IV. HUMOR AND SATIRE



FITZ ADAM'S STORY

The next whose fortune 'twas a tale to tell Was one whom men, before they thought, loved well, And after thinking wondered why they did, For half he seemed to let them, half forbid, And wrapped him so in humors, sheath on sheath, 'Twas hard to guess the mellow soul beneath: But, once divined, you took him to your heart, While he appeared to bear with you as part Of life's impertinence, and once a year Betrayed his true self by a smile or tear, 10 Or rather something sweetly shy and loath, Withdrawn ere fully shown, and mixed of both. A cynic? Not precisely: one who thrust Against a heart too prone to love and trust, Who so despised false sentiment he knew Scarce in himself to part the false and true, And strove to hide, by roughening-o'er the skin, Those cobweb nerves he could not dull within. Gentle by birth, but of a stem decayed, He shunned life's rivalries and hated trade; 20 On a small patrimony and larger pride, He lived uneaseful on the Other Side (So he called Europe), only coming West To give his Old-World appetite new zest; Yet still the New World spooked it in his veins, A ghost he could not lay with all his pains; For never Pilgrims' offshoot scapes control Of those old instincts that have shaped his soul. A radical in thought, he puffed away With shrewd contempt the dust of usage gray, 30 Yet loathed democracy as one who saw, In what he longed to love, some vulgar flaw, And, shocked through all his delicate reserves, Remained a Tory by his taste and nerves, His fancy's thrall, he drew all ergoes thence, And thought himself the type of common sense; Misliking women, not from cross or whim, But that his mother shared too much in him, And he half felt that what in them was grace Made the unlucky weakness of his race. 40 What powers he had he hardly cared to know, But sauntered through the world as through a show; A critic fine in his haphazard way, A sort of mild La Bruyere on half-pay. For comic weaknesses he had an eye Keen as an acid for an alkali, Yet you could feel, through his sardonic tone, He loved them all, unless they were his own. You might have called him, with his humorous twist, A kind of human entomologist; 50 As these bring home, from every walk they take, Their hat-crowns stuck with bugs of curious make, So he filled all the lining of his head With characters impaled and ticketed, And had a cabinet behind his eyes For all they caught of mortal oddities. He might have been a poet—many worse— But that he had, or feigned, contempt of verse; Called it tattooing language, and held rhymes The young world's lullaby of ruder times. 60 Bitter in words, too indolent for gall, He satirized himself the first of all, In men and their affairs could find no law, And was the ill logic that he thought he saw.

Scratching a match to light his pipe anew, With eyes half shut some musing whiffs he drew And thus began: 'I give you all my word, I think this mock-Decameron absurd; Boccaccio's garden! how bring that to pass In our bleak clime save under double glass? 70 The moral east-wind of New England life Would snip its gay luxuriance like a knife; Mile-deep the glaciers brooded here, they say, Through aeons numb; we feel their chill to-day. These foreign plants are but half-hardy still, Die on a south, and on a north wall chill. Had we stayed Puritans! They had some heat, (Though whence derived I have my own conceit,) But you have long ago raked up their fires; Where they had faith, you've ten sham-Gothic spires. 80 Why more exotics? Try your native vines, And in some thousand years you may have wines; Your present grapes are harsh, all pulps and skins, And want traditions of ancestral bins That saved for evenings round the polished board Old lava fires, the sun-steeped hillside's hoard. Without a Past, you lack that southern wall O'er which the vines of Poesy should crawl; Still they're your only hope: no midnight oil Makes up for virtue wanting in the soil; 90 Manure them well and prune them; 'twon't be France, Nor Spain, nor Italy, but there's your chance. You have one story-teller worth a score Of dead Boccaccios,—nay, add twenty more,— A hawthorn asking spring's most dainty breath, And him you're freezing pretty well to death. However, since you say so, I will tease My memory to a story by degrees, Though you will cry, "Enough!" I'm wellnigh sure, Ere I have dreamed through half my overture. 100 Stories were good for men who had no books, (Fortunate race!) and built their nests like rooks In lonely towers, to which the Jongleur brought His pedler's-box of cheap and tawdry thought, With here and there a fancy fit to see Wrought in quaint grace in golden filigree,— Some ring that with the Muse's finger yet Is warm, like Aucassin and Nicolete; The morning newspaper has spoilt his trade, (For better or for worse, I leave unsaid,) 110 And stories now, to suit a public nice, Must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.

'All tourists know Shebagog County: there The summer idlers take their yearly stare, Dress to see Nature In a well-bred way, As 'twere Italian opera, or play, Encore the sunrise (if they're out of bed). And pat the Mighty Mother on the head: These have I seen,—all things are good to see.— And wondered much at their complacency. 120 This world's great show, that took in getting-up Millions of years, they finish ere they sup; Sights that God gleams through with soul-tingling force They glance approvingly as things of course. Say, "That's a grand rock," "This a pretty fall." Not thinking, "Are we worthy?" What if all The scornful landscape should turn round and say, "This is a fool, and that a popinjay"? I often wonder what the Mountain thinks Of French boots creaking o'er his breathless brinks, 130 Or how the Sun would scare the chattering crowd, If some fine day he chanced to think aloud. I, who love Nature much as sinners can, Love her where she most grandeur shows,—in man: Here find I mountain, forest, cloud, and sun, River and sea, and glows when day is done; Nay, where she makes grotesques, and moulds in jest The clown's cheap clay, I find unfading zest. The natural instincts year by year retire, As deer shrink northward from the settler's fire, 140 And he who loves the wild game-flavor more Than city-feasts, where every man's a bore To every other man, must seek it where The steamer's throb and railway's iron blare Have not yet startled with their punctual stir The shy, wood-wandering brood of Character.

'There is a village, once the county town, Through which the weekly mail rolled dustily down, Where the courts sat, it may be, twice a year, And the one tavern reeked with rustic cheer; 150 Cheeshogquesumscot erst, now Jethro hight, Red-man and pale-face bore it equal spite. The railway ruined it, the natives say, That passed unwisely fifteen miles away, And made a drain to which, with steady ooze, Filtered away law, stage-coach, trade, and news. The railway saved it: so at least think those Who love old ways, old houses, old repose. Of course the Tavern stayed: its genial host Thought not of flitting more than did the post 160 On which high-hung the fading signboard creaks, Inscribed, "The Eagle Inn, by Ezra Weeks."

'If in life's journey you should ever find An inn medicinal for body and mind, 'Tis sure to be some drowsy-looking house Whose easy landlord has a bustling spouse: He, if he like you, will not long forego Some bottle deep in cobwebbed dust laid low, That, since the War we used to call the "Last," Has dozed and held its lang-syne memories fast: 170 From him exhales that Indian-summer air Of hazy, lazy welcome everywhere, While with her toil the napery is white, The china dustless, the keen knife-blades bright, Salt dry as sand, and bread that seems as though 'Twere rather sea-foam baked than vulgar dough.

'In our swift country, houses trim and white Are pitched like tents, the lodging of a night; Each on its bank of baked turf mounted high Perches impatient o'er the roadside dry, 180 While the wronged landscape coldly stands aloof, Refusing friendship with the upstart roof. Not so the Eagle; on a grass-green swell That toward the south with sweet concessions fell It dwelt retired, and half had grown to be As aboriginal as rock or tree. It nestled close to earth, and seemed to brood O'er homely thoughts in a half-conscious mood, As by the peat that rather fades than burns The smouldering grandam nods and knits by turns, 190 Happy, although her newest news were old Ere the first hostile drum at Concord rolled. If paint it e'er had known, it knew no more Than yellow lichens spattered thickly o'er That soft lead-gray, less dark beneath the eaves Which the slow brush of wind and weather leaves. The ample roof sloped backward to the ground, And vassal lean-tos gathered thickly round, Patched on, as sire or son had felt the need, Like chance growths sprouting from the old roofs seed, 200 Just as about a yellow-pine-tree spring Its rough-barked darlings in a filial ring. But the great chimney was the central thought Whose gravitation through the cluster wrought; For 'tis not styles far-fetched from Greece or Rome, But just the Fireside, that can make a home; None of your spindling things of modern style, Like pins stuck through to stay the card-built pile, It rose broad-shouldered, kindly, debonair, Its warm breath whitening in the October air, 210 While on its front a heart in outline showed The place it filled in that serene abode.

