I would the gift I offer hereMight graces from thy favor take,And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere,On softened lines and coloring, wearThe unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy sake.Few leaves of Fancy's spring remainBut what I have I give to thee,—The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's plain,And paler flowers, the latter rainCalls from the weltering slope of life's autumnalAbove the fallen groves of green,Where youth's enchanted forest stood,Dry root and mossed trunk between,A sober after-growth is seen,As springs the pine where falls the gay-leafed maple wood!Yet birds will sing, and breezes playTheir leaf-harps in the sombre tree,And through the bleak and wintry dayIt keeps its steady green alway,—So, even my after-thoughts may have a charm for thee.Art's perfect forms no moral need,And beauty is its own excuse;But for the dull and flowerless weedSome healing virtue still must plead,And the rough ore must find its honors in its use.So haply these, my simple laysOf homely toil, may serve to showThe orchard bloom and tasseled maizeThat skirt and gladden duty's ways,The unsung beauty hid life's common things below.Haply from them the toiler, bentAbove his forge or plough, may gainA manlier spirit of content,And feel that life is wisest spentWhere the strong working hand makes strong the working brain.The doom which to the guilty pairWithout the walls of Eden came,Transforming sinless ease to careAnd rugged toil, no more shall bearThe burden of old crime, or mark of primal shame.A blessing now,—a curse no more;Since He whose name we breathe with awe.The coarse mechanic vesture wore,A poor man toiling with the poor,In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law.
Wildly round our woodland quarters,Sad-voiced Autumn grieves;Thickly down these swelling watersFloat his fallen leaves.Through the tall and naked timber,Column-like and old,Gleam the sunsets of November,From their skies of gold.O'er us, to the southland heading,Screams the gray wild-goose;On the night-frost sounds the treadingOf the brindled moose.Noiseless creeping, while we're sleeping,Frost his task-work plies;Soon, his icy bridges heaping,Shall our log-piles rise.When, with sounds of smothered thunder,On some night of rain,Lake and river break asunderWinter's weakened chain,Down the wild March flood shall bear themTo the saw-mill's wheel,Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear themWith his teeth of steel.Be it starlight, be it moonlight,In these vales below,When the earliest beams of sunlightStreak the mountain's snow,Crisps the hoar-frost, keen and early,To our hurrying feet,And the forest echoes clearlyAll our blows repeat.Where the crystal AmbijejisStretches broad and clear,And Millnoket's pine-black ridgesHide the browsing deer:Where, through lakes and wide morasses,Or through rocky walls,Swift and strong, Penobscot passesWhite with foamy falls;Where, through clouds, are glimpses givenOf Katahdin's sides,—Rock and forest piled to heaven,Torn and ploughed by slides!Far below, the Indian trapping,In the sunshine warm;Far above, the snow-cloud wrappingHalf the peak in storm!Where are mossy carpets betterThan the Persian weaves,And than Eastern perfumes sweeterSeem the fading leaves;And a music wild and solemnFrom the pine-tree's height,Rolls its vast and sea-like volumesOn the wind of night;Not for us the measured ringingFrom the village spire,Not for us the Sabbath singingOf the sweet-voiced choirOurs the old, majestic temple,Where God's brightness shinesDown the dome so grand and ample,Propped by lofty pines!Keep who will the city's alleys,Take the smooth-shorn plain,—Give to us the cedar valleys,Rocks and hills of Maine!In our North-land, wild and woody,Let us still have part:Rugged nurse and mother sturdy,Hold us to thy heart!O, our free hearts beat the warmerFor thy breath of snow;And our tread is all the firmerFor thy rocks below.Freedom, hand in hand with labor,Walketh strong and brave;On the forehead of his neighborNo man writeth Slave!Lo, the day breaks! old Katahdin'sPine-trees show its fires,While from these dim forest gardensRise their blackened spires.Up, my comrades! up and doing!Manhood's rugged playStill renewing, bravely hewingThrough the world our way!
