Chapter VII: Appendix (6)

So great in speech, but, ah! in act So overrun with vermin troubles, The coarse, sharp-cornered, ugly fact Of life collapses all his bubbles: Had he but lived in Plato's day, He might, unless my fancy errs, Have shared that golden voice's sway O'er barefooted philosophers. Our nipping climate hardly suits The ripening of ideal fruits: 100 His theories vanquish us all summer, But winter makes him dumb and dumber; To see him mid life's needful things Is something painfully bewildering; He seems an angel with clipt wings Tied to a mortal wife and children, And by a brother seraph taken In the act of eating eggs and bacon. Like a clear fountain, his desire Exults and leaps toward the light, 110 In every drop it says 'Aspire!' Striving for more ideal height; And as the fountain, falling thence, Crawls baffled through the common gutter, So, from his speech's eminence, He shrinks into the present tense, Unkinged by foolish bread and butter.

Yet smile not, worldling, for in deeds Not all of life that's brave and wise is; He strews an ampler future's seeds, 120 'Tis your fault if no harvest rises; Smooth back the sneer; for is it naught That all he is and has is Beauty's? By soul the soul's gains must be wrought, The Actual claims our coarser thought, The Ideal hath its higher duties.

ON A PORTRAIT OF DANTE BY GIOTTO

Can this be thou who, lean and pale, With such immitigable eye Didst look upon those writhing souls in bale, And note each vengeance, and pass by Unmoved, save when thy heart by chance Cast backward one forbidden glance, And saw Francesca, with child's glee, Subdue and mount thy wild-horse knee And with proud hands control its fiery prance?

With half-drooped lids, and smooth, round brow, And eye remote, that inly sees Fair Beatrice's spirit wandering now In some sea-lulled Hesperides, Thou movest through the jarring street, Secluded from the noise of feet By her gift-blossom in thy hand, Thy branch of palm from Holy Land;-- No trace is here of ruin's fiery sleet.

Yet there is something round thy lips That prophesies the coming doom, The soft, gray herald-shadow ere the eclipse Notches the perfect disk with gloom; A something that would banish thee, And thine untamed pursuer be, From men and their unworthy fates, Though Florence had not shut her gates, And Grief had loosed her clutch and let thee free.

Ah! he who follows fearlessly The beckonings of a poet-heart Shall wander, and without the world's decree, A banished man in field and mart; Harder than Florence' walls the bar Which with deaf sternness holds him far From home and friends, till death's release, And makes his only prayer for peace, Like thine, scarred veteran of a lifelong war!

ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND'S CHILD

Death never came so nigh to me before, Nor showed me his mild face: oft had I mused Of calm and peace and safe forgetfulness, Of folded hands, closed eyes, and heart at rest, And slumber sound beneath a flowery turf, Of faults forgotten, and an inner place Kept sacred for us in the heart of friends; But these were idle fancies, satisfied With the mere husk of this great mystery, And dwelling in the outward shows of things. 10 Heaven is not mounted to on wings of dreams, Nor doth the unthankful happiness of youth Aim thitherward, but floats from bloom to bloom, With earth's warm patch of sunshine well content: 'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, Whose golden rounds are our calamities, Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed.

True is it that Death's face seems stern and cold, When he is sent to summon those we love, 20 But all God's angels come to us disguised; Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, One after other lift their frowning masks, And we behold the seraph's face beneath, All radiant with the glory and the calm Of having looked upon the front of God. With every anguish of our earthly part The spirit's sight grows clearer; this was meant When Jesus touched the blind man's lids with clay. Life is the jailer, Death the angel sent 30 To draw the unwilling bolts and set us free. He flings not ope the ivory gate of Rest,-- Only the fallen spirit knocks at that,-- But to benigner regions beckons us, To destinies of more rewarded toil. In the hushed chamber, sitting by the dead, It grates on us to hear the flood of life Whirl rustling onward, senseless of our loss. The bee hums on; around the blossomed vine Whirs the light humming-bird; the cricket chirps; 40 The locust's shrill alarum stings the ear; Hard by, the cock shouts lustily; from farm to farm, His cheery brothers, telling of the sun, Answer, till far away the joyance dies: We never knew before how God had filled The summer air with happy living sounds; All round us seems an overplus of life, And yet the one dear heart lies cold and still. It is most strange, when the great miracle Hath for our sakes been done, when we have had 50 Our inwardest experience of God, When with his presence still the room expands, And is awed after him, that naught is changed, That Nature's face looks unacknowledging, And the mad world still dances heedless on After its butterflies, and gives no sign. 'Tis hard at first to see it all aright: In vain Faith blows her trump to summon back Her scattered troop: yet, through the clouded glass Of our own bitter tears, we learn to look 60 Undazzled on the kindness of God's face; Earth is too dark, and Heaven alone shines through.

It is no little thing, when a fresh soul And a fresh heart, with their unmeasured scope For good, not gravitating earthward yet, But circling in diviner periods, Are sent into the world,--no little thing, When this unbounded possibility Into the outer silence is withdrawn. Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread 70 Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim!

