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55

PART II.

A Soul that out of Nature's Deep.

I.

A soul that out of Nature's deep
From inner fires had birth;
Yet not as rocks or rosebuds peep:
Nor came it to the earth

II.

A drop of rain at random blown;
A star-point burning high,
Lit in the dark, and as alone
As Lyra in the sky:
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III.

Nor ushered in with stormy air,
Sea-shock, or earthquake-jars;
Nor born to fame beneath some rare
Conspiracy of stars;

IV.

Nor fortune-crowned with benefits:
The life was larger lent,
Made up of many opposites
In contradiction blent:—

V.

A nature affable and grand,
Yet cold as headland snow,
Large-handed, liberal to demand,
Though still to proffer slow;

VI.

That shunned to share the roaring cup,
The toast, and cheerings nine,
Nor cared to sit alone to sup
The pleasure of the wine;
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VII.

Yet genial oft by flash and fit:
High manners, courage mild,—
God gave him these, and savage wit
As to an Indian child:

VIII.

And gave him more than this indeed,—
The wisdom to descry
A weathercock in the waving weed,
A clock-face in the sky.

IX.

But he, amid these bowers and dales
A larger life-breath drew,
Beneath more cordial sunshine, gales,
And skies of sounder blue,

X.

Than wait on all. Beside the brook,
With far forgetful eye,
Or toward the deep hills, would he look,
Watching the glory die;
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XI.

Brooding in dim solicitude
On earlier, other times,
And yon dark-purple wing of wood
That o'er the mountain climbs;

XII.

And fancies thick like flower-buds bright;
Rare thoughts in affluence rank,
Came at the onset of the light,
Nor with the sunset sank.

XIII.

He slept not, but the dream had way,
And his watch abroad was cast
With the earliest light of the earliest day;
And, when the light fell fast,

14

He stood in the river-solitudes
To mark the daylight go;
And low in the dusk of the wailing woods
He heard the night-hawk blow.
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XV.

The night-hawk, and the whippoorwill
Across the plashes dim,
Calling her mate from bower and hill,
Made prophecy for him:

XVI.

The night-hawk and the bird bereaved,
His airy calendars,
He stood; till night had, unperceived,
Surrounded him with stars.

XVII.

Oh! dear the look of upward eyes
Lifted with pleading might,
A smile to bless and humanise,
A hand to fold aright;

XVIII.

A silver voice to lead and lull;
Slight step, and streamy hair,—
But, oh! she was too beautiful
That he should call her fair.
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XIX.

A love to pay, a life to give,
Was hers,—for this she strove;
And he, too, loved, and would not live
To live out of her love.

XX.

And childhood came his smile beneath,
And lingered hour on hour,
With sweepy lids, and innocent breath
Like the grape-hyacinth flower.

XXI.

For this, for all, his heart was full;
Yet, to the deeper mind,
All outward passion seemed to dull
That inmost sense refined

XXII.

That broods and feeds where few have trod;
And seeks to pass apart,
Imaging nature, man, and God,
In silence in the heart.
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XXIII.

He saw—for to that secret eye
God's hidden things were spread—
The wiser world in darkness lie,
And Faith by Falsehood led.

XXIV.

Virtue and Envy, side by side;
Blind Will that walks alone;
And mighty throngs that come and glide,
Unknowing and unknown;

XXV.

Great lights! but quenched; strength, foresight, skill,
Gone without deed or name;
And happy accidents that still
Misplace the wreaths of fame;

XXVI.

Religion, but a bruited word
'Twixt foes who difference view
Between our Saviour, God the Lord,
And Jesus Christ the Jew!
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XXVII.

Yet unto all, one wall and fold;
One bed that all must share,—
The miser brooding holy gold,
The fool, and spendthrift heir;

XXVIII.

Still through the years the wrinkled chuff
Acre to acre rolled,
And he, too, will have land enough
When his mouth is filled with mould.

XXIX.

And vaster visions did he win
From cloud, and mountain bars,
And revelations that within
Fell like a storm of stars!

XXX.

Yet checked and crossed by doubt and night;
Dim gulfs, and solitudes
Of the deep mind; or warmth and light
Broke from its shifting moods.
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XXXI.

As when in many-weathered March
May-buds break up through snow,
And, spilt like milk, beneath the larch
The little bluets blow;

XXXII.

Beneath the lilac and the larch,
In many a splash and spot;
Nor belting sea, nor heaven's blue arch,
Bound in where these were not—

XXXIII.

With Love and Peace: yet strangely sank
Cold sorrow on his soul,
For human wisdom, and the blank
Summation of the whole.

XXXIV.

Nor seemed it fit, that one, unnerved
And faint, should rouse the earth;
Or build with those whose zeal had served
But to incense his mirth.
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XXXV.

Troubled to tears, he stood and gazed,—
Unknowing where to weep,
To spend his cries o'er fabrics razed,
Or a safe silence keep;

XXXVI.

Renouncing human life and lore;
Love's calm, and love's excess
Experience and allegiance, for
A higher passiveness.

XXXVII.

So to drink full of Nature, much
Recipient, still to woo
Her windy walk, where pine-trees touch
Against the ribby blue;

XXXVIII.

To find her feet by singing rills,
Adoring and alone,—
O'er grassy fields, to the still hills,
Her solemn seat and throne!
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XXXIX.

Sore struggle! yet, when passed, that seemed
A crowning conquest o'er
Himself and human bands! he deemed
The victory more and more,

XL.

And like that warfare urged upon
Unkingly lust and ease,
Which the fifth Henry waged and won;
Or that Lydiades

XLI.

Who left his looser life with tears,
And in the fire of youth
Lived grave and chaste, Arcadian years
And reigned;—kings, heroes, both!

XLII.

Ah, so—but not to him returned,
Our monarch, meed like this,
But sterner kin his grief had spurned,
And bitter friends were his.
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XLIII.

Distrust and Fear beside him took,
With Shame, their hateful stands;
And Sorrow passed, and struck the book
Of knowledge from his hands.

XLIV.

He saw, with absent, sorrowing heed,
All that had looked so fair;
His secret walk was wild with weed,
His gardens washed and bare:

XLV.

The very woods were filled with strife;
Fierce beaks and warring wings
Clashed in his face; the heart and life
Of those deep-hidden springs,

XLVI.

No more his spirit cared to quaff:
Great Nature lost her place,—
Pushed from her happy heights, and half
Degraded of her grace.
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XLVII.

And so he saw the morning white,
As eyes with tears opprest,
The last heart-breaking gleam of light
That dies along the West.

XLVIII.

And so he saw the opening flower
Dry in the August sheaf,
And on green Summer's top and tower,
Only the turning leaf:

XLIX.

For Summer's darkest green, explored,
Betrays the crimson blight;
As, in the heart of darkness cored,
Red sparks and seeds of light

L.

And lightning lurk, ready to leap
Abroad, beyond reclaim:
To bathe a world in splendour deep,
Or snatch in folding flame.
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LI.

He saw, with manners, age and mode,
Opinion rise and sink,
The jarring clash of creed and code,
And knew not what to think;—

LII.

Beliefs of ritual and of race;—
And hard it was to tell
Why good should come by gift of grace,
And wrong be chargeable.

LIII.

Before him burned attainless towers!
Behind, a comfortless
Dim valley, waste with poison-flowers,
And weeds of barrenness.

LIV.

The early ray, the early dream,
Had vanished; faint and chill
Like winter, did the morning stream
On woodland, house, and hill:
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LV.

Yet, as of old, he ranged apart
By river-bank and bed,
And mused in bitterness of heart;
And to himself he said,—

LXI.

“Tear sullen Monkshood where he stands
Tall by the garden walk;
With burning pricks and venom-glands,
Pluck off the nettle's stalk;

LVII.

Lobelia from the rivage break,
With Arunt's blistering bell;
And, over all, let the bundle reek
With the smilax' loathly smell;

LVIII.

Fools' parsley from the graves of fools,
With deadly darnels bring;
Yew, garget, dogwood of the pools,
And the fen's unwholesome spring;
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LIX.

And hemlock pull; and snatch from bees
Half-drugged, the red-bud rare,
And laurel: but prick in with these
The shaft of a lily fair;

LX.

And bind them up; rank blossom sting,
Bough, berry, poison rife,
Embodying and embleming
The gleanings of a life.”

LXI.

Yet was not she, the lily-flower,
'Mid failings and misdeeds,
The fruit of many a scattered hour,
Yet fairer for the weeds?

LXII.

And was she not, through shade and shower,
In patient beauty-drest,
Though lonely in her place and power,
Enough to save the rest?
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LXIII.

Perhaps; yet darker gloomed the vale,
And dawned the turrets fair,
Beyond the height of ladder's scale,
Or any step of stair.

LXIV.

And yearned his soul for sharper change:—
And knowledge of the light;
Yet not by station, staff, or range
Of human toil or flight,

LXV.

Would he ascend; choosing alone
With grief to make his bed,
Like those whose godhead is their own,
On whom the curse is said,—

LXVI.

Who kindle to themselves a fire,
And in the light thereof
Walk and are lost. But his desire
Was still for wiser love,
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LXVII.

And sought but in the holy place;
And scarcely sought, but found
In still reception: failing this,
All life in death seemed drowned.

