Once I wished I might rehearseFreedom's paean in my verse,That the slave who caught the strainShould throb until he snapped his chain,But the Spirit said, 'Not so;Speak it not, or speak it low;Name not lightly to be said,Gift too precious to be prayed,Passion not to be expressedBut by heaving of the breast:Yet,—wouldst thou the mountain findWhere this deity is shrined,Who gives to seas and sunset skiesTheir unspent beauty of surprise,And, when it lists him, waken canBrute or savage into man;Or, if in thy heart he shine,Blends the starry fates with thine,Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee,And makes 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.'
SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL, CONCORD, JULY 4, 1857O tenderly the haughty dayFills his blue urn with fire;One morn is in the mighty heaven,And one in our desire.The cannon booms from town to town,Our pulses beat not less,The joy-bells chime their tidings down,Which children's voices bless.For He that flung the broad blue foldO'er-mantling land and sea,One third part of the sky unrolledFor the banner of the free.The men are ripe of Saxon kindTo build an equal state,—To take the statute from the mindAnd make of duty fate.United States! 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 frownSee rights for which the one hand fightsBy the other cloven down.Be just at home; then write your scrollOf honor o'er the sea,And bid the broad Atlantic roll,A ferry of the free.And henceforth there shall be no chain,Save underneath the seaThe wires shall murmur through the mainSweet songs of liberty.The conscious stars accord above,The waters wild below,And under, through the cable wove,Her fiery errands go.For He that worketh high and wise.Nor pauses in his plan,Will take the sun out of the skiesEre freedom out of man.
READ IN MUSIC HALL, JANUARY 1, 1863The word of the Lord by nightTo the watching Pilgrims came,As they sat by the seaside,And filled their hearts with flame.God said, I am tired of kings,I suffer them no more;Up to my ear the morning bringsThe outrage of the poor.Think ye I made this ballA field of havoc and war,Where tyrants great and tyrants smallMight harry the weak and poor?My angel,—his name is Freedom,—Choose him to be your king;He shall cut pathways east and westAnd fend you with his wing.Lo! I uncover the landWhich I hid of old time in the West,As the sculptor uncovers the statueWhen he has wrought his best;I show Columbia, of the rocksWhich dip their foot in the seasAnd soar to the air-borne flocksOf clouds and the boreal fleece.I will divide my goods;Call in the wretch and slave:None shall rule but the humble.And none but Toil shall have.I will have never a noble,No lineage counted great;Fishers and choppers and ploughmenShall constitute a state.Go, cut down trees in the forestAnd trim the straightest boughs;Cut down trees in the forestAnd build me a wooden house.Call the people together,The young men and the sires,The digger in the harvest-field,Hireling and him that hires;And here in a pine state-houseThey shall choose men to ruleIn every needful faculty,In church and state and school.Lo, now! if these poor menCan govern the land and seaAnd make just laws below the sun,As planets faithful be.And ye shall succor men;'Tis nobleness to serve;Help them who cannot help again:Beware from right to swerve.I break your bonds and masterships,And I unchain the slave:Free be his heart and hand henceforthAs wind and wandering wave.I cause from every creatureHis proper good to flow:As much as he is and doeth,So much he shall bestow.But, laying hands on anotherTo coin his labor and sweat,He goes in pawn to his victimFor 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, sound!Pay ransom to the ownerAnd fill the bag to the brim.Who is the owner? The slave is owner,And ever was. Pay him.O North! give him beauty for rags,And honor, O South! for his shame;Nevada! coin thy golden cragsWith Freedom's image and name.Up! and the dusky raceThat 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 my purpose forth,Which neither halts nor shakes.My will fulfilled shall be,For, in daylight or in dark,My thunderbolt has eyes to seeHis way home to the mark.
