioned) with the ETERNAL ONE.

SONNET—SUNSET AND MOONSHINE

The sunset hath a glory for the soul,
Uplifting it from all earth's things apart
And building it a palace of pure Art
Where it doth sit alone in crown'd control
And o'er all space its eyes unsealed roll;
But the dear moonshine looks in on the heart,
Giving each kindly blood-drop warmer start,
And knits me with humanity's great whole;
It doth not bear me, as the sunset doth,
Forth of the city, but, on dull brick walls,
Silverly smileth, as 'twere nothing loath
To sanctify all that whereon it falls,
And with it my full heart goes forth and broods
In love o'er all life's sleeping multitudes.

THE LOVED ONE

The loved one, the loved one!
Unseen but never far—
All souls must have a loved one,
Though haply but a star.

And thou, most blessed woman,
When first I looked on thee,
Wert in thy heavenly lustre
Only a star to me.

I gazed on thee so distant,
And with such truth did long,
That, in my earnest loving,
My soul grew high and strong.

And in its deep abysses
Thy shade slept silverly;
Seen only in calm weather,
As stars are in the sea.

So kept I ever quiet,
That it might rest therein;
For thine unconscious shadow
Was utmost bliss to win.

I know not how it happened—
For we can never know
The channel whereby Heaven
Into the soul doth flow;

But, while I yet was gazing,
I was methought lift up!
My soul was filled with splendor,
Like an o'er brimming cup;

And ere I ceased from wonder,
Next to this burning heart
I prest thee, truest woman,
All glorious as thou art;

And, now thou art my loved one,
Thou art my star no less;
For Heaven and Earth are married
In thy full loveliness.

THE BALLAD OF THE STRANGER

The wind is moaning sadly among the pine trees high,—
But that was not it, surely, so like a human sigh.

Her list'ning face she lifted, put back her scattered hair,
And, in the growing twilight, she saw her loved one there.

“Why cam'st thou not more early? Where tarried'st thou so long?
I have waited thee from sunset till dusky even-song;

“The stars came out so slowly! It was a weary time;
I almost thought I never should hear the vesper chime.

“And I have had strange fancies, dim thoughts that seemed like fears,
Not sad,—yet, when they left me, mine eyes were salt with tears;

“I thought of my dead mother, her pale face I could see
Between me and the starlight, as if she waited me;—

“‘Now, wherefore, blessed mother, say wherefore art thou here?
Most sure, if I had sinned, my heart would chill with fear.’

“Her lips moved not to answer, but glimmered with a smile,
That seemed to say, ‘my daughter, wait yet a little while.’

“With that no more I saw her; the Pleiades alone
I saw, all dim and misty, as through my tears they shone.

“And now, when thou art with me, when I should be most glad,
I yet do feel a something that makes me well nigh sad.

“Why lookest thou so mournful? Such face to thee is new;
And why dost thou not kiss me, as thou art used to do?”

Long time his lips seemed moving, as if unwont to speak,
And, when at length he answered, his voice was dim and weak.

“Now, dearest, if thou'lt listen, I will make plain the truth;
As I to thee did hasten, I met a stranger youth;

“He seemed of other country, and he was pale and fair;
His eyes were very mournful, yet kind as thine eyes are;

“He sang to me full sweetly the songs of his own clime,
And, all along, the music interpreted the rhyme;

“They were of unknown language, yet ever, more and more,
They grew to sound like something that I had heard before;

“His face did shine so brightly, he sang so silverly,
I knew he was an angel come down for love of me,—

“A mild and gentle spirit, and in his earnest eyes
I read the seeming riddle of all life's mysteries.

“His voice went through and through me, it was so soft and low,
And it was very mournful, but not as if with woe;

“The voices of the lost ones, of those who've gone before,
Seemed woven with it strangely to charm me more and more.

“With his mild eyes he drew me, he took me by the hand,
I could not choose but follow into his pleasant land;

“And so with him I journeyed, in that fair clime to dwell,
But of its wondrous beauty only that youth can tell;

“The gate whereby we entered, it is both green and low,
And up beyond the church door 'tis scarcely a stone's throw.

“I shall be with thee often, but never as before,
For I wear not the vestments of clay which I once wore;

“We will not break our troth plight, though time can never bring
The day when I may claim thee, to wed thee with a ring;

“For that kind youth hath promised that, on a certain day,
He will go forth and bring thee to dwell with me alway.”

His words to silence faded, when he so far had said,
And mingled with the murmur of the pine trees overhead.

She did not sink with sorrow, nor weep when he was gone,
But patiently she waited until five moons had shone.

She kept her ever ready to greet the stranger youth,
Drest in her wedding garment of purity and truth.

And, when those days were numbered, the stranger came once more,
With gentlest look, to lead her in at the low, green door;

With joy she gave him welcome, all robed in snowy white,
Her heart had told her surely that he would come that night;

A bridal wreath of amaranth he twined about her head,
And then the fair betrothed all silently forth led.

She followed him right gladly, it was not far to go
To meet and dwell forever with him who loved her so.

With many tears they prayed her to stay, but all in vain;
Long waited they her coming, but she never came again.

SONNET

Only as thou herein canst not see me,
Only as thou the same low voice canst hear
Which is the morning-song of every sphere
And which thou erewhile heardst beside the sea
Or in the still night flowing solemnly,
Only so love this rhyme and so revere;
All else cast from thee, haply with a tear
For one who, rightly taught, yet would not be
A voice obedient; some things I have seen
With a clear eye, and otherwhile the earth
With a most sad eclipse hath come between
That sunlight which is mine by right of birth
And what I know with grief I ought to have been,—
Yet is short-coming even something worth.

SONNET

When in a book I find a pleasant thought
Which some small flower in the woods to me
Had told, as if in straitest secrecy,
That I might speak it in sweet verses wrought,
With what best feelings is such meeting fraught!
It shows how nature's life will never be
Shut up from speaking out full clear and free
Her wonders to the soul that will be taught.
And what though I have but this single chance
Of saying that which every gentle soul

Shall answer with a glad, uplifting glance?
Nature is frank to him whose spirit whole
Doth love Truth more than praise, and in good time,
My flower will tell me sweeter things to rhyme.

TO AN ÆOLIAN HARP AT NIGHT

There is a spirit in thee,
A spirit wild and lone,
As of a fallen star;
And when the night-winds win thee
To muse of thy lost throne,
Thy voice is sunken far
In the night's vast hollow
So deep and low,
That the soul dare not follow
Its wandering woe:
Thine anguish sharp
Doth wring the harp
Where bitter fate hath bound thee,
And countless wings
Of dreamy things
Rustle the dark around thee,
Bending to hear
The music clear
Thy hopeless woe hath found thee.

Up from the wondrous past
When thou an angel wast,
Shapes of dim hugeness rise
Through the darkness yonder;
And the old mysteries
With awfully calm eyes
All about thee wander:
Faces of dumb distress
Without a hope of balm;
Of fiery gentleness
In agony kept calm;
Of wisdom deep as death,
Older than oldest star,
O'er which a pale gleam wandereth

From suns long set afar;
Creatures of love and awe,
Dark with the aged woe
Of Godhead long brought low,
Such as the young earth saw
In temples long ago,
When beauty gave unbroken law
And great thoughts into Gods did grow.

In thy heart's abysses
Darkness dwells forever:
Memory of old blisses
Parteth from thee never:
Thinking of thy former light
Deepeneth thy deepest night,
And puts a sadness in thy wail
So utterly forsaken,
That my hope turns deathly pale,
Doubtful of her skyey mail,
When thy moans awaken.

There is a night in thy dark heart
Which longeth for no morrow,
A glorious and awful sorrow
Wherewith thou would'st not part
Though thou could'st so regain
The ancient fulness of thy reign;
Thou hast learned in thine unnumbered years
Of loneliness and woe
That the soil must be wet with many tears
Where the soul's best flowers grow.

There are unworded pains
Whereby the spirit gains
Home in the deepest deep;
Our sorrow and annoy
High as the angel's joy
On wings of patience sweep;
In joy our bodies shine,
Grief makes our souls divine,
Clay washeth from us with each tear we weep.

Woe is more glorious
Than deepest gladness,

Great thoughts look on us
With eyes of sadness;
The mournfullest melodies
Still are the mildest,
Filling the soul with ease
When it is wildest;
There is a joyous gain
In our tears' fiery rain,
And well we can languish
In sorrow and anguish
While the soul maketh music and song of its pain.

SONNET

Thou art a woman, and therein thou art
Fit theme for poet's songful reverence;
Thou art the clear and living evidence
That God will never leave the human heart;
And, being so, should'st thou not do thy part,
For Him and for his blessed cause of Truth?
I fear not that thy crystal dew of ruth
Will be dried from thee in the dusty mart,

Or that thou wilt outwear thy womanhood;
No; where the jar of tongues swells angrily,
Thy gentleness shall clip thee with a ring
Of guardian light,—be the more calm, and good,
And clearlier, like a white angel sing,
Knowing that all shall one day angels be.

FANCIES ABOUT A ROSEBUD,

Pressed in an Old Copy of Spenser

Who prest you here? The Past can tell,
When summer skies were bright above,
And some full heart did leap and swell
Beneath the white new moon of love.

Some Poet, haply, when the world
Showed like a calm sea, grand and blue,
Ere its cold, inky waves had curled
O'er the numb heart once warm and true;

When, with his soul brimful of morn,
He looked beyond the vale of Time,
Nor saw therein the dullard scorn
That made his heavenliness a crime;

When, musing o'er the Poets olden,
His soul did like a sun upstart
To shoot its arrows, clear and golden,
Through slavery's cold and darksome heart.

Alas! too soon the veil is lifted
That hangs between the soul and pain,
Too soon the morning-red hath drifted
Into dull cloud, or fallen in rain!

Or were you prest by one who nurst
Bleak memories of love gone by,
Whose heart, like a star fallen, burst
In dark and erring vacancy?

To him you still were fresh and green
As when you grew upon the stalk,
And many a breezy summer scene
Came back—and many a moonlit walk;

And there would be a hum of bees,
A smell of childhood in the air,
And old, fresh feelings cooled the breeze
That, like loved fingers, stirred his hair!

Then would you suddenly be blasted
By the keen wind of one dark thought,
One nameless woe, that had outlasted
The sudden blow whereby 'twas brought.

Or were you pressed here by two lovers
Who seemed to read these verses rare,
But found between the antique covers
What Spenser could not prison there:

Songs which his glorious soul had heard,
But his dull pen could never write,
Which flew, like some gold-winged bird,
Through the blue heaven out of sight?

My heart is with them as they sit,
I see the rose-bud in her breast,
I see her small hand taking it
From out its odorous, snowy nest;

I hear him swear that he will keep it,
In memory of that blessed day,
To smile on it or over-weep it
When she and spring are far away.

Ah me! I needs must droop my head,
And brush away a happy tear,
For they are gone, and, dry and dead,
The rose-bud lies before me here.

Yet is it in no stranger's hand,
For I will guard it tenderly,
And it shall be a magic wand
To bring mine own true love to me.

My heart runs o'er with sweet surmises,
The while my fancy weaves her rhyme,
Kind hopes and musical surprises
Throng round me from the olden time.

I do not care to know who prest you:
Enough for me to feel and know
That some heart's love and longing blest you,
Knitting to-day with long-ago.

FAREWELL

Farewell! as the bee round the blossom
Doth murmur drowsily,
So murmureth round my bosom
The memory of thee;
Lingering, it seems to go,
When the wind more full doth flow,
Waving the flower to and fro,
But still returneth, Marian!
My hope no longer burneth,
Which did so fiercely burn,
My joy to sorrow turneth,
Although loath, loath to turn,—
I would forget—
And yet—and yet
My heart to thee still yearneth, Marian!

Fair as a single star thou shinest,
And white as lilies are
The slender hands wherewith thou twinest
Thy heavy auburn hair;
Thou art to me
A memory
Of all that is divinest:
Thou art so fair and tall,
Thy looks so queenly are,
Thy very shadow on the wall,
Thy step upon the stair,
The thought that thou art nigh,
The chance look of thine eye

Are more to me than all, Marian,
And will be till I die!

As the last quiver of a bell
Doth fade into the air,
With a subsiding swell
That dies we know not where,
So my hope melted and was gone:
I raised mine eyes to bless the star
That shared its light with me so far
Below its silver throne,
And gloom and chilling vacancy
Were all was left to me,
In the dark, bleak night I was alone!
Alone in the blessed Earth, Marian,
For what were all to me—
Its love, and light, and mirth, Marian,
If I were not with thee?

My heart will not forget thee
More than the moaning brine
Forgets the moon when she is set;
The gush when first I met thee
That thrilled my brain like wine,
Doth thrill as madly yet;
My heart cannot forget thee,
Though it may droop and pine,
Too deeply it had set thee
In every love of mine;
No new moon ever cometh,
No flower ever bloometh,
No twilight ever gloometh
But I'm more only thine.
Oh look not on me, Marian,
Thine eyes are wild and deep,
And they have won me, Marian,
From peacefulness and sleep;
The sunlight doth not sun me,
The meek moonshine doth shun me,
All sweetest voices stun me,—
There is no rest
Within my breast
And I can only weep, Marian!

As a landbird far at sea
Doth wander through the sleet
And drooping downward wearily
Finds no rest for her feet,
So wandereth my memory
O'er the years when we did meet:
I used to say that everything
Partook a share of thee,
That not a little bird could sing,
Or green leaf flutter on a tree,
That nothing could be beautiful
Save part of thee were there,
That from thy soul so clear and full
All bright and blessed things did cull
The charm to make them fair;
And now I know
That it was so,
Thy spirit through the earth doth flow
And face me whereso'er I go,—
What right hath perfectness to give
Such weary weight of wo
Unto the soul which cannot live
On anything more low?
Oh leave me, leave me, Marian,
There's no fair thing I see
But doth deceive me, Marian,
Into sad dreams of thee!

A cold snake gnaws my heart
And crushes round my brain,
And I should glory but to part
So bitterly again,
Feeling the slow tears start
And fall in fiery rain:
There's a wide ring round the moon,
The ghost-like clouds glide by,
And I hear the sad winds croon
A dirge to the lowering sky;
There's nothing soft or mild
In the pale moon's sickly light,
But all looks strange and wild
Through the dim, foreboding night:
I think thou must be dead

In some dark and lonely place,
With candles at thy head,
And a pall above thee spread
To hide thy dead, cold face;
But I can see thee underneath
So pale, and still, and fair,
Thine eyes closed smoothly and a wreath
Of flowers in thy hair;
I never saw thy face so clear
When thou wast with the living,
As now beneath the pall, so drear,
And stiff, and unforgiving;
I cannot flee thee, Marian,
I cannot turn away,
Mine eyes must see thee, Marian,
Through salt tears night and day.

THE TRUE RADICAL

Some men would prune off the limbs of the plant whose summit is dying;—
Water thou well its roots, that new leaves and blossoms may grow:
Often new life may lie waiting, hidden and dead 'neath the surface,
So shall thy name be blest of thousands that rest in its shade.

HYMN

One house, our God, we give to thee:
One day in seven, Eternity
Floods all our souls, and in our eyes
Some thanks for thy great goodness rise.

Let us not think thy presence falls
Only within these narrow walls,
Nor that this handiwork of clods
Can prison up the God of gods.

Let us not think that only here
Thy being to our own is near;
But let us find thee every day
Forth in the fields, or by the way.

The world too many homes doth own,
Shall God the Father have but one?
Shall we his loving presence seek,
But one poor day of all the week?

O, let us feel thee every where
As common as the blessed air,
Among our neighbors and our friends,
The shaper of our rough hewn ends.

Here let us only need to meet,
Because our service is more sweet
When many hearts as one adore,
And feel thee through each other more.

Thy presence here we then shall seek,
As but an emblem of the week;
Secure that thou wilt bless us when
We strive to bless our fellow men.

Then shall this house indeed be thine,
A visible and outward sign
Of that unseen, encircling love,
Which doth in all our spirits move.

SONNET

Poet, if men from wisdom turn away,
And are so wiled with idle gauds of Time,
They will not list the everlasting chime
Of beautiful things, that let in God's clear day,
Through every inlet to this hut of clay,
Think not Truth's sun can ever reach his west;
Nor let one holy longing in thy breast
Fade with long watching dawn's slow-whitening gray:
No! late and early, let thy soul sing clear,
Gushing with prophesy of growing light;
Sing to the hearing of the Eternal ear,
Keep day at noon within, though murkest night
Wrap all without; for, ere 'tis long, our sphere
Shall hymn once more amid his brethren bright!

VOLTAIRE

Heaven shield me from ambition such as his—
To weigh a pun against Eternal bliss
And scoff at God for an antithesis.

THE FOLLOWER

To one who drifteth with opinion's tide
Things on the firm shore seem to shift and glide,
While he, his fantasy's unwitting thrall,
Seems the sole thing that moveth not at all.

THE POET AND APOLLO

“O, master of the golden lyre,
Dread twanger of the golden bow,
I call upon thee, mighty sire,
Old, outcast, blind, and full of woe.

“I have poured out my soul like rain
Upon the dry and withered earth;
And what has been my luckless gain?
A wrinkled heart and honor's dearth.

“All earthly things have I explored,
Sounded the deeps of love and hate,
And often hath my spirit soared
High o'er the dark abyss of fate.

“Now therefore grant me what I seek,
Some gift that none with me may share,
A larger vision than these weak
Unaided eyes could ever dare.”

So prayed a poet once of old,
A poet wise, without a peer,
By long-pent agony made bold
To seek his father's pitying ear.

Apollo heard, and sadly smiled,
Then, murmuring scarce above his breath,
“Bear thou,” he sighed, “unto my child
My last and greatest gift, oh Death.”

A LOVE THOUGHT

In my walks the thought of thee
Like sweet music comes to me;
Music sweet I knew not whence,
Ravishing my soul and sense,—
As if some angel with droopt eyes
Sat at the gate of Paradise,
And let his hand forgetfully
One after one his harpstrings try.

WORDSWORTH

Poet of the lofty brow! far-sighted seer!
Whose gifted eye on mountain peak and plain,
The eternal heavens and never-sleeping main,
Mysterious writings saw and read with fear!
In the deep silence of the night thine ear
Heard from the earth a “still, sad music” rise,
Nor less the anthem caught that midnight skies
Pour through the soul from each rejoicing sphere;
But most thou lov'st, with solemn steps, to take
Down through the awful chambers of the soul
Thy dreadful way, and hear the billows roll
Of that deep ocean whose far thunders break
Upon the everlasting shores, and wake
Echos that wiser make whom they control.

Thy song sublime, the tinkling charm disdains,
And painted trappings of the gaudy muse,
And in such dress as Truth and Nature use
Majestic mounts in high Miltonic strains,
And pours its strength along the ethereal plains,
Solemn and grand as when the hills reply

To the full chorus of a stormy sky,
Or ocean round his rock-bound shores complains;
Yet not the highest heaven amid the “quire
Of shouting angels and the empyreal thrones,”
Nor lowest Erebus, nor Chaos old,
Thy chiefest haunt: but, with sublimer tones,
Through the dark caverns of the mind are rolled
The mighty thunders of thy master lyre.

WINTER

The bird sings not in winter-time,
Nor doth the happy murmur of the bees,
Swarm round us from the chill, unleav'd lime,
And shall ye hear the poet o'sunny rhyme,
Mid souls more bleak and bare than winter trees?

As a lone singing bird that far away,
Hath follow'd north the fickle smiles of spring,
Is ambush'd by a sudden bitter day,
And sits forlorn upon a leafless spray,
Hiding his head beneath his numbed wing.

So is the poet, if he chance to fall
'Mong hearts by whom he is not understood,
Dull hearts, whose throbbing grows not musical,
Although their strings are blown upon by all
The sweetest breezes of the true and good.

His spirit pineth orphan'd of that home
Wherein was nursed its wondrous infancy,
And whence sometimes 'neath night's all quiet dome,
Swiftly a winged memory will come,
And prophesy of glory yet to be.

Then knows he that he hath not been exiled
From those wide halls his own by right of birth;
But hath been sent, a well-beloved child,
A chosen one on whom his father smiled,
And blest, to be his messenger on Earth.

Then doth his brow with its right glory shine,
And stretching forth his strong, undaunted wings,
He soareth to an atmosphere divine,
Whence he can see afar that clime benign,
His father land, whose mystic song he sings.

So in his eyes there doth such blessings grow,
That all those faces erst so hard and dull,
With a sweet warmth of brotherhood do glow,
As he had seen them glisten long ago,
In that old home so free and beautiful.

A RALLYING-CRY FOR NEW-ENGLAND, AGAINST THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS

[By a Yankee]

Rouse up, New-England! Buckle on your mail of proof sublime,
Your stern old hate of tyranny, your deep contempt of crime;
A traitor plot is hatching now, more full of woe and shame,
Than ever from the iron heart of bloodiest despot came!

Six slave States added at a breath! One flourish of a pen,
And fetters shall be rivetted on millions more of men!
One drop of ink to sign a name, and slavery shall find
For all her surplus flesh and blood a market to her mind!

A market where good Democrats their fellow-men may sell!
O, what a grin of fiendish glee runs round and round through hell!
How all the damned leap up for joy and half forget their fire,
To think men take such pains to claim the notice of God's ire!

Is't not enough that we have borne the sneer of all the world,
And bent to those whose haughty lips in scorn of us are curled?
Is't not enough that we must hunt their living chattels back,
And cheer the hungry bloodhounds on that howl upon their track?

Is't not enough that we must bow to all that they decree,—
These cotton and tobacco lords, these pimps of slavery?
That we must yield our conscience up to glut Oppression's maw,
And break our faith with God to keep the letter of Man's law?

But must we sit in silence by, and see the chain and whip
Made firmer for all time to come in Slavery's bloody grip?
Must we not only half the guilt and all the shame endure,
But help to make our tyrant's throne of flesh and blood secure?

If hand and foot we must be bound by deeds our fathers signed,
And must be cheated, gull'd and scorn'd, because they too were blind,
Why, let them have their pound of flesh—for that is in the bond—
But woe to them if they but take a half hair's-breadth beyond!

Is water running in our veins? Do we remember still
Old Plymouth rock, and Lexington, and glorious Bunker Hill?
The debt we owe our fathers' graves? and to the yet unborn,
Whose heritage ourselves must make a thing of pride or scorn?

Gray Plymouth rock hath yet a tongue, and Concord is not dumb,
And voices from our fathers' graves, and from the future come;
They call on us to stand our ground, they charge us still to be
Not only free from chains ourselves, but foremost to make free!

The homespun mail by mothers wove, that erst so freely met
The British steel, clothes hearts as warm with Pilgrim virtues yet,
Come, Brethren, up! Come, Mothers, cheer your sons once more to go
Forth to a nobler battlefield than with our olden foe!

Come, grasp your ancient buckler, gird on your ancient sword,
Let freedom be your bastion, your armory God's word,
Shout “God for our New-England!” and smite them hip and thigh,
The cursed race of Amalek, whose armor is a lie!

They fight against the law of God, the sacred human heart,
One charge from Massachusetts, and their counsels fall apart!
Rock the old Cradle yet once more! let Faneuil Hall send forth
The anger of true-hearted men, the lightning of the North!

Awake, New-England! While you sleep the foes advance their lines,
Already on your stronghold's wall their bloody banner shines,
Awake! and hurl them back again in terror and despair,
The time has come for earnest deeds, we've not a man to spare!

ANTI-TEXAS

[_]

Written on Occasion of the Convention in Faneuil Hall, January 29, 1845

O spirit of the noble Past, when the old Bay State was free,
When her soil was uncontaminate from Berkshire to the sea,
When her sons beneath a foreign sky could answer bold and loud
Of the land that held their fathers' bones within her bosom proud,—

O, for a moment, wake again! rise from thy ancient deep,
Where, in their waving sea-weed shrouds, are swung to dreamless sleep
Her tawny-visaged mariners, within whatever nook
Old Ocean with his moaning surge in farthest seas hath shook!

Awake! arise! O, come again, called up from every sod
Where the moss-gray headstones cluster round the humble house of God,
Where rest the stern old Pilgrims, each little hamlet's pride,
Now, for the first time, sleeping with no weapon by their side!

O, come from where the same good blood, sworn foe to slavery still,
Came oozing through the homespun frock on that world-famous Hill,
And choked his voice whose last faint prayer was for his country's health,—
From being slave or making slave God save the Commonwealth!

O, come from every battle-field, from every famous scene,
Where any blood for Freedom shed hath made the grass more green,
Where, if there be one darker spot and greener than the rest,
It marks where Pilgrim blood hath flowed from a Massachusetts breast!

Rouse! for the Massachusetts men are crowding, one and all,
To look at the corpse of Freedom, where she lies in Faneuil Hall,
Where she lies in her cradle stark and stiff, with death-damp on her brow,
Though cravens would have us think her heart beat never so strong as now!

From clanging forge, from humming mill, from work-shop and from loom,
From ploughing land and ploughing sea, from student's lonely room,
They're coming with the will in their eyes, the Puritan-hearted men,—
At sound of their footsteps, the blood shall rush to Freedom's cheek again!

Not now, as in the olden time, with braced-up hearts they come,
While King Street echoes jarringly the roll of British drum;

Not now prepared to grasp the sword, and snatch the firelock down
From where it had hung since the old French war, with dust and cobwebs brown;—

They're coming but to speak one word, they're coming but to say,—
“Poor minions of the tyrant's cause, your grovelling hearts obey!
But, hear it, North, and hear it, South, and hear it, East and West,
We will not help you bind your slaves! In God's name, we protest!”

And, though all other deeds of thine, dear Father-land, should be
Washed out, like writing upon sand, by Time's encroaching sea,
That single word shall stand sublime, nor perish with the rest,—
“Though the whole world sanction slavery, in God's name, we protest!”

If hand and foot we must be bound by deeds our fathers signed,
And must be cheated, gulled, and scorned because they too were blind,
Why, let them have their pound of flesh,—for that is in the bond,
But woe to them, if they but take a half-hair's breadth beyond!

Is water running in our veins? Do we remember still
Old Plymouth rock, and Lexington, and glorious Bunker Hill?
The debt we owe our fathers' graves, and to the yet unborn,
Whose heritage ourselves must make a thing of pride or scorn?

Gray Plymouth rock hath yet a tongue, and Concord is not dumb,
And voices from our fathers' graves and from the future come;
They call on us to stand our ground, they charge us still to be
Not only free from chains ourselves, but foremost to make free!

If we must stand alone, what then? the honor shall be more;—
But we can never stand alone, while heaven still arches o'er,
While there's a God to worship, a devil to be denied:
The good and true of every age stand with us side by side!

Or, if it must be, stand alone! and stronger we shall grow
With every coward that deserts to join the tyrant foe;
Let wealth and trade and empire go for what the dross is worth,
One man that stands for right outweighs the guilt of all the earth.

No, if the old Bay State were sunk, and, as in days of yore,
One single ship within her sides the hope of Freedom bore,
Run up again the pine-tree flag, and on the chainless sea
That flag should mark, where'er it waved, an island of the free!

A MYSTICAL BALLAD

I

The sunset scarce had dimmed away
Into the twilight's doubtful gray;
One long cloud o'er the horizon lay,
'Neath which, a streak of bluish white
Wavered between the day and night;
Over the pine-trees on the hill
The trembly evening star did thrill,
And the new moon, with slender rim,
Through the elm arches gleaming dim,
Filled memory's chalice to the brim.

II

On such an eve the heart doth grow
Full of surmise, and scarce can know
If it be now or long ago,
Or if indeed it doth exist;—
A wonderful, enchanted mist
From the new moon doth wander out,
Wrapping all things in mystic doubt,
So that this world doth seem untrue,
And all our fancies to take hue
From some life ages since gone through.

III

The maiden sat and heard the flow
Of the west wind, so soft and low
The leaves scarce quivered to and fro;
Unbound, her heavy golden hair
Rippled across her bosom bare,
Which gleamed with thrilling snowy white
Far through the magical moonlight:
The breeze rose with a rustling swell,

And from afar there came the smell
Of a long-forgotten lily-bell.

IV

The dim moon rested on the hill,
But silent, without thought or will,
Where sat the dreamy maiden still;
And now the moon's tip, like a star,
Drew down below the horizon's bar;
To her black noon the night hath grown,
Yet still the maiden sits alone,
Pale as a corpse beneath a stream,
And her white bosom still doth gleam
Through the deep midnight like a dream.

V

Cloudless the morning came and fair,
And lavishly the sun doth share
His gold among her golden hair,
Kindling it all, till slowly so
A glory round her head doth glow;
A withered flower is in her hand,
That grew in some far distant land,
And, silently transfiguréd,
With wide, calm eyes, and undrooped head,
They found the stranger-maiden dead.

VI

A youth, that morn, 'neath other skies,
Felt sudden tears burn in his eyes,
And his heart throng with memories;
All things without him seemed to win
Strange brotherhood with things within,
And he forever felt that he
Walked in the midst of mystery,
And thenceforth, why, he could not tell,
His heart would curdle at the smell
Of his once cherished lily-bell.

VII

Something from him had passed away;
Some shifting trembles of clear day,
Through starry crannies in his clay,

Grew bright and steadfast, more and more,
Where all had been dull earth before;
And, through these chinks, like him of old,
His spirit converse high did hold
With clearer loves and wider powers,
That brought him dewy fruits and flowers
From far Elysian groves and bowers.

VIII

Just on the farthest bound of sense,
Unproved by outward evidence,
But known by a deep influence
Which through our grosser clay doth shine
With light unwaning and divine,
Beyond where highest thought can fly
Stretcheth the world of Mystery,—
And they not greatly overween
Who deem that nothing true hath been
Save the unspeakable Unseen.

IX

One step beyond life's work-day things,
One more beat of the soul's broad wings,
One deeper sorrow, sometimes brings
The spirit into that great Vast
Where neither future is nor past;
None knoweth how he entered there,
But, waking, finds his spirit where
He thought an angel could not soar,
And, what he called false dreams before,
The very air about his door.

X

These outward seemings are but shows
Whereby the body sees and knows;
Far down beneath, forever flows
A stream of subtlest sympathies
That make our spirits strangely wise
In awe, and fearful bodings dim
Which, from the sense's outer rim,
Stretch forth beyond our thought and sight,
Fine arteries of circling light,
Pulsed outward from the Infinite.

NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1844

A Fragment

The night is calm and beautiful; the snow
Sparkles beneath the clear and frosty moon
And the cold stars, as if it took delight
In its own silent whiteness; the hushed earth
Sleeps in the soft arms of the embracing blue,
Secure as if angelic squadrons yet
Encamped about her, and each watching star
Gained double brightness from the flashing arms
Of winged and unsleeping sentinels.
Upward the calm of infinite silence deepens,
The sea that flows between high heaven and earth,
Musing by whose smooth brink we sometimes find
A stray leaf floated from those happier shores,
And hope, perchance not vainly, that some flower,
Which we had watered with our holiest tears,
Pale blooms, and yet our scanty garden's best,
O'er the same ocean piloted by love,
May find a haven at the feet of God,
And be not wholly worthless in his sight.

O, high dependence on a higher Power,
Sole stay for all these restless faculties
That wander, Ishmael-like, the desert bare
Wherein our human knowledge hath its home,
Shifting their light-framed tents from day to day,
With each new-found oasis, wearied soon,
And only certain of uncertainty!
O, mighty humbleness that feels with awe,
Yet with a vast exulting feels, no less,
That this huge Minster of the Universe,
Whose smallest oratries are glorious worlds,
With painted oriels of dawn and sunset;
Whose carved ornaments are systems grand,
Orion kneeling in his starry niche,
The Lyre whose strings give music audible
To holy ears, and countless splendors more,
Crowned by the blazing Cross high-hung o'er all;
Whose organ music is the solemn stops
Of endless Change breathed through by endless Good;

Whose choristers are all the morning stars;
Whose altar is the sacred human heart
Whereon Love's candles burn unquenchably,
Trimmed day and night by gentle-handed Peace;
With all its arches and its pinnacles
That stretch forever and forever up,
Is founded on the silent heart of God,
Silent, yet pulsing forth exhaustless life
Through the least veins of all created things.

Fit musings these for the departing year;
And God be thanked for such a crystal night
As fills the spirit with good store of thoughts,
That, like a cheering fire of walnut, crackle
Upon the hearth-stone of the heart, and cast
A mild home-glow o'er all Humanity!
Yes, though the poisoned shafts of evil doubts
Assail the skyey panoply of Faith,
Though the great hopes which we have had for man,
Foes in disguise, because they based belief
On man's endeavor, not on God's decree,—
Though these proud-visaged hopes, once turned to fly,
Hurl backward many a deadly Parthian dart
That rankles in the soul and makes it sick
With vain regret, nigh verging on despair,—
Yet, in such calm and earnest hours as this,
We well can feel how every living heart
That sleeps to-night in palace or in cot,
Or unroofed hovel, or which need hath known
Of other homestead than the arching sky,
Is circled watchfully with seraph fires;
How our own erring will it is that hangs
The flaming sword o'er Eden's unclosed gate,
Which gives free entrance to the pure in heart,
And with its guarding walls doth fence the meek.

Sleep then, O Earth, in thy blue-vaulted cradle,
Bent over always by thy mother Heaven!
We all are tall enough to reach God's hand,
And angels are no taller: looking back
Upon the smooth wake of a year o'erpast,
We see the black clouds furling, one by one,
From the advancing majesty of Truth,

And something won for Freedom, whose least gain
Is as a firm and rock-built citadel
Wherefrom to launch fresh battle on her foes;
Or, leaning from the time's extremest prow,
If we gaze forward through the blinding spray,
And dimly see how much of ill remains,
How many fetters to be sawn asunder
By the slow toil of individual zeal,
Or haply rusted by salt tears in twain,
We feel, with something of a sadder heart,
Yet bracing up our bruised mail the while,
And fronting the old foe with fresher spirit,
How great it is to breathe with human breath,
To be but poor foot-soldiers in the ranks
Of our old exiled king, Humanity;
Encamping after every hard-won field
Nearer and nearer Heaven's happy plains.

Many great souls have gone to rest, and sleep
Under this armor, free and full of peace:
If these have left the earth, yet Truth remains,
Endurance, too, the crowning faculty
Of noble minds, and Love, invincible
By any weapons; and these hem us round
With silence such that all the groaning clank
Of this mad engine men have made of earth
Dulls not some ears for catching purer tones,
That wander from the dim surrounding vast,
Or far more clear melodious prophecies,
The natural music of the heart of man,
Which by kind Sorrow's ministry hath learned
That the true sceptre of all power is love
And humbleness the palace-gate of truth.
What man with soul so blind as sees not here
The first faint tremble of Hope's morning-star,
Foretelling how the God-forged shafts of dawn,
Fitted already on their golden string,
Shall soon leap earthward with exulting flight
To thrid the dark heart of that evil faith
Whose trust is in the clumsy arms of Force,
The ozier hauberk of a ruder age?
Freedom! thou other name for happy Truth,

Thou warrior-maid, whose steel-clad feet were never
Out of the stirrup, nor thy lance uncouched,
Nor thy fierce eye enticed from its watch,
Thou hast learned now, by hero-blood in vain
Poured to enrich the soil which tyrants reap;
By wasted lives of prophets, and of those
Who, by the promise in their souls upheld,
Into the red arms of a fiery death
Went blithely as the golden-girdled bee
Sinks in the sleepy poppy's cup of flame;
By the long woes of nations set at war,
That so the swollen torrent of their wrath
May find a vent, else sweeping off like straws
The thousand cobweb threads, grown cable-huge
By time's long-gathered dust, but cobwebs still,
Which bind the Many that the Few may gain
Leisure to wither by the drought of ease
What heavenly germs in their own souls were sown;—
By all these searching lessons thou hast learned
To throw aside thy blood-stained helm and spear
And with thy bare brow daunt the enemy's front,
Knowing that God will make the lily stalk,
In the soft grasp of naked Gentleness,
Stronger than iron spear to shatter through
The sevenfold toughness of Wrong's idle shield.

THE HAPPY MARTYRDOM

It is not that the wicked hate,
And that the foolish ones deride,
It is not that so long we wait
To see our Master glorified;—
Let hatred, scorn, and sorrow come,
These do not make our martyrdom.

Father! we know our cause is Thine;
Though every earthly hope departs,
We ask of Thee no clearer sign
Than the sweet promise in our hearts:
Error may win the world's applause,—
Peace watches with the righteous cause.

And, if this blessing Thou hast given,
Why should we heed the bigot's scorn?
He cannot bar the gates of Heaven,
Nor bribe the sunset or the morn
Their consolation to deny,
Because his soul is niggardly.

Love, Faith, and Peace, Thy lilies three,
Bloom on a single heart's frail stem
That dares Truth's unpaid bondman be;—
Father! what lack we, having them?
Though unbelief's bleak winter freeze,
Thy quiet sunshine fences these.

Then, Lord, what martyrdom have we,
Whose pride of self grows less and less,
Who, from a vain world's din, can flee
Into thy guarded silentness,
Content, if we, from year to year,
May save mankind a single tear?

And yet what pang so sharp as this,—
To see our brother sit in night,
Shut out and exiled from the bliss
Of giving all to serve the Right?
To see the seed thy hand hath sown
With the World's darnels overgrown?