'When first I chanced the Eagle to explore. Ezra sat listless by the open door; One chair careened him at an angle meet, Another nursed his hugely slippered feet; Upon a third reposed a shirt-sleeved arm, And the whole man diffused tobacco's charm. "Are you the landlord?" "Wahl, I guess I be," Watching the smoke he answered leisurely. 220 He was a stoutish man, and through the breast Of his loose shirt there showed a brambly chest; Streaked redly as a wind-foreboding morn, His tanned cheeks curved to temples closely shorn; Clean-shaved he was, save where a hedge of gray Upon his brawny throat leaned every way About an Adam's-apple, that beneath Bulged like a boulder from a brambly heath. The Western World's true child and nursling he, Equipt with aptitudes enough for three: 230 No eye like his to value horse or cow, Or gauge the contents of a stack or mow; He could foretell the weather at a word, He knew the haunt of every beast and bird, Or where a two-pound trout was sure to lie, Waiting the flutter of his homemade fly; Nay, once in autumns five, he had the luck To drop at fair-play range a ten-tined buck; Of sportsmen true he favored every whim, But never cockney found a guide in him; 240 A natural man, with all his instincts fresh, Not buzzing helpless in Reflection's mesh, Firm on its feet stood his broad-shouldered mind, As bluffly honest as a northwest wind; Hard-headed and soft-hearted, you'd scarce meet A kindlier mixture of the shrewd and sweet; Generous by birth, and ill at saying "No," Yet in a bargain he was all men's foe, Would yield no inch of vantage in a trade, And give away ere nightfall all he made. 250

"Can I have lodging here?" once more I said. He blew a whiff, and, leaning back his head, "You come a piece through Bailey's woods, I s'pose, Acrost a bridge where a big swamp-oak grows? It don't grow, neither; it's ben dead ten year, Nor th' ain't a livin' creetur, fur nor near, Can tell wut killed it; but I some misdoubt 'Twas borers, there's sech heaps on 'em about. You didn' chance to run ag'inst my son, A long, slab-sided youngster with a gun? 260 He'd oughto ben back more 'n an hour ago, An' brought some birds to dress for supper—sho! There he comes now. 'Say, Obed, wut ye got? (He'll hev some upland plover like as not.) Wal, them's real nice uns, an'll eat A 1, Ef I can stop their bein' overdone; Nothin' riles me (I pledge my fastin' word) Like cookin' out the natur' of a bird; (Obed, you pick 'em out o' sight an' sound, Your ma'am don't love no feathers cluttrin' round;) 270 Jes' scare 'em with the coals,—thet's my idee." Then, turning suddenly about on me, "Wal, Square, I guess so. Callilate to stay? I'll ask Mis' Weeks; 'bout thet it's hern to say."

'Well, there I lingered all October through, In that sweet atmosphere of hazy blue, So leisurely, so soothing, so forgiving, That sometimes makes New England fit for living. I watched the landscape, erst so granite glum, Bloom like the south side of a ripening plum, 280 And each rock-maple on the hillside make His ten days' sunset doubled in the lake; The very stone walls draggling up the hills Seemed touched, and wavered in their roundhead wills. Ah! there's a deal of sugar in the sun! Tap me in Indian summer, I should run A juice to make rock-candy of,—but then We get such weather scarce one year in ten.

'There was a parlor in the house, a room To make you shudder with its prudish gloom. 290 The furniture stood round with such an air, There seemed an old maid's ghost in every chair, Which looked as it had scuttled to its place And pulled extempore a Sunday face, Too smugly proper for a world of sin, Like boys on whom the minister comes in. The table, fronting you with icy stare, Strove to look witless that its legs were bare, While the black sofa with its horse-hair pall Gloomed like a bier for Comfort's funeral. 300 Each piece appeared to do its chilly best To seem an utter stranger to the rest, As if acquaintanceship were deadly sin, Like Britons meeting in a foreign inn. Two portraits graced the wall in grimmest truth, Mister and Mistress W. in their youth,— New England youth, that seems a sort of pill, Half wish-I-dared, half Edwards on the Will, Bitter to swallow, and which leaves a trace Of Calvinistic colic on the face. 310 Between them, o'er the mantel, hung in state Solomon's temple, done in copperplate; Invention pure, but meant, we may presume, To give some Scripture sanction to the room. Facing this last, two samplers you might see, Each, with its urn and stiffly weeping tree, Devoted to some memory long ago More faded than their lines of worsted woe; Cut paper decked their frames against the flies, Though none e'er dared an entrance who were wise, 320 And bushed asparagus in fading green Added its shiver to the franklin clean.

'When first arrived, I chilled a half-hour there, Nor dared deflower with use a single chair; I caught no cold, yet flying pains could find For weeks in me,—a rheumatism of mind. One thing alone imprisoned there had power To hold me in the place that long half-hour: A scutcheon this, a helm-surmounted shield, Three griffins argent on a sable field; 330 A relic of the shipwrecked past was here, And Ezra held some Old-World lumber dear. Nay, do not smile; I love this kind of thing, These cooped traditions with a broken wing, This freehold nook in Fancy's pipe-blown ball, This less than nothing that is more than all! Have I not seen sweet natures kept alive Amid the humdrum of your business hive, Undowered spinsters shielded from all harms, By airy incomes from a coat of arms?' 340

He paused a moment, and his features took The flitting sweetness of that inward look I hinted at before; but, scarcely seen, It shrank for shelter 'neath his harder mien, And, rapping his black pipe of ashes clear, He went on with a self-derisive sneer: 'No doubt we make a part of God's design, And break the forest-path for feet divine; To furnish foothold for this grand prevision Is good, and yet—to be the mere transition, 350 That, you will say, is also good, though I Scarce like to feed the ogre By-and-By. Raw edges rasp my nerves; my taste is wooed By things that are, not going to be, good, Though were I what I dreamed two lustres gone, I'd stay to help the Consummation on, Whether a new Rome than the old more fair, Or a deadflat of rascal-ruled despair; But my skull somehow never closed the suture That seems to knit yours firmly with the future, 360 So you'll excuse me if I'm sometimes fain To tie the Past's warm nightcap o'er my brain; I'm quite aware 'tis not in fashion here, But then your northeast winds are so severe!

'But to my story: though 'tis truly naught But a few hints in Memory's sketchbook caught, And which may claim a value on the score Of calling back some scenery now no more. Shall I confess? The tavern's only Lar Seemed (be not shocked!) its homely-featured bar. 370 Here dozed a fire of beechen logs, that bred Strange fancies in its embers golden-red, And nursed the loggerhead whose hissing dip, Timed by nice instinct, creamed the mug of flip That made from mouth to mouth its genial round, Nor left one nature wholly winter-bound; Hence dropt the tinkling coal all mellow-ripe For Uncle Reuben's talk-extinguished pipe; Hence rayed the heat, as from an indoor sun, That wooed forth many a shoot of rustic fun. 380 Here Ezra ruled as king by right divine; No other face had such a wholesome shine, No laugh like his so full of honest cheer; Above the rest it crowed like Chanticleer.

'In this one room his dame you never saw, Where reigned by custom old a Salic law; Here coatless lolled he on his throne of oak, And every tongue paused midway if he spoke. Due mirth he loved, yet was his sway severe; No blear-eyed driveller got his stagger here; 390 "Measure was happiness; who wanted more, Must buy his ruin at the Deacon's store;" None but his lodgers after ten could stay, Nor after nine on eves of Sabbath-day. He had his favorites and his pensioners, The same that gypsy Nature owns for hers: Loose-ended souls, whose skills bring scanty gold, And whom the poor-house catches when they're old; Rude country-minstrels, men who doctor kine, Or graft, and, out of scions ten, save nine; 400 Creatures of genius they, but never meant To keep step with the civic regiment, These Ezra welcomed, feeling in his mind Perhaps some motions of the vagrant kind; These paid no money, yet for them he drew Special Jamaica from a tap they knew, And, for their feelings, chalked behind the door With solemn face a visionary score. This thawed to life in Uncle Reuben's throat A torpid shoal of jest and anecdote, 410 Like those queer fish that doze the droughts away, And wait for moisture, wrapped in sun-baked clay; This warmed the one-eyed fiddler to his task, Perched in the corner on an empty cask, By whose shrill art rapt suddenly, some boor Rattled a double-shuffle on the floor; "Hull's Victory" was, indeed, the favorite air, Though "Yankee Doodle" claimed its proper share.

''Twas there I caught from Uncle Reuben's lips, In dribbling monologue 'twixt whiffs and sips, 420 The story I so long have tried to tell; The humor coarse, the persons common,—well, From Nature only do I love to paint, Whether she send a satyr or a saint; To me Sincerity's the one thing good, Soiled though she be and lost to maidenhood. Quompegan is a town some ten miles south From Jethro, at Nagumscot river-mouth, A seaport town, and makes its title good With lumber and dried fish and eastern wood. 430 Here Deacon Bitters dwelt and kept the Store, The richest man for many a mile of shore; In little less than everything dealt he, From meeting-houses to a chest of tea; So dextrous therewithal a flint to skin, He could make profit on a single pin; In business strict, to bring the balance true He had been known to bite a fig in two, And change a board-nail for a shingle-nail. All that he had he ready held for sale, 440 His house, his tomb, whate'er the law allows, And he had gladly parted with his spouse. His one ambition still to get and get, He would arrest your very ghost for debt. His store looked righteous, should the Parson come, But in a dark back-room he peddled rum, And eased Ma'am Conscience, if she e'er would scold, By christening it with water ere he sold. A small, dry man he was, who wore a queue, And one white neckcloth all the week-days through,— 450 On Monday white, by Saturday as dun As that worn homeward by the prodigal son. His frosted earlocks, striped with foxy brown, Were braided up to hide a desert crown; His coat was brownish, black perhaps of yore; In summer-time a banyan loose he wore; His trousers short, through many a season true, Made no pretence to hide his stockings blue; A waistcoat buff his chief adornment was, Its porcelain buttons rimmed with dusky brass. 460 A deacon he, you saw it in each limb, And well he knew to deacon-off a hymn, Or lead the choir through all its wandering woes With voice that gathered unction in his nose, Wherein a constant snuffle you might hear, As if with him 'twere winter all the year. At pew-head sat he with decorous pains, In sermon-time could foot his weekly gains, Or, with closed eyes and heaven-abstracted air, Could plan a new investment in long-prayer. 470 A pious man, and thrifty too, he made The psalms and prophets partners in his trade, And in his orthodoxy straitened more As it enlarged the business at his store; He honored Moses, but, when gain he planned, Had his own notion of the Promised Land.

