Ralph Waldo Emerson - May-Day and other Pieces, 1881

CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

GIFT OF

Miss Mars pre t Bsdp-er

^

Cornell University Library

PS 1624.M4 1881

1924 022 113 413

P5 ](o5i

4

3

Cornell University Library

The tine

original of

tliis

book

is in

Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright

restrictions in

the United States on the use of the

text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 9240221 1 341

WORKS OF RALPH

WALDO

EMERSON.

" Such Is the beauty of his speech, such the majeety of hla ideas, such the power of the moral aentiment in men, and such the impresBion which his whole character maltea on them, that they lend him, everywhere, their Massac/titsttts QuarieHy ears, andthoufiands hlesa hla manly thoxLgiita." Review.

—

i6mo vol ESSAYS. First Series ESSAYS. Second Series, vol. T6mo MISCELLANIES. Embracing NATURE,

Ii-So

i

1.50

i

[-EL

1

UK/ia.

1

vol.

Addresses, and 'So

T6mo

REPRESENTA TIVE MEN. Seven Lectures. i6mo ENGLISH TRAITS, i6mo THE CONDUCT OF LIFEi

ivoL i6mo

j.50 1.50

vol.

1.50

i vol.

SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE, vol. LETTERS AND SOCIAL AIMS, FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC.

i6mo

i

25 cts.

;

i

1.5a

i6mo

vol. 1 vol,

i6mo.

1.50

Paper,

Cloth

SCI

PROSE WORKS. Cloth. $7.50

POEMS.

I

;

Comprising the nine preceding volumes, 3 Half Calf. $13 50 Morocco, $18.00.

lamo.

;

vol.

MA Y-DA Y,

vols.

With Portrait other Pieces, i

i6mo.

and

$1.50 vol.

i6mo

1.50

"LITTLE CLASSIC" EDITION. Uniform with "

HAWTHORNE.

Little Classic " $1.50 a volume.

ESSA VS. First Series. ESS A VS. Second Series. MISCELLANIES REPRESENTATIVE MEN.

In nine volumes.

ENGLISH TRAITS. THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. LETTERS AND SOCIAL AIMS. POEMS.

"FIRESIDE EDITION." Complete

i6mo. Sold only in sets. Price, in Cloth, in five volumes. $10.00 ; in Half Calf, $20.00 ; in Tree Calf, $25.00.

PA RNA SSUS

: a volume of Choice Poems, selected from the whole ran?e of English Literature, edited by RALPH AVALDO EMERSON. WiiK a Prefatory Essay, Crown 8vo. Nearly 600 pages $4

The Same.

Household edition. i2mo

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND

oc

2.0c

CO.,

BOSTON.

MAY-DAY AND OTHER

PIECES.

BY

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 1881

Entered according to Act of Congress,

in

the year 1867,

by

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, in

the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts

/^^/f^/7

CONTENTS. Pagi

May-Day

i

The Adirondacs

.

....

.

41

Occasional and Miscellaneous Pieces.

Brahma

.

.

65

Nemesis

67

Fate

69

Freedom

70

Ode sung

in

the Town Hall, Concord, July

4,

1857

Boston

72

Hymn

75

Voluntaries

81

Love and Thought

89

Lover's Petition

90

Una

92

Letters

94

Rubies

95

Merlin's Song

The Test

.........

Solution

Nature and Nature

96 97

98 Life.

The Romany Girl

.

105

109

CONTENTS.

iv

ui

Days

The

Chartist's Complaint

My Garden The Titmouse

....

112

...

114 119

Sea-Shore

125

Song of Nature

128

Two

134

Rivers

Waldeinsamkeit

136

Terminus

140

The Past The Last Farewell In Memoriam

145

143

148

Elements.

Experience

157

Compensation

159

Politics

i6i

Heroism

163

Character

164

Culture

165

Friendship

166

Beauty

168

Manners Art Spiritual

170 172

Laws

174

Unity

Worship

175 .

.

.176

Quatrains

lyg

Translations

ig.

MAY-DAY.

;

MAY-DAY.

D

AUGHTER

of

Heaven and

Earth, coy Spring,

With sudden passion languishing,

Maketh

all

things softly smile,

Painteth pictures mile on mile,

Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,

Whence a smokeless

incense breathes.

Girls are peeling the sweet willow,

Poplar white, and Gilead-tree,

And

troops of boys

Shouting with whoop and

hilloa.

And

hip, hip, three times three.

The

air is full of whistlings

What was

that I heard

bland

MAY-DAT.

Out of the hazy land

Harp of

?

the wind, or song of bird,

Or clapping of shepherd's hands, Or vagrant booming of the

air.

Voice of a meteor lost in day

?

Such tidings of the starry sphere Can

convey.

this elastic air

Or haply 'twas the cannonade

Of the pent and darkened

lake.

Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade.

Whose

deeps,

Afflicted

Even

Vas Or

beams of noonday break,

moan, and latest hold

into it

till

May

the iceberg cold.

a squirrel's pettish bark,

clarionet of jay

?

Where yon wedged

or hark. line the

Nestor leads.

Steering north with raucous cry

Through

tracts

and provinces of sky.

Every night alighting down

MAY-DAY.

new landscapes

In

Where

By

darkling feed the clamorous clans

lonely lakes to

Come

of romance.

men unknown.

the tumult whence

it will,

Voice of sport, or rush of wings. It is a sound, it is a token

That the marble sleep

And

is

broken,

a change has passed on things.

Beneath the calm, within the

A Of

light,

hid unruly appetite swifter

life,

a surer hope,

Strains every sense to larger scope.

Impatient to anticipate

The halting steps of aged

Fate.

Slow grows the palm, too slow the

When

Nature

Grasp the

And

falters, fain

would

pearl

:

zeal

felloes of her wheel,

grasping give the orbs another whirl.

MAY-DAT.

Turn

swiftlier round,

And sun

tardy ball!

this frozen side,

Bring hither back the robin's Bring back the

Why

call,

tulip's pride.

chidest thou the tardy Spring

The hardy bunting does not chide

;

The blackbirds make the maples ring "With social cheer and jubilee

The redwing

;

flutes his o-ka-lee,

The robins know the melting snow

;

The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed.

Her

nest beside the snow-drift weaves,

Secure the osier yet will hide

Her

callow brood in mantling leaves

And

Why To

thou,

by science

all

undone.

only must thy reason

fail

Bee the southing of the sun f

;

?

;

;

MAT-DAY.

As we thaw So Spring

Mix

frozen flesh with snow,

will not, foolish fond,

polar night with tropic glow.

Nor cloy

us with unshaded sun,

Nor wanton

skip with bacchic dance.

But she has the temperance

Of the gods, whereof she

is

one,

—

Masks her treasury of heat Under east-winds crossed with

sleet.

Plants and birds and humble creatures

Well accept her

rule austere

Titan-born, to hardy natures

Cold

is

genial and dear.

As Southern wrath Is

As

to Northern right

but straw to anthracite in the

When

day of

sacrifice.

heroes piled the pyre,

The dismal Massachusetts

ice

Burned more than

fire.

others'

;

;

-

MAY-DAY.

So Spring guards with surface cold

The garnered heat of ages Hers

to

old

:

the seed of bread,

sow

That man and

all

the kinds be fed

And, when the sunlight

fills

;

the hours,

Dissolves the crust, displays the flowers.

The world

rolls

round,

what once

Befalls again

— mistrust

jt

not,

befell

All things return, both sphere and mote,

And

hear

I shall

And dream

my

bluebird's note,

the dream of

When

late

I

was

stiff

and stark

All

Auburn

dell,

walked, in earlier days. ;

Knee-deep snows choked

all

the ways,

In the sky no spark

Firm-braced I sought

my

ancient woods,

Struggling through the drifted roads

;

;

MAY-DAY.

The wLited desert knew me

not,

Snow-ridges masked each darling spot

The summer

One

dells,

by genins haunted,

moon had

arctic

,

disenchanted.

All the sweet secrets therein hid

By Fancy,

ghastly spells undid.

Eldest mason. Frost, had piled,

With wicked ingenuity, Swift cathedrals in the wild

The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts In the

star-lit

I found

Might

minster aisled.

no joy

:

the icy wind

rule the forest to his mind.

Who

would freeze

Back

to books and sheltered home,

And To

wood-fire flickering on the walls,

when, 'mid our talk and games,

hear,

Without the

But

in frozen brakes ?

soft

baffled north-wind calls.

a sultry morning breaks

!

1*

;

;

MAY-DAY.

10

The cowslips make the brown brook gay;

A

happier hour, a longer day.

May,

Now

the sun leads in the

Now

desire of action wakes,

And

the wish to roam.

The caged Hearkens

When

linnet in the spring

for the choral glee,

his fellows

on the wing

Migrate from the Southern Sea

When

trellised

grapes their flowers unmask,

And

the new-born tendrils twine.

The

old wine darkling in the cask

Feels the bloom on the living vine,

And

bursts the hoops at hint of spring:

And

so,

perchance, in Adam's race.

Of Eden's bower some dream-like Survived the Flight, and

And wakes

swam

trace

the Flood,

the wish in youngest blood

—

MAY-DAY.

To

1]

tread the forfeit Paradise,

And

feed once more the exile's eyes;

And

ever

May

In

And

when

beholds the blooming wild,

hears in heaven the bluebird sing,

"Onward," he In the next

And

"j'our baskets bring,

field is air

more mild.

crest is Eden's balmier spring."

for a regiment's parade.

laws or rulers made,

evil

Blue Walden

But

cries,

yon hazy

o'er

Not

Nor

the happy child

rolls its

cannonade,

for a lofty sign

Which

the Zodiac threw,

That the bondage-days are

told.

And

waters free as winds shall flow,

Lo

how

!

To rout

all

the tribes combine

the flying foe.

See, every patriot oak-leaf throws

;

;

MAY-DAY.

12

His

elfin

Not

idle,

Draws

length upon the snows, since the leaf all

to the spot the solar ray.

Ere sunset quarrying inches

And

day

i,

ttx.

half-way to the mosses brown

While the grass beneath the rime

Has

hints of the propitious time,

And upward

pries

Through the cold Till

and perforates slab a thousand gates.

green lances peering through

Bend happy

in the welkin blue.

April cold with dropping rain

Willows and

lilacs

brings again.

The whistle of returning

And trumpet-lowing The

birds,

of the herds.

scarlet maple-keys betray

What

potent blood hath modest

What

fiery force the earth renevrs,

May

;

;

;

MAY-DAY.

The wealth of forms, the

Joy shed

in rosy

13 flush of

hues

;

waves abroad

Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord.

Hither

storm of heat

rolls the

I feel its finer billows beat

Like a sea which

me

Heat with viewless

infolds

fingers moulds,

Swells, and mellows, and matures, Paints, and flavors, and allures,

Bird and brier inly warms, Still

enriches and transforms.

Gives the reed and

Adds

lily

length,

to oak and oxen strength,

Boils the world in tepid lakes,

Burns the world, yet burnt remakes Enveloping heat, enchanted robe.

Wraps

the daisy and the globe,

Transforming what

it

doth infold.

MAY-DAY.

14

Life out of death,

new out

of old,

Painting fawns' and leopards'

fells,

Seethes the gulf-encrimsoning shells. Fires gardens with a joyful blaze

Of

morning's rays.

tulips, in the

The dead log touched

bursts into leaf.

The wheat-blade whispers of the

What god

is this

sheaf.

imperial Heat,

Earth's prime secret, sculpture's seat

Doth

it

bear hidden in

Water-line patterns of

its

heart

all art,

All figures, organs, hues, and graces Is

it

Dsedalus

Or walks

And

in

?

is it

?

Love

?

?

mask almighty Jove,

drops from Power's redundant horn

All seeds of beauty to be born

Where

And duly

shall

we keep

?

the holiday.

greet the entering

May

'i

;

MAY-DAY.

Too

strait

And

all

15

and low our cottage doors,

unmeet our carpet

Nor spacious

floors

court, nor monarches hall,

Suffice to hold the festival.

Up

and away! where haughty woods

Front the liberated floods:

We

will climb the broad-backed hills.

Hear the uproar of

We

will

their joy

mark the leaps and gleams

Of the new-delivered

And

the

Mount

murmuring

streams, rivers of sap

in the pipes of the trees,

Giddy with day,

Which

;

to the topmost spire,

for a spike of tender green

Bartered

its

powdery cap

;

And

the colors of joy in the bird,

And

the love in its carol heard.

Frog and

And

lizard in holiday coats.

turtle brave in his golden spots

:

—

MAT-DAT

16

We

will hear the tiny roar

Of the

insects evermore,

While cheerful Keply

cries of crag

and plain

to the thunder of river

As poured

and main

the flood of the ancient sea

Spilling over mountain chains,

Bending

forests as

bends the sedge.

Faster flowing o'er the plains,

A

—

world-wide wave with a foaming edge

That rims the running

silver sheet,

So pours the deluge of the heat Broad northward

o'er the land,

Painting artless paradises.

Drugging herbs with Syrian Panning secret

fires

spices.

which glow

In columbine and clover-blow.

Climbing the northern zones,

Where

a thousand pallid

towns

MAY-DAY. Lie like cockles

17

by the main,

Or tented armies on a

plain.

The million-handed sculptor moulds Quaintest bud and blossom folds,

The million-handed painter pours Opal hues and purple dye Azaleas flush the island

And

;

floors,

the tints of heaven reply.