To see the Church hold up Thy Book
To keep thy light from bursting in?
To see Thy priests with patience brook,
For the rich sinner's sake, the sin?
To see the red-eyed vengeance creep
Upon our nation in its sleep?

O, let these make our faith more strong,
And make our hope more sure and high;
Except our brother do us wrong,
How could'st Thou teach us charity?
Except we feel our utter weakness,
How could'st Thou strengthen us with meekness?

Still give us trials such as these,
That we may learn to lean on Thee;
Still humble us, till, by degrees,

Proof against self our mail may be;
So shall peace, hope, and patience come
Seven-fold from this our martyrdom.

AN EPIGRAM,

On Certain Conservatives

In olden days men's ears were docked
For thinking, and for other crimes;
And now, some worthies overstocked
With these commodities are shocked
At the false mercy of the times,
Which spoils their chance of being shortened
In their own feature most important.

NOW IS ALWAYS BEST

Dreamy river of the Past,
Flowing into darkness slowly,
Many a blossom I have cast
On thy waters, now made holy
By an idle melancholy;
Give me but a leaflet back,
Though quite wilted, ere thy track
Shall be lost in midnight wholly!
Give me one, I ask no more,
Though it be but from the store
Of some childish, by-gone folly!

Ah me! in a heavy mood,
Such as I to-night am bearing,
Any thing that's past is good;
All the present is but caring,
All the future more despairing,
And the past is sweet alone,
Where, although the sun be gone,
Half the sky is warm with wearing
His last kiss, and in the East
A faint glow, of lights the least,
Tells that moon-rise is preparing.

When was ever joy like thine,
Whose memory, even, is juvenescent?
Then my blood was more than wine,
Then I slumbered like a peasant,
Then my hope was like a crescent
That could never come to full,
Then, if ever, life looked dull,
Dulness must for once be pleasant,
Then my heart so lightly beat
That the sunshine seemed more sweet
Even for being evanescent.

Idle fancies! would I change
The hard present, with its swinking,
With its hopes of broader range,
Past and Future strangely linking
By their privilege of thinking,—
Would I change it for their Old,
Which, for all its cups of gold,
Gives us but poor dregs for drinking?
Would I change it for the past?
Make ease first, and labor last?
Out on such unmanly shrinking!

Mine the Present! That is best,
Let what will have gone before it;
Here my heart shall build her nest,
With green leaves to rustle o'er it;
When there's sunshine, she shall store it
As the moss does, 'gainst the hour
When the clouds come into power,
And from her own garners pour it
All around, until the sun
Come again, ere half's outrun,
And with tenfold grace restore it.

After both are over and gone,
What care I for sun or shower?
While there's earth to stand upon,
Spite of both the heart can flower;
In herself is all her power;
Fancy, too, can build a home
Higher than where change can come,

And the soul hath still her dower
Of high faith and purpose vast,
Where, though earth in night be cast,
She waits firm as in a tower.

ORPHEUS

I

Earth, I have seen thy face,
And looked upon it so,
That what before was barren of all grace,
Did with delight o'erflow.

II

So generous was my glance,
So kingly and so free,
O, mother Earth, thy wo-worn countenance
Lit up for love of me.

III

I looked as doth the sun
Who leaps up, and, behold,
The dark and shaggy hill-tops, one by one,
Beneath his gaze turn gold.

IV

The largess of mine eye
On humblest things I poured,
And still, the more I scattered lavishly,
The fuller grew my hoard.

V

O, Heaven's o'erfolding blue!
I had not loved thee long
Ere royal shapes of gods did glimmer through
And deepen all my song.

VI

Thence leaned the golden-haired
Apollo and the rest,

The forms of power and grace that long had shared
The worship of my breast.

VII

They seemed but dim at first
Till, by my love made wise,
I saw them in all higher moods, and durst
Face their strength-giving eyes.

VIII

From me my brethren learned
To name them, and to praise
One sunlike god, that in calm centre burned,
And shot forth many rays.

IX

Thy love, Eurydice,
To me was shield and helm,
And, when thou wentest forth, it was the key
That oped the spirit-realm.

X

Then did I know at last
What I had dreamed before,
What the tried heart would patiently forecast—
New life when this is o'er.

XI

What hope had argued long
Thereof brought sorrow proof,
And heights of calm that erst hemmed in my song
No longer loomed aloof.

XII

O, Earth, I roam again
Thy hills and woods and glades;
Thy oceans heave, thy forests wave in vain;
Thou art the land of shades!

XIII

Where my beloved is,
And whither now I go,
There only is the solid form of bliss
Whose shadow here is wo.

XIV

Earth, thou hast lent me much
Yet thine is all the debt—
For, where my heedless feet have chanced to touch,
The spot is holy yet.

AN EXTRACT

Force never yet gained one true victory:
The outward man, by pike and ball o'er-argued,
Bends low his politic will; but still, within,
The absolute Man, on whom the basis rest,
Deep under-ground, of the infrangible State,
Stands up defiant, plotting loyalty
To one poor banished, homeless, hunted thought,
The dethroned image of a native land.

Never was city-wall so strong as Peace;
This, founded sure on the soul's primitive rock,
Smiles back upon the baffled engineer;
The mine at its foundations tugs in vain;
An olive-wreath, stretched harmlessly across
Its open gates, enchants all enemies,
So that the trumpet baulks the knitted lips
That would have jarred it with the trampling charge,
And, hushing back its hoarse and quarrelsome voice,
Like a disbanded soldier when he sees
The nestled hamlet of his unstained youth,
With its slim steeple quivering in the sun,
Pipes with repentant note the gay recall.

What hath the conqueror for all his toil?
So many men from men turned murderers;
So many spoiled in the fierce apprenticeship;
So many sacred images of God,
Sons, fathers, brothers, husbands, trampled down
Into the red mud of the plashy field;
So many vultures gorged with human flesh;
So many widows made, so many orphans;
So many cinders for so many homes;
So many caps flung up as there are fools;
And, when his shattering and ungoverned course
Is run at length, he drops, a mass inert,
Like a spent cannon-ball which the child's foot
Spurns at in play,—what further need of him?
Peace will not brook to have her snowy leaves
Turned rudely by those crimson-smutching thumbs;
The smooth civilian elbows him aside;
Like an old armor he is hung in the hall,
For idle men to count the dints upon,
A buttress for the siper's [sic] hanging-bridge.

And for his country what hath this man conquered?
A kindred people's everlasting hate,
The bloody drain of untamed provinces;
Those are ill crops whose sickle is the sword.
And for himself? I never heard that any
Dared knock at Heaven's gate with his reeking sword,
Or lift the next life's latch with bloody hands.

The merry plough-boy whistling to his team,
The noisy mason and the carpenter
Efface the ruinous letters wherewith he
Essayed to carve an everlasting name.
The tyrannous lion preys upon the lamb;
Men fear him and install him king of beasts,
Yet prize the wool above the ravening claws.

THE EX-MAYOR'S CRUMBS OF CONSOLATION: A PATHETIC BALLAD

Two Governors once a letter writ
To the Mayor of a distant city,
And told him a paper was published in it,
That was telling the truth, and 'twas therefore fit
That the same should be crushed as dead as a nit
By an Aldermanic Committee;
“Don't say so?” says Otis,
I'll inquire if so 'tis;
Dreadful! telling the truth? what a pity!

“It can't be the Atlas, that's perfectly clear,
And of course it isn't the Advertiser,
'Tis out of the Transcript's appropriate sphere,
The Post is above suspicion; oh dear,
To think of such accidents happening here!
I hoped that our people were wiser:
While we're going,” says Otis,
“Faustissimis votis,
How very annoying such flies are!”

So, without more ado, he inquired all round
Among people of wealth and standing;
But wealth looked scornful and standing frowned,
At last in a garret with smoke imbrowned,
The conspirators all together he found,—
One man with a coloured boy banding;
“'Pon my word,” says Otis,
“Decidedly low 'tis,”
As he groped for the stairs on the landing.

So he wrote to the Governors back agen,
And told them 'twas something unworthy of mention,
That 'twas only a single man with a pen,
And a font of types in a sort of a den,
A person unknown to Aldermen,
And, of course, beneath attention;
“And therefore,” wrote Otis
Annuentibus totis,
“There's no reason for apprehension.”—

But one man with a pen is a terrible thing,
With a head and heart behind it,
And this one man's words had an ominous ring,
That somehow in peoples' ears would cling;—
“But the mob's uncorrupted; they've eggs to fling;
So 'tis hardly worth while to mind it;
As for Freedom,” says Otis,
“I've given her notice
To leave town, in writing, and underlined it.”

But the one man's helper grew into a sect,
That laughed at all efforts to choke or scare it,
Old parties before it were scattered and wrecked
And respectable folks knew not what to expect;—
“'Tis some consolation, at least to reflect,
And will help us I think to bear it,
That all this,” says Otis,
Though by no means in votis,
“Began with one man and a boy in a garret.”

THE BURIAL OF THEOBALD

They heard it in the lulls of the blast,
In the pauses strange and dreary
That come when a wave of the storm has past,
Through the hollow midnight void and vast,
They heard the plaint of the Miserere.

Up the mountain-side came a sound of wail
Wavering and struggling against the gale
Gathering to a choral swell,
Blown by the tyrannous gust away,
Dropped full-toned in the sheltered dell,
Over the sharp cliff whirled in spray;
One shepherd to another called,
“'Tis the burial-chant of Theobald,”
Then listened to catch the faint reply,
“May he plead for our souls with the saints on high!”

In the Abbey Church the body lay,
And the monks kept watch in turn
That holy candles in due array
At head and feet should burn.

“Hush! heard you naught?” whispered brother Paul,
And fearfully glanced behind
Tow'rd the darkness that seemed to thicken and fall
Nearer and nearer, and shift and crawl
With weird shapes and faces,—“'Tis only the wind,”

Muttered brother Giles, his awe dissembling,
But the shake of his beads betrayed his trembling.

As the lumberers' log-fire melts the snow
And slowly bares its circle of ground,
So the flame of the candles seemed melting slow
Through the chancel's deep-drifted gloom profound,
And figures of saints peered stony and grim
Round the shivering halo's outer rim,
Now hid in their niches, now starting out,
As the wind tossed the island of light about.

“There! there!” gasped Paul, “it sounded again.
Something between a groan and a sigh!”
They listened, but only heard the rain
Dashed spattering against the oriel-pane
By a flap of the storm's wing rushing by.

There are two to knoll the bell have gone,
For the sacristan dared not go alone,
And in many a winter evening cold,
In after years they have both of them told
How behind them, over the floor,
They heard the patting of clammy feet
And the trail, as it were of a winding-sheet
As far as the outer door.

The censers sweet meanwhile were swung
And the dirge for the holy dead was sung;
“God rest his soul!” said the Abbot then;
Much monkish blood was running chill,
As the roof gave back the words agen,
And all once more was still.

“Amen!” and the lank corpse sate upright
Upon the bier, the cerements white
Fell backward as it raised
Its shrunk arm in the ghastly light
And on the Abbot gazed;
Ice crept round the roots of the Abbot's hair,
As he met the dead man's frozen stare.

The blue lips stir not, but the words
Upon the darkness fall,
As flit the shapes of twilight birds
From some long-ruined hall.

“Justo judicio,” thus groaned he,
“Dei damnatus sum,”
And then sank backward silently,
To be forever dumb.

He lived a lone and prayerful life,
Penance was his and gnawing fast,
Much wrestling with an inward strife
To win the crown at last;
Full oft his rebel flesh had known
Sharp scourge-sores festering to the bone.

No sound of earth could pierce his cell,
He sought not fame nor pelf,
Below he saw the fires of hell,
And prayed and scourged and fasted well
Therefrom to save himself;
His heart he starved and mortified;
Love knocked and turned away denied.

Such graces rare, and such an end
God grant us all our lives to mend!
Was not a monk among the whole
Could read this riddle for his soul;
Some hinted at a secret crime,
A vow unpaid, a penance broke,
But clearer views and more sublime
Prevailed, and all agreed in time,
'Twas Satan, not their saint, that spoke.

KING RETRO

I

There lived once, and perhaps lives still,
A monarch brave and mighty,
A prince of energy and will
Compact as lignum vitæ,
Who, among other treasures great,
Whereof he had profusion,
(As well beseemed his birth and state),
Possessed an Institution.

II

A King's whole outfit was, years back,
A people and a saddle;
Enough if he could spur and whack,
Although his brains were addle;
But now these good old times are gone,
And kings, grown wisely heedful,
Find that, to keep their saddles on,
A bridle too is needful.

III

Just now 'tis kingcraft's highest art
Itself to bit and bridle,
Yet kings will sometimes set their heart
Upon a whimsy idle;
One for a brimstone match stakes all,
For a frail woman's kiss one,
One won't let last year's dead leaves fall,
And so it was with this one.

IV

Although his hobby asked no good
To give it expedition,
But bare him straight along the road
To double-distilled perdition,
Although his revenues incurred
An hourly diminution,
His Trojan horse he whipped and spurred,
And blessed his institution.

V

Riches have been but flighty things,
From our day up to Adam,
But, if a treasure e'er had wings,
This institution had 'em;
Or rather, what was just as good
As wings, however supple,
It had ('tis true by holy rood!)
Of legs three million couple.

VI

Whereof each being stout and tough
As those of Bishop Burnet,
Its share of body would take off
Forgetting to return it,
And, what was worse, both clothes and shoes
Went off with every biped,
For whose evasive, larcenous use,
The monarch (with a sigh) paid.

VII

Our king, but that his eyes were dim,
Had thought it quite a blessing
To see his ruin leaving him
And cheap reform progressing,
To lose this rust which nothing did
But eat into his riches,
And of this hobby-horse get rid
Which wore out all his breeches.

VIII

But some his title to the thing
Denied, or picked a hole in it,
Nay, even hinted that the king
His grandfather had stolen it,
And when the wandering pieces got
Beyond his kingdom's borders,
The neighbor Powers said, “Go to pot!”
To all his threats and orders.

IX

This made his kingship very wroth,
He growled like baited Bruin,

Swearing a great and solemn oath
That he would have his Ruin;
And, when his Council next time sate,
His fist he struck the board on
And bade them to prepare him straight
A sanitary cordon.

X

“Liege friends,” (they all hummed vivat rex!)
“I wish your calm solution
Of what disease infects the legs
Of this my institution;
It must and shall be put to rout,
And all of you I'll gibbet if—
That is—I'll thank you to make out
Some penal law prohibitive.

XI

“Although my honoured sire and those
Who lived and reigned before him,
Have been a tariff's deadly foes,
Both fixed and ad valorem,
Yet, rather than these insults bear,
I will impose a tariff,
Which whoso breaks shall straightway wear
A neckcloth à la sheriff!”

XII

Then rose the Minister of Law
And begged he might disclose his—
“Well,” growled the king, “why hem and haw?
Let's have your diagnosis!”
“This epidemic so malign,
I think, if I might venture I
Should say bore every mark and sign
Of chronic Nineteenth Century.”

XIII

“That's the disease beyond a doubt,”
Broke in the king, “that's firstly,
But secondly's how keep it out?
And that does pose me curstly;”

It bursts in like another flood
And drowns all earth in troubles,
Thrones that since Noah's time have stood
It trifles with like bubbles;

XIV

“Nay, that huge image of men's fears,
That spiritual domination
Clamped down with sixteen hundred years
Of iron association,
It has torn up (unless, indeed,
There's taken place of late a
Recoil) and tossed it like a weed
To crumble at Gaëta.”

XV

“First,” said the minister, “we ought
To fix our scale of duties;
Old forms, while Speech is free and Thought,
Are not worth my cast shoe-ties;”—
“Well, tax 'em, then,” the king replied,
“If taxing will prevent 'em;
Say, ad valorem (you decide)
Fifty or so per centum.”

XVI

“May't please you, as those articles
Are quoted now, a higher
Rate will be needed, for all else
Is squirting on hell-fire;
For now-a-days they're both so poor,
So in the making blundered,
That our percent to make all sure,
Must be some fifty hundred.

XVII

“Then there's a book which now-a-days
Is turned into a libel,”—
“Its name? Who wrote it?” “Please your grace,
I mean—a—a—the Bible.”
“The what? O, atheistic wound!
O, stab in part most vital!
Why, on that Book, you know, we found
Our Institution's title.”

XVIII

“Yes, but 'tis made a nuisance now
By Fourierites and fanatics,
Creatures who live, one knows not how,
On bran bread up in attics.”
“Well, then, if fiends in human shape
Their vile eyes have intruded
Upon the text, there's no escape,
The Book must be excluded!

XIX

“And yet it harrows my soul's core
To lose this Widow Cruise's
Pitcher, this never-emptied store
Of precedent for abuses;
Used prudently, it does no harm,
And, given in cautious doses,
It is a safe and sovereign charm
To lead men by their noses.”

XX

“There's yet one more new-fangled thing
That's always mischief hatching,
And, what is worse (God save the King!)
'Tis desperately catching;
They call it Light,”—“By all that's good,
Keep that out, Mister Minister,
Of all the new-loosed Satan's brood
Not one is half so sinister.”

XXI

Here rose an ancient Counsellor
With all men's reverence valanced,
A soul 'twixt After and Before,
In perfect quiet balanced;
When Memory, over ninety years
Can make her retrogressions,
Experience, manifold appears
But backward-looking Prescience.

XXII

He, rising, stood there, hoar and blind,
'Mid much applausive murmur,

Seeking some staff wherewith his mind
Might safelier tread and firmer,
Then straightening, seemed to lay one hand
Upon the Future's shoulder,
One on the Past's, and so to stand
Majestically bolder.

XXIII

“What must that be, O King, think yet,
Which thou are thus protecting,
With every fence around it set
Its weakness more detecting?
All good things strike firm roots below,
The whirlwind with them wages
A fruitless war, and can but blow
Their seeds along the Ages.

XXIV

“What shall thy safeguard be against
Those forces ever living
Whose ordered march thou marr'st and pain'st
Thus vainly with them striving?
Can'st thou shut Love out? Can'st thou bar
Those endless aspirations
Which, upward from the things that are
Lead poets first, then nations?

XXV

“Thou may'st exclude the written Word
And muzzle dead Apostles,
But can'st thou gag the mocking bird,
The robins and the throstles?
These by the lonely rice swamp sing
Or 'mid the bursting cotton,
And tidings of the Father bring
To those by Man forgotten.

XXVI

“The Letter's narrow grave no more
Confines the heart of Jesus;
From whip-scarred flesh the soul can soar
To him who made and sees us;

The air we breathe takes Freedom's part,
Prompts wanderings and departures,
Filled with the spirit and the heart
Of prophets, saints and martyrs.

XXVII

“Your tariff may be strong and tight,
But, if you keep out Heaven, you
Must have men swifter than the light
For officers of revenue;
It floods, it bursts, and eddies in,
Or, on the wings of silence,
Floats down o'er walls of want and sin,
In spite of watchful violence.

XXVIII

“Call back, thou may'st, the martyr age,
Heap faggots for the firing,
Yet think against your futile rage
What traitors are conspiring;
Still shines the sun, still roves the wind,
And, since the earth had motion,
The stars to human hearts have shined
Hope, courage, and devotion.

XXIX

“Against the bestial and the false,
The Kingdom of Unreason,
All Nature gathers force and falls
At once to plotting treason;
Hush every voice you start at now,
Bring Slavery to perfection,
And every leaf upon the bough
Would whisper insurrection.

XXX

“Put trust, my Liege, while yet you can,
In the soul's inborn beauties;
Write first your debt to brother-man,
Upon your scale of duties,
Or keep all dark and close, to work
Brewing explosive vapour,
And woe betide, who in that murk
First lights Hope's farthing taper!”

XXXI

He ceased, and straight the King broke out,
Amid much tongue-confusion,
“What! one of us with sneer and doubt
Blaspheme my Institution!
Thou crazy Fawkes, I'll find out soon
A bedlam to clap you in;
Things must be sadly out of tune
If I can't have my Ruin!”

“LADY BIRD, LADY BIRD, FLY AWAY HOME”

Lady Bird, lady bird, fly away home!
Your house is on fire, your children will burn!
Send for the engines, and send for the men,
Perhaps we can put it out agen;
Send for the ladders, and send for the hose,
Perhaps we can put it out, nobody knows;
Sure, nobody's case was ever sadder,
To the nursery-window clap the ladder,
If they are there, and not done brown,
They'll open the window and hopple down!

Splish, splash! fizz and squirt!
All my ‘things’ ruined with water and dirt,
All my new carpets torn to flinders,
Trodden in with mud and cinders!
My mirrors smashed, my bedsteads racked,
My company tea-set chipped and cracked!
Save my child—my carpets and chairs,
And I'll give you leave to burn my heirs,
They are little six-legged, spotted things,
If they have any sense, they'll use their wings;
If they have any sense, they'll use their legs,
Or, at worst, it is easy to lay more eggs.

OUT OF DOORS

'Tis good to be abroad in the sun,
His gifts abide when day is done;

Each thing in nature from his cup
Gathers a several virtue up;
The grace within its being's reach
Becomes the nutriment of each,
And the same life imbibed by all
Makes each most individual:
Here the twig-bending peaches seek
The glow that mantles in their cheek—
Hence comes the Indian-summer bloom
That hazes round the basking plum,
And, from the same impartial light,
The grass sucks green, the lily white.

Like these the soul, for sunshine made,
Grows wan and gracile in the shade,
Her faculties, which God decreed
Various as Summer's dædal breed,
With one sad color are imbued,
Shut from the sun that tints their blood;
The shadow of the poet's roof
Deadens the dyes of warp and woof;
Whate'er of ancient song remains
Has fresh air flowing in its veins,
For Greece and eldest Ind knew well
That out of doors, with world-wide swell
Arches the student's lawful cell.

Away, unfruitful lore of books,
For whose vain idiom we reject
The spirit's mother-dialect,
Aliens among the birds and brooks,
Dull to interpret or believe
What gospels lost the woods retrieve,
Or what the eaves-dropping violet
Reports from God, who walketh yet
His garden in the hush of eve!
Away, ye pedants city-bred,
Unwise of heart, too wise of head,
Who handcuff Art with thus and so,
And in each other's foot-prints tread,
Like those who walk through drifted snow;
Who, from deep study of brick walls
Conjecture of the water-falls,

By six feet square of smoke-stained sky
Compute those deeps that overlie
The still tarn's heaven-anointed eye,
And, in your earthen crucible,
With chemic tests essay to spell
How nature works in field and dell!
Seek we where Shakspeare buried gold?
Such hands no charmed witch-hazel hold;
To beach and rock repeats the sea
The mystic Open Sesame;
Old Greylock's voices not in vain
Comment on Milton's mountain strain,
And cunningly the various wind
Spenser's locked music can unbind.

THE NORTHERN SANCHO PANZA AND HIS VICARIOUS CORK TREE

If any age or any zone
Hath zeal for Christian doctrines shown,
Zeal proved by deeds, not word of mouth,
Sure the North shows it toward the South;
Ere from one cheek the smart hath burned,
The other to the palm is turned;
Soon as the coat is asked for, lo!
The cloak must from our shoulders go;
And now they bid us, for our sins,
To Compromise—what's left? our skins.
Our cheeks, our cloaks, our skins, suppose
They should be some one's else, who knows?
Well, well, we're not our brother's keeper,
And such self-sacrifice is cheaper.

“Brethren,” says Sancho, meekly, “this is
The price we pay for prejudices;
Some views prevailed in Pagan times
Which our more light convert to crimes;
The stranger found the ancient roof
'Gainst every harm a shield of proof,
And even a foe, become a guest,
Was sure of shelter, food and rest;

But, my good friends, this heathen virtue
In its pure form would surely hurt you,
Though, watered well with compromise,
The stomach finds it very nice;
Christ came, as Paul's Epistles state,
The Ethnic law to abrogate,
Which means—that is—in short, the fact is
Virtue is good in all but practice,
And we have all of us gone wrong,
I almost blush to say how long.
We must obey God's laws, no doubt,
As fast as we can find them out,
That truth is marked by every steeple—
But if we are God's chosen people?
If Cuffee here is just the ram
Jehovah sent to Abraham
In Isaac's stead, by whom is meant
Our party and our ten per cent?

“When the wise men of Gotham found
Their townhouse leaked, they looked around
Some lasting remedy to find
Such as would suit the Gotham mind;
After ten years of speeches, lectures,
Specifications, doubts, conjectures,
And quarrelings among electors,
A very wise and reverend man
Proposed, as all agreed, the plan—
A roof that won't keep out the weather
Had best be torn down altogether;
When we've no roof, 'tis very plain
There'll be no leak to let in rain.

“So we have tried our small concessions,
And given the lie to our professions,
Yet, spite of all our strength and skill,

The South is discontented still;
Now let us no more play the dunce,
But fairly give up all at once,
And fitting penance do, what's more,
For not inventing it before;
My private feelings I surrender,
Although my flesh, like yours, is tender;
Let all the people, far and near,
The thong across my shoulders hear!”

O, generous Sancho, cut and thrash!
The cork-tree will not hurt the lash;
Lay on and spare not, soundly thwack!
Remember that the bark is black;
Keep up the sacrifice, 'tis brave,
When no one feels it but the slave;
Till dooms-day give up all to others,
When all you give up is—your brother's.

A DREAM I HAD

I read one fine evening how Socrates,
Making ready for old Davy's locker at ease,
So grandly contrived a reply to
The reasons and temptings of Crito,
Who urged 't would be acting imbecilely
If, before came from Delos the vessel, he
Did not quickly slip off to Thessaly,
And wait till the fickle Athenians
Had time to get wiser opinions,
Instead of remaining a fixture
Just to drink up the City's vile mixture,
And the, sans his fleshly surtout (Oh
Dreadful!), sneak shivering to Pluto,
Kicked, as 't were, by the general shoe-toe.

Love of life—what a cowardly mocker it is!
But it wasted its breath upon Socrates;
Though he saw Death just lifting the knocker at his
Door, with a stern I must lead ye hence,
Yet he argued so well for obedience
To the law, and showed how on principle
Men must gulp, and not even wince, a pill
Prepared by the rightful authorities,
No matter how dreadful a bore it is,
And how for himself it was proper
(If some friend would lend him a copper
To defray the expenses of Charon,
An abuse he should waive comment there on,
Since he soon should have time, if he wanted it,
To row up the people who granted it),
It was proper—if he but obeyed his
Conscience—to go down to Hades
(Hope, doubtless, threw in some suggestions
How he'd bother the ghosts with his questions),
And fulfil there his proper vocation
As a live note of interrogation;
He, I say, argued all this so strongly
That his friends were convinced they'd done wrongly,
The more since no jailor could them lock
In at night, nor were they to drink hemlock.

Methought 't was a grand thing in Socrates
Thus to sanctify law in Democraties,
And I mused, with my feet on the fender's
Bright rim, about other surrenders
Of self to the infinite Splendors,
And of some to the Darknesses also,
Wondering how people could fall so
As to change a true soul for a sham one,
And become the poor Levites of Gammon,
Making one shame a mere cotyledon
For the seed of another to feed on,
Or rather, like that little dumb bug,
Lifelong rolling pellets of humbug;
And it struck me—would men but consider
Which truly goes highest as bidder
For their services here, God or Satan—
But they will not; our Age is the great one

Of quick returns and small prophets
With no faith in Heavens or Tophets.

Then I thought of those countless epistles,
Flying thick as balloon-seeds from thistles,
Those pleas of the Great Defender's
Where (as boys play at kittledybenders)
One is forced to skim quick o'er the frail ice
Of logic as brittle as Paley's,
Because, if one stop for a moment
To put in a doubt or a comment,
He goes slap through to get a blind seasoning
In the thick mud beneath the thin reasoning.
Well, I bravely went o'er the whole batch (or all
Up to date), and then, as was natural,
Fell asleep, and my brain took to breeding
A dream out of what I'd been reading.

I thought that the sun had just risen
When, I, Crito, went to the prison
To visit (so dreams often whisk us)
The condemned son of old Sophroniscus,
Who somehow was Webster—drest oddly
In a queer want of costume ungodly,
Such as never is seen but on statues
(An invention of sculptors for that use),
No coat, breeches, waistcoat, shirt, hat, shoes,
Just a kind of a sheet flung about him;
Such a garb as was ne'er worn by sane gents,
Save in stone, whether modern or ancients.

Well, Daniel played Socrates nicely,
Talking cheerfully, bravely and wisely,
And spoke of the hemlock precisely
As if any true man would think it
A privilege only to drink it,
And would just as soon wish to say Ah no
To a fiasco of Montepulciano.

The calm sage grew no whit the paler,
When the door creaked and in walked the jailer
With a glass of vile stuff on a waiter;
Unmoved as a Jupiter Stator,

He said, “I regard it as all some
Delicious conservative balsam,
Which to swallow (by proxy) is wholesome—
For the patriot true and self-scorner”—
Just then came a moan from the corner,
And I looked and saw Ellen Craft kneeling,
With a face full of hopeless appealing,
And found that (dreams mix things so drolly)
Daniel did not play Socrates solely;
The talking part—that was his wholly,
And performed with no womanly shrinking;
But as soon as it came to the drinking,
Why, the hemlock was handed to Ellen—
And the roof of my dream-building fell in

ON RECEIVING A PIECE OF FLAX-COTTON

While we, with human rage and heat,
Would make the world forego its ill,
Behold with what unnoticed feet
God's passionless reformers still
Come unaware and have their will.

Tough roots hath profitable wrong
That blunt too long the leveller's axe;
God touches them with naught more strong
Nor sharper than a stem of flax,—
The iron fibres melt as wax.

Thou soft and silken Garrison!
Light as thou liest in my hand,
By thee great marvels shall be done,
For thou shalt snap the Circe-wand
And disenchant the grovelling land.

By many a rushing waterfall
I hear the spindles buzz aloud,
Twining the cords that bind us all;
I see our dear New England bowed
To weave the web of Freedom's shroud.

How quietly upon her side
Doth Fate the hostile force enlist!
Perchance, ere long, with us allied,
Those wheels with every thread they twist
Shall make an Abolitionist.

I hear our pines, with horrent thrill,
Sigh dreading that their doom may be
From 'neath the shade of Bunker Hill,
To bear across the spurning sea
The human flesh-tax of the free.

Come swiftly happy change and bless
Our longing sight before we die;
Set free our pulpit and our press,
Relume the ancient fires that die,
In fallen New England's downcast eye!

Or come in God's own season; swift
In sickly ripeness, stung by wasps;
The hand of God from each good gift
One finger at a time unclasps,
And shuts from him who rashly grasps.

Then let our banyan empire shoot
Such knitted stems as earth ne'er saw,
O'er half a world; and let its root
From Shakspeare's tongue and Alfred's law
The everliving forces draw!

OUR OWN,

His Wanderings and Personal Adventures

Πολλων δ' ανθρωπων ιδην αστεα, και νοον εγνω.
Quae regio in terris NOSTRI non plena laboris?
Full many cities he hath seen and many great men known;
What place on earth but testifies the labors of OUR OWN?

DIGRESSION A

Our Own in mounting Pegasus,
Takes such impetuous stride

That, with a downcome ominous,
He falls o' the other side.

Sirs, Editors of Putnam's (if it's right to use the plural),
I wish to recommend myself to—tooral, looral, looral!
This strikes you as an oddish way of winding up a distich?
As something rather wild, incomprehensible, and mystic?
Well, to confess the truth at once, I'm something new at verses,
No fairy gave me rhymes at birth in Fortunatus-purses;
Rhymes, I opine, like Plato's souls, are born in incompleteness,
Pining, mere bachelors, till they meet their destined linkéd sweetness;
And some men, never finding halves sans those they should be pinned to,
Scrawl rhyme as easily as Jack Frost scrawls rime upon a window:
That's not my luck;—the prior verse, before I've time to think, 's at hand,
While that which ought to marry it plays spinster in my inkstand,
Immovable as the proverb's horse that can both nod and wink stand;
So, having written my first line, and ended it with plural,
I could not light on any mate but Ural, mural, crural,
All very crooked sticks (just try yourselves, good Messieurs Editors,—
When you have turned it twenty ways, you'll own I might have said it worse);
So baffled like poor Nap. the Third, for fear of worse miscarriage,
I sought some friendly assonance, a morganatic marriage;
Failing in that, with Butler's rule I can my weakness bolster,
And 'gainst a lock-less pistol match the flask in t'other holster,
Or, better yet, with Tennyson's authority can cure all,—
If he says tirra-lirra, why mayn't I say tooral-looral?

DIGRESSION B

With foot in stirrup, hand on mane,
Our Own makes prudent pause,
Swings o'er the careful leg again,
And tight the curb-rein draws.

There's naught so hard, Lord Byron says, as getting under way;
The wilted sails droop from the yard, oil-smooth the windless bay,
The tide slips wimpling by, the same that weeks ago, perhaps,
Round coral-reefs in Indian seas, shimmered with whispering lapse;
The same that, sweeping northward still, to Arctic snows may bear
Great leaves, scarce disenchanted yet of drowsy tropic air,
Such as may vex stout Franklin's dreams, where unrelenting lines
Of icepeaks whitening endlessly o'ertop his useless pines;—

The tide slips by and there you lie, the anchor at the peak,
The captain swearing inwardly, the mate with quid in cheek;
There's not a hope of any breeze before, beside, behind,
And, though with ingots laden deep, you cannot raise the wind;
Fair cousins, kissed and bid good-bye, gaze awkward from the pier,
Sorry they wiped their eyes so soon, because their second tear
Declines to fill the other's place; the cambric from the bags
Is taken once again and waved; the slow time drags and dra-a-ags;
He (whom in childhood's guileless prime, you used to lick), your brother,
Spells this exhausted leg, or that, with the exhausted other;
The children go too near the edge, and fuss, and screw, and wriggle;
Tommy's best cap falls overboard and no one dares to giggle;
You strive to make the feeling stay that misted both your eyes,
But thoughts of luggage intervene, and the tired feeling dies;
The farewell, mixed of smiles and tears, so painful-sweet before,
Drawn out into an hour, becomes impertinence and bore,
As if too literal Jove should grant the lovers' prayed-for bliss,
And glue them Siamesely tight in one eternal kiss;
In such case what do captains, even of clippers swift as arrows?
They take a prosy steam-tug till they get beyond the Narrows;
That's what I've done, and, being now safe in the open main,
Set stu'nsails (that is, mend my pen), and take my start again.

PROGRESSION A—THE INVOCATION

He now, with wise spurs so inclined
That each the flank evades,
Nor gives a mettle undesigned,
Invokes two mighty blades.

Sirs, Editors of Putnam's, then, if you indeed be plural,
Or if you the Howadji be, who, sitting crucicrural
(A habit learned in Egypt), through the anaconda coils,
Of his effendi sucks the rare ulemah's fragrant spoils,
And on the best papyrus with a split reed splutters down
An article on Banking that will startle half the town,
(Proving our system all is due to some old Coptic file
Because before that Ramsay reigned, who helped at Babel's pile,
Deposits constantly were made on both banks of the Nile);
Then claps hands languidly (hands lotus-soft) to bring A lad in,
Allah ed deen he calls him—'tis a dyed Milesian clad in

A bloomer bought in Chatham-street and a bandanna turban,
Pure Saracenic in his style like certain cots suburban:—
Or if you Harry Franco be, who, though he e'er so far goes,
Remembers in his secret heart the dear, flat, dull sea's Argos,
And, as a mild suggestion of the customs of Nantucket,
To any kind of elbow-chair prefers an o'erturned bucket;
Who (as the Persian Envoy to old Louis the Magnificent
A turf brought with him piously, that he might always sniff a scent
Of the natale solum) keeps an oilcask in the closet,
(One that has made a v'y'ge, too), lays a harpoon across it,
And with strange rites, left wisely to the fancy of my Reader,
Consults the bunghole's Delphic deeps before he writes a leader;—
Or if you be that gentle youth, so tall and slim and pale,
Who fitted to his Pegasus a Scandinavian Tale,
Who the Pathfinder's leaders made, yet could not find the way
With next-day-after-never to displace our poor to-day,
And nothing met but humbergs, where Charles Fourier (on his slate)
Had cleared the Northwest Passage to a better Social State;—
Or if you be that Moses who, from Modern Egypt's wrecks adust,
Unto their Canaan of Brook Farm the New Lights safely Exodused;
Where life's clean page was never more to be defaced with fresh spots,
As soon as Theory could be made as fattening as the flesh-pots;
Where the new manner, dropt from heaven, should so nerve hand and brain,
That he who nothing did before, should do't as well again;
Where with fresh water from the spring they warmed their stoic lunch,
Biding the time when Fourier said the sea would be milk-punch,
When gold into the public chest like water was to run
For phalansterian beets (that cost two shillings every one),
And Time should wander Ripleying along o'er golden sand,
When forty heads could dig as well as one experienced hand;—
If you are one or all, or if you're ne'er a one of those,
Hear, by what title suits you best, the plan I now propose!

PROGRESSION B LEADING TO DIGRESSION C

Our Own then states his business,
Sets forth the why and how,
Begins in safety to progress
But brings up in a slough.

