A BOOK OF SONNETSTHREE FRIENDS OF MINEIWhen I remember them, those friends of mine,Who are no longer here, the noble three,Who half my life were more than friends to me,And whose discourse was like a generous wine,I most of all remember the divineSomething, that shone in them, and made us seeThe archetypal man, and what might beThe amplitude of Nature's first design.In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their hands;I cannot find them. Nothing now is leftBut a majestic memory. They meanwhileWander together in Elysian lands,Perchance remembering me, who am bereftOf their dear presence, and, remembering, smile.IIIn Attica thy birthplace should have been,Or the Ionian Isles, or where the seasEncircle in their arms the Cyclades,So wholly Greek wast thou in thy sereneAnd childlike joy of life, O Philhellene!Around thee would have swarmed the Attic bees;Homer had been thy friend, or Socrates,And Plato welcomed thee to his demesne.For thee old legends breathed historic breath;Thou sawest Poseidon in the purple sea,And in the sunset Jason's fleece of gold!O, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death,Who wast so full of life, or Death with thee,That thou shouldst die before thou hadst grown old!IIII stand again on the familiar shore,And hear the waves of the distracted seaPiteously calling and lamenting thee,And waiting restless at thy cottage door.The rocks, the sea-weed on the ocean floor,The willows in the meadow, and the freeWild winds of the Atlantic welcome me;Then why shouldst thou be dead, and come no more?Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, when common menAre busy with their trivial affairs,Having and holding? Why, when thou hadst readNature's mysterious manuscript, and thenWast ready to reveal the truth it bears,Why art thou silent! Why shouldst thou be dead?IVRiver, that stealest with such silent paceAround the City of the Dead, where liesA friend who bore thy name, and whom these eyesShall see no more in his accustomed place,Linger and fold him in thy soft embraceAnd say good night, for now the western skiesAre red with sunset, and gray mists ariseLike damps that gather on a dead man's face.Good night! good night! as we so oft have saidBeneath this roof at midnight in the daysThat are no more, and shall no more return.Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed;I stay a little longer, as one staysTo cover up the embers that still burn.VThe doors are all wide open; at the gateThe blossomed lilacs counterfeit a blaze,And seem to warm the air; a dreamy hazeHangs o'er the Brighton meadows like a fate,And on their margin, with sea-tides elate,The flooded Charles, as in the happier days,Writes the last letter of his name, and staysHis restless steps, as if compelled to wait.I also wait; but they will come no more,Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfiedThe thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me!They have forgotten the pathway to my door!Something is gone from nature since they died,And summer is not summer, nor can be.CHAUCERAn old man in a lodge within a park;The chamber walls depicted all aroundWith portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound.And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,Whose song comes with the sunshine through the darkOf painted glass in leaden lattice bound;He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,Then writeth in a book like any clerk.He is the poet of the dawn, who wroteThe Canterbury Tales, and his old ageMade beautiful with song; and as I readI hear the crowing cock, I hear the noteOf lark and linnet, and from every pageRise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.SHAKESPEAREA vision as of crowded city streets,With human life in endless overflow;Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blowTo battle; clamor, in obscure retreats,Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets;Tolling of bells in turrets, and belowVoices of children, and bright flowers that throwO'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets!This vision comes to me when I unfoldThe volume of the Poet paramount,Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone;—Into his hands they put the lyre of gold,And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount,Placed him as Musagetes on their throne.MILTONI pace the sounding sea-beach and beholdHow the voluminous billows roll and run,Upheaving and subsiding, while the sunShines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled,And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by foldAll its loose-flowing garments into one,Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dunPale reach of sands, and changes them to gold.So in majestic cadence rise and fallThe mighty undulations of thy song,O sightless bard, England's Maeonides!And ever and anon, high over allUplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong,Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.KEATSThe young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!The solemn grove uplifts its shield of goldTo the red rising moon, and loud and deepThe nightingale is singing from the steep;It is midsummer, but the air is cold;Can it be death? Alas, beside the foldA shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,On which I read: "Here lieth one whose nameWas writ in water." And was this the meedOf his sweet singing? Rather let me write:"The smoking flax before it burst to flameWas quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."THE GALAXYTorrent of light and river of the air,Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seenLike gold and silver sands in some ravineWhere mountain streams have left their channels bare!The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, whereHis patron saint descended in the sheenOf his celestial armor, on sereneAnd quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair.Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fableOf Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skiesWhere'er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod;But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable,The star-dust that is whirled aloft and fliesFrom the invisible chariot-wheels of God.THE SOUND OF THE SEAThe sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,And round the pebbly beaches far and wideI heard the first wave of the rising tideRush onward with uninterrupted sweep;A voice out of the silence of the deep,A sound mysteriously multipliedAs of a cataract from the mountain's side,Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.So comes to us at times, from the unknownAnd inaccessible solitudes of being,The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;And inspirations, that we deem our own,Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeingOf things beyond our reason or control.A SUMMER DAY BY THE SEAThe sun is set; and in his latest beamsYon little cloud of ashen gray and gold,Slowly upon the amber air unrolled,The falling mantle of the Prophet seems.From the dim headlands many a lighthouse gleams,The street-lamps of the ocean; and behold,O'erhead the banners of the night unfold;The day hath passed into the land of dreams.O summer day beside the joyous sea!O summer day so wonderful and white,So full of gladness and so full of pain!Forever and forever shalt thou beTo some the gravestone of a dead delight,To some the landmark of a new domain.THE TIDESI saw the long line of the vacant shore,The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand,And the brown rocks left bare on every hand,As if the ebbing tide would flow no more.Then heard I, more distinctly than before,The ocean breathe and its great breast expand,And hurrying came on the defenceless landThe insurgent waters with tumultuous roar.All thought and feeling and desire, I said,Love, laughter, and the exultant joy of songHave ebbed from me forever! Suddenly o'er meThey swept again from their deep ocean bed,And in a tumult of delight, and strongAs youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me.A SHADOWI said unto myself, if I were dead,What would befall these children? What would beTheir fate, who now are looking up to meFor help and furtherance? Their lives, I said,Would be a volume wherein I have readBut the first chapters, and no longer seeTo read the rest of their dear history,So full of beauty and so full of dread.Be comforted; the world is very old,And generations pass, as they have passed,A troop of shadows moving with the sun;Thousands of times has the old tale been told;The world belongs to those who come the last,They will find hope and strength as we have done.A NAMELESS GRAVE"A soldier of the Union mustered out,"Is the inscription on an unknown graveAt Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,Nameless and dateless; sentinel or scoutShot down in skirmish, or disastrous routOf battle, when the loud artillery draveIts iron wedges through the ranks of braveAnd doomed battalions, storming the redoubt.Thou unknown hero sleeping by the seaIn thy forgotten grave! with secret shameI feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn,When I remember thou hast given for meAll that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name,And I can give thee nothing in return.SLEEPLull me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful soundSeems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught;Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thoughtAs Hermes with his lyre in sleep profoundThe hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound;For I am weary, and am overwroughtWith too much toil, with too much care distraught,And with the iron crown of anguish crowned.Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek,O peaceful Sleep! until from pain releasedI breathe again uninterrupted breath!Ah, with what subtile meaning did the GreekCall thee the lesser mystery at the feastWhereof the greater mystery is death!THE OLD BRIDGE AT FLORENCETaddeo Gaddi built me. I am old,Five centuries old. I plant my foot of stoneUpon the Arno, as St. Michael's ownWas planted on the dragon. Fold by foldBeneath me as it struggles. I beholdIts glistening scales. Twice hath it overthrownMy kindred and companions. Me aloneIt moveth not, but is by me controlled,I can remember when the MediciWere driven from Florence; longer still agoThe final wars of Ghibelline and Guelf.Florence adorns me with her jewelry;And when I think that Michael AngeloHath leaned on me, I glory in myself.IL PONTE VECCHIO DI FIRENZEGaddi mi fece; il Ponte Vecchio sono;Cinquecent' anni gia sull' Arno piantoIl piede, come il suo Michele SantoPianto sul draco. Mentre ch' io ragionoLo vedo torcere con flebil suonoLe rilucenti scaglie. Ha questi affrantoDue volte i miei maggior. Me solo intantoNeppure muove, ed io non l' abbandono.Io mi rammento quando fur cacciatiI Medici; pur quando GhibellinoE Guelfo fecer pace mi rammento.Fiorenza i suoi giojelli m' ha prestati;E quando penso ch' Agnolo il divinoSu me posava, insuperbir mi sento.NATUREAs a fond mother, when the day is o'er,Leads by the hand her little child to bed,Half willing, half reluctant to be led,And leave his broken playthings on the floor,Still gazing at them through the open door,Nor wholly reassured and comfortedBy promises of others in their stead,Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;So Nature deals with us, and takes awayOur playthings one by one, and by the handLeads us to rest so gently, that we goScarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,Being too full of sleep to understandHow far the unknown transcends the what we know.IN THE CHURCHYARD AT TARRYTOWNHere lies the gentle humorist, who diedIn the bright Indian Summer of his fame!A simple stone, with but a date and name,Marks his secluded resting-place besideThe river that he loved and glorified.Here in the autumn of his days he came,But the dry leaves of life were all aflameWith tints that brightened and were multiplied.How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death!Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;Dying, to leave a memory like the breathOf summers full of sunshine and of showers,A grief and gladness in the atmosphere.ELIOT'S OAKThou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loudWith sounds of unintelligible speech,Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach,Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd;With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed,Thou speakest a different dialect to each;To me a language that no man can teach,Of a lost race, long vanished like a cloud.For underneath thy shade, in days remote,Seated like Abraham at eventideBeneath the oaks of Mamre, the unknownApostle of the Indians, Eliot, wroteHis Bible in a language that hath diedAnd is forgotten, save by thee alone.THE DESCENT OF THE MUSESNine sisters, beautiful in form and face,Came from their convent on the shining heightsOf Pierus, the mountain of delights,To dwell among the people at its base.Then seemed the world to change. All time and space,Splendor of cloudless days and starry nights,And men and manners, and all sounds and sights,Had a new meaning, a diviner grace.Proud were these sisters, but were not too proudTo teach in schools of little country townsScience and song, and all the arts that please;So that while housewives span, and farmers ploughed,Their comely daughters, clad in homespun gowns,Learned the sweet songs of the Pierides.VENICEWhite swan of cities, slumbering in thy nestSo wonderfully built among the reedsOf the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds,As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest!White water-lily, cradled and caressedBy ocean streams, and from the silt and weedsLifting thy golden filaments and seeds,Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest!White phantom city, whose untrodden streetsAre rivers, and whose pavements are the shiftingShadows of palaces and strips of sky;I wait to see thee vanish like the fleetsSeen in mirage, or towers of cloud upliftingIn air their unsubstantial masonry.THE POETSO ye dead Poets, who are living stillImmortal in your verse, though life be fled,And ye, O living Poets, who are deadThough ye are living, if neglect can kill,Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,With drops of anguish falling fast and redFrom the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil?Yes; for the gift and ministry of SongHave something in them so divinely sweet,It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;Not in the clamor of the crowded street,Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.PARKER CLEAVELANDWRITTEN ON REVISITING BRUNSWICK IN THE SUMMER OF 1875Among the many lives that I have known,None I remember more serene and sweet,More rounded in itself and more complete,Than his, who lies beneath this funeral stone.These pines, that murmur in low monotone,These walks frequented by scholastic feet,Were all his world; but in this calm retreatFor him the Teacher's chair became a throne.With fond affection memory loves to dwellOn the old days, when his example madeA pastime of the toil of tongue and pen;And now, amid the groves he loved so wellThat naught could lure him from their grateful shade,He sleeps, but wakes elsewhere, for God hath said, Amen!THE HARVEST MOONIt is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanesAnd roofs of villages, on woodland crestsAnd their aerial neighborhoods of nestsDeserted, on the curtained window-panesOf rooms where children sleep, on country lanesAnd harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!All things are symbols: the external showsOf Nature have their image in the mind,As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,Only the empty nests are left behind,And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.TO THE RIVER RHONEThou Royal River, born of sun and showerIn chambers purple with the Alpine glow,Wrapped in the spotless ermine of the snowAnd rocked by tempests!—at the appointed hourForth, like a steel-clad horseman from a tower,With clang and clink of harness dost thou goTo meet thy vassal torrents, that belowRush to receive thee and obey thy power.And now thou movest in triumphal march,A king among the rivers! On thy wayA hundred towns await and welcome thee;Bridges uplift for thee the stately arch,Vineyards encircle thee with garlands gay,And fleets attend thy progress to the sea!THE THREE SILENCES OF MOLINOSTO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIERThree Silences there are: the first of speech,The second of desire, the third of thought;This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraughtWith dreams and visions, was the first to teach.These Silences, commingling each with each,Made up the perfect Silence, that he soughtAnd prayed for, and wherein at times he caughtMysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach.O thou, whose daily life anticipatesThe life to come, and in whose thought and wordThe spiritual world preponderates.Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heardVoices and melodies from beyond the gates,And speakest only when thy soul is stirred!THE TWO RIVERSISlowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round;So slowly that no human eye hath powerTo see it move! Slowly in shine or showerThe painted ship above it, homeward bound,Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground;Yet both arrive at last; and in his towerThe slumberous watchman wakes and strikes the hour,A mellow, measured, melancholy sound.Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!The frontier town and citadel of night!The watershed of Time, from which the streamsOf Yesterday and To-morrow take their way,One to the land of promise and of light,One to the land of darkness and of dreams!IIO River of Yesterday, with current swiftThrough chasms descending, and soon lost to sight,I do not care to follow in their flightThe faded leaves, that on thy bosom drift!O River of To-morrow, I upliftMine eyes, and thee I follow, as the nightWanes into morning, and the dawning lightBroadens, and all the shadows fade and shift!I follow, follow, where thy waters runThrough unfrequented, unfamiliar fields,Fragrant with flowers and musical with song;Still follow, follow; sure to meet the sun,And confident, that what the future yieldsWill be the right, unless myself be wrong.IIIYet not in vain, O River of Yesterday,Through chasms of darkness to the deep descending,I heard thee sobbing in the rain, and blendingThy voice with other voices far away.I called to thee, and yet thou wouldst not stay,But turbulent, and with thyself contending,And torrent-like thy force on pebbles spending,Thou wouldst not listen to a poet's lay.Thoughts, like a loud