LXVIII.

Yet sometimes, doubting, discord-tost,
Came voices to his side,—
Echoes of youth, and friendships lost,
Or lost, or left aside.

LXIX.

Faces, wherein deep histories are,
Began to float and flee,
And hover darkly, like a far
Forgotten memory:

LXX.

Dim gardens, where a silent creek
Stole onward, margin-mossed;
And walks, with here and there a streak
Of dusky odour crossed,
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LXXI.

Stirring the wells of tears. He saw
The vision of his youth,
With holy grief, with holy awe:
The temple-towers of Truth

LXXII.

Broke nearer; like a thunder-flash
Again came back the dream,
And light in many a bar and dash,
Like moonlight, flake, and beam,

LXXIII.

Or when wild clouds of middle air
Through hurrying gaps reveal
Arcturus, or the sailing star
That spurs Orion's heel;—

LXXIV.

Heaven's lights! yet covered as we look;
So, momently to view,
Came back the sparkle of the brook,
And fields his childhood knew;
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LXXV.

Fair faith and love, with peace almost;
Yet, in that ray serene,
He only saw a glory lost,
And what he might have been.

LXXVI.

The precious grains his hands had spilled
Had fallen to others; they
Had passed before, his place was filled,
And the world rolled away,

LXXVII.

Too late he learned that Nature's parts
Whereto we lean and cling,
Change, but as change our human hearts,
Nor grow by worshipping;

LXXVIII.

And that her presence, fair or grand,
In these faint fields below,
Importeth little, seen beyond
Our welfare, or our woe.
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LXXIX.

Nor good from ill can we release,—
But weigh the world in full;
Not separate taken, part and piece,
But indiscerptible.

LXXX.

In law and limit, tempests blow;
Tides swing from shore to shore;
And so the forest-tree will grow
As grew the tree before.

LXXXI.

Too late he learned by land and sea
This bitter truth to glean,—
That he who would know what shall be,
Must ponder what hath been;

LXXXII.

Nor unto fear or falsehood yield
His strength, the good to baulk;
Nor fold his arms beside the field,
But with the furrow walk,
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LXXXIII.

Ready to cast his grain; and slower
To faint, more credulous,
Believing well that but by our
Own hands God helpeth us.

LXXXIV.

And who would find out Wisdom's grot,
To make her footsteps his,—
Must learn to look where it is not,
As well as where it is.
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The Stranger.

Ere the first red-orange glimmer
Touched the dial on the lawn,
In the earliest shade, and shimmer
Of the dawn:
When the dark was growing dimmer,
And the moon, 'mid wavy clouds
Struggling for the horizon-land,
Had vanished like a worn-out swimmer:—
Feeding on the misty shrouds,
Nature's grief to grief suborning,
Stood a man alone in sorrow
On a lifted ledge of pines;
Over mounted woods, and sand,
Valley, and rolling mountain-lines,
Watching for the morrow;—
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Watching for the daylight,
In the weeping twilight,
In the anguish of the morning.
When first I paused upon these barren bluffs,
Of westland Massachusetts, and looked off
From mountain-roofs thatched by the dropping pine
With his loose leaf,—a natural water-shed;—
Upon the hamlet twinkling through the growth,
The river-silver scattered in the grass,
And all the Tyrian hills! there seemed to me
No spot so fair in all the fair Estate.
And He believed it too; for when the hours
Had, field by field, unlinked the folded vale,
And led me softly by the mountain paths,
And up the hollow rivers; teaching still
New names and natures in their thoughtful round;
And I had followed all the groves that go
From Shaking-Acres, to the Neighbour's Hole!
Still, with each deep-blue gap, or piece of pines,
Or upland farm-field lovely and apart,
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I found him there, the Stranger. Vague and dim
The wind stirs through those mountain-terraces
In the burning day; and such his motion seemed:
Yet, like the ailing wind, went everywhere
With a faint, fluttering step; and, when he stood,
He stood as one about to fall, as now
Sick Autumn stands, with weak-blue vapour crowned,
A man who seemed to have walked through life alone:
Feeble he was, and something stepped in years,
Yet sought no succour save of sun and shade;
But ever went apart, and held his face
Deep in the shadow. But most he loved to lie
By poplar-shafts, or where yon maple-stock
Bears on his fork a ball of umbrage up,
And waits for Autumn's wain: in the deep day,
At morning's edge, or night, his place was there.
Skirting the valley, north by needle runs
A sappling coppice, scrags and second-growth,
With sucker-brush and seedlings intermixed,
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And a wood-path thrids through from end to end:
There breathes the scented pyrola, and there
The perfect fragrance of the partridge-flower,
'Mid moss, and maiden-hair, and damp, dead leaves;—
A poet's cloister for a hidden hour.
And there I found him murmuring to himself
Like a low brook, but could not come to drink
His words; for still the bond that should have drawn
Held us apart,—that love of lonely Nature,
And quick impatience of human neighbourhood.
And I believed he was some natural poet,
With a great sorrow hard against his heart,
And shunned to tread too close; yet while I gazed
On the sad, patient brow, and the fixed lip
Where silence brooded, I longed to look within
On the completed story of his life;
So easy still it seemed to lift the hand,
And open it, as I would a disused door
Locked with a dusty web. But he passed out;
And if he had a grief, it went with him,
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And all the treasure of his untold love;—
A love that carried him forward with the cloud,
Drew him with river-currents, and at night
Impelled him to the mountain's edge and fall
Among the crowding woods and cataracts.
The Summer parted; but ere Autumn's cold
Bade the fall-cricket cease his mournful hymn,
By steps and rests of rock, I once again,
Half-seeking him I shunned, one still fair day
And in the sunshine of the afternoon,
Climbed upward to the overlooking ledge
And stood in thought beneath the dropping pine,
There shook the shining River, and there glimpsed
The village sunk in foliage at my feet,
And one vast pine leaned outward to the gulf.
On a great root that held the tree to the hill
I saw him sitting, till the late red light
Fell wearing westward, and still he sat, and looked
Toward the dim remainder of the day;
And in his hand a bunch of blazing leaves,
Torn from the sumach as he passed along:
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While round his feet gathered the mountain flower,
Dry asters, hardhack, and the withering fern.
The night came dark between us on the hill,
And nevermore have I beheld his face;
Yet often since, when I have walked with Sorrow,
In solitude, and hopelessness of heart,
Have I recalled that time, and wondered whether
The old man still went weary on the earth,
And if my dreams of his high gift were true:
But I have waited long indeed to hear
These rivers break in song, or, bluely-dark,
Behold these mountains rank in rolling verse,
Or our red forests light the landscape line.
Something I still have learned,—respect of patience,
And that mysterious Will that proves the heart,
Breaking away the blossoms of its joy,
And, for our latest love, restoring grief;
A swifter sympathy for human pain;
And knowledge of myself, grown out of this,
Unguessed before; a humbler, higher belief
In God and Nature; and more surrendered love.
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Still clings the pine-root clamped into the crag;
But the dead top is dry, beneath whose boughs
He sat, and watched the West; and, in my walks.
So changed I feel as I approach the place,
So old in heart and step, it almost seems
As if the Wanderer left his life for mine,
When night came dark between us on the hill:
A double interchange, as if indeed
'Twas my old self that disappeared with him,
And he in me still walks the weary earth.
But these are fancies, and so indeed is most
That I have dreamed or uttered in this regard,
Worthless of utterance may be at the best,
Since first the Stranger came among these rocks:
A common man perhaps, with common cares;
Guiltless of grief, or high romantic love
Of natural beauty; a common life at last,
Though strangely set and shrined in circumstance.
Ah! did the brook sob hoarse, the dark tree pine
With all its branches, when first I missed him hence?—
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And found him not, whether my erring feet
Followed the waste flowers up the upland side,
Or dipped in grass, or scaled the Poet's Rock,
Or slid beneath the pines in Wells's woods;
Did Nature bid me mourn? or was it but
The restless beating in my own vague mind
That drove me on? I know not this; but he
Had passed away for ever from the hills.
No more for him, 'mid fallen waves of grass,
Mower or harvest-hand shall mop his brows;
And look across the sunshine; nevermore
Gruff village cur, or even the patient yoke
That after them draw the furrow in the field,
Shall seem to watch those footsteps.
Years have gone,
And, but with me, his memory must be dead;
Yet oft I see a Figure in the fields,
And scarce less real than his personal self,
Which ever faded as the foot drew near.
I often see the figure in the fields,
And hear low voices wailing in the wind,
And I have mourned for him and for his grief:
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Yet never heard his name, and never knew
Word of his history, or why he came
Into this outskirt of the wilder land:
And know not now, whether among the roofs
He parted fair, or, as the people say,
Went off between two days, and left the woods
And wilds to mourn him, with the sighing stream.
86

The School-Girl.

AN IDYLL.