Wreaths To-day

for the

shall all her

The love of

Hymen

May

1

for

dowry

happy Spring

bring.

kind, the joy, the grace.

of element and race,

Knovsring well to celebrate

With song and hue and With tender

light

star

and

state.

and youthful cheer,

The spousals of the new-born year.

Lo Love's inundation poured Over space and race abroad

1

MAV-DAY.

18

Spring

is

strong and virtuous,

Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous,

Quickening underneath the mould Grains beyond the price of gold.

So deep and large her bounties

are.

That one broad, long midsummer day Shall to the planet overpay

The ravage of a year of war.

Drug

And The

the cup, thou butler sweet,

send the nectar round feet that slid so

Are glad to Fill

feel

long on sleet

the ground.

and saturate each kind

With good according Fill

;

to its mind.

each kind and saturate

With good agreeing with Willow and

violet,

its fate,

maiden and man.

;

1

MAY-DAT.

The

/

bitter-sweet, the haunting air

Creepeth, bloweth everywhere It preys

Blooms

on

all,

all

prey on

it,

in beauty, thinks in wit,

Stings the strong with enterprise,

Makes

travellers long for Indian skies,

And where

it

comes

this courier fleet

Fans

in all hearts

As

to-morrow should redeem

if

expectance sweet,

The vanished rose of evening's

By

houses

lies

a fresher green,

On men and maids As

if

a ruddier mien,

time brought a

Of shining

new

virgins every

And Summer came To a beauty

dreanc

relay

May,

to ripen maids

that not fades.

The ground-pines wash The maple-tops

their rusty green,

their crimson tint,

MAY-DAT.

20

On

the soft path each track

The

girl's foot leaves its

neater print.

The pebble loosened from the

Asks of the urchin In

flint

and marble beats a heart,

The green lane

is

children's part,

the school-boy's friend.

leaves his quarrel apprehend.

The

fresh

The

air rings

ground loves

his top

jocund to his

The brimming brook

He

frost

to be tost.

The kind Earth takes her

Low

seen.

is

and

ball.

call,

invites a leap.

dives the hollow, climbs the

steep.

The youth reads omens where he goes.

And

speaks

all

languages the rose.

The wood-fly mocks with tiny noise The

far halloo of

human voice

;

The perfumed berry on the spray

Smacks

A

of faint memories far away.

subtle chain of countless rings

;

MAY-DAY.

The next unto the And,

I

farthest brings,

striving to be

Mounts through

21

all

man, the worm the spires of form.

saw the bud-crowned Spring go

forth.

Stepping daily onward north

To greet

staid ancient cavaliers

Filing single in stately train.

And who, and who

are the travellers

?

They were Night and Day, and Day and Night, Pilgrims wight with step forthright. I

saw the Days deformed and low.

Short and bent by cold and snow

;

The merry Spring threw wreaths on them, Flower-wreaths gay with bud and bell

Many

a flower and

many

a gem.

They were refreshed by the

smell.

They shook the snow from hats and shoon.

They put

their April raiment

on

;

MAY-DAY.

22

And

those eternal forms,

Unhurt by a thousand storms, Shot up to the height of the sky again,

And danced I

as merrily as

saw them mask

young men.

their awful glance

Sidewise meek in gossamer

And It

to speak

was

my

thought

lids if

;

none

forbids.

as if the eternal gods,

Tired of their starry periods,

Hid

their majesty in cloth

Woven On

of tulips and painted moth.

carpets green the maskers march

Below May's well-appointed Each

star,

arch.

each god, each grace amain.

Every joy and virtue speed,

Marching duly

And Is

in her train,

fainting Nature at her need

made whole

again.

:

;

MAY-DAY.

'Twas

When

23

the vintage-day of field and wood,

magic wine

for bards is

brewed

Every tree and stem and chink

Gushed with syrup The

air stole into the streets of

And To

towns.

betrayed the fund of joy

the high-school and medalled boy

On from

hall to

From youth To

to the brink.

chamber

ran.

to maid, from

boy

to

man.

babes, and to old eyes as well.

'Once more,' the old man

cried,

'ye clouds,

Airy turrets purple-piled.

Which once my infancy Beguile 1

me

know ye

The

beguiled.

with the wonted skilful to

total freight of

spell.

convoy hope and joy

Into rude and homely nooks,

Shed mocking lustres on shelf of books.

On

farmer's byre, on meadow-pipes,

MAY-DAT.

24

Or on a pool of dancing I

care not

if

the

Be what they Or

Be bubbles

And To

if it

in sunset

glow

of the atmosphere.

be to you allowed

me

fool

pomps you show

soothfast appear,

yon realms

if

chips.

with a shining cloud,

So only new

griefs are consoled

By new

delights, as old

Frankly

I will

by

old,

be your guest,

Count your change and cheer the

best.

The world hath overmuch of

—

If

Nature give

Of such

Ah

I

me

deceit I

'11

pain,

joy again. not complain.'

well I mind the calendar,

Faithful through a thousand years.

Of the painted race of Exact

flowers,

to days, exact to hours,

;

MAY-DAY.

Counted on the spacious

Yon I

25 dial

broidered zodiac girds.

know

the pretty almanac

Of the punctual coming-back,

On I

A

their

due days, of the birds.

marked them yestermorn, flock of finches darting

Beneath the crystal arch. Piping, as they flew, a march,

—

Belike the one they used in parting

Last year from yon oak or larch

Dusky sparrows

in a

crowd,

Diving, darting northward

Suddenly betook them

Every one to Or to I

free,

all.

his hole in the wall,

his niche in the apple-tree.

greet with joy the choral trains

Fresh from palms and Cuba's canes. Best gems of Nature's cabinet,

MAY-DAY.

26

With dews of

tropic

morning wet,

Beloved of children, bards, and Spring,

your perfect virtues bring.

birds,

Your song, your

Your manners

forms, your rhythmic

flight,

for the heart's delight,

Nefctle in hedge, or barn, or roof.

Here weave your chamber weather-proof. Forgive our harms, and condescend

To man,

as to a lubber friend.

And, generous, teach his awkward race Courage, and probity, and grace

!

Poets praise that hidden wine

Hid

At

in

we drew

the barrier of Time,

When

We We

milk

our

life

had eaten

was new. fairy fruit,

were quick from head to

All the forms

foot,

we looked on shone

MAY-DAY.

As with diamond dews

What

we

cared

The Museum's

27

thereon.

for costly joys,

far-fetched toys ?

Gleam of sunshine on the wall Poured a deeper cheer than

all

The revels of the OarnivaL

We To

a pine-grove did prefer a marble theatre,

Could with gods on mallows dine,

Nor

cared for spices or for wine.

Wreaths of mist and rainbow spanned, Arch on

arch, the

grimmest land

Whistle of a woodland bird

Made

the pulses dance.

Note of horn

in valleys

heard

Filled the region with romance.

None can

How

tell

how

virtuous, the

sweet,

morning

air;

;

;

MAY-DAY.

28

Every accent vibrates well

Not alone the wood-bird's Or shouting boys

call,

that chase their ball,

Pass the height of minstrel

skill,

But the ploughman's thoughtless

Lowing oxen, sheep

And

cry,

that bleat,

the joiner's hammer-beat,

Softened are above their

will.

All grating discords melt.

No

dissonant note

And though Like rasping

Such

is

thy voice be file

on

shrill

steel,

the temper of the

Echo waits with

And

is dealt,

art

and

will the faults of

air.

care.

song

repair.

So by remote Superior Lake,

And by resounding Mackinac,

When

northern storms the forest shake,

MAY-DAY.

And

billows on the long beach break,

The

artful Air doth separate

Note by note

all

sounds that grate,

Smothering in her ample breast All but godlike words.

Reporting to the happy ear

Only

purified accords.

Strangely wrought from barking waves, Soft music daunts the Indian braves,

—

Convent-chanting which the child

Hears pealing from the panther's cave

And

the impenetrable wild.

One musician His wisdom

He

will not

fail,

has not tasted wine impure,

Nor bent

to passion frail.

Age cannot Nor

is sure,

cloud his memory,

grief untune his voice.

MAY-DAT.

30

Eanging down the ruled

From tone

scale

of joy to inward wail,

Tempering the pitch of

all

In his windy cave.

He

all

And

the fables knows,

in their causes tells,

Knows

—

Nature's rarest moods,

Ever on her secret broods.

The Muse of men

is

Oft courted will not

coy.

come

;

In palaces and market squares Entreated, she

But

my

is

minstrel

The counsel of

dumb

;

knows and

tells

the gods,

Knows

of Holy Book the spells,

Knows

the law of Night and Day,

And The

the heart of girl and boy. tragic and the gay,

And what

is

writ on Table

Round

—

! ;

MAY-DAY.

Of Arthur and

What

31

his peers,

sea and land discoursing say

In sidereal years.

He

renders

all his lore

In numbers wild as dreams.

Modulating

What

all

extremes,

the spangled

meadow

To the children who have Only to children children Only to youth

Who When

is

saith

faith

sing,

will spring be spring.

the Bard thus magnified

did he sing

?

and where abide

Chief of song where poets feast Is the wind-harp

which thou seest

In the casement at

my

side.

iEolian harp,

How

?

strangely wise thy strain

?

MAY-DAY.

32

Gay

gay

for youth,

(Sweet

is art,

In the hall at

for

youth,

but sweeter truth,)

'

summer eve

Fate and Beauty skilled to weave.

From

the eager opening strings

Eung loud and bold

the song.

Who

but loved the wind-harp's note

How

should not the poet doat

On

its

With

mystic tongue,

its

primeval memory,

Reporting what old minstrels said

Of Merlin locked the harp

within,

Merlin paying the pain of

sin.

Pent

in a

And some Words

dungeon made of

fits

—

attain his voice to hear,

of pain and cries of fear.

But pillowed

As

air,

all

on melody.

the griefs of bards to be.

And what

—

if

that all-echoing shell,

?

;

MAY-DAY.

Which

S

thus the buried Past can

tell,

Should rive the Future, and reveal

What

would

his dread folds

fain conceal f

It shares the secret of the earth,

And

of the kinds that

Speaks not of

self that

owe her

mystic tone,

But of the Overgods alone It

birth.

:

trembles to the cosmic breath,

As

heareth, so

it

it

—

saith

Obeying meek the primal Cause, It is the

And

tongue of mundane laws.

this, at least, I

dare affirm.

Since genius too has bound and term,

There

is

no bard

Not Homer's

in all the choir.

self,

the poet

sire.

Wise Milton's odes of pensive Or Shakspeare,

Nor

whom

pleasure.

no mind can measure,

Collins' verse of tender pain.

Nor Byron's

clarion of disdain,

2*

;

MAY-DAY.

34

Scott, the delight of generous boys,

Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording

Not one of Or to

all

voice,

—

can put in verse.

this presence could rehearse,

The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the

When

hills in spring,

pacing through the oaks he heard

Sharp queries of the sentry-bird,

The heavy grouse's sudden whir. The

rattle of the kingfisher

Saw

bonfires of the harlot

flies

when day

dies

In the lowland,

Or marked, benighted and The

first far signal-fire

;

forlorn,

of morn.

These syllables that Nature spoke,

And

the thoughts that in him

woke,

Can adequately utter none Save to

And

his ear the wind-harp lone.

best can teach

its

Delphian chord

:

!

MAY-DAY.

How

Nature to the soul

35

is

moored,

If once again that silent string,

As

erst

it

wont, would

Not long ago,

thrill

at eventide.

It

seemed, so listening, at

A

window

my

side

rose, and, to say sooth.

I

looked forth on the

I

saw

I

knew

fair

and ring.

fields of

youth

boys bestriding steeds,

their forms in fancy weeds.

Long, long concealed by sundering

Mates of

my

youth,

— yet not

Stronger and bolder far than

With

And

my

fates,

mates,

I,

grace, with genius, well attired,

then as

now from

far admired.

Followed with love

They knew not

of.

With passion cold and joy, for

shy.

what recoveries

rare

:

MAY-DAT.

36

Eenewed,

I

breathe Elysian

air,

See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,

my

Break not

dream, obtrusive tomb

Or teach thou. Spring

Of

life

!

1

the grand recoil

resurgent from the

soil

Wherein was dropped the mortal

spoil.

Soft on the south-wind sleeps the haze

So on thy broad mystic van Lie the opal-colored days,

And waft

the miracle to man.

Soothsayer of the eldest gods, Eepairer of what harms betide,

Eevealer of the inmost powers

Prometheus proffered, Jove denied

;

Disclosing treasures more than true.

Or

in

what

far

to-morrow due

;

Speaking by the tongues af flowers.

By

the ten-tongued laurel speaking,

-

MAY-DAY.

37

Singing by the oriole songs,

Heart of bird the man's heart seeking

;

Whispering hints of treasure hid

Under Morn's

unlifted lid,

Islands looming just

beyond

The dim horizon's utmost bound

Who

;

—

can, like thee, our rags upbraid.

Or taunt us with our Lope decayed Or who

like thee persuade.

Making

the splendor of the

?

air.

The morn and sparkling dew, a snare

?

Or who resent

Thy

genius, wiles, and blandishment

There

is

To beckon

no orator prevails or persuade

Like thee the youth or maid

Thy

?

birds, thy songs,

Thy blooms, thy

:

thy brooks, thy gales,

kinds,

MAY-DAY.

38

Thy echoes

in the wilderness,

Soothe pain, and age, and love's distress, Fire fainting will, and build heroic minds.

