Chapter II

One slept a sacred sleep, while golden lay
Autumnal moonlight glorious on his bed,--
Sleep ebbing deathward like a sea-drawn bay.

A Book was in his hand, whence late he read
Majestic words of that great Spirit that still
Doth haunt by Avon April-garlanded.

So sleeping, held he fast with fixéd will
His Master’s Book; and all the night was peace,
Bright peace on lawn and terrace, dale and hill.

Calm consummation, and most sweet surcease!
That tryst of sovereign powers Death would not wrong,
Shattering the bars with all-too-rough release,
But softly dealt.--They rule in splendor long,
Large lights, a moon and sun in England’s heaven of song.

THE IRIS-BRIDGE

That morn when men to one another said
“Browning is dead in Venice,” ere the thrill
Of the tidings touched us, lo! our eyes beheld
Strange portent flashed upon the winter sky.
From hill to hill the jewel-splendid span
Of the light rainbow leaped, transcendent joy,
The brave bright delicate bridge, frail as a flower,
Yet firm enough to bear the feet of Hope.
--“Browning is dead,” they told us; but our thoughts
Followed along the aerial sunbuilt arch
The onward quest of that still ardent soul.
Could he be holden of death, who built indeed,
Flinging his lyric faith across the vast,
An iris-bridge for man while words endure?

DESIRE OF FAME

O unapproachable glories of the night!
You type not my desire: enough for me
The vanished meteor’s immortality,
Brief memory of a moment touched with light.

ROSE-RENT

Life! lordly giver and gay!
I, for this manor of Time,
Lightly and lovingly pay
Rent with the rose of a rhyme.

THE FRIGATE-GHOST

Yes, you may build her again
As she was when she sailed the sea;
She may bear the brave old name,
And the harbors hail her the same;
’Tis her semblance, it is not she!
She is gone from our mortal ken.

I know not how or when,
But her spirit escaped away
From the dock and the dull decay,
From the uses of unprized age
And the changes wrought of men;
Like a wild sea-bird from a cage,
Her soul took flight from the form
To the tides that none can tame,
To the restless fields of her fame,
To the wet salt wind and the storm!

Somewhere she ranges free,
Stately, a shape of light,
Revisiting leagues of sea
Illumined with glorious fight.
She hangs like a lucent cloud
On the coast where her guns spoke loud,
In the gates of the Moslem proud,
Till the Crescent grew faint with fright.
Exultant she bounds on the brine,
Tracing the course of the race
When the Æolus held her in chase,
And the Belvidere and the Shannon,
And the Africa, ship-o’-the-line,
With another, doomed to her cannon,
To be blazoned in flame at the last,
When the grim sea-duel was done:
God rest the souls that passed
Ere the Guerrière’s leeward gun!
Ere the noblest flag on the sea
Came down to the Stripes and Stars!
Oh, the frigate-ghost, as she ranges free,
Thrills yet through her spectral spars!

Aye, the old pride stirs her still
As she sails and sails at will;
In her cross-trees memories nestle,
Though she walks the wave a ghost.
Well she minds the wary wrestle
When her shot poured hot as lava
On the shattered, stubborn Java,
Off the dim Brazilian coast;
And she haunts the moonlit seas
Where her crashing broadsides broke
Through the drift of silvered smoke
While she waged a double battle
In the waters Portuguese.
Still the ghostly muskets rattle,
And the old drums beat, beat, beat,
Like a heart that will not die;
And the old fife whistles high,
And the powder-scent is rank,
And she feels on her hollow plank
The old, dead heroes’ feet!

Ah, never sailor-man
Has seen her where she ranges,
Escaped from time and changes
As only spirits can,
Clear, absolute, and free!
Yet, some stern hour to be,
When a fight is fought at sea,
And the right of the fight is ours,
And the cause of the right is failing,
There shall rise a frigate sailing,
A luminous presence paling
Through the powder-cloud where it lowers;
Pale smoke from her side shall break,
Pale faces over her railing
Shall frown, till the foemen shake
With fear and bewildered passion,
Marking her old-time fashion,
In the turrets of hostile powers;
And then shall the rumor run
Like a lightning from lip to lip,
And shall leap from ship to ship,
While the wounded gunner reels
Again to his reeking gun,
Touched with a magic that heals,
Feeling this vision remind him
That the strong Dead fight behind him:
“’Tis the ghost of IRONSIDES,
Come back from the tameless tides,
From the ocean-fields unbounded,
Complete with her scattered spars,
Manned with the shades of her tars,
With the smoke of her guns surrounded,
To succor the Stripes and Stars!”