The wind, that all the day had scarcely clashed
The cornstalks in the sun, as the sun sank,
Came rolling up the valley like a wave,
Broke in the beech, and washed among the pine;
And ebbed in silence; but at the welcome sound,—
Leaving my lazy book without a mark,
In hopes to lose among the blowing fern
The dregs of a headache brought from yesternight,
And stepping lightly lest the children hear,—
I from a side-door slipped, and crossed a lane
With bitter Mayweed lined, and over a field
Snapping with grasshoppers, until I came
Down where an interrupted brook held way
Among the alders. There, on a strutting branch
Leaving my straw, I sat and wooed the west,
With breast and palms outspread as to a fire.
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The breeze had faded, and the day had died;
And twilight, rosy dark, had ceased to climb
Above the borders; when through the alder-thicks
A school-girl fair came up against the brook;
From dell and gurgling hollow, where she had stopped
To pull sweet-flag. And she had been below,
Where the brook doubles,—for well I know each
Angle, and alnage of the weedy stream,—knot,
For those pale amber bell-worts wet with shade:
A girl whom the girl-mother's desperate love
Had clung to, through the years when, one on one,
All of her blood had blushed to drop away;
And she was left the last, with this one tie,
To hang her to the earth. So her young life,
Above the gulf, detached, and yet detained,
Suspended swung; as o'er a fresh-fallen pool
A laurel-blossom, loosened by the rain,
Hangs at its pistil-thread hangs, shakes, and falls.
I saw her crossing through the alder-thicks
And flowerless spoonwood: but, when she stopped to speak,
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I seemed to lift my head out of a dream
To gaze upon her; for the ceaseless chime
Of insect-voices singing in the grass,—
Ticking and thrilling in the seeded grass,—
Had sent me dreaming. I mused; and consciously,
In a half-darkness, so would sink away,
But ever and again the soft wind rose,
And from my eyelids blew the skimming sleep.
I looked upon her, and her eyes were wet;
While something of her mother's colour burned
Gay in her cheek; too like her mother there,
She stood, and called me from the land of dreams.
The land of visions! But she, lingering, seemed
Most like a vision, standing in her tears,
Speaking unreal words: but, when I sought
Their import, she said again in clearer tone
Her salutation, and asked, “Did I not fear
The night's unwholesome dew?” and offered flowers.
And as we wandered homeward, by the slopes,
And through the sugar-orchard to the hill,
She told me of her griefs: her music-lesson—
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She could not play the notes, nor count aright.
And she had sung before she broke her fast
That morning, and needs must weep before she slept;
And so throughout the day; until at night,
As she was winding upward by the brook,
The thought of her dead mother crossed her heart,
And with it came the fear that she herself
Would die, too, young.
I spoke some soothing words,
For her frank sorrow yielding sympathy;
And, as we rose the hill, stood for a breath,
And told an Indian story of the place,—
Of Wassahoale and the fair Quaker maid,
Who left the bog-hut for a chieftain's lodge,
Until her face grew clear again and calm,
Yet like a sky that cleareth in the night,
Presaging rain to follow. We wandered down;
But, ere we reached the village, she said farewell,
Nearing the house in which her father dwelt,—
Her father, and his brother, and herself.
But I passed on until she left me there
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At her own garden-gate, with a half-smile,
And eyelashes fresh-pointed with her tears.
Two brothers were they, dwelling in this place
When first I knew their names and history,
And held for heirs upon the village street;
Yet trained to work from starlight until dusk
For their old father. But he now was old,
Reputed rich, and like the bark to the tree;
Tougher perhaps, but tight enough for that.
And so they toiled and waited, stretched and scrimped,
With one maid-sister fitted to reserve,
Early and late, until their hands were hard,
And their youth left them. Still the promised day
Drew nearer,—the day of rest and competence;
And years went round, and still they rose and slept,
Not for themselves, but him who harder held,
Like a man drowning, his remorseless gripe
As his strength went. At length, when hope was o'er,
The very doorstones at the door worn out,
And they themselves grown old, the old man died;
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And left them poor at last, with a great house
That fed upon their substance like a moth.
Bond-debt and meadow-mortgage had the rest,
All but the house,—a sorry patrimony.
To-day I saw it, staring, lacking paint,
With a new suit of shingles to the sky;
Spruce-pine perhaps, but sapwood at the best,
Good for three years, and warranted to rot.
Regardless this; but she of whom I spoke,
The elder brother's child, was like a light
In the blank house: not practical, in truth,
Nor like the father's side, as oftentimes
The child is more the mother's than the man's;
But dearer far for this: and in the porch,—
Where, for a mortal lifetime certainly,
Was seen the old man sitting like a stone,—
Gathered young footsteps, and light laughter ran,
And sweet-girl voices. Once, indeed, I saw
An awkward youth in the dark angle there,
Dangling and flapping like a maple-key
Hung in a cobweb; but she still was kind,
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Gentle with all, and, as she seemed for me
Beside the brook, thoughtful beyond her years.
That night, I scarcely slept, before I dreamed
Of softly stepping in the meadow grass
With moccason on foot: and like indeed,
The Indian of the story that I told;
While she who wandered with me in the day,
Still went beside; yet changing in her turn,
Became the truant daughter of the woods!
Now seemed herself, now Phœbe Bellflower,
And neither now,—but on I passed alone.
And like myself, thro' dewless bent and reed,
Brooding again the School-girl's simple griefs,
And her sweet farewell face, and murmuring soft
These words:—
“Sleep, sister! let thy faint head fall,
Weary with day's long-fading gleam;
And blessed Gloom, in interval
Of daylight, bind thine eyes, and seem
To lead thee on through dim-lit dells,
Trembling with tiny harps and bells.
93

The flowers you found along the day,
While balmy stars of midnight shine,
May those forgetting fingers sway;
And so, until the morning stream,
May all of fair and good be thine,—
Gathered from daylight, or dim hours
When balmy stars of midnight shine!
“Rest, maiden! let thy sorrows rest,—
Nor tearful on the future look,—
The sinless secrets of thy breast;
And close the record like a book.
And thus aside for ever lay
The disappointments of the day:
Nor note nor number bid thee weep;
But lie, lie on, and let thy dream
Dim off to slumber dark and deep.”—
I heard the whisper of the brook;
While the dry fields across the stream,
With myriad-music of the night,
Still shook and jingled in my dream.”
94

A Sample of Coffee Beans.

SENT TO THE AUTHOR, WITH A REQUEST FOR A POEM; OR, THE PUBLICAN, THE PEDDLER, AND THE POET.

Twelve plain brown beans! 'Twould seem to ask
As plain, indeed, a string of verses;
But beans are sweet; and though my task
Must deal with these, and, what far worse is,
A story dry must dress or dock,
So to search out fair Truth, or shun her,—
Yet may I garnish up the stock,
And bring it with the scarlet runner.
The bean, the garden-bean, I sing,—
Lima, mazagan, late and early,
Bush, butter, black eye, pole and string,
Esculent, annual, planted yearly:
95

Sure here a poet well might fare,
Nor vaguely his invention worry;
I shake my head in flat despair;
Or out and over the hills I hurry.
As Io, fled by Nigris' stream,—
Spurred by the angry brize or bot-bee;
But beans I sing, a classic theme
Known to the Muse; and may they not be
Melodious made in other than
The lyric verse or amœbæan,—
Beans, hateful to the banished man,
And banned by the Pythagorean?
Loose, or in legume blue and red,
Tinged like a tom-turkey's wattle;
Or strung like birds' eggs on a thread;
Or stiff and dry in pods they rattle;
Beans too, in bladders, discomposed
By stroke and blow, make music mystic;
But these are free in hand, nor closed
In their own natural cells, or cystic.
96

May I not, inly pondering, see,
Or stumbling on in flight phrenetic,
Enough of truth and simile,
To strew the way with flowers poetic?
No! though on every side they fell,
Dispersed like the gold hemony
On Ulai's bank, with asphodel,
Lote, lily-blow, and anemone,
Beans would be beans, the gardener's joy;
And, though to him more dear than roses.
Not to be made to senses coy
Rose-redolent, by any process.
Let me, then, cease to stir my breast,
No longer stay to bribe or flatter
The vegetable text; but rest,
Or get at once into my matter.
A little public-house and bar,
Barn, corn-house, dovecote, gathered under
A mighty elm, which, arching far,
Held off the rain and drew the thunder:
97

A farmstead small of shabby huts,
Unknown to cane or cotton grower,
And just within the line that cuts
The States, and Canada the Lower:
A little public-house and bar
Smelling of beer and dead tobacco,
It stood; within, a bench and chair,
A parrot, and an ape; but Jacko
Was stuffed above the chimney-piece,
And Poll was plaster: so we summon
The holders of our house of ease,
And live incumbents, man and woman.
Jolly and old the landlord was,
Part farmer, and part broadcloth-smuggler;
The wife a patient drudge, alas!
With aches and asthma long a struggler:
Yet day and night she served the grate:
He scarcely past beyond the groundsill;
But, feet in slipper-shoes, sat late,
And drew his ale, and kept his counsel.
98

Above his head an almanac
Depended, while the slate and pencil,
On toddy-stick and tumbler-rack,
Kept watch, and stood to charge or cancel:
Nought else, except a faded, grim,
Fly-spattered print of Buonaparté,
And the host's Sunday hat and trim,
Hung, like their owner, plump and hearty.
Another too, a poet slim,
Came nightly from the neighbour-village
To this retreat; more sweet to him
Than leafy summer-house, or treillage
Wherethrough the moonbeams fall: the wreath
Trailed from the pipe of passing drover,
More rare than the grape-blossom's breath,
Or night-gusts o'er the beds of clover.
In the world drama he was one,
Bearing, perhaps, a part like Peto
In the old play: yet did he shun
The world, and, reckless of mosquito,
99