ILow and mournful be the strain,Haughty thought be far from me;Tones of penitence and pain,Meanings of the tropic sea;Low and tender in the cellWhere a captive sits in chains.Crooning ditties treasured wellFrom his Afric's torrid plains.Sole estate his sire bequeathed,—Hapless sire to hapless son,—Was the wailing song he breathed,And his chain when life was done.What his fault, or what his crime?Or what ill planet crossed his prime?Heart too soft and will too weakTo 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 toil to do his bestChilled by a ribald jeer.Great men in the Senate sate,Sage and hero, side by side,Building for their sons the State,Which they shall rule with pride.They forbore to break the chainWhich bound the dusky tribe,Checked by the owners' fierce disdain,Lured by 'Union' as the bribe.Destiny sat by, and said,'Pang for pang your seed shall pay,Hide in false peace your coward head,I bring round the harvest day.'IIFreedom all winged expands,Nor perches in a narrow place;Her broad van seeks unplanted lands;She loves a poor and virtuous race.Clinging to a colder zoneWhose dark sky sheds the snowflake down,The snowflake is her banner's star,Her stripes the boreal streamers are.Long she loved the Northman well;Now the iron age is done,She will not refuse to dwellWith the offspring of the Sun;Foundling of the desert far,Where palms plume, siroccos blaze,He roves unhurt the burning waysIn climates of the summer star.He has avenues to GodHid from men of Northern brain,Far beholding, without cloud,What these with slowest steps attain.If once the generous chief arriveTo lead him willing to be led,For freedom he will strike and strive,And drain his heart till he be dead.IIIIn an age of fops and toys,Wanting wisdom, void of right,Who shall nerve heroic boysTo hazard all in Freedom's fight,—Break sharply off their jolly games,Forsake their comrades gayAnd quit proud homes and youthful damesFor famine, toil and fray?Yet on the nimble air benignSpeed nimbler messages,That waft the breath of grace divineTo hearts in sloth and ease.So nigh is grandeur to our dust,So near is God to man,When Duty whispers low,Thou must,The youth replies,I can.IVO, well for the fortunate soulWhich Music's wings infold,Stealing away the memoryOf sorrows new and old!Yet happier he whose inward sight,Stayed on his subtile thought,Shuts his sense on toys of time,To vacant bosoms brought.But best befriended of the GodHe 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 threadLeading over heroic ground,Walled with mortal terror round,To the aim which him allures,And the sweet heaven his deed secures.Peril around, all else appalling,Cannon in front and leaden rainHim duty through the clarion callingTo the van called not in vain.Stainless soldier on the walls,Knowing this,—and knows no more,—Whoever fights, whoever falls,Justice conquers evermore,Justice after as before,—And he who battles on her side,God, though he were ten times slain,Crowns him victor glorified,Victor over death and pain.
VBlooms the laurel which belongsTo the valiant chief who fights;I see the wreath, I hear the songsLauding the Eternal Rights,Victors over daily wrongs:Awful victors, they misguideWhom they will destroy,And their coming triumph hideIn 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.
Two well-assorted travellers useThe highway, Eros and the Muse.From the twins is nothing hidden,To the pair is nought forbidden;Hand in hand the comrades goEvery nook of Nature through:Each for other they were born,Each can other best adorn;They know one only mortal griefPast all balsam or relief;When, by false companions crossed,The pilgrims have each other lost.
Roving, roving, as it seems,Una lights my clouded dreams;Still for journeys she is dressed;We wander far by east and west.In the homestead, homely thought,At my work I ramble not;If from home chance draw me wide,Half-seen Una sits beside.In my house and garden-plot,Though beloved, I miss her not;But one I seek in foreign places,One face explore in foreign faces.At home a deeper thought may lightThe inward sky with chrysolite,And I greet from far the ray,Aurora of a dearer day.But if upon the seas I sail,Or trundle on the glowing rail,I am but a thought of hers,Loveliest of travellers.So the gentle poet's nameTo foreign parts is blown by fame,Seek him in his native town,He is hidden and unknown.