FAIR ENGLAND

White England shouldering from the sea,
Green England in thy rainy veil,
Old island-nest of Liberty
And loveliest Song, all hail!

God guard thee long from scath and grief!
Not any wish of ours would mar
One richly glooming ivy-leaf,
One rosy daisy-star.

What! phantoms are we, spectre-thin,
Unfathered, out of nothing born?
Did Being in this world begin
With blaze of yestermorn?

Nay! sacred Life, a scarlet thread,
Through lost unnumbered lives has run;
No strength can tear us from the dead;
The sire is in the son.

Nay! through the years God’s purpose glides,
And links in sequence deed with deed;
Hoar Time along his chaplet slides
Bead after jewel-bead.

O brother, breathing English air!
If both be just, if both be free,
A lordlier heritage we share
Than any earth can be:

If hearts be high, if hands be pure,
A bond unseen shall bind us still,--
The only bond that can endure,
Being welded with God’s will!

A bond unseen! and yet God speed
The apparent sign, when He finds good;
When in His sight it types indeed
That inward brotherhood.

For not the rose-and-emerald bow
Can bid the battling storm to cease,
But leaps at last, that all may know
The sign, not source, of peace.

Oh, what shall shameful peace avail,
If east or west, if there or here,
Men sprung of ancient England fail
To hold their birthright dear?

If west or east, if here or there,
Brute Mammon sit in Freedom’s place,
And judge a wailing world’s despair
With hard, averted face?

O great Co-heir, whose lot is cast
Beside the hearthstone loved of yore!
Inherit with us that best Past
That lives for evermore!

Inherit with us! Lo, the days
Are evil; who may know the end?
Strike hands, and dare the darkening ways,
Twin strengths, with God to friend!

TO THE MEMORY OF RICHARD WATSON GILDER

_Again the summer days beside the sea:
The billowing of the russet-feathered grass
In the warm wind; the shadow of clouds that sail;
The orange field-flower flaming like a torch
To light all wings of wavering butterflies;
The long wash of the everlasting wave,
The same and not the same forevermore.
Again the summer nights, a-throb with stars,
And that clear Star, the glory of the Lyre,
White-burning, hung at the high heart of heaven.
Again the summer days, the summer nights,--
All is as it hath been._

_Nay, not for those
Who have felt the shadow fall of that strange cloud
Which yet seems full of light, the shadow of death,
Is aught as it hath been. The dark sea-line
Solemnly deepens, and the sunset sweeps
With graver splendors through its pageant-pomp._

_I know not why these meadows, yester-year,
And these stark pines against the sunset-rose,
And these young woods where haply one beholds
In some brown pool the mirrored cardinal-flower
Lovely and lonely,--why along these ways
Sprang up so oft the sudden thought of him,
A wayside joy; why memories of his song
Floated upon the silvery thistledown;
Yet near he seemed. And not less near to-day,
Though all he loved, and sang of, gleams through tears,
Fresh-haloed with the pathos of the thought
That near or far we shall not see again
Those luminous eyes whence looked his lyric soul.
Star of the Lyre! a spirit like to thee,
White-burning, close to the high heart of heaven,
We knew; a spirit as clear, with ardors pure
Trembling to every touch of the divine
Serene sphere-music. Such was he, our friend,
Our singer; such is he, though mortal sense
Be sealed._

_Now to his name I give this book,
Reverent, as placing on an altar-stone
A gift; though slight, not all unmeet--since he
Served all his years a Soldier of the Light:
From those first days when the brave gentle boy,
In passion of service for the land he loved,
Stood by the thunderous guns of Gettysburg,
To those last days of service not less true
In the loud streets and swarming human hives,
The clangor and flare, and all the civic stress
Of his beloved city,--his and ours,
Where such as he may rear the City of Light._