And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, And her graceful ankles bare and brown;

And listened, while a pleased surprise Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.

At last, like one who for delay Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.

Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me! That I the Judge's bride might be!

"He would dress me up in silks so fine, And praise and toast me at his wine.

"My father should wear a broadcloth coat; My brother should sail a painted boat.

"I'd dress my mother so grand and gay, And the baby should have a new toy each day.

"And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor And all should bless me who left our door."

The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill, And saw Maud Muller standing still.

"A form more fair, a face more sweet Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.

"And her modest answer and graceful air Show her wise and good as she is fair.

"Would she were mine, and I to-day, Like her, a harvester of hay

"No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,

"But low of cattle and song of birds, And health and quiet and loving words."

But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold, And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, And Maud was left in the field alone.

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, When he hummed in court an old love-tune;

And the young girl mused beside the well, Till the rain on the unraked clover,

He wedded a wife of richest dower, Who lived for fashion, as he for power.

Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, He watched a picture come and go;

And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes Looked out in their innocent surprise.

Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, He longed for the wayside well instead;

And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.

And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain, "Ah, that I were free again!

"Free as when I rode that day, Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."

She wedded a man unlearned and poor, And many children played round her door.

But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain, Left their traces on heart and brain.

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,

And she heard the little spring brook fall Over the roadside, through the wall;

In the shade of the apple-tree again She saw a rider draw his rein.

And gazing down with timid grace She felt his pleased eyes read her face.

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls Stretched away into stately halls;

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, The tallow candle an astral burned,

And for him who sat by the chimney lug, Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,

A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty and love was law.

Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only, "it might have been."

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away!



BURNS

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM

No more these simple flowers belong To Scottish maid and lover; Sown in the common soil of song, They bloom the wide world over.

In smiles and tears, in sun and showers, The minstrel and the heather, The deathless singer and the flowers He sang of five together.

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns! The moorland flower and peasant! How, at their mention, memory turns Her pages old and pleasant!

The gray sky wears again its gold And purple of adorning, And manhood's noonday shadows hold The dews of boyhood's morning.

The dews that washed the dust and soil From off the wings of pleasure, The sky, that flecked the ground of toil With golden threads of leisure.

I call to mind the summer day, The early harvest mowing, The sky with sun and clouds at play, And flowers with breezes blowing.

I hear the blackbird in the corn, The locust in the haying; And, like the fabled hunter's horn, Old tunes my heart is playing.

How oft that day, with fond delay, I sought the maple's shadow, And sang with Burns the hours away, Forgetful of the meadow!

Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead I heard the squirrels leaping; The good dog listened while I read, And wagged his tail in keeping.

I watched him while in sportive mood I read "The Two Dogs" story, And half believed he understood The poet's allegory.

Sweet day, sweet songs!—The golden hours Grew brighter for that singing, From brook and bird and meadow flowers A dearer welcome bringing.

New light on home-seen Nature beamed, New glory over Woman; And daily life and duty seemed No longer poor and common.

I woke to find the simple truth Of fact and feeling better Than all the dreams that held my youth A still repining debtor:

That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, The themes of sweet discoursing; The tender idyls of the heart In every tongue rehearsing.

Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, Of loving knight and lady, When farmer boy and barefoot girl Were wandering there already?

I saw through all familiar things The romance underlying; The joys and griefs that plume the wings Of Fancy skyward flying.

I saw the same blithe day return, The same sweet fall of even, That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, And sank on crystal Devon.

I matched with Scotland's heathery hills The sweet-brier and the clover; With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, Their wood-hymns chanting over.

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, I saw the Man uprising; No longer common or unclean The child of God's baptizing!

With clearer eyes I saw the worth Of life among the lowly; The Bible at his Cotter's hearth Had made my own more holy.

And if at times an evil strain, To lawless love appealing, Broke in upon the sweet refrain Of pure and healthful feeling,

It died upon the eye and ear, No inward answer gaining; No heart had I to see or hear The discord and the staining.

Let those who never erred forget His worth, in vain bewailings; Sweet Soul of Song!—I own my debt Uncancelled by his failings!

Lament who will the ribald line Which tells his lapse from duty, How kissed the maddening lips of wine Or wanton ones of beauty;

But think, while falls that shade between The erring one and Heaven, That he who loved like Magdalen, Like her may be forgiven.

Not his the song whose thunderous chime Eternal echoes render,— The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, And Milton's starry splendor!

But who his human heart has laid To Nature's bosom nearer? Who sweetened toil like him, or paid To love a tribute dearer?

Through all his tuneful art, how strong The human feeling gushes! The very moonlight of his song Is warm with smiles and blushes!

Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme, But spare his Highland Mary



THE HERO

"O Fox a knight like Bayard, Without reproach or fear; My light glove on his casque of steel, My love-knot on his spear!

"O for the white plume floating Sad Zutphen's field above, The lion heart in battle, The woman's heart in love!

"O that man once more were manly, Woman's pride, and not her scorn That once more the pale young mother Dared to boast 'a man is born'!

"But, now life's slumberous current No sun-bowed cascade wakes; No tall, heroic manhood The level dulness breaks.

"O for a knight like Bayard, Without reproach or fear! My light glove on his casque of steel My love-knot on his spear!"

Then I said, my own heart throbbing To the time her proud pulse beat, "Life hath its regal natures yet,— True, tender, brave, and sweet!

"Smile not, fair unbeliever! One man, at least, I know, Who might wear the crest of Bayard Or Sydney's plume of snow.

"Once, when over purple mountains Died away the Grecian sun, And the far Cyllenian ranges Paled and darkened, one by one,—

"Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder, Cleaving all the quiet sky, And against his sharp steel lightnings Stood the Suliote but to die.

"Woe for the weak and halting! The crescent blazed behind A curving line of sabres Like fire before the wind!

"Last to fly, and first to rally, Rode he of whom I speak, When, groaning in his bridle path, Sank down like a wounded Greek.

"With the rich Albanian costume Wet with many a ghastly stain, Gazing on earth and sky as one Who might not gaze again!

"He looked forward to the mountains, Back on foes that never spare, Then flung him from his saddle, And place the stranger there.

"'Allah! hu!' Through flashing sabres, Through a stormy hail of lead, The good Thessalian charger Up the slopes of olives sped.

"Hot spurred the turbaned riders; He almost felt their breath, Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down Between the hills and death.

"One brave and manful struggle,— He gained the solid land, And the cover of the mountains, And the carbines of his band!"

"It was very great and noble," Said the moist-eyed listener then, "But one brave deed makes no hero; Tell me what he since hath been!"

"Still a brave and generous manhood, Still and honor without stain, In the prison of the Kaiser, By the barricades of Seine.

"But dream not helm and harness The sign of valor true; Peace bath higher tests of manhood Than battle ever knew.

"Wouldst know him now? Behold him, The Cadmus of the blind, Giving the dumb lip language, The idiot clay a mind.

"Walking his round of duty Serenely day by day, With the strong man's hand of labor And childhood's heart of play.

"True as the knights of story, Sir Lancelot and his peers, Brave in his calm endurance As they in tilt of spears.

"As waves in stillest waters, As stars in noonday skies, All that wakes to noble action In his noon of calmness lies.

"Wherever outraged Nature Asks word or action brave, Wherever struggles labor, Wherever groans a slave,—

"Wherever rise the peoples, Wherever sinks a throne, The throbbing heart of Freedom finds An answer in his own.