'Soon as the winter made the sledding good, From far around the farmers hauled him wood, For all the trade had gathered 'neath his thumb. He paid in groceries and New England rum, 480 Making two profits with a conscience clear,— Cheap all he bought, and all he paid with dear. With his own mete-wand measuring every load, Each somehow had diminished on the road; An honest cord in Jethro still would fail By a good foot upon the Deacon's scale, And, more to abate the price, his gimlet eye Would pierce to cat-sticks that none else could spy; Yet none dared grumble, for no farmer yet But New Year found him in the Deacon's debt. 490

'While the first snow was mealy under feet, A team drawled creaking down Quompegan street. Two cords of oak weighed down the grinding sled, And cornstalk fodder rustled overhead; The oxen's muzzles, as they shouldered through, Were silver-fringed; the driver's own was blue As the coarse frock that swung below his knee. Behind his load for shelter waded he; His mittened hands now on his chest he beat, Now stamped the stiffened cowhides of his feet, 500 Hushed as a ghost's; his armpit scarce could hold The walnut whipstock slippery-bright with cold. What wonder if, the tavern as he past, He looked and longed, and stayed his beasts at last, Who patient stood and veiled themselves in steam While he explored the bar-room's ruddy gleam?

'Before the fire, in want of thought profound, There sat a brother-townsman weather-bound: A sturdy churl, crisp-headed, bristly-eared, Red as a pepper; 'twixt coarse brows and beard 510 His eyes lay ambushed, on the watch for fools, Clear, gray, and glittering like two bay-edged pools; A shifty creature, with a turn for fun, Could swap a poor horse for a better one,— He'd a high-stepper always in his stall; Liked far and near, and dreaded therewithal. To him the in-comer, "Perez, how d' ye do?" "Jest as I'm mind to, Obed; how do you?" Then, his eyes twinkling such swift gleams as run Along the levelled barrel of a gun 520 Brought to his shoulder by a man you know Will bring his game down, he continued, "So, I s'pose you're haulin' wood? But you're too late; The Deacon's off; Old Splitfoot couldn't wait; He made a bee-line las' night in the storm To where he won't need wood to keep him warm. 'Fore this he's treasurer of a fund to train Young imps as missionaries; hopes to gain That way a contract that he has in view For fireproof pitchforks of a pattern new, 530 It must have tickled him, all drawbacks weighed, To think he stuck the Old One in a trade; His soul, to start with, wasn't worth a carrot. And all he'd left 'ould hardly serve to swear at."

'By this time Obed had his wits thawed out, And, looking at the other half in doubt, Took off his fox-skin cap to scratch his head, Donned it again, and drawled forth, "Mean he's dead?" "Jesso; he's dead and t'other d that follers With folks that never love a thing but dollars. 540 He pulled up stakes last evening, fair and square, And ever since there's been a row Down There. The minute the old chap arrived, you see, Comes the Boss-devil to him, and says he, 'What are you good at? Little enough, I fear; We callilate to make folks useful here.' 'Well,' says old Bitters, 'I expect I can Scale a fair load of wood with e'er a man.' 'Wood we don't deal in; but perhaps you'll suit, Because we buy our brimstone by the foot: 550 Here, take this measurin'-rod, as smooth as sin, And keep a reckonin' of what loads comes in. You'll not want business, for we need a lot To keep the Yankees that you send us hot; At firin' up they're barely half as spry As Spaniards or Italians, though they're dry; At first we have to let the draught on stronger, But, heat 'em through, they seem to hold it longer.'

'"Bitters he took the rod, and pretty soon A teamster comes, whistling an ex-psalm tune. 560 A likelier chap you wouldn't ask to see, No different, but his limp, from you or me"— "No different, Perez! Don't your memory fail? Why, where in thunder was his horns and tail?" "They're only worn by some old-fashioned pokes; They mostly aim at looking just like folks. Sech things are scarce as queues and top-boots here; 'Twould spoil their usefulness to look too queer. Ef you could always know 'em when they come, They'd get no purchase on you: now be mum. 570 On come the teamster, smart as Davy Crockett, Jinglin' the red-hot coppers in his pocket, And clost behind, ('twas gold-dust, you'd ha' sworn,) A load of sulphur yallower 'n seed-corn; To see it wasted as it is Down There Would make a Friction-Match Co. tear its hair! 'Hold on!' says Bitters, 'stop right where you be; You can't go in athout a pass from me.' 'All right,' says t'other, 'only step round smart; I must be home by noon-time with the cart.' 580 Bitters goes round it sharp-eyed as a rat, Then with a scrap of paper on his hat Pretends to cipher. 'By the public staff, That load scarce rises twelve foot and a half.' 'There's fourteen foot and over,' says the driver, 'Worth twenty dollars, ef it's worth a stiver; Good fourth-proof brimstone, that'll make 'em squirm,— I leave it to the Headman of the Firm; After we masure it, we always lay Some on to allow for settlin' by the way. 590 Imp and full-grown, I've carted sulphur here, And gi'n fair satisfaction, thirty year.' With that they fell to quarrellin' so loud That in five minutes they had drawed a crowd, And afore long the Boss, who heard the row, Comes elbowin' in with 'What's to pay here now?' Both parties heard, the measurin'-rod he takes, And of the load a careful survey makes. 'Sence I have bossed the business here,' says he, 'No fairer load was ever seen by me.' 600 Then, turnin' to the Deacon, 'You mean cus. None of your old Quompegan tricks with us! They won't do here: we're plain old-fashioned folks, And don't quite understand that kind o' jokes. I know this teamster, and his pa afore him, And the hard-working Mrs. D. that bore him; He wouldn't soil his conscience with a lie, Though he might get the custom-house thereby. Here, constable, take Bitters by the queue. And clap him into furnace ninety-two, 610 And try this brimstone on him; if he's bright, He'll find the masure honest afore night. He isn't worth his fuel, and I'll bet The parish oven has to take him yet!'"

'This is my tale, heard twenty years ago From Uncle Reuben, as the logs burned low, Touching the walls and ceiling with that bloom That makes a rose's calyx of a room. I could not give his language, wherethrough ran The gamy flavor of the bookless man 620 Who shapes a word before the fancy cools, As lonely Crusoe improvised his tools. I liked the tale,—'twas like so many told By Rutebeuf and his Brother Trouveres bold; Nor were the hearers much unlike to theirs, Men unsophisticate, rude-nerved as bears. Ezra is gone and his large-hearted kind, The landlords of the hospitable mind; Good Warriner of Springfield was the last; An inn is now a vision of the past; 630 One yet-surviving host my mind recalls,— You'll find him if you go to Trenton Falls.'



THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC POETRY

When wise Minerva still was young And just the least romantic, Soon after from Jove's head she flung That preternatural antic, 'Tis said, to keep from idleness Or flirting, those twin curses, She spent her leisure, more or less, In writing po——, no, verses.

How nice they were! to rhyme with far A kind star did not tarry; The metre, too, was regular As schoolboy's dot and carry; And full they were of pious plums, So extra-super-moral,— For sucking Virtue's tender gums Most tooth-enticing coral.

A clean, fair copy she prepares, Makes sure of moods and tenses, With her own hand,—for prudence spares A man-(or woman-)-uensis; Complete, and tied with ribbons proud, She hinted soon how cosy a Treat it would be to read them loud After next day's Ambrosia.

The Gods thought not it would amuse So much as Homer's Odyssees, But could not very well refuse The properest of Goddesses; So all sat round in attitudes Of various dejection, As with a hem! the queen of prudes Began her grave prelection.

At the first pause Zeus said, 'Well sung!— I mean—ask Phoebus,—he knows.' Says Phoebus, 'Zounds! a wolf's among Admetus's merinos! Fine! very fine! but I must go; They stand in need of me there; Excuse me!' snatched his stick, and so Plunged down the gladdened ether.

With the next gap, Mars said, 'For me Don't wait,—naught could be finer, But I'm engaged at half past three,— A fight in Asia Minor!' Then Venus lisped, 'I'm sorely tried, These duty-calls are vip'rous; But I must go; I have a bride To see about in Cyprus.'

Then Bacchus,—'I must say good-by, Although my peace it jeopards; I meet a man at four, to try A well-broke pair of leopards.' His words woke Hermes. 'Ah!' he said, 'I so love moral theses!' Then winked at Hebe, who turned red, And smoothed her apron's creases.

Just then Zeus snored,—the Eagle drew His head the wing from under; Zeus snored,—o'er startled Greece there flew The many-volumed thunder. Some augurs counted nine, some, ten; Some said 'twas war, some, famine; And all, that other-minded men Would get a precious——.

Proud Pallas sighed, 'It will not do; Against the Muse I've sinned, oh!' And her torn rhymes sent flying through Olympus's back window. Then, packing up a peplus clean, She took the shortest path thence, And opened, with a mind serene, A Sunday-school in Athens.

The verses? Some in ocean swilled, Killed every fish that bit to 'em; Some Galen caught, and, when distilled, Found morphine the residuum; But some that rotted on the earth Sprang up again in copies, And gave two strong narcotics birth, Didactic verse and poppies.