Up the streets of Aberdeen,By the kick and college green,Rode the Laird of Ury;Close behind him, close beside,Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,Pressed the mob in fury.Flouted him the drunken churl,Jeered at him the serving-girl,Prompt to please her master;And the begging carlin, lateFed and clothed at Ury's gate,Cursed him as he passed her.Yet, with calm and stately mien,Up the streets of AberdeenCame he slowly riding;And, to all he saw and heard,Answering not with bitter word,Turning not for chiding.Came a troop with broadswords swinging,Bits and bridles sharply ringing,Loose and free and froward;Quoth the foremost, "Ride him down!Push him! prick him! through the townDrive the Quaker coward!"But from out the thickening crowdCried a sudden voice and loud"Barclay! Ho! a Barclay!"And the old man at his sideSaw a comrade, battle tried,Scarred and sunburned darkly;Who with ready weapon bare,Fronting to the troopers there,Cried aloud: "God save us,Call ye coward him who stoodAnkle deep in Lutzen's blood,With the brave Gustavus?""Nay, I do not need thy sword,Comrade mine," said Ury's lord;"Put it up, I pray thee:Passive to His holy will,Trust I in my Master still,Even though He slay me."Pledges of thy love and faith,Proved on many a field of death,Not, by me are needed."Marvelled much that henchman bold,That his laud, so stout of old,Now so meekly pleaded."Woe's the day!" he sadly said,With a slowly shaking head,And a look of pity;"Ury's honest lord reviled,Mock of knave and sport of child,In his own good city!"Speak the word, and, master mine,As we charged on Tilly's line,And his Walloon lancers,Smiting through their midst we'll teachCivil look and decent speechTo these boyish prancers!""Marvel not, mine ancient friend,Like beginning, like the end:"Quoth the Laird of Ury,"Is the sinful servant moreThan his gracious Lord who boreBonds and stripes in Jewry?"Give me joy that in His nameI can bear, with patient frame,All these vain ones offer;While for them He suffereth long,Shall I answer wrong with wrong,Scoffing with the scoffer?"Happier I, with loss of all,Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,With few friends to greet me,Than when reeve and squire were seen,Riding out from Aberdeen,With bared heads to meet me."When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,Blessed me as I passed her door;And the snooded daughter,Through her casement glancing down,Smiled on him who bore renownFrom red fields of slaughter."Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,Hard the old friend's falling off,Hard to learn forgiving;But the Lord His own rewards,And His love with theirs accords,Warm and fresh and living."Through this dark and stormy nightFaith beholds a feeble lightUp the blackness streaking;Knowing God's own time is best,In a patient hope I restFor the full day-breaking!"So the Laird of Ury said,Turning slow his horse's headToward the Tolbooth prison,Where, through iron grates, he heardPoor disciples of the WordPreach of Christ arisen!Plot in vain, Confessor old,Unto us the tale is toldOf thy day of trial;Every age on him who straysFrom its broad and beaten waysPours its sevenfold vial.Happy he whose inward earAngel comfortings can hear,O'er the rabble's laughter;And, while Hatred's fagots burn,Glimpses through the smoke discernOf the good hereafter.Knowing this, that never yetShare of Truth was vainly setIn the world's wide fallow;After hands shall sow the seed,After hands from hill and meadReap the harvest yellow.Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,Must the moral pioneerFrom the Future borrow;Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,And, on midnight's sky of rain,Paint the golden morrow!
The clouds, which rise with thunder, slakeOur thirsty souls with rain;The blow most dreaded falls to breakFrom off our limbs a chain;And wrongs of man to man but makeThe love of God more plain.As through the shadowy lens of evenThe eye looks farthest into heavenOn gleams of star and depths of blueThe glaring sunshine never knew!
