Never, surely, was holier manThan Ambrose, since the world began;With diet spare and raiment thinHe shielded himself from the father of sin;With bed of iron and scourgings oft,His heart to God's hand as wax made soft.
Through earnest prayer and watchings longHe sought to know 'tween right and wrong,Much wrestling with the blessed WordTo make it yield the sense of the Lord, 10That he might build a storm-proof creedTo fold the flock in at their need.
At last he builded a perfect faith,Fenced round about withThe Lord thus saith;To himself he fitted the doorway's size,Meted the light to the need of his eyes,And knew, by a sure and inward sign,That the work of his fingers was divine.
Then Ambrose said, 'All those shall dieThe eternal death who believe not as I;' 20And some were boiled, some burned in fire,Some sawn in twain, that his heart's desire,For the good of men's souls might be satisfiedBy the drawing of all to the righteous side.
One day, as Ambrose was seeking the truthIn his lonely walk, he saw a youthResting himself in the shade of a tree;It had never been granted him to seeSo shining a face, and the good man thought'Twere pity he should not believe as he ought. 30
So he set himself by the young man's side,And the state of his soul with questions tried;But the heart of the stranger was hardened indeed,Nor received the stamp of the one true creed;And the spirit of Ambrose waxed sore to findSuch features the porch of so narrow a mind.
'As each beholds in cloud and fireThe shape that answers his own desire,So each,' said the youth, 'in the Law shall findThe figure and fashion of his mind; 40And to each in his mercy hath God allowedHis several pillar of fire and cloud.'
The soul of Ambrose burned with zealAnd holy wrath for the young man's weal:'Believest thou then, most wretched youth,'Cried he, 'a dividual essence in Truth?I fear me thy heart is too cramped with sinTo take the Lord in his glory in.'
Now there bubbled beside them where they stoodA fountain of waters sweet and good: 50The youth to the streamlet's brink drew nearSaying, 'Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here!'Six vases of crystal then he took,And set them along the edge of the brook.
'As into these vessels the water I pour,There shall one hold less, another more,And the water unchanged, in every case,Shall put on the figure of the vase;O thou, who wouldst unity make through strife,Canst thou fit this sign to the Water of Life?' 60
When Ambrose looked up, he stood alone,The youth and the stream and the vases were gone;But he knew, by a sense of humbled grace,He had talked with an angel face to face,And felt his heart change inwardly,As he fell on his knees beneath the tree.
O dwellers in the valley-land,Who in deep twilight grope and cower,Till the slow mountain's dial-handShorten to noon's triumphal hour,While ye sit idle, do ye thinkThe Lord's great work sits idle too?That light dare not o'erleap the brinkOf morn, because 'tis dark with you?
Though yet your valleys skulk in night,In God's ripe fields the day is cried,And reapers, with their sickles bright,Troop, singing, down the mountain-side:Come up, and feel what health there isIn the frank Dawn's delighted eyes,As, bending with a pitying kiss,The night-shed tears of Earth she dries!
The Lord wants reapers: oh, mount up,Before night comes, and says, 'Too late!'Stay not for taking scrip or cup,The Master hungers while ye wait;'Tis from these heights alone your eyesThe advancing spears of day can see,That o'er the eastern hill-tops rise,To break your long captivity.
Lone watcher on the mountain-height,It is right precious to beholdThe first long surf of climbing lightFlood all the thirsty east with gold;But we, who in the shadow sit,Know also when the day is nigh,Seeing thy shining forehead litWith his inspiring prophecy.
Thou hast thine office; we have ours;God lacks not early service here,But what are thine eleventh hoursHe counts with us for morning cheer;Our day, for Him, is long enough,And when He giveth work to do,The bruisèd reed is amply toughTo pierce the shield of error, through.
But not the less do thou aspireLight's earlier messages to preach;Keep back no syllable of fire,Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech.Yet God deems not thine aeried sightMore worthy than our twilight dim;For meek Obedience, too, is Light,And following that is finding Him.
It was past the hour of trysting,But she lingered for him still;Like a child, the eager streamletLeaped and laughed adown the hill,Happy to be free at twilightFrom its toiling at the mill.
Then the great moon on a suddenOminous, and red as blood,Startling as a new creation,O'er the eastern hilltop stood,Casting deep and deeper shadowsThrough the mystery of the wood.
Dread closed fast and vague about her,And her thoughts turned fearfullyTo her heart, if there some shelterFrom the silence there might be,Like bare cedars leaning inlandFrom the blighting of the sea.