Years after, when a poet asked The Goddess's opinion, As one whose soul its wings had tasked In Art's clear-aired dominion, 'Discriminate,' she said, 'betimes; The Muse is unforgiving; Put all your beauty in your rhymes, Your morals in your living.'



THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

Don't believe in the Flying Dutchman? I've known the fellow for years; My button I've wrenched from his clutch, man: I shudder whenever he nears!

He's a Rip van Winkle skipper, A Wandering Jew of the sea, Who sails his bedevilled old clipper In the wind's eye, straight as a bee.

Back topsails! you can't escape him; The man-ropes stretch with his weight, And the queerest old toggeries drape him, The Lord knows how long out of date!

Like a long-disembodied idea, (A kind of ghost plentiful now,) He stands there; you fancy you see a Coeval of Teniers or Douw.

He greets you; would have you take letters: You scan the addresses with dread, While he mutters his donners and wetters,— They're all from the dead to the dead!

You seem taking time for reflection, But the heart fills your throat with a jam, As you spell in each faded direction An ominous ending in dam.

Am I tagging my rhymes to a legend? That were changing green turtle to mock: No, thank you! I've found out which wedge-end Is meant for the head of a block.

The fellow I have in my mind's eye Plays the old Skipper's part here on shore, And sticks like a burr, till he finds I Have got just the gauge of his bore.

This postman 'twist one ghost and t'other, With last dates that smell of the mould, I have met him (O man and brother, Forgive me!) in azure and gold.

In the pulpit I've known of his preaching, Out of hearing behind the time, Some statement of Balaam's impeaching, Giving Eve a due sense of her crime.

I have seen him some poor ancient thrashing Into something (God save us!) more dry, With the Water of Life itself washing The life out of earth, sea, and sky.

O dread fellow-mortal, get newer Despatches to carry, or none! We're as quick as the Greek and the Jew were At knowing a loaf from a stone.

Till the couriers of God fail in duty, We sha'n't ask a mummy for news, Nor sate the soul's hunger for beauty With your drawings from casts of a Muse.



CREDIDIMUS JOVEM REGNARE

O days endeared to every Muse, When nobody had any Views, Nor, while the cloudscape of his mind By every breeze was new designed, Insisted all the world should see Camels or whales where none there be! O happy days, when men received From sire to son what all believed, And left the other world in bliss, Too busy with bedevilling this! 10

Beset by doubts of every breed In the last bastion of my creed, With shot and shell for Sabbath-chime, I watch the storming-party climb, Panting (their prey in easy reach), To pour triumphant through the breach In walls that shed like snowflakes tons Of missiles from old-fashioned guns, But crumble 'neath the storm that pours All day and night from bigger bores. 20 There, as I hopeless watch and wait The last life-crushing coil of Fate, Despair finds solace in the praise Of those serene dawn-rosy days Ere microscopes had made us heirs To large estates of doubts and snares, By proving that the title-deeds, Once all-sufficient for men's needs, Are palimpsests that scarce disguise The tracings of still earlier lies, 30 Themselves as surely written o'er An older fib erased before.

So from these days I fly to those That in the landlocked Past repose, Where no rude wind of doctrine shakes From bloom-flushed boughs untimely flakes; Where morning's eyes see nothing strange, No crude perplexity of change, And morrows trip along their ways Secure as happy yesterdays. 40 Then there were rulers who could trace Through heroes up to gods their race, Pledged to fair fame and noble use By veins from Odin filled or Zeus, And under bonds to keep divine The praise of a celestial line. Then priests could pile the altar's sods, With whom gods spake as they with gods, And everywhere from haunted earth Broke springs of wonder, that had birth 50 In depths divine beyond the ken And fatal scrutiny of men; Then hills and groves and streams and seas Thrilled with immortal presences, Not too ethereal for the scope Of human passion's dream or hope.

Now Pan at last is surely dead, And King No-Credit reigns instead, Whose officers, morosely strict, Poor Fancy's tenantry evict, 60 Chase the last Genius from the door, And nothing dances any more. Nothing? Ah, yes, our tables do, Dramming the Old One's own tattoo, And, if the oracles are dumb, Have we not mediums! Why be glum?

Fly thither? Why, the very air Is full of hindrance and despair! Fly thither? But I cannot fly; My doubts enmesh me if I try, 70 Each Liliputian, but, combined, Potent a giant's limbs to bind. This world and that are growing dark; A huge interrogation mark, The Devil's crook episcopal. Still borne before him since the Fall, Blackens with its ill-omened sign The old blue heaven of faith benign. Whence? Whither? Wherefore? How? Which? Why? All ask at once, all wait reply. 80 Men feel old systems cracking under 'em; Life saddens to a mere conundrum Which once Religion solved, but she Has lost—has Science found?—the key.

What was snow-bearded Odin, trow, The mighty hunter long ago, Whose horn and hounds the peasant hears Still when the Northlights shake their spears? Science hath answers twain, I've heard; Choose which you will, nor hope a third; 90 Whichever box the truth be stowed in, There's not a sliver left of Odin. Either he was a pinchbrowed thing, With scarcely wit a stone to fling, A creature both in size and shape Nearer than we are to the ape, Who hung sublime with brat and spouse By tail prehensile from the boughs, And, happier than his maimed descendants, The culture-curtailed independents, 100 Could pluck his cherries with both paws, And stuff with both his big-boned jaws; Or else the core his name enveloped Was from a solar myth developed, Which, hunted to its primal shoot, Takes refuge in a Sanskrit root, Thereby to instant death explaining The little poetry remaining.

Try it with Zeus, 'tis just the same; The thing evades, we hug a name; 110 Nay, scarcely that,—perhaps a vapor Born of some atmospheric caper. All Lempriere's fables blur together In cloudy symbols of the weather, And Aphrodite rose from frothy seas But to illustrate such hypotheses. With years enough behind his back, Lincoln will take the selfsame track, And prove, hulled fairly to the cob, A mere vagary of Old Prob. 120 Give the right man a solar myth, And he'll confute the sun therewith.

They make things admirably plain, But one hard question will remain: If one hypothesis you lose, Another in its place you choose, But, your faith gone, O man and brother, Whose shop shall furnish you another? One that will wash, I mean, and wear, And wrap us warmly from despair? 130 While they are clearing up our puzzles, And clapping prophylactic muzzles On the Actaeon's hounds that sniff Our devious track through But and If, Would they'd explain away the Devil And other facts that won't keep level, But rise beneath our feet or fail, A reeling ship's deck in a gale! God vanished long ago, iwis, A mere subjective synthesis; 140 A doll, stuffed out with hopes and fears, Too homely for us pretty dears, Who want one that conviction carries, Last make of London or of Paris. He gone, I felt a moment's spasm, But calmed myself, with Protoplasm, A finer name, and, what is more, As enigmatic as before; Greek, too, and sure to fill with ease Minds caught in the Symplegades 150 Of soul and sense, life's two conditions, Each baffled with its own omniscience. The men who labor to revise Our Bibles will, I hope, be wise, And print it without foolish qualms Instead of God in David's psalms: Noll had been more effective far Could he have shouted at Dunbar, 'Rise, Protoplasm!' No dourest Scot Had waited for another shot. 160

And yet I frankly must confess A secret unforgivingness, And shudder at the saving chrism Whose best New Birth is Pessimism; My soul—I mean the bit of phosphorus That fills the place of what that was for us— Can't bid its inward bores defiance With the new nursery-tales of science. What profits me, though doubt by doubt, As nail by nail, be driven out, 170 When every new one, like the last, Still holds my coffin-lid as fast? Would I find thought a moment's truce, Give me the young world's Mother Goose With life and joy in every limb, The chimney-corner tales of Grimm!

Our dear and admirable Huxley Cannot explain to me why ducks lay, Or, rather, how into their eggs Blunder potential wings and legs 180 With will to move them and decide Whether in air or lymph to glide. Who gets a hair's-breadth on by showing That Something Else set all agoing? Farther and farther back we push From Moses and his burning bush; Cry, 'Art Thou there?' Above, below, All Nature mutters yes and no! 'Tis the old answer: we're agreed Being from Being must proceed, 190 Life be Life's source. I might as well Obey the meeting-house's bell, And listen while Old Hundred pours Forth through the summer-opened doors, From old and young. I hear it yet, Swelled by bass-viol and clarinet, While the gray minister, with face Radiant, let loose his noble bass. If Heaven it reached not, yet its roll Waked all the echoes of the soul, 200 And in it many a life found wings To soar away from sordid things. Church gone and singers too, the song Sings to me voiceless all night long, Till my soul beckons me afar, Glowing and trembling like a star. Will any scientific touch With my worn strings achieve as much?

I don't object, not I, to know My sires were monkeys, if 'twas so; 210 I touch my ear's collusive tip And own the poor-relationship. That apes of various shapes and sizes Contained their germs that all the prizes Of senate, pulpit, camp, and bar win May give us hopes that sweeten Darwin. Who knows but from our loins may spring (Long hence) some winged sweet-throated thing As much superior to us As we to Cynocephalus? 220

This is consoling, but, alas, It wipes no dimness from the glass Where I am flattening my poor nose, In hope to see beyond my toes, Though I accept my pedigree, Yet where, pray tell me, is the key That should unlock a private door To the Great Mystery, such no more? Each offers his, but one nor all Are much persuasive with the wall 230 That rises now as long ago, Between I wonder and I know, Nor will vouchsafe a pin-hole peep At the veiled Isis in its keep. Where is no door, I but produce My key to find it of no use. Yet better keep it, after all, Since Nature's economical, And who can tell but some fine day (If it occur to her) she may, 240 In her good-will to you and me, Make door and lock to match the key?



