Chapter II

As I read on, what changes steal O’er me and through, from head to heel? A rapier thrusts coat-skirt aside, My rough Tweeds bloom to silken pride,-- Who was it laughed? Your hand, Dick Steele!

Down vistas long of clipt _charmille_ Watteau as Pierrot leads the reel; Tabor and pipe the dancers guide As I read on.

While in and out the verses wheel The wind-caught robes trim feet reveal, Lithe ankles that to music glide, But chastely and by chance descried; Art? Nature? Which do I most feel As I read on?

TO C. F. BRADFORD

ON THE GIFT OF A MEERSCHAUM PIPE.

The pipe came safe, and welcome too, As anything must be from you; A meerschaum pure, ’twould float as light As she the girls call Amphitrite. Mixture divine of foam and clay, From both it stole the best away: Its foam is such as crowns the glow Of beakers brimmed by Veuve Clicquot; Its clay is but congested lymph Jove chose to make some choicer nymph; And here combined,--why, this must be The birth of some enchanted sea, Shaped to immortal form, the type And very Venus of a pipe.

When high I heap it with the weed From Lethe wharf, whose potent seed Nicotia, big from Bacchus, bore And cast upon Virginia’s shore, I’ll think,--So fill the fairer bowl And wise alembic of thy soul, With herbs far-sought that shall distil, Not fumes to slacken thought and will, But bracing essences that nerve To wait, to dare, to strive, to serve.

When curls the smoke in eddies soft, And hangs a shifting dream aloft, That gives and takes, though chance-designed, The impress of the dreamer’s mind, I’ll think,--So let the vapors bred By Passion, in the heart or head, Pass off and upward into space, Waving farewells of tenderest grace, Remembered in some happier time, To blend their beauty with my rhyme.

While slowly o’er its candid bowl The color deepens (as the soul That burns in mortals leaves its trace Of bale or beauty on the face), I’ll think,--So let the essence rare Of years consuming make me fair; So, ’gainst the ills of life profuse, Steep me in some narcotic juice; And if my soul must part with all That whiteness which we greenness call, Smooth back, O Fortune, half thy frown, And make me beautifully brown!

Dream-forger, I refill thy cup With reverie’s wasteful pittance up, And while the fire burns slow away, Hiding itself in ashes gray, I’ll think,--As inward Youth retreats, Compelled to spare his wasting heats, When Life’s Ash-Wednesday comes about, And my head’s gray with fires burnt out, While stays one spark to light the eye, With the last flash of memory, ’Twill leap to welcome C. F. B., Who sent my favorite pipe to me.

BANKSIDE.

(HOME OF EDMUND QUINCY.)

DEDHAM, MAY 21, 1877.

I.

I christened you in happier days, before These gray forebodings on my brow were seen; You are still lovely in your new-leaved green; The brimming river soothes his grassy shore; The bridge is there; the rock with lichens hoar; And the same shadows on the water lean, Outlasting us. How many graves between That day and this! How many shadows more Darken my heart, their substance from these eyes Hidden forever! So our world is made Of life and death commingled; and the sighs Outweigh the smiles, in equal balance laid: What compensation? None, save that the All-wise So schools us to love things that cannot fade.

II.

Thank God, he saw you last in pomp of May, Ere any leaf had felt the year’s regret; Your latest image in his memory set Was fair as when your landscape’s peaceful sway Charmed dearer eyes with his to make delay On Hope’s long prospect,--as if They forget The happy, They, the unspeakable Three, whose debt, Like the hawk’s shadow, blots our brightest day: Better it is that ye should look so fair, Slopes that he loved, and ever-murmuring pines That make a music out of silent air, And bloom-heaped orchard-trees in prosperous lines; In you the heart some sweeter hints divines, And wiser, than in winter’s dull despair.

III.

Old Friend, farewell! Your kindly door again I enter, but the master’s hand in mine No more clasps welcome, and the temperate wine, That cheered our long nights, other lips must stain: All is unchanged, but I expect in vain The face alert, the manners free and fine, The seventy years borne lightly as the pine Wears its first down of snow in green disdain: Much did he, and much well; yet most of all I prized his skill in leisure and the ease Of a life flowing full without a plan; For most are idly busy; him I call Thrice fortunate who knew himself to please, Learned in those arts that make a gentleman.