By pond-hole dark, and weedy drain,
Sequestered swamp, or grassy side-hill,
Would linger, breathing dull disdain
In many a rustic ode and idyll;
And breathing beauty too, and wit:
Nor lacked it in poetic ardour,
His verse; for, where he doubted it,
He struck again, and hammered harder
'Twas hit or miss, to make or maul.—
Not quite a Walter Scott or Byron,—
Two blows upon the anvil fall,
And one upon the burning iron!
Good fellow was he in the main,
Yet strangely strove to be unhappy;
Himself a desert-chief would feign,
And Cow-cliff, Ararat or Api:
Or, all alone, would weep, to cleanse
Some fancied shame or felony;
Or, witchlike, haunt the birchwood glens
For vervain dank and chelone.
100

A chamber, too, he had at times
For needful rest; but his ambition
Was still to read and rant his rhymes,
Unwearied with their repetition;
Or over some old tale bemused
To lie, till chilled and hunger bitten,
Along a floor with books confused
And blotted sheets, and reams unwritten.
Full well he knew the stars and flowers,
The atmosphere, its height and pressure,
The laws that gird the globe, and powers
That make our peril or our pleasure.
He knew each bird, its range and sphere;
For plant and shrub, had many an odd use:
But naught of farming-growths or gear,
And less of garden-sauce and produce:
So when the peddler passed, and brought
His last new lot of lies and lumber,
Tins, foot-stove, gridiron, pail and pot,
And drugs and dry-goods without number;
101

Cigars too in the grocer line;
Tracts, extracts, jellies, quince, or guava,
And, rarest, seed for coffee-vine,
Pure bean or berry, just from Java;
He listened: “Sure to sprout; in fall
To ripen, let the world go onward,
A row of oaken scrags was all
They needed, so to scramble sunward.”
“O happy thou,” the schoolslip read,
“Who with thy hands thy fortune carvest!”
“But happiest,” so the peddler said,
“Is he who gets such grain in harvest.”
And so they talked. The summer wind
Came softly from the meadow blowing,
Through open door and window-blind
Brought the pine's breath across the mowing;
It stirred the print, it jarred the slate,
It waved the farmer's best apparel,
And shook the dry weeds in the grate,
And withered grasses, awn and aril.
102

And still they talked; and, ere the wind
Had faded, all that parcel precious
Was to our hero's hand resigned
For future use. May such refresh us,
And him who held his luck revealed!
His own, no doubtful risk or far gain,
But silver planted, sure to yield,
And bless him with a golden bargain.
And then the landlord drew his best;
No hoarded drops of vintage fruity,
But good to speed the parting guest
And cheer the new: so while in duty
The poet drank, and called for more,
The landlord, like a desert sandy,
The peddler parted, richer for
Six dollars and a slug of brandy.
What more? Why naught. 'Twere slow to tell
The sequel here; such Glaucian traffic
May well befit a Homer's shell,
Or Virgil's harp; or, sung in Sapphic,
103

Perhaps 'twould mount a theme divine;
But, in this mess of jar and jingle,
'Twould pose the nine brains of the Nine:
To make much sense and music mingle.
Yet might I tell how hard he wrought,
Rising betimes to watch his purchase;
And left his rhymes and dreams forgot,
And lonely walks beneath the birches;
And how the vines got riper fast;
Till, battered pan with sauce-pan clinking.
He borrowed fire, and saw at last
His prize, burnt, ground, and hot for drinking:
And how the Poet stirred and supt
With an old spoon new-bought at auction,
And thought the world's ways all corrupt,—
For so he found his pure decoction;
Not fragrant, black, and fit indeed
To set before a King or Sophi;
But slate-stones for his silver seed
And for his coffee-bean, bean-coffee!
104

His letter, too,—'tis here, addressed
To some society Botanic,
In languid ink; though fitted best
On wharf and mart to scatter panic.
A massive missive certainly,
Nor writ with rifled plume of seraph;
See here! the dotless j and i
Deform, with sprawly date, and paraph.
And last, not least, could I repeat
The landlord's glee, when, thither poking,
The poet sneaked into his seat,
And all the glory of the joking;
How the old fellow roared, forsooth,
And laughed from shining poll to shoelap,
Whilst the old lady showed her tooth,
And coughed, and shook the double dewlap
Enough! the house still stands the same,
With barn and steadings; but the elm-tree
Went down in a great blow that came
To flatten fence and overwhelm tree.
105

Yet looks the ale-bench on the way,
And, as of old, the twain divide it;
But, since the coffee-trade, they say
The peddler has not passed beside it.
106

A Latter-day Saint.

A gray old man, with a descending beard,
Rugged and hoar; and a still massive face,
Met daily in the way. Mall, market-place,
By-way, and thoroughfare his steps have heard
At night and noon. The voice, the utterance slow,
And downward gesture like a blacksmith's blow;
Regardless ear; and eye that would not see,
Or saw as if it saw collectively,—
Who does not call to mind? We thought of all,
Resembling him to each one,—Plato, Paul,
Or him who round beseiged Jerusalem
Fled, shrieking “Woe!”—woe to himself and them,—
107

Until the catapult dashed out his life.
Here, on this slab, above the tear and strife,
He stood, and saw the great world fume and foam on.
As on a dial-plate, himself the gnomon;
Or, like old Time, he leaned on his scythe-snath.
Waiting the harvest of the day of wrath,
Now reaping-ripe: anon, with word and blow,
He thunders judgment to the throngs below;
The end of things he prophesies and paints,
And of the rest remaining for God's saints;
To one conclusion all his reasons run,
And this he sees, taking his hearers on
From point to point; though still discursively
The addle-eggs about his temples fly.
Again he wanders by—you wonder where,
And follow pityingly, but miss him there:
Forgetful soon, you join the stream and stress
Of the great Street; when to yon Porch superb,
Behold! the crowd runs, blackening flag and curb,
108

As to their Stoa the Athenians ran,
Or Rome to hear her Statius. You rush on;
And, in the middle of the jeering press,
He, smeared with mud and yellow yolks is,
Giving the law, like Zeno, or Zamolxis.
109

Anybody's Critic.

Keen, brilliant, shallow, with a ready phrase
To fit occasion, and a happy knack
Of adaptation, where he most did lack,
And witty too, and wise in several ways;
As knowing where to choose, and where to skip:
“Passwords of inspiration” on his lip,
He takes the wall; and now may well surprise
Those who remember him five lustrums back,
A ferret-headed boy with purry eyes.
Behold the Scholar now, the Judge profound!
Yet, feeling with his foot precarious ground,
He stands to fly, or with a borrowed jest,
To blink the question when too closely pressed.
Reproof in praise, and friendship in his frown,
Have we not seen him, talking calmly down
110

On some proud spirit; letting light illapse
On him, poor votary of the book and pen,
Every-ways his superior; perhaps
A mighty Poet, before common men
Ashamed? But view our Critic! mark his eye
Exhaustive, nose would snuff the violet dry
Of odour, and a brow to whelm the world.
In his right hand a written leaf is twirled;
Before, a landscape spreads; and there you see,
Skirting the sky, low scrub and topping tree.
Beside him stands a youth with bended eyes,
(Waiting the word until the Master rise,)
With blushing brow, less confident than cowed:
Perhaps his poem in his hand he brought;
Or a late letter from some lord of thought,
Like a rich gem, half-grudgingly he shows;
Of which a young man might full well be proud:
So cordial, sweet, and friendly to the close;
With not one vacant word of cant or chaff.
“Yes, yes,” the Master says, “an autograph!
And surely to be prized; for such things sell:
And, for your poem, 'tis a clever thing.”
111

Then turning the poor pages carelessly,
As taking in the whole with half an eye,
He said, “The worth of such 'tis hard to tell:
If Art inspire us, 'tis in vain we sing;
If love of Nature merely, 'tis not well;
And personal themes have little good or harm:
For in these bustling days, when critics swarm,
No man can stand aside, without rebuke,
To prate of bubbling brooks, and uplands grassy;
Like the Pied Piper in the Burgelostrasse,
'Twill set the rats a-running.” Then with a look,
A look that took the beauty from the grass,
And damped the blue, he let the subject pass
For other themes; glancing at, Heaven knows what!
The farm, the camp, the forum, Pitt and Burke:
And in his confidential, friendly phrase
Weighed that, he knew the other valued not,
Or plainly lacked; and of his life's best work
Spoke easily, with depreciating praise.
112

Rhotruda.