TEMPORA MUTANTUR

The world turns mild; democracy, they say, Rounds the sharp knobs of character away, And no great harm, unless at grave expense Of what needs edge of proof, the moral sense; For man or race is on the downward path Whose fibre grows too soft for honest wrath, And there's a subtle influence that springs From words to modify our sense of things. A plain distinction grows obscure of late: Man, if he will, may pardon; but the State 10 Forgets its function if not fixed as Fate. So thought our sires: a hundred years ago, If men were knaves, why, people called them so, And crime could see the prison-portal bend Its brow severe at no long vista's end. In those days for plain things plain words would serve; Men had not learned to admire the graceful swerve Wherewith the AEsthetic Nature's genial mood Makes public duty slope to private good; No muddled conscience raised the saving doubt; 20 A soldier proved unworthy was drummed out, An officer cashiered, a civil servant (No matter though his piety were fervent) Disgracefully dismissed, and through the land Each bore for life a stigma from the brand Whose far-heard hiss made others more averse To take the facile step from bad to worse. The Ten Commandments had a meaning then, Felt in their bones by least considerate men, Because behind them Public Conscience stood, 30 And without wincing made their mandates good. But now that 'Statesmanship' is just a way To dodge the primal curse and make it pay, Since office means a kind of patent drill To force an entrance to the Nation's till, And peculation something rather less Risky than if you spelt it with an s; Now that to steal by law is grown an art, Whom rogues the sires, their milder sons call smart, And 'slightly irregular' dilutes the shame 40 Of what had once a somewhat blunter name. With generous curve we draw the moral line: Our swindlers are permitted to resign; Their guilt is wrapped in deferential names, And twenty sympathize for one that blames. Add national disgrace to private crime, Confront mankind with brazen front sublime, Steal but enough, the world is un-severe,— Tweed is a statesman, Fisk a financier; Invent a mine, and he—the Lord knows what; 50 Secure, at any rate, with what you've got. The public servant who has stolen or lied, If called on, may resign with honest pride: As unjust favor put him in, why doubt Disfavor as unjust has turned him out? Even it indicted, what is that but fudge To him who counted-in the elective judge? Whitewashed, he quits the politician's strife At ease in mind, with pockets filled for life; His 'lady' glares with gems whose vulgar blaze 60 The poor man through his heightened taxes pays, Himself content if one huge Kohinoor Bulge from a shirt-front ampler than before, But not too candid, lest it haply tend To rouse suspicion of the People's Friend. A public meeting, treated at his cost, Resolves him back more virtue than he lost; With character regilt he counts his gains; What's gone was air, the solid good remains; For what is good, except what friend and foe 70 Seem quite unanimous in thinking so, The stocks and bonds which, in our age of loans, Replace the stupid pagan's stocks and stones? With choker white, wherein no cynic eye Dares see idealized a hempen tie, At parish-meetings he conducts in prayer, And pays for missions to be sent elsewhere; On 'Change respected, to his friends endeared, Add but a Sunday-school class, he's revered, And his too early tomb will not be dumb 80 To point a moral for our youth to come.



IN THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

I

At twenty we fancied the blest Middle Ages A spirited cross of romantic and grand, All templars and minstrels and ladies and pages, And love and adventure in Outre-Mer land; But ah, where the youth dreamed of building a minster, The man takes a pew and sits reckoning his pelf, And the Graces wear fronts, the Muse thins to a spinster, When Middle-Age stares from one's glass at oneself!

II

Do you twit me with days when I had an Ideal, And saw the sear future through spectacles green? Then find me some charm, while I look round and see all These fat friends of forty, shall keep me nineteen; Should we go on pining for chaplets of laurel Who've paid a perruquier for mending our thatch, Or, our feet swathed in baize, with our Fate pick a quarrel, If, instead of cheap bay-leaves, she sent a dear scratch?

III

We called it our Eden, that small patent-baker, When life was half moonshine and half Mary Jane; But the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker!— Did Adam have duns and slip down a back-lane? Nay, after the Fall did the modiste keep coming With the last styles of fig-leaf to Madam Eve's bower? Did Jubal, or whoever taught the girls thrumming, Make the patriarchs deaf at a dollar the hour?

IV

As I think what I was, I sigh Desunt nonnulla! Years are creditors Sheridan's self could not bilk; But then, as my boy says, 'What right has a fullah To ask for the cream, when himself spilt the milk?' Perhaps when you're older, my lad, you'll discover The secret with which Auld Lang Syne there is gilt,— Superstition of old man, maid, poet, and lover,— That cream rises thickest on milk that was spilt!

V

We sailed for the moon, but, in sad disillusion, Snug under Point Comfort are glad to make fast, And strive (sans our glasses) to make a confusion 'Twixt our rind of green cheese and the moon of the past. Ah, Might-have-been, Could-have-been, Would-have-been! rascals, He's a genius or fool whom ye cheat at two-score, And the man whose boy-promise was likened to Pascal's Is thankful at forty they don't call him bore!

VI

With what fumes of fame was each confident pate full! How rates of insurance should rise on the Charles! And which of us now would not feel wisely grateful, If his rhymes sold as fast as the Emblems of Quarles? E'en if won, what's the good of Life's medals and prizes? The rapture's in what never was or is gone; That we missed them makes Helens of plain Ann Elizys, For the goose of To-day still is Memory's swan.

VII

And yet who would change the old dream for new treasure? Make not youth's sourest grapes the best wine of our life? Need he reckon his date by the Almanac's measure Who is twenty life-long in the eyes of his wife? Ah, Fate, should I live to be nonagenarian, Let me still take Hope's frail I.O.U.'s upon trust, Still talk of a trip to the Islands Macarian, And still climb the dream-tree for—ashes and dust!



AT THE BURNS CENTENNIAL

JANUARY, 1859

I

A hundred years! they're quickly fled, With all their joy and sorrow; Their dead leaves shed upon the dead, Their fresh ones sprung by morrow! And still the patient seasons bring Their change of sun and shadow; New birds still sing with every spring, New violets spot the meadow.

II

A hundred years! and Nature's powers No greater grown nor lessened! 10 They saw no flowers more sweet than ours, No fairer new moon's crescent. Would she but treat us poets so, So from our winter free us, And set our slow old sap aflow To sprout in fresh ideas!

III

Alas, think I, what worth or parts Have brought me here competing, To speak what starts in myriad hearts With Burns's memory beating! 20 Himself had loved a theme like this; Must I be its entomber? No pen save his but's sure to miss Its pathos or its humor.

IV

As I sat musing what to say, And how my verse to number, Some elf in play passed by that way, And sank my lids in slumber; And on my sleep a vision stole. Which I will put in metre, 30 Of Burns's soul at the wicket-hole Where sits the good Saint Peter.

V

The saint, methought, had left his post That day to Holy Willie, Who swore, 'Each ghost that comes shall toast In brunstane, will he, nill he; There's nane need hope with phrases fine Their score to wipe a sin frae; I'll chalk a sign, to save their tryin',— A hand () and "Vide infra!"' 40

VI

Alas! no soil's too cold or dry For spiritual small potatoes, Scrimped natures, spry the trade to ply Of diaboli advocatus; Who lay bent pins in the penance-stool Where Mercy plumps a cushion, Who've just one rule for knave and fool, It saves so much confusion!

VII

So when Burns knocked, Will knit his brows, His window gap made scanter, 50 And said, 'Go rouse the other house; We lodge no Tam O'Shanter!' 'We lodge!' laughed Burns. 'Now well I see Death cannot kill old nature; No human flea but thinks that he May speak for his Creator!

VIII

'But, Willie, friend, don't turn me forth, Auld Clootie needs no gauger; And if on earth I had small worth, You've let in worse I'se wager!' 60 'Na, nane has knockit at the yett But found me hard as whunstane; There's chances yet your bread to get Wi Auld Nick, gaugin' brunstane.'

IX

Meanwhile, the Unco' Guid had ta'en Their place to watch the process, Flattening in vain on many a pane Their disembodied noses. Remember, please, 'tis all a dream; One can't control the fancies 70 Through sleep that stream with wayward gleam, Like midnight's boreal dances.

X

Old Willie's tone grew sharp 's a knife: 'In primis, I indite ye, For makin' strife wi' the water o' life, And preferrin' aqua vitae!' Then roared a voice with lusty din, Like a skipper's when 'tis blowy, 'If that's a sin, I'd ne'er got in, As sure as my name's Noah!' 80

XI

Baulked, Willie turned another leaf,— 'There's many here have heard ye, To the pain and grief o' true belief, Say hard things o' the clergy!' Then rang a clear tone over all,— 'One plea for him allow me: I once heard call from o'er me, "Saul, Why persecutest thou me?"'

XII

To the next charge vexed Willie turned, And, sighing, wiped his glasses: 90 'I'm much concerned to find ye yearned O'er-warmly tow'rd the lasses!' Here David sighed; poor Willie's face Lost all its self-possession: 'I leave this case to God's own grace; It baffles my discretion!'