"Knight of a better era, Without reproach or fear! Said I not well that Bayards And Sidneys still are here?



THE ETERNAL GOODNESS



O friends! with whom my feet have trod The quiet aisles of prayer, Glad witness to your zeal for God And love of man I bear.

I trace your lines of argument; Your logic linked and strong I weigh as one who dreads dissent, And fears a doubt as wrong.

But still my human hands are weak To hold your iron creeds; Against the words ye bid me speak My heart within me pleads.

Who fathoms the Eternal Thought? Who talks of scheme and plan? The Lord is God! He needeth not The poor device of man.

I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground Ye tread with boldness shod: I dare not fix with mete and bound The love and power of God.

Ye praise His justice; even such His pitying love I deem Ye seek a king; I fain would touch The robe that hath no seam.

Ye see the curse which overbroods A world of pain and loss; I hear our Lord's beatitudes And prayer upon the cross.

The wrong that pains my soul below I dare not throne above: I know not of His hate,—I know His goodness and His love.

I dimly guess from blessings known Of greater out of sight, And, with the chastened Psalmist, own His judgments too are right.

I long for household voices gone, For vanished smiles I long, But God bath led my dear ones on, And He can do no wrong.

I know not what the future hath Of marvel or surprise, Assured alone that life and death His mercy underlies.

And if my heart and flesh are weak To bear an untried pain, The bruised reed He will not break, But strengthen and sustain.

No offering of my own I have, Nor works my faith to prove; I can but give the gifts He gave, And plead His love for love.

And so beside the Silent Sea I wait the muffled oar; No harm from Him can come to me On ocean or on shore.

I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.

O brothers! if my faith is vain, If hopes like these betray, Pray for me that my feet may gain The sure and safer way.

And Thou, O Lord! by whom are seen Thy creatures as they be, Forgive me if too close I lean My human heart on Thee!



THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW

Pipes of the misty moorlands Voice of the glens and hills; The droning of the torrents, The treble of the rills! Not the braes of broom and heather, Nor the mountains dark with rain, Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, Have heard your sweetest strain!

Dear to the Lowland reaper, And plaided mountaineer,— To the cottage and the castle The Scottish pipes are dear;— Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch O'er mountain, loch, and glade; But the sweetest of all music The Pipes at Lucknow played.

Day by day the Indian tiger Louder yelled, and nearer crept; Round and round the jungle-serpent Near and nearer circles swept. "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,— Pray to-day!" the soldier said; "To-morrow, death's between us And the wrong and shame we dread."

O, they listened, looked, and waited, Till their hope became despair; And the sobs of low bewailing Filled the pauses of their prayer. Then up spake a Scottish maiden, With her ear unto the ground "Dinna ye hear it?—dinna ye hear it? The pipes o' Havelock sound!"

Hushed the wounded man his groaning; Hushed the wife her little ones; Alone they heard the drum-roll And the roar of Sepoy guns. But to sounds of home and childhood The Highland ear was true; As her mother's cradle-crooning The mountain pipes she knew.

Like the march of soundless music Through the vision of the seer, More of feeling than of hearing, Of the heart than of the ear, She knew the droning pibroch, She knew the Campbell's call "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's,— The grandest o' them all!"

O, they listened, dumb and breathless, And they caught the sound at last; Faint and far beyond the Goomtee Rose and fell the piper's blast! Then a burst of wild thanksgiving Mingled woman's voice and man's "God be praised!—the March of Havelock! The piping of the clans!"

Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, Stinging all the air to life. But when the far-off dust-cloud To plaided legions grew, Full tenderly and blithesomely The pipes of rescue blew!

Round the silver domes of Lucknow, Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, Breathed the air to Britons dearest, The air of Auld Lang Syne. O'er the cruel roll of war-drums Rose that sweet and homelike strain; And the tartan clove the turban, As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.

Dear to the corn-land reaper And plaided mountaineer,— To the cottage and the castle The piper's song is dear. Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch O'er mountain, glen, and glade, But the sweetest of all music The Pipes at Lucknow played!



COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION

The beaver cut his timber With patient teeth that day, The minks were fish-wards, and the crows Surveyors of high way,—

When Keezar sat on the hillside Upon his cobbler's form, With a pan of coals on either hand To keep his waxed-ends warm.

And there, in the golden weather, He stitched and hammered and sung; In the brook he moistened his leather, In the pewter mug his tongue.

Well knew the tough old Teuton Who brewed the stoutest ale, And he paid the good-wife's reckoning In the coin of song and tale.

The songs they still are singing Who dress the hills of vine, The tales that haunt the Brocken And whisper down the Rhine.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome, The swift stream wound away, Through birches and scarlet maples Flashing in foam and spray,—

Down on the sharp-horned ledges Plunging in steep cascade, Tossing its white-maned waters Against the hemlock's shade.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome, East and west and north and south; Only the village of fishers Down at the river's mouth;

Only here and there a clearing, With its farm-house rude and new, And tree-stumps, swart as Indians, Where the scanty harvest grew.

No shout of home-bound reapers, No vintage-song he heard, And on the green no dancing feet The merry violin stirred.

"Why should folk be glum," said Keezar, "When Nature herself is glad, And the painted woods are laughing At the faces so sour and sad?"

Small heed had the careless cobbler What sorrow of heart was theirs Who travailed in pain with the births of God And planted a state with prayers,—

Hunting of witches and warlocks, Smiting the heathen horde,— One hand on the mason's trowel And one on the soldier's sword!

But give him his ale and cider, Give him his pipe and song, Little he cared for Church or State, Or the balance of right and wrong.

"'Tis work, work, work," he muttered— "And for rest a snuffle of psalms!" He smote on his leathern apron With his brown and waxen palms.

"O for the purple harvests Of the days when I was young! For the merry grape-stained maidens, And the pleasant songs they sung

"O for the breath of vineyards, Of apples and nuts and wine! For an oar to row and a breeze to blow Down the grand old river Rhine!"

A tear in his blue eye glistened And dropped on his beard so gray. "Old, old am I," said Keezar, "And the Rhine flows far away!"

But a cunning man was the cobbler; He could call the birds from the trees, Charm the black snake out of the ledges, And bring back the swarming bees.

All the virtues of herbs and metals, All the lore of the woods, he knew, And the arts of the Old World mingled With the marvels of the New.

Well he knew the tricks of magic, And the lapstone on his knee Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles Or the stone of Doctor Dee.

For the mighty master Agrippa Wrought it with spell and rhyme From a fragment of mystic moonstone In the tower of Nettesheim.

To a cobbler Minnesinger The marvellous stone gave he, And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar, Who brought it over the sea.

He held up that mystic lapstone, He held it up like a lens, And he counted the long years coming, By twenties and by tens.

"One hundred years," quoth Keezar. "And fifty have I told Now open the new before me, And shut me out the old!"

Like a cloud of mist, the blackness Rolled from the magic stone, And a marvellous picture mingled The unknown and the known.

Still ran the stream to the river, And river and ocean joined; And there were the bluffs and the blue sea-line. And cold north hills behind.

But the mighty forest was broken By many a steepled town, By many a white-walled farm-house, And many a garner brown.

Turning a score of mill-wheels, The stream no more ran free; White sails on the winding river, White sails on the far-off sea.

Below in the noisy village The flags were floating gay, And shone on a thousand faces The light of a holiday.

Swiftly the rival ploughmen Turned the brown earth from their shares; Here were the farmer's treasures, There were the craftsman's wares.