Yet he came not, and the stillnessDampened round her like a tomb;She could feel cold eyes of spiritsLooking on her through the gloom,She could hear the groping footstepsOf some blind, gigantic doom.
Suddenly the silence waveredLike a light mist in the wind,For a voice broke gently through it,Felt like sunshine by the blind,And the dread, like mist in sunshine,Furled serenely from her mind.
'Once my love, my love forever,Flesh or spirit, still the same,If I failed at time of trysting,Deem then not my faith to blame;I, alas, was made a captive,As from Holy Land I came.
'On a green spot in the desert,Gleaming like an emerald star,Where a palm-tree, in lone silence,Yearning for its mate afar,Droops above a silver runnel,Slender as a scimitar,
'There thou'lt find the humble posternTo the castle of my foe;If thy love burn clear and faithful,Strike the gateway, green and low,Ask to enter, and the warderSurely will not say thee no.'
Slept again the aspen silence,But her loneliness was o'er;Bound her soul a motherly patienceClasped its arms forevermore;From her heart ebbed back the sorrow,Leaving smooth the golden shore.
Donned she now the pilgrim scallop,Took the pilgrim staff in hand;Like a cloud-shade flitting eastward,Wandered she o'er sea and land;And her footsteps in the desertFell like cool rain on the sand.
Soon, beneath the palm-tree's shadow,Knelt she at the postern low;And thereat she knocked full gently,Fearing much the warder's no;All her heart stood still and listened,As the door swung backward slow.
There she saw no surly warderWith an eye like bolt and bar;Through her soul a sense of musicThrobbed, and, like a guardian Lar,On the threshold stood an angel,Bright and silent as a star.
Fairest seemed he of God's seraphs,And her spirit, lily-wise,Opened when he turned upon herThe deep welcome of his eyes,Sending upward to that sunlightAll its dew for sacrifice.
Then she heard a voice come onwardSinging with a rapture new,As Eve heard the songs in Eden,Dropping earthward with the dew;Well she knew the happy singer,Well the happy song she knew.
Forward leaped she o'er the threshold,Eager as a glancing surf;Fell from her the spirit's languor,Fell from her the body's scurf;'Neath the palm next day some ArabsFound a corpse upon the turf.
Rippling through thy branches goes the sunshine,Among thy leaves that palpitate forever;Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned,The soul once of some tremulous inland river,Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever!
While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine,Holds up its leaves in happy, happy stillness,Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended,I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands,And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence.
On the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet,Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad,Dripping round thy slim white stem, whose shadowSlopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet,Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Naiad.
Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers;Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping;Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience,And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weepingAbove her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping.
Thou art to me like my beloved maiden,So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences;Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leafletsSprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses,And Nature gives me all her summer confidences.
Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble,Thou sympathizest still; wild and unquiet,I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river,Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and by itMy heart is floated down into the land of quiet.
I sat one evening in my room,In that sweet hour of twilightWhen blended thoughts, half light, half gloom,Throng through the spirit's skylight;The flames by fits curled round the bars,Or up the chimney crinkled,While embers dropped like falling stars,And in the ashes tinkled.
I sat, and mused; the fire burned low,And, o'er my senses stealing, 10Crept something of the ruddy glowThat bloomed on wall and ceiling;My pictures (they are very few,The heads of ancient wise men)Smoothed down their knotted fronts, and grewAs rosy as excisemen.
My antique high-backed Spanish chairFelt thrills through wood and leather,That had been strangers since whilere,Mid Andaluslan heather, 20The oak that built its sturdy frameHis happy arms stretched overThe ox whose fortunate hide becameThe bottom's polished cover.
It came out in that famous bark,That brought our sires intrepid,Capacious as another arkFor furniture decrepit;For, as that saved of bird and beastA pair for propagation, 30So has the seed of these increasedAnd furnished half the nation.
Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats;But those slant precipicesOf ice the northern voyager meetsLess slippery are than this is;To cling therein would pass the witOf royal man or woman,And whatsoe'er can stay in itIs more or less than human. 40
I offer to all bores this perch,Dear well-intentioned peopleWith heads as void as week-day church,Tongues longer than the steeple;To folks with missions, whose gaunt eyesSee golden ages rising,—Salt of the earth! in what queer GuysThou'rt fond of crystallizing!