XIII

Then sudden glory round me broke, And low melodious surges Of wings whose stroke to splendor woke Creation's farthest verges; 100 A cross stretched, ladder-like, secure From earth to heaven's own portal, Whereby God's poor, with footing sure, Climbed up to peace immortal.

XIV

I heard a voice serene and low (With my heart I seemed to hear it,) Fall soft and slow as snow on snow, Like grace of the heavenly spirit; As sweet as over new-born son The croon of new-made mother, 110 The voice begun, 'Sore tempted one!' Then, pausing, sighed, 'Our brother!

XV

'If not a sparrow fall, unless The Father sees and knows it, Think! recks He less his form express, The soul his own deposit? If only dear to Him the strong, That never trip nor wander, Where were the throng whose morning song Thrills his blue arches yonder? 120

XVI

'Do souls alone clear-eyed, strong-kneed, To Him true service render, And they who need his hand to lead, Find they his heart untender? Through all your various ranks and fates He opens doors to duty, And he that waits there at your gates Was servant of his Beauty.

XVII

'The Earth must richer sap secrete, (Could ye in time but know it!) 130 Must juice concrete with fiercer heat, Ere she can make her poet; Long generations go and come, At last she bears a singer, For ages dumb of senses numb The compensation-bringer!

XVIII

'Her cheaper broods in palaces She raises under glasses, But souls like these, heav'n's hostages, Spring shelterless as grasses: 140 They share Earth's blessing and her bane, The common sun and shower; What makes your pain to them is gain, Your weakness is their power.

XIX

'These larger hearts must feel the rolls Of stormier-waved temptation; These star-wide souls between their poles Bear zones of tropic passion. He loved much!—that is gospel good, Howe'er the text you handle; 150 From common wood the cross was hewed, By love turned priceless sandal.

XX

'If scant his service at the kirk, He paters heard and aves From choirs that lurk in hedge and birk, From blackbird and from mavis; The cowering mouse, poor unroofed thing, In him found Mercy's angel; The daisy's ring brought every spring To him love's fresh evangel! 160

XXI

'Not he the threatening texts who deals Is highest 'mong the preachers, But he who feels the woes and weals Of all God's wandering creatures. He doth good work whose heart can find The spirit 'neath the letter; Who makes his kind of happier mind, Leaves wiser men and better.

XXII

'They make Religion be abhorred Who round with darkness gulf her, 170 And think no word can please the Lord Unless it smell of sulphur, Dear Poet-heart, that childlike guessed The Father's loving kindness, Come now to rest! Thou didst his hest, If haply 'twas in blindness!'

XXIII

Then leapt heaven's portals wide apart, And at their golden thunder With sudden start I woke, my heart Still throbbing-full of wonder. 180 'Father,' I said, ''tis known to Thee How Thou thy Saints preparest; But this I see,—Saint Charity Is still the first and fairest!'

XXIV

Dear Bard and Brother! let who may Against thy faults be railing, (Though far, I pray, from us be they That never had a failing!) One toast I'll give, and that not long, Which thou wouldst pledge if present, 190 To him whose song, in nature strong, Makes man of prince and peasant!



IN AN ALBUM

The misspelt scrawl, upon the wall By some Pompeian idler traced, In ashes packed (ironic fact!) Lies eighteen centuries uneffaced, While many a page of bard and sage, Deemed once mankind's immortal gain, Lost from Time's ark, leaves no more mark Than a keel's furrow through the main.

O Chance and Change! our buzz's range Is scarcely wider than a fly's; Then let us play at fame to-day, To-morrow be unknown and wise; And while the fair beg locks of hair, And autographs, and Lord knows what, Quick! let us scratch our moment's match, Make our brief blaze, and be forgot!

Too pressed to wait, upon her slate Fame writes a name or two in doubt; Scarce written, these no longer please, And her own finger rubs them out: It may ensue, fair girl, that you Years hence this yellowing leaf may see, And put to task, your memory ask In vain, 'This Lowell, who was he?'



AT THE COMMENCEMENT DINNER, 1866

IN ACKNOWLEDGING A TOAST TO THE SMITH PROFESSOR

I rise, Mr. Chairman, as both of us know, With the impromptu I promised you three weeks ago, Dragged up to my doom by your might and my mane, To do what I vowed I'd do never again: And I feel like your good honest dough when possest By a stirring, impertinent devil of yeast. 'You must rise,' says the leaven. 'I can't,' says the dough; 'Just examine my bumps, and you'll see it's no go.' 'But you must,' the tormentor insists, ''tis all right; You must rise when I bid you, and, what's more, be light.' 10

'Tis a dreadful oppression, this making men speak What they're sure to be sorry for all the next week; Some poor stick requesting, like Aaron's, to bud Into eloquence, pathos, or wit in cold blood, As if the dull brain that you vented your spite on Could be got, like an ox, by mere poking, to Brighton.

They say it is wholesome to rise with the sun, And I dare say it may be if not overdone; (I think it was Thomson who made the remark 'Twas an excellent thing in its way—for a lark;) 20 But to rise after dinner and look down the meeting On a distant (as Gray calls it) prospect of Eating, With a stomach half full and a cerebrum hollow As the tortoise-shell ere it was strung for Apollo, Undercontract to raise anerithmon gelasma With rhymes so hard hunted they gasp with the asthma, And jokes not much younger than Jethro's phylacteries, Is something I leave you yourselves to characterize.

I've a notion, I think, of a good dinner speech, Tripping light as a sandpiper over the beach, 30 Swerving this way and that as the wave of the moment Washes out its slight trace with a dash of whim's foam on 't, And leaving on memory's rim just a sense Something graceful had gone by, a live present tense; Not poetry,—no, not quite that, but as good, A kind of winged prose that could fly if it would. 'Tis a time for gay fancies as fleeting and vain As the whisper of foam-beads on fresh-poured champagne, Since dinners were not perhaps strictly designed For manoeuvring the heavy dragoons of the mind. 40 When I hear your set speeches that start with a pop, Then wander and maunder, too feeble to stop, With a vague apprehension from popular rumor There used to be something by mortals called humor, Beginning again when you thought they were done, Respectable, sensible, weighing a ton, And as near to the present occasions of men As a Fast Day discourse of the year eighteen ten, I—well, I sit still, and my sentiments smother, For am I not also a bore and a brother? 50

And a toast,—what should that, be? Light, airy, and free, The foam-Aphrodite of Bacchus's sea, A fancy-tinged bubble, an orbed rainbow-stain, That floats for an instant 'twixt goblet and brain; A breath-born perfection, half something, half naught, And breaks if it strike the hard edge of a thought. Do you ask me to make such? Ah no, not so simple; Ask Apelles to paint you the ravishing dimple Whose shifting enchantment lights Venus's cheek, And the artist will tell you his skill is to seek; 60 Once fix it, 'tis naught, for the charm of it rises From the sudden bopeeps of its smiling surprises.

I've tried to define it, but what mother's son Could ever yet do what he knows should be done? My rocket has burst, and I watch in the air Its fast-fading heart's-blood drop back in despair; Yet one chance is left me, and, if I am quick, I can palm off, before you suspect me, the stick.

Now since I've succeeded—I pray do not frown— To Ticknor's and Longfellow's classical gown, 70 And profess four strange languages, which, luckless elf, I speak like a native (of Cambridge) myself, Let me beg, Mr. President, leave to propose A sentiment treading on nobody's toes, And give, in such ale as with pump-handles we brew, Their memory who saved us from all talking Hebrew,— A toast that to deluge with water is good, For in Scripture they come in just after the flood: I give you the men but for whom, as I guess, sir, Modern languages ne'er could have had a professor, 80 The builders of Babel, to whose zeal the lungs Of the children of men owe confusion of tongues; And a name all-embracing I couple therewith, Which is that of my founder—the late Mr. Smith.



A PARABLE

An ass munched thistles, while a nightingale From passion's fountain flooded all the vale. 'Hee-haw!' cried he, 'I hearken,' as who knew For such ear-largess humble thanks were due. 'Friend,' said the winged pain, 'in vain you bray, Who tunnels bring, not cisterns, for my lay; None but his peers the poet rightly hear, Nor mete we listeners by their length of ear.'



V. EPIGRAMS



SAYINGS

1.

In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, 'I find thee worthy; do this deed for me'?

2.

A camel-driver, angry with his drudge, Beating him, called him hunchback; to the hind Thus spake a dervish: 'Friend, the Eternal Judge Dooms not his work, but ours, the crooked mind.'

3.

Swiftly the politic goes: is it dark?—he borrows a lantern; Slowly the statesman and sure, guiding his steps by the stars.

4.

'Where lies the capital, pilgrim, seat of who governs the Faithful?' 'Thither my footsteps are bent: it is where Saadi is lodged.'



INSCRIPTIONS

FOR A BELL AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY

I call as fly the irrevocable hours, Futile as air or strong as fate to make Your lives of sand or granite; awful powers, Even as men choose, they either give or take.



FOR A MEMORIAL WINDOW TO SIR WALTER RALEIGH, SET UP IN ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER, BY AMERICAN CONTRIBUTORS

The New World's sons, from England's breasts we drew Such milk as bids remember whence we came; Proud of her Past, wherefrom our Present grew, This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name.



PROPOSED FOR A SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MONUMENT IN BOSTON

To those who died for her on land and sea, That she might have a country great and free, Boston builds this: build ye her monument In lives like theirs, at duty's summons spent.