How changed, dear friend, are thy part and thy child's! He bends above _thy_ cradle now, or holds His warning finger out to be thy guide; Thou art the nursling now; he watches thee Slow learning, one by one, the secret things Which are to him used sights of every day; He smiles to see thy wondering glances con 80 The grass and pebbles of the spirit-world, To thee miraculous; and he will teach Thy knees their due observances of prayer. Children are God's apostles, day by day Sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace; Nor hath thy babe his mission left undone. To me, at least, his going hence hath given Serener thoughts and nearer to the skies, And opened a new fountain in my heart For thee, my friend, and all: and oh, if Death 90 More near approaches meditates, and clasps Even now some dearer, more reluctant hand, God, strengthen thou my faith, that I may see That 'tis thine angel, who, with loving haste, Unto the service of the inner shrine, Doth waken thy beloved with a kiss.

EURYDICE

Heaven's cup held down to me I drain, The sunshine mounts and spurs my brain; Bathing in grass, with thirsty eye I suck the last drop of the sky; With each hot sense I draw to the lees The quickening out-door influences, And empty to each radiant comer A supernaculum of summer: Not, Bacchus, all thy grosser juice Could bring enchantment so profuse, 10 Though for its press each grape-bunch had The white feet of an Oread. Through our coarse art gleam, now and then, The features of angelic men: 'Neath the lewd Satyr's veiling paint Glows forth the Sibyl, Muse, or Saint; The dauber's botch no more obscures The mighty master's portraitures. And who can say what luckier beam The hidden glory shall redeem, 20 For what chance clod the soul may wait To stumble on its nobler fate, Or why, to his unwarned abode, Still by surprises comes the God? Some moment, nailed on sorrow's cross, May meditate a whole youth's loss, Some windfall joy, we know not whence, Redeem a lifetime's rash expense, And, suddenly wise, the soul may mark, 29 Stripped of their simulated dark, Mountains of gold that pierce the sky, Girdling its valleyed poverty.

I feel ye, childhood's hopes, return, With olden heats my pulses burn,-- Mine be the self-forgetting sweep, The torrent impulse swift and wild, Wherewith Taghkanic's rockborn child Dares gloriously the dangerous leap. And, in his sky-descended mood, Transmutes each drop of sluggish blood, 40 By touch of bravery's simple wand, To amethyst and diamond, Proving himself no bastard slip, But the true granite-cradled one, Nursed with the rock's primeval drip, The cloud-embracing mountain's son!

Prayer breathed in vain I no wish's sway Rebuilds the vanished yesterday; For plated wares of Sheffield stamp We gave the old Aladdin's lamp; 'Tis we are changed; ah, whither went 51 That undesigned abandonment, That wise, unquestioning content, Which could erect its microcosm Out of a weed's neglected blossom, Could call up Arthur and his peers By a low moss's clump of spears, Or, in its shingle trireme launched, Where Charles in some green inlet-branched, Could venture for the golden fleece 60 And dragon-watched Hesperides, Or, from its ripple-shattered fate, Ulysses' chances re-create? When, heralding life's every phase, There glowed a goddess-veiling haze, A plenteous, forewarning grace, Like that more tender dawn that flies Before the full moon's ample rise? Methinks thy parting glory shines Through yonder grove of singing pines; 70 At that elm-vista's end I trace Dimly thy sad leave-taking face, Eurydice! Eurydice! The tremulous leaves repeat to me Eurydice! Eurydice! No gloomier Orcus swallows thee Than the unclouded sunset's glow; Thine is at least Elysian woe; Thou hast Good's natural decay, And fadest like a star away 80 Into an atmosphere whose shine With fuller day o'ermasters thine, Entering defeat as 't were a shrine; For us,--we turn life's diary o'er To find but one word,--Nevermore.

SHE CAME AND WENT

As a twig trembles, which a bird
Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent,
So is my memory thrilled and stirred;--
I only know she came and went.

As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven,
The blue dome's measureless content,--
So my soul held, that moment's heaven;--
I only know she came and went.

As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps
The orchards full of bloom and scent,
So clove her May my wintry sleeps;--
I only know she came and went.

An angel stood and met my gaze,
Through the low doorway of my tent;
The tent is struck, the vision stays;--
I only know she came and went

Oh, when the room grows slowly dim,
And life's last oil is nearly spent,
One gush of light these eyes will brim,
Only to think she came and went.

THE CHANGELING

I had a little daughter,
And she was given to me
To lead me gently backward
To the Heavenly Father's knee,
That I, by the force of nature.
Might in some dim wise divine
The depth of his infinite patience
To this wayward soul of mine.

I know not how others saw her,
But to me she was wholly fair,
And the light of the heaven she came from
Still lingered and gleamed in her hair;
For it was as wavy and golden,
And as many changes took,
As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples
On the yellow bed of a brook.

To what can I liken her smiling
Upon me, her kneeling lover,
How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids,
And dimpled her wholly over,
Till her outstretched hands smiled also,
And I almost seemed to see
The very heart of her mother
Sending sun through her veins to me!

She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth,
And it hardly seemed a day,
When a troop of wandering angels
Stole my little daughter away;
Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari
But loosed the hampering strings,
And when they had opened her cage-door.
My little bird used her wings.

But they left in her stead a changeling
A little angel child,
That seems like her bud in full blossom,
And smiles as she never smiled:
When I wake in the morning, I see it
Where she always used to lie,
And I feel as weak as a violet
Alone 'neath the awful sky.

As weak, yet as trustful also;
For the whole year long I see
All the wonders of faithful Nature
Still worked for the love of me;
Winds wander, and dews drip earthward,
Rain falls, suns rise and set,
Earth whirls, and all but to prosper
A poor little violet.

This child is not mine as the first was,
I cannot sing it to rest,
I cannot lift it up fatherly
And bliss it upon my breast:
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle
And sits in my little one's chair,
And the light of the heaven she's gone to
Transfigures its golden hair.

