Chapter XXV: Introduction (12)

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

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

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

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

THE MINER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GOLD EGG: A DREAM-FANTASY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AN EMBER PICTURE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO H.W.L.

ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1867

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN THE TWILIGHT

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

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

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

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

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

THE FOOT-PATH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POEMS OF THE WAR

THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD

OCTOBER, 1861

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF BLONDEL

AUTUMN, 1863

SCENE I.--_Near a castle in Germany._

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

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

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

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

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

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

SCENE II.--_An Inn near the Château of Chalus_.

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

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

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

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

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

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

MEMORIAE POSITUM

R.G. SHAW

I

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

III

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

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

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

ON BOARD THE '76

WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

NOVEMBER 3, 1884

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION

JULY 21, 1865

I

Weak-winged is song, Nor aims at that clear-ethered height Whither the brave deed climbs for light: We seem to do them wrong, Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse, Our trivial song to honor those who come With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum, And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire, Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire: 10 Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious memory to buoy up and save From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave Of the unventurous throng.

II

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

III

Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,
With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.
Many in sad faith sought for her,
Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life's dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her, 50
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness:
Their higher instinct knew
Those love her best who to themselves are true,
And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;
They followed her and found her
Where all may hope to find,
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,
But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.
Where faith made whole with deed 60
Breathes its awakening breath
Into the lifeless creed,
They saw her plumed and mailed,
With sweet, stern face unveiled.
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.

IV

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?
Is earth too poor to give us 70
Something to live for here that shall outlive us?
Some more substantial boon
Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?
The little that we see
From doubt is never free;
The little that we do
Is but half-nobly true;
With our laborious hiving
What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,
Life seems a fest of Fate's contriving, 80
Only secure in every one's conniving,
A long account of nothings paid with loss,
Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,
After our little hour of strut and rave,
With all our pasteboard passions and desires,
Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,
Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.
But stay! no age was e'er degenerate,
Unless men held it at too cheap a rate,
For in our likeness still we shape our fate. 90
Ah, there is something here
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer,
Something that gives our feeble light
A high immunity from Night,
Something that leaps life's narrow bars
To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;
A seed of sunshine that can leaven
Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars,
And glorify our clay
With light from fountains elder than the Day; 100
A conscience more divine than we,
A gladness fed with secret tears,
A vexing, forward-reaching sense
Of some more noble permanence;
A light across the sea,
Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,
Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years.

V

Whither leads the path
To ampler fates that leads?
Not down through flowery meads, 110
To reap an aftermath
Of youth's vainglorious weeds,
But up the steep, amid the wrath
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds,
Where the world's best hope and stay
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,
And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,
Ere yet the sharp, decisive word
Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword 120
Dreams in its easeful sheath;
But some day the live coal behind the thought,
Whether from Baäl's stone obscene,
Or from the shrine serene
Of God's pure altar brought,
Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen
Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men:
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 130
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,
And cries reproachful: 'Was it, then, my praise,
And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,
The victim of thy genius, not its mate!'
Life may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So bountiful is Fate; 140
But then to stand beside her,
When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God's plan
And measure of a stalwart man,
Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth,
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,
Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

VI

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 150
Whom late the Nation he had led.
With ashes on her head,
Wept with the passion of an angry grief:
Forgive me, if from present things I turn
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.
Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating as by rote: 160
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true,
How beautiful to see
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,
Not lured by any cheat of birth, 170
But by his clear-grained human worth,
And brave old wisdom of sincerity!
They knew that outward grace is dust;
They could not choose but trust
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,
And supple-tempered will
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind.
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 180
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.
Nothing of Europe here,
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,
Ere any names of Serf and Peer
Could Nature's equal scheme deface
And thwart her genial will;
Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 190
I praise him not; it were too late;
And some innative weakness there must be
In him who condescends to victory
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait,
Safe in himself as in a fate,
So always firmly he:
He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.
Great captains, with their guns and drums, 201
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower.
Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man.
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American.

VII