and sudden rush of wings,Regrets and recollections of things past,With hints and prophecies of things to be,And inspirations, which, could they be things,And stay with us, and we could hold them fast,Were our good angels,—these I owe to thee.IVAnd thou, O River of To-morrow, flowingBetween thy narrow adamantine walls,But beautiful, and white with waterfalls,And wreaths of mist, like hands the pathway showing;I hear the trumpets of the morning blowing,I hear thy mighty voice, that calls and calls,And see, as Ossian saw in Morven's halls,Mysterious phantoms, coming, beckoning, going!It is the mystery of the unknownThat fascinates us; we are children still,Wayward and wistful; with one hand we clingTo the familiar things we call our own,And with the other, resolute of will,Grope in the dark for what the day will bring.BOSTONSt. Bototlph's Town! Hither across the plainsAnd fens of Lincolnshire, in garb austere,There came a Saxon monk, and founded hereA Priory, pillaged by marauding Danes,So that thereof no vestige now remains;Only a name, that, spoken loud and clear,And echoed in another hemisphere,Survives the sculptured walls and painted panes.St. Botolph's Town! Far over leagues of landAnd leagues of sea looks forth its noble tower,And far around the chiming bells are heard;So may that sacred name forever standA landmark, and a symbol of the power,That lies concentred in a single word.ST. JOHN'S, CAMBRIDGEI stand beneath the tree, whose branches shadeThy western window, Chapel of St. John!And hear its leaves repeat their benisonOn him, whose hand if thy stones memorial laid;Then I remember one of whom was saidIn the world's darkest hour, "Behold thy son!"And see him living still, and wandering onAnd waiting for the advent long delayed.Not only tongues of the apostles teachLessons of love and light, but these expandingAnd sheltering boughs with all their leaves implore,And say in language clear as human speech,"The peace of God, that passeth understanding,Be and abide with you forevermore!"MOODSOh that a Song would sing itself to meOut of the heart of Nature, or the heartOf man, the child of Nature, not of Art,Fresh as the morning, salt as the salt sea,With just enough of bitterness to beA medicine to this sluggish mood, and startThe life-blood in my veins, and so impartHealing and help in this dull lethargy!Alas! not always doth the breath of songBreathe on us. It is like the wind that blowethAt its own will, not ours, nor tarries long;We hear the sound thereof, but no man knowethFrom whence it comes, so sudden and swift and strong,Nor whither in its wayward course it goeth.WOODSTOCK PARKHere in a little rustic hermitageAlfred the Saxon King, Alfred the Great,Postponed the cares of king-craft to translateThe Consolations of the Roman sage.Here Geoffrey Chaucer in his ripe old ageWrote the unrivalled Tales, which soon or lateThe venturous hand that strives to imitateVanquished must fall on the unfinished page.Two kings were they, who ruled by right divine,And both supreme; one in the realm of Truth,One in the realm of Fiction and of Song.What prince hereditary of their line,Uprising in the strength and flush of youth,Their glory shall inherit and prolong?THE FOUR PRINCESSES AT WILNAA PHOTOGRAPHSweet faces, that from pictured casements leanAs from a castle window, looking downOn some gay pageant passing through a town,Yourselves the fairest figures in the scene;With what a gentle grace, with what sereneUnconsciousness ye wear the triple crownOf youth and beauty and the fair renownOf a great name, that ne'er hath tarnished been!From your soft eyes, so innocent and sweet,Four spirits, sweet and innocent as they,Gaze on the world below, the sky above;Hark! there is some one singing in the street;"Faith, Hope, and Love! these three," he seems to say;"These three; and greatest of the three is Love."HOLIDAYSThe holiest of all holidays are thoseKept by ourselves in silence and apart;The secret anniversaries of the heart,When the full river of feeling overflows;—The happy days unclouded to their close;The sudden joys that out of darkness startAs flames from ashes; swift desires that dartLike swallows singing down each wind that blows!White as the gleam of a receding sail,White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,White as the whitest lily on a stream,These tender memories are;—a Fairy TaleOf some enchanted land we know not where,But lovely as a landscape in a dream.WAPENTAKETO ALFRED TENNYSONPoet! I come to touch thy lance with mine;Not as a knight, who on the listed fieldOf tourney touched his adversary's shieldIn token of defiance, but in signOf homage to the mastery, which is thine,In English song; nor will I keep concealed,And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed,My admiration for thy verse divine.Not of the howling dervishes of song,Who craze the brain with their delirious dance,Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart!Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong,To thee our love and our allegiance,For thy allegiance to the poet's art.THE BROKEN OAROnce upon Iceland's solitary strandA poet wandered with his book and pen,Seeking some final word, some sweet Amen,Wherewith to close the volume in his hand.The billows rolled and plunged upon the sand,The circling sea-gulls swept beyond his ken,And from the parting cloud-rack now and thenFlashed the red sunset over sea and land.Then by the billows at his feet was tossedA broken oar; and carved thereon he read,"Oft was I weary, when I toiled at thee";And like a man, who findeth what was lost,He wrote the words, then lifted up his head,And flung his useless pen into the sea.THE CROSS OF SNOWIn the long, sleepless watches of the night,A gentle face—the face of one long dead—Looks at me from the wall, where round its headThe night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.Here in this room she died; and soul more whiteNever through martyrdom of fire was ledTo its repose; nor can in books be readThe legend of a life more benedight.There is a mountain in the distant WestThat, sun-defying, in its deep ravinesDisplays a cross of snow upon its side.Such is the cross I wear upon my breastThese eighteen years, through all the changing scenesAnd seasons, changeless since the day she died.
