II

THORWALD'S LAY

So Bioern went comfortless but for his thought, And by his thought the more discomforted, Till Erle Thurlson kept his Yule-tide feast: And thither came he, called among the rest, Silent, lone-minded, a church-door to mirth; But, ere deep draughts forbade such serious song As the grave Skald might chant nor after blush, Then Eric looked at Thorwald where he sat Mute as a cloud amid the stormy hall, And said: 'O Skald, sing now an olden song, 50 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, and with eyes that looked afar From their still region of perpetual snow, Beyond the little smokes and stirs of men: His head was bowed with gathered flakes of years, As winter bends the sea-foreboding pine, 60 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 70 The wary bowman, matched against his peers, Long doubting, singles yet once more the best. Who is it needs such flawless 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 80 Down to the heart of heart; from these she strips All needless stuff, all sapwood; seasons 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! 90

'The song is old and simple that I sing; But old and simple are despised as cheap, Though hardest to achieve of human things: Good were the days of yore, when men were tried By ring of shields, as now by ring of words; But while the gods are left, and hearts of men, And wide-doored ocean, still the days are good. Still o'er the earth hastes Opportunity, Seeking the hardy soul that seeks for her. Be not abroad, nor deaf with household cares 100 That chatter loudest as they mean the least; Swift-willed is thrice-willed; late means nevermore; Impatient is her foot, nor turns again.' He ceased; upon his bosom sank his beard Sadly, as one who oft had seen her pass Nor stayed her: and forthwith the frothy tide Of interrupted wassail roared along. But Bioern, the son of Heriulf, sat apart Musing, and, with his eyes upon the fire, Saw shapes of arrows, lost as soon as seen. 110 'A ship,' he muttered,'is a winged bridge That leadeth every way to man's desire, And ocean the wide gate to manful luck.' And then with that resolve his heart was bent, Which, like a humming shaft, through many a stripe Of day and night, across the unpathwayed seas Shot the brave prow that cut on Vinland sands The first rune in the Saga of the West.

III

GUDRIDA'S PROPHECY

Four weeks they sailed, a speck in sky-shut seas, Life, where was never life that knew itself, 120 But tumbled lubber-like in blowing whales; Thought, where the like had never been before Since Thought primeval brooded the abyss; Alone as men were never in the world. They saw the icy foundlings of the sea, White cliffs of silence, beautiful by day, Or looming, sudden-perilous, at night In monstrous hush; or sometimes in the dark The waves broke ominous with paly gleams Crushed by the prow in sparkles of cold fire. 130 Then came green stripes of sea that promised land But brought it not, and on the thirtieth day Low in the west were wooded shores like cloud. They shouted as men shout with sudden hope; But Bioern was silent, such strange loss there is Between the dream's fulfilment and the dream, Such sad abatement in the goal attained. Then Gudrida, that was a prophetess, Rapt with strange influence from Atlantis, sang: Her words: the vision was the dreaming shore's. 140

Looms there the New Land; Locked in the shadow Long the gods shut it, Niggards of newness They, the o'er-old.

Little it looks there, Slim as a cloud-streak; It shall fold peoples Even as a shepherd Foldeth his flock. 150

Silent it sleeps now; Great ships shall seek it, Swarming as salmon; Noise of its numbers Two seas shall hear.

Men from the Northland, Men from the Southland, Haste empty-handed; No more than manhood Bring they, and hands. 160

Dark hair and fair hair, Red blood and blue blood, There shall be mingled; Force of the ferment Makes the New Man.

Pick of all kindreds, Kings' blood shall theirs be, Shoots of the eldest Stock upon Midgard, Sons of the poor. 170

Them waits the New Land; They shall subdue it, Leaving their sons' sons Space for the body, Space for the soul.

Leaving their sons' sons All things save song-craft, Plant long in growing, Thrusting its tap-root Deep in the Gone. 180

Here men shall grow up Strong from self-helping; Eyes for the present Bring they as eagles', Blind to the Past.

They shall make over Creed, law, and custom: Driving-men, doughty Builders of empire, Builders of men. 190

Here is no singer; What should they sing of? They, the unresting? Labor is ugly, Loathsome is change.

These the old gods hate, Dwellers in dream-land, Drinking delusion Out of the empty Skull of the Past. 200

These hate the old gods, Warring against them; Fatal to Odin, Here the wolf Fenrir Lieth in wait.

Here the gods' Twilight Gathers, earth-gulfing; Blackness of battle, Fierce till the Old World Flare up in fire. 210

Doubt not, my Northmen; Fate loves the fearless; Fools, when their roof-tree Falls, think it doomsday; Firm stands the sky.

Over the ruin See I the promise; Crisp waves the cornfield, Peace-walled, the homestead Waits open-doored. 220

There lies the New Land; Yours to behold it, Not to possess it; Slowly Fate's perfect Fulness shall come.

Then from your strong loins Seed shall be scattered, Men to the marrow, Wilderness tamers, Walkers of waves. 230

Jealous, the old gods Shut it in shadow, Wisely they ward it, Egg of the serpent, Bane to them all.

Stronger and sweeter New gods shall seek it. Fill it with man-folk Wise for the future, Wise from the past. 240

Here all is all men's, Save only Wisdom; King he that wins her; Him hail they helmsman, Highest of heart.

Might makes no master Here any longer; Sword is not swayer; Here e'en the gods are Selfish no more. 250

Walking the New Earth, Lo, a divine One Greets all men godlike, Calls them his kindred, He, the Divine.

Is it Thor's hammer Rays in his right hand? Weaponless walks he; It is the White Christ, Stronger than Thor. 260

Here shall a realm rise Mighty in manhood; Justice and Mercy Here set a stronghold Safe without spear.

Weak was the Old World, Wearily war-fenced; Out of its ashes, Strong as the morning, Springeth the New. 270

Beauty of promise, Promise of beauty, Safe in the silence Sleep thou, till cometh Light to thy lids!

Thee shall awaken Flame from the furnace, Bath of all brave ones, Cleanser of conscience, Welder of will. 280

Lowly shall love thee, Thee, open-handed! Stalwart shall shield thee, Thee, worth their best blood, Waif of the West!

Then shall come singers, Singing no swan-song, Birth-carols, rather, Meet for the mail child Mighty of bone. 290



MAHMOOD THE IMAGE-BREAKER

Old events have modern meanings; only that survives Of past history which finds kindred in all hearts and lives.

Mahmood once, the idol-breaker, spreader of the Faith, Was at Sumnat tempted sorely, as the legend saith.

In the great pagoda's centre, monstrous and abhorred, Granite on a throne of granite, sat the temple's lord,

Mahmood paused a moment, silenced by the silent face That, with eyes of stone unwavering, awed the ancient place.

Then the Brahmins knelt before him, by his doubt made bold, Pledging for their idol's ransom countless gems and gold.

Gold was yellow dirt to Mahmood, but of precious use, Since from it the roots of power suck a potent juice.

'Were yon stone alone in question, this would please me well,' Mahmood said; 'but, with the block there, I my truth must sell.

'Wealth and rule slip down with Fortune, as her wheel turns round; He who keeps his faith, he only cannot be discrowned.

'Little were a change of station, loss of life or crown, But the wreck were past retrieving if the Man fell down.'

So his iron mace he lifted, smote with might and main, And the idol, on the pavement tumbling, burst in twain.

Luck obeys the downright striker; from the hollow core, Fifty times the Brahmins' offer deluged all the floor.



INVITA MINERVA

The Bardling came where by a river grew The pennoned reeds, that, as the west-wind blew, Gleamed and sighed plaintively, as if they knew What music slept enchanted in each stem, Till Pan should choose some happy one of them, And with wise lips enlife it through and through.

The Bardling thought, 'A pipe is all I need; Once I have sought me out a clear, smooth reed, And shaped it to my fancy, I proceed To breathe such strains as, yonder mid the rocks, The strange youth blows, that tends Admetus' flocks. And all the maidens shall to me pay heed.'

The summer day he spent in questful round, And many a reed he marred, but never found A conjuring-spell to free the imprisoned sound; At last his vainly wearied limbs he laid Beneath a sacred laurel's flickering shade, And sleep about his brain her cobweb wound.

Then strode the mighty Mother through his dreams, Saying: 'The reeds along a thousand streams Are mine, and who is he that plots and schemes To snare the melodies wherewith my breath Sounds through the double pipes of Life and Death, Atoning what to men mad discord seems?

'He seeks not me, but I seek oft in vain For him who shall my voiceful reeds constrain, And make them utter their melodious pain; He flies the immortal gift, for well he knows His life of life must with its overflows Flood the unthankful pipe, nor come again.

'Thou fool, who dost my harmless subjects wrong, 'Tis not the singer's wish that makes the song: The rhythmic beauty wanders dumb, how long, Nor stoops to any daintiest instrument, Till, found its mated lips, their sweet consent Makes mortal breath than Time and Fate more strong.'



THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

I

'Tis a woodland enchanted! By no sadder spirit Than blackbirds and thrushes, That whistle to cheer it All day in the bushes. This woodland is haunted: And in a small clearing, Beyond sight or hearing Of human annoyance, The little fount gushes, 10 First smoothly, then dashes And gurgles and flashes, To the maples and ashes Confiding its joyance; Unconscious confiding, Then, silent and glossy, Slips winding and hiding Through alder-stems mossy, Through gossamer roots Fine as nerves, 20 That tremble, as shoots Through their magnetized curves The allurement delicious Of the water's capricious Thrills, gushes, and swerves.