I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam,
And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam;
But what's my pedigree to you? That I will soon unravel;
I've sucked my Haddam-Eden dry, therefore desire to travel,

And, as a natural consequence, presume I needn't say,
I wish to write some letters home and have those letters***
[I spare the word suggestive of those grim Next thorns that mount,
Clump, clump, the stairways of the brain with—sir, my small account,
That, after every good we gain—Love, Fame, Wealth, Wisdom—still,
As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their little bill,
The garçons in our Café of Life, by dreaming us forgot—
Sitting, like Homer's heroes, full and musing God knows what,—
Till they say, bowing, s'il vous plait, voilà, Messieurs, la note!]
I should not hint at this so soon, but in our callous day,
The tollman Debt, who drops the bar across the world's highway,
Great Cæsar in mid-march would stop if Cæsar could not pay;
Pilgriming's dearer than it was: men cannot travel now
Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon a simple vow;
Nay, as long back as Bess's time, when Walsingham went over
Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canterbury and Dover
He was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere he quitted land,
He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the knaves in hand:
If I with staff and scallop-shell should try my way to win,
Would Bonifaces quarrel as to who should take me in?
Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on,
And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison?
I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true;
'Tis out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new:
The question boath for men and meates longe voyages yt beginne
Lyes in a notshell, rather saye lyes in a case of tinne.
But, though men may not travel now, as in the middle ages,
With self-sustaining retinues of little gilt-edged pages,
Yet one may manage pleasantly, where'er he likes to roam,
By sending his small pages (at so much per small page) home;
And if a staff and scallop-shell won't serve so well as then,
Our outlay is about as small—just paper, ink, and pen.
Be thankful! Humbugs never die, more than the wandering Jew;
Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, slink for a while from view,
Then take an alias, change the sign, and the old trade renew;
Indeed, 'tis wondrous how each Age, though laughing at the Past,
Insists on having its tight shoe made on the same old last;
How it is sure its system would break up at once without

The bunnian which it will believe hereditary gout;
How it takes all its swans for geese, nay, stranger yet and sadder,
Sees in its treadmill's fruitless jog a heavenward Jacob's-ladder,
Shouts—Lo, the Shining Heights are reached! one moment more aspire!
Trots into cramps its poor, dear legs, gets never an inch the higher,
And, like the others, ends with pipe and mug beside the fire.
There, 'tween each doze, it whiffs and sips and watches with a sneer
The green recruits that trudge and sweat where it had swinked whilere,
And sighs to think this soon spent zeal should be in simple truth
The only interval between old Fogyhood and Youth:
“Well,” thus it muses, “well, what odds? 'Tis not for us to warn;
“'Twill be the same when we are dead, and was ere we were born;
“Without the Treadmill, too, how grind our store of winter's corn?
“Had we no stock, nor twelve per cent. received from Treadmill shares,
“We might. ... but these poor devils at last will get our easy-chairs;
“High aims and hopes have great rewards, they, too, serene and snug,
“Shall one day have their—soothing pipe and their enlivening mug;
“From Adam, empty-handed Youth hath always heard the hum
“Of Good Times Coming, and will hear until the last day come;
“Young ears hear forward, old ones back, and, while the earth rolls on,
“Full-handed Eld shall hear recede the steps of Good Times Gone;
“Ah what a cackle we set up whene'er an egg was laid!
“Cack-cack-cack-cackle! rang around, the scratch for worms was stayed,
“Cut-cut-ca-dah-cut! from this egg the coming cock shall stalk!
“The great New Era dawns, the age of Deeds and not of Talk!
“And every stupid hen of us hugged close his egg of chalk,
“Thought,—sure, I feel life stir within, each day with greater strength,
“I have not sat these years in vain, the world is saved at length;—
“When lo, the chick! from former chicks he differed not a jot,
“But grew and crew and scratched and went, like those before, to pot!”
So muse the dim Emeriti, and, mournful though it be,
I must confess a kindred thought hath sometimes come to me,
Who, though but just of forty turned, have heard the rumorous fame
Of nine and ninety Coming Men, all—coming till they came.
Pure Mephistopheles all this? the vulgar nature jeers;
Good friend, while I was writing it, my eyes were dim with tears;
Thrice happy he who cannot see, or who his eyes can shut,
Life's deepest sorrow is contained in that small word there—But!

See the COMPLEAT AMBASSADOR, 1655, p. 21.

DIGRESSION D

Caught in the mire, he argufies,
Shows how 'twas done by rules,

And proves outright that nonsense lies
Beyond the reach of fools.

That's pure digression, then, you think? Now, just to prove 'tis not,
I shall begin a bigger one upon this very spot:
At any rate, 'tis naught, you say; precisely, I admit it,
For, in convicting it of that, you virtually acquit it;
You have conjectured, I suppose,—(come, never look despondent!)
That I intend to offer as an OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT,
And by what method more direct could I avouch my fitness
Than by exhibiting such art as the above may witness?
I had one Nothing; and, by dint of turning and displaying it,
I've occupied the time thus far in seeming to be saying it,
And have it, good as new, till comes the moment for conveying it.
Each creature must get forward in his own peculiar sort;
The crab slants sideway to his end, and finds the way as short,
You'd make him go forth rightly, eh? pray try your hand, Sir dab,—
Well, you have bettered Providence, but Nature wants her crab;
Sir, in that awful Congress there, where sit th' assembled Fates,
Of which the unconscious newspapers report the slow debates,
Thank God, you can't be lobbying, log-rolling, and all that;—
A world that suited you, O Smith, might be a trifle flat.
Fate, Idiosyncrasy, or what is just the same thing, custom,
Leads every mortal by the ear, though he be strong as Rustem,
Makes him do quite impossible things,—then, with a spear of grass
Marks the thin line none else can see, but which he cannot pass;
That son of yours, so pale and slim, with whom the master fails,
What claps him in the fo'c'stle rude, and sends him after whales?
And Samson, there, your burly boy, what takes him by the nape
And sets him at the counter's back to measure thread and tape?
The servant-man you hired last year, who, for a paltry fee
Surrendered all his nature up, and would if he'd had three,
To suit your whimsies, and who seemed to find all drudgery sweet,
Left you in tears,—he could not take that bundle through the street;
Centripetal, centrifugal, these the conditions two,
Some cling like moss, and other some fling off, their whole lives through;
My style's centrifugal; mark plain the settled boundary-line,
And, till it gets on t'other side, 'twill fret and fume and pine:
Or call't the polypean style; each verse contains, at any rate,
A polypus that in its turn new polypi can generate,

And if I the temptation strong that lurks in any verse shun,
'Tis certain that the next will breed new centres of dispersion;
A brief attempt would shortly prove that I should be much worse if
I tried to curb my natural bent of being too discursive,
But I forbear, I spare you this experimentum crucis,
And shall, instead, proceed to show that Nonsense hath its uses;
I mean good nonsense, there are men enough who have a leaning to
Write nonsense in great solemn tomes, nor have the wit of meaning to—
Tomes, the hop-pillows of the mind, that vanquish readers stout,
And which no gentleman's library can be complete without,
Pernoctent nobis, bedward turned, take one and feel no doubt;
What a profound narcotic spell your fading senses greets,
'Tis just like getting into bed to look between their sheets;
[I mean to make a list of them, some rainy day, to be a
Fasciculus first to my complete librorum Pharmacopœia.]
And now, because so hard of faith, this omnibus and gas age,
From an old author I translate the following deep passage;
(See preface to the Moriæ Encomium of Erasmus,
Recensuit et præfationem addidit Gelasmus:
'Tis the easiest matter, in one sense,
To write very passable nonsense;
There are those who do naught but create your
Poor stuff from mere thinness of nature;
But to do it with art and intention,
To never let fancy or pen shun
Any kind of odd lurches, twists, waggeries,
Absurdities, quibbles, and vagaries;
To roll your Diogenes-puncheon
The vext reader's toes with a crunch on,
Making one quip the mere cotyledon
For the seed of another to feed on,
Is a matter—why, just reckon how many
Have fared well enough with Melpomene,
And how very few have come by a
Mere prosperous look from Thalia;
Who since has contrived to hit off an ease

That in hard work will match A---s?
Hath even great Swift in his shabby lays
Come near the hop-skip prose of R---s?
The deep-quibbling, sage-clown of S---e,
From among all the wits can you rake his peer?
Are they not, my dear sir, rari nantes
Who can jingle the bells with C---s?
How many great clerks in one turn could
Be both zany and wise man as S---e could?
And who could with such a wise knack array
Great Jeames's phonetics as T---y?
Your head is too small if it happen
That you can't keep the noble fool's-cap on.
So he goes maundering on and on, he's almost worse than I am,
And every line he writes begets as many sons as Priam;
All this, good Messieurs Editors, is simply introduction
To show how nothing could be said in endless reproduction;
I also wished to smooth the way for scribbling off some jolly
Good, topsy-turvy, head-o'er-heels, unmeaning, wholesome folly;
We're pretty nearly crazy here with change and go-ahead,
With flinging our caught bird away for two ne'er caught instead,
With butting 'gainst the wall which we declare shall be a portal,
And questioning Deeps that never yet have said a word to mortal;
We're growing pale and hollow-eyed, and out of all condition,
With mediums and prophetic chairs, and crickets with a mission,
(The most astounding oracles since Balaam's donkey spoke,
'T would seem our furniture was all of Dodonean oak).
Make but the public laugh, be sure, 'twill take you to be somebody;
'Twill wrench its button from your clutch, my densely-earnest, glum body;
'Tis good, this noble earnestness, good in its place, but why
Make great Achilles' shield the pan to bake a penny pie?
Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist that we shall stop,
And bore clear down to central fires to broil our daily chop?
Excalibur and Durandart are swords of price, but then
Why draw them sternly when you wish to cut your nails or pen?

Small gulf between the ape and man; you bridge it with your staff;
But it will be impassable until the ape can laugh;—
No, no, be common now and then, be sensible, be funny,
And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears with pots of honey,
From which ere they'll withdraw their snouts, they'll suffer many a club-lick,
So bait your moral figure-of-fours to catch the Orson public.
Look how the dead leaves melt their way down through deep-drifted snow;
They take the sun-warmth down with them—pearls could not conquer so;
There is a moral here, you see; if you would preach, you must
Steep all your truths in sun that they may melt down through the crust;
Brave Jeremiah, you are grand and terrible, a sign
And wonder, but were never quite a popular divine;
Fancy the figure you would cut among the nuts and wine!
I, on occasion, too, could preach, but hold it wiser far
To give the public sermons it will take with its cigar,
And morals fugitive, and vague as are these smoke-wreaths light
In which. ... I trace ... a. ... let me see—bless me! 'tis out of sight.
When I my commentators have (who serve dead authors brave
As Turks do bodies that are sworn to stir within the grave,—
Unbury, make minced-meat of them, and bury them again),
They'll find deep meanings underneath each sputter of my pen,
Which I, a blissful shade (perhaps in teapoy pent, by process
Of these new moves in furniture, this wooden metempsychosis),
Accept for mine, unquestioning, as prudent Göthe choused
The critics out of all the thoughts they found for him in Fast.

“Nullitates scribere tam facile est quam bibere; sed scribere intelligenter quod sit inintelligibile; insanire perfrequenter, motu proprio, libenter; vertere in risibile quod plane impossible, sic ut titillat imum pectus,—hoc est summum intellectus,” et cætera. Praefatio Gelasmi pp. XCIX. et seqq.

To avoid all suspicion of personality, I have omitted the names here. Though dead for centuries, an enraged satirist might revenge himself on me, nowadays, through the columns of the Spiritual Telegraph, or the legs of some dithyrambic centre-table.

PROGRESSION C

Our Own displays him just the man
To do the thing proposed,
Though what that thing is, nor his plan,
He hath not yet disclosed.

Travel (my theory is) suits least the race called Anglo-Saxon,
They come back loaded from each land they set their fullish tracks on
With every folly they can pile their mental and bodily backs on;
So at the outset let me state I do not mean to budge
And see the persons, places, things, I shall describe and judge,
Because when men have cheated you, or when they've tea'd and fed you, 'tis
The hardest thing to feel unbribed and clear the mind of prejudice;

Therefore, 'tis wasting honest time, this squandering round the earth,
And I, who once sold wooden clocks, should know what time is worth.
Next as to how I'm qualified,—but let us first agree
What things deserve a wise man's eyes and ears across the sea;
PERSONS: I'm forty, and have led, as you will see ere long,
A multifarious Yankee life, so there I'm rather strong;
I've tended bar, worked farms to halves, been twice to the South seas,
Sold clocks (I mentioned that before), done something in herb teas,
Hawked books, kept district school (and thus, inspired with thirst for knowledge,
Pegged shoes till I have saved enough to put me through Yale College),
Invented a cheap stove (the famed Antidotum Gehennæ,
So fuel-saving that no skill could coax it to burn any—
If you have lectured in small towns, you've probably seen many),
Driven stage, sold patent strops, by dint of interest at the White House,
Got nominated keeper of the Finback Island Light-house,
Where, just before a Northeast blow, the clockwork got ungeared,
And I revolved the light myself nine nights until it cleared;
(I took it as a quiet place to invent perpetual motion,—
This large dose of the real thing quite cured me of the notion;
It was, perhaps, the bitterest drop e'er mingled in my cup,
I rowed ashore so thoroughly sick, I threw the light-house up;)
Then I went through the Bankrupt Act, merely from general caution—
For, if you're prudent, you'll take heed, and every chance's claws shun,
Nor leave old blankets lying about for adverse fates to toss ye on;
Then I stood round a spell, and then bought out an Indian Doctor,
Then—but I have a faint surmise your credence may be shocked, or
I might go on, but I have said enough, no doubt, to show
That, to judge characters and men, I need not wait to grow;—
PERSONS thus well provided for, the next thing is the strictures
On works of Art in general; and first, we'll take the PICTURES.
Even here you cannot turn my flank,—I began life a painter,
Worked 'prentice first, then journeyman, with Major-General Taintor,
And did, myself, the sausages and the great round of beef
On the new market-house's sign, still prized for bold relief;—
SCULPTURE: I think that more than half the Sculptors that have risen
Should hammer stone to some good end, sent all to Sing Sing prison;
I'm sick of endless copyings of what were always bores,
Their dreary women on one toe, their Venuses by scores;
(That's in the ignorant, slashing style,—if you prefer a judge
Mildly appreciative, deep,—just give my tap a nudge,
'Twill run æsthetic folderol, and best high-German fudge;)—
MUSIC: when cousin Arad Cox at muster hurt his hand,

I played the bass-drum twice or more in the East Haddam band;—
BUILDINGS: I saved them till the last, for there I feel at home—
Perhaps you never heard about the city of New Rome?
'Twould not disgrace you deeply if you hadn't, for, you see,
It stayed in the potential mood, and was but going to be;
We merely staked a pasture out, christened the poor thing Forum,
And chose two natural architects—OUR OWN was unus horum;
'Twas he who planned the Meeting-house, a structure pure and winning,
With specimens of every style 'twixt vane and underpinning;
Unhappily it ne'er was built; New Rome, with nine good hills,
Remains unsettled to this day,—so do, alas! its bills,—
But the experience thus obtained entitles me to hope
My architectural criticism will be allowed full scope.

PROGRESSION D

Our Own, his various qualities
And aptitudes defined,
Descends, and makes more close replies
To the inquiring mind.

But what, in these your voyagings, do you propose to do?
I might retort, O, highborn Smythe, with—what is that to you?
These twenty times I've bit my nails, and my left ear-tip scratched,
Wondering why you should wish to count my chickens ere they're hatched;
But, if you further will insist, I'll answer (if I can);
My plan is—let me see—my plan is just to have no plan;
In laying out a pleasure-ground (the rule is not in Price),
Be tipsy when you mark the paths, or you'll be too precise;
And do it upon Burgundy, 'twill give a curvi-line
More sure of gentlemanly grace than any thinner wine;
Precision is a right good thing, like olives, in its place,
But (still like olives) it comes in a long way after Grace.
Suppose I told you that I meant (as vines do, when they climb)
To wander where my clasp was wooed by any jutting rhyme?
Or said that, like a river deep, lost first in bogs and sedges,
I soon should march to meet the sea with cities on my edges?
(This seemingly mixed simile, at which the Highborn frowns,
Refers to sketches I shall give of European towns;)
However, you shall have a peep; come, children, form a ring,

I'll lift the crust, and let you see the birds are there to sing;
Now then—I shall appear to go from capital to capital,
Pick up what's worth the picking up, and in my letters clap it all;
When aught of interest shall occur, as certain as a star,
I, in our happy western phrase, shall be precisely thar;
If Paris, for example, which is very likely, chooses
To have the periodic fit she's subject to—the Blouses,
And there should be a general row, I, from the very thick of it,
Shall send home thrilling narratives till you are fairly sick of it;
I shall have interviews with kings and men of lower stations,
(Authors—of course,) and send reports of all the conversations;
Shall visit the cathedrals, and, for fear of any blunder,
Call each the finest in the world, a mountain of carved wonder;
Of every building, thing, and scene, that comes within my view,
I shall say something different, something so simply new,
The very Is upon my page shall with surprise grow round,—
And, by the way, lest any one should base enough be found
To steal the phrases got by me at cost of thought profuse,
I here put in a caveat, for some I mean to use,—

As—Architecture's music cooled to zero point of Reaumur;

A statue is a song in stone (the chisel was its Homer);

St. Peter's has an epic dome, beneath whose deeps profound
The papal choir, on Easter eve, build up a dome of sound;

Art is the soul's horizon broad, and, as we onward go,
It moves with us and still recedes, until life's sun is low;

You call those rather goodish thoughts? I have them by the score,
Ne'er yet by mortal man or maid put into words before;
Life's sun I feel quite sure is new; I got it by hard thinking
Only last night at half-past five, just as the sun was sinking;
With these and other ornaments I shall enrich my text,
When, far across the Atlantic wave, I have to write my next.

PROGRESSION E

Our own unfolds another coil
Of his portentous tale,
And shows the torture and the toil
Of riding on a rail.

I left East Haddam by the train—a mode of torture worse
Than any Dante conjured up—the case I will rehearse:

I found the car, then, occupied (I got in rather late,
And 'twas hermetically closed) by victims fifty-eight,
Each one of whom looked headachy and parboiledy and pale,
Having less air a-piece, perhaps, than Jonah in his whale;
They seemed a troop of convict souls let out in search of bail
And, lest they might a mouthful get of unbedevilled air,
A Stygian sheriff's officer went with them every where,
Whose duty was to see that they no atmosphere should know
Cooler than that which Minos' tail had doomed them to below:
In shape he seemed a kind of stove, but by degrees my head
Was squeezed into an iron cap and screwed till I was dead
(Or thought I was), and then there came strange lights into my brain,
And 'neath his thin sheet-iron mask the tipstaff imp was plain.
At intervals another fiend—by mortals Brakeman hight—
Would rouse his fellow-torturer into a fierce delight,
Punching his ribs, and feeding him with lumps of anthracite;
The demon's single eye grew red, and with unholy glee
Exulted as it shrivelled up the very soul in me.
I would have shrieked a maniac shriek, but that I did not dare;
I thought of turning madly round, and seizing by the hair
A soul unblest that sat by me, only somehow I got
A notion that his treacherous scalp would prove to be red-hot.
I sprang to raise the window, but a female spirit of ill

Who all the space around her soured, sharp-nosed, close-lipped, and still,
(A vinegar-cruet incarnate) said, “No gentleman would place
A lady in a thorough-draught that had a swollen face!”
If you have ever chanced to bite a nice unripe persimmon,
You'll have some notion of her tone, but still a faint and dim one
No patent stove can radiate a chill more like the pole
Than such a lady, whose each act true views of grace control,
In doubt about her bonnet-box, secure about her soul.
Thenceforward all is phantasm dire; I dimly recollect
A something 'twixt a nose and voice that said “'most there, I 'xpect,”—
Heavens! almost WHERE? a pang, a flash of fire through either eye shoots,
And I looked momently to see the last scene of Der Frieschutz;
The bland conductor will become that flame-clad individual
Who stamping, Earth will gape, and “Gentlemen, I bid you all,”
He'll shriek, “to lava tea at six,” then crashing through the floor
With a strong smell of brimstone,—but all swam, I saw no more,
Only I vaguely seem to have seen the attendant fiend excite
His principal with further pokes and lumps of anthracite,
While faces featureless as dough, looked on serene and placid,
And nine and fifty pairs of lungs evolved carbonic acid.
There was a scream, but whether 'twas the engine, or the last
Wild prayer for mercy of those eight and fifty as they passed
Down to their several torturings in deepest Malebolge,
As I myself am still in doubt, can't certainly be told ye;
I only know they vanished all, the silent ghastly crew,
But whither, how, why, when,—these things I never fully knew;

I stood with carpet-bag in hand, when the strange spell unbound me.
And five score yelling cabmen danced their frenzied war-dance round me.

PROGRESSION F

Our own, howe'er with Bryon's verse
He may enchanted be,
Finds that he likes the ocean worse,
When trying it per se.

When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp;
When I could not sleep for cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And built, with a roof of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!

Since then I have toiled day and night,
I have money and power good store,
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright
For the one that is mine no more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose,
For I own no more castles in Spain!

So mused a poet, quite as wise as either you or I,
Coughing with dust, as Crassus' coach rolled smoothly-swinging by;
And, if I understand his thought, which may be something trite,
He was (which for a poet's much) within two-thirds of right;
Fond youth, be abstinent, pull not that Hesperidean fruit,
One bite, and you repent too late, and lame your jaw to boot:
Thank God for the Unattainable, it leaves you still a boy,
The wishing for the wishing-cap is that which makes the joy;
Privation gives their charm to things, the glory and the grace,
Beckon and flee—ah, fool, that would'st their frozen zones embrace!
In winter, summer seems most fair, and what enchantment glows
In August o'er those mountain-peaks, ermined with rounding snows!
The frozen Samoiede makes his heaven a place of endless fire,

And, when kind fortune heaps the board, to glut the soul's desire,
Apicius Bufo starves and sighs, and wonders what it means,—
Nectar? Ambrosia?—hum, so-so, but no pig's head and greens?
And thou, oh hero, who hast climbed to scarce-dreamed fame and power,
Think'st only of a little mound which dusky yews embower,
And, sighing, musest what are all these idle sands to me
Since those blue eyes are closed with dust that should be here to see?
Ah, happy eyes that shut so soon, ye only have the might
To keep undimmed the olden spell, for ever warm and bright!
Had village Alice lived, poor fool, thou would'st without remorse
Be sighing for a bride of State, and planning a divorce.

This train of thought I've fallen on, far out here on the sea,
Coiled up, half-frozen underneath the weather-bulwark's lee.
And (faith that last wave soused me through)—and writing on my knee;
The application of it is, that when you're on the land
The sea is every thing that's bright, and broad, and blue, and grand,
And that you'd change what Wordsworth calls your glorious second berth
(Now that you've tried it) for a grave, because 'twould be firm earth;
Perhaps in some October night, when the roused south o'erwhelms,
With surge on surge rolled gathering down the night, the shuddering elms,
You have lain fancying what wild joy there must be in the motion
Of a brave vessel plunging through the broken coils of ocean;
Your mind ran forth and back again, like a fly-watching spider,
Upon that line in Byron of the steed that knows its rider,
And, in your bath next morning, you splash with double glee,
Humming, dear Barry Cornwall's song—the sea! the o-pen sea!
I wish that Barry and Byron both were only here with me!
All well enough this sentiment and stuff upon the shore,
But, when the sea is smoothest, 'tis an Erymanthian bore,
And when 'tis rough, my brace of bards, you'd neither of you sing
Of hands on manes, or blue and fresh, but quite another thing,—
Flat on your backs in jerking berths you scarce could keep your place in,
You'd moan an Amboean sad—quick, steward! quick! a basin!
(Queen's counsel most delectable, I still seem hearing thee
Sing Cameriere through the rain along the Bieler sea.)

How easy 'tis to tyrannize over Taste's hapless lieges!
The poor Achivi still are plucked quidquid delirant reges;

If Hamlet says he sees a whale, Polonius must follow,
And what A swears is beautiful, all down to Z will swallow;
None dares confess he cannot see what great Flapdoddle spies,
And, like potatoes, fools are bred from one another's eyes;
Dear Nyncombe, what sharp agonies I've seen you going through with
Before a statue which your soul had naught on earth to do with,
And what could e'er be finer than your awed, assenting “Oh!”
When I suggested that deep thought in the Apollo's toe?
Don't come to Rome for nothing, man, with some likeminded crony,
Go valiantly and eat a steak down at the Gabione;
'Tis in this way that men are made to say they like the sea,
Flam says he does, and all the rest will be as good as he.
I heard a great man once declare that he had never found
A sailor, yet, who loved the fate to which his life was bound,
And when I asked our brown first-mate, a seaman good and brave,
On shore as helpless as a fish, a viking on the wave,
What life would please him most? he sighed, looked at his tattooed arm,
Studied its hieroglyphs awhile, and said—an inland farm.
And he was right; I cannot, for example, see the least
Pleasure in walking on a deck that's drunk as any beast,
A wet plank, scarcely larger than a white bear's sloppy pen,
That tips you here and slips you there, and trips you back again;
That cheats you with a moment's lull, and, when you think you feel
Quite sure of the companionway, half breaks you on the wheel,
Then slants until you need both hands to keep your hold on that,
And pins you helpless while the wind blows off your second hat.
The steed that throws his rider would be nearer to the fact:
To me it gives no pleasure to be swashed and washed and racked;
To have a three weeks' tipsiness on cold saltwater merely,
With legs that seem like some one's else, they bother you so queerly
Taking you here when you mean there,—no, no, it has no charm,
Although the loveliest cousin may be hanging on your arm.
Of course, I am not seasick, for although that epidemic
(Hic) prostrates all my friends, yet (hic) I only pity them (hic).
Indeed, in this life's pilgrimage, I found this maxim true:
There are four common weaknesses no mortal ever knew,
A headache that was caused by wine, drowsiness late at night,
Seasickness, and a corn that came from wearing boots too tight.
A seasick man I never saw; Our Own leans o'er the rail,
Muses awhile, and then comes back with features doughy pale;

But he had only wandered aft, a Parthian glance to take
At those strange coils of moony fire that mark the writhing wake.
With ghastly calm he takes a pipe; in minutes five (or less) hence,
He'll feel again that ecstasy produced by phosphorescence.

Conceive of an existence in which the great events
Are breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, in which, when Fate relents,
She sends a string of porpoises, perhaps a grampus, too,
Who blunders up beneath the stern, and gives a poo-oo-ooh!
While we immortal souls crowd aft and crush each other's toes
To see this stupid creature blow what he esteems a nose;
Why, I blew thrice my moral and accountable proboscis,
But found no fish so blasé that it ever came across his
Waterlogged brain that it was worth his while to turn and come anon,
Lest he should miss the witnessing of that sublime phenomenon;
Nor would it, though your nose were like fray John's, or even had you a
Verissimo fazzoletto of Saint Antony of Padua,
The Apostle who in Finland had a cure of souls, and sent
Conviction to his hearers that 'twas good to fry in Lent.
There are some goodish things at sea; for instance, one can feel
A grandeur in the silent man for ever at the wheel,
That bit of two-legged intellect, that particle of drill,
Who the huge floundering hulk inspires with reason, brain and will,
And makes the ship, though skies are black and headwinds whistle loud,
Obey her conscience there which feels the loadstar through the cloud;
And when by lusty western gales the full-sailed barque is hurled
Toward the great moon which, sitting on the silent underworld,
Rounds luridly up to look on ours, and shoots a broadening line,
Of palpitant light from crest to crest across the ridgy brine,
Then from the bows look back and feel a thrill that never stales
In that full-bosomed, swan-white pomp of onward-yearning sails;
Ah, when dear cousin Bull laments that you can't make a poem,
Take him aboard a clipper-ship, young Jonathan, and show him
A work of art that in its grace and grandeur may compare
With any thing that any race has fashioned any where;
'Tis not a statue, grumbles John; nay, if you come to that,
We think of Hyde Park corner, and concede you beat us flat
With your equestrian statue to a Nose and a Cocked-hat;
But 'tis not a cathedral; well, e'en that we will allow,
Both statues and cathedrals are anachronistic now;
Your minsters, coz, the monuments of men who conquered you,

You'd sell a bargain, if we'd take the deans and chapters too;
No; mortal men build now-a-days, as always heretofore,
Good temples to the gods which they in very truth adore;
The shepherds of this Broker Age, with all their willing flocks,
Although they bow to stones no more, do bend the knee to stocks,
And churches can't be beautiful though crowded, floor and gallery,
If people worship preacher, and if preacher worship salary;
'Tis well to look things in the face, the god o' the modern universe,
Hermes, cares naught for halls of art and libraries of puny verse,
If they don't sell, he notes them thus upon his ledger—say, per
Contra to loss of so much stone, best Russia duck and paper;
And, after all, about this Art men talk a deal of fudge,
Each nation has its path marked out, from which it must not budge;
The Romans had as little art as Noah in his ark,
Yet somehow on this globe contrived to make an epic mark;
Religion, painting, sculpture, song—for these they ran up jolly ticks
With Greece and Egypt, but they were great artists in their politics,
And if we make no minsters, John, nor epics, yet the Fates
Are not entirely deaf to men who can build ships and states;
(I waive the literary point, contented with observing
That I like Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, Bryant, Irving,)
The arts are never pioneers, but men have strength and health
Who, called on suddenly, can improvise a commonwealth,
Nay, can more easily go on and frame them by the dozen,
Than you can make a dinner-speech, dear sympathizing cousin:
And, though our restless Jonathan have not your graver bent, sure he
Does represent this hand-to-mouth, pert, rapid, nineteenth century;
This is the Age of Scramble; men move faster than they did
When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid,
Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wire-tamed lightning now
Replaces Delphos—mend don't leave the steamer for the scow;
What hero, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read
The Iliad, the Shanàmeh, or the Nibelungenlied?
Their public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah, the hairy Graf—
Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; we weary o'er a paragraph;
The mind moves planet-like no more, it fizzes, cracks, and bustles;
From end to end with journals dry the land o'ershadowed rustles,
As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, with their breath-roused jars
Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal skies and stars;

100

Down to the general level of the Board of Brokers sinking,
The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say sooth unshrinking,
The newspapers take in the Age, and Stocks do all the thinking.

There's something in a clean fresh page (and I have here begun one)
That sets one thinking of the goods and ills that have been done one,
For all the good books and the bad were first but so much paper
As would have curled Belinda's lock, or lit a bedward taper;
The bit of paper smooth and white is gifted with a spell
Of Mahomet's carpet, and can take the prisoner from his cell,
Can bear him to La Mancha's hills to dream beneath the trees,
Hearing far bells of muleteers, or fitful hum of bees;
'Tis quite a simple recipe—a jail, ink, paper, pen,—
Yet, mixed, they make Don Quixote,—do you think they would agen?
Go steal a trifle, Reader, to put you in the
And see if you can get a lift upon the prophet's rug.
The sheet that's in your desk, dear Sir, potentially contains
More wisdom than has ever yet got out of human brains,
You, young Lorenzo yet may write your billy dukises sweet
On that poor Paddy's tattered shirt, that's digging in the street;
You, Doctor Dodd, may write thereon a very simple note
That singularly shall affect your Reverence's throat;
Yea, on that triangle that shows where he can't see, poor fellow
A greater Shakspeare may begin, a perfecter Othello;
There's magnetism in paper fair that rapidly draws down
The particles of thought that lie stuck fast beneath our crown;
The brain is scrawled with characters in sympathetic ink,
Which with the heat show clearly forth when we begin to think,—
Thoughts, fancies, feelings, memories, just now in darkness shrinking,—
For the imperative paper there compels us into thinking;
Begin; and then Necessity will, like a corkscrew stout,
From the brain's narrow gateway draw the wooden jailor out,
And all that you have bottled there, swipes be it, or Tokay,
Gulluck—gulluck comes gurgling out to wet the reader's clay;
And then, oh Reader, haste to taste; much swipes for Tokay passes
Served up upon a silver tray and poured in Tokay glasses,

101

And thou may'st drink that golden wine with palate dull and neuter
Deeming it poorish swipes because it masquerades in pewter.
Think, pen in hand, wise Göthe said, still hoarding mental pelf
And wise in the economies that save the waste of self.
The paper's virtue being proved, 'tis rather awkward hinting
That all which takes its goodness out's the writing and the printing,
That, while 'tis yet unstained, it keeps it wisdom and its wit in
Until—in short that books are good as long as they're unwritten;
No doubt pure mathematics lie, the undiscovered base
Of all that governs, pleases, or concerns the human race;
Our grandchildren, at common school, may on the blackboard see
The mystery of love resolved by simple a plus b,
And downright Hamlets may produce for exercise at college
By some fourth power of minus x, which now eludes our knowledge,
Till that time comes I've often thought 'twould be a pretty plan
If some not overdeep or grave, but pleasant-thoughted man
Would publish us a small white book, and leave the pages fair,
[Put?] a suggestive index and title here and there,
For Thought to hitch its web upon—Jove! what a book were there!
Its name should be Blank's Essays and to it we'd surrender
Our musing after dinner minds with feet upon the fender,
Meerschaum in mouth, and make the smoke that wavered toward the ceiling
Transmute itself to every shape of fancy thought and feeling.
Twould be in Tartar Doctors' style, who write the medicine's name
Make their poor patients swallow it, and the effect's the same;
Faith, we will try it on the spot, it will not take a minute
I'll leave a short space blank, and write

auf wiedersehen
a rivederci

in it
Let any reader muse on that, and it will plainly show him

102

That he contains within him all he weeps o'er in a poem;
O Edelmann, O Signor Giù, O Storg, does it recall
The pleasant nights, the smokes, the jokes, the songs, the girls, the all?
Or let me leave another space and simply scrawl therein

Sweetbrier Lane—

Now Memory opes forthwith her choicest bin!
Ye twenty maids in muslin gowns who made all else seem chaff,
In whom successively I found my nature's other half,
Who played pianos all day long and had no other care,
Who gave me all those single locks of brown, black, golden hair,
Ye who have been these twenty years the Mrs. Smith and Brown,
Reading those words, how young Romance his long hushed lute takes down,
Wipes off the cobwebs and the dust, gives every key a screw,
And with one stroke across the chords lo, skies forever blue,
Moonlight, slow partings at the gate, pressed roseleaves, and Du! Du!
The last thing that a poet learns is how to throw away
And how to make you thrill and creep with what he doesn't say,
For instance now, to write a song after the style of Poe,
Take the old musty, fusty stock of Everybody and Co;
A moon—we all do know the moon, a sea—we all have seen it,
A dreadful Hint—we all have had—a Fool we all have been it;
Then thus—the black sea moaned beneath and broke in fairy snow,
The moon loomed bloodred in the East, when we met long ago;
That first lush kiss that fierce embrace that parting long and loath—
Avaunt thou pale and patient face! who says I broke my troth?
The music bursts, the dance reels on—ah it is well for thee
Thou hearst no more the muffled beat of that funereal sea;
The dreadful Thing is at my side, its lips are on my lips,
And the sea moans on forevermore, and the frozen seaweed drips!
Tom (nearly eighteen years of age) the dark and silent Man,
Puts on as deep and wild a frown as two white eyebrows can,
Reads it to trembling Sarah Jane, and drops a hint sublime
That he, too, bears the weary weight of some unfathomed crime
And Dick and Harry, who have each an anaconda's appetite,
Feel bound to cheat it of its due and in concealment clap it tight,

103

Envying dark Tom's mysterious gloom (dyspepsia of both kinds)
And blushing for the stomachs strong that give them healthy minds;
Ah, my Lord Byron, it would make a nice statistic question
How many follies had their rise in your diseased digestion;—
But this Digression, banyan-like, plants colonies so fast
And those again new colonies that, on my soul, at last
'Tis only with nice measuring and comparing I can see
Which my discourse's offshoot is and which the mother-tree;
Let but my Muse be once caught up by something to discuss
She's like the one Old Lady that is always in the 'bus,
Who asks the seedy foreigner soon as she takes her seat
Whether they haven't got beyond the End of Something Street,
And, helpless as a bandbox lone, whence the address is torn,
Is set down everywhere except at her appropriate bourne.

Menenius, thou who fain wouldst know how calmly men can pass
Those biting portraits of themselves, disguised as fox or ass,
Go borrow coin enough to buy a full-length psyche-glass,
Engage a rather darkish room in some well-sought position,
And let the town break out with bills, so much per head admission,
GREAT NATURAL CURIOSITY!! THE BIGGEST LIVING FOOL!!
Arrange your mirror cleverly, before it set a stool,
Admit the public one by one, place each upon the seat,
Draw up the curtain, let him look his fill, and then retreat.
Smith mounts and takes a thorough view, then comes serenely down,
Goes home and tells his wife the thing is curiously like Brown;
Brown goes and stares, and tells his wife the wonder's core and pith
Is that 'tis just the counterpart of that conceited Smith.
Life calls us all to such a show: Menenius, trust in me,
While thou to see thy neighbor smil'st, he does the same for thee.
Thou Satirist, who fain would'st know how calmly men can pass
Those clever sketches of themselves in guise of fox or ass,
Go borrow coin enough to buy a full length psyche-glass;
Secure a rather darkish room in some well chosen position
Let all the town break out with bills 25 cts admission;
Just take a look yourself, my friend, and tell me if you see
Yourself or some not quite so much admired and favored he?