THE PIONEER

What man would live coffined with brick and stone,
Imprisoned from the healing touch of air,
And cramped with selfish landmarks everywhere,
When all before him stretches, furrowless and lone,
The unmapped prairie none can fence or own?

What man would read and read the self-same faces,
And, like the marbles which the windmill grinds,
Rub smooth forever with the same smooth minds,
This year retracing last year's, every year's, dull traces,
When there are woods and unpenfolded spaces?

What man o'er one old thought would pore and pore,
Shut like a book between its covers thin
For every fool to leave his dog's ears in,
When solitude is his, and God forevermore,
Just for the opening of a paltry door?

What man would watch life's oozy element
Creep Letheward forever, when he might
Down some great river drift beyond men's sight,
To where the undethroned forest's royal tent
Broods with its hush o'er half a continent?

What man with men would push and altercate,
Piecing out crooked means to crooked ends,
When he can have the skies and woods for friends,
Snatch back the rudder of his undismantled fate,
And in himself be ruler, church, and state?

Cast leaves and feathers rot in last year's nest,
The wingèd brood, flown thence, new dwellings plan;
The serf of his own Past is not a man;
To change and change is life, to move and never rest;--
Not what we are, but what we hope, is best.

The wild, free woods make no man halt or blind;
Cities rob men of eyes and hands and feet,
Patching one whole of many incomplete;
The general preys upon the individual mind,
And each alone is helpless as the wind.

Each man is some man's servant; every soul
Is by some other's presence quite discrowned;
Each owes the next through all the imperfect round,
Yet not with mutual help; each man is his own goal,
And the whole earth must stop to pay him toll.

Here, life the undiminished man demands;
New faculties stretch out to meet new wants;
What Nature asks, that Nature also grants;
Here man is lord, not drudge, of eyes and feet and hands,
And to his life is knit with hourly bands.

Come out, then, from the old thoughts and old ways,
Before you harden to a crystal cold
Which the new life can shatter, but not mould;
Freedom for you still waits, still looking backward, stays,
But widens still the irretrievable space.

LONGING

Of all the myriad moods of mind
That through the soul come thronging,
Which one was e'er so dear, so kind,
So beautiful as Longing?
The thing we long for, that we are
For one transcendent moment,
Before the Present poor and bare
Can make its sneering comment.

Still, through our paltry stir and strife,
Glows down the wished ideal,
And Longing moulds in clay what Life
Carves in the marble Real;
To let the new life in, we know,
Desire must ope the portal;
Perhaps the longing to be so
Helps make the soul immortal.

Longing is God's fresh heavenward will.
With our poor earthward striving;
We quench it that we may be still
Content with merely living;
But, would we learn that heart's full scope
Which we are hourly wronging,
Our lives must climb from hope to hope
And realize our longing.

Ah! let us hope that to our praise
Good God not only reckons
The moments when we tread his ways,
But when the spirit beckons,--
That some slight good is also wrought
Beyond self-satisfaction,
When we are simply good in thought,
Howe'er we fail in action.

ODE TO FRANCE

FEBRUARY, 1848

I

As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches
Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow,
Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches
In unwarned havoc on the roofs below,
So grew and gathered through the silent years
The madness of a People, wrong by wrong.
There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears,
No strength in suffering; but the Past was strong:
The brute despair of trampled centuries
Leaped up with one hoarse yell and snapped its bands, 10
Groped for its right with horny, callous hands,
And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes.
What wonder if those palms were all too hard
For nice distinctions,--if that mænad throng--
They whose thick atmosphere no bard
Had shivered with the lightning of his song,
Brutes with the memories and desires of men,
Whose chronicles were writ with iron pen,
In the crooked shoulder and the forehead low,
Set wrong to balance wrong, 20
And physicked woe with woe?

II

They did as they were taught; not theirs the blame,
If men who scattered firebrands reaped the flame:
They trampled Peace beneath their savage feet,
And by her golden tresses drew
Mercy along the pavement of the street.
O Freedom! Freedom! is thy morning-dew
So gory red? Alas, thy light had ne'er
Shone in upon the chaos of their lair!
They reared to thee such symbol as they knew, 30
And worshipped it with flame and blood,
A Vengeance, axe in hand, that stood
Holding a tyrant's head up by the clotted hair.

III

What wrongs the Oppressor suffered, these we know; These have found piteous voice in song and prose; But for the Oppressed, their darkness and their woe, Their grinding centuries,--what Muse had those? Though hall and palace had nor eyes nor ears, Hardening a people's heart to senseless stone, Thou knewest them, O Earth, that drank their tears, 40 O Heaven, that heard their inarticulate moan! They noted down their fetters, link by link; Coarse was the hand that scrawled, and red the ink; Rude was their score, as suits unlettered men, Notched with a headsman's axe upon a block: What marvel if, when came the avenging shock, 'Twas Atë, not Urania, held the pen?

IV

With eye averted, and an anguished frown, Loathingly glides the Muse through scenes of strife, Where, like the heart of Vengeance up and down, 50 Throbs in its framework the blood-muffled knife; Slow are the steps of Freedom, but her feet Turn never backward: hers no bloody glare; Her light is calm, and innocent, and sweet, And where it enters there is no despair: Not first on palace and cathedral spire Quivers and gleams that unconsuming fire; While these stand black against her morning skies, The peasant sees it leap from peak to peak Along his hills; the craftsman's burning eyes 60 Own with cool tears its influence mother-meek; It lights the poet's heart up like a star; Ah! while the tyrant deemed it still afar, And twined with golden threads his futile snare. That swift, convicting glow all round him ran; 'Twas close beside him there, Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man.