II

'Tis a woodland enchanted! I am writing no fiction; And this fount, its sole daughter, To the woodland was granted To pour holy water 30 And win benediction; In summer-noon flushes, When all the wood hushes, Blue dragon-flies knitting To and fro in the sun, With sidelong jerk flitting Sink down on the rashes, And, motionless sitting, Hear it bubble and run, Hear its low inward singing, 40 With level wings swinging On green tasselled rushes, To dream in the sun.

III

'Tis a woodland enchanted! The great August noonlight! Through myriad rifts slanted, Leaf and bole thickly sprinkles With flickering gold; There, in warm August gloaming, With quick, silent brightenings, 50 From meadow-lands roaming, The firefly twinkles His fitful heat-lightnings; There the magical moonlight With meek, saintly glory Steeps summit and wold; There whippoorwills plain in the solitudes hoary With lone cries that wander Now hither, now yonder, Like souls doomed of old 60 To a mild purgatory; But through noonlight and moonlight The little fount tinkles Its silver saints'-bells, That no sprite ill-boding May make his abode in Those innocent dells.

IV

'Tis a woodland enchanted! When the phebe scarce whistles Once an hour to his fellow. 70 And, where red lilies flaunted, Balloons from the thistles Tell summer's disasters, The butterflies yellow, As caught in an eddy Of air's silent ocean, Sink, waver, and steady O'er goats'-beard and asters, Like souls of dead flowers, With aimless emotion 80 Still lingering unready To leave their old bowers; And the fount is no dumber, But still gleams and flashes, And gurgles and plashes, To the measure of summer; The butterflies hear it, And spell-bound are holden, Still balancing near it O'er the goats' beard so golden. 90

V

'Tis a woodland enchanted! A vast silver willow, I know not how planted, (This wood is enchanted, And full of surprises.) Stands stemming a billow, A motionless billow Of ankle-deep mosses; Two great roots it crosses To make a round basin. 100 And there the Fount rises; Ah, too pure a mirror For one sick of error To see his sad face in! No dew-drop is stiller In its lupin-leaf setting Than this water moss-bounded; But a tiny sand-pillar From the bottom keeps jetting, And mermaid ne'er sounded 110 Through the wreaths of a shell, Down amid crimson dulses In some cavern of ocean, A melody sweeter Than the delicate pulses, The soft, noiseless metre, The pause and the swell Of that musical motion: I recall it, not see it; Could vision be clearer? 120 Half I'm fain to draw nearer Half tempted to flee it; The sleeping Past wake not, Beware! One forward step take not, Ah! break not That quietude rare! By my step unaffrighted A thrush hops before it, And o'er it 130 A birch hangs delighted, Dipping, dipping, dipping its tremulous hair; Pure as the fountain, once I came to the place, (How dare I draw nearer?) I bent o'er its mirror, And saw a child's face Mid locks of bright gold in it; Yes, pure as this fountain once,— Since, bow much error! 140 Too holy a mirror For the man to behold in it His harsh, bearded countenance!

VI

'Tis a woodland enchanted! Ah, fly unreturning! Yet stay;— 'Tis a woodland enchanted, Where wonderful chances Have sway; Luck flees from the cold one, 150 But leaps to the bold one Half-way; Why should I be daunted? Still the smooth mirror glances, Still the amber sand dances, One look,—then away! O magical glass! Canst keep in thy bosom Shades of leaf and of blossom When summer days pass, 160 So that when thy wave hardens It shapes as it pleases, Unharmed by the breezes, Its fine hanging gardens? Hast those in thy keeping. And canst not uncover, Enchantedly sleeping, The old shade of thy lover? It is there! I have found it! He wakes, the long sleeper! 170 The pool is grown deeper, The sand dance is ending, The white floor sinks, blending With skies that below me Are deepening and bending, And a child's face alone That seems not to know me, With hair that fades golden In the heaven-glow round it, Looks up at my own; 180 Ah, glimpse through the portal That leads to the throne, That opes the child's olden Regions Elysian! Ah, too holy vision For thy skirts to be holden By soiled hand of mortal! It wavers, it scatters, 'Tis gone past recalling! A tear's sudden falling 190 The magic cup shatters, Breaks the spell of the waters, And the sand cone once more, With a ceaseless renewing, Its dance is pursuing On the silvery floor, O'er and o'er, With a noiseless and ceaseless renewing.

VII

'Tis a woodland enchanted! If you ask me, Where is it? 200 I can but make answer, ''Tis past my disclosing;' Not to choice is it granted By sure paths to visit The still pool enclosing Its blithe little dancer; But in some day, the rarest Of many Septembers, When the pulses of air rest, And all things lie dreaming 210 In drowsy haze steaming From the wood's glowing embers, Then, sometimes, unheeding, And asking not whither, By a sweet inward leading My feet are drawn thither, And, looking with awe in the magical mirror, I see through my tears, Half doubtful of seeing, The face unperverted, 220 The warm golden being Of a child of five years; And spite of the mists and the error. And the days overcast, Can feel that I walk undeserted, But forever attended By the glad heavens that bended O'er the innocent past; Toward fancy or truth Doth the sweet vision win me? 230 Dare I think that I cast In the fountain of youth The fleeting reflection Of some bygone perfection That still lingers in me?



YUSSOUF

A stranger came one night to Yussouf's tent, Saying, 'Behold one outcast and in dread, Against whose life the bow of power is bent, Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head; I come to thee for shelter and for food, To Yussouf, called through all our tribes "The Good."

'This tent is mine,' said Yussouf, 'but no more Than it is God's come in and be at peace; Freely shall thou partake of all my store As I of His who buildeth over these Our tents his glorious roof of night and day, And at whose door none ever yet heard Nay.'

So Yussouf entertained his guest that night, And, waking him ere day, said: 'Here is gold; My swiftest horse is saddled for thy flight; Depart before the prying day grow bold.' As one lamp lights another, nor grows less, So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.

That inward light the stranger's face made grand, Which shines from all self-conquest; kneeling low, He bowed his forehead upon Yussouf's hand, Sobbing: 'O Sheik, I cannot leave thee so; I will repay thee; all this thou hast done Unto that Ibrahim who slew thy son!'

'Take thrice the gold,' said Yussouf 'for with thee Into the desert, never to return, My one black thought shall ride away from me; First-born, for whom by day and night I yearn, Balanced and just are all of God's decrees; Thou art avenged, my first-born, sleep in peace!'



THE DARKENED MIND

The fire is turning clear and blithely, Pleasantly whistles the winter wind; We are about thee, thy friends and kindred, On us all flickers the firelight kind; There thou sittest in thy wonted corner Lone and awful in thy darkened mind.

There thou sittest; now and then thou moanest; Thou dost talk with what we cannot see, Lookest at us with an eye so doubtful, It doth put us very far from thee; There thou sittest; we would fain be nigh thee, But we know that it can never be.

We can touch thee, still we are no nearer; Gather round thee, still thou art alone; The wide chasm of reason is between us; Thou confutest kindness with a moan; We can speak to thee, and thou canst answer, Like two prisoners through a wall of stone.

Hardest heart would call it very awful When thou look'st at us and seest—oh, what? If we move away, thou sittest gazing With those vague eyes at the selfsame spot, And thou mutterest, thy hands thou wringest, Seeing something,—us thou seest not.

Strange it is that, in this open brightness, Thou shouldst sit in such a narrow cell; Strange it is that thou shouldst be so lonesome Where those are who love thee all so well; Not so much of thee is left among us As the hum outliving the hushed bell.



WHAT RABBI JEHOSHA SAID

Rabbi Jehosha used to say That God made angels every day, Perfect as Michael and the rest First brooded in creation's nest, Whose only office was to cry Hosanna! once, and then to die; Or rather, with Life's essence blent, To be led home from banishment.

Rabbi Jehosha had the skill To know that Heaven is in God's will; And doing that, though for a space One heart-beat long, may win a grace As full of grandeur and of glow As Princes of the Chariot know.

'Twere glorious, no doubt, to be One of the strong-winged Hierarchy, To burn with Seraphs, or to shine With Cherubs, deathlessly divine; Yet I, perhaps, poor earthly clod, Could I forget myself in God, Could I but find my nature's clue Simply as birds and blossoms do, And but for one rapt moment know 'Tis Heaven must come, not we must go, Should win my place as near the throne As the pearl-angel of its zone. And God would listen mid the throng For my one breath of perfect song, That, in its simple human way, Said all the Host of Heaven could say.



ALL-SAINTS

One feast, of holy days the crest, I, though no Churchman, love to keep, All-Saints,—the unknown good that rest In God's still memory folded deep; The bravely dumb that did their deed, And scorned to blot it with a name, Men of the plain heroic breed, That loved Heaven's silence more than fame.

Such lived not in the past alone, But thread to-day the unheeding street, And stairs to Sin and Famine known Sing with the welcome of their feet; The den they enter grows a shrine, The grimy sash an oriel burns, Their cup of water warms like wine, Their speech is filled from heavenly urns.

About their brows to me appears An aureole traced in tenderest light, The rainbow-gleam of smiles through tears In dying eyes, by them made bright, Of souls that shivered on the edge Of that chill ford repassed no more, And in their mercy felt the pledge And sweetness of the farther shore.