For thou,

Spring

All that high

Be

still

his

God

did

arm and

Eebuild the ruin,

!

canst renovate first create.

architect,

mend

defect

;

Chemist to vamp old worlds with new, Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue, New-tint the plumage of the birds.

And

slough decay from grazing herds.

Sweep

ruins from the scarped mountain,

Cleanse the torrent at the fountain.

Purge alpine

air

Bring to

fair

mother

Not

renew the heart and. brain,

less

by towns

defiled.

fairer child.

Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain.

Make

the aged eye sun-clear.

;

;

MAY-DATT.

To parting

An

The

my

Spring

the might of Nature's king,

energy that searches thorough

From Chaos Into

39

soul bring grandeur near.

Under gentle types,

Masks

;

all

to the

dawning morrow

our human plight.

soul's pilgrimage

and

flight

In city or in solitude.

Step by step,

Without

lifts

bad to good,

halting, without rest.

Lifting Better

up to Best

Planting seeds of knowledge pure,

Through earth

to ripen,

through heaven endure.

THE ADIRONDACS. A JOURNAL. DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW-TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, l8S& Wise and

polita,

— and

if I

drew

Their several portraits, you would

Chaucer had no such worthy crew

Nor Boccace

in

Decameron.

own

^

THE ADIRONDACS.

WE

crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends,

Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks

Of

the Ausable stream, intent to reach

The Adirondac

We

lakes.

chose our boats

;

At Martin's Beach each

man

a boat and guide,

Ten men, ten guides, our company

all

told.

Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac,

With

skies of benediction, to

Where

all

Round Lake,

the sacred mountains

drew around

Tahilwus, Seaward, Maclntyre, Baldhead,

And

other Titans without

muse

or name.

us,

THE ADIRONDACS.

44

we

Pleased with these grand companions,

glide on,

Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of

And made

our distance wider, boat from boat,

As each would hear

By

the bright

Through

hills.

files

the oracle alone.

morn the gay

flotilla slid

of flags that gleamed like bayonets,

Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower,

Through scented banks of

Where

lilies

white and gold,

the deer feeds at night, the teal

On through

the

by day.

Upper Saranac, and up

Pere Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass

Winding through grassy shallows

Two

in

and out.

creeping miles of rushes, pads, and sponge,

To Pollansbee Water, and the Lake

of Loons.

Northward the length of Pollansbee we rowed.

Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore.

A

pause and council

:

then,

where near the head

—

THE ADIKONDACS.

On

4£

the east a bay makes inward to the land

Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank,

And

in the twilight of the forest

Wield the

first

noon

axe these echoes ever heard.

We cut young trees

make our

to

poles and thwarts,

Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the

Then struck a

light,

and kindled the camp-fire.

The wood was sovran with centennial Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and

Linden and spruce.

roof,

trees,

—

fir.

In strict society

Three conifers, white, pitch, and Norway pine, Five-leaved,

three-leaved,

and

two-leaved,

grew

thereby.

Our patron pine was The maple

'

fifteen feet in girth,

eight, beneath its shapely tower.

Welcome

I

'

the

the leaves,

wood god murmured through

THE ADIRONDACS.

46

'

Welcome, though

unknowing, yet known

late,

to me.'

Evening drew on

;

stars

peeped through maple-

boughs.

Which o'erhung,

like a cloud,

Decayed millennial trunks, Lit with phosphoric

Ten

scholars,

our camping

like

crumbs the

wonted

to

moonlight

fire.

flecks,

forest floor.

He warm and

soft

In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed, Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux,

And So

greet unanimous the joyful change.

fast will

Though

Nature acclimate her sons,

late returning to her pristine

ways.

Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold

And,

in the forest, delicate clerks,

;

unbrowned,

Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds.

Up

with the dawn, they fancied the light air

That circled freshly

in their forest dress

:

THE ADIRONDACS.

Made them

to

boys again.

47

Happier that they

Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind,

At the

first

mounting of the giant

stairs.

No

placard on these rocks warned to the polls,

No

door-bell heralded a visitor,

No

courier waits, no letter

came or went.

Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold

;

The

frost

The

falling rain will spoil

We

were made freemen of the forest laws.

might

glitter, it

All dressed, like Nature,

would blight no crop. no holiday.

fit

for

her

own

ends,

Essaying nothing she cannot perform.

In Adirondac lakes.

At morn

or noon, the guide rows bareheaded*

Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers

His brief toilette

He

:

make

at night, or in the rain.

dons a surcoat which he

doffs at

morn

:

THE ADIEONDACS.

48

A

paddle in the right hand, or an oar.

And By

in the left, a gun, his needful arms.

we

turns

praised the stature of our guides,

Their rival strength and suppleness, their

To row,

to

To climb a Pull

And

swim, to shoot, to build a camp. lofty stem,

fifty feet,

Temper

ekill

clean without boughs

and bring the eaglet down

to face wolf, bear, or catamount,

wit to trap or take him in his

Sound, ruddy men,

frolic

In winter, lumberers

;

in

lair.

and innocent.

summer, guides

;

Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired

Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn eve.

Look

No

to yourselves,

ye polished gentlemen!

city airs or arts pass current here.

Your rank

Bow

is all

reversed

:

let

men

of cloth

to the stalwart churls in overalls

:

to

;

THE ADIRONDACS.

49

Ihey are the doctors of the wilderness,

And we

the low-prized laymen.

In sooth, red fannel

a saucy test

is

Which few can put on with impunity.

What make

you, master, fumbling at the oar?

Will you catch crabs

?

Truth

tries

pretension

here.

The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb The

He

oar, the guide's.

;

Dare you accept the tasks

shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes,

Tell the sun's time, determine the true north,

Or stumbling on through vast

self-similar

To thread by night the nearest way

Ask you, how went All day

we swept

the hours

to

woods

camp

?

?

the lake, searched every cove.

North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay,

Watching when the loud dogs should

Or whipping

its

rough surface

drive in deer.

for a trout

;

;

THE ADIIiOXDACS.

50

Or bathers, diving from the rock

at

noon

Challenging Echo by our guns and cries

Or listening

to the laughter of the loon

j

;

;

Or, in the evening twilight's latest red,

Beholding the procession of the pines Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack, In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter

Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds

Of the red

Hark

to that muffled roar

Is fallen

Who

deer, to aim at a square mist.

:

but hush

!

it

a tree in the woods

I

has not scared the buck

stands astonished at the meteor light.

Then turns

to

bound away,

Sometimes we

—

is it

too late

tried our rifles at a

mark,

Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five

Sometimes our wits at sally and

With laughter sudden

retort.

as the crack of

Or parties scaled the near

;

acclivities

rifle

?

;

THE ADIRONDACS.

Competing seekers of a rumored

Whose

unauthenticated waves

Lake Probability,

— our

;

51 lake,

we named

carbuncle,

Long sought, not found.

Two

Doctors in the camp

Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain,

Captured the

lizard,

salamander, shrew.

Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow, and

moth

Insatiate skill in water or in air

Waved

the scoop-net, and nothing

came amiss

The while, one leaden pot of alcohol

Gave an

Not

impartial

tomb

to all the kinds.

less the ambitious botanist

sought plants.

Orchis and gentian, fern, and long whip-scirpus.

Rosy polygonum, lake-margin's

Hypnum

pride,

and hydnum, mushroom,

sponge,

moss.

Or harebell nodding

in the

gorge of

falls.

and

THE ADIEONDACS.

52

Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed,

The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker

Loud hammered, and

the heron rose in the swamp.

As water poured through To feed

this

all

beauty lavishly

her redundant horn.

Lords of

Bounded by dawn and

this realm,

sunset, and the day

Eounded by hours where each outdid the In miracles of pomp,

As

We

if

hills

wealth of lakes and rivulets.

So Nature shed

From

hollows of the

we must

last

be proud.

associates of the sylvan gods.

seemed the dwellers of the zodiac.

So pure the Alpine element we breathed. So

We Its

light, so lofty pictures

trode on

air,

contemned the distant town.

timorous ways, big

That we should

came and went.

build,

trifles,

and

we planned

hard-by, a spacious lodge,

:

THE ADIEONDACS.

And how we Hereafter,

Hard

should come hither with our sons.

— willing

fare,

53

they, and

more

adroit.

hard bed, and comic misery,

The midge, the

blue-fly,

—

and the mosquito

Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands But, on the second day,

we heed them

not,

Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries,

Whom

earlier

we had

chid with spiteful

names

For who defends our leafy tabernacle

From

Who

bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,

but the midge, mosquito, and the

Which

Or

fly.

past endurance sting the tender

But which we learn baffle

by a

Our foaming

veil,

ale

to scatter with a

or slight by scorn

we drunk from

Ale, and a sup of wine.

—

cit,

smudge. ?

hunters' pans,

Our steward gave

Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread

;

THE ADIRONDACS.

54

All ate like abbots, and,

if

any missed

Their wonted convenance, cbeerly hid the loss

With hunters'

And

appetite and peals of mirth.

Stillman, our guides' guide, and

Commodore

Crusoe, Crusader, Pius ^neas, said aloud,

" Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating

Food

indigestible

"

:

— then

Others applauded him

Nor doubt but

murmured some.

who spoke

the truth.

visitings of graver thought

heyday

Checked

in these souls the turbulent

'Mid

the hints and glories of the home.

all

For who can

tell

Were sought and

what sudden

privacies

found, amid the hue and cry

Of scholars furloughed from

their tasks,

and

Into this Oreads' fended Paradise,

As chapels

in the city's thoroughfares.

Whither gaunt Labor A.nd meditate a

slips to

wipe

his

moment on Heaven's

brow,

rest.

let

!

THE ADIKONDACS.

65

Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke

To each To

apart, lifting her lovely

home.

spiritual lessons pointed

And

shows

as through dreams in watches of the night,

So through

all

Some mystic

creatures in their form and

ways

hint accosts the vigilant.

Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense Inviting to

Hark

new knowledge, one

to that petulant chirp

bler

!

with old.

what

?

Mark

his capricious

Now

soar again.

ways

What

to

draw the

light.

Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky

What

presently the sky pictures and

The clouds are So

rich

like the soul of

eye.

wilt thou, restless bird,

Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer

And

the war-

ails

is

changed

?

;

world

what harmonies are thine and dark, the

air serene,

me, what

were

if 't

me

?

I

THE ADIRONDACS.

56

A

melancholy better than

all

Comes the sweet sadness Or

mirth.

at the retrospect,

at the foresight of obscurer years ?

Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory,

Whereon the purple Superior to

all its

gaudy

And, that no day of

The

A

dwells in beauty

iris

life

skirts.

may

lack romance.

spiritual stars rise nightly,

private

beam

shedding down

into each several heart.

Daily the bending skies solicit man,

The seasons

chariot him from this exile.

The rainbow hours bedeck

his

glowing

chair.

The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along, Suiis haste to set, that so

Beckon the wanderer

With a vermilion

When

of our

remoter lights

to his vaster

pencil

little fleet

mark

home.

the day

three cruising skiffs

Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Palls

—

THE ADIEONDACS.

5^

Of loud Bog Eiver, suddenly confront

Two

of our mates returning with swift oars.

One held a printed journal waving high Caught from a late-arriving

traveller,

Big with great news, and shouted the report

now

For which the world had waited,

Of the wire-cable

And

beneath the sea.

laid

landed on our coast, and pulsating

With

ductile

From boat

Loud, exulting cries

fire.

to boat,

and to the echoes round,

Greet the glad miracle.

Match God's lift

Worthy

When

We

Thought's new-found

supplement henceforth

Shall

And

firm fact,

e^^

jt

all

trodden ways.

with a zone of

art,

man's public action to a height the enormous cloud of witnesses.

linked hemispheres attest his deed.

have few moments in the longest

life

Of such delight and wonder as there grew,

Nor yet unsuited 3*

path.

to that solitude

:

THE ADIRONDACS.

58

A

burst of joy, as

To

ears intelligent

And

we

if

;

told the fact

as if gray rock

cedar grove and

cliff

and lake should know

This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind

As

if

we men were

Of sympathy so

And

talking in a vein

large, that ours

was

theirs,

a prime end of the most subtle element

Were

fairly

Bend

nearer, faint

reached at

Let them hear well

A

;

last.

day-moon 1

Wake, echoing caves 1

Yon

'tis theirs as

thundertops,

much

as ours.

spasm throbbing through the pedestals

Of Alp and Andes,

isle

and continent,

Urging astonished Chaos with a

To be

thrill

a brain, or serve the brain of man.

The lightning has run masterless too long

He must And

I

to school,

;

and learn his verb and noun.

teach his nimbleness to earn his wage.

Spelling with guided tongue man's messages

;

THE ADIEONDACS.

5!

Shot through the weltering pit of the

And

sea

yet I marked, even in the manly joy

Of our

great-hearted Doctor in his boat,

(Perchance

Or was

As

salt

it

I erred,)

for

a shade of discontent

mankind a generous shame,

of a luck not quite legitimate.

Since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part

Was

it

As one

a college pique of

within whose

town and gown.

memory

burned

it

That not academicians, but some

Found

Of

lout.

ten years since the Californian gold

And now,

again, a

?

?

hungry company

by corporate sons of trade.

traders, led

Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools

Of

science, not from the philosophers.

Had won

the brightest laurel of

'Twas always Are ever

thus, and will be

rivals

The other slow,

:

all

;

time.

hand and head

but, though this be swift.