My wonder, then, was not unmixedWith merciful suggestion, 50When, as my roving eyes grew fixedUpon the chair in question,I saw its trembling arms encloseA figure grim and rusty,Whose doublet plain and plainer hoseWere something worn and dusty.
Now even such men as Nature formsMerely to fill the street with,Once turned to ghosts by hungry worms, 59Are serious things to meet with;Your penitent spirits are no jokes,And, though I'm not averse toA quiet shade, even they are folksOne cares not to speak first to.
Who knows, thought I, but he has come,By Charon kindly ferried,To tell me of a mighty sumBehind my wainscot buried?There is a buccaneerish airAbout that garb outlandish— 70Just then the ghost drew up his chairAnd said, 'My name is Standish.
'I come from Plymouth, deadly boredWith toasts, and songs, and speeches,As long and flat as my old sword,As threadbare as my breeches:Theyunderstand us Pilgrims! they,Smooth men with rosy faces.Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away,And varnish in their places! 80
'We had some toughness in our grain,The eye to rightly see us isNot just the one that lights the brainOf drawing-room Tyrtæuses:Theytalk about their Pilgrim blood,Their birthright high and holy!A mountain-stream that ends in mudMethinks is melancholy.
'He had stiff knees, the Puritan,That were not good at bending;The homespun dignity of man 91He thought was worth defending;He did not, with his pinchbeck ore,His country's shame forgotten,Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er,When all within was rotten.
'These loud ancestral boasts of yours,How can they else than vex us?Where were your dinner oratorsWhen slavery grasped at Texas? 100Dumb on his knees was every oneThat now is bold as Cæsar;Mere pegs to hang an office onSuch stalwart men as these are.'
'Good sir,' I said, 'you seem much stirred;The sacred compromises'—'Now God confound the dastard word!My gall thereat arises:Northward it hath this sense aloneThat you, your conscience blinding, 110Shall bow your fool's nose to the stone,When slavery feels like grinding.
''Tis shame to see such painted sticksIn Vane's and Winthrop's places,To see your spirit of Seventy-SixDrag humbly in the traces,With slavery's lash upon her back,And herds, of office-holdersTo shout applause, as, with a crack, 119It peels her patient shoulders.
'Weforefathers to such a rout!—No, by my faith in God's word!'Half rose the ghost, and half drew outThe ghost of his old broadsword,Then thrust it slowly back again,And said, with reverent gesture,'No, Freedom, no! blood should not stainThe hem of thy white vesture.
'I feel the soul in me draw nearThe mount of prophesying; 130In this bleak wilderness I hearA John the Baptist crying;Far in the east I see upleapThe streaks of first forewarning,And they who sowed the light shall reapThe golden sheaves of morning.
'Child of our travail and our woe,Light in our day of sorrow,Through my rapt spirit I foreknowThe glory of thy morrow; 140I hear great steps, that through the shadeDraw nigher still and nigher,And voices call like that which badeThe prophet come up higher.'
I looked, no form mine eyes could find,I heard the red cock crowing,And through my window-chinks the windA dismal tune was blowing;Thought I, My neighbor BuckinghamHath somewhat in him gritty, 150Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham,And he will print my ditty.
Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can,The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man;Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with easeConsent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these!
I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breastSucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest;And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame,'Tis but my Bay-State dialect,—our fathers spake the same!
Shame on the costly mockery of piling stone on stoneTo those who won our liberty, the heroes dead and gone,While we look coldly on and see law-shielded ruffians slayThe men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day!
Are we pledged to craven silence? Oh, fling it to the wind,The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind,That makes us cringe and temporize, and dumbly stand at rest,While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast!
Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first;The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed;Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod,Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God!
We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more,To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's core;Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but thenBefore Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.
He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done,To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding sun,That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base,Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race.
God works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being freeWith parallels of latitude, with mountain-range or sea.Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will,From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill.
Chain down your slaves with ignorance, ye cannot keep apart,With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart:When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay State's iron shore,The word went forth that slavery should one day be no more.
Out from the land of bondage 'tis decreed our slaves shall go,And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh;If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore,Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore.
'Tis ours to save our brethren, with peace and love to winTheir darkened hearts from error, ere they harden it to sin;But if before his duty man with listless spirit stands,Erelong the Great Avenger takes the work from out his hands.
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,First pledge of blithesome May,Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold,High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that theyAn Eldorado in the grass have found,Which not the rich earth's ample roundMay match in wealth, thou art more dear to meThan all the prouder summer-blooms may be.
Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prowThrough the primeval hush of Indian seas,Nor wrinkled the lean browOf age, to rob the lover's heart of ease;'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters nowTo rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,Though most hearts never understandTo take it at God's value, but pass byThe offered wealth with unrewarded eye.
Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;The eyes thou givest meAre in the heart, and heed not space or time:Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed beeFeels a more summer-like warm ravishmentIn the white lily's breezy tent,His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when firstFrom the dark green thy yellow circles burst.
Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,Where, as the breezes pass,The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,Or whiten in the wind, of waters blueThat from the distance sparkle throughSome woodland gap, and of a sky above,Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.
My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee;The sight of thee calls back the robin's song,Who, from the dark old treeBeside the door, sang clearly all day long,And I, secure in childish piety,Listened as if I heard an angel singWith news from heaven, which he could bringFresh every day to my untainted earsWhen birds and flowers and I were happy peers.
How like a prodigal doth nature seem,When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!Thou teachest me to deemMore sacredly of every human heart,Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleamOf heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,Did we but pay the love we owe,And with a child's undoubting wisdom lookOn all these living pages of God's book.
Ye who, passing graves by night,Glance not to the left or right,Lest a spirit should arise,Cold and white, to freeze your eyes,Some weak phantom, which your doubtShapes upon the dark withoutFrom the dark within, a guessAt the spirit's deathlessness,Which ye entertain with fearIn your self-built dungeon here, 10Where ye sell your God-given livesJust for gold to buy you gyves,—Ye without a shudder meetIn the city's noonday street,Spirits sadder and more dreadThan from out the clay have fled,Buried, beyond hope of light,In the body's haunted night!See ye not that woman pale?There are bloodhounds on her trail! 20Bloodhounds two, all gaunt and lean,(For the soul their scent is keen,)Want and Sin, and Sin is last.They have followed far and fast;Want gave tongue, and, at her howl,Sin awakened with a growl.Ah, poor girl! she had a rightTo a blessing from the light;Title-deeds to sky and earthGod gave to her at her birth; 30But, before they were enjoyed,Poverty had made them void,And had drunk the sunshine upFrom all nature's ample cup,Leaving her a first-born's shareIn the dregs of darkness there.Often, on the sidewalk bleak,Hungry, all alone, and weak,She has seen, in night and storm,Rooms o'erflow with firelight warm, 40Which, outside the window-glass,Doubled all the cold, alas!Till each ray that on her fellStabbed her like an icicle,And she almost loved the wailOf the bloodhounds on her trail.Till the floor becomes her bier,She shall feel their pantings near,Close upon her very heels,Spite of all the din of wheels; 50Shivering on her pallet poor,She shall hear them at the doorWhine and scratch to be let in,Sister bloodhounds, Want and Sin!
Hark! that rustle of a dress,Stiff with lavish costliness!Here comes one whose cheek would flushBut to have her garment brush'Gainst the girl whose fingers thinWove the weary broidery in, 60Bending backward from her toil,Lest her tears the silk might soil,And, in midnights chill and murk,Stitched her life into the work,Shaping from her bitter thoughtHeart's-ease and forget-me-not,Satirizing her despairWith the emblems woven there.Little doth the wearer heedOf the heart-break in the brede; 70A hyena by her sideSkulks, down-looking,—it is Pride.He digs for her in the earth,Where lie all her claims of birth,With his foul paws rooting o'erSome long-buried ancestor,Who perhaps a statue wonBy the ill deeds he had done,By the innocent blood he shed,By the desolation spread 80Over happy villages,Blotting out the smile of peace.There walks Judas, he who soldYesterday his Lord for gold,Sold God's presence in his heartFor a proud step in the mart;He hath dealt in flesh and blood:At the bank his name is good;At the bank, and only there,'Tis a marketable ware. 90In his eyes that stealthy gleamWas not learned of sky or stream,But it has the cold, hard glintOf new dollars from the mint.Open now your spirit's eyes,Look through that poor clay disguiseWhich has thickened, day by day,Till it keeps all light at bay,And his soul in pitchy gloomGropes