A MISCONCEPTION

B, taught by Pope to do his good by stealth, 'Twixt participle and noun no difference feeling, In office placed to serve the Commonwealth, Does himself all the good he can by stealing.



THE BOSS

Skilled to pull wires, he baffles Nature's hope, Who sure intended him to stretch a rope.



SUN-WORSHIP

If I were the rose at your window, Happiest rose of its crew, Every blossom I bore would bend inward, They'd know where the sunshine grew.



CHANGED PERSPECTIVE

Full oft the pathway to her door I've measured by the selfsame track, Yet doubt the distance more and more, 'Tis so much longer coming back!



WITH A PAIR OF GLOVES LOST IN A WAGER

We wagered, she for sunshine, I for rain, And I should hint sharp practice if I dared; For was not she beforehand sure to gain Who made the sunshine we together shared?



SIXTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY

As life runs on, the road grows strange With faces new, and near the end The milestones into headstones change, 'Neath every one a friend.



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT

In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing; The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.



LAST POEMS



HOW I CONSULTED THE ORACLE OF THE GOLDFISHES

What know we of the world immense Beyond the narrow ring of sense? What should we know, who lounge about The house we dwell in, nor find out, Masked by a wall, the secret cell Where the soul's priests in hiding dwell? The winding stair that steals aloof To chapel-mysteries 'neath the roof?

It lies about us, yet as far From sense sequestered as a star 10 New launched its wake of fire to trace In secrecies of unprobed space, Whose beacon's lightning-pinioned spears Might earthward haste a thousand years Nor reach it. So remote seems this World undiscovered, yet it is A neighbor near and dumb as death, So near, we seem to feel the breath Of its hushed habitants as they Pass us unchallenged, night and day. 20

Never could mortal ear nor eye By sound or sign suspect them nigh, Yet why may not some subtler sense Than those poor two give evidence? Transfuse the ferment of their being Into our own, past hearing, seeing, As men, if once attempered so, Far off each other's thought can know? As horses with an instant thrill Measure their rider's strength of will? 30 Comes not to all some glimpse that brings Strange sense of sense-escaping things? Wraiths some transfigured nerve divines? Approaches, premonitions, signs, Voices of Ariel that die out In the dim No Man's Land of Doubt?

Are these Night's dusky birds? Are these Phantasmas of the silences Outer or inner?—rude heirlooms From grovellers in the cavern-glooms, 40 Who in unhuman Nature saw Misshapen foes with tusk and claw, And with those night-fears brute and blind Peopled the chaos of their mind, Which, in ungovernable hours, Still make their bestial lair in ours?

Were they, or were they not? Yes; no; Uncalled they come, unbid they go, And leave us fumbling in a doubt Whether within us or without 50 The spell of this illusion be That witches us to hear and see As in a twi-life what it will, And hath such wonder-working skill That what we deemed most solid-wrought Turns a mere figment of our thought, Which when we grasp at in despair Our fingers find vain semblance there, For Psyche seeks a corner-stone Firmer than aught to matter known. 60

Is it illusion? Dream-stuff? Show Made of the wish to have it so? 'Twere something, even though this were all: So the poor prisoner, on his wall Long gazing, from the chance designs Of crack, mould, weather-stain, refines New and new pictures without cease, Landscape, or saint, or altar-piece: But these are Fancy's common brood Hatched in the nest of solitude; 70 This is Dame Wish's hourly trade, By our rude sires a goddess made. Could longing, though its heart broke, give Trances in which we chiefly live? Moments that darken all beside, Tearfully radiant as a bride? Beckonings of bright escape, of wings Purchased with loss of baser things? Blithe truancies from all control Of Hyle, outings of the soul? 80

The worm, by trustful instinct led, Draws from its womb a slender thread, And drops, confiding that the breeze Will waft it to unpastured trees: So the brain spins itself, and so Swings boldly off in hope to blow Across some tree of knowledge, fair With fruitage new, none else shall share: Sated with wavering in the Void, It backward climbs, so best employed, 90 And, where no proof is nor can be, Seeks refuge with Analogy; Truth's soft half-sister, she may tell Where lurks, seld-sought, the other's well, With metaphysic midges sore, My Thought seeks comfort at her door, And, at her feet a suppliant cast, Evokes a spectre of the past. Not such as shook the knees of Saul, But winsome, golden-gay withal,— 100 Two fishes in a globe of glass, That pass, and waver, and re-pass, And lighten that way, and then this, Silent as meditation is. With a half-humorous smile I see In this their aimless industry, These errands nowhere and returns Grave as a pair of funeral urns, This ever-seek and never-find, A mocking image of my mind. 110 But not for this I bade you climb Up from the darkening deeps of time: Help me to tame these wild day-mares That sudden on me unawares. Fish, do your duty, as did they Of the Black Island far away In life's safe places,—far as you From all that now I see or do. You come, embodied flames, as when I knew you first, nor yet knew men; 120 Your gold renews my golden days, Your splendor all my loss repays. 'Tis more than sixty years ago Since first I watched your to-and-fro; Two generations come and gone From silence to oblivion, With all their noisy strife and stress Lulled in the grave's forgivingness, While you unquenchably survive Immortal, almost more alive. 130 I watched you then a curious boy, Who in your beauty found full joy, And, by no problem-debts distrest, Sate at life's board a welcome guest. You were my sister's pets, not mine; But Property's dividing line No hint of dispossession drew On any map my simplesse knew; O golden age, not yet dethroned! What made me happy, that I owned; 140 You were my wonders, you my Lars, In darkling days my sun and stars, And over you entranced I hung, Too young to know that I was young. Gazing with still unsated bliss, My fancies took some shape like this: 'I have my world, and so have you, A tiny universe for two, A bubble by the artist blown, Scarcely more fragile than our own, 150 Where you have all a whale could wish, Happy as Eden's primal fish. Manna is dropt you thrice a day From some kind heaven not far away, And still you snatch its softening crumbs, Nor, more than we, think whence it comes. No toil seems yours but to explore Your cloistered realm from shore to shore; Sometimes you trace its limits round, Sometimes its limpid depths you sound, 160 Or hover motionless midway, Like gold-red clouds at set of day; Erelong you whirl with sudden whim Off to your globe's most distant rim, Where, greatened by the watery lens, Methinks no dragon of the fens Flashed huger scales against the sky, Roused by Sir Bevis or Sir Guy, And the one eye that meets my view, Lidless and strangely largening, too, 170 Like that of conscience in the dark, Seems to make me its single mark. What a benignant lot is yours That have an own All-out-of-doors, No words to spell, no sums to do, No Nepos and no parlyvoo! How happy you without a thought Of such cross things as Must and Ought,— I too the happiest of boys To see and share your golden joys!' 180

So thought the child, in simpler words, Of you his finny flocks and herds; Now, an old man, I bid you rise To the fine sight behind the eyes, And, lo, you float and flash again In the dark cistern of my brain. But o'er your visioned flames I brood With other mien, in other mood; You are no longer there to please, But to stir argument, and tease 190 My thought with all the ghostly shapes From which no moody man escapes. Diminished creature, I no more Find Fairyland beside my door, But for each moment's pleasure pay With the quart d'heure of Rabelais!

I watch you in your crystal sphere, And wonder if you see and hear Those shapes and sounds that stir the wide Conjecture of the world outside; 200 In your pent lives, as we in ours, Have you surmises dim of powers, Of presences obscurely shown, Of lives a riddle to your own, Just on the senses' outer verge, Where sense-nerves into soul-nerves merge, Where we conspire our own deceit Confederate in deft Fancy's feat, And the fooled brain befools the eyes With pageants woven of its own lies? 210 But are they lies? Why more than those Phantoms that startle your repose, Half seen, half heard, then flit away, And leave you your prose-bounded day?

The things ye see as shadows I Know to be substance; tell me why My visions, like those haunting you, May not be as substantial too. Alas, who ever answer heard From fish, and dream-fish too? Absurd! 220 Your consciousness I half divine, But you are wholly deaf to mine. Go, I dismiss you; ye have done All that ye could; our silk is spun: Dive back into the deep of dreams, Where what is real is what, seems! Yet I shall fancy till my grave Your lives to mine a lesson gave; If lesson none, an image, then, Impeaching self-conceit in men 230 Who put their confidence alone In what they call the Seen and Known. How seen? How known? As through your glass Our wavering apparitions pass Perplexingly, then subtly wrought To some quite other thing by thought. Here shall my resolution be: The shadow of the mystery Is haply wholesomer for eyes That cheat us to be overwise, 240 And I am happy in my right To love God's darkness as His light.



TURNER'S OLD TEMERAIRE

UNDER A FIGURE SYMBOLIZING THE CHURCH

Thou wast the fairest of all man-made things; The breath of heaven bore up thy cloudy wings, And, patient in their triple rank, The thunders crouched about thy flank, Their black lips silent with the doom of kings.

The storm-wind loved to rock him in thy pines, And swell thy vans with breath of great designs; Long-wildered pilgrims of the main By thee relaid their course again, Whose prow was guided by celestial signs.

How didst thou trample on tumultuous seas, Or, like some basking sea-beast stretched at ease, Let the bull-fronted surges glide Caressingly along thy side, Like glad hounds leaping by the huntsman's knees!