Golden the good-wife's butter, Ruby her currant-wine; Grand were the strutting turkeys, Fat were the beeves and swine.

Yellow and red were the apples, And the ripe pears russet-brown, And the peaches had stolen blushes From the girls who shook them down.

And with blooms of hill and wildwood, That shame the toil of art, Mingled the gorgeous blossoms Of the garden's tropic heart.

"What is it I see?" said Keezar: "Am I here or am I there? Is it a fete at Bingen? Do I look on Frankfort fair?

"But where are the clowns and puppets, And imps with horns and tail? And where are the Rhenish flagons? And where is the foaming ale?

"Strange things, I know, will happen,— Strange things the Lord permits; But that droughty folk should be dolly Puzzles my poor old wits.

"Here are smiling manly faces, And the maiden's step is gay; Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drinking, Nor mopes, nor fools, are they.

"Here's pleasure without regretting, And good without abuse, The holiday and the bridal Of beauty and of use.

"Here's a priest and there is a Quaker, Do the cat and the dog agree? Have they burned the stocks for oven-wood? Have they cut down the gallows-tree?

"Would the old folk know their children? Would they own the graceless town, With never a ranter to worry And never a witch to drown?"

Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar, Laughed like a school-boy gay; Tossing his arms above him, The lapstone rolled away.

It rolled down the rugged hillside, It spun like a wheel bewitched, It plunged through the leaning willows, And into the river pitched.

There, in the deep, dark water, The magic stone lies still, Under the leaning willows In the shadow of the hill.

But oft the idle fisher Sits on the shadowy bank, And his dreams make marvellous pictures Where the wizard's lapstone sank.

And still, in the summer twilights. When the river seems to run Out from the inner glory, Warm with the melted sun,

The weary mill-girl lingers Beside the charmed stream, And the sky and the golden water Shape and color her dream.

Fair wave the sunset gardens, The rosy signals fly; Her homestead beckons from the cloud, And love goes sailing by!



THE MAYFLOWERS

Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars, And nursed by winter gales, With petals of the sleeted spars, And leaves of frozen sails

What had she in those dreary hours, Within her ice-rimmed bay, In common with the wild-wood flowers, The first sweet smiles of May?

Yet, "God be praised!" the Pilgrim said, Who saw the blossoms peer Above the brown leaves, dry anal dead "Behold our Mayflower here!"

"God wills it: here our rest shall be Our years of wandering o'er; For us the Mayflower of the sea, Shall spread her sails no more."

O sacred flowers of faith and hope, As sweetly now as then Ye bloom on many a birchen slope, In many a pine-dark glen.

Behind the sea-wall's rugged length, Unchanged, your, leaves unfold Like love behind the manly strength Of the brave hearts of old.

So live the fathers in their sons, Their sturdy faith be ours, And ours the love that overruns Its rocky strength with flowers.

The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day Its shadow round us draws; The Mayflower of his stormy bay, Our Freedom's struggling cause.

But warmer suns erelong shall bring To life the frozen sod; And, through dead leaves of hope, shall spring Afresh the flowers of Cod!



RALPH WALDO EMERSON



GOOD-BYE

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine. Long through thy weary crowds I roam; A river-ark on the ocean brine, Long I've been tossed like the driven foam; But now, proud world! I'm going home.

Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face; To Grandeur with his wise grimace; To upstart Wealth's averted eye; To supple Office, low and high; To crowded halls, to court and street; To frozen hearts and hasting feet; To those who go, and those who come; Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home.

I am going to my own hearth-stone, Bosomed in yon green hills alone,— A secret nook in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies planned; Where arches green, the livelong day, Echo the blackbird's roundelay, And vulgar feet have never trod A spot that is sacred to thought and Cod.

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; And when I am stretched beneath the pines, Where the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man At the sophist schools and the learned clan; For what are they all, in their high conceit, Where man in the bush with God may meet?



EACH AND ALL

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland faun, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone. I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home, in his nest, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky;— He sang to my ear,—they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me. I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home, But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. The lover watched his graceful maid, As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white choir. At last she came to his hermitage, Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;— The gay enchantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none. Then I said, "I covet truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth:— As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club-moss burrs; I inhaled the violet's breath; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird;— Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole.



THE PROBLEM

I like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below,— The canticles of love and woe The hand that rounded Peter's dome And groined the aisles of Christian Rome; Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He budded better than he knew;— The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?

Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with morn each annual cell? Or how the sacred pine-tree adds To her old leaves new myriads? Such and so grew these holy piles, Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone, And Morning opes with haste her lids To gaze upon the Pyramids; O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, As on its friends, with kindred eye; For out of Thought's interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air; And Nature gladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and With Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the grasses Art might obey, but not surpass. The passive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned; And the same power that reared the shrine Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. Ever the fiery Pentecost Girds with one flame the countless host, Trances the heart through chanting choirs, And through the priest the mind inspires. The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken;

The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost. I know what say the fathers wise, The book itself before me lies, Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, And he who blent both in his line, The younger Golden Lips or mines, Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines. His words are music in my ear, I see his cowled portrait dear; And yet, for all his faith could see, I would not the good bishop be.



THE RHODORA

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the Woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook, The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being Why thou went there, O rival of the rose! I never thought to ask, I never knew: But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.



THE HUMBLE—BEE

Burly, dozing humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Let them sail for Porto Rique, Far-off heats through seas to seek; I will follow thee alone, Thou animated torrid-zone! Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, Let me chase thy waving lines; Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, Singing over shrubs and vines.

Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thy dominion Sailor of the atmosphere; Swimmer through the waves of air; Voyager of light and noon; Epicurean of June; Wait, I prithee, till I come Within earshot of thy hum,— All without is martyrdom.

When the south wind, in May days, With a net of shining haze Silvers the horizon wall, And with softness touching all, Tints the human countenance With a color of romance, And infusing subtle heats, Turns the sod to violets, Thou, in sunny solitudes, Rover of the underwoods, The green silence dolt displace With thy mellow, breezy bass.

Hot midsummer's petted crone, Sweet to me thy drowsy tone Tells of countless sunny hours, Long days, and solid banks of flowers; Of gulfs of sweetness without bound In Indian wildernesses found; Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.

Aught unsavory or unclean Hath my insect never seen; But violets and bilberry bells, Maple-sap and daffodels, Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern, and agrimony, Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue And brier-roses, dwelt among; All beside was unknown waste, All was picture as he passed.

Wiser far than human seer, Yellow-breeched philosopher Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care, Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. When the fierce northwestern blast, Cools sea and land so far and fast, Thou already slumberest deep; Woe and want thou canst outsleep; Want and woe, which torture us, Thy sleep makes ridiculous.



THE SNOW-STORM

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come and see the north wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow.



FABLE

The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter "Little Prig"; Bun replied, "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I'll snot deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut."



FORBEARANCE

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk? At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse? Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? And loved so well a high behavior, In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, Nobility more nobly to repay? O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!



CONCORD HYMN

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT,

APRIL 19, 1836

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creep.

On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.



BOSTON HYMN

The word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came, As they sat beside the seaside, And filled their hearts with flame.

Cod said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.

Think ve I made this ball A field of havoc and war, Where tyrants great and tyrants small Might harry the weak and poor?

My angel,—his name is Freedom, Choose him to be your king; He shall cut pathways east and west And fend you with his wing.