104

Go buy a mirror, Satirist, secure a good position,
And advertise a raree-show, twenty-five cents admission
Great natural Curiosity!!! a real Living Fool!!!
Arrange your mirror cleverly, before it set a stool,
Admit the Public one by one, place each upon the seat
Draw up the curtain, let him look his fill and then retreat;
Smith mounts and takes a thorough view, then comes serenely down
Goes home and tells his wife it is the strangest thing in town,
“You must go take a look at it; 'tis curiously like Brown;”
Brown goes and stares and tells his wife the wonder's core and pith,
Is that 'tis just the counterpart of that conceited Smith;
Life calls us all to such a show: Menippus, it may be
While thou to see thy neighbor smilst, he does the same for thee.

PESCHIERA

What voice did on my spirit fall,
Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost?
“'Tis better to have fought and lost
Than never to have fought at all.”

The Tricolor, a trampled rag,
Lies, dirt and dust; the lines I track,
By sentry-boxes yellow-black,
Lead up to no Italian flag.

I see the Croat soldier stand
Upon the grass of your redoubts;
The Eagle with his black wing flouts
The breadth and beauty of your land.

Yet not in vain, although in vain
O! men of Brescia, on the day
Of loss past hope, I heard you say
Your welcome to the noble pain.

105

You said, “Since it is so, good-bye
Sweet life, high hope; but whatsoe'er
May be or must, no tongue shall dare
To tell, ‘The Lombard feared to die.’”

You said, (there shall be answer fit,)
“And if our children must obey
They must, but thinking on this day
'Twill less debase them to submit.”

You said, (O! not in vain you said,)
“Haste, brothers, haste while yet we may;
The hours ebb fast of this one day
When blood may yet be nobly shed.”

Ah! not for idle hatred, not
For honor, fame, nor self-applause,
But for the glory of your cause,
You did what will not be forgot.

And though the strangers stand, 'tis true
By force and fortune's right he stands;
By fortune which is in God's hands,
And strength which yet shall spring in you.

This voice did on my spirit fall,
Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost,
“'Tis better to have fought and lost
Than never to have fought at all.”

WITHOUT AND WITHIN

No. II The Restaurant

That seedy chap upon the grating,
Who sniffs the odors from the kitchen,
Seems in his hungry thoughts debating
Of all he sees what's most bewitching.

His eyes devour the window's treasure,
The game, the cutlet, and the salmon,—

106

But not the flowers, which give me pleasure,—
Japonicas to him are gammon.

I hope to smashing he's not given,—
He looks so like a hungry terrier,
For, 'twixt him and his seeming heaven,
There's but a thin and brittle barrier.

He smacks his lips—in fancy tasting,
And has half brought his mind to nab it—
My game he thinks the cook is basting,
While 'tis, in fact, a poor Welsh rabbit.

The longing wretch leans o'er the railing,
And thinks—“Is't I that am a sinner?
Or is it for my father's failing
That I must go without a dinner?”

“Look at that scamp” (he means me), “sitting
Cramming enough to feed a dozen,
While I my useless teeth am gritting,
And yet his wife's my second cousin.

“Now he pours down his Medoc claret,
Now what to order next he ponders;
Prudhon is right; we ought to share it—
The gold he so insanely squanders!”

I think.—“O! Fortune, why presentest
To all mankind gifts so irrelevant?
My teeth demand a constant dentist,
While he is ivoried like an elephant.

“Why probe us with these sharp reminders,
Why still in cornu habes foenum?
Send roasts and nuts to carious grinders,
While millstone jaws get naught between 'em?

“By all the wealth I've been the winner,
I would without a moment's question,
Give him my Medoc and my dinner,
To have his molars and digestion.

107

“He fancies me a careless feeder,
While the Lord knows, he's not so weary;
I'm worried for tomorrow's leader.
And dished by that last fall in Erie.”

IN-DOORS AND OUT

Within the grate, fantastic forms
Like youthful dreams, flame bright and fair,
And burning battlements are seen
Crumbling like “castles in the air!”

Here, in the ruddy, glowing light,
In my warm, easy-chair I sit,
Without, the blast howls fierce tonight,
And past, pale, haggard outcasts flit.

No glimmering beacon's love-lit rays
Will homeward guide the wand'rer's feet;
No friendly hearth-stone's genial blaze,
The vagrant's wistful vision greet.

Homeless, and shelterless, they glide
Like phantoms through the drifting gloom,
Sorrow and Error, side by side—
Down to unfathomable doom!

Cold blows the wind—fast drives the sleet,
The grey-beard Winter shrieks aloud,
And hurries on his minions fleet,
To wrap the dead Earth in her shroud!

Poor, faded Earth—her glowing form
But late all radiant with life—
Bares her brown bosom to the storm,
Heeds not the wild wind's angry strife!

With feathery flake, and frosted gem,
They fringe her winding-sheet of snow—
A glittering, ice-bound diadem
Surmounts her wrinkled, rugged brow!

108

No more with summer garlands crowned,
Lifting her regal forehead up—
She sleeps, with frozen fetters bound,
The dreamless sleep of Lethe's cup!

Rude, rushing winds, and howling blasts
Shall o'er her chant their dirges drear,
Till God Omniscient, rolleth back
The resurrection of the year!

HYMN

Friends of Freedom! ye who stand
With no weapon in your hand,
Save a purpose stern and grand,
All men to set free,
Welcome! Freedom stands in need
Of true men in thought and deed—
Men who have this only creed,
That they will not flee!

Though we were but two or three,
Sure of triumph we should be;
We our promised land shall see,
Though the way seem long:—
Every fearless word we speak
Makes Sin's stronghold bend and creak—
Tyranny is always weak,
Truth is young and strong!

All the hero-spirits vast,
Who have sanctified the past,
Bearing witness to the last,
Fight upon our part;
We can never be forlorn:
He, who, in a manger born,
Bore the Priest's and Levite's scorn,
Gives us hope and heart.

109

VERSES

[_]

Copy of verses wrote by Sir Henry Knatchbull, Bart., 1760

O, share these flowers! thus Delia wrote,
And pinned upon a tree,
With her own hands, the dainty note
Addressed to you and me.

The trees were glad that saw her pass,
The turf embalmed her trace,
The brook flowed slow and smoothed a glass
To catch her fleeting face.

Next day the letters fair were flown;
Who stole them? Dryads, say?
By chilling Auster were they blown,
By Zephyr lured away?

Perhaps some bird the leaf conveyed
To line her happier nest;
O lucky eggs that shall be laid
On such a bed to rest!

Perhaps some squirrel was the thief
To grace his hollow tree,
As with inscription and relief
Our galleries do we.

But no, the truth was simply this:
Young Strephon, wandering by,
Saw from the stem, with sudden bliss,
Fair Delia's ensign fly.

“And oh,” he cried, “be mine the page
That Delia's hand hath prest,
Forgive, ye Gods, his harmless rage
Whom she hath robbed of rest!

110

“The slender lines her crowquill traced
To warn rude hands away,
Shall ne'er in bleak exposure taste
The chance of night and day;

“But with the bud she once let fall,
The ribbon that she wore,
Shall add to Cupid's chapel wall
One saintly relic more!”

THE POWER OF SOUND

A Rhymed Lecture

Ladies and Gentlemen! I claim tonight
With your fair leaves, to use a poet's right:
Asked for a lecture, 'twill be no high crime
If, for a change, I give you one in rhyme.
[I come no stranger, I might fairly claim
In these old streets a kind of grandchild's name,
For in your graveyard, wrapt in silence deep,
Four generations of my kindred sleep,—
Happy in dying e'er our troublous time,
Made dark and full of tears by treason's crime!
Unhappy that they did not live to see
A country worthy to be great and free,
A people dauntless in the weary fight,
Whate'er its pangs, for freedom and for right!]
At no high range I try Invention's wing,
But give you just a medley of a thing,
Part serious and part comic, both in one,
Or here all sentiment and there all fun,
Rather rhymed speech than poem, framed to sound
Well in the utterance, with its couplets round,
Not too condensed, for many a verse might fall
Dead in the closet, written for the hall,
And what brought down the house to hear,—if read,
Might bring down all the critics on one's head.
The Power of Sound the subject of my song,—
Lend me your ears, nor find my own too long!

111

Promise yourselves beforehand this relief,—
I may be tedious but I will be brief.

In Nature's realm what element is found
So wide in range, so deep in power as Sound,
Whether it find in earth's weird voices vent,
Or climb to Art in tongue or instrument?
What porch of sense is earlier, later, dear
Than Love's and Music's entrance-gate, the ear?
The new-born darling, sunk in slumber deep,
Hears still his mother's singing through his sleep,
Hears it and feels, though all too young to know,
That love hangs watching o'er his cradle low;
So when at last, life's ebb almost run out,
The windows darken and the dull eyes doubt,
When faces bright to all, to us grow dim,
Seen through the flush of Heaven's auroral rim,
Then thrill our ears the murmured words of prayer,
The exulting texts that wrench us from despair,
And, last of earth, like far-heard bells of home
To shipwrecked men amid the breakers' foam,
The choking tones, half blessing, half farewell,
That woman's faith and hope and heartbreak tell.

To lead the mind from things of present view,
Backward by frail association's clue,
Not e'en the Eye its magic may compare
With charms that Hearing gathers from the air:
We climb Mont Blanc and gaze with soul aglow
On God's own Gothic marble-roofed with snow,
We watch the Staubbach trailing like a mist
O'er crags by August sun to opal kissed,
We track the torrent whirling smoothly swift
Down the primeval glacier's azure rift,—
Hark! far below the mountain's beetling eaves,
A peasant girl is singing 'mid her sheaves,
A simple song, but heard long years before
From lips, that save in Heaven, will sing no more;
Hush! as she sings, the mountains fade from view,
The stream grows silent as the heaven's own blue,
Across the eyes a veil of mist is cast,
And we but see the landscape of the past.

112

We roam the halls where reigns the ideal race
Of Grecian gods not yet dethroned in grace,
The beauty, inaccessible and lone,
Left locked by Athens in the Parian stone;
E'en as we gaze, a voice, behind us heard,
Dissolves the spell with some sweet English word,—
The gods have vanished,—melt the walls in air,
No statue answers to our vacant stare,
Forth from the stately solitude of Rome
That chance-spoke phrase hath borne our spirits home;
We walk the village where we first drew breath,
Dear with its memories of life and death,
We see the spire whose warning shadow slow
Moves o'er its dial green of graves below,
We hear on new-fallen leaves in silent lanes
The yellowing shagbark drop its summer gains,
Or, on the ice, the ring of gliding steel,
And the long echo from the skater's heel.

But, Nymph of Sound,—what need to prove thy gift,
The Aladdin's trapdoor of the past to lift?
To spread old scenes beneath a foreign sky,
And give the enchantment of the inward eye?
Blind Milton still, though sealed in darkness long,
Could see all springtime in the sky-lark's song;
For while we hear we are not wholly blind;
'T is the best link that binds us to our kind;
To every sense God gives its several bliss,—
The words “I love you,” speak alone to this.

Walk the Spring fields and say what joys of sight
So keen, so various, as the Ear's delight?
The bird whose breast shows Autumn's russet dye,
While back and wings are steeped in May's own sky,
From post to post, the rustic fence along,
Shifts the light burden of his simple song;
O'erhead the bobolink rows against the breeze,
Quivering with dithyrambic melodies,
Meanwhile the bee, with intermission sweet,
From flower to flower flits humming at our feet,
And far from elm-embosomed farm to farm
The cock's shrill triumph sends its household charm.

113

Where'er we turn, to him who listens right
The earth is full of music and delight,
But music formless, void of law or bound,
A vast unconquered wilderness of sound,
A chaos waiting till the master man
Should harmonize its discords into plan,
A chaos, longing with expectant heart
For the creative will and word of Art.
And what is Art? 'tis Nature reproduced
In forms ideal, from the actual loosed;—
Nature sublimed in life's more gracious hours
By high Imagination's plastic powers,
When all the senses round one passion close
As round its golden heart the unopened rose;—
'Tis Beauty, when, her Psyche-wings set free,
She spurns her chrysalis, Utility;
And, more than all, 'tis Life, creative, warm,
That wooes the blockish thought to Grecian form.

Take any sound, a step we'll say, and see
How Art can raise it to her own degree,
Free it from triteness, commonplace, and prose,
And make it herald of sublimer woes:
Steps have their various meanings,—who can hear
The long, slow, tread, deliberate and clear,
The boot that creaks and gloats on every stair
And the firm knock which says “I know you're there!”
Nor quake at portents which so oft before
Have been the heralds of the ten-inch bore?
He enters and he sits—as crowners sit,
On the dead bodies of our time and wit,
Hopes that no plan of ours he comes to balk,
And grinds the hurdy-gurdy of his talk
In steady circles meaningless and flat,
As the broad brim that rounds a Bishop's hat.
Nature, didst thou endow him with a voice,
As mothers give great drums to little boys,
To teach us sadly how much outward din
Is based on bland vacuity within?
He goes at last, and once again we wait
To hear the rattle of the closing gate,
Nor are we free from terror and surmise
Till his last boot-creak in the gravel dies.

114

Now think you Mozart's blood had never run
Chill at the advancing step of bore or dun?
Had he not heard the million footsteps fall
Daily on pavements of the capital?
Was aught more common or outworn than this,
The hourly proof that man a biped is?
Yet how, in Don Giovanni, has he shed
Terror and mystery round the marble tread
That through the laughter strikes a chill and gloom,
Like the dull footfall of advancing Doom!
How in the overture we hear it sound,
No trivial step that falls on common ground,
But full of portent, as each clod that gave
Its echo back were hollow with a grave!
So Art can lift the meanest things that be
Up to the heaven of her felicity,
So can Imagination's touch sublime
Make things Eternal of the things of Time,
And so, as Music waves her baton round,
To shapes harmonious thrills the void of sound!

Slow were the steps, the progress steep and long;
And Music's earliest stammer was in song;
No arduous notes, but such as idly rise
Unwilled, like tears of pleasure to the eyes;
Songs such as mothers o'er the cradle croon
At morn invented and forgot ere noon.
And might I guess who first with human words
Made measured cadence, simple as a bird's,
'Twas the world's mother, when, half joy, half awe,
Her image in her baby's eyes she saw,
And, as her first-born to her heart she strained,
Felt almost more than Paradise regained.
He, as he drew the pain of mortal breath,
Knew Eden lost, in life foretasted death,
And wailed aloud, while she rocked to and fro,
And to her motion sang, now fast, now slow,
As terror and delight by turns held sway
Within her heart and tempered all her lay:
So to her lips the laws of Time and Tune
Came up unasked, like violets in June:
“Sleep, darling, sleep,” she softly sang, “in thee
“Our race renewed with fairer hope I see,

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“Sleep, son of Adam, thou shalt never know,
“Like her who gave thee life, the utter woe
“Of giving death to others, but thy brow
“Shall still be fair and innocent as now!”
So sang she, feeling on her bosom stir
The rose-soft palms of that first murderer;
How many a mother since has sung as she,
And dreamed fair dreams with Cain upon her knee!

What need the advancing steps of song to trace
And all its changing moods of Age and Race?
Themes such as that, distinctions such as those,
Belong of right to science and to prose.
The light-winged Muse that Hippocrenë drinks
Recks not the weeds and pebbles on its brinks;
She clasps whole continents with gladdening eyes
Nor stays her footstep to geologize.
Yet must I linger! who untouched could leave
Those Hebrew songs that triumph, trust, or grieve?
Verses that smite the soul as with a sword,
And open all the abysses with a word?
How many a soul have David's tears washed white,
His wings borne upward to the Source of light!
How many his triumph nerved with martyr-will,
His faith from turmoil led to waters still!
They were his songs that rose to Heaven before
The surge of steel broke wild o'er Marston Moor,
When rough-shod workmen in their sober gear
Rode down in dust the long-haired Cavalier;
With these once more the Mayflower's cabin rang
From men who trusted in the God they sang,
And Plymouth heard them, poured on bended knees,
From wild Cathedrals arched with centuried trees.
They were grim men, unlovely,—yes, but great,
Who prayed around the cradle of our State;
Small room for light and sentimental strains
In those lean men with empires in their brains,
Who their young Israel saw in vision clasp
The mane of either sea with taming grasp,
Who pitched a State as other men pitch tents,
And led the march of Time to great events.
O strange New World that yet wast never young,
Whose youth from thee by tyrannous need was wrung,

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Brown foundling of the forests, with gaunt eyes,
Orphan and heir of all the centuries,
Who, on thy baby leaf-bed in the wood,
Grew'st frugal, plotting for to-morrow's food;
And thou, dear Bay-state, mother of us all,
Forget not in new cares thine ancient call,
Though all things else should perish in the sod,
Hold with firm clutch thy Puritan faith in God,
And the calm courage that deemed all things light
Whene'er the inward voice said, This is right!
If for the children there should come a time
Like that which tried the fathers' faith sublime,
(Which God avert!), if Tyranny should strive
On limbs New-England-made to lock her gyve,
Let Kansas answer from her reddened fields,
“'Tis bastard and not Pilgrim blood that yields!”

But lighter themes demand my wandering lay,
The Muse with gladness smoothes the frown away,
Content to follow down the ages long
The brooklike waywardness of gleaming song.

Music hath uses, nor of these the least
To be the inspiring handmaid of the priest,
To guide the soul to that serener air
Where praise, full-ripened, blossoms into prayer:
O ancient chants, O voice of chaste desires,
Tender with tears and warm with martyr-fires,
Blossom of saintly spirits, essence fine
Of all in human nature most divine,
Best aspirations, which we feel to be
Not one but every age's litany,
Who that has ever sorrowed, ever loved,
Can hear your ecstasies with soul unmoved?
Whether 'neath Sistine vaults, while twilight falls
O'er Michael's frescoes fading on the walls,
The Miserere trail its long despair,
And grief find solace in a pain more rare,—
Whether 'neath Peter's dome there swell the chant,
While Easter sunbeams through the incense slant,
And saints down-gleaming from the vaulted roof
Thrill in their golden Heaven so far aloof,
As with one burst of voice and instrument

117

He is arisen! down the nave is sent,—
Whether in England's hoary minster-piles,
The organ's thunders jar the quarried aisles,
Shaking the banners that had streamed of yore
In France's van at Creci and Agincourt,
And the long chant, with exultation flown,
Makes the carved leaves forget that they are stone,—
Or whether in some meeting-house which we
To call a Gothic edifice agree,
(Vandal were better,—all one, so we keep
Taste out of sight and do religion cheap),
Yet there, even there, within that bandbox shrine,
The soul may taste its sacramental wine,
May in Wachuset's place see Horeb stand,
As from the people, in a chorus grand,
“Old Hundred” rings, and memories dim for years
Rise up transfigured through a mist of tears!

If measured words man's nature so can move,
Song too must plead for Freedom, Joy, and Love:
How many a change the lyric Muse hath rung
Since all the woman burned on Sappho's tongue;
Since the mild Teian, innocently gay,
'Twixt wine and woman shared his genial lay;
Since fierce Tyrtaeus crashing o'er the lyre
For burning words found notes of kindred fire;
Since Horace sang in numbers clear and sweet
Life's social charm and friendship's Autumn heat!
Where'er man's heart with daring deed or hope
Hath felt its bounds, yet longed for wider scope,
The dumb emotion in the bosom pent
Hath found in song its solace and its vent.
When Luther roused to grapple with his foe,
Shaking all Europe with indignant No!
And moulding kingdoms in his peasant palms,
His doughtiest champions were a score of psalms;
On Music's wings and Memory's all abroad
They flew, the weaponed canticles of God,
Safe from the stake, the halter and the sword,
From the priest's guile, or Kaiser's broken word.

No easy task to frame the passionate lay
Whose force magnetic keeps old Time at bay,

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To find the melody complex yet clear,
In no tongue alien, sweet to every ear,
Fresh still, though centuries old, as morning dew,
Familiar, though but yesterday 'twas new.
The artist knows not how within him sprung
The graceful marvel trembling on his tongue;
Dreams the brown Earth her mother-juices stir
In the rathe snowdrop that looks back on her,
Or that it stole from her dumb heart below
The tender secret of its perfumed snow?
Rare is the gift to marry to the chords
Words that are music, music that is words,
A perfect sympathy to ear and heart,
Nature made doubly natural by Art,
Words that across the yielding music fly
Like light winds gleaming o'er the scarce-bent rye,
Music that floats the thought unconscious up
As the lake swings the lily's argent cup,—
Such the true lyric, and the men how few
Who know the secret, or who ever knew!

Spirit of Song, by wandering breezes borne
Safe to the heart which thou wilt fill with morn,
Whether in some hushed hamlet 'mid the hills,
Or the smoked city loud with whirling mills,
Who knows what foundling's utterance thou'lt unbind,
Take him from toil and give him to Mankind?
Thou foundest Burns a stripling at his plough,
The impatient genius lamping neath his brow;
Small need had he to mourn the lore of books,
The season's playmate, friend of fields and brooks,—
He sang as birds sing, and his joys and woes
Took beauty on as simply as a rose.
Thou foundest Moore a boy in amorous wars,
The lord's small toady, Cupid of boudoirs,—
Thou whispered'st him, and Erin's earth-bowed wrong
Sprang mailed with verse and falchion-girt with song,—
On “The Last Rose” there falls no winter blight,
The “Light of Other Days” is deathless light!
Where Paris' streets with million footsteps throb,
Child of the alley, pupil of the mob,
Thou found'st a bright-eyed boy, and sigh'dst “Come forth,”
“Alas!” he answered, “I am nothing worth,

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“A shiftless creature, fit to be a king.”
Thou spak'st once more, “And thou shalt be one,—Sing!”
Then gushed the lays, pathetic, tender, light,
Cheerful as sunshine, full of thought as night,
And France, that wept with him, and lent
Her choral tones to deepen all he meant,
Mourned (and 'twas long for France to mourn) a day,
Her greatest poet dead in Béranger.

Have we no lyrics? Doth Euterpe scorn
To tread our prairies broad and woods unworn?
Answer, ye notes which shrilled o'er Yorktown's farms,
A country-jig, impressed to serve in arms,
When loath Cornwallis, scarlet-breasted, drew
His sword to yield it to the Buff and Blue;
Which shrilled again when, 'mid the war-clouds dun,
Yard locked with yard, hot gun-lip kissing gun,
The English oak, long wont to spurn the seas,
Bent to the western pine its sturdy knees,
And the red cross, dread meteor of the wave,
Place to new stars in skies of empire gave!

Long as the sun beneath our hill-tops dips,
Ne'er may war set the trumpet to her lips,
And, with fierce summons, call from forge and field
Our youth that kindle slow and slowly yield;
But, oh! fair Freedom, if our choice must be
'Twixt war and craven recreance to thee,
Sooner, dear land, let each manchild of thine
Sleep death's red sleep within the enemy's line,
Let ocean whelm thy last ship's shattered trunk,
Her torn flag shaking challenge as she sunk,
To rot unconquered, all her thunders spent,
Each rusting gun a brave man's monument,
Sooner than brook, what only slaves hold dear,
A suppliant peace that is not Peace, but Fear!

Poor though the air, and not of native growth,
The paltry words and music British both,
Yet Yankee Doodle's hurrying cadence suits
Our rapid Jonathan in seven-league boots.
And, mixed with glorious memories, can inspire
The heart with will and flood the veins with fire.

120

But have we nothing that is wholly ours?
No songs commensurate with our growing powers?
Answer, whose ears have felt the torturing blows
Of lays like “Jump Jim Crow” or “Coal-black Rose,”
The pioneers, from nightly lampblacked jaws,
Of all those tunes that set our teeth like saws!
Answer, ye patient victims, doomed to hear
The white man's Ethiop doggerel by the year,
Mothers, with industry of nursery choirs
Tired out,—because “Virginny nebber tires,”
Fathers, half-dead with hearing sons and heirs
Forever “gittin' up” those endless “stairs”
That led to empty rooms for Discord fit,
Not Attic, though,—that word we join with wit!

Music, thou keystone of Creation's arch,—
From morning stars that pealed Time's opening march,
From angels singing Christmas hymns of peace,
What a descent to banjo strains like these!
By these men enter not thy shrine, nor so
Thy springs of grace and solace learn to know;
Not so are oped those starry deeps of song
That make us weak to make us doubly strong;
O'er this grimed gate is carven deep and clear,
“Leave hope behind, all ye who enter here!”
No sin more base than thus to vulgarize
The Arts, which, rightly used, make great and wise,
By which the soul lives when the man is gone,
And Beauty's trophies mock oblivion;
These to degrade, through want of thought or pelf,
Is to debase the coin of God himself!

But I am preaching: ah me! what's the use,
Not they who teach please most, but who amuse,
Yet as we near our fortieth parallels
We reach our temperate zone, if nothing else,
And threaten judgments less, because we find
Our own has not been always of one mind.
Who against music has not sinned? who not
In some vile chorus paid his vocal scot,
When all the letters of the scale to him
Were x's, unknown quantities and dim?

121

Long o'er the Lyric I have paused, but when
Was aught so dear, so eloquent, to men?
What like the human voice can soothe or stir,
The voice, and Music its interpreter?
Love softens it till every pleading tone
Seems shod with leaves of roses newly-blown;
Fear chokes it to a hoarse and husky breath
From some pale twilight realm 'twixt life and death;
Hate chills and hardens it until we feel
Under the civil sheath an edge of steel;
Courage rings through it like a trump that calls
“Havelock is nigh!” to Lucknow's trembling walls;
And when beneath the torrid vault of brain
The eyes are dry and spent their futile rain,
It draws its pathos from profounder spheres,
Red heart-caves, far below the source of tears.
The voice it is that parts us from the brute,
The unfallen angels sing,—the fallen are mute.
Since God first spake, dividing day from night,
And in one act created speech and light,
Language hath been man's high prerogative,
Image express of Him by whom we live;
Unlanguaged Nature to the Earth is bound,
Yet speechward yearns in many a speechless sound,
For utterance longs, and finds at last in Man
The gift denied her in Creation's plan.
Yet by mere words the soul's but half released,
Nature had found, the spirit lacked her priest,
Who, as he offered for the adoring throng,
Could transubstantiate mortal words with song;
Then music came, and on the Poet's lips
Utterance full-orbed swam moonlike from eclipse:
As Man to Nature, so to Man is he
Who fledges words with wings of melody;
Through him the weary, weak, oppressed, and poor
Their stammering sorrow hear to rapture soar,
He by expression gives their hearts relief,
For a grief uttered is but half a grief.
O gift unequalled, by the spell of Tone
To make the aspirings of mankind his own!

But am I partial? Hath not Music flung
Her charm o'er other organs than the tongue?

122

O'er wood, and brass, and wire, insensate things,
She waves her wand, and each, enchanted, sings,
Takes Feeling's, Passion's, Thought's, or Fancy's hue
As pools grow deep with Heaven's reflected blue.

Than the Composer's art none more demands
The long-trained instinct of creative hands;
What breadth of brain, what tireless stretch of thought,
By which these miracles of sound are wrought!
What grasp of mind, what subtle tact of skill,
To wield the Orchestra with a single will,
The guiding thought and impulse to conceive
That Tone's ten thousand strands in one shall weave,
That in the Opera's gathering Fate shall suit
The tragic buskin to Euterpe's foot,
Endow the organ with a breathing soul
And like a moon its mutinous tides control!

Majestic Organ, in thy stops are blent
All Nature's tones, imperial instrument!
Thou canst wail plaintive like a soul in doubt
Or peal all Sinai's threatening thunders out,
Canst like a child entreat, or prophet warn,
Or hurl o'er kneeling hosts Jehovah's scorn!
Through Haarlem's aisles, or Freiburg's arches grand,
How thrill'st thou docile to the master's hand,
While through the forest of thy pipes there sweeps,
Like wind through pines, a storm from out the deeps!
In Bach's broad fugues the mid-sea waves, heaped high,
Roll on and on beneath a sunless sky,
Break on no shore, but endless rise and fall,
Till gradual silence drops like night o'er all;
Of if the player will, you seem to hear
Two choirs alternate, distant one, one near;
From mighty basses one to whispers dies,
Far off in heaven the treble clear replies;
So, till in distance lost, they seem to call
And answer still in chant antiphonal,
While like a golden censer, as they go,
They swing the choral incense to and fro.

Our fathers, large in faith and strong in heart,
Were bleak and northern on the side of Art,

123

And surely in the narrow path they trod,
When they shut organs from the house of God.
And when, with feuds like Ghibelline and Guelf,
Each parish did its music for itself.
A parson's son, through tree-arched country ways,
I rode exchanges oft in dear old days
Ere yet the boys forgot, with reverent eye,
To doff their hats as the black coat went by,
Ere skirts expanding in their apogee,
Turned girls to bells without the second e;
Still in my teens, I felt the various woes
Of volunteers, each singing as he chose,
Till much experience left me no desire
To learn new species of the Village choir.
Sometimes two ancient men, through glasses dim,
In age's treble deaconed off the hymn,
Paused o'er long words and then with breathless pace
Went down a slope of short ones at a race,
While who could sing and who could not, but would,
Rushed helter-skelter after as they could.
Well I remember how their faces shone,
Safe through some snare like Re-sig-na-ti-on,
And how some graceless youth would mock the tones
Of Deacon Jarvis or of Deacon Jones:
In towns ambitious of more cultured strains,
The gruff bass-viol told its inward pains
As some enthusiast, deaf to catgut's woe,
Rasped its bare nerves with torture-resined bow;
Hard-by another, with strained eyeballs set,
Blew devious discord through his clarinet,
And the one fiddle, that was wont to seek
In secular tunes its living all the week,
Blind to the leader's oft-repeated glance
Mixed up the psalm-tune with a country dance.

O, Muse, return, for somewhat nobler chords
Wait but thy touch to sing beneath the words;
Names crowd, of men that well deserved the bays,—
No chaplet frail of overhasty praise,
But sifted judgments, not of one or two,
Such as slow decades pass upon the few.
There Händel smiles, he who the song restored
That angel-choirs o'er Bethlehem's manger poured,

124

Who plucked great thoughts, with soul of mighty reach,
Easily as children pull a loosened peach,
And whose clear depth, and pure Arcadian tone,
Still, as the centuries pass, are all his own;
There Haydn towers, and, in his various strain,
Renews Creation's miracle again,
Poet and thinker, who to Music brought
The embracing range of astronomic thought;
There stands stout Glück, his seamed face glowing through
With the frank courage to its instincts true,
Who dared the bribes of Fashion to refuse
And rescued fallen Opera from the stews;
There Mozart rises, spirit ever young,
O'er whose charmed cradle murmuring Music hung,
That fresh, blithe nature, through whose veins we see
The ichor throb of innate Melody,
Whose artist hands so sweetly interwrought
Italian sunshine with Teutonic thought;
And there, majestic shade, with cliff-like brow,
Once scarred with stormy thought, but placid now,
The lion-head bent down with weight of mind,
The hair blown back with supernatural wind,
Beethoven passes,—what a soul was there
To wrench its triumphs from a life's despair!
A deaf musician! tell me, can there be
A man so stepmothered by Fate as he?
Not so: the Muse her little Ishmael found
Shut in his desert from the world of sound,
Showed him the rift whence living water sprang,
And in his brain all Nature's voices sang.
As, over Guido's fresco brightly borne,
His flaming coursers drives the god of morn,
So, with light grasp, yet strong, Beethoven strains
In glowing hands all Music's golden reins,
While, with resounding wheels, the car is driven
Through brightening spaces to the verge of Heaven!

I pass the living; say not I have set
Only round German brows the coronet;
O Italy, I love thee all too well
Not to have felt and loved thy music's spell!
Art will not leave thee; though the Bourbon brood
Stain thy fair streets, Parthenope, with blood,

125

Though Rome again within her broken walls
Hears with bowed head the tramp of barbarous Gauls
Spite French treachery and Teutonic wrong,
The land of Dante is the land of song,
Round the dead shell the soul of Music clings
And Passion only in Italian sings!

O Art divine, so strong to cheer and save,
Companion from the cradle to the grave,
Who know'st each stop, from thoughts whose lurid seams
Glow with Imagination's thund'rous gleams,
To airiest Fancies that like swallows skim
O'er the brain's surface with unceasing whim,—
Proteus! now gay as that auroral glance
That leads from Boreal skies its tireless dance,
Now sad as first earth on the coffin's lid,
Or yellowing letters after dear deaths hid,—
How shall my voice find art, or strike the key,
In fitting words to take her leave of thee?

Thou calm'st the infant on the mother's breast,—
Thou modulat'st aspiring youth's unrest,—
Thou sooth'st the mother pining for her boy,—
Pip'st to the bride to heighten joy with joy,—
O'er awestruck multitudes thou soar'st in praise,—
Wail'st for the dead gone forth through darkling ways,—
Thrillest the martyr with exultant hymn
From cloudy rows of waiting Cherubim,
Until the fiery cup, denied its power,
Folds its cool petals round him like a flower:
From the hushed edge of battle, when the breath
Chills 'neath the upas-shade of imminent Death,
The soldier hears thy clarion clangors come,
And the quick heart-beat of thy eager drum,
In airs home-breathing hears his country cry,
“Hath life such sweetness as for me to die?”
And mounts the breach, with eye as marble firm,
To crush the hailing battery like a worm.

Music, companion of Life's choicest hours,
Passion's best voice, spur of the manlier powers,
Fitly for thee to breathe a last farewell
The tones should fade, as, in the exiled shell,

126

Dies the faint murmur stolen from the sea,
The lifelong sigh of Love and Memory;—
Feeling should undulate each living line,
And the words match it, as across the brine,
Following the bark the stormy-petrel flies,
Sinks with the waves and rises as they rise;—
But, ah, to track the ideal Hope how vain!
The rainbow, caught, would be but icy rain,
And still before us glides the alluring bow
In its own heaven, and leaves us still below!

EPIGRAM ON J. M.

Said Fortune to a common spit,
“Your rust and grease I'll rid ye on,
And make ye in a twinkling fit
For Ireland's Sword of Gideon!”

In vain! what Nature meant for base
All chance for good refuses;
M. gave one gleam, then turned apace
To dirtiest kitchen uses.

THE TRUSTEE'S LAMENT

Per aspera ad astra

(Scene.—Outside the gate of the Astronomical Observatory at Albany.)

There was a time when I was blest;
The stars might rise in East or West
With all their sines and wonders;
I cared for neither great nor small,
As pointedly unmoved by all
As, on the top of steeple tall,
A lightning-rod at thunders.

What did I care for Science then?
I was a man with fellow-men,
And called the Bear the Dipper;

127

Segment meant piece of pie,—no more;
Cosine, the parallelogram that bore
JOHN SMITH & CO. above a door;
Arc, what called Noah skipper.

No axes weighed upon my mind,
(Unless I had a few to grind,)
And as for my astronomy,
Had Hedgecock's quadrant then been known,
I might a lamp-post's height have shown
By gas-tronomic skill,—if none
Find fault with the metonymy.

O hours of innocence! O ways
How far from these unhappy days
When all is vicy-versy!
No flower more peaceful took its due
Than I, who then no difference knew
'Twixt Ursy major and my true
Old crony, Major Hersey.

Now in long broils and feuds we roast,
Like Strasburg geese that living toast
To make a liver-paté,—
And all because we fondly strove
To set the city of our love
In scientific fame above
Her sister Cincinnati!

We built our tower and furnished it
With everything folks said was fit,
From coping-stone to grounsel;
And then, to give a knowing air,
Just nominally assigned its care
To that unmanageable affair,
A Scientific Council.

We built it, not that one or two
Astronomers the stars might view
And count the comets' hair-roots,
But that it might by all be said
How very freely we had bled,—
We were not laying out a bed
To force their early square-roots.

128

The observations we wished made
Were on the spirit we'd displayed,
Worthy of Athens' high days;
But they've put in a man who thinks
Only of planets' nodes and winks,
So full of astronomic kinks
He eats star-fish on Fridays.

The instruments we did not mean
For seeing through, but to be seen
At tap of Trustee's knuckle;
But the Director locks the gate,
And makes ourselves and strangers wait
While he is ciphering on a slate
The rust of Saturn's buckle.

So on the wall's outside we stand,
Admire the keyhole's contour grand
And gateposts' sturdy granite;—
But, ah, is Science safe, we say,
With one who treats Trustees this way?
Who knows but he may snub, some day,
A well-conducted planet?

Who knows what mischief he may brew
With such a telescope brand-new
At the four-hundredth power?
He may bring some new comet down
So near that it'll singe the town
And do the Burgess-Corps crisp-brown
Ere they can storm his tower.

We wanted (having got our show)
Some man, that had a name or so,
To be our public showman;
But this one shuts and locks the gate
Who'll answer but he'll peculate,
(And, faith, some stars are missed of late,)
Now that he's watched by no man?

Our own discoveries he may steal,
Or put night's candles out, to deal
At junkshops with the sockets:

129

Savants, in other lands or this,
If any theory you miss
Whereon your cipher graven is,
Don't fail to search his pockets!

Lock up your comets: if that fails,
Then notch their ears and clip their tails,
That you at need may swear to 'em;
And watch your nebulous flocks at night,
For, if your palings are not tight,
He may, to gratify his spite,
Let in the Little Bear to 'em.

Then he's so quarrelsome, we've fears
He'll set the very Twins by the ears,—
So mad, if you resist him,
He'd get Aquarius to play
A milkman's trick, some cloudy day,
And water all the Milky Way
To starve some sucking system.