about its narrow tomb, 100From whose dank and slimy wallsDrop by drop the horror falls.Look! a serpent lank and coldHugs his spirit fold on fold;From his heart, all day and night,It doth suck God's blessed light.Drink it will, and drink it must,Till the cup holds naught but dust;All day long he hears it hiss,Writhing in its fiendish bliss; 110All night long he sees its eyesFlicker with foul ecstasies,As the spirit ebbs awayInto the absorbing clay.Who is he that skulks, afraidOf the trust he has betrayed,Shuddering if perchance a gleamOf old nobleness should streamThrough the pent, unwholesome room,Where his shrunk soul cowers in gloom, 120Spirit sad beyond the restBy more Instinct for the best?'Tis a poet who was sentFor a bad world's punishment,By compelling it to seeGolden glimpses of To Be,By compelling it to hearSongs that prove the angels near;Who was sent to be the tongueOf the weak and spirit-wrung, 130Whence the fiery-winged DespairIn men's shrinking eyes might flare.'Tis our hope doth fashion usTo base use or glorious:He who might have been a larkOf Truth's morning, from the darkRaining down melodious hopeOf a freer, broader scope,Aspirations, prophecies,Of the spirit's full sunrise, 140Chose to be a bird of night,That, with eyes refusing light,Hooted from some hollow treeOf the world's idolatry.'Tis his punishment to hearSweep of eager pinions near,And his own vain wings to feelDrooping downward to his heel,All their grace and import lost,Burdening his weary ghost: 150Ever walking by his sideHe must see his angel guide,Who at intervals doth turnLooks on him so sadly stern,With such ever-new surpriseOf hushed anguish in her eyes,That it seems the light of dayFrom around him shrinks away,Or drops blunted from the wallBuilt around him by his fall. 160Then the mountains, whose white peaksCatch the morning's earliest streaks,He must see, where prophets sit,Turning east their faces lit,Whence, with footsteps beautiful,To the earth, yet dim and dull,They the gladsome tidings bringOf the sunlight's hastening:Never can these hills of bliss 169Be o'erclimbed by feet like his!But enough! Oh, do not dareFrom the next the veil to tear,Woven of station, trade, or dress,More obscene than nakedness,Wherewith plausible culture drapesFallen Nature's myriad shapes!Let us rather love to markHow the unextingnished sparkStill gleams through the thin disguise 179Of our customs, pomps, and lies,And, not seldom blown to flame,Vindicates its ancient claim.
Some sort of heart I know is hers,—I chanced to feel her pulse one night;A brain she has that never errs,And yet is never nobly right;It does not leap to great results,But, in some corner out of sightSuspects a spot of latent blight,And, o'er the impatient infinite,She hargains, haggles, and consults.
Her eye,—it seems a chemic testAnd drops upon you like an acid; 11It bites you with unconscious zest,So clear and bright, so coldly placid;It holds you quietly aloof,It holds,—and yet it does not win you;It merely puts you to the proofAnd sorts what qualities are in you:It smiles, but never brings you nearer,It lights,—her nature draws not nigh;'Tis but that yours is growing clearer 20To her assays;—yes, try and try,You'll get no deeper than her eye.
There, you are classified: she's goneFar, far away into herself;Each with its Latin label on,Your poor components, one by one,Are laid upon their proper shelfIn her compact and ordered mind,And what of you is left behindIs no more to her than the wind;In that clear brain, which, day and night, 31No movement of the heart e'er jostles,Her friends are ranged on left and right,—Here, silex, hornblende, sienite;There, animal remains and fossils.
And yet, O subtile analyst,That canst each property detectOf mood or grain, that canst untwistEach tangled skein of intellect,And with thy scalpel eyes lay bare 40Each mental nerve more fine than air,—O brain exact, that in thy scalesCanst weigh the sun and never err,For once thy patient science fails,One problem still defies thy art;—Thou never canst compute for herThe distance and diameterOf any simple human heart.
Hear him but speak, and you will feelThe shadows of the Portico 50Over your tranquil spirit steal,To modulate all joy and woeTo one subdued, subduing glow;Above our squabbling business-hours,Like Phidian Jove's, his beauty lowers,His nature satirizes ours;A form and front of Attic grace,He shames the higgling market-place,And dwarfs our more mechanic powers.
What throbbing verse can fitly render 60That face so pure, so trembling-tender?Sensation glimmers through its rest,It speaks unmanacled by words,As full of motion as a nestThat palpitates with unfledged birds;'Tis likest to Bethesda's stream,Forewarned through all its thrilling springs,White with the angel's coming gleam,And rippled with his fanning wings.