When I remember them, those friends of mine,Who are no longer here, the noble three,Who half my life were more than friends to me,And whose discourse was like a generous wine,I most of all remember the divineSomething, that shone in them, and made us seeThe archetypal man, and what might beThe amplitude of Nature's first design.In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their hands;I cannot find them. Nothing now is leftBut a majestic memory. They meanwhileWander together in Elysian lands,Perchance remembering me, who am bereftOf their dear presence, and, remembering, smile.
In Attica thy birthplace should have been,Or the Ionian Isles, or where the seasEncircle in their arms the Cyclades,So wholly Greek wast thou in thy sereneAnd childlike joy of life, O Philhellene!Around thee would have swarmed the Attic bees;Homer had been thy friend, or Socrates,And Plato welcomed thee to his demesne.For thee old legends breathed historic breath;Thou sawest Poseidon in the purple sea,And in the sunset Jason's fleece of gold!O, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death,Who wast so full of life, or Death with thee,That thou shouldst die before thou hadst grown old!
I stand again on the familiar shore,And hear the waves of the distracted seaPiteously calling and lamenting thee,And waiting restless at thy cottage door.The rocks, the sea-weed on the ocean floor,The willows in the meadow, and the freeWild winds of the Atlantic welcome me;Then why shouldst thou be dead, and come no more?Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, when common menAre busy with their trivial affairs,Having and holding? Why, when thou hadst readNature's mysterious manuscript, and thenWast ready to reveal the truth it bears,Why art thou silent! Why shouldst thou be dead?
River, that stealest with such silent paceAround the City of the Dead, where liesA friend who bore thy name, and whom these eyesShall see no more in his accustomed place,Linger and fold him in thy soft embraceAnd say good night, for now the western skiesAre red with sunset, and gray mists ariseLike damps that gather on a dead man's face.Good night! good night! as we so oft have saidBeneath this roof at midnight in the daysThat are no more, and shall no more return.Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed;I stay a little longer, as one staysTo cover up the embers that still burn.
The doors are all wide open; at the gateThe blossomed lilacs counterfeit a blaze,And seem to warm the air; a dreamy hazeHangs o'er the Brighton meadows like a fate,And on their margin, with sea-tides elate,The flooded Charles, as in the happier days,Writes the last letter of his name, and staysHis restless steps, as if compelled to wait.I also wait; but they will come no more,Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfiedThe thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me!They have forgotten the pathway to my door!Something is gone from nature since they died,And summer is not summer, nor can be.
An old man in a lodge within a park;The chamber walls depicted all aroundWith portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound.And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,Whose song comes with the sunshine through the darkOf painted glass in leaden lattice bound;He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,Then writeth in a book like any clerk.He is the poet of the dawn, who wroteThe Canterbury Tales, and his old ageMade beautiful with song; and as I readI hear the crowing cock, I hear the noteOf lark and linnet, and from every pageRise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.
A vision as of crowded city streets,With human life in endless overflow;Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blowTo battle; clamor, in obscure retreats,Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets;Tolling of bells in turrets, and belowVoices of children, and bright flowers that throwO'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets!This vision comes to me when I unfoldThe volume of the Poet paramount,Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone;—Into his hands they put the lyre of gold,And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount,Placed him as Musagetes on their throne.
I pace the sounding sea-beach and beholdHow the voluminous billows roll and run,Upheaving and subsiding, while the sunShines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled,And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by foldAll its loose-flowing garments into one,Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dunPale reach of sands, and changes them to gold.So in majestic cadence rise and fallThe mighty undulations of thy song,O sightless bard, England's Maeonides!And ever and anon, high over allUplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong,Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.
The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!The solemn grove uplifts its shield of goldTo the red rising moon, and loud and deepThe nightingale is singing from the steep;It is midsummer, but the air is cold;Can it be death? Alas, beside the foldA shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,On which I read: "Here lieth one whose nameWas writ in water." And was this the meedOf his sweet singing? Rather let me write:"The smoking flax before it burst to flameWas quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."
Torrent of light and river of the air,Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seenLike gold and silver sands in some ravineWhere mountain streams have left their channels bare!The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, whereHis patron saint descended in the sheenOf his celestial armor, on sereneAnd quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair.Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fableOf Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skiesWhere'er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod;But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable,The star-dust that is whirled aloft and fliesFrom the invisible chariot-wheels of God.