But plaints are vain! through wrath or pride,
The Council all espouse his side
And will our missives con no more;
And who that knows what savants are,
Each snappish as a Leyden jar,
Will hope to soothe the wordy war
'Twixt Ologist and Onomer?

Search a Reform Convention, where
He-and she-resiarchs prepare
To get the world in their power,
You will not, when 'tis loudest, find
Such gifts to hug and snarl combined
As drive each astronomic mind
With fifty-score Great-Bear-power!

No! put the Bootees on your foot,
Elope with Virgo, strive to shoot
That arrow of O'Ryan's,
Drain Georgian Ciders to the lees,
Attempt what crackbrained thing you please,
But dream not you can e'er appease
An angry man of science!

130

Ah, would I were, as I was once,
To fair Astronomy a dunce,
Or launching jeux d'esprit at her,
Of light zodiacal making light,
Deaf to all tales of comets bright,
And knowing but such stars as might
Roll r-rs at our theatre!

Then calm I drew my night-cap on,
Nor bondsman was for what went on
Ere morning in the heavens;
'Twas no concern of mine to fix
The Pleiades at seven or six,—
But now the omnium genitrix
Seems all at sixes and sevens.

Alas, 'twas in an evil hour
We signed the paper for the tower,
With Mrs. D. to head it!
For, if the Council have their way,
We've merely had, as Frenchmen say,
The painful maladie du pay,
While they get all the credit!

Boys, henceforth doomed to spell Trustees,
Think not it ends in double ease
To those who hold the office;
Shun Science as you would Despair,
Sit not in Cassiopeia's chair,
Nor hope from Berenice's hair
To bring away your trophies!

THE FATAL CURIOSITY

Some charm was round me, night and day,
That made my life seem just begun;
A presence was it? Rather say
The warning aureole of one.

And yet I felt it everywhere;
Walked I the woodland isles along,

131

It brushed me with ambrosial hair;
Bathed I, I heard a mermaid's song.

How sweet it was! a buttercup
Could hold for me a day's delight,
A bird could lift my fancy up
To ether free from cloud or blight.

What was the Nymph? Nay, I will see,
Methought, and I will know her near;
If such, but guessed, her charm can be,
Were not possession triply dear?

So every magic art I tried,
And spells as numberless as sand,
Until one midnight by my side
I saw her glowing fulness stand.

I turned to clasp her—but, “Farewell,”
Fading, she sighed, “we meet no more;
Not by my hand the curtain fell
That leaves you conscious, wise, and poor.

“Since you have found me out, I go;
Another lover I must find
Content his happiness to know,
Nor strive its secret to unwind.”

BEFORE THE EMBERS

It is not far to the Macarian isles,
Nor to the gates of my enchanted palace;
There fountains rear their palpitating piles,
And Parian beauty gleams through twilight alleys.
There music, never heard in mortal air,
Swells and is hushed along the hillsides fair,
Or hides and seeks with echo in the valleys;
And in its pauses all the tree-tops sing,
And all the falling fountain-jewels ring,
And, with half-hushed emotion,
Up marble steps the unharmful billows swing,
Rimming with whispery pearls the sapphire ocean.

132

There are all things that soul or sense delight—
Imperial shapes that Phidias died conceiving,
Verses that musing poets meant to write,
And Raphael's dreams, at sunrise past retrieving;
Great windows open toward the western gold,
O'er hills on hills in amplest sunset rolled
To sharp snow-peaks, an opal chrism receiving,
And eastward over leagues of ocean stark,
Where, o'er the upheaving moon, some raven bark
With swift eclipse is stealing,
And there are walls cloistered with laurel dark,
To shut the senses round some chosen feeling.

But most my portrait-gallery I prize,
By memory reared, the artist wise and holy
From stainless quarries of deep-buried days;
There, as I muse in dainty melancholy,
Your faces glow in more than mortal youth,
Companions of my prime, now vanished wholly!
Though my dull soul refract Heaven's other rays,
Though truth, or what seemed truth, may feel decays,
Ye know not alteration,
But shine undimmed as when life's morning blaze
Flashed back from youth's white shield of expectation.

Ye glow serene through that celestial air
Which only fortunes passed are e'er arrayed in,
Secure from mist of doubt or blight of care,
The loud impetuous boy, the low-voiced maiden;
Ah, never master that drew mortal breath
Can match thy portraits, just and generous death,
Whose brush with sweet regretful tints is laden;
Thou paintest that which baffled here below,
Half understood, or understood for woe,
And, with a sweet forewarning,
Mak'st round the sacred front an aureole glow
Woven of that light which rose on Easter morning!

133

IL PESCEBALLO

Opera Seria: in un Atto

Musica del Maestro Rossibelli-Donimozarti

PERSONAGGI

Lo Straniero (Tenore)
Il Cameriere (Basso)
La Padrona (Soprano)
Un Corriere, Serve della Locanda, Studenti di Padova

La Scena è in Padova

[_]

[Il Pesceballo (corruzione della voce inglese Fish-ball) è un prodotto della cucina americana, consistente in una combinazione di stoccofisso con patate, fatta nella forma di pallottole, simili alle nostre polpette, e poi fritta. Msgr. Bedini, nel suo Viaggio negli Stati Uniti, c' insegna che la detta pietanza si usa massimamente nella Nuova-Inghiterra, ove, secondo quel venerabile autore, viene specialmente mangiato a colazione nelle domeniche.]

SCENE I

Street in Padua. Chorus of Students of the University, first in the distance, then on the stage.

Hesper doth peer now,
Make we good cheer now,
With the new daylight
Back to the oar!

We're your true nightlarks!
Truce to all learning
Till, with the morning,
Comes the old bore!

Drinking and smoking,
Laughing and joking,
These are what students
Love to the core!

134

We have to study
Flossofies muddy,
'Ologies, 'Onomies,
'Ics by the score!

All the strange lingoes,
Law, too, by jingoes!
Ever new sciences
We must explore!

Drinking and smoking,
Laughing and joking,
These are the pleasures
Night hath in store.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II

The Stranger

Cavatina

Behold thro' shadows lowering
The waning moon slinks cowering!
Dread Fate, my soul o'erpowering,
No more my footsteps dog!
Ah! sweet, ecstatic vision,
Why leave me in derision?
I perish, dream Elysian,
Unless I find some prog!
[He sinks upon a rock, weary, and almost desperate: after a pause, he begins again.
Just Heaven, what splendor greets my aching eyes!
Methinks I see Hope's morning star arise!
Is it some sign transparent, or the moon?
Guide me, ye powers supreme, to some Saloon!

[Exit.

SCENE III

Dining-room of an Eating-House. The Landlady, Waiter, Maids
L.
Pietro, say, are all things ordered right?
There'll be a throng of customers to-night.

135

W.
Bid them come on! we're ready and to spare:
I hear the students singing in the square.

L.
Yes, what a bore! sad customers are they!

W.
Your pardon, Madam, good ones—when they pay.

L.
Howe'er it is, submissive must we be:
Go to the kitchen and the maids o'ersee,
That everything be ready to a T.

[Exit Waiter.

SCENE IV

The Landlady,
sola

Aria

How full is life of sorrow
To one that keeps an hostel!
Doomed with each weary morrow
To be upon the go still!
Send me, oh Heaven, some angel
In answer to my moan!

In season and out of season,
I wither here alone,
('Tis a shame, 'tis against all reason,)
Wearing my hands to the bone!
My mind's made up! I'll seize on
Some husband to share my moan!

SCENE V

Landlady, Waiter
W.
(aside).
Lo, she's alone! no better moment seek!

L.
What is it, Pietro?

W.
Have I leave to speak?

L.
Ah no! I see, the string you're always strumming;
Don't waste your breath,—there's customers a-coming!

W.
Yet hear me! I'm sincere.—D'ye call this humming?

Duet
L.
Alas, too well to me is known
That hopeless song of love and woe.

W.
You cannot hush my anguished moan,
Till you recall that fatal “No!”

136

L.
Thy importunings are in vain,
Cease, cease, these sighs, 'tis wasted pain!

W.
Though thou refuse me yet again,
My love shall wax, but never wane!

L.
Again I say it cannot be;
This hand, this heart, are not for thee!

W.
Again I swear, though cold to me,
This hand, this heart, are thine in fee!

[Exit Landlady.

SCENE VI

In front of the Eating-House. The Stranger knocks.
Enter Waiter
W.
Stranger of doubtful aspect, what make you at the door?
Your face with Hunger's I O U's is written o'er and o'er;
Yet much I do suspect me, you haven't nary red;
Here but our clock hath leave to tick! make tracks! vamose! 'nough said!

S.
O gentlemanly waiter, all day have I pursued
A fleeting, fond illusion of broiled and roast and stewed;
I am not Crœsus, 'tis too true, but I my scot can pay!

W.
If that's the case, I ask no more; I pray you step this way,—
Yet first (for I have sorrows, too,) your woeful tale impart!

S.
Waiter of generous soul, I will, although it break my heart!

Cavatina

With love and hunger anguishing,
As I in bed was tossing,
There passed a vision languishing,
The murky midnight crossing!
“Arise!” it said, “and follow me!
Follow with dauntless courage!
And find, ere darkness swallow me,
For heart and stomach forage!”

W.
And then?

S.
I followed, then, unterrified,
In hope (yet hope half-scorning)
To see that promise verified,
All night and since this morning!

137

At last the vision wonderful
Stopped here before your portal,
And then, like longings mortal,
In cloud-wreaths disappeared!

W.
O stranger, too, unfortunate, thy story starts a tear,
Step in, I prithee, and forget thy sorrows in some beer!

SCENE VII

The Eating-House. Students seated. Waiting-Maids. To them enter the Waiter and Stranger
Chorus:
Popular Ballad

There was a man went round the town
To hunt a supper up and down.

For he had been right far away,
And nothing found to eat that day.

He finds at last a right cheap place,
And stealeth in with modest pace—

S.
Now, waiter, bring to me the bill of fare.
(aside)
Ye pangs within, what will not hunger dare?

Aria

Here is the bill of fare, sir,
Of what there is for supper,
Long as the Proverbs of Tupper,—
Command, then, s'il vous plaît!

Soup, with nothing, twenty coppers,
Roast spring-chicken, three-and-nine,
Ditto biled, (but then they're whoppers!)
Fish-balls, luscious, two a dime,
Two a dime, sir, hot and prime, sir,
Fried cod-fish balls, two a dime!
There's the bill, and cash procures ye
Any viand that allures ye;—
Cutlet, pigeon, woodcock, widgeon,
Canvas-backs, if you're a painter,
Plover, rice-birds, (they're your nice birds!)
And, to cut it short, there ain't a

138

Thing but you can play the lord in,
If you've got the brads accordin'.
Wines? We get 'em right from Jersey;—
Coffee? Our own beans we raise, sir;—
Ices? 'Cept we warmed 'em,—mercy,—
Freeze your tongue too stiff to praise, sir!
Best of all, though, 's the fish-ball, though,
We have made 'em all the fashion;
Come to try 'em as we fry 'em,—
Presto! liking turns to passion!
There we carry off the banner,
'Taint so easy, neither, that ain't,—
But, you see, we've got a patent,—
Do 'em in the Cape Cod manner,—
That's the way to make 'em flavorous!
Fried in butter, tongue can't utter
How they're brown, and crisp, and savorous!

S.
Peace, waiter, for I starve meanwhile,—but hold:
Bring me one fish-ball, ONE,— (aside)
curst lack of gold!

SCENE VIII

The Stranger, Chorus
S.
Moment of horror! crisis of my doom!
Led by the dreadful Shape, I sought this room
With half a dime! A slender sum, and yet
'Twill buy one fish-ball! Down, weak pride, forget
Thy happier—but what prate I? Thought of dread,
If, with one fish-ball, they should not give bread!

Chorus
Beer here! beer here! hallo! waiter!
Think ye we came here to wait?
Jupiter surnamed the Stator,
Never had so slow a gait!
Beer here! beer here! brisk and foaming,
Lager, Burton, Dublin stout!
If you take so long in coming,
One would rather go without!

SCENE IX

Enter Waiter
W.
Here's your one fish-ball, sir— (sarcastically)
you ordered one?

S.
Thanks,—and with bread to match, 'twere not ill done.

139

Duet and Chorus
W.
(with fury).
With one single fish-ball, is't bread ye are after?
So wild a presumption provokes me to laughter!
So mad a suggestion proves, out of all question,
Howe'er you the test shun, you're mad as a hornet!
I trample it, scorn it, so mad a suggestion!
It fills me with fury, it dumbs me with rage!

S.
With one dainty fish-ball do you bread refuse me?
It's you are the madman yourself, sir, excuse me!
My wish was immodest? Of men you're the oddest!
In strait-waistcoat bodiced, go hide ye in Bedlam!
Your fish-balls, there, peddle 'em! learn to be modest,
And tempt not a stranger half-starving to rage!

Chorus.
O'er one paltry fish-ball d'ye make such a rumpus?
For gracious' sake, neighbors, we'd rather you'd thump us!
You make such a flare-up, such riot and rear-up,
Our comfort you tear up to rags and to tatters,
Come, settle your matters without such a flare-up,
Or soon you shall suffer a proof of our rage!

SCENE X

Enter Landlady
W.
The Mistress comes, and I will all relate.

S.
Oh, Heaven! my dream! (aside)

L.
Resistless stars! my Fate! (aside)

What means, sirs, tell me, this unseemly riot?
These twenty years my house has still been quiet.

All.
Lady!

L.
Peace! Interesting stranger, tell
The tumult's cause, and how it all befell.

S.
I'll furnish voice, if thou'lt find ears as well!

Cavatina

With love and hunger anguishing,
As I in bed was tossing,
There came a vision languishing,
The murky midnight crossing!
“Arise!” it said, “and follow me!
Press on with dauntless courage!
And find, ere darkness swallow me,
For heart and stomach forage!”

140

L.
What then!

S.
I followed, then, unterrified,
In hope (yet hope half scorning)
To see the vision verified,
All night and all this morning.
At last the shape mysterious
Stopped here before your portal,
And then, like longings mortal,
It vanished in a fog!

Chorus and Aria
Chorus.
Hurrah for the famous incognito!
Here's marvels beyond exception!
I'd dance, though I had a mahog'ny toe,
To give him a rousing reception!
Ah, if with Cupid's arrow
You tingle to the marrow,
Yield to the sweet distraction
Of instantaneous flame!

L.
Much faith to joy- or sorrow-scopes
My mind has never tendered,
Yet to a gypsy's horoscopes
It instantly surrendered;—
“There comes a noble stranger
In mystery and danger,
At once to seize the sceptre
That sways thy bosom's throne!”

One of the Chorus.
Pardon my rudeness, gentle stranger, do!

All.
And ours!

S.
'Tis done!

Chorus.
Your vision, then?

S.
Proves true!

Trio
W.
Oh bah! confound his visions!
'Twould be a tavern pretty,
If gratis here the city
Could all come in to dine,
Consuming our provisions,
Our fish-balls, and our wine!

141

L.
O, if thou only knewest
To what a deed atrocious
Thou urgest me, ferocious,
My horror would be thine!
Aims such as thou pursuest,
A fiend would sure resign!

S.
That she should prove benignant,
My wildest hope surpasses;
They are but dolts and asses
That doubt my dream divine!
Ah, do not be indignant,
If now I call thee mine!

SCENE XI

Enter a Messenger
Mess.
Friends, was a stranger here of noble mien?

W.
A stranger, yes.

Mess.
Half-starved? Of garments mean?

W.
Precisely so, and coin of small amount!

Mess.
'Tis he I've sought for years, Carrara's Count!

L.
Art speaking sooth?

Mess.
Of course; why this amaze?
A harsh stepfather turned him out to graze.
An exile long,—mark now the hand of Fate!
The old man's dead, and his'n the estate!

(points to stranger.)
L.
O, joy supreme!

Chorus.
I always told you so!

Mess.
Are you a Paduan? (To stranger.)

S.
No, of Bergamo!

Mess.
Then 'tis the Count!—Your memory recalls
Blithe days of childhood passed in marble halls?

S.
Hanged if it does!

Mess.
'Tis He!!—One further test:
Wear you a locket with the fam'ly crest?

S.
Not I!

Mess.
'Tis He!!!—Yet, might I be so bold,—
Shows your left arm a roseate button-mould?

S.
Not in the least!

Mess.
'TIS HE!!! Conviction strong!
Salute him all!

Chorus.
I thought so all along.

142

Aria
L.
Yes, divine (ah, who can doubt it?)
Was thy sweet ecstatic vision!
Thrice divine, for how, without it,
Had I known thy heart so true?
Pietro slight thee? I invite thee;
Order what you like,—I grant it;
Eat up all, and, if you want it,
Empty all the cellar too!

S.
Yes, divine (ah, who can doubt it?)
Was my vision so Elysian!
Thrice divine,—who dares to flout it,
Now that I can call thee mine?
Nought now frights me, She invites me,
All the bill of fare's mine gratis,
And if that should not be satis,
There's the cellar full of wine!

W.
No, a humbug (who can doubt it?)
Was his lying, plund'ring vision!
Take no pay? Give meals without it?
Scorn, my soul, the base idear!
Stuff ye, dead-heads, black-, gray-, red-heads,
Eat whate'er you lay your eyes on!
Gratis eat, and find it pison,
Ending with unlooked-for bier!

L.
Sit down together, then, and eat away!

All.
'Tis sweet to eat and drink when others pay!

A WORTHY DITTY

[_]

Sung before the President His Excellency at Washington, to a Barrel-Organ Accompaniment

As I, one day, went on my way,
A rowdy ill-conducted
Growled, “You low whelp, I want your help
To get me reconstructed;
A gone-up man, I've (hic) a plan
Of asking your assistance;

143

So give 's your cash at once, by dash!
And keep your (hic) your distance!”

Said I, “You 're not precisely what
I call a civil person;
You 're one I 'd list to use my fist
Much sooner than my purse on;
However, come, give up your rum
And all that 's been your ruin,
Drop your big airs, and your affairs
I'll see what I can do in.”

'T was plain my man from such a plan
Of doing things relucted;
“I don't,” said he, “(hic) want to be
In your way reconstructed;
Not I, by dash! and you I'll thrash
For treating me this fashion!”
With that he drew a knife, and flew
Into a tearing passion.

Said I, “Heyday, why, that 's the way
They do things in Timbuctoo;
And the police must keep the peace,
And help you reconstruct, too:
Then (as I called, and wildly bawled
“Take this man to the lock-up!”)
Straight saw I come a giant glum,
With blue close-buttoned frock, up.

Said he, “I think the man's in drink,
You 'd better not molest him;
'T would only get him madder yet,
If I should try arrest him.”
“But don't you see,” I cried, “that he
Upon me run a muck did?”
Said he, “Mere play; it 's just his way
Of getting reconstructed.”

I turned to go; my rowdy, though,
Was burning for the strife yet,
And muttered deep, “My grudge I'll keep,
And have your dash-dashed life yet!”

144

“Is it not, then, just such vile men,”
I thought, “we 've bolts and keys for?”
And musing went, with eyebrows bent,
“What do we pay police for?”

MR. WORSLEY'S NIGHTMARE

[_]

[He having dedicated his translation of the “Iliad” to General R. E. Lee, late of the U. S. A., later of the C. S. A., “as the best living representative of its hero.”]

Worsley
(Fallen into an uneasy after-dinner sleep)
Bless my soul! here's a singular dream!
Can it be I am dead and don't know it?
That has happened ere now to a poet
Who thereafter wrote many a ream;
Is it certain to enter one's head,
When he is dead, to think that he's dead?
Here I am, or at any rate seem,
On the edge of a queer-looking stream
That would do very well for the Styx,
Or that one whom a nightmare fear eggeth on
Might imagine Cocytus or Phlegethon—
If it were, well, that would be a fix!
But perhaps an Homeric translator,
When he wakes up and sees that he's dead,
Would not feel any difference greater
Than the no-change that happened with lead
In the humbug they called transmutation:—
Is it death I've gone through or translation?
Or might all not result from the immersion
Of my wits for so long in my version?
If I'm dreaming, I'm mixing my classic-
al attainments in maddest confusion;
'T is like pouring in Chian with Massic:
Aristophanes jumbles with Lucian,
I can scarce tell my Greek from my Latin;
Only nonsense of all sorts comes pat in,
And the whole makes a mess of my own ideas
Worse than I did of poor old Maionides.

145

(He hears himself snore, and forthwith there enters his conception a)
Chorus of Frogs
Brekekex! Brekekex!

Worsley
Heavens! what's that?
Perhaps I had best be conning a prayer
To the maker's name inside my hat,
As we Britons are wont in despair
At services long and parsons flat.

Frogs
Brekekex! Brekekex! who goes there?

Worsley
Please your Frogships, Homer's last translator:
I've done it in metre that's called Spenserian.

Frogs
Which, used by a bore 's a precious dreary one.
Onk! Onk! we wish you might be the last!
He's as like himself, when so recast,
As one of us to Jupiter Stator:
Why, because one can croak, d'ye think it follows
That one should set himself up to practise
A cavatina of Phœbus Apollo's,
With voice as rough as a nutmeg-grater?

Worsley
Ahem! well, my friends, you see the fact is,
We English are always taught to seek
For that inspiration in the Greek,
Which, when your literature was great, your
Authors could somehow find in nature:
Our whole scheme of training takes such pains
To make merest Attics of our brains,
That after all of our plague and fuss
Pure nature's all heathen Greek to us.

Frogs
Brekekex! Attic, eh? say Bœotian:
Scarce a grain of that salt in your ocean!
Some Greeks, friend, believed in transmigrations,
And get 'em, by Jove, in your translations!

146

Worsley
A theory downright Jacobinical!
Can it be that my brain, as it often is,
Is but brimful of old Aristophanes,
And, infect with his humor so cynical,
Is colored by what it doth brood on?
Why, I'm thinking as wildly as Proudhon!

Frogs
Brekekex! Coäx! don't fear a bit!
'T isn't infectious; he was a wit.
Brekekex! Coäx! This world is a hoäx,
Version poor of an excellent hit!

Worsley
Nay, this is profane: I'll hear no more on 't;
If a trick of my brain, I'll shut the door on 't.

(Enter Bacchus, pretending tipsiness, in Charon's boat)
Bacchus
If I were to meet with old Silenus
We could n' tell which was which between us;
Cocktails and juleps! smashes and slings!
I've got so somehow with those Yankees
(They've such a talent at mixing things),
I can't make out where the gangway plank is;
It wavers and rises and falls and swings
Like one of my choruses dithyrambic,
Where you can't tell trochaic from iambic. (He lands.)

Well, the confounded rope-dance is past,
And here I am on the shore at last,
Safe escaped out of Erebus's low air,
With a kind of peristaltic motion,
A devious looseness in my knees,
A general tendency to nowhere,
That gives to firm earth the flux of ocean:
In such a case a gargle of—Bourbon,
I think they call it—will help to curb one: (Drinking.)

Good ferrers to le' me have a bottle,
For I am as dry as Aristotle!
Hallo! what's your name?

147

Worsley
My name is Worsley; (Solemnly.)

Translator, sir, of the last new Homer.

Bacchus
And, by this bottle, 't is no misnomer!
You could n' ha' made the statemen' terselier,
For nobody'll ever translate him worselier;
He 's one o' those skinkers, as I divine, (Aside.)

That mixes water with rare old wine;
And, thus baptizing it by immersion,
Christens the puling result a version.
I say, my friend, do you chance to know
What we tempered our wine with, ages ago?
Put some salt in the water, and that
Saved the new product from tasting flat:
You 're surprised? Well, sure as my name's Lyæus,
You'll find it so stated in Athenæus.

Worsley
(Aside)
Ah, this comes of taking too much claret;
If 't was n't a dream I could n't bear it.

Bacchus
Well, Misser Worsley,
I warn you firs'ly
(Solemnly, too; you think I am merry),
As you seem meaning to cross the ferry,
Where Charon does his job of translation
In the true, legitimate, stolid way,
So many verses (or trips) every day,
Without depression, without elation,
And no more change in his rhythm of oars
Than in that contractor's measure of yours,
That metes its phrase like a soldier's ration,—
I say, Misser Worsley,
I warn you firs'ly,
That Hector is waiting you, mad as thunder,
As those Yankees say, at your dedication;
On the other side he 's taken station,
Vowing he 'll tear your ghost's limbs asunder,
Full of black bile as a theologian,

148

Cursing and swearing,
Ripping and tearing,
In the strongest phrase of ancient Trojan,
And I guess you 'd berrer stan' from under! (Exit Bacchus)

Frogs
Brekekex! Brekekex! look out, Worsley;
Heroes are apt to behave perversely;
If you meet Homer, we warn you, too,
Keep clear of him, whatever you do!

Worsley
I'm in for 't now, and have got to go,
Though the outlook's rather squally or so:
Here you, honest fellow, what's your fee? (Hailing Charon)

Charon
An obolus, mostly; but then, you see,
Sometimes there 's special deductions made;
For when a man 's been nothing on earth,
Nothing 's as much as the job is worth;
It 's gratis always for those in the trade,
And I understand, from Bacchus there,
Your business has been in the upper air
What my own down here is, more or less,—
Piloting folks to forgetfulness.
But what 's that bundle under your arm?

Worsley
Why, nothing that could do any harm;
A few poor ghosts of my new translation;
I did up some half a dozen copies,
To have a few just for presentation.

Charon
Lethe once tasted, ghosts need no poppies:
Leave 'em behind you there on the levee,
And nobody 'll touch 'em, I 'll be bound:
What good in dying, if all the bevy
Of life's poor failures, and duns, and bores,
Could follow, to haunt us underground?
For a boat like mine, such verse as yours,
Though disembodied, were quite too heavy.

149

Come! in with you! I 've no time to wait;
I 've three more trips yet, and it 's getting late.
You 're English, eh? (Talking as he rows)

Worsley
Yes.

Charon
So I could swear!
You 've most of you such a stuck-up air,
And somehow look down on all creation
As if you were each the British nation;
Doer of everything under the sun,
From taking Troy to the last bad pun.
Once get your white chokers under your chins,
What conscience you do have for other folks' sins!

Worsley
(Aside)
A most uncommonly vulgar hind!
We have done everything, time out of mind,
And so little boastful, modest elves,
That nobody knows it but ourselves.
If we should brag like the Yankees and French—

Charon
Come, be packing! Art grown to the bench?
Why, John Bull thinks e'en the lower regions
Must pay his comfort proper allegiance!

(Enter Hector and to him a crowd of American ghosts just landed)
Spirit of Smith
(Spits and speaks)
General Hector, 't would make us proud,
If my friends and I might be allowed
To take so great a man by the hand,
And we 'd be grateful, if you 'n' your staff,
Would favor us each with an autograph:
My name is Smith, sir. I'll take my stand
And introduce 'em all as they land.
Gentlemen sperrits, you'll step this way
And shake the general's hand, I say.

Hector
(After the presentation of three thousand)
By Jove! I feel like an old town-pump;
I never was in such a scrape as this! (Aside)

150

Allow me, good sirs, to have the bliss
Of greeting the others in a lump;
And as for autographs, to my shame,
I never e'en learned to write my name;
I lived in the ages, you know, called dark,
When men had a way of making their mark.

Spirit of Smith
(Spits and speaks)
Well, I hope you won't decide adversely
On one request I shall put to your vote—
That's to present my friend, Mister Worsley,
I made his acquaintance on the boat:
I rather guess it's likely you know him—
Author of “Homer,” a first-class poem.

Worsley
(Aside)
Confound his impudence! But for him,
I might have slipt by: my chance is slim.
Acquaintance, indeed! I'd like to know
If he makes 'em by treading on one's toe?
For no more, no less, that I could see,
Was all of his introduction to me!

Hector
Ah, here, then, I have you; come at last!
My staff has been longing, these three months' past,
To measure the back of that dedicator
Who likened me to the double traitor,
False to his country, false to his oath,
Me, who'd have given my life for both!
Me, who no omens could understand
But those that said, Fight for Fatherland!
Achilles dragged but my dust in dust;
You insult my soul without reason,
Coupling my name with a broken trust,
Dabbling my fame in the lees of treason.

Worsley
(Aside)
That swelling nostril I hardly like,
Nor the look that makes me too mean to strike:
I never felt worselier since I was born,
Between my fears of his staff and scorn.

151

Hector
Did he war bravely? The more his shame;
And, once men take their side with wrong,
Their guilt stalks behind them, stern and strong,
And despair may win fair valor's name.
Courage is mostly a thing in the veins;
'Tis Valor that lives in the poet's strains,
Valor that stands for the right and true,
A thing unconceived by such as you!
Was his, then, your notion of the bravery
That swells in deathless echoes of song?
Forth from my presence, poor snob of slavery,
Herd with the dull souls where you belong!
Study that bible you call the Peerage,
Get what salvation therefrom you can,
Nor come near me, lest I pay the arrearage
Due to your ribs from an honest man.

(Mr. Worsley awakes in terror, but gradually composes himself by reading a few pages of his translation of Homer)

HOB GOBBLING'S SONG

Not from Titania's Court do I
Hither upon a night-moth fly;
I am not of those Fairies seen
Tripping by moonlight on the green,
Whose dewdrop bumpers, nightly poured,
Befleck the mushroom's virgin board,
And whose faint symbols tinkling clear
Sometimes on frosty nights you hear.

No, I was born of lustier stock,
And all their puling night-sports mock:
My father was the Good Old Time,
Famous in many a noble rhyme,
Who reigned with such a royal cheer

152

He made one Christmas of the year,
And but a single edict passed,
Dooming it instant death to fast.

I am that earthlier, fatter elf
That haunts the wood of pantry shelf,
When minced-pies, ranged from end to end,
Up to the gladdened roof ascend;
On a fat goose I hither rode,
Using a skewer for a goad,
From the rich region of Cockayne,
And must ere morn be back again.

I am the plump sprite that presides
O'er Thanksgiving and Christmas tides;
I jig it not in woods profound;
The barn-yard is my dancing-ground,
Making me music as I can
By drumming on a pattypan;
Or if with songs your sleep I mar,
A gridiron serves me for guitar.

When without touch the glasses clink,
And dishes on the dresser wink
Back at the fire, whose jovial glance
Sets the grave pot-lids all adance;
When tails of little pigs hang straight,

153

Unnerved by dreams of coming fate;
When from the poultry-house you hear
Midnight alarums,—I am near.

While the pleased housewife shuts her eyes,
I lift the crust of temperance pies,
And slip in slyly two or three
Spoonfuls of saving eau de vie;
And, while the cookmaid rests her thumbs,
I stone a score of choicer plums,
And hide them in the pudding's corner,
In memory of the brave Jack Horner.

I put the currants in the buns,
A task the frugal baker shuns;
I for the youthful miner make
Nuggets of citron in the cake;
'T is I that down the chimney whip,
And presents in the stockings slip,
Which Superstition's mumbling jaws
Ascribe to loutish Santa Claus.

'T is I that hang, as you may see,
With presents gay the Christmas-tree;
But, if some foolish girl or boy
Should chance to mar the common joy
With any sulky look or word,

154

By them my anger is incurred,
And to all such I give fair warning
Of nightmares ere to-morrow morning.

“POSEIDON FIELDS, WHO DOST THE ATLANTIC SWAY”

Poseidon Fields, who dost the Atlantic sway,
Making it swell or flattening at thy will!
O, glaucous one, be thou propitious still
To me, a minnum dandled on thy spray!
Eftsoons a milkwhite porkerlet we slay,
No sweeter e'er repaid Eumæus' skill;
A blameless Lamb thereon might feed his fill,
Deeming he cropped the new-sprung herb of May:
Our board do thou and Amphitrite grace;
Archbishop of our literary sea,

155

Lay by thy trident-crozier for a space,
And try our forks: or, earless to our plea,
Let this appease thee and the frown displace,—
The Gurneys come and John, —then answer, Oui!

Poseidon, a fabulous deity, called by the Latins Neptunus; here applied to Fields as presiding over the issues of the Atlantic.

“the Atlantic,” to be read “th' Atlantic” in order to avoid the hiatus or gap where two vowels come together. Authority for this will be found in Milton and other poets.

“Atlantic”—a well known literary magazine.

“Glaucous”—between blue and green, an epithet of Poseidon, and an editor who shows greenness is sure to look blue in consequence.

“Minnum”—vulgo pro minnow, utpote species minima piscium.

“Dandled on thy spray.” A striking figure. Horace has piscium genus summa hæsit ulmo, but the poverty of the Latin did not allow this sport of fancy with the double meaning of the word spray.

“Eftsoons.” This word (I think) may be found in Spenser. It means soon after i.e. before long.

“Porkerlet.” A pretty French diminutive, as in roitelet.

“Eumæus.” The swineherd of Ulysses, a character in Homer.

“Lamb”—a well known literary character of the 17th century, chiefly remembered for having burnt his house to roast a favorite pig. He invented mint-sauce.

“Herb”—grass. Borrow a bible, and you will find the word thus used in that once popular work.

“Amphitrite.” The beautiful spouse of Poseidon.

“Archbishop.” This is in the Elizabethan style. (N. B. the play is upon sea and see.) This term is beautifully, may I not say piously, appropriate, since the Grecian gods have all been replaced by Xtian saints and St. Anthony of Padua converted the finny nomads of the deep. He found a ready herring, I suppose.

“Earless.” This is not to be taken literally as in the case of Defoe, or as Hotspur misinterprets Glendower's bootless. It simply means deaf.

“John.” It is hardly necessary to say that there is but one John—to wit, J. Holmes Esq. of Holmes Place.

“Oui.” A neat transition to the French tongue, conveying at once a compliment to the learning of the person addressed and an allusion to his editorial position. Editors and Kings always say We.

CHARLES DICKENS

A man of genius, simple, warm, sincere,
He left a world grown kindlier than he came;
His hand the needy knew, but not his name;
Dumb creatures snuffed a friend when he drew near,
And the strange dog pricked one suspicious ear,
Then couched his head secure. Safe be this fame
From critics' measured praise or close-picked blame—
He loved God's gentler face, and made it dear.
Was then Stylites' post the better way,
Or mingling with his kind, a man with men,
Like Him that was and was not such as they?
I judge ye not, but to my simple ken,
If on your guideboards the right name be kept,
Some foe hath changed their places while ye slept.

TO MADAME DU CHATELET

If you would have me still a lover,
To me the age of love restore,
And let these twilight shades once more
The sunrise, if they can, recover.

156

From spots where shares the God of wine
With Love the sceptre of unreason,
Time, laying his chill hand on mine,
Warns me to steal away in season.

'Gainst his inflexible decree
Let us, at least, seek some assuaging;
He who hath not the wit of aging
The victim of his years must be.

Leave to fair Youth the hours unreckoned
Of rapture wild, of dance and song;
Since life is but two minutes long,
Let us on wisdom spend the second.

What, then, forever do ye leave me,
Illusion, folly, heedless waste,
Gifts of the gods, that could deceive me
To think life left no bitter taste!

Yes, one dies twice, I see it plain;
Ceasing to love or love to kindle
Is the worst death on Clotho's spindle;
Ceasing to live is little pain.

Thus with wet eyes did I require
The follies of my earlier days;
My soul bewailed the dancing fire
That led astray from beaten ways.

Then gentle Friendship deigned to bend her
Steps to my succor from above;
She was, it may be, quite as tender,
But not so full of life as Love.

Her beauty set my heart astir,
And, guided by her milder lustre,
I followed: but the tears would muster
That I must follow only her.

157

AN EPITAPH

World, Flesh, and Devil gave him all they could,
Wealth, harlots, wine and disbelief in good;
Fame, too, he bought, our modern kind of fame,
The morning-column reeking with his name;
Lifelong he never did his lusts deny
One pleasure sin could give, or money buy.
The halter bilked, a pandar's coward shot
Sent him to where he—nay, I had forgot;
That's passé, so they tell us who should know,
Put out with milk and water years ago:
No retribution, then? Yes, something worse
Than angry justice e'er distilled in verse;
He had (could shame or vengeance this exceed?)
Living, Gould's friendship, dead, the tears of Tweed!

THE WORLD'S FAIR, 1876

Columbia, puzzled what she should display
Of true home-make on her Centennial Day,
Asked Brother Jonathan: he scratched his head,
Whittled a while reflectively, and said,
“You're own invention and own making, too?
Why, any child could tell ye what to do:
Show 'em your Civil Service, and explain
How all men's loss is everybody's gain;
Show your new patent to increase your rents
By paying quarters for collecting cents;
Show your short cut to cure financial ills
By making paper-collars current bills;
Show your new bleaching-process, cheap and brief,
To wit: a jury chosen by the thief;
Show your State Legislatures; show your Rings;
And challenge Europe to produce such things
As high officials sitting half in sight
To share the plunder and to fix things right;
If that don't fetch her, why, you only need
To show your latest style in martyrs—Tweed:
She'll find it hard to hide her spiteful tears
At such advance in one poor hundred years.”

158

CAMPAIGN EPIGRAMS

A Coincidence

Banks made a speech and sate; the band full soon,
As if by instinct, struck up Bonnie Doon;
O strong enchantment of those Scottish lays!
That make us still associate Banks and brays.

The Widow's Mite

When currency's debased, all coins will pass.
Ask you for proof? The Widow's might is brass.

