Chapter IV

Nor deem he lived unto himself alone; His was the public spirit of his sire, And in those eyes, soft with domestic fire, A quenchless light of fiercer temper shone What time about the world our shame was blown On every wind; his soul would not conspire With selfish men to soothe the mob’s desire, Veiling with garlands Moloch’s bloody stone; The high-bred instincts of a better day Ruled in his blood, when to be citizen Rang Roman yet, and a Free People’s sway Was not the exchequer of impoverished men, Nor statesmanship with loaded votes to play, Nor public office a tramps' boosing-ken.

JOSEPH WINLOCK.

DIED JUNE 11, 1875.

Shy soul and stalwart, man of patient will Through years one hair’s-breadth on our Dark to gain, Who, from the stars he studied not in vain, Had learned their secret to be strong and still, Careless of fames that earth’s tin trumpets fill; Born under Leo, broad of build and brain, While others slept, he watched in that hushed fane Of Science, only witness of his skill: Sudden as falls a shooting-star he fell, But inextinguishable his luminous trace In mind and heart of all that knew him well. Happy man’s doom! To him the Fates were known Of orbs dim hovering on the skirts of space, Unprescient, through God’s mercy, of his own!

SONNET.

TO FANNY ALEXANDER.

Unconscious as the sunshine, simply sweet And generous as that, thou dost not close Thyself in art, as life were but a rose To rumple bee-like with luxurious feet; Thy higher mind therein finds sure retreat, But not from care of common hopes and woes; Thee the dark chamber, thee the unfriended, knows, Although no babbling crowds thy praise repeat: Consummate artist, who life’s landscape bleak Hast brimmed with sun to many a clouded eye, Touched to a brighter hue the beggar’s cheek, Hung over orphaned lives a gracious sky, And traced for eyes, that else would vainly seek, Fair pictures of an angel drawing nigh!

FLORENCE, 1873.

JEFFRIES WYMAN.

DIED SEPTEMBER 4, 1874.

The wisest man could ask no more of Fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the Many, honored by the Few; To count as naught in World, or Church, or State, But inwardly in secret to be great; To feel mysterious Nature ever new; To touch, if not to grasp, her endless clew, And learn by each discovery how to wait. He widened knowledge and escaped the praise; He wisely taught, because more wise to learn; He toiled for Science, not to draw men’s gaze, But for her lore of self-denial stern. That such a man could spring from our decays Fans the soul’s nobler faith until it burn.

TO A FRIEND

WHO GAVE ME A GROUP OF WEEDS AND GRASSES, AFTER A DRAWING OF DÜRER.

True as the sun’s own work, but more refined, It tells of love behind the artist’s eye, Of sweet companionships with earth and sky, And summers stored, the sunshine of the mind. What peace! Sure, ere you breathe, the fickle wind Will break its truce and bend that grass-plume high, Scarcely yet quiet from the gilded fly That flits a more luxurious perch to find. Thanks for a pleasure that can never pall, A serene moment, deftly caught and kept To make immortal summer on my wall. Had he who drew such gladness ever wept? Ask rather could he else have seen at all, Or grown in Nature’s mysteries an adept?

WITH AN ARMCHAIR.

About the oak that framed this chair, of old The seasons danced their round; delighted wings Brought music to its boughs; shy woodland things Shared its broad roof, ’neath whose green glooms grown bold, Lovers, more shy than they, their secret told; The resurrection of a thousand springs Swelled in its veins, and dim imaginings Teased them, perchance, of life more manifold. Such shall it know when its proud arms enclose My Lady Goshawk, musing here at rest, Careless of him who into exile goes, Yet, while his gift by those fair limbs is prest, Through some fine sympathy of nature knows That, seas between us, she is still his guest.

E. G. DE R.

Why should I seek her spell to decompose Or to its source each rill of influence trace That feeds the brimming river of her grace? The petals numbered but degrade to prose Summer’s triumphant poem of the rose: Enough for me to watch the wavering chase, Like wind o’er grass, of moods across her face, Fairest in motion, fairer in repose. Steeped in her sunshine, let me, while I may, Partake the bounty: I content should be That her mirth cheats my temples of their gray, Her charm makes years long spent seem yet to be. Wit, goodness, grace, swift flash from grave to gay,-- All these are good, but better far is she.

BON VOYAGE!

Ship, blest to bear such freight across the blue, May stormless stars control thy horoscope; In keel and hull, in every spar and rope, Be night and day to thy dear office true! Ocean, men’s path and their divider too, No fairer shrine of memory and hope To the underworld adown thy westering slope E’er vanished, or whom such regrets pursue: Smooth all thy surges as when Jove to Crete Swam with less costly burthen, and prepare A pathway meet for her home-coming soon With golden undulations such as greet The printless summer-sandals of the moon And tempt the Nautilus his cruise to dare!