Lo! I uncover the land Which I hid of old time in the West, As the sculptor uncovers the statue When he has wrought his best;

I show Columbia, of the rocks Which dip their foot in the seas And soar to the air-borne flocks Of clouds and the boreal fleece.

I will divide my goods; Call in the wretch and slave None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have.

I will have never a noble, No lineage counted great; Fishers and choppers and ploughmen Shall constitute a state.

Go, cut down trees in the forest And trim the straightest boughs; Cut down trees in the forest And build me a wooden house.

Call the people together, The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest-field, Hireling and him that hires;

And here in a pine state-house They shall choose men to rule In every needful faculty, In church and state and school.

Lo, now! if these poor men Can govern the land and the sea And make just laws below the sun, As planets faithful be.

And ye shall succor men; 'Tis nobleness to serve; Help them who cannot help again Beware from right to swerve.

I break your bonds and masterships, And I unchain the slave Free be his heart and hand henceforth As wind and wandering wave.

I cause from every creature His proper good to flow As much as he is and doeth, So much he shall bestow.

But, laying hands on another To coin his labor and sweat, He goes in pawn to his victim For eternal years in debt.

To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!

Pay ransom to the owner And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner? The slave is owner, And ever was. Pay him.

O North! give him beauty for rags, And honor, O South! for his shame; Nevada! coin thy golden crags With Freedom's image and name.

Up! and the dusky race That sat in darkness long,— Be swift their feet as antelopes, And as behemoth strong.

Come, East and West and North, By races, as snow-flakes, And carry my purpose forth, Which neither halts nor shakes.

My will fulfilled shall be, For, in daylight or in dark, My thunderbolt has eyes to see His way home to the mark.



THE TITMOUSE

You shall not be overbold When you deal with arctic cold, As late I found my lukewarm blood Chilled wading in the snow-choked wood.

How should I fight? my foeman fine Has million arms to one of mine East, west, for aid I looked in vain, East, west, north, south, are his domain, Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home; Must borrow his winds who there would come. Up and away for life! be fleet!— The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,— The punctual stars will vigil keep,— Embalmed by purifying cold; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.

Softly—but this way fate was pointing, 'Twas coming fast to such anointing, When piped a tiny voice hard by, Gay and polite, a cheerful cry, Chic-chic-a-dee-dee! saucy note Out of sound heart and merry throat, As if it said, "Good day, good sir! Fine afternoon, old passenger! Happy to meet you in these places Where January brings few faces."

This poet, though he lived apart, Moved by his hospitable heart, Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, To do the honors of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land; Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to the spray.

Here was this atom in full breath, Hurling defiance at vast death; This scrap of valor just for play Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, As if to shame my weak behavior; I greeted loud my little savior, "You pet! what dost here? and what for? In these woods, thy small Labrador, At this pinch, wee San Salvador! What fire burns in that little chest So frolic, stout and self-possest? Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine; Ashes and jet all hues outshine. Why are not diamonds black and gray, To ape thy dare-devil array? And I affirm, the spacious North Exists to draw thy virtue forth. I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension."

'Tis good will makes intelligence, And I began to catch the sense Of my bird's song: "Live out of doors In the great woods, on prairie floors. I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea, I too have a hole in a hollow tree; And I like less when Summer beats With stifling beams on these retreats, Than noontide twilights which snow makes With tempest of the blinding flakes. For well the soul, if stout within, Can arm impregnably the skin; And polar frost my frame defied, Made of the air that blows outside."

With glad remembrance of my debt, I homeward turn; farewell, my pet! When here again thy pilgrim comes, He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs, Doubt not, so long as earth has bread, Thou first and foremost shah be fed; The Providence that is most large Takes hearts like throe in special charge, Helps who for their own need are strong, And the sky dotes on cheerful song. Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant O'er all that mass and minster vaunt; For men mis-hear thy call in Spring, As 'twould accost some frivolous wing, Crying out of the hazel copse, Phe-be! And, in winter, Chic-a-dee-dee! I think old Caesar must have heard In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in some frosty wold, Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. And I will write our annals new, And thank thee for a better clew, I, who dreamed not when I came her To find the antidote of fear, Now hear thee say in Roman key. Paean! Veni, vidi, vici.



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL



HAKON'S LAY

Then Thorstein looked at Hakon, where he sate, Mute as a cloud amid the stormy hall, And said: "O Skald, sing now an olden song, Such as our fathers heard who led great lives; And, as the bravest on a shield is borne Along the waving host that shouts him king, So rode their thrones upon the thronging seas!"

Then the old man arose; white-haired he stood, White-bearded with eyes that looked afar From their still region of perpetual snow, Over the little smokes and stirs of men: His head was bowed with gathered flakes of years, As winter bends the sea-foreboding pine, But something triumphed in his brow and eye, Which whoso saw it, could not see and crouch: Loud rang the emptied beakers as he mused, Brooding his eyried thoughts; then, as an eagle Circles smooth-winged above the wind-vexed woods, So wheeled his soul into the air of song High o'er the stormy hall; and thus he sang:

"The fletcher for his arrow-shaft picks out Wood closest-grained, long-seasoned, straight as light; And, from a quiver full of such as these, The wary bow-man, matched against his peers, Long doubting, singles yet once more the best. Who is it that can make such shafts as Fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, Or hits the white so surely? They are men, The chosen of her quiver; nor for her Will every reed suffice, or cross-grained stick At random from life's vulgar fagot plucked: Such answer household ends; but she will have Souls straight and clear, of toughest fibre, sound Down to the heart of heart; from these she strips All needless stuff, all sapwood; hardens them; From circumstance untoward feathers plucks Crumpled and cheap; and barbs with iron will: The hour that passes is her quiver-boy; When she draws bow, 'tis not across the wind, Nor 'gainst the sun, her haste-snatched arrow sings, For sun and wind have plighted faith to her Ere men have heard the sinew twang, behold, In the butt's heart her trembling messenger!

"The song is old and simple that I sing; Good were the days of yore, when men were tried By ring of shields, as now by ring of gold; But, while the gods are left, and hearts of men, And the free ocean, still the days are good; Through the broad Earth roams Opportunity And knocks at every door of but or hall, Until she finds the brave soul that she wants."

He ceased, and instantly the frothy tide Of interrupted wassail roared along; But Leif, the son of Eric, sat apart Musing, and, with his eyes upon the fire, Saw shapes of arrows, lost as soon as seen; lint then with that resolve his heart was bent, Which, like a humming shaft, through many a stripe Of day and night across the unventured seas, Shot the brave prow to cut on Vinland sands The first rune in the Saga of the West.



FLOWERS

O poet! above all men blest, Take heed that thus thou store them; Love, Hope, and Faith shall ever rest, Sweet birds (upon how sweet a nest!) Watchfully brooding o'er them. And from those flowers of Paradise Scatter thou many a blessed seed, Wherefrom an offspring may arise To cheer the hearts and light the eyes Of after-voyagers in their need. They shall not fall on stony ground, But, yielding all their hundred-fold, Shall shed a peacefulness around, Whose strengthening joy may not be told! So shall thy name be blest of all, And thy remembrance never die; For of that seed shall surely fall In the fair garden of Eternity, Exult then m the nobleness Of this thy work so holy, Yet be not thou one jot the less Humble and meek and lowly, But let throe exultation be The reverence of a bended knee; And by thy life a poem write, Built strongly day by day— on the rock of Truth and Right Its deep foundations lay.



IMPARTIALITY

I cannot say a scene is fair Because it is beloved of thee But I shall love to linger there, For sake of thy dear memory; I would not be so coldly just As to love only what I must.