V

O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit? A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weed Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no seed! 70 Could eighteen years strike down no deeper root? But now thy vulture eye was turned on Spain; A shout from Paris, and thy crown falls off, Thy race has ceased to reign, And thou become a fugitive and scoff: Slippery the feet that mount by stairs of gold, And weakest of all fences one of steel; Go and keep school again like him of old, The Syracusan tyrant;--thou mayst feel Royal amid a birch-swayed commonweal! 80

VI

Not long can he be ruler who allows
His time to run before him; thou wast naught
Soon as the strip of gold about thy brows
Was no more emblem of the People's thought:
Vain were thy bayonets against the foe
Thou hadst to cope with; thou didst wage
War not with Frenchmen merely;--no,
Thy strife was with the Spirit of the Age,
The invisible Spirit whose first breath divine 89
Scattered thy frail endeavor,
And, like poor last year's leaves, whirled thee and thine
Into the Dark forever!

VII

Is here no triumph? Nay, what though
The yellow blood of Trade meanwhile should pour
Along its arteries a shrunken flow,
And the idle canvas droop around the shore?
These do not make a state,
Nor keep it great;
I think God made
The earth for man, not trade; 100
And where each humblest human creature
Can stand, no more suspicious or afraid,
Erect and kingly in his right of nature,
To heaven and earth knit with harmonious ties,--
Where I behold the exultation
Of manhood glowing in those eyes
That had been dark for ages,
Or only lit with bestial loves and rages,
There I behold a Nation:
The France which lies 110
Between the Pyrenees and Rhine
Is the least part of France;
I see her rather in the soul whose shine
Burns through the craftsman's grimy countenance,
In the new energy divine
Of Toil's enfranchised glance.

VIII

And if it be a dream,
If the great Future be the little Past
'Neath a new mask, which drops and shows at last
The same weird, mocking face to balk and blast, 120
Yet, Muse, a gladder measure suits the theme,
And the Tyrtæan harp
Loves notes more resolute and sharp,
Throbbing, as throbs the bosom, hot and fast:
Such visions are of morning,
Theirs is no vague forewarning,
The dreams which nations dream come true.
And shape the world anew;
If this be a sleep, 129
Make it long, make it deep,
O Father, who-sendest the harvests men reap!
While Labor so sleepeth,
His sorrow is gone,
No longer he weepeth,
But smileth and steepeth
His thoughts in the dawn;
He heareth Hope yonder
Rain, lark-like, her fancies,
His dreaming hands wander
Mid heart's-ease and pansies; 140
''Tis a dream! 'Tis a vision!'
Shrieks Mammon aghast;
'The day's broad derision
Will chase it at last;
Ye are mad, ye have taken
A slumbering kraken
For firm land of the Past!'
Ah! if he awaken,
God shield us all then, 149
If this dream rudely shaken
Shall cheat him again!

IX

Since first I heard our Northwind blow,
Since first I saw Atlantic throw
On our grim rocks his thunderous snow,
I loved thee, Freedom; as a boy
The rattle of thy shield at Marathon
Did with a Grecian joy
Through all my pulses run;
But I have learned to love thee now
Without the helm upon thy gleaming brow, 160
A maiden mild and undefiled
Like her who bore the world's redeeming child;
And surely never did thine altars glance
With purer fires than now in France;
While, in their clear white flashes,
Wrong's shadow, backward cast,
Waves cowering o'er the ashes
Of the dead, blaspheming Past,
O'er the shapes of fallen giants,
His own unburied brood, 170
Whose dead hands clench defiance
At the overpowering Good:
And down the happy future runs a flood
Of prophesying light;
It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood,
Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud
Of Brotherhood and Right.

ANTI-APIS

Praisest Law, friend? We, too, love it much as they that love it best; 'Tis the deep, august foundation, whereon Peace and Justice rest; On the rock primeval, hidden in the Past its bases be, Block by block the endeavoring Ages built it up to what we see.

But dig down: the Old unbury; thou shalt find on every stone That each Age hath carved the symbol of what god to them was known, Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but the fairest that they knew; If their sight were dim and earthward, yet their hope and aim were true.

Surely as the unconscious needle feels the far-off loadstar draw, So strives every gracious nature to at-one itself with law; 10 And the elder Saints and Sages laid their pious framework right By a theocratic instinct covered from the people's sight.

As their gods were, so their laws were; Thor the strong could reave and steal, So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman's eager keel; But a new law came when Christ came, and not blameless, as before, Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our lives and faiths to Thor.

Law is holy: ay, but what law? Is there nothing more divine Than the patched-up broils of Congress, venal, full of meat and wine? Is there, say you, nothing higher? Naught, God save us! that transcends Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends? 20

Did Jehovah ask their counsel, or submit to them a plan, Ere He filled with loves, hopes, longings, this aspiring heart of man? For their edict does the soul wait, ere it swing round to the pole Of the true, the free, the God-willed, all that makes it be a soul?

Law is holy; but not your law, ye who keep the tablets whole While ye dash the Law to pieces, shatter it in life and soul; Bearing up the Ark is lightsome, golden Apis hid within, While we Levites share the offerings, richer by the people's sin.