—

this the

Prometheus,

:

THE ADIEONDACS.

60

And It

;

that the Jove,

— yet,

howsoever

was from Jove the other

hid,

stole his fire.

And, without Jove, the good had never It is

not Iroquois or cannibals.

But ever the

And

been,,

free race with front sublime.

by

these instructed

Who

do the

feat,

and

Let not him mourn

:

humanity.

lift

who

Nay, mourn not one

their wisest too.

best entitled was,

him

let

exult.

Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples,

And water

it

with wine, nor watch askance

Whether thy sons or strangers eat the

Enough

We

that

flee

mankind

away from

The best of

plant,

cities

eat,

fruit

and are refreshed.

cities,

but

we

bring

with us, these learned

classifiers,

Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts,

We

praise the guide,

But

will

we

sacrifice

we

praise the forest

our dear-bought lore

life

—

THE ADIEONDACS.

Of books and

and trained experiment.

arts

Or count the Sioux a match no, not

61

for Agassiz

?

we! Witness the shout that shook

Wild Tupper Lake The joyful

;

witness the mute

traveller gives,

when on

all-hail

the verge

Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears

From a

On '

log-cabin stream Beethoven's notes

the piano, played with master's hand.

Well done

!

'

The lynx, the

he cries

' ;

the bear

is

kept at bay,

rattlesnake, the flood, the fire

All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold.

This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall, This wild plantation will sufSce to chase.

Now What

speed the gay celerities of in the desart

Within four walls

is

art.

was impossible possible again,

Culture and libraries, mysteries of

skill,

Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife

Of keen competing youths, joined

or alone

;

;;

62

; ;

;

THE ADIRONDACS.

To outdo each

other,

and extort applause.

Mind wakes a new-born giant from her Twirl the old wheels

On

for a

!

Time takes

fruitful,

One August evening had

So

a cooler breath

mind intruding duties crept

letters

fires

of

home

new event

struck our camp, and

The fortunate

left

the happy

land,

The

rivers gambolled

And

Nature, the inscrutable and mute.

Permitted on her

onward

infinite

Almost a smile to if

hills.

star that rose on us sank not

The prodigal sunshine rested on the

As

;

found us in our paradise

in the gladness of the

We

'

but must end

Under the cinders burned the Nay,

fresh start again

thousand years of genius more

The holidays were

Into each

sleep.

to the sea.

repose

steal to cheer her sons,

one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed.

OCCASIONAL AND MISCELLA-

NEOUS PIECES

;

;

;

; ;

BRAHMA. TF

the red slayer think he slays,

-*

Or

if

the slain think he

They know not I

is

slain,

well the subtle

ways

keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me

Shadow and

to

They reckon

When me I

am

near

sunlight are the same

The vanished gods

And one

is

me

ill

to

are

who

they

fly,

me

appear

shame and fame.

leave I

am

me

out

the wings

the doubter and the doubt.

And

I

the

hymn

the Brahmin sings.

!

;

BRAHMA.

The

Btrotig

And

gods pine

for

my

abode,

pine in vain the sacred Seven

But thou, meek lover of the good Find me, anU turn tny Dack on heaven.

NEMESIS. LREADY

A

blushes in thy cheek

The bosom-thought which thou must speak The

By

bird,

how

cloud or

The maiden

far it is

isle,

fears,

haply roam flying

home

;

and fearing runs

Into the charmed snare she shuns

And every man, Of

;

in love or pride,

his fate is never wide.

Will a woman's fan the ocean smooth

Or prayers the stony Parcse sooth. Or coax the thunder from

its

mark

Or tapers light the chaos dark

?

?

?

;

NEMESIS.

In spite of Virtue and the Muse,

Nemesis

And

all

will

have her dues,

our struggles and our

Tighter wind the giant coils.

toils

:

;

FATE. "TvEEP

To mould

Unknown

Was

he than

He

to

sits fast his fate

his fortunes

;

to him, as to his horse, his

groom be

better or worse. affairs,

squires, lords, kings, his craft compares,

Till late

he learned, through doubt and

Broad England harbored not

Obeying Time, the

The Genius from

last to

its

For the prevision

Unto the thing so

is

his peer

own

cloudy throne. allied

signified

say, the foresight that awaits

Is the

or great:

Cromwell as to me

works, plots, fights, in rude

With

Or

mean

Cromwell's measure or degree

Unknown If

man

in the

same Genius that

creates.

fear,

:

FREEDOM. /^NOE

I

wished I might rehearse

Freedom's psean

in

my

verse.

That the slave who caught the strain Should throb until he snapped his chain.

But the Speak

Name

it

Spirit said,

'

Not so

not, or speak it

;

low

;

not lightly to be said,

Gift too precious to

be prayed.

Passion not to be expressed

But by heaving of the breast Yet,

— wouldst

Where

Who

thou the mountain find

this deity is shrined,

gives to seas and sunset skies

;

;

FREEDOM.

71

Their unspent beauty of surprise,

And, when

it lists

him,

waken can

Brute or savage into man Or,

if in

;

thy heart he shine.

Blends the starry fates with thine.

Draws angels nigh

And makes

to dwell with thee,

thy thoughts archangels be

Freedom's secret wilt thou know? Counsel not with

flesh

and blood

Loiter not for cloak or food;

Right thou

feelest,

rush to do.'

—

ODE SUNG

IN

THE TOWN HALT

CONCORD, JULY

/^ TENDERLY

And one

is in

in

1857.

the haughty day-

Fills his blue

One morn

4,

urn with

The

joy-bells

Which

For

He

;

the mighty heaven,

our desire.

The cannon booms from town Our pulses

fire

to town,

are not less,

chime their tidings down,

children's voices bless.

that flung the broad blue fold

O'er-mantling land and sea,

One

third part of the

sky unrolled

For the banner of the

free.

FOURTH OK JULY

73

ODE.

The men are ripe of Saxon kind

To

build an equal state,

To take the

—

statute from the mind,

And make

United States

of duty fate.

1

the ages plead,

—

Present and Past in under-song,

Go put your

—

creed into your deed.

Nor speak with double tongue.

For sea and land don't understand,

Nor

skies without a frown

See rights for which the one hand fights

By

Be

the other cloven down.

just at

Of honor

And

A

home

;

then write your scroll

o'er the sea.

bid the broad Atlantic ferry of the free.

roll,

FOURTH OF JULY ODE.

74

And, henceforth, there

shall

be no chain,

Save underneath the sea

The wires

shall

murmur through

the main

Sweet songs of Liberty.

The conscious

stars accord above.

The waters wild below,

And

under, through the cable wove,

Her

For

fiery errands go.

He

that worketh high and wise,

Nor pauses

in his plan.

Will take the sun out of the skies

Ere freedom out of man.

BOSTON HYMN. READ

IN MUSIC HALL,

npHE

1863.

the watching Pilgrims came,

As they

sat

And

filled

God

saidj I

I suffer

to

I,

word of the Lord by night

To

Up

JANUARY

by the

seaside,

with flame.

their hearts

am

tired of kings,

them no more

my

ear the

;

morning brings

The outrage of the poor.

Think ye

A

field

Where

I

made

this ball

of havoc and war, tyrants great and tyrants small

Might harry the weak and poor

?

;

;

BOSTON HYMN.

76

My

— his

angel,

name

is

Freedom,

—

Choose him to be your king

He

shall cut

And

fend

Lo

I

!

I hid of old

time in the West,

he has wrought his best

show Columbia,

Which

And Of

his wing.

the sculptor uncovers the statue

When

I

you with

uncover the land

Which

As

pathways east and west,

of the rocks

dip their foot in the seas,

soar to the air-borne flocks

clouds, and the boreal fleece.

I will divide

Call in the

None

my

goods

wretch and slave

shall rule but the

And none

;

:

humble,

but Toil shall have.

;

;

;

BOSTON HYMN. I will

No

77

have never a noble,

lineage counted great

Fishers and choppers and ploughmen Shall constitute a state.

Go, cut down trees in the

And

trim the straightest boughs

Cut down trees

And

forest.

build

me

a

in the forest.

wooden house.

Call the people together.

The young men and the The digger

in the harvest field.

Hireling, and

And They

sires,

him that

hires

here in a pine state-house shall

choose

men

to rule

In every needful faculty, In church, and state, and Bchool.

:

:: ;

BOSTON HYMN.

78

now

Lo,

!

if

these poor

men

Can govern the land and

And make As

just laws below the sun,

planets faithful be.

And ye 'T

sea,

is

shall succor

men

nobleness to serve

;

Help them who cannot help again

Beware from

I

right to swerve.

break your bonds and masterships.

And

I

unchain the slave

Free be his heart and hand henceforth

As wind and wandering wave,

I

cause from every creature

His proper good to flow

As much

as he is

So much he

and doeth,

shall bestow.

;

!

;

BOSTON HYMN.

19

But, laying hands on another

To

coin his labor and sweat,

He

goes in

pawn

to his victim

For eternal years in debt.

To-day unbind the captive,

So only are ye unbound Lift

up a people from the dust,

Trump of

their rescue,

Pay ransom

And

fill

Who

is

And

to the owner,

the bag to the brim. the owner

ever was.

North

And

!

!

?

The

slave is owner.

Pay him.

give him beauty for rags.

honor,

Nevada

sound

South

!

for his

shame

coin thy golden crags

With Freedom's image and name.

—

80

BOSTON HYMN.

Up

!

and the dusky race

That sat in darkness long,

Be

swift their feet as antelopes,

And

as

behemoth strong.

Come, East and West and North,

By

races, as snow-flakes.

And

carry

Which

My

my

purpose

forth,

neither halts nor shakes.

will fulfilled shall be.

For, in daylight or in dark,

My

thunderbolt has eyes to see

His way home to the mark.

VOLUNTARIES.

T OW

and mournful be the

Haughty thought be

far

strain.

from me;

Tones of penitence and pain,

Moanings of the

Low

and tender

Where

;

in the cell

a captive sits in chains.

Crooning

From

tropic sea

ditties treasured well

his Afric's torrid plains.

Sole estate his sire bequeathed

Hapless

sire to

hapless son

—

—

Was

the wailing song he breathed.

And

his chain

4»

when

life

was done. »

—

82

VOLUNTARIES.

What Or what

ill

Heart too

To

what

his crime

?

planet crossed his prime

?

his fault, or

soft

and

weak

will too

front the fate that crouches near,

Dove beneath the

vulture's beak

;

—

Will song dissuade the thirsty spear

Dragged from

his mother's

?

arms and breast.

Displaced, disfurnished here,

His wistful Chilled

Great

toil to

by a

men

do his best

ribald jeer.

in the

Senate sate.

Sage and hero, side by

side,

Building for their sons the State,

Which they They

shall rule

with pride.

forbore to break the chain

Which bound

the dusky tribe.

Checked by the owners'

fierce disdain.

Lured by " Union " as the Destiny sat by, and said,

bribe.

;

;

;

VOLUNTARIES.

'Pang Hide I

for

pang your seed

in false

83

shall pay,

peace your coward head,

bring round the harvest-day.'

IL

Fkkedom

all

Nor perches

winged expands. narrow place

in a

;

Her broad van seeks unplanted lands She loves a poor and virtuous race. Clinging to a colder zone

Whose dark sky

sheds the snow-flake down,

The snow-flake

her banner's

Her

She

star.

stripes the boreal streamers are.

Long she loved

Now

is

the

the iron age

is

Northman well done,

will not refuse to dwell

With the

ofi"spring of the

Foundling of the desert

Sun

far,

—

34

VOLUNTARIES.

Where palms plume,

He

siroccos blaze,

roves unhurt the burning ways

In climates of the summer star.

He

has avenues to

Hid from men

God

of Northern brain,

Far beholding, without cloud,

What

these with slowest steps attain.

If once the generous chief arrive

To

lead him willing to be led.

For freedom he

And

will strike

drain his heart

and

strive,

he be dead.

till

IIL

In an age of fops and toys,

Wanting wisdom, void

Who

shall nerve heroic

To hazard

all in

Break sharply

of right.

boys

Freedom's

off their jolly

fight,

games.

VOLUNTARIES.

85

Foisake their comrades gay,

And

quit proud

For famine,

toil,

homes and youthful dames, and fray

Yet on the nimble

air

?

benign

Speed nimbler messages, That waft the breath of grace divine

To

hearts in sloth and ease.

So nigh

is

grandeur to our dust.

So near

is

God

When Duty The youth

to man.

whispers low. Thou must

replies,

I

can.

IV.

0, WKLL for the fortunate soul

Which Music's wings Stealing

infold.

away the memory

Of sorrows new and old

I

Yet happier he whose inward

sight.

—

VOLUNTARIES.

86

Stayed on his subtile thought. Shuts his sense on toys of time,

To vacant bosoms brought. But best befriended of the God

He

who,

in evil times,

Warned by an inward

voice.

Heeds not the darkness and the

dread,

Biding by his rule and choice. Feeling only the fiery thread

Leading over heroic ground,

Walled with mortal terror round,

To the aim which him

And

allures.

the sweet heaven his deed secures.

Stainless soldier on the walls.

— and

Knowing

this,

Whoever

fights,

knows no more,

whoever

falls.

Justice conquers evermore,

Justice after as before,

—

;

VOLUNTAKIES.

And

who

he

ÂŤ7

battles on her side,

God, though he were ten times

Crowns him

slain,

victor glorified,

Victor over death and pain

Forever

:

but his erring

foe.