SICUT PATRIBUS, SIT DEUS NOBISThe rocky nook with hilltops threeLooked eastward from the farms,And twice each day the flowing seaTook Boston in its arms;The men of yore were stout and poor,And sailed for bread to every shore.And where they went on trade intentThey did what freemen can,Their dauntless ways did all men praise,The merchant was a man.The world was made for honest trade,—To plant and eat be none afraid.The waves that rocked them on the deepTo them their secret told;Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep,'Like us be free and bold!'The honest waves refused to slavesThe empire of the ocean caves.Old Europe groans with palaces,Has lords enough and more;—We plant and build by foaming seasA city of the poor;—For day by day could Boston BayTheir honest labor overpay.We grant no dukedoms to the few,We hold like rights, and shall;—Equal on Sunday in the pew,On Monday in the mall,For what avail the plough or sail,Or land or life, if freedom fail?The noble craftsman we promote,Disown the knave and fool;Each honest man shall have his vote,Each child shall have his school.A union then of honest men,Or union never more again.The wild rose and the barberry thornHung out their summer pride,Where now on heated pavements wornThe feet of millions stride.Fair rose the planted hills behindThe good town on the bay,And where the western hills declinedThe prairie stretched away.What care though rival cities soarAlong the stormy coast,Penn's town, New York and Baltimore,If Boston knew the most!They laughed to know the world so wide;The mountains said, 'Good-day!We greet you well, you Saxon men,Up with your towns and stay!'The world was made for honest trade,—To plant and eat be none afraid.'For you,' they said, 'no barriers be,For you no sluggard rest;Each street leads downward to the sea,Or landward to the west.'O happy town beside the sea,Whose roads lead everywhere to all;Than thine no deeper moat can be,No stouter fence, no steeper wall!Bad news from George on the English throne;'You are thriving well,' said he;'Now by these presents be it knownYou shall pay us a tax on tea;'Tis very small,—no load at all,—Honor enough that we send the call.'Not so,' said Boston, 'good my lord,We pay your governors hereAbundant for their bed and board,Six thousand pounds a year.(Your Highness knows our homely word)Millions for self-government,But for tribute never a cent.'The cargo came! and who could blameIfIndiansseized the tea,And, chest by chest, let down the same,Into the laughing sea?For what avail the plough or sail,Or land or life, if freedom fail?The townsmen braved the English king,Found friendship in the French,And honor joined the patriot ringLow on their wooden bench.O bounteous seas that never fail!O day remembered yet!O happy port that spied the sailWhich wafted Lafayette!Pole-star of light in Europe's night,That never faltered from the right.Kings shook with fear, old empires craveThe secret force to findWhich fired the little State to saveThe rights of all mankind.But right is might through all the world;Province to province faithful clung,Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled,Till Freedom cheered and joy-bells rung.The sea returning day by dayRestores the world-wide mart;So let each dweller on the BayFold Boston in his heart,Till these echoes be choked with snows,Or over the town blue ocean flows.Let the blood of her hundred thousandsThrob in each manly vein;And the wits of all her wisest,Make sunshine in her brain.For you can teach the lightning speech,And round the globe your voices reach.And each shall care for other,And each to each shall bend,To the poor a noble brother,To the good an equal friend.A blessing through the ages thusShield all thy roofs and towers!GOD WITH THE FATHERS, SO WITH US,Thou darling town of ours!
Every day brings a ship,Every ship brings a word;Well for those who have no fear.Looking seaward, well assuredThat the word the vessel bringsIs the word they wish to hear.
They brought me rubies from the mine,And held them to the sun;I said, they are drops of frozen wineFrom Eden's vats that run.I looked again,—I thought them heartsOf friends to friends unknown;Tides that should warm each neighboring lifeAre locked in sparkling stone.But fire to thaw that ruddy snow,To break enchanted ice,And give love's scarlet tides to flow,—When shall that sun arise?
IOf Merlin wise I learned a song,—Sing it low or sing it loud,It is mightier than the strong,And punishes the proud.I sing it to the surging crowd,—Good men it will calm and cheer,Bad men it will chain and cage—In the heart of the music peals a strainWhich only angels hear;Whether it waken joy or rageHushed myriads hark in vain,Yet they who hear it shed their age,And take their youth again.IIHear what British Merlin sung,Of keenest eye and truest tongue.Say not, the chiefs who first arriveUsurp the seats for which all strive;The forefathers this land who foundFailed to plant the vantage-ground;Ever from one who comes to-morrowMen wait their good and truth to borrow.But wilt thou measure all thy road,See thou lift the lightest load.Who has little, to him who has less, can spare,And thou, Cyndyllan's son! bewarePonderous gold and stuffs to bear,To falter ere thou thy task fulfil,—Only the light-armed climb the hill.The richest of all lords is Use,And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse.Live in the sunshine, swim the sea,Drink the wild air's salubrity:When the star Canope shines in May,Shepherds are thankful and nations gay.The music that can deepest reach,And cure all ill, is cordial speech:Mask thy wisdom with delight,Toy with the bow, yet hit the white.Of all wit's uses, the main oneIs to live well with who has none.
(Musa loquitur.)I hung my verses in the wind,Time and tide their faults may find.All were winnowed through and through,Five lines lasted sound and true;Five were smelted in a potThan the South more fierce and hot;These the siroc could not melt,Fire their fiercer flaming felt,And the meaning was more whiteThan July's meridian light.Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,Nor time unmake what poets know.Have you eyes to find the fiveWhich five hundred did survive?