A WINTER-EVENING HYMN TO MY FIRE

I

Beauty on my hearth-stone blazing! To-night the triple Zoroaster Shall my prophet be and master; To-night will I pure Magian be, Hymns to thy sole honor raising, While thou leapest fast and faster, Wild with self-delighted glee, Or sink'st low and glowest faintly As an aureole still and saintly, Keeping cadence to my praising 10 Thee! still thee! and only thee!

II

Elfish daughter of Apollo! Thee, from thy father stolen and bound To serve in Vulcan's clangorous smithy, Prometheus (primal Yankee) found, And, when he had tampered with thee, (Too confiding little maid!) In a reed's precarious hollow To our frozen earth conveyed: For he swore I know not what; 20 Endless ease should be thy lot, Pleasure that should never falter, Lifelong play, and not a duty Save to hover o'er the altar, Vision of celestial beauty, Fed with precious woods and spices; Then, perfidious! having got Thee in the net of his devices, Sold thee into endless slavery, Made thee a drudge to boil the pot, 30 Thee, Helios' daughter, who dost bear His likeness in thy golden hair; Thee, by nature wild and wavery, Palpitating, evanescent As the shade of Dian's crescent, Life, motion, gladness, everywhere!

III

Fathom deep men bury thee In the furnace dark and still. There, with dreariest mockery, 39 Making thee eat, against thy will, Blackest Pennsylvanian stone; But thou dost avenge thy doom, For, from out thy catacomb, Day and night thy wrath is blown In a withering simoom, And, adown that cavern drear, Thy black pitfall in the floor, Staggers the lusty antique cheer, Despairing, and is seen no more!

IV

Elfish I may rightly name thee; 50 We enslave, but cannot tame thee; With fierce snatches, now and then, Thou pluckest at thy right again, And thy down-trod instincts savage To stealthy insurrection creep While thy wittol masters sleep, And burst in undiscerning ravage: Then how thou shak'st thy bacchant locks! While brazen pulses, far and near, Throb thick and thicker, wild with fear 60 And dread conjecture, till the drear Disordered clangor every steeple rocks!

V

But when we make a friend of thee, And admit thee to the hall On our nights of festival, Then, Cinderella, who could see In thee the kitchen's stunted thrall? Once more a Princess lithe and tan, Thou dancest with a whispering tread, While the bright marvel of thy head 70 In crinkling gold floats all abroad, And gloriously dost vindicate The legend of thy lineage great, Earth-exiled daughter of the Pythian god! Now in the ample chimney-place, To honor thy acknowledged race, We crown thee high with laurel good, Thy shining father's sacred wood, Which, guessing thy ancestral right, Sparkles and snaps its dumb delight, 80 And, at thy touch, poor outcast one, Feels through its gladdened fibres go The tingle and thrill and vassal glow Of instincts loyal to the sun.

VI

O thou of home the guardian Lar, And, when our earth hath wandered far, Into the cold, and deep snow covers The walks of our New England lovers, Their sweet secluded evening-star! 'Twas with thy rays the English Muse 90 Ripened her mild domestic hues; 'Twas by thy flicker that she conned The fireside wisdom that enrings With light from heaven familiar things; By thee she found the homely faith In whose mild eyes thy comfort stay'th When Death, extinguishing his torch, Gropes for the latch-string in the porch; The love that wanders not beyond His earliest nest, but sits and sings 100 While children smooth his patient wings; Therefore with thee I love to read Our brave old poets; at thy touch how stirs Life in the withered words: how swift recede Time's shadows; and how glows again Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, As when upon the anvils of the brain It glittering lay, cyclopically wrought By the fast-throbbing hammers of the poet's thought! Thou murmurest, too, divinely stirred, 110 The aspirations unattained, The rhythms so rathe and delicate, They bent and strained And broke, beneath the sombre weight Of any airiest mortal word.

VII

What warm protection dost thou bend Round curtained talk of friend with friend, While the gray snow-storm, held aloof, To softest outline rounds the roof, Or the rude North with baffled strain 120 Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane! Now the kind nymph to Bacchus born By Morpheus' daughter, she that seems Gifted opon her natal morn By him with fire, by her with dreams, Nicotia, dearer to the Muse Than all the grape's bewildering juice, We worship, unforbid of thee; And, as her incense floats and curls In airy spires and wayward whirls, 130 Or poises on its tremulous stalk A flower of frailest revery, So winds and loiters, idly free, The current of unguided talk, Now laughter-rippled, and now caught In smooth, dark pools of deeper thought. Meanwhile thou mellowest every word, A sweetly unobtrusive third; For thou hast magic beyond wine, To unlock natures each to each; 140 The unspoken thought thou canst divine; Thou fill'st the pauses of the speech With whispers that to dream-land reach And frozen fancy-springs unchain In Arctic outskirts of the brain: Sun of all inmost confidences, To thy rays doth the heart unclose Its formal calyx of pretences, That close against rude day's offences, And open its shy midnight rose! 150

VIII

Thou holdest not the master key With which thy Sire sets free the mystic gates Of Past and Future: not for common fates Do they wide open fling, And, with a far heard ring, Swing back their willing valves melodiously; Only to ceremonial days, And great processions of imperial song That set the world at gaze, Doth such high privilege belong; 160 But thou a postern-door canst ope To humbler chambers of the selfsame palace Where Memory lodges, and her sister Hope, Whose being is but as a crystal chalice Which, with her various mood, the elder fills Of joy or sorrow, So coloring as she wills With hues of yesterday the unconscious morrow.

IX

Thou sinkest, and my fancy sinks with thee: For thee I took the idle shell, 170 And struck the unused chords again, But they are gone who listened well; Some are in heaven, and all are far from me: Even as I sing, it turns to pain, And with vain tears my eyelids throb and swell: Enough; I come not of the race That hawk their sorrows in the market-place. Earth stops the ears I best had loved to please; Then break, ye untuned chords, or rust in peace! As if a white-haired actor should come back 180 Some midnight to the theatre void and black, And there rehearse his youth's great part Mid thin applauses of the ghosts. So seems it now: ye crowd upon my heart, And I bow down in silence, shadowy hosts!



FANCY'S CASUISTRY

How struggles with the tempest's swells That warning of tumultuous bells! The fire is loose! and frantic knells Throb fast and faster, As tower to tower confusedly tells News of disaster.

But on my far-off solitude No harsh alarums can intrude; The terror comes to me subdued And charmed by distance, To deepen the habitual mood Of my existence.

Are those, I muse, the Easter chimes? And listen, weaving careless rhymes While the loud city's griefs and crimes Pay gentle allegiance To the fine quiet that sublimes These dreamy regions.

And when the storm o'erwhelms the shore, I watch entranced as, o'er and o'er, The light revolves amid the roar So still and saintly, Now large and near, now more and more Withdrawing faintly.

This, too, despairing sailors see Flash out the breakers 'neath their lee In sudden snow, then lingeringly Wane tow'rd eclipse, While through the dark the shuddering sea Gropes for the ships.

And is it right, this mood of mind That thus, in revery enshrined, Can in the world mere topics find For musing stricture, Seeing the life of humankind Only as picture?

The events in line of battle go; In vain for me their trumpets blow As unto him that lieth low In death's dark arches, And through the sod hears throbbing slow The muffled marches.

O Duty, am I dead to thee In this my cloistered ecstasy, In this lone shallop on the sea That drifts tow'rd Silence? And are those visioned shores I see But sirens' islands?

My Dante frowns with lip-locked mien, As who would say, ''Tis those, I ween, Whom lifelong armor-chafe makes lean That win the laurel;' But where is Truth? What does it mean, The world-old quarrel?

Such questionings are idle air: Leave what to do and what to spare To the inspiring moment's care, Nor ask for payment Of fame or gold, but just to wear Unspotted raiment.



TO MR. JOHN BARTLETT

WHO HAD SENT ME A SEVEN-POUND TROUT

Fit for an Abbot of Theleme, For the whole Cardinals' College, or The Pope himself to see in dream Before his lenten vision gleam. He lies there, the sogdologer!

His precious flanks with stars besprent, Worthy to swim in Castaly! The friend by whom such gifts are sent, For him shall bumpers full be spent, His health! be Luck his fast ally!

I see him trace the wayward brook Amid the forest mysteries, Where at their shades shy aspens look. Or where, with many a gurgling crook, It croons its woodland histories.

I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend,— (Oh, stew him, Ann, as 'twere your friend, With amorous solicitude!)

I see him step with caution due, Soft as if shod with moccasins, Grave as in church, for who plies you, Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew From all our common stock o' sins.

The unerring fly I see him cast, That as a rose-leaf falls as soft, A flash! a whirl! he has him fast! We tyros, how that struggle last Confuses and appalls us oft.

Unfluttered he: calm as the sky Looks on our tragi-comedies, This way and that he lets him fly, A sunbeam-shuttle, then to die Lands him, with cool aplomb, at ease.

The friend who gave our board such gust, Life's care may he o'erstep it half, And, when Death hooks him, as he must, He'll do it handsomely, I trust, And John H—— write his epitaph!

Oh, born beneath the Fishes' sign, Of constellations happiest, May he somewhere with Walton dine, May Horace send him Massic wine, And Burns Scotch drink, the nappiest!

And when they come his deeds to weigh, And how he used the talents his, One trout-scale in the scales he'll lay (If trout had scales), and 'twill outsway The wrong side of the balances.