I cannot say a thought is good Because thou foundest joy in it; Each soul must choose its proper food Which Nature hath decreed most fit; But I shall ever deem it so Because it made thy heart o'erflow.

I love thee for that thou art fair; And that thy spirit joys in aught Createth a new beauty there, With throe own dearest image fraught; And love, for others' sake that springs, Gives half their charm to lovely things.



MY LOVE

I not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear; Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening-star, And yet her heart is ever near.

Great feelings has she of her own, Which lesser souls may never know; God giveth them to her alone, And sweet they are as any tone Wherewith the wind may choose to blow.

Yet in herself she dwelleth not, Although no home were half so fair; No simplest duty is forgot, Life hath no dim and lowly spot That doth not in her sunshine share.

She doeth little kindnesses, Which most leave undone, or despise; For naught that sets one heart at ease, And giveth happiness or peace, Is low-esteemed m her eyes.

She hath no scorn of common things, And, though she seem of other birth, Round us her heart entwines and clings, And patiently she folds her wings To tread the humble paths of earth.

Blessing she is: God made her so, And deeds of week-day holiness Fall from her noiseless as the snow, Nor hath she ever chanced to know That aught were easier than to bless.

She is most fair, and thereunto Her life loth rightly harmonize; Feeling or thought that was not true Ne'er made less beautiful the blue Unclouded heaven of her eyes.

She is a woman: one in whom The spring-time of her childish years Hath never lost its fresh perfume, Though knowing well that life bath room For many blights and many tears.

I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which, by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet doth ever flow aright.

And, on its full, deep breast serene, Like quiet isles my duties lie; It flows around them and between, And makes them fresh and fair and green, Sweet homes wherein to live and die.



THE FOUNTAIN

Into the sunshine, Full of the light, Leaping and flashing From morn till night!

Into the moonlight, Whiter than snow, Waving so flower-like When the winds blow!

Into the starlight, Rushing in spray, Happy at midnight, Happy by day!

Ever in motion, Blithesome and cheery. Still climbing heavenward, Never aweary

Glad of all weathers, Still seeming best, Upward or downward, Motion thy rest;—

Full of a nature Nothing can tame, Changed every moment, Ever the same;—

Ceaseless aspiring, Ceaseless content, Darkness or sunshine Thy element;—

Glorious fountain! Let my heart be Fresh, changeful, constant, Upward, like thee!



THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS

There came a youth upon the earth, Some thousand years ago, Whose slender hands were nothing worth, Whether to plow, to reap, or sow.

Upon an empty tortoise-shell He stretched some chords, and drew Music that made men's bosoms swell Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew.

Then King Admetus, one who had Pure taste by right divine, Decreed his singing not too bad To hear between the cups of wine

And so, well-pleased with being soothed Into a sweet half-sleep, Three times his kingly beard he smoothed, And made him viceroy o'er his sheep.

His words were simple words enough, And yet he used them so, That what in other mouths was rough In his seemed musical and low.

Men called him but a shiftless youth, In whom no good they saw; And yet, unwittingly, in truth, They made his careless words their law.

They knew not how he learned at all, For idly, hour by hour, He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, Or mused upon a common flower.

It seemed the loveliness of things Did teach him all their use, For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs, He found a healing power profuse.

Men granted that his speech was wise, But, when a glance they caught Of his slim grace and woman's eyes, They laughed, and called him good-for-naught.

Yet after he was dead and gone, And e'en his memory dim, Earth seemed more sweet to live upon, More full of love, because of him.

And day by day more holy grew Each spot where he had trod, Till after—poets only knew Their first-born brother as a god.



ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION July 21, 1865

(Selection)

Weak-Winged is Song, Nor aims at that clear-ethered height Whither the brave deed climbs for light We seem to do them wrong, Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse. Our trivial song to honor those who come With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum. And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire Live battle-odes whose lines mere steel and fire: Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious memory to buoy up and save From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave Of the unventurous throng.

Many loved Truth, and lavished Life's best oil Amid the dust of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her; But these, our brothers, fought for her, At life's dear peril wrought for her, So loved her that they died for her, Tasting the raptured fleetness Of her divine completeness Their higher instinct knew Those love her best who to themselves are true, And what they dare to dream of, dare to do; They followed her and found her Where all may hope to find, Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her. Where faith made whole with deed Breathes its awakening breath Into the lifeless creed, They saw her plumed and mailed, With sweet, stern face unveiled, And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past; What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last? Is earth too poor to give us Something to live for here that shall outlive us? Some more substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon? The little that we sec: From doubt is never free; The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. But stay! no age was e'er degenerate, Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, For in our likeness still we shape our fate.

Whither leads the path To ampler fates that leads? Not down through flowery meads, To reap an aftermath Of youth's vainglorious weeds, But up the steep, amid the wrath And shock of deadly-hostile creeds, Where the world's best hope and stay By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword Dreams in its easeful sheath; But some day the live coal behind the thought, Whether from Baal's stone obscene, Or from the shrine serene Of God's pure altar brought, Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught, And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, And trips reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise, And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth; Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, The victim of thy genius, not its mate!" Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to Truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So bountiful is Fate; But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield, This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, Whom late the Nation he had led, With ashes on her head, wept with the passion of an angry grief. Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Vise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth, But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity! They knew that outward grace is dust; They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. Nothing of Europe here, Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface And thwart her genial will; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate. So always firmly he He knew to bide his time, And can his fame abide, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Till the wise years decide. Great captains, with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes; These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American.



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL

PRELUDE TO PART FIRST

Over his keys the musing organist, Beginning doubtfully and far away, First lets his fingers wander as they list, And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay: Then, as the touch of his loved instrument Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent Along the wavering vista of his dream.

Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.

Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite; And to our age's drowsy blood Mill shouts the inspiring sea.

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; At the devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking; No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer.

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every, clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sink He pings to the wide world, and she to her nest, In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life bath ebbed away Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near, That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; Everything is happy now, Everything is upward striving; 'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,— Tis the natural way of living Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes the season's youth, And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow?



BIGLOW PAPERS

I. WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS

Guvener B. is a sensible man; He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks; He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes;— But John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du? We can't never choose him o' course,—thet's flat; Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?) An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man: He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,— He's been true to one party—an' thet is himself;— So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

Gineral C. he goes in fer the war; He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood? So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village, With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut aint We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage, An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint, But John P. Robinson he Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee.

The side of our country must oilers be took, An' Presidunt Polk' you know he is our country. An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per contry An' John P. Robinson he Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.

Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies; Sez they're nothin' on airth but jest fee, faw, fum: An' thet all this big talk of our destinies Is half on it ign'ance, an' t' other half rum, But John P. Robinson he Sez it aint no seek thing; an', of course, so must we.

Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats, An' marched round in front of a drum an' a fife, To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em votes, But John P. Robinson he Sez they didn't know everthin' down in Judee.

Wal, it's a marcy we've gut folks to tell us The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow, God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers To start the world's team wen it gits in a Slough; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez the world 'll go right, ef he hollers out Gee!



II. THE COURTIN'

God makes sech nights, all white an' still Fur 'z you can look or listen, Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, All silence an' all glisten.

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown An' peeked in thru' the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone, 'Ith no one nigh to hender.

A fireplace filled the room's one side With half a cord o' wood in— There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) To bake ye to a puddin'.

The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out Towards the pootiest, bless her, An' leetle flames danced all about The chiny on the dresser.

Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, An' in amongst 'em rusted The ole queen's arm thet gran'ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted.

The very room, coz she was in, Seemed warm from floor to ceilin', An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin'.

'Twas kin' o' kingdom-come to look On seek a blessed cretur, A dogrose blushin' to a brook Ain't modester nor sweeter.

He was six foot o' man, A 1, Clean grit an' human natur'; None couldn't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter.

He'd sparked it with full twenty gals, He'd squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells— All is, he couldn't love 'em.

But long o' her his veins 'ould run All crinkly like curled maple, The side she breshed felt full o' sun Ez a south slope in Ap'il.

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing Ez hisn in the choir; My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, She knowed the Lord was nigher.

An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, When her new meetin'-bunnet Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair O' blue eyes sot upun it.

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some! She seemed to 've gut a new soul, For she felt sartin-sure he'd come, Down to her very shoe-sole.

She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu; A-raspin' on the scraper,— All ways to once her feelin's flew Like sparks in burnt-up paper.

He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, Some doubtfle o' the sekle, His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity Zekle.

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work, Parin' away like murder.

"you want to see my Pa, I s'pose?" "Wal...no...I come dasignin'"— "To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es Agin to-morrer's i'nin'."

To say why gals acts so or so, Or don't, 'ould be presumin'; Mebby to mean yes an' say no Comes nateral to women.

He stood a spell on one foot fust, Then stood a spell on t'other, An' on which one he felt the wust He couldn't ha' told ye nuther.

Says he, "I'd better call agin;" Says she, "Think likely, Mister;" Thet last word pricked him like a pin, An'... Wal, he up an' kist her.

When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, Huldy sot pale ez ashes, All kin' o' smily roun' the lips An' teary roun' the lashes.

For she was jes' the quiet kind Whose naturs never vary, Like streams that keep a summer mind Snowhid in Jenooary.

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued Too tight for all expressin', Tell mother see how metters stood, And gin 'em both her blessin'.

Then her red come back like the tide Down to the Bay o' Fundy, An' all I know is they was cried In meetin' come nex' Sunday.



III. SUNTHIN' IN THE PASTORAL LINE

Once git a smell o' musk into a draw, An' it clings hold like precerdents in law; Your gra'ma'am put it there,—when, goodness knows,— To jes this—worldify her Sunday-clo'es; But the old chist wun't sarve her gran'son's wife, (For, 'thout new funnitoor, wut good in life?) An' so ole clawfoot, from the precinks dread O' the spare chamber, slinks into the shed, Where, dim with dust, it fust or last subsides To holdin' seeds an' fifty things besides; But better days stick fast in heart an' husk, An' all you keep in't gits a scent o' musk. Jes' so with poets: wut they've airly read Git,s kind o' worked into their heart-an' head, So 's 't they can't seem to write but jest on sheers With furrin countries or played-out ideers, Nor hev a feelin', ef it doosn't smack O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way back. This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an' things, Ez though we'd nothin' here that blows an' sings,— (Why, I'd give more for one live bobolink Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink,) This makes 'em think our fust o' May is May, Which 't ain't, for all the almanicks can say. O little city-gals, don't never go it Blind on the word o' noospaper or poet! They're apt to puff, an' May-day seldom looks Up in the country, ez it dons in books They're no more like than hornets'-nests an' hives, Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. I, with my trouses perched on cow-hide boots, Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots, Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse Your muslin nosegays from the milliner's, Puzzlin' to find dry ground your queen to choose, An' dance your throats sore m morocker shoes I've seen ye an' felt proud, thet, come wut would, Our Pilgrim stock wuz pithed with hardihood. Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' winch, Ez though 'twuz sunthin' paid for by the inch; But yit we du contrive to worry thru, Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing's to du, An' kerry a hollerday, ef we set out, Ez stidchly ez though 'twaz a redoubt. I, country-born an' bred, know where to find Some blooms thet make the season suit the mind, An' seem to metch the doubtin' bluebird's notes,— Half-vent'rin' liverworts in furry coats, Bloodroots, whose rolled-up leaves ef you oncurl, Each on 'em 's cradle to a baby-pearl,— But these are jes' Spring's pickets; sure ez sin, The rebble frosts'll try to drive 'em in; For half our May's so awfully like Mayn't, 'Twould rile a Shaker or an evrige saint; Though I own up I like our back'ard springs Thet kind o' haggle with their greens an' things, An' when you most give up, 'ithout more words Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an' birds Thet's Northun natur', slow an' apt to doubt, But when it doos git stirred, ther' 's no gin-out!

Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees, An' settlin' things in windy Congresses,— Queer politicians, though, for I'll be skinned Ef all on 'em don't head against the wind. 'Fore long the trees begin to show belief, The maple crimsons to a coral-reef, Then saffern swarms swing off from' all the willers So plump they look like yaller caterpillars, Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold Softer'n a baby's be at three days old Thet's robin-redbreast's almanick; he knows Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house. Then seems to come a hitch,—things lag behind, Till some fine mornin' Spring makes up her mind, An' ez, when snow-swelled avers cresh their dams Heaped-up with ice thet dovetails in an' jams, A leak comes spirtin thru some pin-hole cleft, Grows stronger, fercer, tears out right an' left, Then all the waters bow themselves an' come Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin' foam, Jes' so our Spring gits everythin' in tune An gives one leap from April into June Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you think, Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods with pink The catbird in the laylock-bush is loud; The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud; Red-cedars blossom tu, though few folks know it, An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet; The lime-trees pile their solid stacks o' shade An' drows'ly simmer with the bees' sweet trade; In ellum-shrouds the flashin' hangbird clings An' for the summer vy'ge his hammock slings; All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers, Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love to try With pins—they'll worry yourn so, boys, bimeby! But I don't love your cat'logue style,—do you?— Ez ef to sell off Natur' b y vendoo; One word with blood in 't 's twice ez good ez two: 'Nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the year, Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here; Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings, Or, givin' way to't in a mock despair, Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air. I ollus feels the sap start in my veins In Spring, with curus heats an' prickly pains, Thet drive me, when I git a chance, to walk Off by myself to hev a privit talk With a queer critter thet can't seem to 'gree Along o' me like most folks,—Mister Me. Ther' 's times when I'm unsoshle ez a stone An' sort o' suffocate to be alone,— I'm crowded jes' to think thet folks are nigh, An' can't bear nothin' closer than the sky; Now the wind's full ez shifty in the mind Ez wut it is ou'-doors, ef I ain't blind, An' sometimes, in the fairest sou'west weather, My innard vane pints east for weeks together, My natur' gits all goose-flesh, an' my sins Come drizzlin' on my conscience sharp ez pins: Wal, et sech times I jes' slip out o' sight An' take it out in a fair stan'-up fight With the one cuss I can't lay on the shelf, The crook'dest stick in all the heap,—Myself.