Self-assured that he prevails.

Looks from

And

his victim lying low.

sees aloft the red right

arm

Eedress the eternal scales.

He, the poor

foe,

whom

angels

foil,

Blind with pride, and fooled by hate,

Writhes within the dragon Beserved to a speechless

coil,

fate.

Blooms the laurel which belongs

To the

valiant chief

I see the

wreath,

I

who

fights

;

hear the songs

:

VOLUNTAEIES.

88

Lauding the Eternal Rights, Victors over daily wrongs

Awful

Whom And

victors, they

misguide

they will destroy,

their

coming triumph hide

In our downfall, or our joy

:

They reach no term, they never

sleep,

In equal strength through space abide

;

Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep,

The strong they

slay, the swift outstride

Fate's grass grows rank in valley clods.

And

rankly on the castled steep,

Speak

it firmly,

these are gods.

All are ghosts beside.

—

:

LOVE AND THOUGHT. ri^wO

well-assorted travellers use

The highway, Eros and the Muse,

rrom

the twins

To the

Hand

is

nothing hidden,

pair is naught forbidden

in

hand the comrades go

Every nook of nature through

Each

for other

;

They know one only mortal all

balsam or

When, by

false

:

they were born,

Each can other best adorn

Past

;

grief

relief,

companions crossed,

The pHgrims have each other

lost.

——

:

LOVER'S PETITION, /^ OOD I

Heart, that ownest

all

1

ask a modest boon and small

Not

of lands and towns the gift,

Too

large a load for

But

for

me

to

lift,

one proper creature,

Which geographic

eye.

Sweeping the map of Western

earth;

Or the Atlantic coast, from Maine

To Powhatan's domain. Could not descry. Is

So

A

't

much

to ask in

trivial a part,

solitary heart

?

—

all

thy huge creation

LOVER'S rETlTION.

Yet count me not of

spirit

mean.

Or mine a mean demand, For

'tis the concentration

And worth The

of

all

the land,

sister of the sea,

The daughter of the

strand.

Composed of

light.

And So

air

and

of the swart earth-might.

little to

thy poet's prayer

Thy

large bounty well can spare.

And

yet

I think, if

The world were

she were gone,

better left alone.

91

;

;

;

UNA. T>OVING, Una Still for

We

roving, as

my

lights

far

by

seems,

clouded dreams

journeys she

wander

it

is

dressed

east and west.

In the homestead, homely thought

At my work

Una

Half-seen

my

ramble not

home chance draw me

If from

In

I

sits beside.

Though beloved,

One

wide,

house and garden-plot,

But one

I

',

I

miss her not;

seek in foreign places.

face explore in foreign faces.

UNA.

93

At home a deeper thought may

The inward sky with

And

I greet

from

light

chrysolite,

far the ray,

Aurora of a dearer day.

Bat

If

upon the seas

I sail.

Or trundle on the glowing I

am

rail,

but a thought of hers,

Loveliest of travellers.

So the gentle poet's name

To

foreign parts

is

blown by fame;

Seek him in his native town,

He

is

hidden and unknown.

;

LETTERS. "17^

VERY

day brings a

ship,

Every ship brings a word

Well

for those

who have no

fear.

Looking seaward well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the

word they wish

to hear.

—

;

RUBIES. ri^HET

brought

And I said,

they are drops of frozen wine

I looked again,

vats that run.

—

I

thought them hearts

fiiends to friends

Tides that should

Are locked

But

fire to

unknown

warm each

;

neighboring

in sparkling stone.

thaw that ruddy snow,

To break enchanted

And

rubies from the mine.

held them to the sun

From Eden's

Of

me

ice,

give love's scarlet tides to flow,

When

shall that

sun arise

?

life

—

;

MERLIN'S SONG. /^P

Merlin wise

Sing

I learned

low, or sing

it

it

a song, loud,

It is mightier than the strong.

And

punishes the proud.

I sing

it

to the surging crowd,

Good men Bad men

it

will

it will

—

calm and cheer. chain and cage.

In the heart of the music peals a straia

Which

only angels hear

Whether

it

waken joy or

rage.

Hushed myriads hark

in vain,

Yet they who hear

shed their age,

And

it

take their youth again.

;

THE TEST. (Musa loquiran)

T

HUNG my Time and

verses in the wind,

tide tlieir faults

may

find.

winnowed through and through,

All were

Five lines lasted sound and true

;

Five were smelted in a pot

Than the South more These the

fierce

siroc could not melt,

Fire their fiercer flaming

And

and hot

the meaning

felt,

was more white

Than July's meridian

light.

Sunshine cannot bleach the snow.

Nor time unmake what poets know.

Have you eyes Which

five 5

to find the five

hundred did survive

?

G

—

:

—

:

;

SOLUTION.

T AM By

the

Muse wno sung alway

Jove, at

dawn

of the

first

Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long

To

fire

slime

my

Wolves shed

their

fangs,

in the

song prevails,

and dragons scales

sky the sweet May-morn,

Earth smiled with flowers, and

man was

Then Asia yeaned her shepherd

And

wrought

the stagnant earth with thought

On spawning

Flushed

I

day.

race,

Nile substructs her granite base,

Tented Tartary, columned Nile,

And, under vines, on rocky

isle,

Or on wind-blown sea-marge

bleak,

Forward stepped the

Greek

pei'fect

born.

;

SOLUTION.

That wit and joy might

And

earth

Flown I

grow

civil,

to Italy

find a tongue.

Hojier sung.

from Greece,

brooded long, and held

For

I

And

am wont

in

days of

my

peace,

to sing uncalled. evil plight

Unlock doors of new delight

And sometimes mankind With

I

appalled

a bitter horoscope,

With spasms

of terror for balm of hope.

Then by better thought

I

lead

Bards to speak what nations need

So

1

folded

And Dante

me

in fears,

searched the triple spheres,

Moulding nature

at his will.

So shaped, so colored, swift or

And,

;

still.

sculptor-like, his large design

Etched on Alp and Apennine.

100

SOLUTION.

Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur,

Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power, England's genius

Of heart and

Gave

And

to the life

Orbit and

measure and pleasure,

soul, of strength

mind

was

Nor sequent

filled all

its

emperor,

larger than before

:

centuries could hit

sum

The men who

of Shakspeake's wit. lived with

Poets, for the air

him became

was fame.

Far in the North, where polar night Holds in check the

frolic light,

In trance upborne past mortal goal

The Swede Emanuel leads the

soul.

Through snows above, mines underground,

The inks of Erebus he found

;

Eehearsed to men the damned wails

On which

the seraph music

sails.

— ;

SOLUTION.

In

spirit-worlds

lie

101

trod alone,

But walked the earth unmarked, unknown.

The near by-stander caught no sound,

Yet they who

listened far aloof

Heard rendings of the skyey

And

felt,

And

his air-sown,

roof.

beneath, the quaking ground

unheeded words.

In the next age, are flaming swords.

In newer days of war and trade,

Romance

When And

forgot,

and

faith

decayed,

Science armed and guided war.

clerks the Janus-gates unbar,

When

Prance, where poet never grew.

Halved and dealt the globe anew, Goethe, raised o'er joy and

Drew

strife.

the firm lines of Fate and Life,

And brought Olympian wisdom down To court and

mart, to

gown and town

;

102

SOLUTION. Stooping, his finger wrote in clay

The open

secret of to-day.

So bloom the unfading petals

And

verses that

all

five.

verse outlive.

NATURE AND LIFE

;

NATURE.

TTTINTERS know Easily to shed the snow,

And

the untaught Spring is wise

In cowslips and anemonies.

Nature, hating art and pains,

Baulks and

baffles plotting brains

{

Casualty and Surprise

Are the apples of her eyes But she dearly loves the poor. And, by marvel of her own, Strikes the loud pretender

For Nature

And To

down.

listens in the rose.

hearkens in the berry's

bell,

help her friends, to plague her foes,

5*

NATURE.

106

And

like

wise

God

she judges well.

Tet doth much her love excel

To

the souls that never

To swains

And do

Who And

fell,

that live in happiness,

well because they please.

walk

in

ways

that are unfamed,

feats achieve before they 're

named.

—

NATURE. II.

OHE

gamesome and good.

is

But of mutable mood,

No She

dreary repeater

now and

again,

will be all things to all

She who

is

old,

men.

but nowise feeble.

Pours her power into the people,

Merry and manifold without

bar,

Makes and moulds them what they

And what they Is not their

And what

call their city

are,

way

way, but hers,

they say they made to-day.

They learned

of the oaks and

She spawneth men as mallows

firs.

fresh,

;

NATURE.

108

Hero and maiden,

flesh of her flesh

;

She drugs her water and her wheat

With

And

the flavors she finds meet,

gives them

And having

what

to drink and eat

thus their bread and growth,

They do her bidding, nothing

What

's

most

theirs is not their

But borrowed

And

in their

loath.

in

own,

atoms from iron and stone,

vaunted works of Art

The master-stroke

is still

her part.

;

THE ROMANY rilHE sun goes down, and The coarseness of The

fair

with him takes

poor

moon mounts, and aye

Of Gypsy beauty

attire

the flame

!

you scorn our race

captives of your air-tight halls.

Wear

out in-doors your sickly days.

But leave us the horizon

walls.

And

if I

take you, dames, to task.

And

say

it

frankly without guile.

Then you are Gypsies

And

I the

lady

;

blazes higher.

Pale Northern girls

You

my

GIRL.

all

in a

mask,

the while.

;

no If,

THE ROMANY

GIRL.

on the heath, below the moon,

I court

Me

and play with paler blood,

false to

mine dare whisper none,

—

One sallow horseman knows me good.

Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain,

For teeth and hair with shopmen deal

My

swarthy

tint is in the grain.

The rocks and

forest

know

it

real.

The wild

air

The keen

stars twinkle in our eyes,

The

bloweth in our lungs.

birds gave us our wily tongues.

The panther

in our

You doubt we Nathless

The

stars

dances

read the stars on high,

we read your

may

flies.

fortunes true

;

hide in the upper sky,

But without glass we fathom you.

DAYS. T~\ AUGHTER

of Time, the hypocritic Days.

Muffled and

And marching

dumb

like barefoot dervishes,

single in an endless

Bring diadems and fagots

To each they

in their

file,

hands.

offer gifts after his will.

Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them I,

in

my

Forgot

pleached garden, watched the pomp,

my

morning wishes, hastily

Took a few herbs and Turned and departed Under her solemn

apples, and the silent.

fillet

I,

saw the

Day

too late. scorn.

all

THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT T~\AT!

hast thou two faces,

Making one place two

places

?

One, by humble farmer seen,

and wet, unlighted, mean,

Chill

Useful only, triste and damp,

Serving for a laborer's lamp

Have

?

the same mists another side.

To be

the appanage of pride,

Gracing the rich man's wood and lake,

His park where amber mornings break.

And

treacherously bright to show

His planted

Day

!

and

isle is

where roses glow your mightiness

?

THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT.

A

sycophant to smug success

?

Will the sweet sky and ocean broad

Be

accomplices to fraud

fine

Sun

I

I

?

ourse thy cruel ray

:

Back, back to chaos, harlot Day!

113

MY GARDEN. 1

could put

F I

And

what

men would

All

And

In

tell

my woods

to

's

in song,

there enjoyed,

my

gardens throng,

leave the cities void.

my

plot no tulips blow,

—

Snow-loving pines aad oaks instead

And

rank the savage maples grow

From

My

;

spring's faint flush to

garden

Which

is

autumn

red.

a forest ledge

older forests bound;

The banks slope down Then plunge

to the blue lake-edge,

to depths profound.

—

;

MY GARDEN.

115

Here once the Deluge ploughed, Laid the terraces, one by one

Ebbing

later

whence

flowed,

it

They bleach and dry

;

in the sun.

The sowers made haste

to depart,

The wind and the birds which sowed

Not

for fame, nor

by

rules of art.

Planted these, and tempests flowed

Waters

that

wash

my

it.

garden side

Play not in Nature's lawful web.

They heed not moon or

—

solar tide,

Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,

And

every god,

And be And

— none

sure at last

after Love, the

did refuse

came Love,

Muse

;

it

U6

MY GARDEN. Keen

ears can catcla a syllable,

As

one spake to another,

if

In the hemlocks

And what

tall,

untamable,

the whispering grasses smother.

^olian harps

in the pine

Ring with the song of the Fates Infant Bacchus in the vine,

Par distant yet

;

—

his chorus waits.

Canst thou copy in verse one chime

Of the wood-bell's peal and Write

in a

cry.

book the morning's prime.

Or match with words that tender sky

Wonderful verse of the gods,

Of one import, of varied tone

They chant

;

the bliss of their abodes

To man imprisoned

in his

own.

?

MY GARDEN.

117

Ever the words of the gods resound

;

But the porches of man's ear Seldom

in this

low

life's

round

Are unsealed, that he may hear.

Wandering voices

in

the

air,

And murmurs

in the wold,

Speak what

I

cannot declare,

Yet cannot

all

When

the

withhold.

shadow

The whirlwind

fell

on the lake,

in ripples

wrote

Air-bells of fortune that shine

And omens above

and break.

thought.

But the meanings cleave

to the lake,

Cannot be carried in book or urn

Go thy ways now, come On waves and hedges

;

later back.

still

they burn.

;

MY GARDEN.