ODE TO HAPPINESS

Spirit, that rarely comest now And only to contrast my gloom, Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom A moment on some autumn bough That, with the spurn of their farewell Sheds its last leaves,—thou once didst dwell With me year-long, and make intense To boyhood's wisely vacant days Their fleet but all-sufficing grace Of trustful inexperience, 10 While soul could still transfigure sense, And thrill, as with love's first caress, At life's mere unexpectedness. Days when my blood would leap and run As full of sunshine as a breeze, Or spray tossed up by Summer seas That doubts if it be sea or sun! Days that flew swiftly like the band That played in Grecian games at strife, And passed from eager hand to hand 20 The onward-dancing torch of life!

Wing-footed! thou abid'st with him Who asks it not; but he who hath Watched o'er the waves thy waning path, Shall nevermore behold returning Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning! Thou first reveal'st to us thy face Turned o'er the shoulder's parting grace, A moment glimpsed, then seen no more,— Thou whose swift footsteps we can trace 30 Away from every mortal door.

Nymph of the unreturning feet, How may I win thee back? But no, I do thee wrong to call thee so; 'Tis I am changed, not thou art fleet: The man thy presence feels again, Not in the blood, but in the brain, Spirit, that lov'st the upper air Serene and passionless and rare, Such as on mountain heights we find 40 And wide-viewed uplands of the mind; Or such as scorns to coil and sing Round any but the eagle's wing Of souls that with long upward beat Have won an undisturbed retreat Where, poised like winged victories, They mirror in relentless eyes. The life broad-basking 'neath their feet,— Man ever with his Now at strife, Pained with first gasps of earthly air, 50 Then praying Death the last to spare, Still fearful of the ampler life.

Not unto them dost thou consent Who, passionless, can lead at ease A life of unalloyed content, A life like that of land-locked seas, Who feel no elemental gush Of tidal forces, no fierce rush Of storm deep-grasping scarcely spent 'Twixt continent and continent. 60 Such quiet souls have never known Thy truer inspiration, thou Who lov'st to feel upon thy brow Spray from the plunging vessel thrown Grazing the tusked lee shore, the cliff That o'er the abrupt gorge holds its breath, Where the frail hair-breadth of an if Is all that sunders life and death: These, too, are cared for, and round these Bends her mild crook thy sister Peace; 70 These in unvexed dependence lie, Each 'neath his strip of household sky; O'er these clouds wander, and the blue Hangs motionless the whole day through; Stars rise for them, and moons grow large And lessen in such tranquil wise As joys and sorrows do that rise Within their nature's sheltered marge; Their hours into each other flit Like the leaf-shadows of the vine 80 And fig-tree under which they sit, And their still lives to heaven incline With an unconscious habitude, Unhistoried as smokes that rise From happy hearths and sight elude In kindred blue of morning skies.

Wayward! when once we feel thy lack, 'Tis worse than vain to woo thee back! Yet there is one who seems to be Thine elder sister, in whose eyes 90 A faint far northern light will rise Sometimes, and bring a dream of thee; She is not that for which youth hoped, But she hath blessings all her own, Thoughts pure as lilies newly oped, And faith to sorrow given alone: Almost I deem that it is thou Come back with graver matron brow, With deepened eyes and bated breath, Like one that somewhere hath met Death: 100 But 'No,' she answers, 'I am she Whom the gods love, Tranquillity; That other whom you seek forlorn Half earthly was; but I am born Of the immortals, and our race Wears still some sadness on its face: He wins me late, but keeps me long, Who, dowered with every gift of passion, In that fierce flame can forge and fashion Of sin and self the anchor strong; 110 Can thence compel the driving force Of daily life's mechanic course, Nor less the nobler energies Of needful toil and culture wise; Whose soul is worth the tempter's lure, Who can renounce, and yet endure, To him I come, not lightly wooed, But won by silent fortitude.'



VILLA FRANCA

1859

Wait a little: do we not wait? Louis Napoleon is not Fate, Francis Joseph is not Time; There's One hath swifter feet than Crime; Cannon-parliaments settle naught; Venice is Austria's,—whose is Thought? Minie is good, but, spite of change, Gutenberg's gun has the longest range. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever.

Wait, we say: our years are long; Men are weak, out Man is strong; Since the stars first curved their rings, We have looked on many things: Great wars come and great wars go, Wolf-tracks light on polar snow; We shall see him come and gone, This second-hand Napoleon. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever.

We saw the elder Corsican, And Clotho muttered as she span, While crowned lackeys bore the train, Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne: 'Sister, stint not length of thread! Sister, stay the scissors dread! On Saint Helen's granite Weak, Hark, the vulture whets his beak!' Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever.

The Bonapartes, we know their bees That wade in honey red to the knees; Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound In dreamless garners underground: We know false glory's spendthrift race Pawning nations for feathers and lace; It may be short, it may be long, ''Tis reckoning-day!' sneers unpaid Wrong. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever.

The Cock that wears the Eagle's skin Can promise what he ne'er could win; Slavery reaped for fine words sown, System for all, and rights for none, Despots atop, a wild clan below, Such is the Gaul from long ago; Wash the black from the Ethiop's face, Wash the past out of man or race! Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever.

'Neath Gregory's throne a spider swings, And snares the people for the kings; 'Luther is dead; old quarrels pass: The stake's black scars are healed with grass;' So dreamers prate; did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive? But Luther's broom is left, and eyes Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent headsman waits forever.

Smooth sails the ship of either realm, Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm; We look down the depths, and mark Silent workers in the dark Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs, Old instincts hardening to new beliefs; Patience a little; learn to wait; Hours are long on the clock of Fate. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! Darkness is strong, and so is Sin, But surely God endures forever!



THE MINER

Down 'mid the tangled roots of things That coil about the central fire, I seek for that which giveth wings To stoop, not soar, to my desire.

Sometimes I hear, as 'twere a sigh, The sea's deep yearning far above, 'Thou hast the secret not,' I cry, 'In deeper deeps is hid my Love.'

They think I burrow from the sun, In darkness, all alone, and weak; Such loss were gain if He were won, For 'tis the sun's own Sun I seek.

'The earth,' they murmur, 'is the tomb That vainly sought his life to prison; Why grovel longer in the gloom? He is not here; he hath arisen.'

More life for me where he hath lain Hidden while ye believed him dead, Than in cathedrals cold and vain, Built on loose sands of It is said.

My search is for the living gold; Him I desire who dwells recluse, And not his image worn and old, Day-servant of our sordid use.

If him I find not, yet I find The ancient joy of cell and church, The glimpse, the surety undefined, The unquenched ardor of the search.

Happier to chase a flying goal Than to sit counting laurelled gains, To guess the Soul within the soul Than to be lord of what remains.

Hide still, best Good, in subtile wise, Beyond my nature's utmost scope; Be ever absent from mine eyes To be twice present in my hope!



GOLD EGG: A DREAM-FANTASY

HOW A STUDENT IN SEARCH OF THE BEAUTIFUL FELL ASLEEP IN DRESDEN OVER HERR PROFESSOR DOCTOR VISCHER'S WISSENSCHAFT DES SCHOeNEN, AND WHAT CAME THEREOF

I swam with undulation soft, Adrift on Vischer's ocean, And, from my cockboat up aloft, Sent down my mental plummet oft In hope to reach a notion.

But from the metaphysic sea No bottom was forthcoming, And all the while (how drearily!) In one eternal note of B My German stove kept humming. 10

'What's Beauty?' mused I; 'is it told By synthesis? analysis? Have you not made us lead of gold? To feed your crucible, not sold Our temple's sacred chalices?'

Then o'er my senses came a change; My book seemed all traditions, Old legends of profoundest range, Diablery, and stories strange Of goblins, elves, magicians. 20

Old gods in modern saints I found, Old creeds in strange disguises; I thought them safely underground, And here they were, all safe and sound, Without a sign of phthisis.

Truth was, my outward eyes were closed, Although I did not know it; Deep into dream-land I had dozed, And thus was happily transposed From proser into poet. 30

So what I read took flesh and blood, And turned to living creatures: The words were but the dingy bud That bloomed, like Adam, from the mud, To human forms and features.

I saw how Zeus was lodged once more By Baucis and Philemon; The text said, 'Not alone of yore, But every day, at every door Knocks still the masking Demon.' 40

DAIMON 'twas printed in the book And, as I read it slowly, The letters stirred and changed, and took Jove's stature, the Olympian look Of painless melancholy.

He paused upon the threshold worn: 'With coin I cannot pay you; Yet would I fain make some return; The gift for cheapness do not spurn, Accept this hen, I pray you. 50

'Plain feathers wears my Hemera, And has from ages olden; She makes her nest in common hay, And yet, of all the birds that lay, Her eggs alone are golden.'

He turned, and could no more be seen; Old Bancis stared a moment, Then tossed poor Partlet on the green, And with a tone, half jest, half spleen, Thus made her housewife's comment: 60

'The stranger had a queerish face, His smile was hardly pleasant, And, though he meant it for a grace, Yet this old hen of barnyard race Was but a stingy present.

'She's quite too old for laying eggs, Nay, even to make a soup of; One only needs to see her legs,— You might as well boil down the pegs I made the brood-hen's coop of! 70

'Some eighteen score of such do I Raise every year, her sisters; Go, in the woods your fortunes try, All day for one poor earthworm pry, And scratch your toes to blisters!'