Moieties

A Widow? Yes, and not of one but twain,
The worser half of Sanborn and of Jayne;
She helped their dubious profits, and, they gone,
At the old stand the business carries on.

The Astronomer Misplaced

Boutwell could find a big hole in the sky,
Blind to the small ones in the Treasury.
Tell him of leaks, he doesn't care a pin;
Can't they be stopped by sticking sponges in?

THREE SCENES IN THE LIFE OF A PORTRAIT

Scene I: 1879

I

Your portrait? Charming! And for me!
And such a capital resemblance!
'T will serve when you're beyond the sea—
Crayon? Ah, no; lithography—
To keep you freshly in remembrance.

159

II

Where shall we hang it? Juan, my dear,
Make yourself useful this once, pray do!
Yes, there 's some empty wall-space here;
But, then, 't would hardly do so near
That dark oil-picture of Quevedo.

III

No hurry, say you? We can wait?
We've got the rest of life before us?
Poor women! It is still our fate
To hear such wisdom. How I hate
That universal husband's chorus!

IV

Myself I'll hang it where I reign
Like our old kings sans Constitution:
In my boudoir. Since here in Spain
Men talked of rights, the only gain
Has been high taxes and confusion.

Scene II: 1889

I

Juan, I must need contrive some space
To hang this bit of old repoussé;
One's gatherings grow at such a pace!
Ah, to be sure, there's just the place—
Why not have said so sooner, goosie?

II

That portrait of poor What'shisname—
What was his name? Well, I can spare it;
It really has no sense of shame,
To stare so! It can do the same,
Without offending, in the garret.

III

One's memory plays such tricks perverse!
But I recall his story now well;
He used to bore me with his verse

160

And prose—I don't know which was worse.
A Yankee, and his name was Powell.

IV

What tiresome notes he used to write
To his Querida Doña Emilia!
Some in such Spanish! My delight
Was in the blunders. Well, good night;
A bore should like the Boardilla.

Scene III: 1899

I

Ten years; and I, an aimless ghost,
Dim as Assisi's vanished frescos,
Glide where shrill minstrels deafen most
And blessed prenderos keep their post,
Along the Calle de Tudescos.

II

The same old reckless odds and ends,
Pistols, coins, lace, unholy clutter!
Life's castaways that have no friends,
Dead lovers' gifts—who knows? So ends
A poet sometimes in the gutter!

III

And there, beside the selfsame door
(How many years they must have kept him, oh!),
With the same seasick look he wore,
But faded out a trifle more,
Hangs my old friend Fernando Septimo.

IV

I—but what portrait's that below?
Oh, Doña Emil—wast thou, too, shoddy?
Yes, 't is the face I used to know
Seen in a mirror long ago,
When this poor shadow had a body.

Mr. Riaño.

The garret.

Dealers in bric-à-brac.

The king.

161

CUIVISCUNQUE

On earth Columbus wrote his name,
Montgolfier on its circling air;
Lesseps in water did the same;
Franklin traced his in living flame,
Newton on space's desert bare.

Safe with the primal elements
Their signatures august remain;
While the fierce hurtle of events
Whirls us and our ephemeral tents
Beyond oblivion's mere distain.

Our names, as what we write on, frail,
Time spunges out like hopeless scores,
Unless for mine it should prevail
To turn awhile the faltering scale
Of memory, thus to make it yours.

VERSES

(Written in a Copy of “Fireside Travels” for P. G. S.)

If to my fireside I return,
And, as Life's embers fainter burn,
No travels plan save that last post
To the low inn where Death is host,
Yet when my thoughts an outing seek,
Bowed pilgrims and with footing weak,
No spots to all men's memories known
Shall lure them forth; one path alone
Will they with constant faith retread,
Brightening 'neath Memory's sunset red.
Across the muffled course of steeds
Through the sheep-dotted park it leads
By water silvered in the breeze
With the swan's shattered images,
By sun-steeped elms where not the rush
And rapture of the embowered thrush
Detain them—that could once detain

162

Those feet more light than summer rain
That sang beside me:—Sure 'tis I,
And not my lumpish thoughts, that fly
To lay my tribute at those feet
Of gratitude forever sweet
For comfort given when great the lack,
For sunshine, when my heaven was black,
Poured through my dull and sullen mood
From skies of purest womanhood.

This path lifelong my feet shall bless
With sense of dear indebtedness;—
Yet what avails it her or me,
Myself a dream, a vision she?

VERSES WRITTEN IN A COPY OF SHAKSPEARE

Here Music fledges thought as leaves the pine
Whose strong stem lightward lifts those minstrels fine,
And in this symphony no voice is mute
Of kindling trump or meditative flute,
For 't is the high prerogative of song
To nerve the weak and mitigate the strong:
Here passion is sublimed until its throes,
Seen in reflection, feed the mind's repose;
Here life is shown as only he could see
Who found in Man the World's epitome
And knew the pygmy-giant, idiot-sage,
The same in every clime and every age,
While, as the motley throng goes by, we scan
Mask after mask to find beneath the man,
Matchless in all, the circuit of whose soul
Girt human nature round from pole to pole.
Here is Truth's well, and this its constant law,
That still and still it deepens as we draw;
Bring larger vessels, larger yet, and more;
Fill them to running-over; still there's store;
Get all experience, and at last it is
But as a key to part decypher his;
Observe, think, morals draw, part false from true,
He did all long ago, and better too;

163

Go, seek of Thought some yet unsullied strand,
His footprint there confronts you as you land;
What need for help on many words to call?
When I say Shakspeare, I have said it all.

“My Shakspeare” Milton called him, echoing Ben;
“My Shakspeare” he to all the sons of men;
'T is the world's common field and each man's share
To just what treasure he first buried there,
And he shall bring mere fairy-gold away
Who finds here but the matter of a play.
Those inbred fates that shadow, under wings
With lightnings seamed, the stormy fates of kings,
Measure to us as to ourselves we mete,
Drag us before the unerring judgment-seat,
Sow in our passions the same seeds of death
As in Othello, Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth,
And fairy vanities our fortunes mix,
Play with our baffled sense the selfsame tricks
As Ariel did, or, like sly Puck deride,
With ears all see but us, the brains inside.

STREET DOORS

I have no doubt that Bluebeard's chamber door
The features of a guiltless portal wore;
Its keyhole whispered not; its handle made
No sign that all the crime within betrayed;
And the smooth panels could their secret keep
As calm pools do that o'er drowned wretches sleep.

So smooth, so calm, the city's front doors close
On lives laid waste and more than Theban woes;
The indifferent wood without grimace shuts in
The mother's anguish or the husband's sin;
Perhaps the hand, from whose familiar thrill
The latch just fallen scarcely yet is still,
[I]n vain appeases, with beseeching sign,
The lawful tyrant crimson—hot with wine,
Or idly strives, beside the fluttering breath,
To push away immitigable Death.

164

Who knows or dreams? Men so demurely can
Confront their God, much more their fellow man.

[B]ut now and then some portal left ajar
Gives glimpses swift of what our neighbors are;
Or, flung back suddenly, lets forth the shriek
Of some lone anguish, pent for many a week,
Tow'rd which the passers eddy, and incline
A moment's ear, then hurry on to dine.
And it so oft hath happened that, whene'er
A chink has gaped through which my eye could peer
Into one cell of those still murmuring hives
Where we gregarious men lead lonely lives,
So much of sin and sorrow have I seen,
So many scars yet raw where both have been,
So little happiness, but in its stead.
A base content, unhopeful, callous, dead,
That I have cried, “Fate, show me, then, the home
Where Death or worse hath not this morning come,
The one safe sanctuary, whither Sorrow
Came not to-day or will not come tomorrow!”

And so a line of street doors standing white,
Stiff and respectable from morn till night,
Oft as strong to fill my mind with glooms
As a dumb city of unwindowed tombs,
Where my roused fancy, deft in such grim tricks,
Strives with a shuddering eagerness to fix
In which uncertain one of them may strive
Some coffined horror dungeoned there alive:
Nay, worse than doors of sepulchers are these
That close o'er all of Death except his peace!

HIS SHIP

“O watcher on the Minster Hill,
Look out o'er the sloping sea;
Of the tall ships coming, coming still,
Is never one for me?

165

“I have waited and watched (the weary years!)
When I to the shore could win,
Till now I cannot see for tears
If my ship be coming in.

“Eyes shut, I see her night and day,
No inch of canvas furled,
As a swan full-breasted push her way
Up out of the underworld.

“'Tis but her wraith! And all the time
These cheated eyes grow dim.
Will her tardy topmasts never climb
Above the ocean's rim?

“The minster tower is goldener grown
With lichens the sea winds feed,
Since first I came; each bleak head-stone
Grows hard and harder to read.

“Think! There's a dearer heart that waits,
And eyes that suffer wrong,
As the fruitless seasons join their mates
While my ship delays so long!”

“From among so many pennons bright
On which the sunshine pours,
From among so many wings of white,
Say, how shall I single yours?”

“By her mast that's all of the beaten gold,
By her gear of the silk so fine,

166

By the smell of spices in her hold,
Full well may you know mine.”

“O some go west and some go east;
Their shadows lighten all the sea;
'Tis a blessing of God to see the least,
So stately as they be.

“Their high-heaped sails with the wind are round;
The sleek waves past them swirl;
As they stoop and straighten without a sound,
They crush the sea to pearl.

“Wind-curved the rainbow signals stream,
Green, yellow, blue, and red,
But never a ship with the glory and gleam
Of the tokens you have said.”

“My ship of dreams I may never see
Slide swan-like to her berth,
With her lading of sandal and spicery
Such as never grew on earth.

“But from peril of storm and reef and shoal,
From ocean's tumult and din,
My ship, her freight a living soul,
Shall surely erelong come in

“With toll of bells to a storm-proof shore,
To a haven landlocked and still,
Where she shall lie with so many more
In the lee of the Minster Hill.

167

“In God's good time she shall 'scape at last
From the waves' and the weather's wrong,
And the rattle of her anchor cast
There's a heart shall hear life-long.”

THE INFANT PRODIGY

A veteran entered at my gate
With locks as cherry-blossoms white;
His clothes proclaimed a prosperous fate,
His boots were arrogantly bright.

The hat was glossy on his head,
Gold-rimmed his eye-glass, gold his chain,
In genial curves his waistcoat spread,
And golden-headed was his cane.

Without a preface thus he spoke,
“I've called to get my annual due”;
Whereat I too the silence broke
With, “Who, respected sir, are you?

“What is your claim against me, pray?
A many-childed man am I,
Hard-pinched my monthly bills to pay,
And prices rule perversely high.”

“Not know me? Everybody knows
And gladly gives his mite,” quoth he,
“Why, I'm a babe in swaddling clo'es,
I am an Infant Industry.”

“Forgive me, Reverend Shape,” I cried,
“You set my faith a heavy task;
This infancy which seems your pride,
Is it your second, may I ask?

168

“Or have you, where so many failed,
The key to life's Elixir found?
You look like one who never ailed,
In wind and limb sedately sound.”

“You doubt my word? (Excuse these tears,
They flow for you and not for me;)
Young man, for more than seventy years
I've been an Infant Industry.

“Your father rued my helpless lot,
Lifelong he handed me his fee
Nor ever asked himself for what;
He loved an Infant Industry.”

Quoth I, “He paid my ransom then
From further tribute, small or great;
Besides, if I can judge of men,
Since that, you've grown to man's estate.”

He murmured, as I bowed him out,
“The world is getting worse and worse;
This fellow almost makes me doubt
Whether I've not been changed at nurse.

“But no, this hat, this cane, these boots,
This suit in London made by P.,
Convince me to the very roots
I am an Infant Industry.”

Until he vanished from my sight
These words came floating back to me:
“Yes, 'spite of Time, in Reason's spite,
I am an Infant Industry!”

MY BROOK

It was far up the valley we first plighted troth,
When the hours were so many, the duties so few;

169

Earth's burthen weighs wearily now on us both—
But I've not forgotten those dear days; have you?

Each was first-born of Eden, a morn without mate,
And the bees and the birds and the butterflies thought
'Twas the one perfect day ever fashioned by fate,
Nor dreamed the sweet wonder for us two was wrought.

I loitered beside you the whole summer long,
I gave you a life from the waste-flow of mine;
And whether you babbled or crooned me a song,
I listened and looked till my pulses ran wine.

'Twas but shutting my eyes; I could see, I could hear,
How you danced there, my nautch-girl, 'mid flag-root and fern,
While the flashing tomauns tinkled joyous and clear
On the slim wrists and ankles that flashed in their turn.

Ah, that was so long ago! Ages it seems,
And, now I return sad with life and its lore,
Will they flee my gray presence, the light-footed dreams,
And Will-o'-wisp light me his lantern no more?

Where the bee's hum seemed noisy once, all was so still,
And the hermit-thrush nested secure of her lease,
Now whirr the world's millstones and clacks the world's mill—
No fairy-gold passes, the oracles cease!

The life that I dreamed of was never to be,
For I with my tribe into bondage was sold,

170

And the sungleams and moongleams, your elf-gifts to me,
The miller transmutes into work-a-day gold.

What you mint for the miller will soon melt away;
It is earthy, and earthy good only it buys,
But the shekels you tost me are safe from decay;
They were coined of the sun and the moment that flies.

Break loose from your thralldom! 'Tis only a leap;
Your eyes 'tis but shutting, just holding your breath;
Escape to the old days, the days that will keep.
If there's peace in the mill-pond, so is there in death.

Leap down to me, down to me! Be, as you were,
My nautch-girl, my singer; again let them glance,
Your tomauns, the sun's largess, that wink and are there,
And gone again, still keeping time as you dance.

Make haste, or it may be I wander again;
It is I, dear, that call you; Youth beckons with me;
Come back to us both, for, in breaking your chain,
You set the old summers and fantasies free.

You are mine and no other's; with life of my life
I made you a Naiad, that were but a stream;
In the moon are brave dreams yet, and chances are rife
For the passion that ventures its all on a dream.

Leapt bravely! Now down through the meadows we'll go
To the Land of Lost Days, whither all the birds wing,

171

Where the dials move backward and asphodels blow;
Come flash your tomauns again, dance again, sing!

Yes, flash them and clash them on ankle and wrist,
For we're pilgrims to Dreamland, O Daughter of Dream!
There we find again all that we wasted or mist,
And Fancy—poor fool!—with her bauble's supreme.

As the Moors in their exile the keys treasured still
Of their castles in Spain, so have I; and no fear
But the doors will fly open, whenever we will,
To the prime of the Past and the sweet of the year.

IN A VOLUME OF SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Strange spoil from this weird garden Memory brings;
Here, hard by Flower de Luce, the night-blast sows
Moonstruck Thessalian herbs; o'erhead (who knows?)
Or from beneath, a sough of missioned wings;
The soil, enriched with mould of Coptic kings,
Bears, intertwining, substances and shows,
And in the midst about their mystic rose
The Muses dance, while rapt Apollo sings.
All-potent Phantasy, the spell is thine;
Thou lay'st thy careless finger on a word,
And there forever shall thine effluence shine,
The witchery of thy rhythmic pulse be heard;
Yea, where thy foot hath left its pressure fine,
Though but in passing, haunts the Attic bird.

172

INSCRIPTION FOR A MEMORIAL BUST OF FIELDING

He looked on naked Nature unashamed,
And saw the Sphinx, now bestial, now divine,
In change and rechange; he nor praised nor blamed,
But drew her as he saw with fearless line.
Did he good service? God must judge, not we;
Manly he was, and generous and sincere;
English in all, of genius blithely free:
Who loves a Man may see his image here.

FOR A BIRTHDAY

How many years have subtly wrought,
With patient art and loving care,
To rear this pleasurehouse of thought,
This fabric of a woman fair?

'Twere vain to guess: years leave no trace
On that soft cheek's translucent swell;
Time, lingering to behold that face,
Is cheated of his purpose fell.

Why ask how many, when I find
Her charm with every morrow new?
How be so stupid? Was I blind?
Next birthday I shall ask how few.

173

“I AM DRIVEN BY MY LONGING”

I am driven by my longing,
Of my thought I hear the summons
That to singing I betake me,
That I give myself to speaking,
That our race's lay I utter,
Song for ages handed downward.
Words upon my lips are melting,
And the eager tones escaping
Will my very tongue outhasten,
Will my teeth, despite me, open.

Golden friend, belovèd brother,
Dear one that grew up beside me,
Join thee with me now in singing,
Join thee with me now in speaking,
Since we here have come together,
Journeying by divers pathways;
Seldom do we come together,
One comes seldom to the other,
In the barren fields far-lying,
On the hard breast of the Northland.

Hand in hand together clasping,
Finger fast with finger clasping,
Gladly we our song will utter,
Of our lays will give the choicest—
So that friends may understand it,
And the kindly ones may hear it,
In their youth which now is waxing,
Climbing upward into manhood:
These our words of old tradition,
These our lays that we have borrowed
From the belt of Wainamoinen,
From the forge of Ilmarinen,
From the sword of Kaukomeli,
From the bow of Jonkahainen,
From the borders of the ice-fields,
From the plains of Kalevala.
These my father sang before me,
As the ax's helve he fashioned;

174

These were taught me by my mother,
As she sat and twirled her spindle,
While I on the floor was lying,
At her feet, a child was rolling;
Never songs of Sampo failed her,
Magic songs of Lonhi never;
Sampo in her song grew agèd,
Lonhi with her magic vanished,
In her singing died Wipunen,
As I played, died Lunminkainen.
Other words there are a many,
Magic words that I have taught me,
Which I picked up from the pathway,
Which I gathered from the forest,
Which I snapped from wayside bushes,
Which I gleaned from slender grass-blades,
Which I found upon the foot-bridge,
When I wandered as a herd-boy,
As a child into the pastures,
To the meadows rich in honey,
To the sun-begoldened hilltops,
Following the black Maurikki
By the side of brindled Kimmo.

Lays the winter gave me also,
Song was given me by the rain-storm,
Other lays the wind-gusts blew me,
And the waves of ocean brought them;
Words I borrowed of the song-birds,
And wise sayings from the tree-tops.

Then into a skein I wound them,
Bound them fast into a bundle,
Laid upon my ledge the burthen,
Bore them with me to my dwelling,
On the garret beams I stored them,
In the great chest bound with copper.

Long time in the cold they lay there,
Under lock and key a long time;
From the cold shall I forth bring them?
Bring my lays from out the frost there
'Neath this roof so wide-renownèd?

175

Here my song-chest shall I open,
Chest with runic lays o'errunning?
Shall I here untie my bundle,
And begin my skein unwinding?

Now my lips at last must close them
And my tongue at last be fettered;
I must leave my lay unfinished,
And must cease from cheerful singing;
Even the horses must repose them
When all day they have been running;
Even the iron's self grows weary
Mowing down the summer grasses;
Even the water sinks to quiet
From its rushing in the river;
Even the fire seeks rest in ashes
That all night hath roared and crackled;
Wherefore should not music also,
Song itself, at last grow weary
After the long eve's contentment
And the fading of the twilight?
I have also heard say often,
Heard it many times repeated,
That the cataract swift-rushing
Not in one gush spends its waters,
And in like sort cunning singers
Do not spend their utmost secret,
Yea, to end betimes is better
Than to break the thread abruptly.

Ending, then, as I began them,
Closing thus and thus completing,
I fold up my pack of ballads,
Roll them closely in a bundle,
Lay them safely in the storeroom,
In the strong bone-castle's chamber,
That they never thence be stolen,
Never in all time be lost thence,
Though the castle's wall be broken,
Though the bones be rent asunder,
Though the teeth may be pried open,
And the tongue be set in motion.

176

How, then, were it sang I always
Till my songs grew poor and poorer,
Till the dells alone would hear me,
Only the deaf fir-trees listen?
Not in life is she, my mother,
She no longer is aboveground;
She, the golden, cannot hear me,
'Tis the fir-trees now that hear me,
'Tis the pine-tops understand me,
And the birch-crowns full of goodness,
And the ash-trees now that love me!
Small and weak my mother left me,
Like a lark upon the cliff-top,
Like a young thrush 'mid the flintstones,
In the guardianship of strangers,
In the keeping of the stepdame.
She would drive the little orphan,
Drive the child with none to love him,
To the cold side of the chimney,
To the north side of the cottage,
Where the wind that felt no pity,
Bit the boy with none to shield him.
Larklike, then, I forth betook me,
Like a little bird to wander,
Silent, o'er the country straying
Yon and hither, full of sadness.
With the winds I made acquaintance,
Felt the will of every tempest,
Learned of bitter frost to shiver,
Learned too well to weep of winter.
Yet there be full many people
Who with evil voice assail me,
And with tongue of poison sting me,
Saying that my lips are skilless,
That the ways of song I know not,
Nor the ballad's pleasant turnings.
Ah, you should not, kindly people,
Therein seek a cause to blame me,
That, a child, I sang too often,
That, unfledged, I twittered only.
I have never had a teacher,
Never heard the speech of great men,
Never learned a word unhomely,

177

Nor fine phrases of the stranger.
Others to the school were going,
I alone at home must keep me,
Could not leave my mother's elbow,
In the wide world had her only;
In the house had I my schooling,
From the rafters of the chamber,
From the spindle of my mother,
From the axehelve of my father,
In the early days of childhood;
But for this it does not matter,
I have shown the way to singers,
Shown the way, and blazed the tree-bark,
Snapped the twigs, and marked the footpath;
Here shall be the way in future,
Here the track at last be opened
For the singers better-gifted,
For the songs more rich than mine are,
Of the youth that now are waxing,
In the good time that is coming!

VERSES

(To P. G. S. Written in a Gift Copy of Mr. Lowell's Poems.)

If here, sweet friend, no verse you find
To wake far echoes in the mind,
No reach of passion that can stir
Your chords of deeper character,
Let it suffice if here and there
You seem to snuff New England air,
And give a kindly thought to one
Who in our ampler Western sun
Finds no such sunshine as he drew
In London's dreariest fogs from you.

178

VERSES

(Written in a Copy of “Among My Books” for P. G. S.)

Last year I brought you verses,
This year with prose make bold;
I know not which the worse is;
Both are but empty purses
For your superfluous gold.
Put in your sunny fancies,
Your feeling quick and fine,
Your mirth that sings and dances,
Your nature's graver glances,
And think they all are mine.

179

COLLEGE VERSE

187

IN IMITATION OF BURNS

I

Those liquid een o' winsome blue,
Like sparklin' draps o' heav'n's ain dew,
Those modest cheeks o' changin' hue
Are aye before me;
Where'er I turn they meet my view,
An' hover owre me.

II

Fu' aft I've talked o' laughin' girls,
An' sparklin' een, an' auburn curls,
An' smiles disclosin' rows o' pearls,
Wi' mickle glee;
But she, alas! my heart strings dirls
In spite o' me!

188

III

Na, ne'er till now I've felt the sway
Of een that mock'd pure Hesper's ray,
An' voice mair sweet than when, in May,
The playfu' breeze
Sighs aft, as if it long'd to stay
Amang the trees.

IV

Oh had I but ae lock o' hair
That now sae fandly nestles there
Just peepin' out, (her smiles to share),
Frae 'neath her bonnet,
For a' life's ills I wad na care
While gazin' on it!

DRAMATIC SKETCH

“De omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis.”

Scene; a college room. Time; evening. The Editors of Harvardiana sitting round a table.
First Editor
(snatching a paper from one of his brethren.)
Is this a sonnet that I see before me,
Its title towards mine eyes? or is it but
An outward semblance of a sonnet, shaped,
By the vain dreamings of my tortured brain,
From “airy nothing” but to cheat my sense?
I see thee still, and, from thy smiling front,
Large scrawls of ink look meekly in my face,
In silent eloquence, as if to say
“Regard me well; I am a CONTRIBUTION!”

Second Editor
Yes, 'tis a contribution, and myself
I took it with these hands from out our box,
As I returned, with circular, by names
Unsullied, sadly to my room to weep!
Oh! I have passed a miserable day!
So full of honied “nays” and soft refusals—

189

I would not pass another such a day
Though 't were to smoke, (Oh best of earthly joys!),
The nicest “real Spanish,” ever made
By Yankee ingenuity and art.
'T was but an hour ago, that wreathed in smiles,
I placed “the paper” 'neath a Freshman's nose,
And asked, in accents bland, “Will you subscribe?
We need a few great names to head the list;
To sign or not to sign; that is the question.”
Then with my ready pencil poised between
My thumb and finger, waited a reply.
He started back as if his nostrils snuffed
Contamination, “grinned a ghastly grin,”
And cried, “I've seen the work!” It was enough;
I opened not my mouth, for “I liked not
The grinning” humor which that Freshman had!
Oh 'tis a grievous thing to be an Editor!
Men look askance and say, “He hath the ‘LIST,’
The foul subscription list within his pocket!”
Nor this the worst; “the little dogs and all,
Tray, Blanch and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me!”

Third Editor

Well, less than this we could not much expect;

“He who ascends the mountain tops, shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below!”

But gained you not one name?
Second Editor
Alas! not one.

Third Editor
Gods! can a single student long debate
Which of the two to choose, subscribe or not?
“Oh I could weep; save that I may not stain
With grief” this hour made sacred to the nine.
Hast a cigar?

190

Fourth Editor
(abstractedly)
No, and alas! no cash
To buy them with. I had a fourpence once,
A treasured one; there was the look
Of pureness on its venerable cheek,
Such as the coiners love to give to their
Debased metal. How I loved that coin!
It left my purse, and never to return.
A saddened smile lit its round face, a tear
Seemed almost trickling down that long loved cheek;
I saw it slide, slide gently, through the fingers
Of the glad Herald boy; then sternly wiped
The woman from my eye, and cried, “I'm penniless!”

Fifth Editor
“'T was strange, 't was passing strange, 't was pitiful,
'T was wondrous pitiful!” But listen, hark!

(a voice is heard in the street.)
Devil
(sings)
Where the types are, there are I;
And on costly sheets I lie;
There I couch when cats do cry
In the murk night lovingly;
On my bare feet do I fly
After “Copy” merrily!
“Merrily, merrily shall I live now”
And pick up a living the devil knows how!

Fifth Editor
Didst mark that song? “it had a dying fall,
Oh! it came o'er my ear” like a sweet fife—
But here's the devil!

(Enter) Devil
COPY! Copy! ho!

Fifth Editor
(gives him a bag)
“I tax not you, poor devil, with unkindness!”

Devil

If you did, it would be “werry annoying,” as the gemman said ven he vos hung by mistake.

[Exit

Childe Harold.

191

THE SERENADE

I

Hark! o'er the lake rings
My lover's guitar;
Hush my fond heart—Lord!
He'll wake up Papa!

II

Nearer! Oh now he'll
His fond suit renew—
My hair's all in papers—
Oh! what shall I do?

III

Hist! to his voice chimes
The gondolier's oar—
Heavens! my Pa wakes!
No! 't was but a snore!

IV

“Waken, my Anna!
Oh list to my song,
As, on the night breeze,
It hastens along!

V

“See! the moon trembles
In light on the lake,
So trembles my fond heart,
Oh wake, dearest, wake!”

VI

“Throw up the ladder
Mine own dearest love!
But oh! wake not father,
Who sleeps just above!”

VII

Lightly the true lover
Leaped to the land,

192

Gently he crept up,
With ladder in hand.

VIII

Softly a casement
Oped over his head,
And a gruff voice thus
Most savagely said—

IX

“Seek you for me, Sir?”
“Ah no! for your daughter!”
“Do you? take this then—
This tub of cold water!”

X

Sadly the lover sneaked
To his canoe—
Wet to the skin, he
Thus sighed his adieu—

XI

“Farewell! I tinkle
No more my guitar,
But my heart beats true
As --- d---n your Papa!”

WHAT IS IT?

I

Oh! it flashes and beams in the eloquent eye,
And beats thick in the heart when that one form is nigh;
It gleams forth through the glow of the unbidden blush,
Like the mild star of eve in the sunset's last flush.

II

It burns warm in each whisper, it melts in each tear,
And its half-formed words falter—but oh! not with fear;
It appeals to the soul in the ill-suppressed sigh,
Which, unconscious, we utter, and then wonder why.

193

III

It communes in a voice far too thrilling for speech,
In a mystical language, which words cannot reach,
Like the breath of the Zephyr, the harpstrings along,
When it sighs forth its love-notes and dies with the song.

IV

If 't is checked, like the torrent, it swells but more high,
Or returns to its home, like the hurt dove—to die!—
Ask your heart what this fairy-like vision may seem,
And it throbs as it answers—“'T is LOVE'S youthful dream!”

SARATOGA LAKE

[_]

“There is an Indian superstition attached to this lake, which probably had its source in its remarkable loneliness and tranquillity. The Mohawks believed that its stillness was sacred to the Great Spirit, and that, if a human voice uttered a sound upon its waters, the canoe of the offender would instantly sink.” Willis—American Scenery, v. 1, p. 19

It was an Autumn evening and the lake,
(Save when some light breeze ruffled it,
In dalliance with a blushing water lily,)
Lay tranquil as a spotless maiden in her rest,
Whose sleep is peace itself—except some gleam
Of newborn love flit o'er her dream—and then
Her pulse beats quicker, and her traitor lips
Tremble, as they reveal the only secret
Her breast e'er knew.

Skimming the quiet waters,
Like the scared wild-fowl whom the hunter's foot
Has startled from her solitary nook,
Out shot a light canoe upon the lake.
Two only forms it held, and they were lovers—
A pale-face and his bride.—His practised arm,
Which, until now, had urged the little bark
With speed well nigh as swift, as would the shaft,
Winged with destruction, leave the Indian's bow,
Relaxed its efforts; and they floated on

194

O'er the still bosom of the lake, now rosy
With that mild tint which blushes o'er the sky,
When the last autumn sunshine fades to twilight.

It was a lovely scene, and they, (his arm
Was thrown unwittingly around her waist,)
In silence listened to the voice of nature
As, clothed in beauty, she discoursed, in tones
Which language knows not, to their spirit's ear,
Of HIM who made this glorious world, from which,
As from one vast Cathedral, all things raise
An everlasting anthem of Thanksgiving.

The scene was lovely—but to those two lovers
'T was more, far more; it almost seemed as if,
(So to the holy Prophets once 't was given,)
The scales had left their eyes, and they beheld
The present glories of a better world.
Oh love! thou art the sunshine of the soul,
Gilding with thine own hues whate'er thou touchest,
And warming into life the spirit's currents,
(Before dull icebound streams,) until they gush
In the wild music of untutored Poetry!

Their hearts were full; they gazed upon the scene,
And then upon each other. Oh that gaze!
If but to speak be death, why sank they not?
For worlds of speech were crowded in that gaze.
A tear shone trembling in that eye which oft
Had met the fearful glance of Death and quailed not.
He clasped her to his breast, and, as his lips,
(Scarce consciously,) met hers, murmured “my love!”
The spirit of the lake was wroth—calmly,
(How awful was that calm!) yet suddenly,
The charmed waves yawned wide and overwhelmed them
In life and love, as in their death, united.

No sound is heard except the mournful note
Of the lone whippoorwill, who tells his love
To the deceitful echo, which, from far,
Like a fond mate, makes answer, cry for cry—
But the glad ears, which one short moment since,

195

Drank in the wailing melody, heed not.
The evening star still throws his trembling glance
In silver lustre on the lake below,
But they, who gazed so oft upon his beams
And wondered, in their love, if he contained
Beings one half as happy—where are they?
Dead—and what's Death that we should fear him so?
It is not Nature's prompting; for the babe
Who knows not Death, sinks, at his beck, to rest
Calmly as on a fond mother's bosom—
Like children, we have drest a phantom up,
And fear to look on what ourselves have made.
In pity of the lovers' mournful fate,
The merciful Great Spirit broke the spell
That bound those quiet waters; but e'en now,
So says the Mohawk hunter, at that hour,
That loveliest hour of Autumn twilight,
The light canoe still skims the lake, and still
Those two float for a moment round the spot
They loved so well on earth, and then are gone.

SCENES FROM AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA

By the late G. A. Slimton, Esq.

Act I

Scene I

SCENE.—Oystershop. TIME.—10 o'clock, P. M. Room brilliantly illuminated by two tallow candles. OYSTERMAN in the background brandishing his knife with a tragic air over a prostrate oyster. Enter TOM and DICK.
Thomas
(loquitur)
This hour is big with fate, and must decide,
As Shakspeare well remarks—

Richardus
I like 'em fried,
They suit me rather better; and I think
That, (as you pay,) we'll have a little drink.

196

I'm not at all particular, but fain
Would— (to Oysterman)
—hand that bottle—taste of this Champagne.
(To Oysterman)
Just file the wires or break them with a fork,
And, when I'm ready, liberate the cork.

Thomas
Say, gentle Oysterman, old Neptune's son,
Oh say and soothe me! are the shellfish done?

Oysterman
That warn't my father's name! I've no idee
Of having fun nor nothing poked at me!
But to add rubbing in to poking—yes,
That's most too hard for any one I guess,
And as for me—young man I tell you what
I am—no matter what I am—I'm hot,
Ay, in my wrath a very mustard pot!
A curse is on me, wander where I will
That dreadful ban, by jingoes! dogs me still!
E'en so some puppy, to whose harmless tail
Some urchin's hand has tied an old tin pail,
Flees to escape it, yet forever feels
The cumbrous pendent dangling at his heels,
And finds the only method left to take
Is—for his heart, or tail, or both, to break!
I once was gentle as my own sweet Sam,
But perfidy has made me what I am!
I have been cheated, and have suffered wrong
Not to be sneezed at, I have borne long, long,
That pay deferred that makes the full heart ache—
Oh trebly cursed be they who coldly take
The poor man's oysters, eat them up and say
“Trust us, good Oysterman”—and never pay!!

Thomas
(aside)
I've heard of second-sight, but can it be
That fate's dark book is conned by such as he?
If it be so, perhaps he may not trust—
We'll eat the oysters though, and then he must!

197

Oysterman
'Tis hard, at best, to keep a wife and child
And grievous when the last, last tatur's biled!
When the wide world is wrapt in slumbers all
And only Sammy wakes, and wakes to squall,
Then on my restless couch I sleepless turn.

Richardus
I say! old cock, these oysters here will burn!

Oysterman
Let me alone for that—I scratch my head
To think the morrow brings no loaf of bread.
All this is sad enough, but sadder far,
When I pass by the tavern's well-stocked bar,
See rum o'er rum, o'er whiskey, whiskey placed,
And my mouth waters for one leetle taste
To warm the blood that curdles round my heart,
And add fresh vigor to my baser part,—
Often I've told the bar-keeper how slick
'T would be for both, if he would only “tick,”
Just tick this once, I'd never ask again,
'T would so relieve an intermittent pain,
A sort of daily cholic that would come,
And only yielded to New England Rum.
(Aside)
Take that junk bottle, Samuel, my son,
(It stands up in the corner there,) and run
Round to the grocer's; get it filled with—stuff
And hasten back again—Begone! Enough!

Thomas
Much like the frightful colds which students tell,
Just reach their crisis at the matin bell,
Sudden they come and sudden disappear
When the loud breakfast peal salutes the ear.
The symptoms are a deep lethargic snore
Till much-loved prayers and more-loved Locke are o'er,
At morning meal an appetite diseased,
Which, like poor Rachel, will not be appeased.

198

The danger then subsides, but oftentimes
Returns more dreadful by next morning's chimes—
In former days they had a funny cure,
Which, though severe, was almost always sure;
The President in person used to pick
In Craigie's woods full many a walnut stick
Of toughest quality, and having got 'em
Applied the same unto the patient's ---.
But now-a-days the country air is thought
To cure such maladies of every sort.
But are the oysters fried? I cannot wait
Much longer, Oysterman, it's getting late.
I hear sad accents which you cannot hear,
Ventriloquistic voices meet my ear,
My mental ear, and weeping, seem to say
“Our Commons dinner was but poor to-day.”
And when I strive to put the tempter down,
They moan again, “Do have them fried quite brown!”
Dick, if Fate's hand were ever shown in aught,
These dreadful omens are not meant for nought.
So ghosts, when Cæsar fell, wrapt up in sheets,
“Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets,”
As Shakspeare says—

Richardus
Dear Tom, the oysters wait,
Don't stand and moralize, but fill your plate.

Thomas
Fill! I'll do more, I'll empty it as fast
As what is “present” hastens to be “past;”
For verily my nose, most mighty Dick,
Informs my bowels that the treat is slick!
E'en so some grunter, monarch of the stye,
Lifts o'er the new-brought swill his nostrils high,
Keeps all the other rev'rent piglings off
As he inhales the incense of the trough,
And while his very tail for rapture curls,
Prefers his banquet to a feast of pearls.

199

Richardus
Bring on the bottle, Oysterman, this knife
Shall bring its prisoned energies to life,
See how it foams and fizzles to be free,—
(Cuts the cork loose.)
Pop! that's a sounder! how it sparkles! See!