Hear him unfold his plots and plans, 70And larger destinies seem man's;You conjure from his glowing faceThe omen of a fairer race;With one grand trope he boldly spansThe gulf wherein so many fall,'Twixt possible and actual;His first swift word, talaria-shod,Exuberant with conscious God,Out of the choir of planets blotsThe present earth with all its spots. 80
Himself unshaken as the sky,His words, like whirlwinds, spin on highSystems and creeds pellmell together;'Tis strange as to a deaf man's eye,While trees uprooted splinter by,The dumb turmoil of stormy weather;Less of iconoclast than shaper,His spirit, safe behind the reachOf the tornado of his speech,Burns calmly as a glowworm's taper. 90
So great in speech, but, ah! in actSo overrun with vermin troubles,The coarse, sharp-cornered, ugly factOf life collapses all his bubbles:Had he but lived in Plato's day,He might, unless my fancy errs,Have shared that golden voice's swayO'er barefooted philosophers.Our nipping climate hardly suitsThe ripening of ideal fruits: 100His theories vanquish us all summer,But winter makes him dumb and dumber;To see him mid life's needful thingsIs something painfully bewildering;He seems an angel with clipt wingsTied to a mortal wife and children,And by a brother seraph takenIn the act of eating eggs and bacon.Like a clear fountain, his desireExults and leaps toward the light, 110In every drop it says 'Aspire!'Striving for more ideal height;And as the fountain, falling thence,Crawls baffled through the common gutter,So, from his speech's eminence,He shrinks into the present tense,Unkinged by foolish bread and butter.
Yet smile not, worldling, for in deedsNot all of life that's brave and wise is;He strews an ampler future's seeds, 120'Tis your fault if no harvest rises;Smooth back the sneer; for is it naughtThat all he is and has is Beauty's?By soul the soul's gains must be wrought,The Actual claims our coarser thought,The Ideal hath its higher duties.
Can this be thou who, lean and pale,With such immitigable eyeDidst look upon those writhing souls in bale,And note each vengeance, and pass byUnmoved, save when thy heart by chanceCast backward one forbidden glance,And saw Francesca, with child's glee,Subdue and mount thy wild-horse kneeAnd with proud hands control its fiery prance?
With half-drooped lids, and smooth, round brow,And eye remote, that inly seesFair Beatrice's spirit wandering nowIn some sea-lulled Hesperides,Thou movest through the jarring street,Secluded from the noise of feetBy her gift-blossom in thy hand,Thy branch of palm from Holy Land;—No trace is here of ruin's fiery sleet.
Yet there is something round thy lipsThat prophesies the coming doom,The soft, gray herald-shadow ere the eclipseNotches the perfect disk with gloom;A something that would banish thee,And thine untamed pursuer be,From men and their unworthy fates,Though Florence had not shut her gates,And Grief had loosed her clutch and let thee free.
Ah! he who follows fearlesslyThe beckonings of a poet-heartShall wander, and without the world's decree,A banished man in field and mart;Harder than Florence' walls the barWhich with deaf sternness holds him farFrom home and friends, till death's release,And makes his only prayer for peace,Like thine, scarred veteran of a lifelong war!
Death never came so nigh to me before,Nor showed me his mild face: oft had I musedOf calm and peace and safe forgetfulness,Of folded hands, closed eyes, and heart at rest,And slumber sound beneath a flowery turf,Of faults forgotten, and an inner placeKept sacred for us in the heart of friends;But these were idle fancies, satisfiedWith the mere husk of this great mystery,And dwelling in the outward shows of things. 10Heaven is not mounted to on wings of dreams,Nor doth the unthankful happiness of youthAim thitherward, but floats from bloom to bloom,With earth's warm patch of sunshine well content:'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up,Whose golden rounds are our calamities,Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer GodThe spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed.