118

These the

fates of

men

Of better men than If

who can

He

forecast,

live to-day

read them comes at last

will spell in the sculpture,

'Stay

'

;

THE TITMOUSE. 'VT'OU

not be overbold

shall

When you As

deal with arctic cold,

my lukewarm

late I found

Chilled

How Has

wading

snow-choked wood.

in the

should I fight

?

blood

my

foeman

million arms to one of

mine

fine

:

East, west, for aid I looked in vain. East, west, north, south, are his domain.

Miles

oflF,

three dangerous miles,

Must borrow Tip

The

his

and away

my

for life

ears,

home

winds who there would come

frost-king ties

Sings in

is

!

my my

be

fleet

!

fumbling

— feet.

hands are stones,

Cnrdles the blood to the marble bones.

'

!

:20

THE TITMOUSE.

Tugs

And hems Well,

numbs

at the heart-strings,

with narrowing fence.

in life

in this

The punctual

broad bed

The snow

lie

cold.

shall sing their is

and sleep,

stars will vigil keep,

Embalmed by purifying The winds

dead-march

'T

— but

this

was coming

When

way

fast to

fate

was

such anointing.

saucy note

!

Out of sound heart and merry if it said,

'

Good

to

meet you

Where January

throat.

day, good sir

Pine afternoon, old passenger

Happy

pointing,

a cheerful cry,

polite,

Ghic-chicadeedee

As

cloud.

piped a tiny voice hard by.

Gay and

old,

no ignoble shroud,

The moon thy mourner, and the

Softly,

the sense,

I

in these places.

brings few faces.'

;

;

THE TITMOUSE.

121

This poet, though he live apart,

Moved by

his hospitable heart.

Sped, when I passed his sylvan

To do

As

the honors of his court. a feathered lord of land

fits

Flew

fort,

near, with soft

Hopped on

;

wing grazed

my

hand.

the bough, then, darting low.

Prints his small impress on the snow.

Shows

feats of his

Head downward,

Here was

this

gymnastic play. clinging to the spray.

atom

in

full

breath.

Hurling defiance at vast death This scrap of valor just for play

Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray,

As I

'

shame

if to

greeted loud

You

pet

!

my weak my

little

behavior saviour,

what dost here

?

and what for

In these woods, thy small Labrador, 6

?

;

THE TITMOUSE.

122

At

this pinch,

What So

in that little chest

stout,

and self-possest

Henceforth

wear no

I

Ashes and jet

Why

all

?

stripe but thine

hues outshine.

are not diamonds black and gray.

To ape thy

And

!

burns

fire

frolic,

wee San Salvador

dare-devil array

?

the spacious North

I affirm,

Exists to draw thy virtue forth.

no virtue goes with size

I think

The reason of Is, that

And,

men

;

cowardice

all

are overgrown,

to be valiant,

must come down

To the titmouse dimension.'

good-will

makes

intelligence,

'T

is

And

I

began

to catch the sense

Of my

bird's

song

:

'

Live out of doors

In the great woods, on prairie floors.

! ;

THE TITMOUSE. sun

I dine in the

when he

;

123

sinks in the sea,

have a hole in a hollow tree

I too

And

when Summer

I like less

With

beams on these

stifling

Than noontide

With tempest For well the

of the blinding flakes. soul, if stout within.

my

of the air that blows outside.'

homeward turn

When

He

;

of

farewell,

Thou

my

my

debt,

pet

here again thy pilgrim comes,

shall bring store of seeds

Doubt

;

frame defied,

With glad remembrance I

snow makes

twilights which

polar frost

Made

beats

retreats,

Can arm impregnably the skin

And

;

not, first

and crumb-

so long as earth has bread,

and foremost shalt be fed

The Providence Takes hearts

that

is

most large

like thine in special charge,

!

THE TITMOUSE.

124

Helps who

And

for their

own need

are strong,

the sky doats on cheerful song.

Henceforth O'er

all

I

that

wiry chant

prize thy

mass and minster vaunt

For men mis-hear thy

As

;

call in spring,

would accost some

t'

frivolous wing,

Crying out of the hazel copse, Fhe-be/

And,

in winter,

Ghic-a-dee-dee

I think old Ceesar

In northern Gaul

And, echoed

must have heard

my

in sonu'

dauntless bird. frosty wold,

Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold.

And

I will

And thank I,

To

write our annals new,

thee for a better clew,

who dreamed not when

I

came here

find the antidote of fear.

Now

hear thee say in

Pcean

I

Roman

Vent, vidi, vici.

key,

SEA-SHORE. T

HEAED

or

seemed to hear the chiding Sea

Say, Pilgrim,

Am

I

why

so late and slow to

home

not always here, thy summer

Is not

my

come? ?

voice thy music, morn and eve

?

My

breath thy healthful climate in the heats.

My

touch thy antidote,

Was

ever building like

Was

ever couch magnificent as mine

Lie on the

A I

little

warm

my my

bay thy bath terraces

?

?

?

rock-ledges, and there learn

hut sufSces like a town.

make your sculptured

Vain beside mine.

architecture vain.

I drive

my wedges

home,

And

carve the coastwise mountain into caves.

Lo

here

!

is

Eome, and Nineveh, and Thebes,

Kamak, and Pyramid, and

Giant's Stairs,

; ;

!

126

:

SEA-SHORE.

Half

piled or prostrate

Older than

all

and

;

my

newest slab

thy race.

Behold the Sea,

The

opaline, the plentiful

Yet

beautiful as is the rose in June,

and strong,

Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July

Sea

full

of food, the nourisher of kinds,

Purger of earth, and medicine of men Creating a sweet climate by

Washing out harms and And,

in

my

my

griefs

breath.

from memory.

mathematic ebb and flow,

Giving a hint of that which changes not. Rich are the sea-gods

They grope

For every wave

This

— who gives

the sea for pearls, but

They pluck Force

Wealth

:

to the

matchless

is

gifts

but they?

more than pearls

thence, and give

it

to the wise.

wealth to Dsedalus,

cunning

artist

strength.

who can work

Where

shall

waves A.

load your Atlas shoulders cannot

lift ?

he

find,

;

127

SEA-SHOKE.

with

I

my hammer

The rocky Strewing

pounding evermore

coast, smite

my

Andes

into dust.

bed, and, in another age,

Eebuild a continent of better men.

Then

I

unbar the doors

The exodus of nations

Men

I

:

:

I

my

paths lead out

disperse

to all shores that front the

too have arts and sorceries

Illusion dwells forever with the I

hoary main.

know what

wave.

Leave

spells are laid.

With credulous and imaginative man For,

A

though he scoop

few rods

ofiF

my

he deems

water it

me

to deal

;

in his

gems and

palm, clouds.

Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore, I

make some

coast alluring, some lone

To distant men,

who must go

isle.

there, or die.

;

SONG OF NATURE. 1% /TINE are the night and morning,

The

The

pits of air, the gulf of space,

sportive sun, the gibbous moon,

The innumerable days.

I hide in the solar glory, I

am dumb

I rest

in the pealing song,

on the pitch of the torrent,

In slumber I

am

No numbers have No

tribes

1 sit

by

my

strong.

counted

house can

my

tallies,

fill,

the shining Fount of Life,

And pour

the deluge

still

SONG OF NATURE.

And

129

ever by delicate powers

Gathering along the centuries

From

My

race on race the rarest flowers.

wreath

And many

My And

shall

nothing miss.

a thousand

apples ripened well, light from meliorating stars

With firmer glory

I

wrote the past

Of rock and The building

fire

fell

in characters

the scroll,

in the coral sea,

The planting of the

And

I

coal.

and rings

thefts from satellites

And broken

And

summers

stars I drew,

out of spent and aged things

formed the world anew

6*

;

I

130

SONG OF NATURE.

What

time the gods kept carnival,

Tricked out in star and flower,

And

in

cramp

They swathed

elf

and saurian forms

their too

Time and Thought were

much power.

my

surveyors,

They

laid their courses well,

They

boiled the sea, and baked the layers

Of

granite, marl,

But

and

he, the man-child glorious,

Where

tarries he the while

The rainbow shines

The sunset gleams

My

—

?

his harbinger.

his smile.

boreal lights leap upward.

Forthright

And

shell.

still

my

planets

the man-child

roll. is

The summit of the whole.

not born.

;

SONG OF NATURE.

Must time and

131

tide forever run ?

Will never

my

winds go sleep

Will never

my

wheels which whirl the sun

And

satellites

have rest

in the

?

Too much of donning and doÂŁSng, Too slow the rainbow I

weary of

My

my

leaves and

I tire

fades,

robe of snow,

my

cascades

of globes and races,

Too long the game

What without him

is

is

played

travail in pain for

My

;

summer's pomp.

Or winter's frozen shade

I

;

?

him.

creatures travail and wait

His couriers come by squadrons,

He comes not

to the gate.

west?

132

SOMG OF NATURE.

Twice

And

have moulded an image,

I

thrice outstretched

Made one

And

One

And

my

hand,

of day, and cue of night,

one of the salt sea-sand.

Judeean manger,

in a

one by Avon stream.

One over against the mouths of

And one

1

in the

Nile,

Academe.

moulded kings and saviours,

And But

bards o'er kings to rule fell

;

—

the starry influence short,

The cup was never

full.

Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,

And mix

the bowl again

Seethe, Fate

!

;

the ancient elements.

Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain

SONG OF NATURE.

133

Let war and trade and creeds and song Blend, ripen race on race,

The sunburnt world a man

Of

all

breed

the zones, and countless days.

No

ray

My

oldest force is

And

shall

is

dimmed, no atom worn,

good as new,

the fresh rose on yonder thorn

Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

'

:

;

TWO RIVERS. nnilY summer

voice, Musketaquit,

Repeats the music of the rain

But sweeter

rivers pulsing

flit

Through

thee, as thou

Thou

thy narrow banks art peat

in

The stream

I

through Concord Plain.

love unbounded goes

Through

flood

Through

light,

I

;

and sea and firmament through

life, it

forward flows.

see the inundation sweet,

I hear the

spending of the stream

Through years, through men, through nature Through passion, thought, dream.

through

power

fleet

anc

TWO

RIVERS.

135

Musketaquit, a goblin strong,

Of shard and They

flint

makes jewels gay

lose their grief

And where he winds

So

forth

Who No

who hear is

and brighter

drink

it

his song,

the day of day.

fares

my

stream,

shall not thirst again

darkness stains

And ages drop

its

;

equal gleam,

in it like rain

;

—

;

WALDEINSAMKEIT. T

DO

not count the hours

In wandering

The Like

God

In plains that

Bound

in

loyal friend.

useth me.

it

Of skirting

spend

by the sea

my

forest is

I

room

for

shadows make

hills to lie,

by streams which give and take

Their colors from the sky

;

Or on the mountain-crest sublime,

Or down the oaken glade, what have For

this the

I to

do with time

day was made.

?

WALDEINSAMKEIT. Cities of mortals

137

woe-begone

Fantastic care derides.

But

in the serious

landscape lone

Stern benefit abides.

Sheen

will tarnish,

And merry

is

honey

cloy,

only a mask of bad,

But, sober on a fund of joy.

The woods

at heart are glad.

There the great Planter plants

Of

fruitful

And with

worlds the grain. a million spells enchants

The souls that walk

Still

The

on the seeds of

in pain.

all

he made

rose of beauty burns

;

Through times that wear, and forms that Immortal youth returns.

fade,

!

WALDEIXSAMKEIT.

138 Tlie blaok

ducks mounting from the lake,

The pigeon The

in the pines,

bittern's

Which no

Down

in

boom, a desert make

false art refines.

yon watery nook,

Where bearded The gray The

mists divide.

old gods

whom

Chaos knew,

sires of Nature, hide.

Aloft, in secret veins of air.

Blows the sweet breath of song, 0, few to scale those uplands dare.

Though they

to all belong

See thou bring not

The

to field or stone

fancies found in books

;

Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own,

To brave

the landscape's looks.

WALDEINSAMKEIT.

And

My

if,

amid

this dear delight,

thoughts did home rebound,

I well

might reckon

To the high cheer

I

it

a slight

found.

Oblivion here thy wisdom

Thy

139

thrift,

the sleep

For a proud idleness

Crowns

all

thy mean

vÂťl

is.

cares

like this affairs.

;

TERMINUS. TT

is

time to be old,

To take

in sail:

—

The god of bounds.

Who

sets to seas a shore,

Came

And

No

to said

me :

'

in his fatal rounds,

No more

!

farther spread

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy Fancy departs

:

no more invent.

Contract thy firmament

To compass There

's

of a tent.

not enough for this and that.

Make thy

option which of

two

;

root

;

TERMINUS.

Economize the

Not the

141

failing river,

less revere the Giver,

Leave the many and hold the few. Timely wise accept the terms. Soften the

A

little

fall

with wary foot

while

Still

plan and smile,

And,

fault of novel

Mature the unfallen Curse,

if

thou

Bad husbands

wilt,

germs, fruit.

thy

sires.

of their fires.

Who, when they gave

thee breath,

Failed to bequeath

The needful sinew stark The Baresark marrow But

left

as once.

to thy bones.

a legacy of ebbing veins.

Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,

—

Amid

the Muses, left thee deaf and

Amid

the gladiators, halt and numb.'

dumb.

:

TERMINUS.

142

As

the bird trims her to the gale,

myself to the storm of time,

I trim I

man

Obey '

the rudder, reef the

sail.

the voice at eve obeyed at prime

Lowly

faithful,

banish fear.