I shall not soon forget that sight:The glow of autumn's westering day,A hazy warmth, a dreamy light,On Raphael's picture lay.It was a simple print I saw,The fair face of a musing boy;Yet, while I gazed, a sense of aweSeemed blending with my joy.A simple print:—the graceful flowOf boyhood's soft and wavy hair,And fresh young lip and cheek, and browUnmarked and clear, were there.Yet through its sweet and calm reposeI saw the inward spirit shine;It was as if before me roseThe white veil of a shrine.As if, as Gothland's sage has told,The hidden life, the man within,Dissevered from its frame and mould,By mortal eye were seen.Was it the lifting of that eye,The waving of that pictured hand?Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky,I saw the walls expand.The narrow room had vanished,—space,Broad, luminous, remained alone,Through which all hues and shapes of graceAnd beauty looked or shone.Around the mighty master cameThe marvels which his pencil wrought,Those miracles of power whose fameIs wide as human thought.There drooped thy more than mortal face,O Mother, beautiful and mild!Enfolding in one dear embraceThy Saviour and thy Child!The rapt brow of the Desert John;The awful glory of that dayWhen all the Father's brightness shoneThrough manhood's veil of clay.And, midst gray prophet forms, and wildDark visions of the days of old,How sweetly woman's beauty smiledThrough locks of brown and gold!There Fornarina's fair young faceOnce more upon her lover shone,Whose model of an angel's graceHe borrowed from her own.Slow passed that vision from my view,But not the lesson which it taught;The soft, calm shadows which it threwStill rested on my thoughtThe truth, that painter, bard, and sage,Even in Earth's cold and changeful clime,Plant for their deathless heritageThe fruits and flowers of time.We shape ourselves the joy or fearOf which the coming life is made,And fill our Future's atmosphereWith sunshine or with shade.The tissue of the Life to beWe weave with colors all our own,And in the field of DestinyWe reap as we have sown.Still shall the soul around it callThe shadows which it gathered here,And, painted on the eternal wall,The Past shall reappear.Think ye the notes of holy songOn Milton's tuneful ear have died?Think ye that Raphael's angel throngHas vanished from his side?O no!—We live our life againOr warmly touched, or coldly dim,The pictures of the Past remain,—Man's works shall follow him!
As o'er his furrowed fields which lieBeneath a coldly-dropping sky,Yet chill with winter's melted snow,The husbandman goes forth to sow,Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blastThe ventures of thy seed we cast,And trust to warmer sun and rainTo swell the germ, and fill the grain.Who calls thy glorious service hard?Who deems it not its own reward?Who, for its trials, counts it lessA cause of praise and thankfulness?It may not be our lot to wieldThe sickle in the ripened field;Nor ours to hear, on summer eves,The reaper's song among the sheaves.Yet where our duty's task is wroughtIn unison with God's great thought,The near and future blend in one,And whatsoe'er is willed, is done!And ours the grateful service whenceComes, day by day, the recompense;The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed,The fountain and the noonday shade.And were this life the utmost span,The only end and aim of man,Better the toil of fields like theseThan waking dream and slothful ease.But life, though falling like our grain,Like that revives and springs again;And, early called, how blest are theyWho wait in heaven their harvest-day!
Up and gown the village streetsStrange are the forms my fancy meets,For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid,And through the veil of a closed lidThe ancient worthies I see again:I hear the tap of the elder's cane,And his awful periwig I see,And the silver buckles of shoe and knee.Stately and slow, with thoughtful air,His black cap hiding his whitened hair,Walks the Judge of the great Assize,Samuel Sewall the good and wise.His face with lines of firmness wrought,He wears the look of a man unbought,Who swears to his hurt and changes not;Yet, touched and softened neverthelessWith the grace of Christian gentleness,The face that a child would climb to kiss!True and tender and brave and just,That man might honor and woman trust.Touching and sad, a tale is told,Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old,Of the fast which the good man lifelong keptWith a haunting sorrow that never slept,As the circling year brought round the timeOf an error that left the sting of crime,When he sat on the bunch of the witchcraft courts,With the laws of Moses and Hales Reports,And spake, in the name of both, the wordThat gave the witch's neck to the cord,And piled the oaken planks that pressedThe feeble life from the warlock's breast!All the day long, from dawn to dawn,His door was bolted, his curtain drawn;No foot on his silent threshold trod,No eye looked on him save that of God,As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charmsOf penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms,And, with precious proofs from the sacred wordOf the boundless pity and love of the Lord,His