The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,And round the pebbly beaches far and wideI heard the first wave of the rising tideRush onward with uninterrupted sweep;A voice out of the silence of the deep,A sound mysteriously multipliedAs of a cataract from the mountain's side,Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.So comes to us at times, from the unknownAnd inaccessible solitudes of being,The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;And inspirations, that we deem our own,Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeingOf things beyond our reason or control.
The sun is set; and in his latest beamsYon little cloud of ashen gray and gold,Slowly upon the amber air unrolled,The falling mantle of the Prophet seems.From the dim headlands many a lighthouse gleams,The street-lamps of the ocean; and behold,O'erhead the banners of the night unfold;The day hath passed into the land of dreams.O summer day beside the joyous sea!O summer day so wonderful and white,So full of gladness and so full of pain!Forever and forever shalt thou beTo some the gravestone of a dead delight,To some the landmark of a new domain.
I saw the long line of the vacant shore,The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand,And the brown rocks left bare on every hand,As if the ebbing tide would flow no more.Then heard I, more distinctly than before,The ocean breathe and its great breast expand,And hurrying came on the defenceless landThe insurgent waters with tumultuous roar.All thought and feeling and desire, I said,Love, laughter, and the exultant joy of songHave ebbed from me forever! Suddenly o'er meThey swept again from their deep ocean bed,And in a tumult of delight, and strongAs youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me.
I said unto myself, if I were dead,What would befall these children? What would beTheir fate, who now are looking up to meFor help and furtherance? Their lives, I said,Would be a volume wherein I have readBut the first chapters, and no longer seeTo read the rest of their dear history,So full of beauty and so full of dread.Be comforted; the world is very old,And generations pass, as they have passed,A troop of shadows moving with the sun;Thousands of times has the old tale been told;The world belongs to those who come the last,They will find hope and strength as we have done.
"A soldier of the Union mustered out,"Is the inscription on an unknown graveAt Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,Nameless and dateless; sentinel or scoutShot down in skirmish, or disastrous routOf battle, when the loud artillery draveIts iron wedges through the ranks of braveAnd doomed battalions, storming the redoubt.Thou unknown hero sleeping by the seaIn thy forgotten grave! with secret shameI feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn,When I remember thou hast given for meAll that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name,And I can give thee nothing in return.
Lull me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful soundSeems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught;Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thoughtAs Hermes with his lyre in sleep profoundThe hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound;For I am weary, and am overwroughtWith too much toil, with too much care distraught,And with the iron crown of anguish crowned.Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek,O peaceful Sleep! until from pain releasedI breathe again uninterrupted breath!Ah, with what subtile meaning did the GreekCall thee the lesser mystery at the feastWhereof the greater mystery is death!
Taddeo Gaddi built me. I am old,Five centuries old. I plant my foot of stoneUpon the Arno, as St. Michael's ownWas planted on the dragon. Fold by foldBeneath me as it struggles. I beholdIts glistening scales. Twice hath it overthrownMy kindred and companions. Me aloneIt moveth not, but is by me controlled,I can remember when the MediciWere driven from Florence; longer still agoThe final wars of Ghibelline and Guelf.Florence adorns me with her jewelry;And when I think that Michael AngeloHath leaned on me, I glory in myself.
Gaddi mi fece; il Ponte Vecchio sono;Cinquecent' anni gia sull' Arno piantoIl piede, come il suo Michele SantoPianto sul draco. Mentre ch' io ragionoLo vedo torcere con flebil suonoLe rilucenti scaglie. Ha questi affrantoDue volte i miei maggior. Me solo intantoNeppure muove, ed io non l' abbandono.Io mi rammento quando fur cacciatiI Medici; pur quando GhibellinoE Guelfo fecer pace mi rammento.Fiorenza i suoi giojelli m' ha prestati;E quando penso ch' Agnolo il divinoSu me posava, insuperbir mi sento.
As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,Leads by the hand her little child to bed,Half willing, half reluctant to be led,And leave his broken playthings on the floor,Still gazing at them through the open door,Nor wholly reassured and comfortedBy promises of others in their stead,Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;So Nature deals with us, and takes awayOur playthings one by one, and by the handLeads us to rest so gently, that we goScarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,Being too full of sleep to understandHow far the unknown transcends the what we know.
Here lies the gentle humorist, who diedIn the bright Indian Summer of his fame!A simple stone, with but a date and name,Marks his secluded resting-place besideThe river that he loved and glorified.Here in the autumn of his days he came,But the dry leaves of life were all aflameWith tints that brightened and were multiplied.How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death!Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;Dying, to leave a memory like the breathOf summers full of sunshine and of showers,A grief and gladness in the atmosphere.
Thou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loudWith sounds of unintelligible speech,Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach,Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd;With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed,Thou speakest a different dialect to each;To me a language that no man can teach,Of a lost race, long vanished like a cloud.For underneath thy shade, in days remote,Seated like Abraham at eventideBeneath the oaks of Mamre, the unknownApostle of the Indians, Eliot, wroteHis Bible in a language that hath diedAnd is forgotten, save by thee alone.
