Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Thou askest me, dear Friend! for what old cause
These men thus hate thee.—Hatred hath no laws,
But is a weak-willed thing, which in young days
A look, a word, a random doubt can raise.
Account not of it; it hath slender root;
For bitter speech doth mostly overshoot
In our warm youth a passion's real length,
And words are unfair measures of the strength
Of youthful things: there is too great a want
Of love and kindly thoughts, for hate to haunt
A young heart long. Account not of it then,
Nor harshly blame the speeches of those men.
Ah! never blame the hearts thou dost not know:
Full are they doubtless of good thoughts, and flow
O'er many round them with a power to bless,
With sunny tempers, and meek gentleness,
With quick forgiveness, and sweet conquests won
O'er self and sin, and generous actions done.
They have their ring of friends, and pensive ties,
And put as much on welcomes and kind eyes
As we can do. Why wilt thou treasure up
Hard words like these, which do but taint the cup
Of thine own happiness? Thou canst not spare
One shred of peaceful feeling; life will mar
That store too soon with its rude misery.
I should have thought, dear Friend! that I loved thee

380

But feebly and unwisely to suppose
Thou shouldst permit thy spirit's deep repose
To be thus jarred, because some men speak ill
Of one with a proud heart and headstrong will,
Most variable mien, and bitter tongue
Which hath too often to like taunts been strung.

If I must blame, then will I censure thee;
For doubtless in the days when thou wert free
From those restraints upon thy thought and speech,
Which now, by prayer with prayer enchained, can reach
Barely across the day, thou mayst have wrought
Some evil, vented some ill-natured thought,
Been cold when kindly manners were required,
Distracted in thyself, sullen, or tired,
Imperious or capricious, at the hour
When, which is Angels' lot, thou hadst the power
To sow a gentle thought, or do a deed
Which, like a prayer, in thy behalf might plead.

Some wrong hast thou done them or their near friends,
Whose memory, like a teasing shade, attends
The thought of thee within them. Ah! be slow
To blame these censors! For how canst thou know
True love is not the soil where this dislike,
On jealous friendship grafted, now doth strike
Quick root, I hope not lasting? Sure I am
It is more likely far that honest blame
Should rest on thee, than that a groundless hate
On any human heart on earth should wait.
Oh! surely there are none would rather slake
Their thirsty souls at bitter wells, than take
The sweet and ready waters of mild springs,
Which lure us by their very murmurings.

381

I must believe—fond faith perchance—true hate
To be of young hearts excommunicate.

“But if the judgments are untrue?” What then?
They may not seem so unto other men
Who know thee better: and I never heard
Reported slander, but there was some word,
Some stray expression, like a well-aimed dart,
Which found a rightful home within my heart.
If I deserved it not from him who spoke,
I did from some one else; and it awoke
Soft thoughts and kind regrets, such as belong
In compensation unto those we wrong.
If now unmerited, it was not so
In younger days, or some few years ago;
And it is well to have our sinful past
Upon our notice somewhat roughly cast
In bitter admonitions: Providence
By these revenges would prolong the sense
Of self-abasement, and the cleansing grief
Which in young hearts is wont to be too brief.
It is true health which Christian spirits win
From out the abiding shade of early sin.
But let this pass: an honest casuist
His holy science must have sorely missed,
Who would not from such things by subtle law
Wise canons for ascetic living draw;
And even to ourselves it is more fair
To think ourselves in fault than that our neighbors are.

Then be not thou afraid; a few short years,
Deepening the shades of life with pensive fears,
Have holiest power to soften and subdue
The starting feature and the glaring hue,
Which in our youth will struggle into view.

382

Time, which can heal us and yet give no pain,
Will right the tremulous balance once again,
And rescue, overlaid by youth's excess
Of speech and feeling, childhood's gentleness,
Then mellowed by calm age. Oh! it is sweet,
As through the thick of life we turn our feet
To feel how harsh, unamiable ways
Wear out within us by the lapse of days,
Or drop like chains which have our spirits bound
Close prisoners from the hearts which lie around.
Then meek-eyed simpleness and common mirth
Start, like the flowers in spring, o'er all the earth,
And we confess the world is made so fair
That nought, but self, can be beneath us there,
That such good clings to all that round us move
We fain must pity where we cannot love;
There is no soil where scorn or cold dislike,
Except in self, abiding root can strike.

Then be not thou afraid: for I would see
In these dislikes a peaceful guarantee
Of gentleness hereafter, which may wait,
Kindly retributive, on this strange hate.
For, in the crossings of our various strife,
And oddly intersecting paths of life,
We may be brought in contact with a heart
Which dealt hard measure to us once, and part
Regretting that we should have been so much
Of our short lives beyond each other's touch,—
Winning kind thoughts which, whether told or not,
It is a solid blessing to have got.
And to the generous mind there is no love
Which doth more calm and ready service move

383

Than that, which through harsh judgments hath been long
Withheld from those to whom we have done wrong.

Tonight in my lone ramble through the dell,
I saw the sun sink down behind the fell.
When twilight barred him out with crimson shrouds,
I saw a kneeling Angel in the clouds;
It seemed the centre of the glory, whence,
A spot almost too bright for aching sense,
A deep effulgence travelled o'er the hills,
Lighting the woods, and finding out the rills
In their sequestered channels; on the breast
Of one most rugged mountain did it rest.
Ah me! dear Friend! I wish thou couldst have seen
With what a light it flushed the vernal green,
And how the huge, unsightly stones it wrought
To forms of yielding softness, while it brought
A power of transmutation to the line
Which keen and jaggèd did but lately shine,
Yet now lay gloriously inflamed on high,
Like an aërial mist across the sky
Or wavering haze. Such is the softness cast
Upon the heart when youth's hot hour is past.
For some years now not one ungentle thought
Towards any of my kind hath in me wrought:
Yet once more do I pray kind Heaven to give
That in this beam I may for ever live,
That I may have a sunset in my spirit
To glorify and soften all things near it!