Philemon found the rede was good, And, turning on the poor hen, He clapt his hands, and stamped, and shooed, Hunting the exile tow'rd the wood, To house with snipe and moorhen. 80

A poet saw and cried: 'Hold! hold! What are you doing, madman? Spurn you more wealth than can be told, The fowl that lays the eggs of gold, Because she's plainly clad, man?'

To him Philemon: 'I'll not balk Thy will with any shackle; Wilt add a harden to thy walk? There! take her without further talk: You're both but fit to cackle!' 90

But scarce the poet touched the bird, It swelled to stature regal; And when her cloud-wide wings she stirred, A whisper as of doom was heard, 'Twas Jove's bolt-bearing eagle.

As when from far-off cloud-bergs springs A crag, and, hurtling under, From cliff to cliff the rumor flings, So she from flight-foreboding wings Shook out a murmurous thunder. 100

She gripped the poet to her breast, And ever, upward soaring, Earth seemed a new moon in the west, And then one light among the rest Where squadrons lie at mooring.

How tell to what heaven-hallowed seat The eagle bent his courses? The waves that on its bases beat, The gales that round it weave and fleet, Are life's creative forces. 110

Here was the bird's primeval nest, High on a promontory Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest To brood new aeons 'neath her breast, The future's unfledged glory.

I know not how, but I was there All feeling, hearing, seeing; It was not wind that stirred my hair But living breath, the essence rare Of unembodied being. 120

And in the nest an egg of gold Lay soft in self-made lustre, Gazing whereon, what depths untold Within, what marvels manifold, Seemed silently to muster!

Daily such splendors to confront Is still to me and you sent? It glowed as when Saint Peter's front, Illumed, forgets its stony wont, And seems to throb translucent. 130

One saw therein the life of man, (Or so the poet found it,) The yolk and white, conceive who can, Were the glad earth, that, floating, span In the glad heaven around it.

I knew this as one knows in dream, Where no effects to causes Are chained as in our work-day scheme, And then was wakened by a scream That seemed to come from Baucis. 140

'Bless Zeus!' she cried, 'I'm safe below!' First pale, then red as coral; And I, still drowsy, pondered slow, And seemed to find, but hardly know, Something like this for moral.

Each day the world is born anew For him who takes it rightly; Not fresher that which Adam knew, Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew Entranced Arcadia nightly. 150

Rightly? That's simply: 'tis to see Some substance casts these shadows Which we call Life and History, That aimless seem to chase and flee Like wind-gleams over meadows.

Simply? That's nobly: 'tis to know That God may still be met with, Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow These senses fine, this brain aglow, To grovel and forget with. 160

Beauty, Herr Doctor, trust in me, No chemistry will win you; Charis still rises from the sea: If you can't find her, might it be Because you seek within you?



A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND

Alike I hate to be your debtor, Or write a mere perfunctory letter; For letters, so it seems to me, Our careless quintessence should be, Our real nature's truant play When Consciousness looks t'other way; Not drop by drop, with watchful skill, Gathered in Art's deliberate still, But life's insensible completeness Got as the ripe grape gets its sweetness, 10 As if it had a way to fuse The golden sunlight into juice. Hopeless my mental pump I try, The boxes hiss, the tube is dry; As those petroleum wells that spout Awhile like M.C.'s, then give out, My spring, once full as Arethusa, Is a mere bore as dry's Creusa; And yet you ask me why I'm glum, And why my graver Muse is dumb. 20 Ah me! I've reasons manifold Condensed in one,—I'm getting old!

When life, once past its fortieth year, Wheels up its evening hemisphere, The mind's own shadow, which the boy Saw onward point to hope and joy, Shifts round, irrevocably set Tow'rd morning's loss and vain regret, And, argue with it as we will, The clock is unconverted still. 30

'But count the gains,' I hear you say, 'Which far the seeming loss out-weigh; Friendships built firm 'gainst flood and wind On rock foundations of the mind; Knowledge instead of scheming hope; For wild adventure, settled scope; Talents, from surface-ore profuse, Tempered and edged to tools for use; Judgment, for passion's headlong whirls; Old sorrows crystalled into pearls; 40 Losses by patience turned to gains, Possessions now, that once were pains; Joy's blossom gone, as go it must, To ripen seeds of faith and trust; Why heed a snow-flake on the roof If fire within keep Age aloof, Though blundering north-winds push and strain With palms benumbed against the pane?'

My dear old Friend, you're very wise; We always are with others' eyes, 50 And see so clear! (our neighbor's deck on) What reef the idiot's sure to wreck on; Folks when they learn how life has quizzed 'em Are fain to make a shift with Wisdom, And, finding she nor breaks nor bends, Give her a letter to their friends. Draw passion's torrent whoso will Through sluices smooth to turn a mill, And, taking solid toll of grist, Forget the rainbow in the mist, 60 The exulting leap, the aimless haste Scattered in iridescent waste; Prefer who likes the sure esteem To cheated youth's midsummer dream, When every friend was more than Damon, Each quicksand safe to build a fame on; Believe that prudence snug excels Youth's gross of verdant spectacles, Through which earth's withered stubble seen Looks autumn-proof as painted green,— 70 I side with Moses 'gainst the masses, Take you the drudge, give me the glasses! And, for your talents shaped with practice, Convince me first that such the fact is; Let whoso likes be beat, poor fool, On life's hard stithy to a tool, Be whoso will a ploughshare made, Let me remain a jolly blade!

What's Knowledge, with her stocks and lands, To gay Conjecture's yellow strands? 80 What's watching her slow flock's increase To ventures for the golden fleece? What her deep ships, safe under lee, To youth's light craft, that drinks the sea, For Flying Islands making sail, And failing where 'tis gain to fail? Ah me! Experience (so we're told), Time's crucible, turns lead to gold; Yet what's experience won but dross, Cloud-gold transmuted to our loss? 90 What but base coin the best event To the untried experiment!

'Twas an old couple, says the poet, That lodged the gods and did not know it; Youth sees and knows them as they were Before Olympus' top was bare; From Swampscot's flats his eye divine Sees Venus rocking on the brine, With lucent limbs, that somehow scatter a Charm that turns Doll to Cleopatra; 100 Bacchus (that now is scarce induced To give Eld's lagging blood a boost), With cymbals' clang and pards to draw him, Divine as Ariadne saw him, Storms through Youth's pulse with all his train And wins new Indies in his brain; Apollo (with the old a trope, A sort of finer Mister Pope), Apollo—but the Muse forbids: At his approach cast down thy lids, 110 And think it joy enough to hear Far off his arrows singing clear; He knows enough who silent knows The quiver chiming as he goes; He tells too much who e'er betrays The shining Archer's secret ways.

Dear Friend, you're right and I am wrong; My quibbles are not worth a song, And I sophistically tease My fancy sad to tricks like these. 120 I could not cheat you if I would; You know me and my jesting mood, Mere surface-foam, for pride concealing The purpose of my deeper feeling. I have not spilt one drop of joy Poured in the senses of the boy, Nor Nature fails my walks to bless With all her golden inwardness; And as blind nestlings, unafraid, Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade 130 By which their downy dream is stirred, Taking it for the mother-bird, So, when God's shadow, which is light, Unheralded, by day or night, My wakening instincts falls across, Silent as sunbeams over moss, In my heart's nest half-conscious things Stir with a helpless sense of wings, Lift themselves up, and tremble long With premonitions sweet of song. 140

Be patient, and perhaps (who knows?) These may be winged one day like those; If thrushes, close-embowered to sing, Pierced through with June's delicious sting; If swallows, their half-hour to run Star-breasted in the setting sun. At first they're but the unfledged proem, Or songless schedule of a poem; When from the shell they're hardly dry If some folks thrust them forth, must I? 150

But let me end with a comparison Never yet hit upon by e'er a son Of our American Apollo, (And there's where I shall beat them hollow, If he indeed's no courtly St. John, But, as West said, a Mohawk Injun.) A poem's like a cruise for whales: Through untried seas the hunter sails, His prow dividing waters known To the blue iceberg's hulk alone; 160 At last, on farthest edge of day, He marks the smoky puff of spray; Then with bent oars the shallop flies To where the basking quarry lies; Then the excitement of the strife, The crimsoned waves,—ah, this is life!

But, the dead plunder once secured And safe beside the vessel moored, All that had stirred the blood before Is so much blubber, nothing more, 170 (I mean no pun, nor image so Mere sentimental verse, you know,) And all is tedium, smoke, and soil, In trying out the noisome oil.

Yes, this is life! And so the bard Through briny deserts, never scarred Since Noah's keel, a subject seeks, And lies upon the watch for weeks; That once harpooned and helpless lying, What follows is but weary trying. 180

Now I've a notion, if a poet Beat up for themes, his verse will show it; I wait for subjects that hunt me, By day or night won't let me be, And hang about me like a curse, Till they have made me into verse, From line to line my fingers tease Beyond my knowledge, as the bees Build no new cell till those before With limpid summer-sweet run o'er; 190 Then, if I neither sing nor shine, Is it the subject's fault, or mine?



AN EMBER PICTURE

How strange are the freaks of memory! The lessons of life we forget, While a trifle, a trick of color, In the wonderful web is set,—

Set by some mordant of fancy, And, spite of the wear and tear Of time or distance or trouble, Insists on its right to be there.

A chance had brought us together; Our talk was of matters-of-course; We were nothing, one to the other, But a short half-hour's resource.