'Twuz so las' Sabbath arter meetin'-time: F'indin' my feelin's wouldn't noways rhyme With nobody's, but off the hendle flew An' took things from an east-wind pint o' view, I started off to lose me in the hills Where the pines be, up back o' Siah's Mills: Pines, ef you're blue, are the best friends I know, They mope an' sigh an' sheer your feelin's so,— They hesh the ground beneath so, tu, I swan, You half-forgit you've gut a body on. "Ther' 's a small school'us' there where four road, meet, The door-steps hollered out by little feet, An side-posts carved with names whose owners grew To gret men, some on 'em an' deacons, tu; 'Tain't used no longer, coz the town hez gut A high-school, where they teach the Lord knows wut: Three-story larnin' 's poplar now: I guess We thriv' ez wal on jes' two stories less, For it strikes me ther' 's sech a thing ez sinnin' By overloadin' children's underpinnin: Wal, here it wuz I larned my A B C, An' it's a kind o' favorite spot with me. We're curus critters: Now ain't jes' the minute Thet ever fits us easy while we're in it; Long ez 'twuz futur', 'twould be perfect bliss,— Soon ez it's past, thet time's wuth ten o' this An' yit there ain't a man thet need be told Thet Now's the only bird lays eggs o' gold. A knee-high lad, I used to plot an' plan An' think 'twuz life's cap-sheaf to be a man; Now, gittin' gray, there's nothin' I enjoy Like dreamin' back along into a boy: So the ole school'us' is a place I choose Afore all others, ef I want to muse; I set down where I used to set, an' git Diy boyhood back, an' better things with it,— Faith, Hope, an' sunthin' ef it isn't Cherrity, It's want o' guile, an' thet's ez gret a rerrity. Now, 'fore I knowed, thet Sabbath arternoon Thet I sot out to tramp myself in tune, I found me in the school'us' on my seat, Drummin' the march to No-wheres with my feet. Thinkin' o' nothin', I've heerd ole folks say, Is a hard kind o' dooty in its way: It's thinkin' everythin' you ever knew, Or ever hearn, to make your feelin's blue.

From this to thet I let my worryin' creep Till finally I must ha' fell asleep.

Our lives in sleep are some like streams thet glide Twixt flesh an' sperrit boundin' on each side, Where both shores' shadders kind o' mix an' mingle In sunthin' thet ain't jes' like either single; An' when you cast off moorin's from To-day, An' down towards To-morrer drift away, The imiges thet tengle on the stream Make a new upside-down'ard world o' dream: Sometimes they seem like sunrise-streaks an' warnin's O' wut'll be in Heaven on Sabbath-mornin's, An', mixed right in ez ef jest out o' spite, Sunthin' thet says your supper ain't gone right. I'm gret on dreams: an' often, when I wake, I've lived so much it makes my mem'ry ache, An' can't skurce take a cat-nap in my cheer 'Thout hevin' 'em, some good, some bad, all queer.

Now I wuz settin' where I'd ben, it seemed, An' ain't sure yit whether I rally dreamed, Nor, ef I did, how long I might ha' slep', When I hearn some un stompin' up the step, An' lookirz' round, ef two an' two make four, I see a Pilgrim Father in the door.

He wore a steeple-hat, tall boots, an' spurs With rowels to 'em big ez ches'nut-burrs, An' his gret sword behind him sloped away Long'z a man's speech thet dunno wut to say.— "Ef your name's Biglow, an' your given-name Hosee," sez he, "it's arter you I came; I'm your gret-gran they multiplied by three." "My wut?" sez I.—your gret-gret-gret," sez he: "You wouldn't ha' never ben here but for me. Two hundred an' three year ago this May, The ship I come in sailed up Boston Bay; I'd been a cunnle in our Civil War,— But wut on girth hev ,you gut up one for? Coz we du things in England, 'tain't for you To git a notion you can du 'em tu: I'm told you write in public prints: ef true, It's nateral you should know a thing or two."— "Thet air's an argymunt I can't endorse,— 'Twould prove, coz you wear spurs, you kep' a horse:

But du pray tell me, 'fore we furder go, How in all Natur' did you come to know 'Bout our affairs," sez I "in Kingdom-Come?"— "Wal, I worked round at sperrit-rappin' some, An' danced the tables till their legs wuz gone, In hopes o' larnin wut wuz goin' on," Sez he, "but mejums lie so like all-split Thet I concluded it wuz best to quit. But, come now, ef you wun't confess to knowin', You've some conjectures how the thing's a-goin'."— "Gran'ther," sez I, "a vane warn't never known Nor asked to hev a jedgment of its own; An' yit, ef 'tain't gut rusty in the jints, It's safe to trust its say on certin pints It knows the wind's opinions to a T, An' the wind settles wut the weather'll be." "I never thought a scion of our stock Could grow the wood to make a weathercock; When I wuz younger'n you, skurce more'n a shaver, No airthly wind," sez he, "could make me waver!" (Ez he said this, he clinched his jaw an' forehead, Hitchin' his belt to bring his sword-hilt forrard.) "Jes' so it wuz with me," sez I, "I swow, When I wuz younger'n wut you see me now,— Nothin' from Adam's fall to Huldy's bonnet, Thet I warm't full-cocked with my jedgment on it; But now I'm gittin' on in life, I find It's a sight harder to make up my mind,— Nor I don't often try tu, when events Will du it for me free of all expense. The moral question's ollus plain enough,— It's jes' the human-natur' side thet's tough; Wut's best to think mayn't puzzle me nor you,— The pinch comes in decidin' wut to du; Ef you read History, all runs smooth ez grease, Coz there the men ain't nothin' more'n idees,— But come to make it, ez we must to-day, Th' idees hev arms an' legs an' stop the way It's easy fixin' things in facts an' figgers,— They can't resist, nor warn't brought up with nigers; But come to try your the'ry on,—why, then Your facts an' figgers change to ign'ant men Actin' ez ugly—"—"Smite 'em hip an' thigh!" Sez gran'ther, "and let every man-child die! Oh for three weeks o' Crommle an' the Lord! Up, Isr'el, to your tents an' grind the sword! "Thet kind o' thing worked wal in ole Judee, But you forgit how long it's hen A.D.; You think thet's ellerkence—I call it shoddy, A thing," sez I, "wun't cover soul nor body; I like the plain all-wool o' common-sense, Thet warms ye now, an' will a twelvemonth hence. You took to follerin' where the Prophets beckoned. An', fust you knowed on, back come Charles the Second; Now, wut I want's to hev all we gain stick, An' not to start Millennium too quick; We hain't to punish only, but to keep, An' the cure's gut to go a cent'ry deep" "Wal, milk-an'-water ain't the best o' glue," Sez he, "an' so you'll find before you're thru;

"Strike soon," sez he, "or you'll be deadly ailin'— Folks thet's afeared to fail are sure o' failin'; God hates your sneakin' creturs thet believe He'll settle things they run away an' leave!" He brought his foot down fiercely, ez he spoke, An' give me sech a startle thet I woke.



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE

What visionary tints the year puts on, When failing leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!

No more the landscape holds its wealth apart. Making me poorer in my poverty, But mingles with my senses and my heart; My own projected spirit seems to me In her own reverie the world to steep; 'Tis she that waves to sympathetic sleep, Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill, and tree.

How fuse and mix, with what unfelt degrees, Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms, Each into each, the hazy distances! The softened season all the landscape charms; Those hills, my native village that embay, In waves of dreamier purple roll away, And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering farms.

Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee Close at my side; far distant sound the leaves; The fields seem fields of dream, where Memory Wanders like gleaning Ruth; and as the sheaves Of wheat and barley wavered in the eye Of Boaz as the maiden's glow went by, So tremble and seem remote all things the sense receives.

The cock's shrill trump that tells of scattered corn, Passed breezily on by all his flapping mates, Faint and more faint, from barn to barn is borne, Southward, perhaps to far Magellan's Straits; Dimly I catch the throb of distant flails; Silently overhead the henhawk sails, With watchful, measuring eye, and for his quarry waits.