Eight onward drive unharmed

The

And

port, well

;

worth the cruise,

every wave

is

charmed.'

is

near,

;

THE PAST. rpHE

debt

paid,

is

The verdict

The Furies

laid,

The plague

is

All fortunes

Turn Sweet

said,

stayed.

made

;

the key and bolt the door, is

death forevermore.

Nor haughty hope, nor swart Nor murdering All

is

now

chagrin,

hate, can enter in.

secure and fast

Not the gods can shake the Past Flies-to the

Bolted

adamantine door

down forevermore.

;

THE PAST.

144

None can

re-enter there,

—

No

thief so politic,

No

Satan with a royal trick

Steal in

by window, chink, or

To bind

or unbind, add

hole,

what lacked,

Insert a leaf, or forge a name.

New-face or Alter or

finish

mend

what

is

packed.

eternal Pact.

!

THE

FAREWELL.

t^-ST

LINES WRITTEN BY rHE AUTHOR'S BROTHER,

EDWARD

BLISS

BMERSON, WHILST SAILING OUT OF BOSTON HARBOR, BOUND

FOR THE ISLAND OF fORTO

TTIAREWBLL,

RICO, IN 1832.

ye lofty spires

That cheered the holy light Farewell, domestic fires

That broke the gloom of night

Too soon those Too

fast

we

spires are lost,

leave the bay,

Too soon by ocean

From

1

hearth and

tost

home away,

Par away,

far

away.

Farewell the busy town.

The wealthy and 7

tJie

wise, J

;

;

THE LAST FAREWELL.

146

Kind smile and honest frown

From

bright, familiar eyes.

All these are fading

now

;

Our brig hastes on her way,

Her unremembering prow Is leaping o'er the sea.

Par away,

away.

far

my

mother fond.

Too

kind, too

good to me

Nor

pearl nor

diamond

Farewell,

Would pay my debt

;

to thee.

But even thy kiss denies

Upon my cheek

to stay

The winged vessel

And

flies.

billows round her play,

Far away, Farewell,

My

my

far

away.

brothers true.

betters, yet

my

peers

;

;

THE LAST FAREWELL.

How

My

you

desert without

few and

147

evil years

But though aye one

I

in heart.

Together sad or gay,

Rude ocean doth us

part

"We separate to-day,

Far away,

away.

far

Farewell I breathe again

To dim New England's shore

My I

heart shall beat not

when

pant for thee no more.

In yon green palmy

isle,

Beneath the tropic ray, I

murmur never

while

For thee and thine

I

Far away,

pray far

;

away.

MEMORIAM,

IN

E. B. E.

T MOURN But not

upon

this battle-field,

for those

who perished

here

Behold the river-bank

Whither the angry farmers came, In sloven dress and broken rank.

Nor thought of fame. Their deed of blood All

mankind praise

Even the It

seretie

;

Reason says,

was well done.

The wise and simple have one glance

To greet you

stern head-stone,

IN

Which more

it is

1 19

of pride than pity gave

To mark the Tet

MEMOEIAM.

Briton's friendless grave.

a stately tomb

;

The grand return

Of eve and morn, The year's The

fresh bloom,

silver cloud.

Might grace the dust that

Yet not of these

I

is

most proud.

muse

In this ancestral place,

But of a kindred face That never joy or hope

shall here diffuse.

Ah, brother of the brief but blazing star

What

hast thou to do with these

Haunting

Thou bom

this bank's historic trees?

for noblest

For action's

life.

field, for victor's car.

1

:

IjO

in

Thou

living

To these I

MEMORIAM.

champion of the right

their penalty

?

belonged

grudge not these their bed of death.

But thine

to thee,

who never wronged

The poorest that drew

All inborn

breath.

power that could

Consist with

homage

Flamed from

his martial

He who seemed He

to the

good

eye

;

a soldier born,

should have the helmet worn.

All friends to fend,

Fronting foes of

foes defy,

God and man.

Frowning down the Battling for the

all

evil-doer.

weak and

poor.

His from youth the leader's look

Gave

the law which others took.

And

never poor beseeching glance

Shamed

that sculptured countenance.

;

IK MEMOBIAM.

There

is

no record

left

on

151

earfh.

Save in tablets of the heart,

Of the

rich inherent worth.

Of the grace that on him shone.

Of eloquent

lips,

of joyful wit

He

could not frame a word

An

act

unworthy

to

be done

Honor prompted every

Honor came and

unfit,

;

glance.

sat beside him.

In lowly cot or painful road.

And evermore Cried,

Born

the cruel

"Onward!" and for success

With grace

he seemed.

gifts that

With budding power

Weapons

to

the palm-crown showed.

to win, with heart to hold,

With shining

As pledged

god

in

took

all

eyes.

in college-halls.

coming days

to forge

guard the State, or scourge

Tyrants despite their guards or walls.

IN MEMOEIAM.

152

On

his yowBsg: promise

Drew

his free

Beauty smiled,

homage unbeguiled,

And

prosperous

And

richly his large future planned,

And

troops of friends enjoyed- the tide,

All, all

I

Age

held out his hand.

was given, and only

—

health denied.

see him with superior smile

Hunted by Sorrow's In lands remote, in

grisly train

toil

With angel patience

and pain>

labor on.

With the high port he wore

When, foremost The prizes

erewhile.

of the youthful band,

in all lists

he won

;

Nor bate one

jot of heart or hope.

And, least of

all,

Which

holds to

the loyal tie

home

'neath every sky,

The joy and pride the pilgrim

feels

In hearts which round the hearth at

Keep pulse

for pulse

home

with those who roam.

;

;

;

IN MEMOEIAM.

What

generous

153

beliefs console^

The brave whom Pate denies the goal! If others reach

it,

To Heaven's high Firm on

is

content

will his will is bent.

his heart relied,

What

lot soe'er betide,

Work

of his hand

He

nor repents nor grieves.

Pleads for itself the fact,

As unrepenting Nature Her every

leaves

act-

Fell the bolt on the branching oak

The rainbow of

his

hope was broke

No

craven cry, no secret tear,

He

told

no pang, he knew no

;

— fear

Its peace sublime his aspect kept,

His purpose woke, his features slept

And

yet between the spasms of pain

His genius beamed with joy again.

;

IN MEMORIAM.

154

O'er thy rich dust the endless smile

Of Nature

in

thy Spanish

isle

Hints never loss or cruel break

And

sacrifice for love's

Nor mourn

dear sake,

the unalterable

Days

That Genius goes and Polly stays.

What The

matters how, or from what ground,

freed soul its Creator found

Alike thy

?

memory embalms

That orange-grove, that

isle

And

whose oak-boughs bold

ÂŁoot

these loved banks, in the

of palms,

blood of heroes old.

ELEMENTS

:

EXPERIENCE. rpHE I

lords of

saw them

In their

own

life,

the lords of

life,

pass,

guise.

Like and unlike. Portly and grim,

—

Use and Surprise, Surface and Dream,

Succession swift and spectral Wrong,

Temperament without a tongue,

And

the inventor of the

game

Omnipresent without name

Some

to see,

some

;

—

to be guessed,

They marched from east

to west

-

'

KXPERIENCE.

158 Little

man, least of

Among

all,

the legs of his guardians tall,

Walked about with puzzled

Him by

look.

the hand dear Nature took,

Dearest Nature, strong and kind,

Whispered,

'

Darling, never

To-morrow they

will

The founder thou

;

mind

1

wear another

face,

these are thy race

!

COMPENSATION.

npHE

wings of Time are black and white,

Pied with morning and with night.

Mountain

tall

and ocean deep

Trembling balance duly keep. In changing

moon and

tidal

wave

Glows the feud of Want and Have.

Gauge of more and

less

through space,

Electric star or pencil plays,

The lonely Earth amid the

balls

That hurry through the eternal

A

makeweight

halls,

flying to the void.

Supplemental asteroid,

;

COMPENSATION.

160

Or compensatory spark, Shoots across the neutral Dark.

Man 'a

the elm, and Wealth the vine

:

Stanch and strong the tendrils twine

Though

the

None from

frail

its

ringlets thee deceive,

stock that vine can reave.

Fear not, then, thou child There

's

:

infirm.

no god dare wrong a

worm

;

Laurel crowns cleave to deserts.

And power

to

him who power

Hast not thy share

Lo

!

And

it

On winged

feet,

rushes thee to meet

all

that Nature

Floating in

air or

Will rive the

And,

?

exerts.

like

hills

made thy own,

pent in stone.

and swim the sea.

thy shadow, follow thee.

;

POLITICS. /^ OLD

and iron are good

To buy

iron and gold

All earth's fleece and food

For

their like are sold.

Hinted Merlin wise.

Proved Napoleon great,

Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above

its rate.

Pear, Craft, and Avarice

Cannot rear a State.

Out of dust

What

is

to build

more than

dust,

Walls Amphion piled

—

162

POLITICS.

Phoebus stablish must.

When

the

Muses nine

With the Virtues meet, Find to their design

An

Atlantic seat,

By

green orchard boughs

Fended from the

Where

heat,

the statesman ploughs

Furrow

for the

wheat,

—

When

the Church

When

the state-house is the hearth,

is

social worth,

Then the perfect State

The republican

at

is

home.

come.

HEROISM.

pUBY

wine

drunk by knaves,

is

Sugar spends to fatten slaves, Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons

;

Thunder-clouds are Jove's festoons.

Drooping

oft in

wreaths of dread.

Lightning-knotted round his head

The hero

is

Daily his

own

;

not fed on sweets, heart he eats

Chambers of the great are

And head-winds

;

jails,

right for royal sails

:

;

CHARACTER. r

I

iHE

Bun

set,

Stars rose

;

but Bet not his hope his faith

was

earlier

up

Fixed on the enormous galaxy,

Deeper and older seemed his eye

And matched The

He

;

his sufferance sublime

taciturnity of time

spoke, and words more soft than rain

Brought the Age of Gold again

:

His action won such reverence sweet

As

hid

all

measure of the

feat.

CULTURE. /~^AN

rules or tutors educate

The semigod whom we await

He must

?

be musical.

Tremulous, impressional, Alive to gentle influence

Of landscape and of

And

sky,

tender to the spirit-touch

Of man's or maiden's eye But, to his native centre

:

fast.

Shall into Future fuse the Past,

And

the world's flowing fates in his recast.

own mould

FRIENDSHIP. EUDDY

A

drop of manly blood

The surging

sea outweighs,

The world uncertain comes and goes.

The

lover rooted stays.

I fancied

And,

he was

after

many

—

fled,

a year.

Glowed unexhausted

kindliness,

Like daily sunrise there.

My

careful heart

friend,

was

my bosom

free again,

said.

Through thee alone the sky Through thee the rose

is

is

red

arched.

;

All things through thee take nobler form,

And

look be3'oiid

tlie

earth.

167

FEIENDSfflP.

The

A

mill-round of our fate appears

sun-path in thy worth.

Me

too thy nobleness has taught

To master my The

.

despair

fountains of

my

;

hidden

Are through thy friendship

life

fair.

BEAUTY. TTTAS

never form and never face

So sweet to Seyd as only grace

Which

did not slumber like a stone.

But hovered gleaming and was gone. Beauty chased he everywhere, In flame, in storm, in clouds of

He

smote the lake to feed his eye

With

He

air.

the beryl

beam

of the broken wave;

flung in pebbles well to hear

The moment's music which they gave. Oft pealed for him a lofty tone

From nodding

He

pole and belting zone.

heard a voice none else could hear

From

centred and from errant sphere.

BEAUTY.

The quaking

169

earth did quake in rhyme.

Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. In dens of passion, and pits of woe,

He saw To sun

strong Eros struggling through, the dark and solve the curse.

And beam

to the

bounds of the universe.

While thus to love he gave his days In loyal worship, scorning praise,

How

spread their lures for him in vain

Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain!

He

thought

To

die for

it

happier to be dead,

Beauty, than

live for bread.

;

MANNE.RS. /~^

EACE, Beauty, and

Caprice

Build this golden portal; Graceful

women, chosen men.

Dazzle every mortal.

Their sweet and lofty countenance

His enchanted food

He

;

need not go to them, their forma

Beset his solitude.

He

looketh seldom in their face,

His eyes explore the ground,

The green grass

Whereon Little

is

—

a looking-glass

their traits are found.

and less he says to them.

So dances his heart in his breast

MANNERS. Their tranquil mien bereaveth him

Of

wit, of words, of rest.

Too weak

to win, too fond to shun

The tyrants

of his doom.

The much deceived Endymion Slips behind a tomb.

171

;

;

ART. /^ IVE

to barrows, traya, and pans

Grace and glimmer of romance Bring the moonlight into noon

Hid

On

in

gleaming piles of stone

;

the city's paved street

Plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet

Let spouting fountains cool the

air.

Singing in the sun-baked square

Let statue, picture, park, and

hall,

Ballad, flag, and festival.

The past

restore, the

And make to-morrow So

shall the

drudge

Spy behind the

day adorn, a

in

new morn. dusty frock

city clock

;

ART.

Retinues of airy kings, Skirts of angels, starry wings,

His fathers shining in bright

fables.

His children fed at heavenly

tables.

'T

is

the privilege of Art

Thus to play

Man

on earth

And bend

its

cheerful part,

to acclimate,

the exile to his fate,

And, moulded of one element

With

the days and firmament.