I am the Muse who sung alwayBy Jove, at dawn of the first day.Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wroughtTo fire the stagnant earth with thought:On spawning slime my song prevails,Wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales;Flushed in the sky the sweet May-morn,Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born.Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race,And 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 perfect Greek:That wit and joy might find a tongue,And earth grow civil, HOMER sung.Flown to Italy from Greece,I brooded long and held my peace,For I am wont to sing uncalled,And in days of evil plightUnlock doors of new delight;And sometimes mankind I appalledWith a bitter horoscope,With spasms of terror for balm of hope.Then by better thought I leadBards to speak what nations need;So I folded me in fears,And DANTE searched the triple spheres,Moulding Nature at his will,So shaped, so colored, swift or still,And, sculptor-like, his large designEtched on Alp and Apennine.Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur,Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power,England's genius filled all measureOf heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,Gave to the mind its emperor,And life was larger than before:Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE'S wit.The men who lived with him becamePoets, for the air was fame.Far in the North, where polar nightHolds in check the frolic light,In trance upborne past mortal goalThe Swede EMANUEL leads the soul.Through snows above, mines underground,The inks of Erebus he found;Rehearsed to men the damned wailsOn which the seraph music sails.In spirit-worlds he trod alone,But walked the earth unmarked, unknown,The near bystander caught no sound,—Yet they who listened far aloofHeard rendings of the skyey roof,And felt, beneath, the quaking ground;And his air-sown, unheeded words,In the next age, are flaming swords.In newer days of war and trade,Romance forgot, and faith decayed,When Science armed and guided war,And clerks the Janus-gates unbar,When France, where poet never grew,Halved and dealt the globe anew,GOETHE, raised o'er joy and strife,Drew the firm lines of Fate and LifeAnd brought Olympian wisdom downTo court and mart, to gown and town.Stooping, his finger wrote in clayThe open secret of to-day.So bloom the unfading petals five,And verses that all verse outlive.
SUNG AT THE SECOND CHURCH, AT THE ORDINATIONOF REV. CHANDLER ROBBINSWe love the venerable houseOur fathers built to God;—In heaven are kept their grateful vows,Their dust endears the sod.Here holy thoughts a light have shedFrom many a radiant face,And prayers of humble virtue madeThe perfume of the place.And anxious hearts have pondered hereThe mystery of life,And prayed the eternal Light to clearTheir doubts, and aid their strife.From humble tenements aroundCame up the pensive train,And in the church a blessing foundThat filled their homes again;For faith and peace and mighty loveThat from the Godhead flow,Showed them the life of Heaven aboveSprings from the life below.They live with God; their homes are dust;Yet here their children pray,And in this fleeting lifetime trustTo find the narrow way.On him who by the altar stands,On him thy blessing fall,Speak through his lips thy pure commands,Thou heart that lovest all.
Winters knowEasily to shed the snow,And the untaught Spring is wiseIn cowslips and anemonies.Nature, hating art and pains,Baulks and baffles plotting brains;Casualty and SurpriseAre the apples of her eyes;But she dearly loves the poor,And, by marvel of her own,Strikes the loud pretender down.For Nature listens in the roseAnd hearkens in the berry's bellTo help her friends, to plague her foes,And like wise God she judges well.Yet doth much her love excelTo the souls that never fell,To swains that live in happinessAnd do well because they please,Who walk in ways that are unfamed,And feats achieve before they're named.
She is gamesome and good,But of mutable mood,—No dreary repeater now and again,She will be all things to all men.She who is old, but nowise feeble,Pours her power into the people,Merry and manifold without bar,Makes and moulds them what they are,And what they call their city wayIs not their way, but hers,And what they say they made to-day,They learned of the oaks and firs.She spawneth men as mallows fresh,Hero and maiden, flesh of her flesh;She drugs her water and her wheatWith the flavors she finds meet,And gives them what to drink and eat;And having thus their bread and growth,They do her bidding, nothing loath.What's most theirs is not their own,But borrowed in atoms from iron and stone,And in their vaunted works of ArtThe master-stroke is still her part.
The sun goes down, and with him takesThe coarseness of my poor attire;The fair moon mounts, and aye the flameOf Gypsy beauty blazes higher.Pale Northern girls! you scorn our race;You captives of your air-tight halls,Wear out indoors 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 in a mask,And I the lady all the while.If on the heath, below the moon,I court and play with paler blood,Me 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 bloweth in our lungs,The keen stars twinkle in our eyes,The birds gave us our wily tongues,The panther in our dances flies.You doubt we read the stars on high,Nathless we read your fortunes true;The stars may hide in the upper sky,But without glass we fathom you.