faith confirmed and his trust renewedThat the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued,Might be washed away in the mingled floodOf his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood!Green forever the memory beOf the Judge of the old Theocracy,Whom even his errors glorified,Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-sideBy the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide!Honor and praise to the PuritanWho the halting step of his age outran,And, seeing the infinite worth of manIn the priceless gift the Father gave,In the infinite love that stooped to save,Dared not brand his brother a slave!"Who doth such wrong," he was wont to say,In his own quaint, picture-loving way,"Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenadeWhich God shall cast down upon his head!"Widely as heaven and hell, contrastThat brave old jurist of the pastAnd the cunning trickster and knave of courtsWho the holy features of Truth distorts,—Ruling as right the will of the strong,Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong;Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weakDeaf as Egypt's gods of leek;Scoffing aside at party's nod,Order of nature and law of God;For whose dabbled ermine respect were waste,Reverence folly, and awe misplaced;Justice of whom 't were vain to seekAs from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik!O, leave the wretch to his bribes and sins;Let him rot in the web of lies he spins!To the saintly soul of the early day,To the Christian judge, let us turn and say"Praise and thanks for an honest man!—Glory to God for the Puritan!"I see, far southward, this quiet day,The hills of Newbury rolling away,With the many tints of the season gay,Dreamily blending in autumn mistCrimson, and gold, and amethyst.Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,A stone's toss over the narrow sound.Inland, as far as the eye can go,The hills curve round like a bonded bow;A silver arrow from out them sprung,I see the shine of the Quasycung;And, round and round, over valley and hill,Old roads winding, as old roads will,Here to a ferry, and there to a mill;And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves,Through green elm arches and maple leaves,—Old homesteads sacred to all that canGladden or sadden the heart of man,—Over whose thresholds of oak and stoneLife and Death have come and gone!There pictured tiles in the fireplace show,Great beams sag from the ceiling low,The dresser glitters with polished wares,The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs,And the low, broad chimney shows the crackBy the earthquake made a century back.Lip from their midst springs the collage spireWith the crest of its cock in the sun afire;Beyond are orchards and planting lands,And great salt marshes and glimmering sands,And, where north and south the coast-lines run,The blink of the sea in breeze and sun!I see it all like a chart unrolled,But my thoughts are full of the past and old,I hear the tales of my boyhood told;And the shadows and shapes of early daysFlit dimly by in the veiling haze,With measured movement and rhythmic chimeWeaving like shuttles my web of rhyme.I think of the old man wise and goodWho once on yon misty hillsides stood,(A poet who never measured rhyme,A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,)And, propped on his staff of age, looked down,With his boyhood's love, on his native town,Where, written, as if on its hills and plains,His burden of prophecy yet remains,For the voices of wood, and wave, and windTo read in the ear of the musing mind:—"As long as Plum Island, to guard the coastAs God appointed, shall keep its post;As long as a salmon shall haunt the deepOf Merrimack River, or sturgeon leap;As long as pickerel swift and slim,Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim;As long as the annual sea-fowl knowTheir time to come and their time to go;As long as cattle shall roam at willThe green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill;As long as sheep shall look from the sideOf Oldtown Hill on marishes wide,And Parker River, and salt-sea tide;As long as a wandering pigeon shall searchThe fields below from his white-oak perch,When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn,And the dry husks fall from the standing corn;As long as Nature shall not grow old,Nor drop her work from her doting hold,And her care for the Indian corn forget,And the yellow rows in pairs to set;—So long shall Christians here be born,Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!—By the beak of bird, by the breath of frostShall never a holy ear be lost,But husked by Death in the Planter's sight,Be sown again m the fields of light!"The Island still is purple with plums,Up the river the salmon comes,The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feedsOn hillside berries and marish seeds,—All the beautiful signs remain,From spring-time sowing to autumn rainThe good man's vision returns again!And let us hope, as well we can,That the Silent Angel who garners manMay find some grain as of old he foundIn the human cornfield ripe and sound,And the Lord of the Harvest deign to ownThe precious seed by the fathers sown!