Nine sisters, beautiful in form and face,Came from their convent on the shining heightsOf Pierus, the mountain of delights,To dwell among the people at its base.Then seemed the world to change. All time and space,Splendor of cloudless days and starry nights,And men and manners, and all sounds and sights,Had a new meaning, a diviner grace.Proud were these sisters, but were not too proudTo teach in schools of little country townsScience and song, and all the arts that please;So that while housewives span, and farmers ploughed,Their comely daughters, clad in homespun gowns,Learned the sweet songs of the Pierides.
White swan of cities, slumbering in thy nestSo wonderfully built among the reedsOf the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds,As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest!White water-lily, cradled and caressedBy ocean streams, and from the silt and weedsLifting thy golden filaments and seeds,Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest!White phantom city, whose untrodden streetsAre rivers, and whose pavements are the shiftingShadows of palaces and strips of sky;I wait to see thee vanish like the fleetsSeen in mirage, or towers of cloud upliftingIn air their unsubstantial masonry.
O ye dead Poets, who are living stillImmortal in your verse, though life be fled,And ye, O living Poets, who are deadThough ye are living, if neglect can kill,Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,With drops of anguish falling fast and redFrom the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil?Yes; for the gift and ministry of SongHave something in them so divinely sweet,It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;Not in the clamor of the crowded street,Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
WRITTEN ON REVISITING BRUNSWICK IN THE SUMMER OF 1875
Among the many lives that I have known,None I remember more serene and sweet,More rounded in itself and more complete,Than his, who lies beneath this funeral stone.These pines, that murmur in low monotone,These walks frequented by scholastic feet,Were all his world; but in this calm retreatFor him the Teacher's chair became a throne.With fond affection memory loves to dwellOn the old days, when his example madeA pastime of the toil of tongue and pen;And now, amid the groves he loved so wellThat naught could lure him from their grateful shade,He sleeps, but wakes elsewhere, for God hath said, Amen!
It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanesAnd roofs of villages, on woodland crestsAnd their aerial neighborhoods of nestsDeserted, on the curtained window-panesOf rooms where children sleep, on country lanesAnd harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!All things are symbols: the external showsOf Nature have their image in the mind,As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,Only the empty nests are left behind,And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.
Thou Royal River, born of sun and showerIn chambers purple with the Alpine glow,Wrapped in the spotless ermine of the snowAnd rocked by tempests!—at the appointed hourForth, like a steel-clad horseman from a tower,With clang and clink of harness dost thou goTo meet thy vassal torrents, that belowRush to receive thee and obey thy power.And now thou movest in triumphal march,A king among the rivers! On thy wayA hundred towns await and welcome thee;Bridges uplift for thee the stately arch,Vineyards encircle thee with garlands gay,And fleets attend thy progress to the sea!
TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Three Silences there are: the first of speech,The second of desire, the third of thought;This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraughtWith dreams and visions, was the first to teach.These Silences, commingling each with each,Made up the perfect Silence, that he soughtAnd prayed for, and wherein at times he caughtMysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach.O thou, whose daily life anticipatesThe life to come, and in whose thought and wordThe spiritual world preponderates.Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heardVoices and melodies from beyond the gates,And speakest only when thy soul is stirred!
Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round;So slowly that no human eye hath powerTo see it move! Slowly in shine or showerThe painted ship above it, homeward bound,Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground;Yet both arrive at last; and in his towerThe slumberous watchman wakes and strikes the hour,A mellow, measured, melancholy sound.Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!The frontier town and citadel of night!The watershed of Time, from which the streamsOf Yesterday and To-morrow take their way,One to the land of promise and of light,One to the land of darkness and of dreams!
O River of Yesterday, with current swiftThrough chasms descending, and soon lost to sight,I do not care to follow in their flightThe faded leaves, that on thy bosom drift!O River of To-morrow, I upliftMine eyes, and thee I follow, as the nightWanes into morning, and the dawning lightBroadens, and all the shadows fade and shift!I follow, follow, where thy waters runThrough unfrequented, unfamiliar fields,Fragrant with flowers and musical with song;Still follow, follow; sure to meet the sun,And confident, that what the future yieldsWill be the right, unless myself be wrong.
Yet not in vain, O River of Yesterday,Through chasms of darkness to the deep descending,I heard thee sobbing in the rain, and blendingThy voice with other voices far away.I called to thee, and yet thou wouldst not stay,But turbulent, and with thyself contending,And torrent-like thy force on pebbles spending,Thou wouldst not listen to a poet's lay.Thoughts, like a loud and sudden rush of wings,Regrets and recollections of things past,With hints and prophecies of things to be,And inspirations, which, could they be things,And stay with us, and we could hold them fast,Were our good angels,—these I owe to thee.