TO WHITTIER

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY.

New England’s poet, rich in love as years, Her hills and valleys praise thee, her swift brooks Dance in thy verse; to her grave sylvan nooks Thy steps allure us, which the wood-thrush hears As maids their lovers', and no treason fears; Through thee her Merrimacs and Agiochooks And many a name uncouth win gracious looks, Sweetly familiar to both Englands' ears: Peaceful by birthright as a virgin lake, The lily’s anchorage, which no eyes behold Save those of stars, yet for thy brother’s sake That lay in bonds, thou blewst a blast as bold As that wherewith the heart of Roland brake, Far heard across the New World and the Old.

ON AN AUTUMN SKETCH OF H. G. WILD.

Thanks to the artist, ever on my wall The sunset stays: that hill in glory rolled, Those trees and clouds in crimson and in gold, Burn on, nor cool when evening’s shadows fall. Not round _these_ splendors Midnight wraps her pall; _These_ leaves the flush of Autumn’s vintage hold In Winter’s spite, nor can the Northwind bold Deface my chapel’s western window small: On one, ah me! October struck his frost, But not repaid him with those Tyrian hues; His naked boughs but tell him what is lost, And parting comforts of the sun refuse: His heaven is bare,--ah, were its hollow crost Even with a cloud whose light were yet to lose!

_April, 1854._

TO MISS D. T.

ON HER GIVING ME A DRAWING OF LITTLE STREET ARABS.

As, cleansed of Tiber’s and Oblivion’s slime, Glow Farnesina’s vaults with shapes again That dreamed some exiled artist from his pain Back to his Athens and the Muse’s clime, So these world-orphaned waifs of Want and Crime, Purged by Art’s absolution from the stain Of the polluting city-flood, regain Ideal grace secure from taint of time. An Attic frieze you give, a pictured song; For as with words the poet paints, for you The happy pencil at its labor sings, Stealing his privilege, nor does him wrong, Beneath the false discovering the true, And Beauty’s best in unregarded things.

WITH A COPY OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE.

Leaves fit to have been poor Juliet’s cradle-rhyme, With gladness of a heart long quenched in mould They vibrate still, a nest not yet grown cold From its fledged burthen. The numb hand of Time Vainly his glass turns; here is endless prime; Here lips their roses keep and locks their gold; Here Love in pristine innocency bold Speaks what our grosser conscience makes a crime. Because it tells the dream that all have known Once in their lives, and to life’s end the few; Because its seeds o’er Memory’s desert blown Spring up in heartsease such as Eden knew; Because it hath a beauty all its own, Dear Friend, I plucked this herb of grace for you.

ON PLANTING A TREE AT INVERARA.

Who does his duty is a question Too complex to be solved by me, But he, I venture the suggestion, Does part of his that plants a tree.

For after he is dead and buried, And epitaphed, and well forgot, Nay, even his shade by Charon ferried To--let us not inquire to what,

His deed, its author long outliving, By Nature’s mother-care increased, Shall stand, his verdant almoner, giving A kindly dole to man and beast.

The wayfarer, at noon reposing, Shall bless its shadow on the grass, Or sheep beneath it huddle, dozing Until the thundergust o’erpass.

The owl, belated in his plundering, Shall here await the friendly night, Blinking whene’er he wakes, and wondering What fool it was invented light.

Hither the busy birds shall flutter, With the light timber for their nests, And, pausing from their labor, utter The morning sunshine in their breasts.

What though his memory shall have vanished, Since the good deed he did survives? It is not wholly to be banished Thus to be part of many lives.

Grow, then, my foster-child, and strengthen, Bough over bough, a murmurous pile, And, as your stately stem shall lengthen, So may the statelier of Argyll!

1880.

AN EPISTLE TO GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

“De prodome, Des qu’il s’atorne a grant bonte Ja n’iert tot dit ne tot conte, Que leingue ne puet pas retraire Tant d’enor com prodom set faire.” CRESTIEN DE TROIES, _Li Romans dou Chevalier au Lyon_, 784-788.

1874.

Curtis, whose Wit, with Fancy arm in arm, Masks half its muscle in its skill to charm, And who so gently can the Wrong expose As sometimes to make converts, never foes, Or only such as good men must expect, Knaves sore with conscience of their own defect, I come with mild remonstrance. Ere I start, A kindlier errand interrupts my heart, And I must utter, though it vex your ears, The love, the honor, felt so many years.