In the golden reign of Charlemaign the king,
The three and thirtieth year, or thereabout,
Young Eginardus, bred about the court,
(Left mother-naked at a postern-door,)
Had thence by slow degrees ascended up;—
First page, then pensioner, lastly the king's knight
And secretary; yet held those steps for naught
Save as they led him to the Princess' feet,
Eldest and loveliest of the regal three,
Most gracious too, and liable to love:
For Bertha was betrothed; and she, the third.
Giselia, would not look upon a man.
So, bending his whole heart unto this end,
He watched and waited, trusting to stir to fire
113

The indolent interest in those large eyes,
And feel the languid hands beat in his own,
Ere the new spring. And well he played his part;
Slipping no chance to bribe, or brush aside,
All that would stand between him and the light;
Making fast foes in sooth, but feeble friends.
But what cared he, who had read of ladies' love,
And how young Launcelot gained his Guenovere.
A foundling too, or of uncertain strain?
And when one morning, coming from the bath,
He crossed the Princess on the palace-stair,
And kissed her there in her sweet disarray,
Nor met the death he dreamed of, in her eyes,—
He knew himself a hero of old romance;
Not seconding, but surpassing, what had been.
And so they loved; if that tumultous pain
Be love,—disquietude of deep delight,
And sharpest sadness; nor, though he knew her heart,
His very own,—gained on the instant too,
And like a waterfall that at one leap
114

Plunges from pines to palms,—shattered at once
To wreaths of mist, and broken spray bows bright,
He loved not less, nor wearied of her smiles;
But through the daytime held aloof and strange
His walk; mingling with knightly mirth and game;
Solicitous but to avoid alone
Aught that might make against him in her mind;
Yet strong in this,—that, let the world have end,
He had pledged his own, and held Rhotruda's troth.
But Love, who had led these lovers thus along,
Played them a trick one windy night and cold:
For Eginardus, as his wont had been,
Crossing the quadrangle, and under dark,—
No faint moonshine, nor sign of any star,—
Seeking the Princess' door, such welcome found,
The knight forgot his prudence in his love;
For lying at her feet, her hands in his,
And telling tales of knightship and emprise,
And ringing war; while up the smooth white arm
His fingers slid insatiable of touch,
115

The night grew old: still of the hero-deeds
That he had seen, he spoke; and bitter blows
Where all the land seemed driven into dust!
Beneath fair Pavia's wall, where Loup beat down
The Longobard, and Charlemaign laid on,
Cleaving horse and rider; then, for dusty drought
Of the fierce tale, he drew her lips to his,
And silence locked the lovers fast and long,
Till the great bell crashed One into their dream.
The castle-bell! and Eginard not away!
With tremulous haste she led him to the door,
When, lo! the courtyard white with fallen snow;
While clear the night hung over it with stars.
A dozen steps, scarce that, to his own door:
A dozen steps? a gulf impassable!
What to be done? Their secret must not lie
Here to the sneering eye with the first light;
She could not have his footsteps at her door!
Discovery and destruction were at hand:
And, with the thought, they kissed, and kissed again;
116

When suddenly the lady, bending, drew
Her lover towards her half-unwillingly,
And on her shoulders fairly took him there,—
Who held his breath to lighten all his weight,—
And lightly carried him the courtyard's length
To his own door; then, like a frightened hare,
Fled back in her own tracks unto her bower,
To pant awhile, and rest that all was safe.
But Charlemaign the king, who had risen by night
To look upon memorials, or at ease
To read and sign an ordinance of the realm,—
The Fanolehen, or Cunigosteura
For tithing corn, so to confirm the same
And stamp it with the pommel of his sword,
Hearing their voices in the court below,
Looked from his window, and beheld the pair.
Angry, the king: yet laughing half to view
The strangeness and vagary of the feat;
Laughing indeed! with twenty minds to call
From his inner bed-chamber the Forty forth,
117

Who watched all night beside their monarch's bed,
With naked swords and torches in their hands,
And test this lover's-knot with steel and fire;
But with a thought, “To-morrow yet will serve
To greet these mummers,” softly the window closed,
And so went back to his corn-tax again.
But, with the morn, the king a meeting called
Of all his lords, courtiers and kindred too,
And squire and dame,—in the great Audience Hall
Gathered; where sat the king, with the high crown
Upon his brow: beneath a drapery
That fell around him like a cataract!
With flecks of colour crossed and cancellate;
And over this, like trees about a stream;
Rich carven-work, heavy with wreath and rose
Palm and palmirah, fruit and frondage, hung.
And more the high Hall held of rare and strange:
For on the king's right hand Leoena bowed
118

In cloudlike marble, and beside her crouched
The tongueless lioness; on the other side,
And poising this, the second Sappho stood,—
Young Erexcea, with her head discrowned,
The anadema on the horn of her lyre;
And by the walls there hung in sequence long
Merlin himself, and Uterpendragon,
With all their mighty deeds; down to the day
When all the world seemed lost in wreck and rout,
A wrath of crashing steeds and men; and, in
The broken battle fighting hopelessly,
King Arthur, with the ten wounds on his head!
But not to gaze on these, appeared the peers.
Stern looked the king, and, when the court was met,—
The lady and her lover in the midst,—
Spoke to his lords, demanding them of this:
What merits he, the servant of the king,
Forgetful of his place, his trust, his oath,
Who, for his own bad end, to hide his fault,
119

Makes use of her, a Princess of the realm,
As of a mule;—a beast of burden!—borne
Upon her shoulders through the winter's night,
And wind and snow? “Death!” said the angry lords;
And knight and squire and minion murmured, “Death!”
Not one discordant voice. But Charlemaign—
Though to his foes a circulating sword,
Yet, as a king, mild, gracious, exorable,
Blest in his children too, with but one born
To vex his flesh like an ingrowing nail—
Looked kindly on the trembling pair, and said:
“Yes, Eginardus, well hast thou deserved
Death for this thing; for, hadst thou loved her so,
Thou shouldst have sought her Father's will in this,—
Protector and disposer of his child,—
And asked her hand of him, her lord and thine.
Thy life is forfeit here; but take it, thou!—
Take even two lives for this forfeit one;
120

And thy fair portress—wed her; honour God,
Love one another, and obey the king.”
Thus far the legend; but of Rhotrude's smile,
Or of the lords' applause, as truly they
Would have applauded their first judgment too,
We nothing learn: yet still the story lives,
Shines like a light across those dark old days,
Wonderful glimpse of woman's wit and love;
And worthy to be chronicled with hers
Who to her lover dear threw down her hair,
When all the garden glanced with angry blades!
Or like a picture framed in battle-pikes
And bristling swords, it hangs before our view;—
The palace-court white with the fallen snow,
The good king leaning out into the night,
And Rhotruda bearing Eginard on her back.
121

Coralie.

Pale water-flowers!
That quiver in the quick turn of the brook;
And thou, dim nook,—
Dimmer in twilight,—call again to me
Visions of life and glory that were ours
When first she led me here, young Coralie!
No longer blest,
Yet standing here in silence, may not we
Fancy or feign
That little flowers do fall about thy rest,
In silver mist and tender-dropping rain,
And that thy world is peace, loved Coralie?
122

Our friendships flee;
And, darkening all things with her mighty shade,
Comes Misery.
No longer look the faces that we see,
With the old eyes; and Woe itself shall fade,
Nor even this be left us, Coralie!
Feelings and fears,
That once were ours, have perished in the mould,
And grief is cold:
Hearts may be dead to grief; and if our tears
Are failing or forgetful, there will be
Mourners about thy bed, lost Coralie!
The brook-flowers shine,
And a faint song the falling water has,
But not for thee;
The dull night weepeth, and the sorrowing pine
Drops his dead hair upon thy young grave-grass,
My Coralie! my Coralie!
123

I took from its glass a flower,
To lay on her grave with dull accusing tears;
But the heart of the flower fell out as I handled the rose,
And my heart is shattered, and soon will wither away.
I watch the changing shadows,
And the patch of windy sunshine upon the hill,
And the long blue woods; and a grief no tongue can tell,
Breaks at my eyes in drops of bitter rain.
I hear her baby-wagon,
And the little wheels go over my heart:
Oh! when will the light of the darkened house return?
Oh! when will she come who made the hills so fair?
I sit by the parlour-window
When twilight deepens, and winds get cold without;
But the blessed feet no more come up the walk,
And my little girl and I cry softly together.
124

As sometimes in a Grove.