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,And marching single in an endless file,Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.To each they offer gifts after his will,Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,Forgot my morning wishes, hastilyTook a few herbs and apples, and the DayTurned and departed silent. I, too late,Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
If I could put my woods in songAnd tell what's there enjoyed,All men would to my gardens throng,And leave the cities void.In my plot no tulips blow,—Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;And rank the savage maples growFrom Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.My garden is a forest ledgeWhich older forests bound;The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,Then plunge to depths profound.Here once the Deluge ploughed,Laid the terraces, one by one;Ebbing later whence it flowed,They bleach and dry in the sun.The sowers made haste to depart,—The wind and the birds which sowed it;Not for fame, nor by rules of art,Planted these, and tempests flowed it.Waters that wash my garden-sidePlay 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,—none did refuse;And be sure at last came Love,And after Love, the Muse.Keen ears can catch a syllable,As if one spake to another,In the hemlocks tall, untamable,And what the whispering grasses smother.Aeolian harps in the pineRing with the song of the Fates;Infant Bacchus in the vine,—Far distant yet his chorus waits.Canst thou copy in verse one chimeOf the wood-bell's peal and cry,Write in a 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 abodesTo man imprisoned in his own.Ever the words of the gods resound;But the porches of man's earSeldom in this low life's roundAre unsealed that he may hear.Wandering voices in the airAnd murmurs in the woldSpeak what I cannot declare,Yet cannot all withhold.When the shadow fell on the lake,The whirlwind in ripples wroteAir-bells of fortune that shine and break,And omens above thought.But the meanings cleave to the lake,Cannot be carried in book or urn;Go thy ways now, come later back,On waves and hedges still they burn.These the fates of men forecast,Of better men than live to-day;If who can read them comes at lastHe will spell in the sculpture, 'Stay.'
Day! hast thou two faces,Making one place two places?One, by humble farmer seen,Chill and wet, unlighted, mean,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 showHis planted isle where roses glow?O Day! and is your mightinessA sycophant to smug success?Will the sweet sky and ocean broadBe fine accomplices to fraud?O Sun! I curse thy cruel ray:Back, back to chaos, harlot Day!
You shall not be overboldWhen you deal with arctic cold,As late I found my lukewarm bloodChilled wading in the snow-choked wood.How should I fight? my foeman fineHas million arms to one of mine:East, west, for aid I looked in vain,East, west, north, south, are his domain.Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home;Must borrow his winds who there would come.Up and away for life! be fleet!—The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,Sings in my ears, my hands are stones,Curdles the blood to the marble bones,Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense,And hems in life with narrowing fence.Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,—The punctual stars will vigil keep,—Embalmed by purifying cold;The winds shall sing their dead-march old,The snow is no ignoble shroud,The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.Softly,—but this way fate was pointing,'T was coming fast to such anointing,When piped a tiny voice hard by,Gay and polite, a cheerful cry,Chic-chic-a-dee-de!saucy noteOut of sound heart and merry throat,As if it said, 'Good day, good sir!Fine afternoon, old passenger!Happy to meet you in these places,Where January brings few faces.'This poet, though he live apart,Moved by his hospitable heart,Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort,To do the honors of his court,As fits a feathered lord of land;Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand,Hopped on the bough, then, darting low,Prints his small impress on the snow,Shows feats of his gymnastic play,Head downward, clinging to the spray.Here was this atom in full breath,Hurling defiance at vast death;This scrap of valor just for playFronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray,As if to shame my weak behavior;I greeted loud my little savior,'You pet! what dost here? and what for?In these woods, thy small Labrador,At this pinch, wee San Salvador!What fire burns in that little chestSo frolic, stout and self-possest?Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine;Ashes and jet all hues outshine.Why are not diamonds black and gray,To ape thy dare-devil array?And I affirm, the spacious NorthExists to draw thy virtue forth.I think no virtue goes with size;The reason of all cowardiceIs, that men are overgrown,And, to be valiant, must come downTo the titmouse dimension.''T is good will makes intelligence,And I began to catch the senseOf my bird's song: 'Live out of doorsIn the great woods, on prairie floors.I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea,I too have a hole in a hollow tree;And I like less when Summer beatsWith stifling beams on these retreats,Than noontide twilights which snow makesWith tempest of the blinding flakes.For well the soul, if stout within,Can arm impregnably the skin;And polar frost my frame defied,Made of the air that blows outside.'With glad remembrance of my debt,I homeward turn; farewell, my pet!When here again thy pilgrim comes,He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs.Doubt not, so long as earth has bread,Thou first and foremost shalt be fed;The Providence that is most largeTakes hearts like thine in special charge,Helps who for their own need are strong,And the sky doats on cheerful song.Henceforth I prize thy wiry chantO'er all that mass and minster vaunt;For men mis-hear thy call in Spring,As 't would accost some frivolous wing,Crying out of the hazel copse,Phe-be!And, in winter,Chic-a-dee-dee!I think old Caesar must have heardIn northern Gaul my dauntless bird,And, echoed in some frosty wold,Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold.And I will write our annals new,And thank thee for a better clew,I, who dreamed not when I came hereTo find the antidote of fear,Now hear thee say in Roman key,Paean! Veni, vidi, vici.