Curtis, skilled equally with voice and pen To stir the hearts or mould the minds of men,-- That voice whose music, for I’ve heard you sing Sweet as Casella, can with passion ring, That pen whose rapid ease ne’er trips with haste, Nor scrapes nor sputters, pointed with good taste, First Steele’s, then Goldsmith’s, next it came to you, Whom Thackeray rated best of all our crew,-- Had letters kept you, every wreath were yours; Had the World tempted, all its chariest doors Had swung on flattered hinges to admit Such high-bred manners, such good-natured wit; At courts, in senates, who so fit to serve? And both invited, but you would not swerve, All meaner prizes waiving that you might In civic duty spend your heat and light, Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain Refusing posts men grovel to attain. Good Man all own you; what is left me, then, To heighten praise with but Good Citizen?

But why this praise to make you blush and stare, And give a backache to your Easy-Chair? Old Crestien rightly says no language can Express the worth of a true Gentleman, And I agree; but other thoughts deride My first intent, and lure my pen aside. Thinking of you, I see my firelight glow On other faces, loved from long ago, Dear to us both, and all these loves combine With this I send and crowd in every line; Fortune with me was in such generous mood That all my friends were yours, and all were good; Three generations come when one I call, And the fair grandame, youngest of them all, In her own Florida who found and sips The fount that fled from Ponce’s longing lips. How bright they rise and wreathe my hearthstone round, Divine my thoughts, reply without a sound, And with them many a shape that memory sees, As dear as they, but crowned with aureoles these! What wonder if, with protest in my thought, Arrived, I find ’twas only love I brought? I came with protest; Memory barred the road Till I repaid you half the debt I owed.

No, ’twas not to bring laurels that I came, Nor would you wish it, daily seeing fame, (Or our cheap substitute, unknown of yore,) Dumped like a load of coal at every door, Mime and hetæra getting equal weight With him whose toils heroic saved the State. But praise can harm not who so calmly met Slander’s worst word, nor treasured up the debt, Knowing, what all experience serves to show, No mud can soil us but the mud we throw. You have heard harsher voices and more loud, As all must, not sworn liegemen of the crowd, And far aloof your silent mind could keep As when, in heavens with winter-midnight deep, The perfect moon hangs thoughtful, nor can know What hounds her lucent calm drives mad below.

But to my business, while you rub your eyes And wonder how you ever thought me wise. Dear friend and old, they say you shake your head And wish some bitter words of mine unsaid: I wish they might be,--there we are agreed; I hate to speak, still more what makes the need; But I must utter what the voice within Dictates, for acquiescence dumb were sin; I blurt ungrateful truths, if so they be, That none may need to say them after me. ’Twere my felicity could I attain The temperate zeal that balances your brain; But nature still o’erleaps reflection’s plan, And one must do his service as he can. Think you it were not pleasanter to speak Smooth words that leave unflushed the brow and cheek? To sit, well-dined, with cynic smile, unseen In private box, spectator of the scene Where men the comedy of life rehearse, Idly to judge which better and which worse Each hireling actor spoiled his worthless part? Were it not sweeter with a careless heart, In happy commune with the untainted brooks, To dream all day, or, walled with silent books, To hear nor heed the World’s unmeaning noise, Safe in my fortress stored with lifelong joys?

I love too well the pleasures of retreat Safe from the crowd and cloistered from the street; The fire that whispers its domestic joy, Flickering on walls that knew me still a boy, And knew my saintly father; the full days, Not careworn from the world’s soul-squandering ways, Calm days that loiter with snow-silent tread, Nor break my commune with the undying dead; Truants of Time, to-morrow like to-day, That come unbid, and claimless glide away By shelves that sun them in the indulgent Past, Where Spanish castles, even, were built to last, Where saint and sage their silent vigil keep, And wrong hath ceased or sung itself to sleep. Dear were my walks, too, gathering fragrant store Of Mother Nature’s simple-minded lore: I learned all weather-signs of day or night; No bird but I could name him by his flight, No distant tree but by his shape was known, Or, near at hand, by leaf or bark alone. This learning won by loving looks I hived As sweeter lore than all from books derived. I know the charm of hillside, field, and wood, Of lake and stream, and the sky’s downy brood, Of roads sequestered rimmed with sallow sod, But friends with hardhack, aster, goldenrod, Or succory keeping summer long its trust Of heaven-blue fleckless from the eddying dust: These were my earliest friends, and latest too, Still unestranged, whatever fate may do. For years I had these treasures, knew their worth, Estate most real man can have on earth. I sank too deep in this soft-stuffed repose That hears but rumors of earth’s wrongs and woes; Too well these Capuas could my muscles waste, Not void of toils, but toils of choice and taste; These still had kept me could I but have quelled The Puritan drop that in my veins rebelled. But there were times when silent were my books As jailers are, and gave me sullen looks, When verses palled, and even the woodland path, By innocent contrast, fed my heart with wrath, And I must twist my little gift of words Into a scourge of rough and knotted cords Unmusical, that whistle as they swing To leave on shameless backs their purple sting.