We spoke of French acting and actors, And their easy, natural way: Of the weather, for it was raining, As we drove home from the play.

We debated the social nothings We bore ourselves so to discuss; The thunderous rumors of battle Were silent the while for us.

Arrived at her door, we left her With a drippingly hurried adieu, And our wheels went crunching the gravel Of the oak-darkened avenue.

As we drove away through the shadow, The candle she held in the door From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree-trunk Flashed fainter, and flashed no more;—

Flashed fainter, then wholly faded Before we had passed the wood; But the light of the face behind it Went with me and stayed for good.

The vision of scarce a moment, And hardly marked at the time, It comes unbidden to haunt me, Like a scrap of ballad-rhyme.

Had she beauty? Well, not what they call so; You may find a thousand as fair; And yet there's her face in my memory With no special claim to be there.

As I sit sometimes in the twilight, And call back to life in the coals Old faces and hopes and fancies Long buried, (good rest to their souls!)

Her face shines out in the embers; I see her holding the light, And hear the crunch of the gravel And the sweep of the rain that night.

'Tis a face that can never grow older, That never can part with its gleam, 'Tis a gracious possession forever, For is it not all a dream?



TO H.W.L.

ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1867

I need not praise the sweetness of his song, Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides along, Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.

With loving breath of all the winds his name Is blown about the world, but to his friends A sweeter secret hides behind his fame, And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim To murmur a God bless you! and there ends.

As I muse backward up the checkered years Wherein so much was given, so much was lost, Blessings in both kinds, such as cheapen tears,— But hush! this is not for profaner ears; Let them drink molten pearls nor dream the cost.

Some suck up poison from a sorrow's core, As naught but nightshade grew upon earth's ground; Love turned all his to heart's-ease, and the more Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound.

Even as a wind-waved fountain's swaying shade Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot with sun, So through his trial faith translucent rayed Till darkness, halt disnatured so, betrayed A heart of sunshine that would fain o'errun.

Surely if skill in song the shears may stay And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss, If our poor life be lengthened by a lay, He shall not go, although his presence may, And the next age in praise shall double this.

Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet As gracious natures find his song to be; May Age steal on with softly-cadenced feet Falling in music, as for him were meet Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he!



THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY

'Come forth!' my catbird calls to me, 'And hear me sing a cavatina That, in this old familiar tree, Shall hang a garden of Alcina.

'These buttercups shall brim with wine Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic; May not New England be divine? My ode to ripening summer classic?

'Or, if to me you will not hark, By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing Till all the alder-coverts dark Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing.

'Come out beneath the unmastered sky, With its emancipating spaces, And learn to sing as well as I, Without premeditated graces.

'What boot your many-volumed gains, Those withered leaves forever turning, To win, at best, for all your pains, A nature mummy-wrapt to learning?

'The leaves wherein true wisdom lies On living trees the sun are drinking; Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies, Grew not so beautiful by thinking.

'"Come out!" with me the oriole cries, Escape the demon that pursues you: And, hark, the cuckoo weather-wise, Still hiding farther onward, wooes you.'

'Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, Hast poured from that syringa thicket The quaintly discontinuous lays To which I hold a season-ticket.

'A season-ticket cheaply bought With a dessert of pilfered berries, And who so oft my soul hast caught With morn and evening voluntaries,

'Deem me not faithless, if all day Among my dusty books I linger, No pipe, like thee, for June to play With fancy-led, half-conscious finger.

'A bird is singing in my brain And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain Fed with the sap of old romances.

'I ask no ampler skies than those His magic music rears above me, No falser friends, no truer foes,— And does not Dona Clara love me?

'Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, Then silence deep with breathless stars, And overhead a white hand flashing.

'O music of all moods and climes, Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, Where still, between the Christian chimes, The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly!

'O life borne lightly in the hand, For friend or foe with grace Castilian! O valley safe in Fancy's land, Not tramped to mud yet by the million!

'Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale To his, my singer of all weathers, My Calderon, my nightingale, My Arab soul in Spanish feathers.

'Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, And still, God knows, in purgatory, Give its best sweetness to all song, To Nature's self her better glory.'



IN THE TWILIGHT

Men say the sullen instrument, That, from the Master's bow, With pangs of joy or woe, Feels music's soul through every fibre sent, Whispers the ravished strings More than he knew or meant; Old summers in its memory glow; The secrets of the wind it sings; It hears the April-loosened springs; And mixes with its mood All it dreamed when it stood In the murmurous pine-wood Long ago!

The magical moonlight then Steeped every bough and cone; The roar of the brook in the glen Came dim from the distance blown; The wind through its glooms sang low, And it swayed to and fro With delight as it stood, In the wonderful wood, Long ago!

O my life, have we not had seasons That only said, Live and rejoice? That asked not for causes and reasons, But made us all feeling and voice? When we went with the winds in their blowing, When Nature and we were peers, And we seemed to share in the flowing Of the inexhaustible years? Have we not from the earth drawn juices Too fine for earth's sordid uses? Have I heard, have I seen All I feel, all I know? Doth my heart overween? Or could it have been Long ago?

Sometimes a breath floats by me, An odor from Dreamland sent. That makes the ghost seem nigh me Of a splendor that came and went, Of a life lived somewhere, I know not In what diviner sphere, Of memories that stay not and go not, Like music heard once by an ear That cannot forget or reclaim it, A something so shy, it would shame it To make it a show, A something too vague, could I name it, For others to know, As if I had lived it or dreamed it, As if I had acted or schemed it, Long ago!

And yet, could I live it over, This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover. Moon and tide, bee and clover, As I seem to have been, once again, Could I but speak it and show it, This pleasure more sharp than pain, That baffles and lures me so, The world should once more have a poet, Such as it had In the ages glad, Long ago!



THE FOOT-PATH

It mounts athwart the windy hill Through sallow slopes of upland bare, And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still Its narrowing curves that end in air.

By day, a warmer-hearted blue Stoops softly to that topmost swell; Its thread-like windings seem a clue To gracious climes where all is well.

By night, far yonder, I surmise An ampler world than clips my ken, Where the great stars of happier skies Commingle nobler fates of men.

I look and long, then haste me home, Still master of my secret rare; Once tried, the path would end in Rome, But now it leads me everywhere.

Forever to the new it guides, From former good, old overmuch; What Nature for her poets hides, 'Tis wiser to divine than clutch.

The bird I list hath never come Within the scope of mortal ear; My prying step would make him dumb, And the fair tree, his shelter, sear.

Behind the hill, behind the sky, Behind my inmost thought, he sings; No feet avail; to hear it nigh, The song itself must lend the wings.

Sing on, sweet bird close hid, and raise Those angel stairways in my brain, That climb from these low-vaulted days To spacious sunshines far from pain.

Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet, I leave thy covert haunt untrod, And envy Science not her feat To make a twice-told tale of God.

They said the fairies tript no more, And long ago that Pan was dead; 'Twas but that fools preferred to bore Earth's rind inch-deep for truth instead.

Pan leaps and pipes all summer long, The fairies dance each full-mooned night, Would we but doff our lenses strong, And trust our wiser eyes' delight.

City of Elf-land, just without Our seeing, marvel ever new, Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the blue,

I build thee in yon sunset cloud, Whose edge allures to climb the height; I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud, From still pools dusk with dreams of night.

Thy gates are shut to hardiest will, Thy countersign of long-lost speech,— Those fountained courts, those chambers still, Fronting Time's far East, who shall reach?

I know not, and will never pry, But trust our human heart for all; Wonders that from the seeker fly Into an open sense may fall.

Hide in thine own soul, and surprise The password of the unwary elves; Seek it, thou canst not bribe their spies; Unsought, they whisper it themselves.



POEMS OF THE WAR



THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD

OCTOBER, 1861

Along a river-side, I know not where, I walked one night in mystery of dream; A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair, To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam Of a moon-wraith that waned through haunted air.

Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow-mist Their hales, wavering thistledowns of light; The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst, Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in affright, Like Odin's hounds, fled baying down the night. 10

Then all was silent, till there smote my ear A movement in the stream that checked my breath: Was it the slow plash of a wading deer? But something said, 'This water is of Death! The Sisters wash a shroud,—ill thing to hear!'

I, looking then, beheld the ancient Three Known to the Greek's and to the Northman's creed, That sit in shadow of the mystic Tree, Still crooning, as they weave their endless brede, One song: 'Time was, Time is, and Time shall be.' 20

No wrinkled crones were they, as I had deemed, But fair as yesterday, to-day, to-morrow To mourner, lover, poet, ever seemed; Something too high for joy, too deep for sorrow, Thrilled in their tones, and from their faces gleamed.

'Still men and nations reap as they have strawn,' So sang they, working at their task the while; 'The fatal raiment must be cleansed ere dawn: For Austria? Italy? the Sea-Queen's isle? O'er what quenched grandeur must our shroud be drawn? 30

'Or is it for a younger, fairer corse, That gathered States like children round his knees, That tamed the wave to be his posting-horse, Feller of forests, linker of the seas, Bridge-builder, hammerer, youngest son of Thor's?

'What make we, murmur'st thou? and what are we? When empires must be wound, we bring the shroud, The time-old web of the implacable Three: Is it too coarse for him, the young and proud? Earth's mightiest deigned to wear it,—why not he?' 40

'Is there no hope?' I moaned, 'so strong, so fair! Our Fowler whose proud bird would brook erewhile No rival's swoop in all our western air! Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file For him, life's morn yet golden in his hair?