The sobered robin, hunger-silent now, Leeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; The squirrel on the shingly shagbark's bough, Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear, Then drops his nut, and, with a chipping bound, Whisks to his winding fastness underground; The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere.

O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar shadows Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the ploughman's call Creeps, faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed meadows; The single crow a single caw lets fall And all around me every bush and tree Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon will Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence over all.

The birch, most shy and lady-like of trees, Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, As one who proudlier to a falling fortune cleaves

He looks a sachem, in red blanket wrapt, Who, mid some council of the sad-garbed whites, Erect and stern, in his own memories lapt, With distant eye broods over other sights, Sees the hushed wood the city's flare replace, The wounded turf heal o'er the railway's trace, And roams the savage Past of his undwindled rights.

The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all for lost, And, with his crumpled foliage stiff and dry, After the first betrayal of the frost, Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky; The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid gold, To the faint Summer, beggared now and old, Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her favoring eye.

The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze; Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush.

O'er yon low wall, which guards one unkempt zone, Where vines, and weeds, and scrub-oaks intertwine Safe from the plough, whose rough, discordant stone Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine, The tangled blackberry, crossed and recrossed, weaves A prickly network of ensanguined leaves; Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black-alders shine.

Pillaring with flame this crumbling boundary, Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the ploughboy's foot, Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye, Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot, The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires. Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires; In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak stands mute.

Below, the Charles—a stripe of nether sky, Now hid by rounded apple-trees between, Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by, Now flickering golden through a woodland screen, Then spreading out at his next turn beyond, A silver circle like an inland pond— Slips seaward silently through marshes purple and green.

Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of sight Who cannot in their various incomes share, From every season drawn, of shade and light, Who sees in them but levels brown and bare; Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free On them its largesse of variety, For nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare.

In Spring they lie one broad expanse of green, O'er which the light winds run with glimmering feet; Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseen here, darker growths o'er hidden ditches meet; And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd, As if the silent shadow of a cloud Hung there becalmed, with the next breath to fleet.

All round, upon the river's slippery edge, Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run Of dimpling light, and with the current seem to glide.

In Summer 'tis a blithesome sight to see, As step by step, with measured swing, they pass, The wide-ranked mowers evading to the knee, Their sharp scythes panting through the thick-set grass Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring, Their nooning take, while one begins to sing A stave that droops and dies 'neath the close sky of brass.

Meanwhile the devil-may-care, the bobolink, Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops Just ere he sweeps O'er rapture's tremulous brink, And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops, A decorous bird of business, who provides For his brown mate and fledglings six besides, And looks from right to left, a farmer mid his crops.

Another change subdues them in the Fall, But saddens not, they still show merrier tints, Though sober russet seems to cover all; When the first sunshine through their dew-drops glints, Look how the yellow clearness, streamed across, Redeems with rarer hues the season's loss, As Dawn's feet there had touched and left their rosy prints.

Or come when sunset gives its freshened zest, Lean o'er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill, While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west, Glow opposite; the marshes drink their fill And swoon with purple veins, then slowly fade Through pink to brown, as eastward moves the shade, Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simond's darkening hill.

Later, and yet ere Winter wholly shuts, Ere through the first dry snow the runner grates, And the loath cart-wheel screams in slippery ruts, While the firmer ice the eager boy awaits, Trying each buckle and strap beside the fire, And until bedtime—plays with his desire, Twenty times putting on and off his new-bought skates;—

Then, every morn, the river's banks shine bright With smooth plate-armor, treacherous and frail, By the frost's clinking hammers forged at night, "Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail, Giving a pretty emblem of the day When guitar arms in light shall melt away, And states shall move free limbed, loosed from war's cramping mail.

And now those waterfalls the ebbing river Twice everyday creates on either side Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiver In grass-arched channels to the sun denied; High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, The silvered flats gleam frostily below, Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the glassy tide.

But, crowned in turn by vying seasons three, Their winter halo hath a fuller ring; This glory seems to rest immovably,— The others were too fleet and vanishing; When the hid tide is at its highest flow, O'er marsh and stream one breathless trance of snow With brooding fulness awes and hushes everything.

The sunshine seems blown off by the bleak wind, As pale as formal candles lit by day; Gropes to the sea the river dumb and blind; The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the storm in play, Show pearly breakers combing o'er their lee, White crests as of some just enchanted sea, Checked in their maddest leap and hanging poised midway.

But when the eastern blow, with rain aslant, From mid-sea's prairies green and rolling plains Drives in his wallowing herds of billows gaunt, And the roused Charles remembers in his veins Old Ocean's blood and snaps his gyves of frost, That tyrannous silence on the shores is tost In dreary wreck, and crumbling desolation reigns.

Edgewise or flat, in Druid-like device, With leaden pools between or gullies bare, The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice; No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, Or ashen the close-wedged fields of ice crunch here and there.

But let me turn from fancy-pictured scenes To that whose pastoral calm before me lies: Here nothing harsh or rugged intervenes; The early evening with her misty dyes Smooths off the ravelled edges of the nigh, Relieves the distant with her cooler sky, And tones the landscape down, and soothes the wearied eyes

There gleams my native village, dear to me, Though higher change's waves each day are seen, Whelming fields famed in boyhood's history, Sanding with houses the diminished green; There, in red brick, which softening time defies, Stand square and stiff the Muses' factories; How with my life knit up is every well-known scene!

Flow on, dear river! not alone you flow To outward sight, and through your marshes wind; Fed from the mystic springs of long-ago, Your twin flows silent through my world of mind Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's gray! Before my inner sight ye stretch away, And will forever, though these fleshly eyes grow blind.



A FABLE FOR CRITICS

(Selections)

I. Emerson.

"There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, Is some of it pr—— No, 'tis not even prose; I'm speaking of metres; some poems have welled From those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been excelled; They're not epics, but that doesn't matter a pin, In creating, the only hard thing's to begin; A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak, If you've once found the way you've achieved the grand stroke; In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter Now it is not one thing nor another alone Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, The something pervading, uniting, the whole, The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, So that just in removing this trifle or that, you Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue; Roots, wood, bark, and leaves, singly perfect may be, But, clapt bodge-podge together, they don't make a tree.

"But, to come back to Emerson, (whom by the way, I believe we left waiting,)—his is, we may say, A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t' other the Exchange; Life, nature, lore, God, and affairs of that sort, He looks at as merely ideas; in short, As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, Of such vast extent that our earth's a mere dab in it; Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion, With the quiet precision of science he'll sort em, But you can't help suspecting the whole a post mortem.

II. Bryant.

"There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights, With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Nights. He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation,

(There's no doubt that he stands in supreme iceolation,) Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on— He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on: Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has em, But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, Like being stirred up with the very North Pole.

"He is very nice reading in summer, but inter Nos, we don't want extra freezing in winter; Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is, When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices. But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him, He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities, To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their lime stone and granite.

III. Whinier.

"There is Whinier, whose swelling and vehement heart Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart, And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect, Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing; And his failures arise, (though perhaps he don't know it,) From the very same cause that has made him a poet,— A fervor of mind which knows no separation 'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration, As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing If 'twere I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing; Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection, While, borne with the rush of the metre along, The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, Content with the whirl and delirium of song; Then his grammar's not always correct, nor his rhymes, And he's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes, Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats And can ne'er be repeated again any more Than they could have been carefully plotted before "All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard, Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave When to look but a protest in silence was brave;