And thou, O River of To-morrow, flowingBetween thy narrow adamantine walls,But beautiful, and white with waterfalls,And wreaths of mist, like hands the pathway showing;I hear the trumpets of the morning blowing,I hear thy mighty voice, that calls and calls,And see, as Ossian saw in Morven's halls,Mysterious phantoms, coming, beckoning, going!It is the mystery of the unknownThat fascinates us; we are children still,Wayward and wistful; with one hand we clingTo the familiar things we call our own,And with the other, resolute of will,Grope in the dark for what the day will bring.
St. Bototlph's Town! Hither across the plainsAnd fens of Lincolnshire, in garb austere,There came a Saxon monk, and founded hereA Priory, pillaged by marauding Danes,So that thereof no vestige now remains;Only a name, that, spoken loud and clear,And echoed in another hemisphere,Survives the sculptured walls and painted panes.St. Botolph's Town! Far over leagues of landAnd leagues of sea looks forth its noble tower,And far around the chiming bells are heard;So may that sacred name forever standA landmark, and a symbol of the power,That lies concentred in a single word.
I stand beneath the tree, whose branches shadeThy western window, Chapel of St. John!And hear its leaves repeat their benisonOn him, whose hand if thy stones memorial laid;Then I remember one of whom was saidIn the world's darkest hour, "Behold thy son!"And see him living still, and wandering onAnd waiting for the advent long delayed.Not only tongues of the apostles teachLessons of love and light, but these expandingAnd sheltering boughs with all their leaves implore,And say in language clear as human speech,"The peace of God, that passeth understanding,Be and abide with you forevermore!"
Oh that a Song would sing itself to meOut of the heart of Nature, or the heartOf man, the child of Nature, not of Art,Fresh as the morning, salt as the salt sea,With just enough of bitterness to beA medicine to this sluggish mood, and startThe life-blood in my veins, and so impartHealing and help in this dull lethargy!Alas! not always doth the breath of songBreathe on us. It is like the wind that blowethAt its own will, not ours, nor tarries long;We hear the sound thereof, but no man knowethFrom whence it comes, so sudden and swift and strong,Nor whither in its wayward course it goeth.
Here in a little rustic hermitageAlfred the Saxon King, Alfred the Great,Postponed the cares of king-craft to translateThe Consolations of the Roman sage.Here Geoffrey Chaucer in his ripe old ageWrote the unrivalled Tales, which soon or lateThe venturous hand that strives to imitateVanquished must fall on the unfinished page.Two kings were they, who ruled by right divine,And both supreme; one in the realm of Truth,One in the realm of Fiction and of Song.What prince hereditary of their line,Uprising in the strength and flush of youth,Their glory shall inherit and prolong?
A PHOTOGRAPH
Sweet faces, that from pictured casements leanAs from a castle window, looking downOn some gay pageant passing through a town,Yourselves the fairest figures in the scene;With what a gentle grace, with what sereneUnconsciousness ye wear the triple crownOf youth and beauty and the fair renownOf a great name, that ne'er hath tarnished been!From your soft eyes, so innocent and sweet,Four spirits, sweet and innocent as they,Gaze on the world below, the sky above;Hark! there is some one singing in the street;"Faith, Hope, and Love! these three," he seems to say;"These three; and greatest of the three is Love."
The holiest of all holidays are thoseKept by ourselves in silence and apart;The secret anniversaries of the heart,When the full river of feeling overflows;—The happy days unclouded to their close;The sudden joys that out of darkness startAs flames from ashes; swift desires that dartLike swallows singing down each wind that blows!White as the gleam of a receding sail,White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,White as the whitest lily on a stream,These tender memories are;—a Fairy TaleOf some enchanted land we know not where,But lovely as a landscape in a dream.
TO ALFRED TENNYSON
Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine;Not as a knight, who on the listed fieldOf tourney touched his adversary's shieldIn token of defiance, but in signOf homage to the mastery, which is thine,In English song; nor will I keep concealed,And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed,My admiration for thy verse divine.Not of the howling dervishes of song,Who craze the brain with their delirious dance,Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart!Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong,To thee our love and our allegiance,For thy allegiance to the poet's art.
Once upon Iceland's solitary strandA poet wandered with his book and pen,Seeking some final word, some sweet Amen,Wherewith to close the volume in his hand.The billows rolled and plunged upon the sand,The circling sea-gulls swept beyond his ken,And from the parting cloud-rack now and thenFlashed the red sunset over sea and land.Then by the billows at his feet was tossedA broken oar; and carved thereon he read,"Oft was I weary, when I toiled at thee";And like a man, who findeth what was lost,He wrote the words, then lifted up his head,And flung his useless pen into the sea.
In the long, sleepless watches of the night,A gentle face—the face of one long dead—Looks at me from the wall, where round its headThe night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.Here in this room she died; and soul more whiteNever through martyrdom of fire was ledTo its repose; nor can in books be readThe legend of a life more benedight.There is a mountain in the distant WestThat, sun-defying, in its deep ravinesDisplays a cross of snow upon its side.Such is the cross I wear upon my breastThese eighteen years, through all the changing scenesAnd seasons, changeless since the day she died.