Give to Cæsar what is Cæsar's? yes, but tell me, if you can, Is this superscription Cæsar's here upon our brother man? 30 Is not here some other's image, dark and sullied though it be, In this fellow-soul that worships, struggles Godward even as we?

It was not to such a future that the Mayflower's prow was turned, Not to such a faith the martyrs clung, exulting as they burned; Not by such laws are men fashioned, earnest, simple, valiant, great In the household virtues whereon rests the unconquerable state.

Ah! there is a higher gospel, overhead the God-roof springs, And each glad, obedient planet like a golden shuttle sings Through the web which Time is weaving in his never-resting loom, Weaving seasons many-colored, bringing prophecy to doom. 40

Think you Truth a farthing rushlight, to be pinched out when you will With your deft official fingers, and your politicians' skill? Is your God a wooden fetish, to be hidden out of sight That his block eyes may not see you do the thing that is not right?

But the Destinies think not so; to their judgment-chamber lone Comes no noise of popular clamor, there Fame's trumpet is not blown; Your majorities they reck not; that you grant, but then you say That you differ with them somewhat,--which is stronger, you or they?

Patient are they as the insects that build islands in the deep; They hurl not the bolted thunder, but their silent way they keep; 50 Where they have been that we know; where empires towered that were not just; Lo! the skulking wild fox scratches in a little heap of dust.

A PARABLE

Said Christ our Lord, 'I will go and see How the men, my brethren, believe in me.' He passed not again through the gate of birth, But made himself known to the children of earth.

Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and kings, 'Behold, now, the Giver of all good things; Go to, let us welcome with pomp and state Him who alone is mighty and great.'

With carpets of gold the ground they spread Wherever the Son of Man should tread, And in palace-chambers lofty and rare They lodged him, and served him with kingly fare.

Great organs surged through arches dim Their jubilant floods in praise of him; And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall, He saw his own image high over all.

But still, wherever his steps they led, The Lord in sorrow bent down his head, And from under the heavy foundation-stones, The son of Mary heard bitter groans.

And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall, He marked great fissures that rent the wall, And opened wider and yet more wide As the living foundation heaved and sighed.

'Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, On the bodies and souls of living men? And think ye that building shall endure, Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?

'With gates of silver and bars of gold Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold; I have heard the dropping of their tears In heaven these eighteen hundred years.'

'O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt, We build but as our fathers built; Behold thine images, how they stand, Sovereign and sole, through all our land.

'Our task is hard,--with sword and flame To hold thine earth forever the same, And with sharp crooks of steel to keep Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep.'

Then Christ sought out an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin Pushed from her faintly want and sin.

These set he in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garment-hem, For fear of defilement, 'Lo, here,' said he, 'The images ye have made of me!'

ODE

WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE COCHITUATE WATER INTO THE CITY OF BOSTON

My name is Water: I have sped Through strange, dark ways, untried before, By pure desire of friendship led, Cochituate's ambassador; He sends four royal gifts by me: Long life, health, peace, and purity.

I'm Ceres' cup-bearer; I pour, For flowers and fruits and all their kin, Her crystal vintage, from of yore Stored in old Earth's selectest bin, Flora's Falernian ripe, since God The wine-press of the deluge trod.

In that far isle whence, iron-willed, The New World's sires their bark unmoored, The fairies' acorn-cups I filled Upon the toadstool's silver board, And, 'neath Herne's oak, for Shakespeare's sight, Strewed moss and grass with diamonds bright.

No fairies in the Mayflower came, And, lightsome as I sparkle here, For Mother Bay State, busy dame, I've toiled and drudged this many a year, Throbbed in her engines' iron veins, Twirled myriad spindles for her gains.

I, too, can weave: the warp I set Through which the sun his shuttle throws, And, bright as Noah saw it, yet For you the arching rainbow glows, A sight in Paradise denied To unfallen Adam and his bride.

When Winter held me in his grip, You seized and sent me o'er the wave, Ungrateful! in a prison-ship; But I forgive, not long a slave, For, soon as summer south-winds blew, Homeward I fled, disguised as dew.

For countless services I'm fit, Of use, of pleasure, and of gain, But lightly from all bonds I flit, Nor lose my mirth, nor feel a stain; From mill and wash-tub I escape, And take in heaven my proper shape.

So, free myself, to-day, elate I come from far o'er hill and mead, And here, Cochituate's envoy, wait To be your blithesome Ganymede, And brim your cups with nectar true That never will make slaves of you.

LINES

SUGGESTED BY THE GRAVES OF TWO ENGLISH SOLDIERS ON CONCORD BATTLE-GROUND

The same good blood that now refills The dotard Orient's shrunken veins, The same whose vigor westward thrills, Bursting Nevada's silver chains, Poured here upon the April grass, Freckled with red the herbage new; On reeled the battle's trampling mass, Back to the ash the bluebird flew.

Poured here in vain;--that sturdy blood Was meant to make the earth more green, But in a higher, gentler mood Than broke this April noon serene; Two graves are here: to mark the place, At head and foot, an unhewn stone, O'er which the herald lichens trace The blazon of Oblivion.

These men were brave enough, and true To the hired soldier's bull-dog creed; What brought them here they never knew, They fought as suits the English breed: They came three thousand miles, and died, To keep the Past upon its throne: Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, Their English mother made her moan.

The turf that covers them no thrill Sends up to fire the heart and brain; No stronger purpose nerves the will, No hope renews its youth again: From farm to farm the Concord glides, And trails my fancy with its flow; O'erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides, Twinned in the river's heaven below.