Thomas
E'en so my spirit, Richard, scorns the rules
Of College order, made to shackle fools!
What are all laws in fact but galling chains,
The empty work of still more empty brains;
A poor device, if history tell us true,
To make the many buckle to the few?
Laws! shame that such frail gossamer should bind
The God-like powers of the mighty mind!
(Dick, in the mean while, keeps alternately tipping the bottle towards his glass, and his glass towards his mouth, with a dexterity which Sancho Panza himself might have been proud to imitate.)
Oh how my spirit struggles to be loose
And strives in vain! alas it ain't no use!
Oh Dick! Dick! Dick! if you but had a soul
Like mine, to grasp the world from pole to pole,
And, in its universal charity take in
Each fellow mortal of whatever skin;
Brown Indian, roasted by the eccentric sun,
And ebon Ethiop, rather overdone,
(What time poor Phaëton in Sol's bright car,
“Shot from the zenith like a falling star,”)
Had you a soul, I say, as vast as that,
You'd say—these things are fried in too much fat—
You'd say, What are the laws to me, to any one,
If but approving conscience say, “Well done!”

Richardus
Well done, forsooth! Well done! I do not care
What conscience likes, but I prefer things rare!

(With this he pours down the last glass of Champagne)
Thomas
Yet why this eloquence? he heeds me not,
Far better eat my oysters while they're hot.

200

Besides, this speech, if husbanded with care,
May one day make the Harvard Union stare,
And bellowed forth with more than Stentor's lungs
Call thundering plaudits from a dozen tongues!!!
So some huge Freshman, hero of a tail,
Delights to feel it fluttering in the gale,
But more delights to save it nicely brushed,
Till Sophs' fell ire by Sunday's calm is hushed,
Then proudly does his young ambition soar,
As he struts sternly to the chapel door,
In all but age and size, a Sophomore!

Richardus

Oh nature's noblest gift, New York Champagne!
Light of the sense! Elysium of the brain!
Who cast aside the grape, and mixed instead
With one part brandy, four of pure white lead,
And thus our country's freedom did enhance,
No more dependent on the vines of France?
A leather medal his reward should be,
A leather medal and an LL. D.! (after a pause, sings)

“Come hey down derry
Let's drink and be merry
In spite of Mahomet's law!”

But stop! oh sight of horrors! by the stove
Stand two twin oystermen! they do, by Jove!
Glaring at me, with look intent, they stand,
And knives, for murder thirsty, in their hand,
Oh men of oysters! men of oysters oh!
What can possess ye to regard me so?
And Thomas! long loved, honored Thomas too,
Why have you thus transformed yourself to two?
I ne'er expected such a thing of you!

Thomas
Richard, thou 'rt drunk! you're fuddled Dick, I say,
Here, take my arm, and let us haste away.

Richardus
Believe me, Tom, I really am not high,
This seeing double's wholly “in my eye”—
And really, (hiccup,) Tom, I cannot see

201

Why you should thus insinuate at me.
E'en so the pot behind the kettle's back,
As history tells us, called his cousin black.
A meddling saucepan to the kettle told
The whole affair, before the words were cold.
The latter boiled with wrath, ‘called out’ the pot,
And shot the luckless slanderer on the spot!!
So prithee, Thomas, do not make a fuss,
And let the pot's sad fate take one of us.

Thomas
I will not, dearest Dick—but let us go,
We've something else to do to-night, you know;
And though some proctor, on his evening scout,
Led by his nose, should chance to find us out,
And peeping through night's blanket cry hold! hold!
I'd try his courage, Dick, I feel so bold!!

Richardus

Yes, Tom, if courage dwelleth in the feet,
I think you'd stand the fairest chance to beat.

[Exeunt Tom and Dick singing

“We won't go home till morning!”g

(A proctor comes out from the other cell in the shop)
Proctor
Now will I keep a very strict look out,
And, (if thou'rt faithful to thy charge, my snout,
And guid'st me truly yet this one time more
As thou, unerring, oft hast done before,)
I hope to nip in time this budding scrape,
Nor let the actors or the act escape!
Then in all future proctors' mouths my name
Shall be synonymous with deathless fame.
Guy Fawkes was nothing to this horrid plot,—
But I must strike while yet the iron's hot!

[Exit Proctor, in his haste forgetting to pay.
Manet Oysterman
Now by the terrors of this mighty fist
Which rival oystermen could ne'er resist,
I'll pay that rascal who forgot to pay,

202

E'er yet the sun proclaims another day.
Nor sword nor horrid oysterknife will sheathe
Until I make him banquet on his teeth!!
(Takes a swallow from the bottle.)
To seal the oath I take one leetle drop—
Sam! while I'm gone, do you attend the shop!

[Exit.

“And only sorrow wakes, and wakes to weep.”— Rogers.

Manuscript illegible.

“Cast your pearls before swine,” &c. Every one has heard of Cleopatra's pearl. After her example, pearls dissolved in vinegar became almost a standing article of dessert among the luxurious Romans.

A poetical expression for knocking his teeth down his throat.

“Tityre dum redeo, brevis est via, para capellas.”

End of Act First

SKILLYGOLIANA. No. II

“O most lame and impotent conclusion!”

Readers! if those there be that ever read
Our sleepy page and bid the work “God speed!”
To each and all we wish a happy year
Unsullied by one doubt or care or tear,
Save those bright drops at parting, rendered sweet
By the found thought that we again shall meet,
And those of joy, that virtue only knows,
When our cup filled with gladness overflows.
And ye, fair readers, if indeed one glance
Of sunshine on our foggy pages dance,
From eyes so soft they seem of heaven's own blue,
Like violets sparkling in the morning dew—
And thou, almost ideal! whose pure face
Beauty and innocence combine to grace,
Whose voice is music and whose glance is love,
Whose smile like what we dream of joy above,
Whose eyes—but whew-ew! what's bewitched our pen?
The seventh heaven is beyond your ken;
Come back again, and wish our readers fair
An hundred happy new years for their share.

(Here followeth a vision “that caused our bones to shake and made the very hair of our flesh to stand up.”)
Penna
(interloquitur)
An hundred to a lady! bless your eyes
They would n't thank you for the “soft surprise!”
Wish 'em all matrimony, love, or fat,

203

Or death, or any other bore than that;
Wish 'em long noses, mouths,—nay, even ears,
But never, never wish 'em length of years!

Poetaster
Well, call it fifty.

Penna
Where alas! would be
Those eyes that sparkle now with girlish glee?
Peering through spectacles with vacant look
They spell the sentences of some worn book;
Where that fair hand, that tiny hand of snow,
Whose taper fingers have bewitched you so?
Why, knitting stockings with absorbing care
And always trembling o'er the self same pair.
And where the voice whose music makes you start,
Sending the warm blood quicker to the heart?
Garrulous with age it tells you, day by day,
What such and such an one were wont to say
In days gone by—pauses for breath—and then
Repeats the same old story o'er again,
Look on the picture—have not fifty years
Made mournful changes in their long careers?

Poetaster
What! is that spectacled old lady there
The maiden whom I once esteemed so fair?

Penna
“That spectacled old lady!” cast your eyes
Upon that glass—nay stifle your surprise—
Those are not crowsfeet, they are dimples—nay
Don't look so blank, those curled locks are not grey;
Come, hasten! fly! get down upon your knees
At that young lady's feet, and pray and teaze
To print one kiss upon that lily hand,
Which owns no lovely rival in the land.—

Poetaster
Now I look closer, why I think I do
See that she's not so very old—don't you?
But call it twenty.

204

Penna
Where the deuse might be
This venerable university?
Just think of buildings flying round the yard
On the swift pinions of a hand-grenade!
Imagine five and forty thousand tomes.
Torn from companions dear and long loved homes,
Darting about, here, there, and everywhere,
Scattering the dust of ages in the air,
And breezes turning those vast pages o'er,
Which, save their writers, none e'er turned before!
Lo! monstrous Polyglotts and sermons rise
Jostling with plays and novels to the skies,
And getting higher in the public view
Than e'en their authors would have wished them to!
The janitor beginning to perceive
Through his dim specs, that all were taking leave,
Would think 't was one, and give a farewell shout,
“One o'clock, gentlemen! you must go out!”
Then, on some cherished tome he'd take his flight,
And, coat-tails flying, vanish out of sight.
Perhaps to some bright planet-realm he'd soar
Where DUCKS are sacred, and all toils are o'er,
Perhaps to Erin green he'd wing his way,
“O'er the glad waters of the dark blue say!”
Then too the Philosophic “things” below,
(Put there to catch the dust and make a show,
And twice a week, for lecturers to take
To show their audience how “slick” they break,)
Just think how quick the orreries would be,
With all their suns and stars, in apogee;
How “transit instruments” and all would change
To exit instruments,—'t would be as strange
As some men's politics, which oft obtain
The name of weathercock, they are so vain.
How “FUTTERBUNKS” would streak it through the air
With so much “emphasis” his very hair,
His auburn hair, that stands too proudly straight
Would sink in terror from its high estate!

“There you're too hard for me!”

205

SKILLYGOLIANA. No. III

“O most lame and impotent conclusion!”

Since Friday morning, on each busy tongue,
“Shameful!” “Outrageous!” has incessant rung.
But what's the matter? why should words like these,
Of dreadful omen hang on every breeze?
Has our Bank failed, and shown, to cash her notes,
Not cents enough to buy three Irish votes?
Or worse than that, and worst of human ills,
Will not the lordly Suffolk take her bills?
Sooner expect, than see her credit die,
Proud Bunker's pile to creep an inch more high.
Has want of patronage, or payments lean,
Put out the rush-light of our Magazine?
No, though Penumbra swears “the thing is flat,”
Thank Heaven, taste has not sunk so low as that!
Can no cigars be bought in all the town,
Of Marshall, Ramsay, Wood & Hall, or Brown?
Though other crops were small, and grain is dear,
Oak-leaves were very plentiful last year.
Has Texas, freed by Samuel the great,
Entered the Union as another state?
No, still she trades in slaves as free as air,
And Sam still fills the Presidential chair,
Rules o'er the realm, the freeman's proudest hope,
In dread of naught but bailiffs and a rope.
Has then the hero of the claret coat
Swamped General Arcularius and boat;
When, paddling out, he boldly draws his sword
Against great Navy Island's conquering horde,
And as he fiercely shakes the thirsty blade,
Demands the “captured” cannon, undismayed
Though met by heroes who might well defy
The maids of Billingsgate in sharp reply?
Oh no! Columbia's angel stretched her arm
To shield her bravest son from every harm,
And still he lives to see on muster field

206

The bristling squadrons bloodless charge and yield.
What is the matter then? Why Thursday night
Some chap or other strove to vent his spite
By blowing up the chapel with a shell,
But unsuccessfully,—he might as well
With popgun threat the noble bird of Jove,
Or warm his fingers at a patent stove,
As try to shake old Harvard's deep foundations,
With such poor despicable machinations.
Our Alma Mater laughs such plots to scorn,—
Her glory yet is but the early dawn,
Which shall, as every shadow melts away,
Grow bright and more bright to the perfect day.
Long may she live, and Harvard's morning star
Light learning's weary pilgrims from afar!
And long may ‘Star-eyed Science’ love to twine
Her greenest wreaths for this her fairest shrine!
Long may the chapel echo to the sound
Of sermon lengthy and of part profound,
Long may it stand to hear young stentors pour
Latin and Greek in one continued roar,
And long may Dana's gowns survive to grace
Each future runner in the learned race!

General A. was the “force” despatched to preserve neutrality, and to retake the cannon from the “ragged regiment” on Navy Island. Troy was taken by a wooden horse, but such has been the improvement in military tactics, that the Navy Islanders were too wise to be deceived into anything but Billingsgate by a living jackass.

This attempt would be scarce worth noticing but for its enormity. While a few glasses were broken by the explosion of a petard or so, it might be called thoughtlessness, but the character of this offense stamps it as deliberate villany. This Erostratian method of being “damned to endless fame,” is, after all, but a small way of gaining a reputation.

207

A DEAD LETTER

“My heart is sair, I darena tell,—
My heart is sair for somebody.”

I joined the crowd, and I thought of thee only,
And thy bright smile,—
Thou wast not there, oh! how heartsick and lonely
I felt the while!

To many maidens I have sent gay letters,
Yet dared not tell
One hope to her, who all my heartstrings fetters
As with a spell.

'T was weary work to flatter unknown beauties
All o'er and o'er,

208

While there was one—my heart thou know'st how true 't is,
Deserved far more.

But, though I feared to write, I ceased not thinking,
Fairest, of thee!
And Fancy still thy gentle tones was drinking,
Thy glance of glee.

And oh! when round thee lovely forms are glancing
'Mid feast and song,
When happy hearts and fairy feet go dancing
In joy along;—

When, 'mid bright eyes, thine eyes of blue are brightest,
Then condescend,
To waste one little thought, though but the lightest,
Upon

A FRIEND. Cambridge, May-day Evening, 1838.

The above letter was left in the Post-Office and never called for. It was, by a lucky chance, saved from being sent on to Washington, to be opened by the unfeeling hands of government clerks.

EXTRACTS FROM A “HASTY PUDDING POEM”

Does College life feel no ambitious cares?
Are students only free from all her snares?
Fancy, for one short fraction of an hour,
That we are gifted with Asmodeus' power,
Then snugly seated on old Harvard's cap,
We'll take a look, or if you please, a nap,—
If it may chance that my unworthy strain
Bring rest to one, I have not sung in vain.
Now then, you must n't mind the chilly breeze,
We're seated, look around you, if you please.

Mark yon enthusiast, his lamp grows dim,
His pale fire smoulders, but 't is nought to him!
What's paltry coal compared with endless fame,
Or wasting tapers to the muses' flame?
His gilt-edged superfine devoted lies

209

In virgin purity before his eyes,
Save where, (sole token of poetic rage,)
“Sonnet” stands staring from the modest page.
Poor guiltless word! long doomed to pine alone,
Like aged toad imbedded deep in stone!
Harvardiana's pages bid him seek
“An immortality of near a week.”
Ambition lends him industry, and she,—
May one day make a bard of even me!
Methinks e'en now the poet's eye may look
With prophet vision on the future's book,
And see, like Dædalus, the minstrel rise
On self-invented pinions to the skies,
Spur his racked hobby in the muses' teeth,
And snatch in triumph at the deathless wreath!
And as stout Vulcan's axe impetuous clove
The blue-eyed Goddess from the scull of Jove,
So labor beats from dulness' brain ideas
While each more brilliant than the last appears,
Until at length, his patent wings full spread,
Enormous epics blossom round his head!
Perchance improvement, in some future time,
May soften down the rugged path of rhyme,
Build a nice railroad to the sacred mount,
And run a steamboat to the muses' fount!
O happy days! when “steaming” to renown,
Each bard shall rise, the wonder of his town!
O happy days! when every well-filled car,
With stubborn rhymes in rugged strife shall jar,
And every scribbler's tuneless lyre shall squeak,
When whizzing swiftly up Parnassus' Peak!

Stop! hear you not that concourse of sweet notes,
Thrilling the soul as on the breeze it floats?
Ah music's votaries! full well ye know
To win the senses from dull study's woe,
To lull the mind to quiet, yet to keep
Your drowsy neighbors from too sound a sleep.
'T is sweet to hear, when sinking to a doze,
Some tuneful neighbor chanting through his nose,
Just when, oblivious of sublunar things,
Free fancy soars away on dreamy wings,
When, themes well finished or postponed awhile,

210

Light Somnus greets one with Pickwickian smile,—
'T is sweet to be awakened, though 't is true
There's pleasure in a calm siesta too.
But ah, much sweeter, when the night has thrown
Her sable mantle round her starlit throne,
When the day's weariness has given zest
To the soft pillow and the soothing rest,
To be awakened by the mingled sound
Of many laboring instruments around,
Far more melodious than the startling call,
That shattered Jericho's embattled wall.
“Ah!” one exclaims, “this music is a bore,
They might have let me sleep a little more,
With windows closed, I think they well might spare
‘To waste their sweetness on the desert air!’”
No! what were music, if it were not known
Who pealed the loudest, who the sweetest tone?
Ambition fills them all, they all aspire
To get on string of Phœbus' silver lyre.
Full many such “oft in the stilly night”
Exert their voices with stentorian might,
“From morn till night, from night till startled morn,”
Twang loud alarums on the groaning horn,
Or when they should be chewing learning's root,
Wring heartfelt moanings from the tortured flute.
All, all, have ears; though some more highly blest
Have ears much longer than the luckless rest;
Yet amidst sizes of near every sort,
None, (I must say it,) are at all too short!

Fain would I more;—but could my muse aspire
To praise in fitting strains our College choir?
Ah, happy band! securely hid from sight,
Ye pour your melting strains with all your might;—
And, as the prince, on Prosper's magic isle,
Stood spell-bound, listening with a raptured smile
To Ariel's witching notes, as through the trees
They stole like angel voices on the breeze,—
So when some strange divine the hymn gives out,
Pleased with the strains he casts his eyes about,
All round the chapel gives an earnest stare,
And wonders where the deuce the singers are,

211

Nor dreams that o'er his own bewildered pate,
There hangs suspended such a tuneful weight!

212

TO MOUNT WASHINGTON

On a Second Visit

How are you, mine ancient hoary headed friend?
How have you been since I saw you last?
Hast any more wild Indian legends to tell,
Sturdy old chronicler of the past?

What, mum? poor old fellow! I see how it is,—
You're berhymed and betravelled too much!
You can scarcely peep out with your storm-beaten phiz,
But you fall in some viewhunter's clutch.

I suppose you remember when Time was young,
Say, what makes him so crabbed and cross?
Did he speculate largely in Eastern lands,
Which the deluge made all a dead loss?

Did he lose his affianced, (poor soul!) in the flood?
Or write a small poem or two,
And turn misanthropic on reading a squib
In some acid præ-Adam review?

213

He must be your friend;—why you're not changed at all,
Save some wrinkles the torrents have made,
When you wrung out the water from some stray cloud
To replenish a dried-up cascade.

You're a pious old chap to stand pointing there still,
With admonishing finger on high,—
'T is a pity your visitors don't improve
By your lofty, silent homily.

Did you ever (you must live next door to the spheres)
Enjoy a nice spherical serenade?
If so, do relax that unsociable frown,
And tell on what pieces they each of 'em played.

Come, speak,—does the carbuncle light its old spot?
Is the lake of the clouds too still there,
Which served for a looking-glass when you were young,
To arrange your then plentiful hair?

And now that I think of it, try Ward's hair oil,
'T will resist age, misfortune, and weather;
And, make your locks long as when you and old Time
Began life's rugged journey together.

Nay, never look cross, for you know you are bald,
And have been so these two thousand years,
And scarce take a look in your truth-telling glass,
Without shedding a river of tears.

You won't say a word? hey, old vinegar face?
Hold your tongue then, I don't care a bit,—
If you open your clamshells you'll only show,
That you've lost both your grinders and wit.

Good bye! milestone huge on eternity's road,
Stand there proudly till earth's latest day,

214

May you powder your head with old winter's last snow,
And smile back on the sun's latest ray.

SONG

“Their tricks and craft hae put me daft,
They've ta'en me in, and a' that;
But clear your decks, and ‘Here's the sex!’
I like the jades for a' that.”
Burns, Jolly Beggars.

I

A pair of black eyes,
Of a charming size,
And a lip so prettily curled O!
Are enough to capsize
The intentions wise
Of any young man in the world O!

II

For a pretty smile
Is a grievous wile
For a heart, for a heart that is light O!
And a spirit like a dove
Draws one slily into love,
Though he knows that it is n't right O!

III

Oh a gentle heart
Is the better part
Of the loveliest woman's wealth O!
And I totter on the brink
Of love when I think,
When I think how our eyes met by stealth O!

215

IV

For a thousand girls
Have hair that curls,
And a sort of expressive face O!
But it is n't the hair,
Nor the genteelish air,—
'T is the heart that looks bright and gives grace O!

V

Ay, lasses there are many
With the devil a penny,
But with hearts worth their weight in gold O!
Who would sooner win my heart
Than the richest in the mart,
Whose prudent love may be bought and sold O!

VI

No bee e'er yet sucked honey
From gold or silver money,
But he does from the lowly flower O!
Then give me a spouse
Without fortune, land or house,
And her charming self for a dower O!

VII

For love it is a thing
That will quit the lonely king,
To make sunny the cot of the peasant O!
And it folds its gauzy wing,—
In short it is a thing,
'T is a thing—that is deuced pleasant O!

VIII

Though Platonism will do
For the verd-antique blue,
Who no portion has but her tongue O!

216

Yet that is rather tame,
And a little hotter flame
Is the thing for the heartsome young O!

TO THE CLASS OF '38, BY THEIR OSTRACIZED POET, (SO CALLED,) J. R. L.

I

Classmates, farewell! our journey's done,
Our mimic life is ended,
The last long year of study's run,
Our prayers their last have blended!

Chorus

Then fill the cup! fill high! fill high!
Nor spare the rosy wine!
If Death be in the cup, we'll die!
Such death would be divine!

II

Now forward! onward! let the past
In private claim its tear,
For while one drop of wine shall last,
We'll have no sadness here!

Chorus

Then fill the cup! fill high! fill high!
Although the hour be late,
We'll hob and nob with Destiny,
And drink the health of Fate!

III

What though Ill-luck may shake his fist,
We heed not him or his,
We've booked our names on Fortune's list,
So d---n his grouty phiz!

Chorus

Then fill the cup! fill high! fill high!
Let joy our goblets crown,

217

We'll bung Misfortune's scowling eye,
And knock Foreboding down!

IV

Fling out youth's broad and snowy sail,
Life's sea is bright before us!
Alike to us the breeze or gale,
So hope shine cheerly o'er us!

Chorus

Then fill the cup! fill high! fill high!
And drink to future joy,
Let thought of sorrow cloud no eye,
Here's to our eldest boy!

V

Hurrah! Hurrah! we're launched at last,
To tempt the billows' strife!
We'll nail our pennon to the mast,
And DARE the storms of life!

Chorus

Then fill the cup! fill high once more!
There's joy on time's dark wave;
Welcome the tempest's angry roar!
'Tis music to the brave.

CLASS POEM

“Some said, John, print it; others said, Not so:
Some said, It might do good; others said, No.”
Bunyan.

DEDICATION TO THE CLASS OF 1838, Some of Whom He Loves, None of Whom He Hates, This “Poem” is Dedicated by Their Classmate

218

PREFACE

Many of my readers, and all my friends know that it was not by any desire of mine that this rather slim production is printed. Circumstances, known to all my readers, and which I need not dilate on here, considerably cooled my interest in the performance. Many of the lines, though in fact they would even then be indifferent good, I should prefer if possible to see in prose. Sed Dis aliter. Many were written merely as rough draughts, which I intended to have altered and revised, but the change of feeling, mentioned above, has prevented, and rough draughts they are still. There are a few grains of gold, or at least tinsel, in the composition, but the lead—oh word infaust to poets!—will I fear, far outweigh them. A few passages have been omitted, whose place is sufficiently well supplied by asterisks.

Paltry, however, as it is, I submit it (at their desire) to my readers, confident

“That never anything can be amiss,
When simpleness and duty tender it.”

Concord, Mass., August, 1838.

I

Brothers! you know that every passing year,
When it has dug enough in learning's mine,
Each class still meets to take its parting here,
To Alma Mater gives one farewell line,
And throws, perchance made fresher by a tear,
Its wreath of tribute blossoms on her shrine,—
Pray Heaven! she be not smothered by the flowers
That visit her with such perennial showers!

II

And eloquence and song are called to swell,
With music's dreamlike witchery and prayer,
The faltering cadence of the sad farewell,
And beauty's heart-inspiring smile is there,
And brilliant eyes more softly beam to tell,
That in the moment's sadness they too share,
Like stars, seen fainter through some filmy veil,
Which makes their light seem purer, though more pale.

219

III

Long years we've trod our dusty path together,
Years duller e'en than when retraced in rhyme,
Sharing alike Fate's storms and sunny weather,—
Three silently have floated through the void of time,
The fourth still stays his ruffled plumes to feather,
And make his last record of sin and crime,—
Fancy e'en now can hear his dusky wing
Flutter and flap at parting, while I sing.

IV

Oh! would I had a better voice for singing!
That I might plunge into a tide of song,
And, to some little plank of reason clinging,
Float gaily on the rushing waves along,
From side to side the glittering foam-drops flinging,
Bresting the yesty waves with purpose strong,
Until at last, far, far from either shore,
I sank in bathos-depths to rise no more!

V

Or, heavenward striking on unwearied wing,
Seek the star-broidered empyrean, thence,
Leaving to earth's dull clods each common thing,
As common metre, words, and common sense,
Soar on and upward, till each cracking string
Of feeling vibrate with a thrill intense,
And, wandering on, far out of mortal view,
Quite lose myself, alas! and hearers too!

VI

To those who understand me not, I'd say
“‘Haud tibi spiro,’ we want sympathy,
If you don't like me turn another way;”
Or else I'd grow pathetic, rub my eye,
And snivel out in half-choked words, “My day
Of triumph yet will come before I die;
So 't was with Milton, Shakspeare, and a host,
Unhonored all, till they gave up the ghost!”

VII

I might,—but I'm like one who turns a glass
Among those heavenly melodists the stars,

220

Nor knows while o'er his raptured gaze they pass,
Wheeling and turning in their golden cars,
Which fairest one to single from the mass,
Minerva, Venus, Juno, Vesta, Mars,
So lovely are they all to gaze upon,
Sweet, modest shunners of the garish sun.

VIII

Or more like one who makes his choice among
Some dozen garments in their latest stage,
Whose gaping mouths, could they have found a tongue,
Had told full many a tale of fortune's rage,—
So I,—for all things have been said or sung
In this long-winded pathobathic age,
Who let philosophers (God wot!) command 'em,
Because they (honest souls!) can't understand 'em.

IX

What they can't comprehend must be profound,
And so they toil along the same blind round,
Admiring all who talk in tropes and rant,
From heaven-high Fichte up to viewless Kant.
Kant! happy name! change but the K to C,
And I will wring my poem out of thee.
Thanks, vast Immanuel! thy name has given
The thing for which my brains so long have striven.
Who ever thought that thou could'st be of use
To give a subject to a puzzled muse?
Spread, Pegasus, thy wings! for thou and I
In one short hour have many leagues to fly,
Cant be my theme, and when she fails my song,
Her sister Humbug shall the lay prolong.

The subject was literally hit upon in the way stated, or rather hinted at, in the text.

X

Dim realm of shades! ere yet I take my flight,
To pierce the gloom of thy eternal night,
Where Cant, sublime upon her throne of brass,
Feeds every knave and feeds on every ass,
Oh let me breathe one last, one parting prayer,
To be my talisman of safety there.

221

Oh thou! to whom, where'er my footsteps roam,
My restless soul would spread its pinions home,—
Reality! more fair than any seeming
E'er blest the fancy of an angel's dreaming,—
Be thou my muse, in whose blue eye I see
The heaven of my heart's eternity!
Oh hover like a spirit at my side,
In all my wanderings a heavenly guide,
Then, if in Cant's dim mists I lose my way,
Thy blessed smile shall lead me back to day,
And, when I turn me from the land of night,
Thou, morning star of love, shalt herald light!

XI

Hail Cant's great watchword, quickstep march of mind!
Whose gallant leaders hurry on so fast,
They have no time to cast a look behind,
And take a lesson from the hoary past;
On, like a torrent in their pauseless course,
They rush, to bring Millennium by force,
And in the holy warfare growing warm,
Would take the New Jerusalem by storm!
Thee first I sing. Not mine the poet's fire,
Or hand that deftly strikes the sacred lyre,
Not mine the bays, and yet a muse like mine
Might wreath a rainbow round the dullest line.

Hail progress days! Farewell! thou good old age,
When talking nonsense did not make a sage,
Bacon and Locke, your day of empire's o'er,
To dust and bookworms sink for evermore!
The march of mind is going on too fast,—
So half the world run mad with some one's last,
(Would that it were indeed his last!) and then
With Teufelsdröckh run full as mad agen.
“Look! look!” they cry, “upon this book, and see
What a philosopher this man must be!
What quaint-mouthed sentences! and how profound!
You'll grant there's bathos in the very sound;
Such long and lofty nouns and verbs had well
Graced the high words between those giants fell,
Whom Scripture tells us poured out so much blood,

222

As nearly drowned the earth before the flood.
Johnson to this man was a fool 't is plain,—
In his great work you'll seek such words in vain.
Then too those other saints, this side the sea,
Already write as crooked words as he;
Now, as all arguments of words consist,
And everything is magnified by mist,
In all debates of course he gets the best
Who brings more words and mistier than the rest.”

Thus they, infatuate as the Jews of old,
Worship a calf, though not a calf of gold,
And on their godship's heads take monstrous pains
With laurel wreaths to hide the want of brains.
“Omne ignotum pro mirifico,”
They know that's grand whose sense they cannot know;
And, proving thus that bombast is profound,
Through works of deepest mist they grope around,
Staring at sentences so vastly high,
That all their meaning quite escapes the eye,
So lengthy too, that rhyme must own it fears,
Nothing can match them but their author's ears,
So strange, that Murray would have wept to hear,
Unless indeed while writhing through his ear,
They put the good old grammatist to sleep,
Ere he could pull his kerchief out to weep,—
And so immensely deep—the reader's head
In vain tries soundings with its native lead.
Thus they wade on, now measuring some word
Of which no other Christian ever heard,
Now toiling slowly up some premise steep
To pitch, half-drowned, in some conclusion deep,
Until at length they end their march in nought,
Or break their shins by stumbling on a thought.

“And there were giants in those days and after.” Genesis.

XII

Hail too great drummer in the mental march,
Teufelsdröckh! worthy a triumphal arch,
Who send'st forth prose encumbered with jackboots,
To hobble round and pick up raw recruits,
And, able both to battle and to teach,

223

Mountest thy silent kettledrum to preach.
Great conqueror of the English language hail!
How Caledonia's goddess must turn pale
To hear thy German-Greeco-Latin flung
In Revolutions from a Scottish tongue!

Yet here the muse would fold her wing to weep
O'er genius buried in lethargic sleep,
O'er talents misapplied, o'er heavenly fire
Smothered beneath a mass of wordy mire,
And only bursting forth at times to show
How much still lies to sorrow for below.
Oh! better that the sombre cypress wave
Its mourning branches o'er a fameless grave,
Than gain a name by talents thus applied
To a base intellectual suicide.
Burst, prisoned eagle, burst thy chains and soar
Where soulless eye can track thy flight no more;
Where shafts of satire, feathered from thy wing,
No more can gall thee with their insect sting!
Proud bird of Jove! seek Heaven's purest air,
And dwell forever with thy compeers there;
Go sit at Shakspeare's sainted feet, and see
How man can trample on mortality!

No one admires Mr. Carlyle's genius more than I do; but his style is execrable, though, for a change, entertaining. His tying himself down to such a diction, &c. reminds one of a punishment still practised in China, chaining a living criminal to a dead body. Of course the ridicule is meant for his imitators—the “servum pecus,” as Horace calls them.

Ah, Clothes Philosophers, you'd better try
To make the garments you but mar in prose,
You'd find a tailor's wages much more high
And profitable too, as this world goes;
No doubt the balance on your printer's book
Will add its counsel—if you dare but look;
Those winged words, of which you prate so much,
Cannot be yours, and had you any such,
Off from your pens they'd spread their wings and fly
To seek, elsewhere, for better company.
Lay down the goosequill then—take up the goose,
And put your talents to their proper use.

224

XIII

Alas for poor Philosophy! that she
In her old age should come to beggary
And turn a tailoress, who from her throne
Once ruled fair Greece, and called the world her own.
Those days are gone, when poet, hero, sage
In rapture brooded o'er her speaking page,
And fixed in breathless wonder, silent hung
On the proud lessons swelling from her tongue,
Then spread her truths to earth's remotest bound
Till haughty Error trembled at the sound.
Those days are gone, and now her only friends
Are misty rhapsodists, whom Heaven sends
To form a contrast with the blessed light,
And make Truth's holy lustre seem more bright.
Who, blessed with souls scarce larger than a broker's,
Would furnish them to pots and pans and pokers,
And, having made a “universal soul,”
Forget their own in thinking of the whole;
Who, seeking nothing, wander on through space,
Flapping their half-fledged wings in Reason's face,
And if they chance the vestal flame to find,
That burns a beacon to the storm-tost mind,
Like senseless insects dish within the fire,
And sink forgotten in their funeral pyre.
Few ever meet with such a glorious end,
Or towards the light their aimless ramblings bend;
But, having fretted out their little age,
Sink into chaos, and their sleepy page,
Lining some trunk, shall be the only note
That what's-his-name their author lived and wrote.

Woe for Religion too, when men, who claim
To place a “Reverend” before their name,
Ascend the Lord's own holy place to preach
In strains that Kneeland had been proud to reach,
And which, if measured by judge Thatcher's scale,
Had doomed their author to the county jail!
When men just girding for the holy strife,

225

Their hands just cleansed to break the bread of life,
Whose souls, made whole, should never count it loss
With their own blood to witness for the cross,
Invite a man their Christian zeal to crown
By preaching earnestly the gospel—down,
Applaud him when he calls of earthy make
That ONE who spake as never yet man spake,
And tamely hear the anointed Son of God
Made like themselves an animated clod!

They call such doctrines startling, strange, and new,
But then they're his, you know, and must be true;
The universal mind requires a change,
Its insect wings must have a wider range,
It wants no mediator—it can face
In its own littleness the Throne of Grace;
For miracles and “such things” 't is too late,
To trust in them is now quite out of date,
They're all explainable by nature's laws—
Ay! if you only could find out their CAUSE!
I know in these wise days 't is very flat
To ask for any thing so small as that,
But all mankind are not transparent eyes,
They only see things of their usual size,
And, when the very grass beneath their feet
Grows by a law that only God can mete,
Strive not to analyze that mighty will
Which raised the dead, and made the tempest still.
Such doctrines new! they've been repeated oft
Since first the Jews at their Redeemer scoffed,
Stained their vile hands with the Messiah's gore,
And filled the bitter cup to running o'er!
Alas! that Christian ministers should dare
To preach the views of Gibbon and Voltaire!
Alas! that one whose life, and gentle ways,
E'en hate could find it in its heart to praise,
Whose intellect is equalled but by few,
Should strive for what he'd weep to find were true!

The “most melancholy Jaques” seems to have had a prophetic voice, when he said,

“My lungs began to crow like Chanticleer
That fools should be so deep-contemplative.”

XIV

Alas for Poesy! her brightness gone,
With draggled plume she flutters lamely on,
Pelted and scoffed at by the rabble rout,

226

Who mock her heartfelt shame with ribald shout,
And, at each turn their illmatched verses pour,
Struggling to get apart, (when not too weak,)
While grammar, sense, and taste for mercy roar,
And metre howls a supplicating shriek,
Buried alive beneath the weight of lead
That pours in masses from the poet's head.
Apollo! crush this milk-and-water school,
Rhymesters by rote and rhapsodists by rule,
Who boldly plagiarize from Mother Goose,
And never grant poor common sense a truce;
Who hunt one little, frightened thought to death,
(At least till they themselves are out of breath,)
And, when recovered from the fruitless chase,
Too stupid e'en to play the fool with grace,
Exclaim, “There's not the slightest use for thought,
If poets would but rhyme as poets ought!”
Fools! in the duck-pond at their kitchen door,
As muddy as their own dull brains or more,
A Hippocrene they discern, and count
Their duly fingered feet beside their fount!
Poor hapless bards! misfortune's eldest sons,
Whose only real followers are duns,
Whose “highest heaven of invention” is
The garret where they spin their quiddities!

XV

Farewell, great Shakspeare! nature's second self,
Compose thyself with care to grace a shelf,
The world now worships bards of that new school
Who show us Nature duly squared by rule,
Who give the length and breadth of every tree
That shades the desert of their poetry,
And sound each brook, whose music as it flows,
Draws notes in concert from the reader's nose.
So in the gardens in Queen Bess's time,
The streams did all that's natural but climb,
And every rock, shrub, flower, tree, and limb,
Was nature bettered by the owner's whim.

Yet memory with mournful smile would turn
Where earth still weeps o'er Shakspeare's sacred urn,
Where Freedom twines fresh wreaths around the bust

227

Whose sightless orbs watch Milton's holy dust,
And Nature still with drooping eyelid mourns
Her nurseling buried in the tomb of Burns.
Oh Poetry! best gift to mortals given
To color earth with hues that rival Heaven,
Thou hast breathed life in all created things,
And clothed bright Fancy with her roaming wings;
There's not a leaf that frolics on the tree
But has it its tiny cherisher from thee,
There's not a breeze that dances through the air
But thou hast placed some sweet musician there,
And not a flower in whose honeyed mine
Dwells not some sylphid pensioner of thine.
Thine are the fays that trip the verdant ring,
And the sweet spirits of the crystal spring,
Where the worn pilgrim, ere he bend to drink,
Blesses the shape that loves its mossy brink;
Thine are the Peris nursed with rich perfume
Of India's blossoms in their freshest bloom,
Who in the fleeting tints of heaven's bow
Find fitting shelter for their limbs of snow;
Thine are the forms that haunt the ocean cave
Gemmed with the dewdrops of the restless wave;
Thine are the witches, and the elves are thine
Who guard the treasures of the sunless mine;
Thine are the gay processions yearly seen
In fairy carnival at Hallowe'en;
Thine are the legends round the old hall fire
That made young hearts for knightly deeds beat higher,
As the shrill tones of some old withered crone
Told deeds of sin that well might seem her own.
Thine are they all—Oh let us cherish still
The hallowed sprites of fountain, dell, and hill!
Cling fondly to these lovely dreams of eld,
Nor fling away the faith our fathers held
For all that now for deepest pathos passes,
For fifty Peter Bells and half-starved asses!