How slow Time comes! Gone, who so swift as he? Add but a year, ’tis half a century Since the slave’s stifled moaning broke my sleep, Heard ’gainst my will in that seclusion deep, Haply heard louder for the silence there, And so my fancied safeguard made my snare. After that moan had sharpened to a cry, And the cloud, hand-broad then, heaped all our sky With its stored vengeance, and such thunders stirred As heaven’s and earth’s remotest chambers heard, I looked to see an ampler atmosphere By that electric passion-gust blown clear. I looked for this; consider what I see-- But I forbear, ’twould please nor you nor me To check the items in the bitter list Of all I counted on and all I mist. Only three instances I choose from all, And each enough to stir a pigeon’s gall: Office a fund for ballot-brokers made To pay the drudges of their gainful trade; Our cities taught what conquered cities feel By ædiles chosen that they might safely steal; And gold, however got, a title fair To such respect as only gold can bear. I seem to see this; how shall I gainsay What all our journals tell me every day? Poured our young martyrs their high-hearted blood That we might trample to congenial mud The soil with such a legacy sublimed? Methinks an angry scorn is here well-timed: Where find retreat? How keep reproach at bay? Where’er I turn some scandal fouls the way.

Dear friend, if any man I wished to please, ’Twere surely you whose humor’s honied ease Flows necked with gold of thought, whose generous mind Sees Paradise regained by all mankind, Whose brave example still to vanward shines, Checks the retreat, and spurs our lagging lines. Was I too bitter? Who his phrase can choose That sees the life-blood of his dearest ooze? I loved my Country so as only they Who love a mother fit to die for may; I loved her old renown, her stainless fame,-- What better proof than that I loathed her shame? That many blamed me could not irk me long, But, if you doubted, must I not be wrong? ’Tis not for me to answer: this I know, That man or race so prosperously low Sunk in success that wrath they cannot feel, Shall taste the spurn of parting Fortune’s heel; For never land long lease of empire won Whose sons sate silent when base deeds were done.

POSTSCRIPT, 1887.

Curtis, so wrote I thirteen years ago, Tost it unfinished by, and left it so; Found lately, I have pieced it out, or tried, Since time for callid juncture was denied. Some of the verses pleased me, it is true, And still were pertinent,--those honoring you. These now I offer: take them, if you will, Like the old hand-grasp, when at Shady Hill We met, or Staten Island, in the days When life was its own spur, nor needed praise. If once you thought me rash, no longer fear; Past my next milestone waits my seventieth year. I mount no longer when the trumpets call; My battle-harness idles on the wall, The spider’s castle, camping-ground of dust, Not without dints, and all in front, I trust. Shivering sometimes it calls me as it hears Afar the charge’s tramp and clash of spears; But ’tis such murmur only as might be The sea-shell’s lost tradition of the sea, That makes me muse and wonder Where? and When? While from my cliff I watch the waves of men That climb to break midway their seeming gain, And think it triumph if they shake their chain. Little I ask of Fate; will she refuse Some days of reconcilement with the Muse? I take my reed again and blow it free Of dusty silence, murmuring, “Sing to me!” And, as its stops my curious touch retries, The stir of earlier instincts I surprise,-- Instincts, if less imperious, yet more strong, And happy in the toil that ends with song.

Home am I come: not, as I hoped might be, To the old haunts, too full of ghosts for me, But to the olden dreams that time endears, And the loved books that younger grow with years; To country rambles, timing with my tread Some happier verse that carols in my head, Yet all with sense of something vainly mist, Of something lost, but when I never wist. How empty seems to me the populous street, One figure gone I daily loved to meet,-- The clear, sweet singer with the crown of snow Not whiter than the thoughts that housed below! And, ah, what absence feel I at my side, Like Dante when he missed his laurelled guide, What sense of diminution in the air Once so inspiring, Emerson not there! But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet Lessen like sound of friends' departing feet, And Death is beautiful as feet of friend Coming with welcome at our journey’s end; For me Fate gave, whate’er she else denied, A nature sloping to the southern side; I thank her for it, though when clouds arise Such natures double-darken gloomy skies. I muse upon the margin of the sea, Our common pathway to the new To Be, Watching the sails, that lessen more and more, Of good and beautiful embarked before; With bits of wreck I patch the boat shall bear Me to that unexhausted Otherwhere, Whose friendly-peopled shore I sometimes see, By soft mirage uplifted, beckon me, Nor sadly hear, as lower sinks the sun, My moorings to the past snap one by one.

II.

SENTIMENT.

ENDYMION.

A MYSTICAL COMMENT ON TITIAN’S “SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE.”