As sometimes in a grove at morning chime,
To hit his humour,
The poet lies alone, and trifles time,—
A slow consumer;
While terebinthine tears the dark trees shed,
Balsamic grument;
And pine-straws fall into his breast, or spread
A sere red strewment;
As come dark motions of the memory,
Which no denial
Can wholly chase away; nor may we see,
In faint espial,
125

The features of that doubt we brood upon
With dull persistence,
As in broad noon our recollections run
To pre-existence;
As when a man, lost on a prairie-plain
When day is fleeting,
Looks on the glory, and then turns again,
His steps repeating,
And knows not if he draws his comrades nigher,
Nor where their camp is,
Yet turns once more to view those walls of fire
And chrysolampis:
So idleness, and phantasy, and fear,
As with dim grandeur
The night comes crowned, seem his who wanders here
In rhyme a ranger;
Seem his, who once has seen his morning go,
Nor dreamed it mattered;
Mysterious Noon; and, when the night comes, lo!
A life well-scattered—
126

Is all behind; and howling wastes before:
Oh that some warmer
Imagination might those deeps explore,
And turn informer!
In the old track we paddle on, and way,
Nor can forego it;
Or up behind that horseman of the day,
A modern poet,
We mount; uncertain where we may arrive.
Or what we trust to;
Unknowing where, indeed, our friend may drive
His Pegasus to:
Now reining daintily by stream and sward
In managed canter;
Now plunging on, thro' brick and beam and board,
Like a Levanter!
Yet ever running on the earth his course,
And sometimes into;
Chasing false fire, we fare from bad to worse;
With such a din too—
127

As this that now awakes your grief and ire,
Reader or rider—
Of halting verse; till in the Muse's mire
We sink beside her.
Oh! in this day of light, must he, then, lie
In darkness Stygian,
Who for his friend may choose Philosophy,
Reason, Religion;
And find, tho' late, that creeds of good men prove
No form or fable;
But stand on God's broad justice, and his love
Unalterable?
Must he then, fail, because his youth went wide?
Oh! hard endeavour
To gather grain from the marred mountain-side;
Or to dissever
The lip from its old draught: we tilt the cup,
And drug reflection;
Or juggle with the soul, and so patch up
A peace or paction;
128

Would carry heaven with half our sins on board:
Or, blending thickly
Earth's grosser sweet with that, to our reward
Would mount up quickly;
Ready to find, when this has dimmed and shrunk,
A more divine land,
And lightly, as a sailor climbs a trunk
In some dark pine-land.
Truly a treasure in a hollow tree
Is golden honey,
Breathing of mountain-dew, clean fragrancy,
And uplands sunny;
But who, amid a thousand men or youth,
Landward or seabred,
Would choose his honey bitter in the mouth
With bark and bee-bread?
No! though the wish to join that harping choir
May oft assail us,
We scarce shall find vague doubt, or half-desire
Will aught avail us;
129

Nor fullest trust that firmest faith can get,
Cold fear supplanting;
There may be blue and better blue, and yet
Our part be wanting.
Alas! the bosom-sin, that haunts the breast,
We pet and pension;
Or let the foolish deed still co-exist
With fair intention.
From some temptation, where we did not dare,
We turn regretful;
Yet think “the Devil finds his empty snare,”
Not by a netful!
O conscience, coward conscience! teasing so
Priest, lawyer, statist,
Thou art a cheat, and may be likened to
Least things or greatest;
A rocking-stone poised on a lonely tower
In pastures hilly;
Or like an anther of that garden-flower,
The tiger-lily;
130

Stirred at a breath: or stern to break and check
All winds of heaven;
While toward some devil's-dance, we crane the neck,
And sigh unshriven;
Or lightly follow where our leaders go
With pipe and tambour,
Chafing our follies till they fragrant grow,
And like rubbed amber.
Yet, for these things, not godlike seems the creed
To crush the creature,
Nor Christly sure; but shows it like indeed
A pulpit preacher—
To fling a pebble in a pond, and roar
“There! sink or swim, stone;
Get safe to land with all your ballast, or
Black fire and brimstone!”
Ah! in a world with joy and sorrow torn,
No life is sweeter
Than his, just starting in his journey's morn;
And seems it bitter
131

To give up all things for the pilgrim's staff,
And garment scanty;
The moonlight-walk, the dream, the dance, the laugh,
And fair Rhodanthe!
And must it be, when but to him, in truth,
Whom it concerneth,
The spirit speaks? Yet to the tender tooth
The tongue still turneth.
And he, who proudly walks through life, and hears
Pæan and plaudit,
Looks ever to the end with doubts and fears,
And that last audit.
But, as we sometimes see before the dawn,
With motion gentle,
Across the lifeless landscape softly drawn
A misty mantle;
Up from the river to the bluffs away,
The low land blurring,
All dim and still, and in the broken gray
Some faint stars stirring:
132

So, when the shadow falls across our eyes,
And interveneth
A veil 'twixt us, and all we know and prize;
Then, in the zenith,
May heaven's lone lights not pass in wreaths obscure,
But, still sojourning
Amid the cloud, appoint us to the pure
And perfect morning!
And even here,—when stretching wide our hands,
Longing and leaning,
To find, 'mid jarring aims and fierce demands,
Our strength and meaning;
Though troubled to its depths the spirit heaves,
Though dim despairing,—
May we not find Life's mesh of wreck and leaves
Pale pearls insnaring?
Yes:—as the waters cast upon the land
Loose dulse and laver,
And where the sea beats in, befringe the sand
With wild sea-slaver;—
133

For currents lift the laden and the light,
Ground-swell and breaker;
Not weedy trash alone, but corallite,
Jasper, and nacre.
And though at times the tempter sacks our souls,
And fiends usurp us,
Let us still press for right, as ocean rolls,
With power and purpose;
Returning still, though backward flung and foiled,
To higher station,
So to work out, distained and sorely soiled,
Our own salvation.
Nor following Folly's lamp, nor Learning's lore,
But, humbly falling
Before our Father and our Friend, implore
Our gift and calling.
Outside the vineyard we have wandered long
In storm and winter:
Oh! guide the grasping hands, the footsteps wrong,
And bid us enter—
134

Ere the day draw to dark; nor heave and prize
With strength unable,
Nor range a world for wisdom's fruit, that lies
On our own table.
So shall we find each movement an advance,
Each hour momentous,
If but, in our own place and circumstance,
Thou, God, content us.
135

Mark Atherton.

Of one who went to do deliberate wrong;
Not driven by want, nor hard necessity,
Nor seemingly impelled by hidden hands
As some have said; nor hounded on by hate,
Imperious anger, nor the lust of gold,
This story tells. Yet all of these colleagued
To drive him at the last; who in young life,
Ere the bone hardens, or the blood grows cold,
When youth is prompt to change, even momently,
With every whiff of wind, or word of chance,—
Through heat and cold, for many a month and day
Went calmly to his purpose with still feet;
No break-neck speed, but fearfully, and as one
Who holds his horse together down a hill.
Bethiah, or, as those who loved her loved
To call her, Bertha, for her beauty's sake,—
136

Bethiah Westbrooke was a forest-flower;
That trembled forth on the waste woods and swamps
Of wild New England, in the wild dark days
Of witchcraft, and, of Indian wiles and war.
Yet something after this; for oft at night,
When Westbrooke's cottage was a beacon-star
To many a beating heart, and suitors came
From far with gifts and game, then the old man,
Who felt the fire, and had a gust to talk,
Would tell of Philip's war and Sassacus;
And how De Rouville crossed the crusted snow
Toward doomed Deerfield in the winter's morn,—
With a quick rush and halt alternately,
As 'twere the empty rushing of the wind,
So to delude the outposts; how by night,
About the lonely blockhouse and the mount,
The scouting Indian hovered like a wolf,
Seeking a crevice to thrust in the fire;
Till the dumb creatures of the barn and field
Would give swift notice of the stealing foe;
Cows, horses, snuffed the war-paint; and, in the house,
137

How the dog whimpered with erected hair,
And, like the wind in a window, wawled the cat.
Of these, and personal scapes, would Westbrooke speak
As of the past: “For now,” he said, “the tribes,
Shot, scalped, and scattered, flee on every side;
Their bark-boats staved and sunk, their lodges burned,
And plantings, and even the lands that grew them, seized,
They scarce can draw to head. The Indian war
Was ended; save that, perhaps, in the long nights,
From some lone farm outlying, a fire might rise,
Set on by the wild savage with a shriek!
For squads were here and there; and still 'twas said,
That in the North some stragglers held together;
But mainly broken now; nor seemed it best
To mull and grind them into very dust.”
And then the old man, turning, as he talked,
Towards his daughter, bitterly would speak
138

Of that most hateful sin of treachery;
False friendliness, and that domestic treason,
Wherein the red man, trustless, merciless,
Is better than the white, then, pausing long,
Would gaze upon Bethiah where she sat,
Till the girl winced, and on her forehead stood
The impatient colour; and Mark, Mark Atherton,
Into his dark avoiding eye would seem
To call a clear look, till the old man's fell.
Not lovers these, though long-accounted friends;
And, though the voice went that they two would wed,
Not lovers sure: yet the youth had her ear
And ready laughter; for he well could speak
Smooth words, but with an edge of meaning in them,
Like a sharp acid sheathed in milk or oil.
Others, too, held aloof; but yet the maid
Heard not, or, hearing, heard with a half-heart;
For still another stood between the two,—
Companion of the twilights and the dawns
Of parted days; one who had loved her then
139

With true-intending love,—his hope, his star,
And almost mistress! And so the maiden looked
On this and this, with a divided eye.
Into the forest rode Mark Atherton.
Leaving the settlement at the river-side,
By felling and burnt-over land he passed, and plunged
Thro' towering fern and thickset, till he reached
The open pines; and onward still he rode;
Climbing the slippery slope, and clattering down
The stony hollow. From his horse's hoof
The shy frog flew; and, like a streak of light,
The squirrel darted up the mossy bole,
Where, glancing upward, downward, and across,
Hammered and hung the crested popinjay.
So sharply on he rode; now brooding on
His purpose, which was in truth to win the maid,
Wrong her rich love, and sell her to the chiefs
That lurked with their red warriors in the shade;
Now on her beauty with a grain of ruth,
140