'Leave me not hopeless, ye unpitying dames! I see, half seeing. Tell me, ye who scanned The stars, Earth's elders, still must noblest aims Be traced upon oblivious ocean-sands? Must Hesper join the wailing ghosts of names?' 50

'When grass-blades stiffen with red battle-dew, Ye deem we choose the victor and the slain: Say, choose we them that shall be leal and true To the heart's longing, the high faith of brain? Yet there the victory lies, if ye but knew.

'Three roots bear up Dominion: Knowledge, Will,— These twain are strong, but stronger yet the third,— Obedience,—'tis the great tap-root that still, Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred, Though Heaven-loosed tempests spend their utmost skill. 60

'Is the doom sealed for Hesper? 'Tis not we Denounce it, but the Law before all time: The brave makes danger opportunity; The waverer, paltering with the chance sublime, Dwarfs it to peril: which shall Hesper be?

'Hath he let vultures climb his eagle's seat To make Jove's bolts purveyors of their maw? Hath he the Many's plaudits found more sweet Than Wisdom? held Opinion's wind for Law? Then let him hearken for the doomster's feet! 70

'Rough are the steps, slow-hewn in flintiest rock, States climb to power by; slippery those with gold Down which they stumble to eternal mock: No chafferer's hand shall long the sceptre hold, Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell the block.

'We sing old Sagas, songs of weal and woe, Mystic because too cheaply understood; Dark sayings are not ours; men hear and know, See Evil weak, see strength alone in Good, Yet hope to stem God's fire with walls of tow. 80

'Time Was unlocks the riddle of Time Is, That offers choice of glory or of gloom; The solver makes Time Shall Be surely his. But hasten, Sisters! for even now the tomb Grates its slow hinge and calls from the abyss.'

'But not for him,' I cried, 'not yet for him, Whose large horizon, westering, star by star Wins from the void to where on Ocean's rim The sunset shuts the world with golden bar, Not yet his thews shall fail, his eye grow dim! 90

'His shall be larger manhood, saved for those That walk unblenching through the trial-fires; Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of woes, And he no base-born son of craven sires, Whose eye need blench confronted with his foes.

'Tears may be ours, but proud, for those who win Death's royal purple in the foe-man's lines; Peace, too, brings tears; and mid the battle-din, The wiser ear some text of God divines, For the sheathed blade may rust with darker sin. 100

'God, give us peace! not such as lulls to sleep, But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose knit! And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep, Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit, And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!'

So cried I with clenched hands and passionate pain, Thinking of dear ones by Potomac's side; Again the loon laughed mocking, and again The echoes bayed far down the night and died, While waking I recalled my wandering brain. 110



TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF BLONDEL

AUTUMN, 1863

SCENE I.—Near a castle in Germany.

'Twere no hard task, perchance, to win The popular laurel for my song; 'Twere only to comply with sin, And own the crown, though snatched by wrong: Rather Truth's chaplet let me wear, Though sharp as death its thorns may sting: Loyal to Loyalty, I bear No badge but of my rightful king.

Patient by town and tower I wait, Or o'er the blustering moorland go; 10 I buy no praise at cheaper rate, Or what faint hearts may fancy so; For me, no joy in lady's bower, Or hall, or tourney, will I sing, Till the slow stars wheel round the hour That crowns my hero and my king.

While all the land runs red with strife, And wealth is won by pedler-crimes, Let who will find content in life And tinkle in unmanly rhymes; 20 I wait and seek; through dark and light, Safe in my heart my hope I bring, Till I once more my faith may plight To him my whole soul owns her king.

When power is filched by drone and dolt, And, with canght breath and flashing eye, Her knuckles whitening round the bolt, Vengeance leans eager from the sky, While this and that the people guess, And to the skirts of praters cling, 30 Who court the crowd they should compress, I turn in scorn to seek my king.

Shut in what tower of darkling chance Or dungeon of a narrow doom, Dream'st thou of battle-axe and lance That for the Cross make crashing room? Come! with hushed breath the battle waits In the wild van thy mace's swing; While doubters parley with their fates, Make thou thine own and ours, my king! 40

O strong to keep upright the old, And wise to buttress with the new, Prudent, as only are the bold, Clear-eyed, as only are the true, To foes benign, to friendship stern, Intent to imp Law's broken wing, Who would not die, if death might earn The right to kiss thy hand, my king?

SCENE II.—An Inn near the Chateau of Chalus.

Well, the whole thing is over, and here I sit With one arm in a sling and a milk-score of gashes, 50 And this flagon of Cyprus must e'en warm my wit, Since what's left of youth's flame is a head flecked with ashes. I remember I sat in this very same inn,— I was young then, and one young man thought I was handsome,— I had found out what prison King Richard was in, And was spurring for England to push on the ransom.

How I scorned the dull souls that sat guzzling around And knew not my secret nor recked my derision! Let the world sink or swim, John or Richard be crowned, All one, so the beer-tax got lenient revision. 60 How little I dreamed, as I tramped up and down, That granting our wish one of Fate's saddest Jokes is! I had mine with a vengeance,—my king got his crown, And made his whole business to break other folks's.

I might as well join in the safe old tum, tum: A hero's an excellent loadstar,—but, bless ye, What infinite odds 'twixt a hero to come And your only too palpable hero in esse! Precisely the odds (such examples are rife) 'Twixt the poem conceived and the rhyme we make show of, 70 'Twixt the boy's morning dream and the wake-up of life, 'Twixt the Blondel God meant and a Blondel I know of!

But the world's better off, I'm convinced of it now, Than if heroes, like buns, could be bought for a penny To regard all mankind as their haltered milch-cow, And just care for themselves. Well, God cares for the many; For somehow the poor old Earth blunders along, Each son of hers adding his mite of unfitness, And, choosing the sure way of coming out wrong, Gets to port as the next generation will witness. 80

You think her old ribs have come all crashing through, If a whisk of Fate's broom snap your cobweb asunder; But her rivets were clinched by a wiser than you. And our sins cannot push the Lord's right hand from under. Better one honest man who can wait for God's mind In our poor shifting scene here though heroes were plenty! Better one bite, at forty, of Truth's bitter rind, Than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty!

I see it all now: when I wanted a king, 'Twas the kingship that failed in myself I was seeking,— 90 'Tis so much less easy to do than to sing, So much simpler to reign by a proxy than be king! Yes, I think I do see; after all's said and sung, Take this one rule of life and you never will rue it,— 'Tis but do your own duty and hold your own tongue And Blondel were royal himself, if he knew it!



MEMORIAE POSITUM

R.G. SHAW

I

Beneath the trees, My lifelong friends in this dear spot, Sad now for eyes that see them not, I hear the autumnal breeze Wake the dry leaves to sigh for gladness gone, Whispering vague omens of oblivion, Hear, restless as the seas, Time's grim feet rustling through the withered grace Of many a spreading realm and strong-stemmed race, Even as my own through these. 10

Why make we moan For loss that doth enrich us yet With upward yearning of regret? Bleaker than unmossed stone Our lives were but for this immortal gain Of unstilled longing and inspiring pain! As thrills of long-hushed tone Live in the viol, so our souls grow fine With keen vibrations from the touch divine Of noble natures gone. 20

'Twere indiscreet To vex the shy and sacred grief With harsh obtrusions of relief; Yet, Verse, with noiseless feet, Go whisper: 'This death hath far choicer ends Than slowly to impearl to hearts of friends; These obsequies 'tis meet Not to seclude in closets of the heart, But, church-like, with wide doorways, to impart Even to the heedless street.' 30

II

Brave, good, and true, I see him stand before me now. And read again on that young brow, Where every hope was new, How sweet were life! Yet, by the mouth firm-set, And look made up for Duty's utmost debt, I could divine he knew That death within the sulphurous hostile lines, In the mere wreck of nobly pitched designs, Plucks heart's-ease, and not rue. 40

Happy their end Who vanish down life's evening stream Placid as swans that drift in dream Round the next river-bend! Happy long life, with honor at the close, Friends' painless tears, the softened thought of foes! And yet, like him, to spend All at a gush, keeping our first faith sure From mid-life's doubt and eld's contentment poor, What more could Fortune send? 50

Right in the van, On the red rampart's slippery swell, With heart that beat a charge, he fell Foeward, as fits a man; But the high soul burns on to light men's feet Where death for noble ends makes dying sweet; His life her crescent's span Orbs full with share in their undarkening days Who ever climbed the battailous steeps of praise Since valor's praise began. 60

III

His life's expense Hath won him coeternal youth With the immaculate prime of Truth; While we, who make pretence At living on, and wake and eat and sleep, And life's stale trick by repetition keep, Our fickle permanence (A poor leaf-shadow on a brook, whose play Of busy idlesse ceases with our day) Is the mere cheat of sense. 70

We bide our chance, Unhappy, and make terms with Fate A little more to let us wait; He leads for aye the advance, Hope's forlorn-hopes that plant the desperate good For nobler Earths and days of manlier mood; Our wall of circumstance Cleared at a bound, he flashes o'er the fight, A saintly shape of fame, to cheer the right And steel each wavering glance. 80

I write of one, While with dim eyes I think of three; Who weeps not others fair and brave as he? Ah, when the fight is won, Dear Land, whom triflers now make bold to scorn, (Thee! from whose forehead Earth awaits her morn,) How nobler shall the sun Flame in thy sky, how braver breathe thy air, That thou bred'st children who for thee could dare And die as thine have done!