But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs, Proud of thy birth and neighbor's right, Where sleep the heroic villagers Borne red and stiff from Concord fight; Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun, Or Seth, as ebbed the life away, What earthquake rifts would shoot and run World-wide from that short April fray?

What then? With heart and hand they wrought, According to their village light; 'Twas for the Future that they fought, Their rustic faith in what was right. Upon earth's tragic stage they burst Unsummoned, in the humble sock; Theirs the fifth act; the curtain first Rose long ago on Charles's block.

Their graves have voices; if they threw Dice charged with fates beyond their ken, Yet to their instincts they were true, And had the genius to be men. Fine privilege of Freedom's host, Of humblest soldiers for the Right!-- Age after age ye hold your post, Your graves send courage forth, and might.

TO----

We, too, have autumns, when our leaves
Drop loosely through the dampened air,
When all our good seems bound in sheaves,
And we stand reaped and bare.

Our seasons have no fixed returns,
Without our will they come and go;
At noon our sudden summer burns,
Ere sunset all is snow.

But each day brings less summer cheer,
Crimps more our ineffectual spring,
And something earlier every year
Our singing birds take wing.

As less the olden glow abides,
And less the chillier heart aspires,
With drift-wood beached in past spring-tides
We light our sullen fires.

By the pinched rushlight's starving beam
We cower and strain our wasted sight,
To stitch youth's shroud up, seam by seam,
In the long arctic night.

It was not so--we once were young
When Spring, to womanly Summer turning,
Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung,
In the red sunrise burning.

We trusted then, aspired, believed
That earth could be remade to-morrow;
Ah, why be ever undeceived?
Why give up faith for sorrow?

O thou, whose days are yet all spring,
Faith, blighted one, is past retrieving;
Experience is a dumb, dead thing;
The victory's in believing.

FREEDOM

Are we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be That thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringest Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea, Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom flingest, As on an altar,--can it be that ye Have wasted inspiration on dead ears, Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains? The people's heart is like a harp for years Hung where some petrifying torrent rains Its slow-incrusting spray: the stiffened chords 10 Faint and more faint make answer to the tears That drip upon them: idle are all words: Only a golden plectrum wakes the tone Deep buried 'neath that ever-thickening stone.

We are not free: doth Freedom, then, consist In musing with our faces toward the Past, While petty cares and crawling interests twist Their spider-threads about us, which at last Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind In formal narrowness heart, soul and mind? 20 Freedom is re-created year by year, In hearts wide open on the Godward side, In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, In minds that sway the future like a tide. He broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes; She chooses men for her august abodes, Building them fair and fronting to the dawn; Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few Light footprints, leading mornward through the dew: Before the day had risen, she was gone. 30

And we must follow: swiftly runs she on, And, if our steps should slacken in despair, Half turns her face, half smiles through golden hair, Forever yielding, never wholly won: That is not love which pauses in the race Two close-linked names on fleeting sand to trace; Freedom gained yesterday is no more ours; Men gather but dry seeds of last year's flowers; Still there's a charm uugranted, still a grace, Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained, 40 Makes us Possession's languid hand let fall; 'Tis but a fragment of ourselves is gained, The Future brings us more, but never all.

And, as the finder of some unknown realm, Mounting a summit whence he thinks to see On either side of him the imprisoning sea, Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelm The valley-land, peak after snowy peak Stretch out of sight, each like a silver helm Beneath its plume of smoke, sublime and bleak, 50 And what he thought an island finds to be A continent to him first oped,--so we Can from our height of Freedom look along A boundless future, ours if we be strong; Or if we shrink, better remount our ships And, fleeing God's express design, trace back The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet-track To Europe entering her blood-red eclipse.

* * * * *

Therefore of Europe now I will not doubt, For the broad foreheads surely win the day, 60 And brains, not crowns or soul-gelt armies, weigh In Fortune's scales: such dust she brushes out. Most gracious are the conquests of the Word, Gradual and silent as a flower's increase, And the best guide from old to new is Peace-- Yet, Freedom, than canst sanctify the sword!

Bravely to do whate'er the time demands, Whether with pen or sword, and not to flinch, This is the task that fits heroic hands; So are Truth's boundaries widened inch by inch. 70

I do not love the Peace which tyrants make; The calm she breeds let the sword's lightning break! It is the tyrants who have beaten out Ploughshares and pruning-hooks to spears and swords, And shall I pause and moralize and doubt? Whose veins run water let him mete his words! Each fetter sundered is the whole world's gain! And rather than humanity remain A pearl beneath the feet of Austrian swine, Welcome to me whatever breaks a chain. 80 _That_ surely is of God, and all divine!

BIBLIOLATRES

Bowing thyself in dust before a Book, And thinking the great God is thine alone, O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brook What gods the heathen carves in wood and stone, As if the Shepherd who from the outer cold Leads all his shivering lambs to one sure fold Were careful for the fashion of his crook.

There is no broken reed so poor and base, No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue, But He therewith the ravening wolf can chase, And guide his flock to springs and pastures new; Through ways unloosed for, and through many lands, Far from the rich folds built with human hands, The gracious footprints of his love I trace.

And what art thou, own brother of the clod, That from his hand the crook wouldst snatch away And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod, To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day? Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew, That with thy idol-volume's covers two Wouldst make a jail to coop the living God?

Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ-tone By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught, Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brains Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought, Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire, Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desire To weld anew the spirit's broken chains.

God is not dumb, that He should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor; There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less, Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends, Intent on manna still and mortal ends, Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore.