Teach him on these as

And

live

stairs to climb,

on even terms with Time

Whilst upper

life

the slender

Of human sense doth

overfill.

rill

;

;

SPIRITUAL LAWS. rr^HE

living

House

Heaven thy prayers

at once

respect,

and architect,

Quarrying man's rejected hours, Builds therewith eternal towers

;

Sole and self-commanded works,

Pears not undermining days,

Grows by decays, And, by the famous might that lurks [n reaction

and

Makes flame

recoil,

to freeze, and ice to boil

Forging, through swart arms of Oifence,

The

silver seat of Innocence.

:

;

UNITY. OPACB

is

ample, east and west,

But two cannot go Cannot travel

in

it

abreast.

two

Yonder masterful cuckoo

Crowds every egg out of the Quick or dead, except

A

spell is laid

its

nest,

own

on sod and stone.

Night and Day were tampered with,

Every quality and pith Surcharged and sultry with a power

That works

its will

on age and hour.

:

:

:

WORSHIP. rriHIS

is

he,

who,

felled

by

foes.

Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows

He

to captivity

was

sold,

But him no prison-bars would hold

Though they

sealed him in a rock,

Mountain chains he can unlock

Thrown

to lions for their

The crouching

Bound

This

is

lion kissed his feet

to the stake,

But arched

meat.

o'er

no flames appalled.

him an honoring vault.

he men miscall Fate,

Threading dark ways, arriving

But ever coming

The

truth,

in time to

late,

crown

and hurl wrong-doers down.

:

WOKSHIP.

He

is

177

the oldest, and best known,

More near than aught thou

call'st

thy own,

Yet, greeted in another's eyes, Disconcerts with glad surprise. This

is

Jove, who, deaf to prayers,

Floods with blessings unawares.

Draw,

if

thou canst, the mystic line

Severing rightly his from thine.

Which

is

human, which

divine.

QUATRAINS,

;

QUATRAINS. s.

TTTITH

H.

beams December planets dart

His cold eye truth and conduct scanned, July was in his sunny heart, October in his liberal hand.

A. H.

High was her

heart,

Her manners made Far capitals,

of bounty well refined

and marble

seemed to Minstrels,

and yet was well inclined.

courts,

her

eye

still

see,

and kings, and high-born dames, and

of the best that be.

;

182

QUATRAINS.

"SUUM CUIQUE." Wilt thou

seal

Pay every

debt, as if

up the avenues of

God wrote

ill

the

HUSHI EvEET thought

is

Every nook

wide

is

public, ;

Thy

gossips spread each whisper.

And

the gods from side to side.

ORATOR. Hb who

has no hands

Perforce must use his tongue

Poxes are so cunning Because they are not strong.

? bill.

;

QUATRAINS.

183

ARTIST. Quit the hut, frequent the palace,

Eeck not what the people say For

;

where'er the trees grow biggest,

still,

Huntsmen

find the easiest

way.

POET. Ever the Poet from the land Steers his bark, and trims his

sail

Eight out to sea his courses stand,

New

worlds to find in pinnace

POET. To

clothe the fiery thought

In simple words succeeds.

For

still

the craft of genius

To mask a king

in weeds.

is

frail.

: ;

184

QUATRAINS.

BOTANIST. Go thou

to thy learned task,

I stay with the flowers of spring

Do thou

What me

of the ages ask the hours will bring.

GARDENER. True Bramin,

in the

morning meadows wet,

Expound the Vedas of the

violet,

Or, hid in vines, peeping through

many

a loop,

See the plum redden, and the beurr^ stoop.

FORESTER. He

took the color of his vest

From

rabbit's coat or grouse's breast

For, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide,

So walks the woodman, unespied

QUATRAINS.

185

NORTHMAN. The gale It

that wrecked

my

helped

The storm

And

drives

rowers to row

my

is

you on the sand. ;

best galley hand,

me where

I go.

FROM ALCUIN. The sea

is the

road of the bold.

Frontier of the wheat-sown plains,

The

And

pit

wherein the streams are rolled.

fountain of the rains.

EXCELSIOR. OvEB

his

head were the maple buds.

And

over the tree was the moon,

And

over the

moon were

the starry stud6j

That drop from the angels' shoon.

QUATRAINS

186

BORROWING. PROM THE FRENCH. Some of your hurts you have curod,

And

the sharpest

you

But what torments of

From

evils

still

grief

have survived.

you

which never arrived

endure(? I

NATURE. Boon Nature

now And

first

each day a brag which

blest

is

we

behold,

trains us on to slight the

the old

But

yields

new, as

if it

were

:

he,

who, playing deep, yet haply

asks not why,

Too busied with the crowded hour or die.

to fear to live

:

QUATRAINS.

187

FATE. Her

planted eye to-day controls,

morrow most

Is in the

And

at

home,

sternly calls to being souls

That curse her when they come.

HOROSCOPE. Ere he was born, the Plotted to

When

make him

from the

The gate of

stars of fate rich

womb

gifts

and great

the babe

was

loosed,

behind him closed.

POWER. Cast the bantling on the rocks. Suckle him with the she-wolfs teat.

Wintered with the hawk and

fox,

Power and speed be hands and

feet

— :

188

QUATRAINS.

CLIMACTERIC. I

AM not wiser

Nor

skilful

by

for

my

my

age,

grief;

Life loiters at the book's first page,

Ah

I

could

we

turn the

leaf.

HERI, CRAS, HODIE. Shines the last age, the next with hope

To-day slinks poorly

off

is

seen

unmarked between

Future or Past no richer secret friendless Present! than thy

folds,

bosom

holds.

MEMORY. Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall

Shadows of the thoughts of day,

And The

thy fortunes, as they

fall.

bias of the will betray.

—

;

QUATRAINS.

189

LOVE. Love on

his errand

bound to go

Can swim the

flood,

and wade through snow,

Where way

none,

't

And

is

will creep

eat through Alps its

home

and wind

to find.

SACRIFICE. Though love

and reason chafe,

repine,

There came a voice without reply,

"Tis man's

When

perdition to be safe,

for the truth

he ought to

die.'

PERICLES. Well and Be thou

To the

wisely said the Greek,

faithful,

but not fond

altar's foot

thy fellow seek,

The Furies wait beyond.

QUATRAINS.

190

CASELLA. Test of the poet

For Eros

is

is

older than Saturn or Jove

Never was poet, of

Who was

knowledge of love, ;

late or of yore,

not tremulous with love-lore.

SHAKSPEARE. I SEE all

human

wits

Are measured but a few. Unmeasured

still

my

Shakspeare

sits,

Lone as the blessed Jew.

HAFIZ. Her

passions the shy violet

Prom Hafiz never

hides

;

Love-longings of the raptured bird

The

bird to

him confides.

—

191

QUATRAINS.

NATURE As

IN LEASTS.

sings the pine-tree in the wind,

So sings ^;the windVa sprig of the pine

Her strength and Shed

in

;

soul has laughing France

each drop of wine.

'AAAKPYN NEMONTAI AIQNA.

'

A

'

I

NEW commandment,' give

my

darling son,

Luther, Fox,

said the smiling

Thou

Muse,

shalt not preach

Behmen, Swedenborg, grew

;

'

pale,

And, on the instant, rosier clouds upbore Hafiz and Shafcspeare with their shining choirs.

;

TRANSLATIONS. SONNET OF MICHEL ANGELO BUONAROTl

"VTEVER

A In

did sculptor's

form which marble doth not hold

white block

its

dream unfold

;

yet

it

therein shall find

Only the hand secure and bold

Which So hide

The

ill

I alas

!

still

obeys the mind.

in thee,

thou heavenly dame.

I shun, the

good

I strive.

love, nor beauty's pride.

Nor Fortune, nor thy If,

claim

not well alive.

Miss the aim whereto

Not

I

coldness, can I chide.

whilst within thy heart abide

Both death and Fails of the

life,

pity,

my

unequal

skill

but draws the death and

ill

!

!

TRANSLATIONS.

196

THE EXILE. FROM THE PERSIAN OF KERMANI. In Farsistan the violet spreads Its leaves to the rival I

how

ask

And

sky

;

far is the Tigris flood,

the vine that

grows thereby?

Except the amber morning wind,

me

Not one

salutes

There

no lover in

To

I

is

;

Bagdat

all

offer the exile cheer.

know

that thou,

O'er Kernan's

And

My

here

morning wind

meadow

blowest,

thou, heart-warming nightingale father's orchard

The merchant hath

And gems from

knowest.

stuffs

of price.

the sea-washed strand,

;

;

;

197

TRANSLATIONS.

And

princes offer

To stay

me

grace

in the Syrian land

But what

is

gold for, but for gifts

And

dark, without love,

And

all

is

?

the day

that I see in Bagdat

Is the Tigris to float

me away.

FROM HAFIZ. I SAID to

heaven that glowed above,

hide yon sun-filled zone,

Hide

all

the stars

you boast

For, in the world of love

And

estimation true,

The hcaped-up harvest of the moon Is

worth one barley-corn at most,

The Pleiads' sheaf but two.

;

TRANSLATIONS.

198

my

If

darling should depart,

And

search the skies for prouder friends,

God

forbid

my

angry heart

In other love should seek amends.

When

Me

the blue horizon's hoop

a little pinches here.

Instant to

And go

my

grave

I

stoop.

find thee in the sphere.

EPITAPH. Bethink, poor heart, what bitter kind of jest

Mad

Destiny this tender stripling played

For a warm breast of maiden to

She

laid

his breast,

a slab of marble on his head.

;

TRANSLATIONS.

They

199

eay, through patience, cnalk

Becomes a ruby stone Ah, yes

but by the true heart's blood

1

The chalk

is

crimson grown

FRIENDSHIP.

Thou

foolish Hafiz

Know

Say, do churls

the worth of Oman's pearls

Give the

To

!

gem which dims

the

?

moon

the noblest, or to none.

Dkarest, where thy shadow

Beauty

sits,

and Music

Where thy form and

calls

falls,

;

favor come.

All good creatures have their home.

;

TRANSLATIONS.

200

On

prince or bride no diamond stone

Half so gracious ever shone,

As

the light of enterprise

Beaming from a young man's eyes.

FROM OMAR CHIAM. Each spot where

tulips

prank their state

Has drunk

the life-blood of the great

The

yon

violets

field

which stain

Are moles of beauties Time hath

He who

slain.

has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,

And he who has one enemy where.

will

meet

liim every-

;

TRANSLATIONS.

On two days

it

201

steads Dot to run from thy grave,

The appointed, and the unappointed day

On

the

Nor

neither balm nor physician can save,

first,

thee,

on the second, the Universe

slay.

FROM IBN JEMIN. Two

things thou shalt not long

a mind serene

A woman

to thy wife,

queen

And

;

for, if

thou lovo

— though she were a crowned

;

the second, borrowed

money,

— though

the

smiling lender say.

That he

will not

ment Day. 9»

demand the debt

until the Judg-

TRANSLATIONS.

202

THE FLUTE. FROM HILALI. Hark what, now flute

yellow-cheeked,

that wail and sigh

Saying, Sweetheart

am

I

;

low,

the

pining

complains,

Without tongue,

If I

now

loud,

1

of

full

winds

;

the old mystery remains,

thou, thou

;

or thou art I

—

?

TO THE SHAH. FROM HAFIZ. Thy

foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike

Poises Arcturus

aloft

down,

morning and evening

spear.

TO THE SHAH. FROM ENWERI. Not

in their

But

o'er the pinnacles of thine

houses stand the stars^ I

his

TRANSLATIONS.

203

TO THE SHAH. FROM ENWERI

.

From thy worth and weight the

stars gravitate,

And

thy house's equi-

the equipoise of heaven

is

poise.

SONG OF SEID NIMETOLLAH OF KUHISTAN [Among

the religious customs of the dervishes

dance, in which the dervish imitates the

ical

heavenly bodies, by spinning on his

own

is

an astronom-

movements of the

axis, whilst at the

same

time he revolves round the Sheikh in the centre, representing the

sun

;

and, as he spins, he sings the

Song of Seid NimetoUah of

Kiihi'itan.]

Spin the ball

!

Nor head from

I reel, I burn,

foot can I discern.

Nor

my

Nor

the wine-cup from the wine.

All

my

heart from love of mine,

doing,

Reaches not to

all

my

my

leaving.

perceiving

;

;

TRANSLATIONS.

204 Lost

m

wnirling spheres

And know

I

am

rove,

I love.

seeker of the stone,

gem

Living

From

only that

I

of Solomon

;

the shore of souls arrived,

In the sea of sense I dived

But what

is

land, or

what

;

wave,

is

To me who only jewels crave ? Love

the air-fed

is

And my As

fire

intense.

heart the frankincense

the rich aloes flames, I glow.

Yet the censer cannot know. I

'm all-knowing, yet unknowing

Stand not, pause not,

Ask not me,

To

recite the

Well I

I

in

my

;

going.

as Muftis can,

Alcoran

;

love the meaning sweet,

tread the book beneath

my

—

feet.

TRANSLATIONS.

Lo

!

205

the God's love blazes higher.

Till all difference expire.

What

are

Moslems

?

All are Love's, and I

what all

are Giaours

are ours.

embrace the true believers.

But

I

reck not of deceivers.

Firm to Heaven Heedless of

Down

my bosom

inferior things

clings.

;

on earth there, underfoot,

What men

chatter

know

THE END.

I not.

?

Ill i''i!i'ii!iii'ni';iiiiiiii!!

U^^'lll

m,Mi

\W