228

Long may the wave-worn sailor love to tell
Of maids that bless old ocean's dreary swell,
And long the plaided shepherd thrill to hear
The gude folks' silver bridles ringing clear,
And elfin music stealing through the trees,
Borne on the pinions of the listening breeze!
Lives there a man so cold, that has not felt
With song too deep for words his bosom melt,
When reading something in a woman's eye,
Might tell a skeptic soul could never die,—
Or when his spirit wings its way afar,
To dwell with Fancy in some heavenlit star,—
Or when he sees the demon of the storm
Folding the clouds about his giant form,
Flapping his raven pinions in the west,
The thunder brooding o'er his wind-tost crest,
Nursing the lightnings 'neath his shaggy wing,
Like startled serpents coiled and prompt to spring?
Whose soul so dead but hears in hours like these
A more than common music in the breeze?
Oh! pure as Venus rising from the foam,
Or thoughts that call my muse's bosom home,
Bright as the tear of thanks for comfort spoken,
Or memory's falling on some cherished token,
Fair Poesy, from all thy foes seek rest,
Within the cell of each whole-hearted breast!

See Burns's “Hallowe'en”:—

“Upon that night, when fairies light,
---dance,” &c.

The day has long past when any one would think of ridiculing Wordsworth. As Carlyle says of Fichte, “What is the wit of a thousand wits to him? The cry of a thousand choughs assaulting that old cliff of granite.” But his fame as a poet does not rest on Peter Bell, (though it contains passages as beautiful as almost any in the language,) nor on any of his “Nursery” poetry, as it has been termed. A man may be a great genius and yet be mistaken, and so apparently Wordsworth thought himself, for he gradually shook off the style of his younger poetry. He probably saw that what was silly in prose no verse would ever make wiser.

And yet we have floods of verses with all the childishness and none of the redeeming points of Wordsworth's earlier style. For instance, Tennyson's “Oh darling Room!” of which one verse will be a sufficient speciman.

“Oh darling room, my heart's delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight,
With thy two couches soft and white,
There is no room so exquisite,
No little room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.”

The last four lines are considered “so exquisite,” that they are repeated in the course of the piece. Some men seem to think, to use Byron's words,

“That Christmas stories tortured into rhyme
Contain the essence of the true sublime.”

XVI

Farewell, bright realm of Poesy! I grieve,
With downward wing, thy purer air to leave;

229

But canting fanatics next pour along,
Claiming a tribute from my halting song,
And first and greatest, those who roar and rave
O'er the exaggerate tortures of the slave.
Not mine the heart that would not keenly feel
A fellow's moans 'neath slavery's iron heel,
Nor mine the eye which could unquivering see
Oppression grind the weak that clasp his knee,
But still I own no sympathy with those
Whose stony hearts can count the falling blows,
Who, standing at safe distance, boldly gnash
Their teeth in concert with the whistling lash,
And make a sermon on each purple drop,
Which shrill invectives strive in vain to stop.
Shall Britain too ship saintly cargoes o'er,
To add their whinings to the general roar,
(With maids who, finding flattery too tame,
Mistake their eartrumps for the trump of fame,)
And stop her ears to Erin's mournful cry
Of babes and mothers in their agony,
Where blood of hue as crimson as her own
Cries from the ground to the Almighty's throne,
And famine grinning o'er each cheerless hearth
Mocks shrinking misery with her fiendish mirth?
Oh, England! England! while thy snowy sails
Swell to the kiss of earth's remotest gales,
And all beneath thy meteor flag is free,
As the wild wave that wafts it o'er the sea,
When 't is thy pride that chains can gall no more,
The wretch whose fettered foot hath touched thy shore,
When every Briton, be he ne'er so mean,

230

Claims rights as sacred as thy virgin queen,
Shall it be whispered to thy endless shame,
Thy bounds held worse than slaves without the name?
Slaves whom no duller current in their veins,
Or different skin had doomed to scourge and chains?
And dost thou talk of mercy? dread the rod
In the red hand of an offended God!

But to my theme,—I would not call him knave,
Who breaks the hated fetters of the slave,
But I do blame that man who takes his place
The self-made benefactor of his race,
Who in his zeal his neighbor's eye to free
From motes that calumny can hardly see,
Dreams not that aught can shadow his clear sight,
Showing him all things in a jaundiced light,
And in his care about another's sins,
On Satan's threshold breaks his own sweet shins.
Bold saints! why tell us here of those who scoff
At law and reason thousands of miles off?
Why punish us with your infernal din,
For what you tell us is the planter's sin?
Why on the North commence the fierce crusade,
And war on them for ills the South has made?

“What! would you have them run the risk to mar
Their saintly sleekness with a coat of tar?
When they can gain the name of martyrs here
With half the breath they'd gasp for there with fear?
Did blest St. Paul e'er turn his footsteps south,
Or in the slave-states even open his mouth?
We do not find he risked his life at all,
Pray why should our saints go beyond St. Paul?”

Gone are those days when Christians held it grace,
To treat like Christians all the human race;
But lives there one whose calm and manly pen
Can lash the vice, yet scorn to wound the men,
Whose temperate zeal would liberate the slave,

231

Yet shrink to desecrate the master's grave,
Whose heart, with Christian mildness running o'er,
Disdains to curse whom God has cursed before,
Whose mind like purest crystal gives to view
Each ray of truth adorned with rainbow hue,
And in whose broad philanthropy find place,
Not slaves alone, but all the human race?
Yes! still thank God! some pilgrim blood remains
To stir the lazy current of our veins,
Thank God! that stout New England's rocky earth
To men of simple virtue yet gives birth!
And Truth may point to where no breath of blame
Can wilt the wreaths that circle CHANNING's name!

It is too late in the day now to sneer at Abolitionists. Even their enemies have come to that conclusion. For I suppose there is not a man in New England who is not an abolitionist at heart. But those fanatics who try to get up an excitement, and especially the females (if I may be allowed to call them so) who go round ranting, when they ought to be at home educating their children, are deserving of more than ridicule. For those who have reached what Dante calls the “mezzo cammin de nostra vita,” “In maiden meditation, fancy free,” there is more apology perhaps. Hamlet's advice to Polonius, not to let his daughter “walk i' the sun,” might be a great deal benefited by.

“'T is a pity when charming women
Talk about what they don't understand.”

George Thomson, being in dread of the bailiffs in Glasgow, hit upon the ingenious plan of drawing a revenue from, by blackguarding, us.

See the “Report on the Irish Poor Laws,” &c.

“The meteor flag of England

Shall yet terrific burn,” &c.—
CAMPBELL.

Cowper says,

“He finds
His fellow creature guilty of a skin
Not colored like his own”—

and dooms him to chains, &c. I forget his precise words.

XVII

But most of all my maiden muse would scorn
That hybrid race, nor man nor woman born,
Whose misplaced petticoats are all the claim
They have upon the latter hallowed name;
Who leave their zero husbands in the lurch,
To raise a riot at some new free church,
Who wish to prove by force of arms that they
With man should hold at least divided sway,
And so without regard to where or when,
They play the fool as wisely as the men.
Oh woman! gentle woman! given to show
How much man has to struggle for below,
Whose smile can well reward each action high,
And kindle courage in the quailing eye,
Who know'st untaught so well the minstrel's art,
To touch the strings of music in the heart,
And in whose spirit's calmer, purer tone,
There breathes a spell to harmonize our own,
Who that has ever read in almost trance
The soul's full language speaking in thy glance,
Who that has seen thy modest eyes just dare
To meet his own and read thine image there,
Who that has ever knelt before thy shrine

232

And murmured vows that only can be thine,
Would render up those magic master keys
That ope the inmost heart to claims like these?
Like stars, thy sphere is far above the strife
And petty turmoils of our work-day life,
Shrinking from public noisiness, as they
Fade from the glances of the “eye of day,”
Yet still, as old astrologers divined,
With all our fortune's windings close entwined.

I would remind the advocates of the “Rights” of Women of the ingenious expedient of a king of the Longobards, to get rid of the teazings of his wife and other ladies of his court for a share in the government of the state. There is another story extant in which the women actually raised the standard of revolt, and were only saved from bloodshed by an expedient as ingenious, though not quite so printable, as the other.

XVIII

Nor this the worst, the groves of academe
Have echoed to the Negroes' fancied scream,
And youths, the down upon whose cultured chins
Scarce lifts its head to blame the razor's sins,
Take up the cry in treble, tenor, bass,
To mourn the woes of Afric's fallen race.
Freshmen, just set at liberty from school,
Their palms still tingling for some broken rule,
Who stand quite speechless when they strive to scan,
Leave Zumpt, to squabble o'er the rights of man;
Nor need the prophet's eye look far to see,
In the dim vista of futurity,
Little enthusiasts mounting on their stools,
To curse the slave-states in our infant schools.
E'en where Religion mildly strives to teach
Her ward, the graver graduate, to preach,
Men, though forbidden, break the college laws
To meet and show their zeal in virtue's cause,
And fierce invectives in the chapel there
Jar with the music of the rising prayer.

XIX

Oh abolitionists, both men and maids,
Who leave your desks, your parlors, and your trades,
To wander restless through the land and shout,
But few of you could tell us what about!
Can ye not hear where on the Southern breeze
Swells the last wailing of the Cherokees?
Hark! the sad Indian sighs a last adieu
To scenes which memory gilds with brighter hue,
The giant trees whose hoary branches keep
Their quiet vigil where his fathers sleep,

233

'Neath the green sod upon whose peaceful breast
He too had hoped to lay him down to rest—
The woods through whose dark shades, unknown to fear,
He roamed as freely as the bounding deer,
The streams so well his boyish footsteps knew
Pleased with the tossings of the mock canoe,
And the vast mountains, round whose foreheads proud,
Curled the dark grandeur of the roaming cloud,
From whose unfathomed breast he oft has heard
In thunder tones the god Great Spirit's word.
Lo where he stands upon yon towering peak
That echoes with the startled eagle's shriek,
His scalptuft floating wildly to the gale
Which howls an answer to his mournful wail,
Leaning his arm upon an unbent bow,
He thus begins in accents sad and low—

1

“We must go! for already more near and more near
The tramp of the paleface falls thick on the ear—
Like the roar of the blast when the storm-spirit comes
Is the clang of the trumps and the death-rolling drums.
Farewell to the spot where the pine trees are sighing
O'er the flowery turf where our fathers are lying!
Farewell to the forests our young hunters love,
We shall soon chase the deer with our fathers above!

2

“We must go! and no more shall our council-fires glance
On the senate of chiefs or the warriors' dance,
No more in its light shall youth's eagle eye gleam,
Or the glazed sight of age become young in its beam.
Wail! wail! for our nation; its glory is o'er,
These hills with our war-songs shall echo no more,
And the eyes of our bravest no more shall look bright,
As they hear of the deeds of their fathers in fight!

3

“In the home of our sires we have lingered our last,
Our death-song is swelling the moan of the blast,
Yet to each hallowed spot clings fond memory still,
Like the mist that makes lovely yon far distant hill.
The eyes of our maidens are heavy with weeping,

234

The fire 'neath the brow of our young men is sleeping,
And the half-broken hearts of the aged are swelling,
As the smoke curls its last round their desolate dwelling!

4

“We must go! but the wailings ye wring from us here
Shall crowd your foul prayers from the Great Spirit's ear,
And when ye pray for mercy, remember that Heaven
Will forgive (so ye taught us) as ye have forgiven!
Ay slay! and our souls on the pinions of prayer
Shall mount freely to Heaven and seek justice there,
For the flame of our wigwams points sadly on high
To the sole path of mercy ye've left us—to die!

5

“God's glad sun shone as warm on our once peaceful homes
As when gilding the pomp of your proud swelling domes,
And his wind sang a pleasanter song to the trees
Than when rustling the silk in your temples of ease;
For He judges not souls by their flesh-garment's hue,
And his heart is as open for us as for you;
Though he fashioned the Redman of duskier skin,
Yet the Paleface's breast is far darker within!

6

“We are gone! the proud Redman hath melted like snow
From the soil that is tracked by the foot of his foe;
Like a summer cloud spreading its sails to the wind,
We shall vanish and leave not a shadow behind.

235

The blue old Pacific roars loud for his prey,
As he taunts the tall cliffs with his glittering spray,
And the sun of our glory sinks fast to his rest
All darkly and dim in the clouds of the west!”

The cadence ends, and where the Indian stood
The rock looks calmly down on lake and wood,
Meet emblem of that lone and haughty race,
Whose strength hath passed in sorrow from its place.

Our policy towards the Indians has never been equalled, except by the Saracen disciples of Mahomet. We give them the Bible with one hand and the sword with the other. The Indian's remarks on this point in the text appear to me just and sensible. Here is a speciman of our humane policy. General Jesup writes to Mr. Poinsett, Secretary of War, as follows. “The villages of the Indians have all been destroyed; and their cattle, horses, and other stock, with nearly all their other property, taken or destroyed. ... They have nothing of value left but their rifles.

“These results, trifling as they are compared with those of the Creek campaign,” &c. Vide Boston Daily Advertiser, Aug. 2, 1838.

This man's heart must be of a very peculiar texture—“these results, trifling as they are”! How well prepared these poor fellows must be to “emigrate” into the Pacific Ocean! The coolness with which the General talks of burning and destroying is only to be equalled by that of the boys pelting frogs. Why,

“The common executioner,
Whose heart the accustomed sight of death makes hard,
Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck,
But first begs pardon.”—

My readers may think that I have kept the poor savage exposed rather too long on his elevated position. Those, who had the pleasure of seeing our Pawnee visitors last autumn, will not think much of their dread of exposure. The knight of the rueful countenance, when his gambols excited the holy horror of his faithful esquire, was nothing to them. Besides, his indignation would not allow him to think of cold or colds.

XX

Oppression, Famine, Pestilence, and Steam
Have done their worst upon this fated race—
They fade in silence, as a morning dream,
Before Improvement's forest-levelling pace;
And soon by mountain, valley, wood, and stream,
The stranger scarce shall find the Indian's trace:
The Whiteman's avarice asks a rood of earth—
And lo! the ploughshare rends the Redman's hearth!

The sinking of a steamboat, and drowning of “about three hundred” (for our government talks of them as if they were cattle) “emigrants,”—for such is the soft expression,—is probably fresh in every one's mind. “Emigrants,” good lack! a man might as well be called an “emigrant,” who was kicked out of his own door by some impudent interloper.

XXI

And yet his heart, though wilder, beats as warm,
And clings as fondly to his wigwam's hearth
As if its case were whiter, and his form
Steps nobler o'er the soil that gave him birth,
Ay, manlier bears the peltings of the storm—
And shall we grudge him six poor feet of earth
(His own by birthright) where to lay his head,
And sleep in quiet with the happier dead?

XXII

Has conscience never whispered in our ear,
The untutored Redman too has had a mother,
His brow is holy with a mother's tear—
Baptismal font more pure than any other—

236

He too has held some dark-eyed maiden dear,
His wayward heart has yearned towards a brother—
Nay, more—perchance the pure, undying light
Of sister's love has made his wigwam bright?

XXIII

Some thirst of vengeance slakes this side the tomb,
And ceases with the mournful bell's long toll
That calls the victim to his cell of gloom—
But we—oh deepest bloodspot on the scroll
Of God's recording angel! we would doom
Alike the Redman's body and his soul:
We sell him first our whiskey, then the Word,
Then punish Gospel-breaking with the sword!

XXIV

I've often wondered, and I often wonder
If God has ceased to look with wrath on crime,
If lifted hands, fresh from unholy plunder,
All red and reeking with their bloody slime,
Can rise in prayer, nor dread his angry thunder—
Our nation seems to think so—but will Time
Be of the same opinion? What will be
The juster verdict of Futurity?

XXV

Has the warm blood of seventy-six grown cold?
Has Freedom left her Cradle to rush in
And join the general scramble after gold?
One heart hath plead against a nation's sin;
Where Liberty's first blood was dearly sold,
One voice hath risen o'er the work-day din,
And told far better than my heavy song
Our Country's baseness and the Indian's wrong.

Rev. R. W. Emerson's letter—which does equal honor to his head and heart. There was a peculiar fitness in its being dated at Concord, where the first blood of the Revolution flowed.

Speaking of Concord—having spent most of my “vacation” in that town, I can recommend it as a residence for any student, whose precarious state of health requires a change of air. Though the situation is low, the air is salubrious.

The inhabitants (to whom I return my heartfelt thanks for their kind attention to a stranger) are hospitable and pleasant. Moreover, I can bestow the still higher commendation on them, that (which is rare in country towns) they mind their own business wonderfully. P.S. I have been informed that this last is only at one end of the town.

237

XXVI

That voice pealed out where first the Heavenly fire
Came down to light the altar of the free—
'T is fit the blaze should thus be kindled higher,
And spread its holy light from sea to sea;
Oh may it still descend from hoary sire
To son—a heritage of Liberty;
And may our maidens, as in ancient Rome,
Still nurse this vestal flame, whose shrine is—home!

XXVII

Oh for a voice of pleading like the roar
Of many waters—that its tones might sweep
In mournful deepness on from shore to shore,
And wake the heart of mercy from its sleep!
Rouse! Rouse ye! ere the hour for right is o'er,
Ere justice shall have nought to do but weep!
Rouse, ere the bloody vintage yet be trod
To fill the wine-cup of the wrath of God!

“The same shall drink the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation.

“And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

“And the winepress was trodden ... and blood ran out of the winepress.”—Rev. xiv. 10, 19, 20.

XXVIII

When the last dreaded trump of doom shall sound,
That calls us from our narrow place of rest
To meet our Judge—shall we be spotless found?
Will not the earth lie heavy on our breast,
Where cries our brother's heart's blood from the ground?
Will not the gold we've wrung from the opprest,
Though now it buy us friends and fools and power,
Weigh like a mountain on us in that hour?

XXIX

Oh ye who ship supplies to struggling Greece,
Or furnish flannel waistcoats for the slave,
And get a fraction of a thank apiece,
Telling the public just how much ye gave—
Do all your tender pricks of conscience cease,
Because there's none to call you “good” or “brave”?

238

Will not your hearts grow warm unless your name
Gain in the Newspapers a half-hour's “fame”?

XXX

'T is true our army didn't shed much blood,
(Unless beneath some cunning flag of truce,
When they nipt all our honor in the bud,)
In fact they were not of important use,
Except to lose the nation's shoes in mud,
And blackguard foes (when distant) like the deuce—
It would have spared the Treasury a groan,
Had General Jesup waded round alone.

General Hernandez is already so essentially damned to fame, that it is impossible that my voice should add at all to his unenviable celebrity. If I thought that my small voice could add at all to the greenness of his laurels, I would exert it most cheerfully.—With regard to the brave conduct of our army, I shall speak in the words of Falstaff. “I call thee coward! I'll see thee damned ere I call thee coward: but I would give a thousand pound I could run as fast as thou canst. You are straight enough in your shoulders, you care not who sees your back.” Most of the battles were fought, I suspect, “by Shrewsbury clock,” and more pains were taken by our army to save their own scalps than to take those of the enemy, who, most unfortunately, had a habit of carrying off their dead, much in the same way as their invaders always made it a principle to convey away their living. This they did with a “quick dexterity,” that “honest Jack” might have envied.

XXXI

He might have killed as many as he chose—
On paper —without losing e'en a man;
He might have brought the campaign to a close
(Had he but tried this economic plan)
Ere Brother Jonathan could blow his nose;
As 't was, indeed, the little blood that ran
Was shed with ink—which saved more lives than pence,
Since that was furnished at the State's expense.

This was the method of the “deep-contemplative” Touchstone—“Oh sir, we quarrel in print, by the book.” Perhaps Uncle Toby's plan of fighting his battles o'er again would be as cheap and more amusing.

XXXII

Time was when men were wont to show their scars,
When standing candidate for any place,

239

Telling of battles “quorum magna pars”
And so forth—now that's not the case,
Our heroes talk in tones might frighten Mars—
Should chance e'er bring them but before his face—
As yet they've never met him, though they saw
During the last campaign—one living Squaw!

“MENENIUS.
It then remains,
That you do speak to the people.
CORIOLANUS.
I do beseech you,
Let me o'erleap that custom; for I cannot
Put on the gown, stand naked, and entreat them,
For my wounds' sake to give me suffrage.”

If any of our soldiers should take up this plan, though it is scarce possible, they might use the same address that Coriolanus thought of—

“Look, sir!—my wounds!
I got them in my country's service, when
Some certain of your brethren roared, and ran
From the noise of our own drums.”

XXXIII

Immortal Cant! beneath thy sheltering wing
The ultra temperance men their pæans sing,
Inspired, as any man of sense would think,
By no peculiarly inspiring drink;
At least quite guiltless of those sparkling waters,
Which flow for all Apollo's sons and daughters,
Where Pegasus struck out with hoof of fire
That spring which ends its winding course in mire.
Full many poets seek this wondrous fount,
Where it rolls brightly down the muse's mount,
But getting wearied ere they reach its source,
Drink,—strive to sing,—and find their voices hoarse,
And oft when verse just spreads its opening bud,
Stick fast, and flounder in the fertile mud.
So 't is I fear with you, poor bards, who shape
Your couplets dull to hack the harmless grape,
Pray cease to shame fair water with your praise,
But pour it on your self-created bays,
Drown yourselves in 't,—do any foolish thing,
('T will be quite natural,) but do not sing!

“Be temperate in all things,” Scripture saith,
And there, there only, will I pin my faith.

240

Who damns another in the world to come
Because he drinks no dearer drink than rum,
While his own feet avoid a rectiline,
Led by the costlier blandishments of wine;—
Or loads his duller neighbor with abuse,
To show him poison in the grape's bright juice,
And runs stark mad in his indecent haste
To cure these sinners of their wretched taste,
Sins much as he who reeling through the street
Tramples his reason 'neath his drunken feet.
The worst intoxication man can feel
Is that which drains the burning cup of zeal;
This lights the fagots of the martyr's pile,
And eyes his writhings with a pious smile,
This fired the madness of that bloody train,
Who erewhile made a slaughter-house of Spain,
This mewed the heretic in dungeons damp,
Which knew no cheering but the jailor's lamp,
Tried mild conversion on his shrinking back,
Or used the Christian pleadings of the rack,
And strove with flame and carnage to increase
The holy army of the Prince of Peace!

Oh world-philanthropy! Oh cant and stuff!
Of thy blest influence we've seen enough,
Whether you prove war's ills by force of fist,
Make your own ends seem public good by mist,
In zeal to spread your temperance pledges wider
Fell apple-trees to stop the use of cider,
Or fill your purse and show your moral bravery
By suffering eggdom in abusing slavery.
Time was (dark age) ere men had oped their eyes
To see the good of being pennywise;
When women, men, yea, families might eat
Just what they pleased, or prudence thought most meet,
And did n't know (poor fools!) that half the time
They swallowed poison and committed crime.
'T is truly shocking to the feeling breast,
To think what nightmares must have broke their rest,
Turtles in aldermanic gowns and wigs

241

Walk side by side with ghosts of martyred pigs,
Geese,—stop! humanity the list gives o'er,
For Graham nerves such thoughts can bear no more!
What constitutions those men must have had!
It well-nigh drives Benevolence stark mad,
To think how long they might have stretched their span
Had they but lived on chips or even bran;
For as it was they often reached fourscore,
Nay, sometimes even lingered on still more,
In spite of all the meat and drink and mirth,
Which had been preying on them from their birth,
Slow poisons, it is true, but sure to send
Their victims to the graveyard in the end.
Now the philanthropists have changed all that,
No heresy's so damnable as fat,
And soon they trust no mortal will be seen
Whom decency or bran have not made lean.
Nor is the day far distant when mankind
Shall brush time's gathering cobwebs from the mind,
And, rising far above base nature's thrall,
Become too wise to eat or drink at all.
Full many men grow thin from year to year
On sawdust puddings and imagined beer,
And one great hero, (so his brethren say,)
Lessened his useless dinner day by day,
Until at length, as every wise man ought,
He tried the plan of living upon nought.
As grew the spirit strong the flesh grew weak,
And in eight days the patriot scarce could speak,
Two more rolled on and put him in his bed,
Another,—and he scarce could raise his head.
His thin disciples thronged to see and hear
The lessening progress of a man so dear,
When, just as the attempt had met success,
And proved man thrived on nullity or less,
The skeleton turned slowly on its side,
Muttered, “I live, you see, on nought!” and—died!
The bones of this improver of our race
Were thinly followed to their resting place,
By crowds of worshippers from far and near,
Who keep the anniversary every year,
And on that day convene a general meeting
“For the Suppression of superfluous eating.”

242

(N. B. The worms, not finding aught to eat,
Voted the man a “most notorious cheat.”)

Their verses put one in mind of Touchstone's remark: “I'll rhyme you so eight years together; dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted.”

“For God's sake stop, my friend! 't were best—
Non Di, non homines—you know the rest.”
BYRON'S Vision of Judgment.

“Penny wise and pound foolish.”—

Old proverb.

Mr. Buckingham's advice on the subject of diet contains sound doctrine,—“Eat your victuals, and go about your business.”

XXXIV

Shade of the past! recall that golden age,
The brightest line on Alma Mater's page,
When Massachusetts and her sisters young
Stood fair as Helen from her eggshell sprung,
Their red cheeks blushing on the passer by
In all the glow of maiden modesty!
Blest days! when Freshmen in the college yard
Trembled if Seniors did but eye them hard;
Compelled by law to walk uncovered there,
Their wigs grew restive with each breath of air,
And sometimes did, with all their weight of curls,
Perform with grace a few aerial twirls.
They dug Greek roots, nor joined in deep debate
On equal rights and great affairs of state.
Enough for them to carry down their bowls
Each morn and eve for Commons' milk and rolls,
At noon to gather round the frugal table
And get the lion's share if they were able;
They never shed a sympathetic tear
For Afric's sufferings o'er their daily beer,
Nor as they mixed the sugar in their cup
Groaned for slave-labor ere they drank it up.
No brighter light upon their brains had beamed,
Of other diet they had never dreamed;
They little thought that in their beef or roll,
They swallowed parts of “Universal Soul,”
(Unless indeed they thought of some such stuff,
And scraped to show it, when their meat was tough,)
Nor knew (poor ignoramuses!) how good
A knotty formula might be for food.
Those days are past; oh change thou rulest all,
From lofty Sophomore to Freshman small!

243

Poor Alma Mater feels thy withering blight
And even PROCTORS bow before thy might!

Where is that band,—Bellona tell me where,—
Whose banner once so proudly wooed the air,
And thrice a year on Exhibition days
Flung out its folds to bask in beauty's gaze?
Alas that banner, rent in many a fight,
No more shall greet the blushing ensign's sight,
No more shall kindle valor's fading eye
And lead the marshalled ranks to victory!
No more the braying trump and rattling drum
Tell the glad town-boy that the warriors come,
No more shall Freshman wipe his streaming eyes,
Swelling to reach the regulated size,
And hearts, for their small casings all too large,
Throb for the honor of the bloodless charge!
Brave band! how ardent was the serried line
When led to battle with good Kirkland's wine,
And how each manly bosom mocked at fear
In the fierce onset upon Quincy's cheer!
All this is gone, and graduates as they pass,
Can only shake their heads and sigh “Alas!”
The flag neglected darkly gathers dust,
The sword's bright eye grows dim with gathering rust,
Mars o'er the relics hangs with drooping head,—
The flower of Harvard's chivalry is dead!

But though old Harvard's gallant soldiers sleep,
Her navy still is queen upon the deep,
And still each year she spreads her swelling sail
To court the dalliance of the summer gale;
And still all those who do not take a part
In college honors, learn the seaman's art,
And when one qualm of sorrow gives them pain,
Cast all their burdens on the azure main.
Gently sweet Westernwind unfurl thy pinion,
To waft them through old Neptune's blue dominion,
Softly as calmest slumber rustle o'er
The wave that bears them from the lessening shore,
And bring in safety landward through the foam
These floating bulwarks of their country home!

244

Shades of Hippocrates and Galen! tell
Where are the youths who loved your art so well?
Gone,—like the snow before the Southwind's breath,
Gone,—like a patient to expectant Death,
Who wisely hopes to 'scape all human ills,
Not by a rope, but,—Doctor Brandreth's pills!
Weep Esculapius! weep above the tomb,
Where lie thy sons cut off in manhood's bloom!
None knew so well as they to trace the woes
Of sickly students, and prescribe repose,
None could administer with so much skill
A dose from Willard's, or an oyster pill;
For, unlike most practitioners who try
On some poor dog their skill in pharmacy,
These youthful heroes nobly dared the worst,
And boldly tried their own prescriptions first.
They brought the cold bath to its highest glory,
Testing its value from some upper story,
In all complaints of spirit or of flesh,
Particularly when the case was Fresh.

“And at all times the Freshmen were to keep their hats off in the yard, unless when it rained. The resident graduates and all the senior classes were allowed to send the Freshmen on errands as they saw fit.”—

See PEIRCE'S History, p. 309.

“The breakfast was two sizings of bread and a cue of beer.”—

PEIRCE, p. 219.

Alas! she didn't this year!

XXXV

Classmates, I've nearly done, and yet to day,
Our last together,—there is much to say,—
The strength of ties that twine around the heart
Is but half known till they are torn apart.
Four years we've been here making friends and foes,
With passable success, as this world goes,
And this perhaps is our last earthly chance,
To give a friendly or a chilling glance.
Four years, four long and seeming snailpaced years
Of revels, quarrels, friendships, smiles, and tears,
Have passed,—and do we gather here
As when the bell first smote our Freshman ear?
Has no sharp pang of common sorrow wrung us?
Has not Death's icy hand been stretched among us?
Has no loved voice become forever still?
No merry heart grown heavy, cold, and chill?
Has no bright eye waxed dim, no red cheek pale
At the dread horrors of the “shadowy vale”?
Ay! one there was, —alas for me that mine

245

Should be the task to trace this mournful line!—
Whose seat stands empty, whose brief journey's o'er,
The place that knew him knows him now no more.
Alas! too soon he left our saddened band,
An earlier pilgrim to a better land!
Yes! while our sojourn here hath lingered on,
One bright, pure spirit to his home hath gone,
Whose sunny smile, whose mind serenely gay,
Once cheered the dulness of our weary way,—
A heart more warm, more manly, and sincere,
More pure and gentle is not beating here.
That heart, when first we gathered here for prayer,
With youthful hope was dancing light as air,
And Alma Mater, were he with us now,
Had twined her wreath to grace his manly brow.

Classmate! while yet our trembling voices swell
The mournful melody of this farewell,
Oh, from thy spirit-home above descend,
And in the strain thy voice of music blend!
Brother! if pall and hearse and mourners' tread
Are all of death,—then thou indeed art dead;
But if thy sainted image deep imprest
Within the shrine of every Classmate's breast,
Entwined with evergreen,—if Memory's tear
Of tempered anguish o'er thine early bier,—
If to be cherished still with fond regret
Have aught of living,—here thou livest yet!
Pace Quiescas! may the wild flowers bloom
With fresher verdure round thy hallowed tomb,
Nurtured by dews, tears such as Heaven weeps
O'er the green pillow where her servant sleeps!

Watch o'er him Nature! truest friend of earth,
Who smilest on us ever from our birth,
And after death, when friends have all forgot,
Or scarce remember, still forgettest not!
Who, when affection's flowers have ceased to bloom,

246

Twinest thy yearly wreath around our tomb
Of blue-eyed violets and that flower pale,
That claims a parent in the summer gale.
Oh! mildly cherish him,—for he was mild,
And like a mother,—for he was thy child,
And wantonly ne'er crushed the meanest thing
That nestled 'neath thy all-protecting wing!

Edward Charles Mussey—drowned while bathing in Charles River in July, 1835.

“If friendship's smile, the better part of fame,
Should lend my song the only wreath I claim,
Whose voice would greet me with a sweeter tone,
Whose living hand more kindly press my own,
Than thine?”

XXXVI

Brothers! we part upon the sounding shore
That curbs the waters of life's heaving sea,
We part perchance to meet again no more
This side the haven of Eternity—
Then nerve to breast the billows' angry roar
Alone!—this moment breaks our company,
And though we shrink to hear the waters moan,
We now must sink or struggle on—alone!

XXXVII

Alone! Alone! oh what a mournful spell
One simple word may work upon the heart!
How many a tale one word—one look may tell
Of pathos far beyond the reach of art!
How much of untold agony may dwell
In those two little syllables—“We part!”
They touch a thrilling string within the breast,
No time—no sorrow e'er can put at rest.

XXXVIII

Each word of friendship lightly spoke to day
May be a resting-place for Memory—
Each silly jokelet, scattered by the way,
May call the woman to some graybeard's eye,
As Fancy wanders back in idle play
To these bright hours when boyish hopes were high.
Poor withered buds, nipt by the world's cold blast,
To deck the bosom of the mournful past!

XXXIX

Nay, e'en this silly, half-forgotten song
May win a smile upon some wrinkled cheek,
As some gray classmate slowly spells along,
Aloud (as old men will, whose wits grow weak)

247

With spectacles on nose, and voice half strong,
Half blending with an aged treble squeak—
Shaking his drowsy head as it recalls
Some long-lost dream of Alma Mater's halls.

XL

Those last lines make me think of Time and Fate,
Who, think you, will outlive the rest o' the class—
Perchance himself—and die at last too late?
Who shall sleep soundly 'neath next summer's grass?
Nay, smile not, Reader! that may be thy date—
For e'en these very moments, as they pass,
Carry some mother's son, with youthful form
As dear as thine, to pillow with the worm!

XLI

Enough of this—whate'er may be our lot,
We'll look with love upon our sojourn here,
And memory still shall hover round the spot,
Nor check the tender tribute of a tear,—
A Classmate—Brother—ne'er shall be forgot,
While one poor leaf makes glad life's waning year—
And though old Time in his provoking way
May change our locks—our hearts shall ne'er grow gray!

XLII

Now onward! single, and yet not alone,
But in the hollow of His mighty hand
Who yoked the planets in their boundless zone,
Who set the ocean and the steadfast land,
And yet who calls the meanest thing his own—
Launch out then boldly from the idle strand,
Where'er we wander on the pathless deep
His arm is nigh to guide us and to keep!

XLIII

Youth's morn shines clear, hurrah! the wave is bright,
The gleaming ripples dance right joyously,
And through the foam our barks shall bound as light
As floats yon vapor in its upper sea—
Hoist sail! we'll dare Misfortune's fellest spite,
And buffet stoutly with old Destiny,
Until we reach some pleasant sunny isle
In life's long voyage where to rest awhile!

248

XLIV

And now farewell! again—again farewell!
That word, though mournful, has a soothing tone,
Like the sad music of a passing bell,
Which, swelling from some hamlet far and lone,
Hath travelled long o'er forest, hill, and dell,
To warn us that some brother soul hath flown—
God bless you all! farewell yet once agen!
Plunge in the strife and quit yourselves like men!

Lady! whom I have dared to call my muse,
With thee my lay began, with thee shall end—
Thou can'st not such a poor request refuse
To let thine image with its closing blend!
As turn the flowers to the quiet dews,
Fairest, so turns my yearning heart to thee,
For thee it pineth—as the homesick shell
Mourns to be once again beneath the sea—
Oh let thine eyes upon this tribute dwell,
And think—one moment kindly think of me!
Alone—my spirit seeks thy company,
And in all beautiful communes with thine,
In crowds—it ever seeks alone to be
To dream of gazing in thy gentle eyne!

Concord, August 21, 1838.

By the advice of friends the original dedication of this performance is suppressed, so that now, gentle reader, as Grumio says, “it shall die in oblivion, and thou return unexperienced to thy grave.”

University of Virginia Library

TEXT OF THE POEMS

Periodical and pamphlet poems

“YE YANKEES OF THE BAY STATE”

1

2

3

4

5

THE LOVER'S DRINK-SONG

AGATHA

THE TWO

CALLIRHÖE

SONNET—TO KEATS

MERRY ENGLAND

“I LOVE THOSE POETS, OF WHATEVER CREED”

SONNET

SONNET

SONNET

THE LESSON—TO IRENE

I

II

III

BALLAD

“MY FATHER, SINCE I LOVE, THY PRESENCE CRIES”

SONNET—SUNSET AND MOONSHINE

THE LOVED ONE

THE BALLAD OF THE STRANGER

SONNET

SONNET

TO AN ÆOLIAN HARP AT NIGHT

SONNET

FANCIES ABOUT A ROSEBUD,

Pressed in an Old Copy of Spenser

FAREWELL

THE TRUE RADICAL

HYMN

SONNET

VOLTAIRE

THE FOLLOWER

THE POET AND APOLLO

A LOVE THOUGHT

WORDSWORTH

WINTER

A RALLYING-CRY FOR NEW-ENGLAND, AGAINST THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS

ANTI-TEXAS

A MYSTICAL BALLAD

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1844

A Fragment

THE HAPPY MARTYRDOM

AN EPIGRAM,

On Certain Conservatives

NOW IS ALWAYS BEST

ORPHEUS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

AN EXTRACT

THE EX-MAYOR'S CRUMBS OF CONSOLATION: A PATHETIC BALLAD