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone; Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, While thunder's surges burst on cliffs and cloud, Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.

BEAVER BROOK

Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill,
And, minuting the long day's loss,
The cedar's shadow, slow and still,
Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss.

Warm noon brims full the valley's cup,
The aspen's leaves are scarce astir;
Only the little mill sends up
Its busy, never-ceasing burr.

Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems
The road along the mill-pond's brink,
From 'neath the arching barberry-stems,
My footstep scares the shy chewink.

Beneath a bony buttonwood
The mill's red door lets forth the din;
The whitened miller, dust-imbued,
Flits past the square of dark within.

No mountain torrent's strength is here;
Sweet Beaver, child of forest still,
Heaps its small pitcher to the ear,
And gently waits the miller's will.

Swift slips Undine along the race
Unheard, and then, with flashing bound,
Floods the dull wheel with light and grace,
And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round.

The miller dreams not at what cost
The quivering millstones hum and whirl,
Nor how for every turn are tost
Armfuls of diamond and of pearl.

But Summer cleared my happier eyes
With drops of some celestial juice,
To see how Beauty underlies
Forevermore each form of use.

And more; methought I saw that flood,
Which now so dull and darkling steals,
Thick, here and there, with human blood,
To turn the world's laborious wheels.

No more than doth the miller there,
Shut in our several cells, do we
Know with what waste of beauty rare
Moves every day's machinery.

Surely the wiser time shall come
When this fine overplus of might,
No longer sullen, slow, and dumb,
Shall leap to music and to light.

In that new childhood of the Earth
Life of itself shall dance and play,
Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make mirth,
And labor meet delight halfway.

MEMORIAL VERSES

KOSSUTH

A race of nobles may die out,
A royal line may leave no heir;
Wise Nature sets no guards about
Her pewter plate and wooden ware.

But they fail not, the kinglier breed,
Who starry diadems attain;
To dungeon, axe, and stake succeed
Heirs of the old heroic strain.

The zeal of Nature never cools,
Nor is she thwarted of her ends;
When gapped and dulled her cheaper tools,
Then she a saint and prophet spends.

Land of the Magyars! though it be
The tyrant may relink his chain,
Already thine the victory,
As the just Future measures gain.

Thou hast succeeded, thou hast won
The deathly travail's amplest worth;
A nation's duty thou hast done,
Giving a hero to our earth.

And he, let come what will of woe
Hath saved the land he strove to save;
No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow,
Can quench the voice shall haunt his grave.

'I Kossuth am: O Future, thou
That clear'st the just and blott'st the vile,
O'er this small dust in reverence bow,
Remembering what I was erewhile.

'I was the chosen trump wherethrough
Our God sent forth awakening breath;
Came chains? Came death? The strain He blew
Sounds on, outliving chains and death.'

TO LAMARTINE

1848

I did not praise thee when the crowd,
'Witched with the moment's inspiration,
Vexed thy still ether with hosannas loud,
And stamped their dusty adoration;
I but looked upward with the rest,
And, when they shouted Greatest, whispered Best.

They raised thee not, but rose to thee,
Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging;
So on some marble Phoebus the swol'n sea
Might leave his worthless seaweed clinging,
But pious hands, with reverent care,
Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare.

Now thou'rt thy plain, grand self again,
Thou art secure from panegyric,
Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain,
And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric;
This side the Blessed Isles, no tree
Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee.

Nor can blame cling to thee; the snow
From swinish footprints takes no staining,
But, leaving the gross soils of earth below,
Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining,
And unresentful falls again,
To beautify the world with dews and rain.

The highest duty to mere man vouchsafed
Was laid on thee,--out of wild chaos,
When the roused popular ocean foamed and chafed
And vulture War from his Imaus
Snuffed blood, to summon homely Peace,
And show that only order is release.

To carve thy fullest thought, what though
Time was not granted? Aye in history,
Like that Dawn's face which baffled Angelo
Left shapeless, grander for its mystery,
Thy great Design shall stand, and day
Flood its blind front from Orients far away.

Who says thy day is o'er? Control,
My heart, that bitter first emotion;
While men shall reverence the steadfast soul,
The heart in silent self-devotion
Breaking, the mild, heroic mien,
Thou'lt need no prop of marble, Lamartine.

If France reject thee, 'tis not thine,
But her own, exile that she utters;
Ideal France, the deathless, the divine,
Will be where thy white pennon flutters,
As once the nobler Athens went
With Aristides into banishment.

No fitting metewand hath To-day
For measuring spirits of thy stature;
Only the Future can reach up to lay
The laurel on that lofty nature,
Bard, who with some diviner art
Hast touched the bard's true lyre, a nation's heart.

Swept by thy hand, the gladdened chords,
Crashed now in discords fierce by others,
Gave forth one note beyond all skill of words,
And chimed together, We are brothers.
O poem unsurpassed! it ran
All round the world, unlocking man to man.

France is too poor to pay alone
The service of that ample spirit;
Paltry seem low dictatorship and throne,
Weighed with thy self-renouncing merit;
They had to thee been rust and loss;
Thy aim was higher,--thou hast climbed a Cross!

TO JOHN GORHAM PALFREY

There are who triumph in a losing cause, Who can put on defeat, as 'twere a wreath Unwithering in the adverse popular breath, Safe from the blasting demagogue's applause; 'Tis they who stand for Freedom and God's laws.