Of all the rides since the birth of time,Told in story or sung in rhyme,—On Apuleius's Golden Ass,Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass,Witch astride of a human back,Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,—The strangest ride that ever was spedWas Ireson's, out from Marblehead!Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,Tarred and feathered and carried in a cartBy the women of Marblehead!Body of turkey, head of owl,Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,Feathered and ruffled in every part,Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.Scores of women, old and young,Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue,Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,Shouting and singing the shrill refrain"Here's Flud Oirson, for his horrd horrt,Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrtBy the women o' Morble'ead!"Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chaseBacchus round some antique vase,Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang.Over and over the Maenads sang:"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrtBy the women o' Morble'ead!"Small pity for him!—He sailed awayFrom a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,—Sailed away from a sinking wreck,With his own town's-people on her deck!"Lay by! lay by!" they called to him.Back he answered, "Sink or swim!Brag of your catch of fish again!"And off he sailed through the fog and rain!Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,Tarred and feathered and carried in a cartBy the women of Marblehead!Fathoms deep in dark ChaleurThat wreck shall lie forevermore.Mother and sister, wife and maid,Looked from the rocks of MarbleheadOver the moaning and rainy sea,—Looked for the coming that might not be!What did the winds and the sea-birds sayOf the cruel captain who sailed away?—Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,Tarred and feathered and carried in a cartBy the women of Marblehead!Through the street, on either side,Up flew windows, doors swung wide;Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,Hulks of old sailors run aground,Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,And cracked with curses the old refrain:"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrtBy the women o' Morble'ead!Sweetly along the Salem roadBloom of orchard and lilac showed.Little the wicked skipper knewOf the fields so green and the sky so blue.Riding there in his sorry trim,Like an Indian idol glum and grim,Scarcely he seemed the sound to hearOf voices shouting, far and near:"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrtBy the women o' Morble'ead!""Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried,"—What to me is this noisy ride?What is the shame that clothes the skinTo the nameless horror that lives within?Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,And hear a cry from a reeling deck!Hate me and curse me,—I only dreadThe hand of God and the face of the dead!"Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,Tarred and feathered and carried in a cartBy the women of Marblehead!Then the wife of the skipper lost at seaSaid, God has touched him! why should we?"Said an old wife mourning her only son,"Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!"So with soft relentings and rude excuse,Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,And gave him a cloak to hide him in,And left him alone with his shame and sin.Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,Tarred and feathered and carried in a cartBy the women of Marblehead!
Far away in the twilight timeOf every people, in every clime,Dragons and griffins and monsters dire,Born of water, and air, and fire,Or nursed, like the Python, in the mudAnd ooze of the old Deucalion flood,Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage,Through dusk tradition and ballad age.So from the childhood of Newbury townAnd its time of fable the tale comes downOf a terror which haunted bush and brake,The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,Consider that strip of Christian earthOn the desolate shore of a sailless sea,Full of terror and mystery,Half-redeemed from the evil holdOf the wood so dreary, and dark, and old,Which drank with its lips of leaves the dewWhen Time was young, and the world was new,And wove its shadows with sun and moon,Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn.Think of the sea's dread monotone,Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown,Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North,Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth,And the dismal tales the Indian told,Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold,And he shrank from the tawny wizard's boasts,And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts,And above, below, and on every side,The fear of his creed seemed verified;—And think, if his lot were now thine own,To grope with terrors nor named nor known,How laxer muscle and weaker nerveAnd a feebler faith thy need might serve;And own to thyself the wonder moreThat the snake had two heads, and not a score!Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fenOr the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den,Or swam in the wooded Artichoke,Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock,Nothing on record is left to show;Only the fact that he lived, we know,And left the cast of a double headin the scaly mask which he yearly shed.For he earned a head where his tail should be,And the two, of course, could never agree,But wriggled about with main and might,Now to the left and now to the right;Pulling and twisting this way and that,Neither knew what the other was at.A snake with two heads, lurking so near!—Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear!Think what ancient gossips might say,Shaking their heads in their dreary way,Between the meetings on Sabbath-day!How urchins, searching at day's declineThe Common Pasture for sheep or kine,The terrible double-ganger heardIn the leafy rustle or whir of bird!Think what a zest it gave to the sport,In berry-time, of the younger sort,As over pastures blackberry-twined,Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind,And closer and closer, for fear of harm,The maiden clung to her lover's arm;And how the spark, who was forced to stay,By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of day,Thanked the snake for the fond delay!Far and wide the tale was told,Like a snowball growing while it rolled.The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry;And it served, in the worthy minister's eye,To paint the primitive serpent by.Cotton Mather came galloping downAll the way to Newbury town,With his eyes agog and his ears set wide,And his marvellous inkhorn at his side;Stirring the while in the shallow poolOf his brains for the lore he learned at school,To garnish the story, with here a streakOf Latin, and there another of Greek:And the tales he heard and the notes he took,Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill.If the snake does not, the tale runs stillIn Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill.And still, whenever husband and wifePublish the shame of their daily strife,And, with mid cross-purpose, tug and strainAt either end of the marriage-chain,The gossips say, with a knowing shakeOf their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake!One in body and two in will,The Amphisbaena is living still!"