Their long-time friendship, and that marriage-vow
Which his heart hated: for he thought of one,
Once the heart's idol of his boyish dream,
That hardly heaven seemed fitted to enshrine;
Now pent within a house just bigger than
A martin-box, that seemed, and scarce as clean,—
The fair slight girl that was,—“And see her now!
A dozen children at her gown-tail pull,
As so a slut as ere went down-at-heel!”
So, hardening his heart, he drew his rein
Against the bank, and sought the water-side;
Parting the laurel to behold thy face,
New England's Stream, cold River of the Pines!
There lay and listened till the twilight fell;
When, weary of the flutter of the leaf,
The dipping of the ripple on the rock,
And plaintive calling of the phœbe-bird,
He chanted, half-in-fear, half mockingly:—
“The river-sides are high, are high, the night is dark!
And fair white hands are drawing at our bark:
141

To-night, to-night, the winds obey our call,
And the still, dark river sucks like a waterfall,
As downstream in the dug-out on we fare;
For the minister's daughter, and deacon's wife are there.
Paddle away!
On either bank, as softly, softly down she plies,
Remember, remember, that many a landing lies:
Then fear not the Friend, with whom we have our part;
Nor shame to own the love that hideth in the heart;
Nor grudge our chiefest chamber to afford,
When the house is his from sill to saddle-board;
Paddle away!”
And with the cadence came
The quick replying plunge of a broad blade;
And, hideous in his plaint and peag, with face
Inflexible of mournful gravity,
An Indian chieftain, leaping from his boat,
Stood, like the fiend evoked. But Atherton,
Whose cheek had whitened like the winter-leaf
That flickers all day in the whistling beech,
Held down his head as for a moment, so
Recovering his face; then steadfastly
142

Exchanged due greeting with the forest-king,
And passed they into parley by the stream.
Red light had parted from the westward verge,
And night lay black, ere back again and fast
The horseman fled, a shadow through the shade.
And now indeed, as if in very truth,
The river-demons gathered on his track;
For, ever as he rode, a woman's shriek
Seemed to pursue him through the sounding pines!
And where he looked, there was a woman's face,
With the frothed lip, and nostril edged with blood,
Relentlessly appealing, as it seemed.
And, ever as he rode, a ceaseless sound
Went ringing at his ear like jingling gold;
And, like the innumerable chink and chime
Of the night-crickets hidden in the grass,
Not to be lost or left; he gnashed his teeth:
But even there the forest fell away,
And on, by burned and blackened stumps and shells,
That mimicked all things horrible and vague,
143

In the dim glimmer insecure, he sped,
And gained the pickets of the palisade.
Another night, and later in the year,
A youth and maid, in the first edge of dark,
Stood by the haunted stream, or wandered on;
Insensibly approaching in their talk
A bushy point that jutted from the wood;—
Alley and ambuscade of black pitch-pine.
Various their look: he, lowering in his mood,
Baffled and broken where his heart was high,
Strode sullenly; she, sad, but resolute,
And pale with her determination; yet
As one who strives to soothe a cureless harm,
Spoke tenderly, as to an angry friend;
Remembering old affection ere he go.
“Partings must be,” she said; “but is not this
A sorrowful leavetaking to our love,—
To all our friendliness an ill farewell?”
A moment more, and while the words were warm,
Torn from her feet, arms bound, and gagged with grass,
144

They trailed her through the thickets of the wood.
And all alone stood Atherton,—with him
The sachem of the riverside and stream;—
Receiving now, what he had had in part,
All the bad wage of his iniquity.
Then, as if all things now were at an end,
Released from gift of faith, and entergage,
They parted silent: one took up the trail,
The other slowly to the village passed,
And raised the alarm, and blew the gathering-horn,
And headed the wild search.
With trampling feet
He led them to the River, where, he said
They dragged her through the stream, and up the bank,
He following on into its very flow;
But his foot slipping in the anchor-ice,
With wetted gun, and bruised among the stones,
He saw her, for whose life he risked his own,
Snatched from his sight; but darker now the night,
They far before, the trail unsure by day.
145

What more could be, but gather arms and men,
And scout abroad, and watch, till morning light?
And Westbrooke, the old man without a child,
Now raging, now in blank and mute despair,
Ran forth, or stood in helplessness of grief;
Not now as when he marched with Mosely's men
Against the savage seated in his strength!
When, like a sword of fire, with twenty more,
He fell upon their necks, and drove them in;
Or under Winslow, in that desperate day,
When, beaten off by the red foe intrenched,
Through battle-smoke he found himself alone
O'er breastwork and abbatis charging back.
Gone was his strength; and, as the days went by,
Gone seemed his heart. He sought his bed, and there
Seeing but one face, as the days went by,
Lay motionless, and like a drowning man,
Who, lying at the bottom of a brook,
Stares at the sun; till, small and smaller grown,
146

It flickers like a lamp, and then,—goes out;
So shrank his hope, so dropped into the dark.
And days went by, and still no tidings were,
The smouldered war broke up in fresher flame,
Killing all hope! the rangers, ranging back
Through all the Massachusetts, west and north,
Had swept the woods to farthest Canada,
And many prisoners ransomed or retook:
But she, the glory of his life, was gone.
And yet, one winter morning, ere the sun
Had crossed the river on his westward march,
Sudden as was the stroke, the mercy came;
And Westbrooke held the daughter of his heart;
Wilted and wan, yet still the Forest-Flower!
Brought by the party of a friendly tribe,
Who took her from the chiefs, sick unto death;
And nursed her long, and tenderly led her home,
Nor claimed reward.
And sudden vengeance broke
O'er him, the traitor; but not by those he had wronged;
147

Fled on the instant to the cedar-swamps,
His Indian allies seized and bound him there;
And after battle, chafing for their slain,
There, in the darkness of the cedar-swamp,
They slowly burned his flesh, and charred his bones.
So, in the old days, God was over all!
Vengeance was full, and wrong returned to right;
Mercy replied to Love; the lost was found;
And treachery answered so with treachery.
148

Sidney.

Have you forgotten that still afternoon,
How fair the fields were, and the brooks how full?
The hills how happy in their hanging green?
The fields were green; and here, in spots and holes
Where the rich rain had settled, greener green.
We sat beside a window to the south,
Talking of nothing, or in silence sat,
Till, weary of the summer-darkened room,
I in an impulse spoke, you smiled; and so
In this consent we wandered forth together
Across the fields to entertain the time.
Shall I retrace those steps until we reach
Again the crossing River? Yes; for so
149

Again I seem to tread those paths with you;
Here are the garden-beds, the shrubbery,
And moody murmur of the poising bee;
And here the hedge that to the River runs.
Beside me still you mov'd thro' meadow-flowers;
Beside, yet unapproached; cold as a star
On the morning's purple brink; and seemingly
Unconscious of the world beneath your feet.
Yet as I plucked up handfuls from the grass,
With here and there a flower, telling their names
And talking ignorant words of why they were,
You paused to gather berries from the hedge;
And I despaired to reach you with my words,
Believed you cold, nor wished to find myself
Calling your face back, and as in a dream
Lingering about the places where you were;
And would not if I might, or so it seemed,
Attain unto the property of your love:
Knowing full well that I must soon awake,
Gaze blankly round, and, with a bottomless sigh,
Relapse into my life;—the life I knew
Before I saw your fair hair softly put
150

From off your temples, and the parted mouth,—
More beautiful indeed, than any flower,
Half-open, and expectant of the rain.
O youth and loveliness! are ye less dear
Placed at impracticable height, or where
Not wholly clear, but touched with shades and spots
Of coldness and caprice? or do such make
The bright more bright, as sometimes we may see
In the old pictures? Is the knight's brow held
Not noble for its scar? or she less fair,
The lady with the lozenge on her lip?
So may your very failings grace you more;
And I, most foolish in my wisdom, find
The grapes alone are sour we cannot gain.
But, Sidney, look! the River runs below,—
Dark-channelled Deerfield, here beneath, our feet,
Unfordable,—a natural bar and stay.
Yet, ere you turn, let us look off together,
As travellers from a hill; not separate yet,
But being to be divided, let us look
Upon the mountains and the summer sky;
151

The meadow with the herd in its green heart;
The ripple, and the rye-grass on the bank,
As what we ne'er may so behold again.
And, do me right in this, the eye, that saw
These accidents and adjuncts, could not fail
To mark you, loveliest of the place and time;
A separate beauty, which was yet akin
To all soft graces of the earth and sky,
While wanting naught that human warmth could give.
So, lady, take the bitter from my words:
Let us go onward now; and should you prize
In any way the homage of a heart
Most desolate of love, that finds in all
Still the salt taste of tears, receive it here,
With aught that I can give, or you retain.
Let me, though turning backward with dim eyes,
Recover from the past one golden look,
Remembering this valley of the stream;
And the sweet presence that gave light on all,
And my injustice, and indeed your scorn,
Refusing me the half-stripped clover-stalk
152

Your fingers picked to pieces as we walked.
Yet, ere we part, take from my lips this wish,—
Not from my lips alone, from my heart's midst,—
That your young life may be undimmed with storms,
Nor the wind beat, nor wild rain lash it out,
But over change and sorrow rise and ride!
Leading o'er all a tranquil, lenient light;
And, when your evening comes, around that beam
No tragic twilight brood, but late and long
Your crystal beauty linger like a star,—
Like a pure poignant star in the fleecy pink.
But give your poet now one perfect flower:
For here we reach again the garden's bound,—
Sweet as yourself, and of one lustre too;
Let not the red dark bud Damascus yields,
Nor York-and-Lancaster, nor white, nor yellow,
But a rose-coloured rose.
153

Refrigerium.