And so stands Palfrey now, as Marvell stood,
Loyal to Truth dethroned, nor could be wooed
To trust the playful tiger's velvet paws:
And if the second Charles brought in decay
Of ancient virtue, if it well might wring
Souls that had broadened 'neath a nobler day,
To see a losel, marketable king
Fearfully watering with his realm's best blood
Cromwell's quenched bolts, that erst had cracked and flamed,
Scaring, through all their depths of courtier mud,
Europe's crowned bloodsuckers,--how more ashamed
Ought we to be, who see Corruption's flood
Still rise o'er last year's mark, to mine away
Our brazen idol's feet of treacherous clay!

O utter degradation! Freedom turned
Slavery's vile bawd, to cozen and betray
To the old lecher's clutch a maiden prey,
If so a loathsome pander's fee be earned!
And we are silent,--we who daily tread
A soil sublime, at least, with heroes' graves!--
Beckon no more, shades of the noble dead!
Be dumb, ye heaven-touched lips of winds and waves!
Or hope to rouse some Coptic dullard, hid
Ages ago, wrapt stiffly, fold on fold,
With cerements close, to wither in the cold,
Forever hushed, and sunless pyramid!

Beauty and Truth, and all that these contain,
Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet;
We climb to them through years of sweat and pain;
Without long struggle, none did e'er attain
The downward look from Quiet's blissful seat:
Though present loss may be the hero's part,
Yet none can rob him of the victor heart
Whereby the broad-realmed future is subdued,
And Wrong, which now insults from triumph's car,
Sending her vulture hope to raven far,
Is made unwilling tributary of Good.

O Mother State, how quenched thy Sinai fires! Is there none left of thy stanch Mayflower breed? No spark among the ashes of thy sires, Of Virtue's altar-flame the kindling seed? Are these thy great men, these that cringe and creep, And writhe through slimy ways to place and power?-- How long, O Lord, before thy wrath shall reap Our frail-stemmed summer prosperings in their flower? Oh for one hour of that undaunted stock That went with Vane and Sidney to the block!

Oh for a whiff of Naseby, that would sweep,
With its stern Puritan besom, all this chaff
From the Lord's threshing-floor! Yet more than half
The victory is attained, when one or two,
Through the fool's laughter and the traitor's scorn,
Beside thy sepulchre can bide the morn,
Crucified Truth, when thou shalt rise anew.

TO W.L. GARRISON

'Some time afterward, it was reported to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all colors.'--_Letter of H.G. Otis_.

In a small chamber, friendless and unseen,
Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young man;
The place was dark, unfurnitured, and mean;
Yet there the freedom of a race began.

Help came but slowly; surely no man yet
Put lever to the heavy world with less:
What need of help? He knew how types were set,
He had a dauntless spirit, and a press.

Such earnest natures are the fiery pith,
The compact nucleus, round which systems grow;
Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith,
And whirls impregnate with the central glow.

O Truth! O Freedom! how are ye still born
In the rude stable, in the manger nurst!
What humble hands unbar those gates of morn
Through which the splendors of the New Day burst!

What! shall one monk, scarce known beyond his cell,
Front Rome's far-reaching bolts, and scorn her frown?
Brave Luther answered YES; that thunder's swell
Rocked Europe, and discharmed the triple crown.

Whatever can be known of earth we know,
Sneered Europe's wise men, in their snail-shells curled;
No! said one man in Genoa, and that No
Out of the darkness summoned this New World.

Who is it will not dare himself to trust?
Who is it hath not strength to stand alone?
Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward MUST?
He and his works, like sand, from earth are blown.

Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here!
See one straightforward conscience put in pawn
To win a world; see the obedient sphere
By bravery's simple gravitation drawn!

Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old,
And by the Present's lips repeated still,
In our own single manhood to be bold,
Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?

We stride the river daily at its spring,
Nor, in our childless thoughtlessness, foresee
What myriad vassal streams shall tribute bring,
How like an equal it shall greet the sea.

O small beginnings, ye are great and strong,
Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain!
Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong,
Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain.

ON THE DEATH OF CHARLES TURNER TORREY

Woe worth the hour when it is crime To plead the poor dumb bondman's cause, When all that makes the heart sublime, The glorious throbs that conquer time, Are traitors to our cruel laws!

He strove among God's suffering poor One gleam of brotherhood to send; The dungeon oped its hungry door To give the truth one martyr more, Then shut,--and here behold the end!

O Mother State! when this was done, No pitying throe thy bosom gave; Silent thou saw'st the death-shroud spun, And now thou givest to thy son The stranger's charity,--a grave.

Must it be thus forever? No! The hand of God sows not in vain, Long sleeps the darkling seed below, The seasons come, and change, and go, And all the fields are deep with grain.

Although our brother lie asleep, Man's heart still struggles, still aspires; His grave shall quiver yet, while deep Through the brave Bay State's pulses leap Her ancient energies and fires.

When hours like this the senses' gush Have stilled, and left the spirit room, It hears amid the eternal hush The swooping pinions' dreadful rush, That bring the vengeance and the doom;--

Not man's brute vengeance, such as rends What rivets man to man apart,-- God doth not so bring round his ends, But waits the ripened time, and sends His mercy to the oppressor's heart.

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF DR. CHANNING

I do not come to weep above thy pall,
And mourn the dying-out of noble powers,
The poet's clearer eye should see, in all
Earth's seeming woe, seed of immortal flowers.

Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep
Of everlasting Soul her strength abides,
From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap,
Through Nature's veins her strength, undying, tides.