ON BOARD THE '76

WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

NOVEMBER 3, 1884

Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side; Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free, Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide; Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn, We lay, awaiting morn.

Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair; And she that bare the promise of the world. Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare, At random o'er the wildering waters hurled; 10 The reek of battle drifting slow alee Not sullener than we.

Morn came at last to peer into our woe, When lo, a sail! Mow surely help was nigh; The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge; but no, Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by And hails us:—'Gains the leak! Ay, so we thought! Sink, then, with curses fraught!'

I leaned against my gun still angry-hot, And my lids tingled with the tears held back: 20 This scorn methought was crueller than shot: The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack, Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far Than such fear-smothered war.

There our foe wallowed, like a wounded brute The fiercer for his hurt. What now were best? Once more tug bravely at the peril's root, Though death came with it? Or evade the test If right or wrong in this God's world of ours Be leagued with mightier powers? 30

Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs; Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry flag That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 'Neath the all-seeing sun.

But there was one, the Singer of our crew, Upon whose head Age waved his peaceful sign, But whose red heart's-blood no surrender knew; And couchant under brows of massive line, 40 The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet, Watched, charged with lightnings yet.

The voices of the hills did his obey; The torrents flashed and tumbled in his song; He brought our native fields from far away, Or set us 'mid the innumerable throng Of dateless woods, or where we heard the calm Old homestead's evening psalm.

But now he sang of faith to things unseen, Of freedom's birthright given to us in trust; 50 And words of doughty cheer he spoke between, That made all earthly fortune seem as dust, Matched with that duty, old as Time and new, Of being brave and true.

We, listening, learned what makes the might of words,— Manhood to back them, constant as a star: His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard, and wooed The winds with loftier mood. 60

In our dark hours he manned our guns again; Remanned ourselves from his own manhood's stores; Pride, honor, country, throbbed through all his strain; And shall we praise? God's praise was his before; And on our futile laurels he looks down, Himself our bravest crown.



ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION

JULY 21, 1865

I

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 were steel and fire: 10 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.

II

To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back Her wisest Scholars, those who understood The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, And offered their fresh lives to make it good: No lore of Greece or Rome, No science peddling with the names of things, 20 Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, Can lift our life with wings Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits, And lengthen out our dates With that clear fame whose memory sings In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates: Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all! Not such the trumpet-call Of thy diviner mood, That could thy sons entice 30 From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest Of those half-virtues which the world calls best, Into War's tumult rude; But rather far that stern device The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood In the dim, unventured wood, The VERITAS that lurks beneath The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth living, Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 40 One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.

III

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, 50 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 60 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.

IV

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 70 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 see 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 fest of Fate's contriving, 80 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. 90 Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, Something that gives our feeble light A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; A seed of sunshine that can leaven Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars, And glorify our clay With light from fountains elder than the Day; 100 A conscience more divine than we, A gladness fed with secret tears, A vexing, forward-reaching sense Of some more noble permanence; A light across the sea, Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years.

V

Whither leads the path To ampler fates that leads? Not down through flowery meads, 110 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 120 Dreams in its easeful sheath; But some day the live coal behind the thought, Whether from Baael'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 130 Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, And cries 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; 140 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.

VI

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 150 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 as by rote: 160 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, Wise, 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, 170 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; 180 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. 190 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, 201 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.

VII

Long as man's hope insatiate can discern Or only guess some more inspiring goal 210 Outside of Self, enduring as the pole, Along whose course the flying axles burn Of spirits bravely pitched, earth's manlier brood, Long as below we cannot find The meed that stills the inexorable mind; So long this faith to some ideal Good, Under whatever mortal names it masks, Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks, Feeling its challenged pulses leap, 220 While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks, Shall win man's praise and woman's love, Shall be a wisdom that we set above All other skills and gifts to culture dear, A virtue round whose forehead we inwreathe Laurels that with a living passion breathe When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear. What brings us thronging these high rites to pay, And seal these hours the noblest of our year, 230 Save that our brothers found this better way?

VIII

We sit here in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; But 'twas they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. We welcome back our bravest and our best;— Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here! I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, But the sad strings complain, 240 And will not please the ear: I sweep them for a paean, but they wane Again and yet again Into a dirge, and die away, in pain. In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, Dark to the triumph which they died to gain: Fitlier may others greet the living, For me the past is unforgiving; I with uncovered head 250 Salute the sacred dead, Who went, and who return not.—Say not so! 'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay, But the high faith that failed not by the way; Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave; No ban of endless night exiles the brave; And to the saner mind We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! For never shall their aureoled presence lack: 260 I see them muster in a gleaming row, With ever-youthful brows that nobler show; We find in our dull road their shining track; In every nobler mood We feel the orient of their spirit glow, Part of our life's unalterable good, Of all our saintlier aspiration; They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 270 Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!

IX

But is there hope to save Even this ethereal essence from the grave? What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of song? Before my musing eye The mighty ones of old sweep by, Disvoiced now and insubstantial things, As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings, Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust, 280 And many races, nameless long ago, To darkness driven by that imperious gust Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow: O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only Change, Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range! Shall we to more continuance make pretence? Renown builds tombs, a life-estate is Wit; And, bit by bit, The cunning years steal all from us but woe; 290 Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow. But, when we vanish hence, Shall they lie forceless in the dark below, Save to make green their little length of souls, Or deepen pansies for a year or two, Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods? Was dying all they had the skill to do? That were not fruitless: but the Soul resents Such short-lived service, as if blind events Ruled without her, or earth could so endure; 300 She claims a more divine investiture Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents; Whate'er she touches doth her nature share; Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air, Gives eyes to mountains blind, Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind, And her clear trump slugs succor everywhere By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind; For soul inherits all that soul could dare: Yea, Manhood hath a wider span 310 And larger privilege of life than man. The single deed, the private sacrifice, So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears, Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years; But that high privilege that makes all men peers, That leap of heart whereby a people rise Up to a noble anger's height, And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright, That swift validity in noble veins, 320 Of choosing danger and disdaining shame, Of being set on flame By the pure fire that flies all contact base But wraps its chosen with angelic might, These are imperishable gains, Sure as the sun, medicinal as light, These hold great futures in their lusty reins And certify to earth a new imperial race.

X

Who now shall sneer? Who dare again to say we trace 330 Our lines to a plebeian race? Roundhead and Cavalier! Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud; Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud, They flit across the ear: That is best blood that hath most iron in 't, To edge resolve with, pouring without stint For what makes manhood dear. Tell us not of Plantagenets, Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawl 340 Down from some victor in a border-brawl! How poor their outworn coronets, Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath, Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears With vain resentments and more vain regrets!

XI

Not in anger, not in pride, Pure from passion's mixture rude 350 Ever to base earth allied, But with far-heard gratitude, Still with heart and voice renewed, To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, The strain should close that consecrates our brave. Lift the heart and lift the head! Lofty be its mood and grave, Not without a martial ring, Not without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: 360 Little right has he to sing Through whose heart in such an hour Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, 370 For her time of need, and then Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower! How could poet ever tower, If his passions, hopes, and fears, If his triumphs and his tears, Kept not measure with his people? 380 Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves! Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple! Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves! And from every mountain-peak Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, And so leap on in light from sea to sea, Till the glad news be sent Across a kindling continent, Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver: 390 'Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her! She that lifts up the manhood of the poor, She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all mankind! The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more; From her bold front the helm she doth unbind, Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, And bids her navies, that so lately hurled Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in, Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore. 400 No challenge sends she to the elder world, That looked askance and hated; a light scorn Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty knees She calls her children back, and waits the morn Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas.'

XII

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release! Thy God, in these distempered days, Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of his ways, And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace! Bow down in prayer and praise! 410 No poorest in thy borders but may now Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow. O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more! Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips, Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it, 420 Among the Nations bright beyond compare? What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare!



L'ENVOI

TO THE MUSE

Whither? Albeit I follow fast, In all life's circuit I but find, Not where thou art, but where thou wast, Sweet beckoner, more fleet than wind! I haunt the pine-dark solitudes, With soft brown silence carpeted, And plot to snare thee in the woods: Peace I o'ertake, but thou art fled! I find the rock where thou didst rest, The moss thy skimming foot hath prest; 10 All Nature with thy parting thrills, Like branches after birds new-flown; Thy passage hill and hollow fills With hints of virtue not their own; In dimples still the water slips Where thou hast dipt thy finger-tips; Just, just beyond, forever burn Gleams of a grace without return; Upon thy shade I plant my foot, And through my frame strange raptures shoot; 20 All of thee but thyself I grasp; I seem to fold thy luring shape, And vague air to my bosom clasp, Thou lithe, perpetual Escape!

One mask and then another drops, And thou art secret as before; Sometimes with flooded ear I list, And hear thee, wondrous organist, From mighty continental stops A thunder of new music pour; 30 Through pipes of earth and air and stone Thy inspiration deep is blown; Through mountains, forests, open downs, Lakes, railroads, prairies, states, and towns, Thy gathering fugue goes rolling on From Maine to utmost Oregon; The factory-wheels in cadence hum, From brawling parties concords come; All this I hear, or seem to hear, But when, enchanted, I draw near 40 To mate with words the various theme, Life seems a whiff of kitchen steam, History an organ-grinder's thrum, For thou hast slipt from it and me And all thine organ-pipes left dumb, Most mutable Perversity!