Heroic feet, with fire of genius shod, In battle's ecstasy thy deck have trod, While from their touch a fulgor ran Through plank and spar, from man to man, Welding thee to a thunderbolt of God.

Now a black demon, belching fire and steam, Drags thee away, a pale, dismantled dream, And all thy desecrated bulk Must landlocked lie, a helpless hulk, To gather weeds in the regardless stream.

Woe's me, from Ocean's sky-horizoned air To this! Better, the flame-cross still aflare, Shot-shattered to have met thy doom Where thy last lightnings cheered the gloom, Than here be safe in dangerless despair.

Thy drooping symbol to the flag-staff clings, Thy rudder soothes the tide to lazy rings, Thy thunders now but birthdays greet, Thy planks forget the martyrs' feet, Thy masts what challenges the sea-wind brings.

Thou a mere hospital, where human wrecks, Like winter-flies, crawl, those renowned decks, Ne'er trodden save by captive foes, And wonted sternly to impose God's will and thine on bowed imperial necks!

Shall nevermore, engendered of thy fame, A new sea-eagle heir thy conqueror name. And with commissioned talons wrench From thy supplanter's grimy clench His sheath of steel, his wings of smoke and flame?

This shall the pleased eyes of our children see; For this the stars of God long even as we; Earth listens for his wings; the Fates Expectant lean; Faith cross-propt waits, And the tired waves of Thought's insurgent sea.



ST. MICHAEL THE WEIGHER

Stood the tall Archangel weighing All man's dreaming, doing, saying, All the failure and the pain, All the triumph and the gain, In the unimagined years, Full of hopes, more full of tears, Since old Adam's hopeless eyes Backward searched for Paradise, And, instead, the flame-blade saw Of inexorable Law.

Waking, I beheld him there, With his fire-gold, flickering hair, In his blinding armor stand, And the scales were in his hand: Mighty were they, and full well They could poise both heaven and hell. 'Angel,' asked I humbly then, 'Weighest thou the souls of men? That thine office is, I know.' 'Nay,' he answered me, 'not so; But I weigh the hope of Man Since the power of choice began, In the world, of good or ill.' Then I waited and was still.

In one scale I saw him place All the glories of our race, Cups that lit Belsbazzar's feast, Gems, the lightning of the East, Kublai's sceptre, Caesar's sword, Many a poet's golden word, Many a skill of science, vain To make men as gods again.

In the other scale he threw Things regardless, outcast, few, Martyr-ash, arena sand, Of St Francis' cord a strand, Beechen cups of men whose need Fasted that the poor might feed, Disillusions and despairs Of young saints with, grief-grayed hairs, Broken hearts that brake for Man.

Marvel through my pulses ran Seeing then the beam divine Swiftly on this hand decline, While Earth's splendor and renown Mounted light as thistle-down.



A VALENTINE

Let others wonder what fair face Upon their path shall shine, And, fancying half, half hoping, trace Some maiden shape of tenderest grace To be their Valentine.

Let other hearts with tremor sweet One secret wish enshrine That Fate may lead their happy feet Fair Julia in the lane to meet To be their Valentine.

But I, far happier, am secure; I know the eyes benign, The face more beautiful and pure Than fancy's fairest portraiture That mark my Valentine.

More than when first I singled, thee, This only prayer is mine,— That, in the years I yet shall see. As, darling, in the past, thou'll be My happy Valentine.



AN APRIL BIRTHDAY—AT SEA

On this wild waste, where never blossom came, Save the white wind-flower to the billow's cap, Or those pale disks of momentary flame, Loose petals dropped from Dian's careless lap, What far fetched influence all my fancy fills, With singing birds and dancing daffodils?

Why, 'tis her day whom jocund April brought, And who brings April with her in her eyes; It is her vision lights my lonely thought, Even as a rose that opes its hushed surprise In sick men's chambers, with its glowing breath Plants Summer at the glacier edge of Death.

Gray sky, sea gray as mossy stones on graves;— Anon comes April in her jollity; And dancing down the bleak vales 'tween the waves, Makes them green glades for all her flowers and me. The gulls turn thrushes, charmed are sea and sky By magic of my thought, and know not why.

Ah, but I know, for never April's shine, Nor passion gust of rain, nor all her flowers Scattered in haste, were seen so sudden fine As she in various mood, on whom the powers Of happiest stars in fair conjunction smiled To bless the birth, of April's darling child.



LOVE AND THOUGHT

What hath Love with Thought to do? Still at variance are the two. Love is sudden, Love is rash, Love is like the levin flash, Comes as swift, as swiftly goes, And his mark as surely knows.

Thought is lumpish, Thought is slow, Weighing long 'tween yes and no; When dear Love is dead and gone, Thought comes creeping in anon, And, in his deserted nest, Sits to hold the crowner's quest.

Since we love, what need to think? Happiness stands on a brink Whence too easy 'tis to fall Whither's no return at all; Have a care, half-hearted lover, Thought would only push her over!



THE NOBLER LOVER

If he be a nobler lover, take him! You in you I seek, and not myself; Love with men's what women choose to make him, Seraph strong to soar, or fawn-eyed elf: All I am or can, your beauty gave it, Lifting me a moment nigh to you, And my bit of heaven, I fain would save it— Mine I thought it was, I never knew.

What you take of me is yours to serve you, All I give, you gave to me before; Let him win you! If I but deserve you, I keep all you grant to him and more: You shall make me dare what others dare not, You shall keep my nature pure as snow, And a light from you that others share not Shall transfigure me where'er I go.

Let me be your thrall! However lowly Be the bondsman's service I can do, Loyalty shall make it high and holy; Naught can be unworthy, done for you. Men shall say, 'A lover of this fashion Such an icy mistress well beseems.' Women say, 'Could we deserve such passion, We might be the marvel that he dreams.'



ON HEARING A SONATA OF BEETHOVEN'S PLAYED IN THE NEXT ROOM

Unseen Musician, thou art sure to please, For those same notes in happier days I heard Poured by dear hands that long have never stirred Yet now again for me delight the keys: Ah me, to strong illusions such as these What are Life's solid things? The walls that gird Our senses, lo, a casual scent or word Levels, and it is the soul that hears and sees! Play on, dear girl, and many be the years Ere some grayhaired survivor sit like me And, for thy largess pay a meed of tears Unto another who, beyond the sea Of Time and Change, perhaps not sadly hears A music in this verse undreamed by thee!



VERSES

INTENDED TO GO WITH A POSSET DISH TO MY DEAR LITTLE GODDAUGHTER, 1882

In good old times, which means, you know, The time men wasted long ago, And we must blame our brains or mood If that we squander seems less good, In those blest days when wish was act And fancy dreamed itself to fact, Godfathers used to fill with guineas The cups they gave their pickaninnies, Performing functions at the chrism Not mentioned in the Catechism. No millioner, poor I fill up With wishes my more modest cup, Though had I Amalthea's horn It should be hers the newly born. Nay, shudder not! I should bestow it So brimming full she couldn't blow it. Wishes aren't horses: true, but still There are worse roadsters than goodwill. And so I wish my darling health, And just to round my couplet, wealth, With faith enough to bridge the chasm 'Twixt Genesis and Protoplasm, And bear her o'er life's current vext From this world to a better next, Where the full glow of God puts out Poor reason's farthing candle, Doubt. I've wished her healthy, wealthy, wise, What more can godfather devise? But since there's room for countless wishes In these old-fashioned posset dishes, I'll wish her from my plenteous store Of those commodities two more, Her father's wit, veined through and through With tenderness that Watts (but whew! Celia's aflame, I mean no stricture On his Sir Josh-surpassing picture)— I wish her next, and 'tis the soul Of all I've dropt into the bowl, Her mother's beauty—nay, but two So fair at once would never do. Then let her but the half possess, Troy was besieged ten years for less. Now if there's any truth in Darwin, And we from what was, all we are win, I simply wish the child to be A sample of Heredity, Enjoying to the full extent Life's best, the Unearned Increment Which Fate her Godfather to flout Gave him in legacies of gout. Thus, then, the cup is duly filled; Walk steady, dear, lest all be spilled.



ON A BUST OF GENERAL GRANT

Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws That sway this universe, of none withstood, Unconscious of man's outcries or applause, Or what man deems his evil or his good; And when the Fates ally them with a cause That wallows in the sea-trough and seems lost, Drifting in danger of the reefs and sands Of shallow counsels, this way, that way, tost, Strength, silence, simpleness, of these three strands They twist the cable shall the world hold fast To where its anchors clutch the bed-rock of the Past.

Strong, simple, silent, therefore such was he Who helped us in our need; the eternal law That who can saddle Opportunity Is God's elect, though many a mortal flaw May minish him in eyes that closely see, Was verified in him: what need we say Of one who made success where others failed, Who, with no light save that of common day, Struck hard, and still struck on till Fortune quailed, But that (so sift the Norns) a desperate van Ne'er fell at last to one who was not wholly man.

A face all prose where Time's [benignant] haze Softens no raw edge yet, nor makes all fair With the beguiling light of vanished days; This is relentless granite, bleak and bare, Roughhewn, and scornful of aesthetic phrase; Nothing is here for fancy, naught for dreams, The Present's hard uncompromising light Accents all vulgar outlines, flaws, and seams, Yet vindicates some pristine natural right O'ertopping that hereditary grace Which marks the gain or loss of some time-fondled race.