One musician is sure,His wisdom will not fail,He has not tasted wine impure,Nor bent to passion frail.Age cannot cloud his memory,Nor grief untune his voice,Ranging down the ruled scaleFrom tone of joy to inward wail,Tempering the pitch of allIn his windy cave.He all the fables knows,And in their causes tells,—Knows Nature's rarest moods,Ever on her secret broods.The Muse of men is coy,Oft courted will not come;In palaces and market squaresEntreated, she is dumb;But my minstrel knows and tellsThe counsel of the gods,Knows of Holy Book the spells,Knows the law of Night and Day,And the heart of girl and boy,The tragic and the gay,And what is writ on Table RoundOf Arthur and his peers;What sea and land discoursing sayIn sidereal years.He renders all his loreIn numbers wild as dreams,Modulating all extremes,—What the spangled meadow saithTo the children who have faith;Only to children children sing,Only to youth will spring be spring.Who is the Bard thus magnified?When did he sing? and where abide?Chief of song where poets feastIs the wind-harp which thou seestIn the casement at my side.Aeolian harp,How strangely wise thy strain!Gay for youth, gay for youth,(Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,)In the hall at summer eveFate and Beauty skilled to weave.From the eager opening stringsRung loud and bold the song.Who but loved the wind-harp's note?How should not the poet doatOn its mystic tongue,With its primeval memory,Reporting what old minstrels toldOf Merlin locked the harp within,—Merlin paying the pain of sin,Pent in a dungeon made of air,—And some attain his voice to hear,Words of pain and cries of fear,But pillowed all on melody,As fits the griefs of bards to be.And what if that all-echoing shell,Which thus the buried Past can tell,Should rive the Future, and revealWhat his dread folds would fain conceal?It shares the secret of the earth,And of the kinds that owe her birth.Speaks not of self that mystic tone,But of the Overgods alone:It trembles to the cosmic breath,—As it heareth, so it saith;Obeying meek the primal Cause,It is the tongue of mundane laws.And this, at least, I dare affirm,Since genius too has bound and term,There is no bard in all the choir,Not Homer's self, the poet sire,Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure,Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,Scott, the delight of generous boys,Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,—Not one of all can put in verse,Or to this presence could rehearseThe sights and voices ravishingThe boy knew on the hills in spring,When pacing through the oaks he heardSharp queries of the sentry-bird,The heavy grouse's sudden whir,The rattle of the kingfisher;Saw bonfires of the harlot fliesIn the lowland, when day dies;Or marked, benighted and forlorn,The first far signal-fire of morn.These syllables that Nature spoke,And the thoughts that in him woke,Can adequately utter noneSave to his ear the wind-harp lone.Therein I hear the Parcae reelThe threads of man at their humming wheel,The threads of life and power and pain,So sweet and mournful falls the strain.And best can teach its Delphian chordHow Nature to the soul is moored,If once again that silent string,As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.Not long ago at eventide,It seemed, so listening, at my sideA window rose, and, to say sooth,I looked forth on the fields of youth:I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,I knew their forms in fancy weeds,Long, long concealed by sundering fates,Mates of my youth,—yet not my mates,Stronger and bolder far than I,With grace, with genius, well attired,And then as now from far admired,Followed with loveThey knew not of,With passion cold and shy.O joy, for what recoveries rare!Renewed, I breathe Elysian air,See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,—Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb!Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoilOf life resurgent from the soilWherein was dropped the mortal spoil.