Let them lie,—their day is over;
Only night and stillness be:
Let the slow rain come, and bring
Brake and star-grass, speedwell, harebell,
All the fulness of the spring;
What reck I of friend and lover?
Foe by foe laid lovingly?
What are mounds of green earth, either?
What, to me, unfriendly bones
Death hath pacified and won
To a reconciled patience,
Though their very graves have run
In the blending earth together,
And the spider links the stones?
154

To the hills I wander, crying,—
Where we stood in days of old,
Stood and saw the sunset die;
Watched through tears the passing purple,—
“O my darling! misery
Has been mine; but thou wert lying
In a slumber sweet and cold.”
155

The Old Beggar.

When buttercups break on each grassy side,
And the summer-long clover is far and wide,
And by air-hung crag, and gully dwell
The raspberry rose, and the blue bluebell,
What will he do? what can he say?
Will the lavish laurel his charges pay?
No: but the sun lies warm on the way;
And, if to-day will not, to-morrow may!
Yet late in this year, when the grass is dry,
And the grain is all in, and the garden by,
And on reach of river, and forest through,
The smoke of the Autumn is brooding blue,
What will he do? what can he say
To the purple swamp, and the hills' array?
Naught, but to whisper the adage gay,
If to-day will not, to-morrow may!
156

But now, when the white drift is hurrying higher,
And the birch-log sputters like fat in the fire,
And the wind singeth boldly, and in the window
The weather-glass bubble is buried in snow,
What will he do? what can he say?
Out! is it ours to save or to slay?
E'en let him go whistle his lesson and lay,
That, if to-day will not, to-morrow may!
Heed not his cry, though you feed of the best,
And with warmest of feathers have fledged your nest;
From the wind of his garments shrink and scowl;
Slap the door in his face, and let him howl!
What will he do? what can he say?
What matter to us, if we preach and pray;
Stand him aside for a fairer day!
So, if to-day will not, to-morrow may!
Alas! when the daylight is weary to see,
When the grasshopper's song shall a burthen be,
When the jar of the cricket is bitter to hear,
And the hum of the harvest-fly stings the ear,
157

What shall we do? what can we say
When the heart is old, and the head is gray,
And Grief cometh home like a child to stay,
And to-day cannot help us, nor morrow may?
When we plant with tears, and in sorrow pluck,
And cometh cross-fortune and evil luck;
And the land is cold, and the stiff hands bleed,
And for harvest we hardly get back the seed,—
What can we do? what shall we say
If a selfish past we alone survey?
Dare we hope from the present a happier ray?
Or that, if to-day will not, to-morrow may?
Ah, no! but now reach him the holding hand;
Round his fading strength be an arm and band;
Be the wrong of the wretched your trust and task;
And when trouble comes home, then do you ask,
“What can we do? what shall we say?”
Thank God for the good we have done in our day;
Be the beggar's burthen our stave and stay;
That the cloud may be lifted, with full heart pray;
And, if to-day will not, to-morrow may.
158

Paulo to Francesca.

When weary Summer had laid down her leaves,
And all the autumn fields were brown and bleak,
How often did we, wandering cheek to cheek,
Tread these deserted ways! On those sad eves.
You—clinging to my side how fearfully!—
Would scarcely dare to speak or breathe aloud;
While every gust seemed like a voice to rise,
And Nature's self to mourn. How often we,
Low in the westward, where they stood like eyes,
Saw the Gemelli under brows of cloud;
Or, through dim pine-boughs,—now the quick tears start,—
Watched the red beating of the Scorpion's heart,
While winged with love and fear the hours fled by!
O stolen hours of danger and delight!
159

O lamp of erring passion burned to waste!
O true false heart! even now I seem to taste
The bitter of the kisses that you gave.
You were the traitor,—yes; and more than I,
You were the tempter. Ah! that autumn night,
The hour that seemed a wavering line to mark
'Twixt early sunset and determined dark,
Found us together. Menacing and grave,
The night sank down; no lingering gleam allowed,
But in the west one fiery cupreous cloud.
Do you remember, desperate in my mood,
Of all things, of myself, and most of you,
Half-careless, too, whether the worst were known.
So that the storm might split on me alone,
I laughed to think how far we had got from good!
Then, with a quick revulsion, wept to view
The misery of our lives! for cruel hands
Had digged a gulf between, a gulf of sin
We could not cross, nor dared to plunge within,
And yet,—as, musing on our fate and fall,
I spoke as one who surely understands,
Of that deep peace that had been found by some.
160

And good from evil; reasoning, like Paul,
Of temperance, judgment, and the life to come;
Deeming it better here to weep and fast,
Than mourn with those who shall mourn at the last;
And we had wept as ne'er till then before,
And half-resolved that we would meet no more,—
In the pine-hollow, under the bare skies,
While darker yet the Shadow closed and clung.
You, pausing, turned, (do you remember this?)
With clinging arms, and die-away sweet eyes,
And kissed me in the mouth, with such a kiss
As that Apollo gave Cassandra young;
Sealing her prophet-lips, alas! with serpent-tongue.
 

See the “Story of Rimini”

161

When the Dim Day.

When the dim day is buried
Beyond the world's sight,
Low-lingering, lurid,
A sorrowful light
Is left on the hilltops;
While bitter winds blow,
Swept down from those chill tops
And summits of snow,
Yet, like a pale crown set,
The hills wear away
The gold of the downset
And dying of day:
So the Indian beheld it
Above his black pine,
Ere the pioneer felled it;
Yet, brother of mine,
162

No more by the river
You track to the brink
Snowy marks of the beaver;
The musk-rat and mink
Are all that is left now;
So races depart;
And Nature, bereft now,
Place yieldeth to Art.
Yes, bridge-pier and building
Now burden the bank,
Where the slow sunset, yielding,
O'er dark forests sank;
Nor the red man with cunning
His net hangeth here
Where the rapid is running,
Nor plungeth the spear.
Yet raftsmen and wrecker
Subsist by the stream;
Here find their exchequer:
Nor empty, we deem,
163

Are the boats and the barges
That softly drop down,
Bearing burthen and largess
Of hillside and town.
But the heart no change knoweth:
The stream shifts its side;
Wind cometh and goeth,
But sorrows abide.
The bank breaketh inward;
The hills heave and sink:
Without and withinward,
All gather or shrink.
See where, by yon birches,
The wave rested still!
Now the wild water lurches
And lashes at will;
Nor oarsman nor sculler
Could draw on the tide,
Though his cheek wore the colour
Of roses in pride.
But the depth and the deadness
Of grief will not flow:
164

O sorrow and sadness,
That this should be so!
Though the wave and the earthquake
May swallow the shore,
Yet wild sorrow and heart-break
Will part nevermore!
166

Hymn to the Virgin.

Translation.

Thou, O Virgin of the virgins,
Star and flower of the sea!
Bearing up the Lamp of men,—
Shrine of purity!
Mary, fountain of remission,
Fountain sweet of honey-dew,
Fountain of forgiving mercy;
Mingler and dispenser, too,
Of delightful sweetness!
Gate of splendour's king;
In all excellence of beauty
Stars out-glorying!
At the summit of the poles,
Crowned, thou art reigning.
167

Margites.

I neither plough the field, nor sow,
Nor hold the spade, nor drive the cart,
Nor spread the heap, nor hill nor hoe,
To keep the barren land in heart.
And tide and term, and full and change,
Find me at one with ridge and plain;
And labour's round, and sorrow's range,
Press lightly, like regardless rain.
Pleasure and peril, want and waste,
Knock at the door with equal stress,
And flit beyond; nor aught I taste
Disrelishing of bitterness.
168

And tide and term, and full and change,
Crown me no cup with flowers above;
Nor reck I of embraces strange,
Nor honey-month of lawful love.
The seasons pass upon the mould
With counter-change of cloud and clear:
Occasion sure of heat and cold,
And all the usage of the year.
But, leaning from my window, chief
I mark the Autumn's mellow signs,—
The frosty air, the yellow leaf,
The ladder leaning on the vines.
The maple from his brood of boughs
Puts northward out a reddening limb;
The mist draws faintly round the house;
And all the headland heights are dim.
169

And yet it is the same, as when
I looked across the chestnut woods,
And saw the barren landscape then
O'er the red bunch of lilac-buds;
And all things seem the same.—'Tis one,
To lie in sleep, or toil as they
Who rise beforetime with the sun,
And so keep footstep with their day;
For aimless oaf, and wiser fool,
Work to one end by differing deeds;—
The weeds rot in the standing pool;
The water stagnates in the weeds;
And all by waste or warfare falls,
Has gone to wreck, or crumbling goes,
Since Nero planned his golden walls,
Or the Cham Cublai built his house.
170

But naught I reck of change and fray;
Watching the clouds at morning driven,
The still declension of the day;
And, when the moon is just in heaven,
I walk, unknowing where or why;
Or idly lie beneath the pine,
And bite the dry brown threads, and lie
And think a life well-lost is mine.
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