True is it that Death's face seems stern and cold,When he is sent to summon those we love, 20But all God's angels come to us disguised;Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death,One after other lift their frowning masks,And we behold the seraph's face beneath,All radiant with the glory and the calmOf having looked upon the front of God.With every anguish of our earthly partThe spirit's sight grows clearer; this was meantWhen Jesus touched the blind man's lids with clay.Life is the jailer, Death the angel sent 30To draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.He flings not ope the ivory gate of Rest,—Only the fallen spirit knocks at that,—But to benigner regions beckons us,To destinies of more rewarded toil.In the hushed chamber, sitting by the dead,It grates on us to hear the flood of lifeWhirl rustling onward, senseless of our loss.The bee hums on; around the blossomed vineWhirs the light humming-bird; the cricket chirps; 40The locust's shrill alarum stings the ear;Hard by, the cock shouts lustily; from farm to farm,His cheery brothers, telling of the sun,Answer, till far away the joyance dies:We never knew before how God had filledThe summer air with happy living sounds;All round us seems an overplus of life,And yet the one dear heart lies cold and still.It is most strange, when the great miracleHath for our sakes been done, when we have had 50Our inwardest experience of God,When with his presence still the room expands,And is awed after him, that naught is changed,That Nature's face looks unacknowledging,And the mad world still dances heedless onAfter its butterflies, and gives no sign.'Tis hard at first to see it all aright:In vain Faith blows her trump to summon backHer scattered troop: yet, through the clouded glassOf our own bitter tears, we learn to look 60Undazzled on the kindness of God's face;Earth is too dark, and Heaven alone shines through.
It is no little thing, when a fresh soulAnd a fresh heart, with their unmeasured scopeFor good, not gravitating earthward yet,But circling in diviner periods,Are sent into the world,—no little thing,When this unbounded possibilityInto the outer silence is withdrawn.Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread 70Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death,The visionary hand of Might-have-beenAlone can fill Desire's cup to the brim!
How changed, dear friend, are thy part and thy child's!He bends abovethycradle now, or holdsHis warning finger out to be thy guide;Thou art the nursling now; he watches theeSlow learning, one by one, the secret thingsWhich are to him used sights of every day;He smiles to see thy wondering glances con 80The grass and pebbles of the spirit-world,To thee miraculous; and he will teachThy knees their due observances of prayer.Children are God's apostles, day by daySent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace;Nor hath thy babe his mission left undone.To me, at least, his going hence hath givenSerener thoughts and nearer to the skies,And opened a new fountain in my heartFor thee, my friend, and all: and oh, if Death 90More near approaches meditates, and claspsEven now some dearer, more reluctant hand,God, strengthen thou my faith, that I may seeThat 'tis thine angel, who, with loving haste,Unto the service of the inner shrine,Doth waken thy beloved with a kiss.
Heaven's cup held down to me I drain,The sunshine mounts and spurs my brain;Bathing in grass, with thirsty eyeI suck the last drop of the sky;With each hot sense I draw to the leesThe quickening out-door influences,And empty to each radiant comerA supernaculum of summer:Not, Bacchus, all thy grosser juiceCould bring enchantment so profuse, 10Though for its press each grape-bunch hadThe white feet of an Oread.Through our coarse art gleam, now and then,The features of angelic men:'Neath the lewd Satyr's veiling paintGlows forth the Sibyl, Muse, or Saint;The dauber's botch no more obscuresThe mighty master's portraitures.And who can say what luckier beamThe hidden glory shall redeem, 20For what chance clod the soul may waitTo stumble on its nobler fate,Or why, to his unwarned abode,Still by surprises comes the God?Some moment, nailed on sorrow's cross,May meditate a whole youth's loss,Some windfall joy, we know not whence,Redeem a lifetime's rash expense,And, suddenly wise, the soul may mark, 29Stripped of their simulated dark,Mountains of gold that pierce the sky,Girdling its valleyed poverty.
I feel ye, childhood's hopes, return,With olden heats my pulses burn,—Mine be the self-forgetting sweep,The torrent impulse swift and wild,Wherewith Taghkanic's rockborn childDares gloriously the dangerous leap.And, in his sky-descended mood,Transmutes each drop of sluggish blood, 40By touch of bravery's simple wand,To amethyst and diamond,Proving himself no bastard slip,But the true granite-cradled one,Nursed with the rock's primeval drip,The cloud-embracing mountain's son!
Prayer breathed in vain I no wish's swayRebuilds the vanished yesterday;For plated wares of Sheffield stampWe gave the old Aladdin's lamp;'Tis we are changed; ah, whither went 51That undesigned abandonment,That wise, unquestioning content,Which could erect its microcosmOut of a weed's neglected blossom,Could call up Arthur and his peersBy a low moss's clump of spears,Or, in its shingle trireme launched,Where Charles in some green inlet-branched,Could venture for the golden fleece 60And dragon-watched Hesperides,Or, from its ripple-shattered fate,Ulysses' chances re-create?When, heralding life's every phase,There glowed a goddess-veiling haze,A plenteous, forewarning grace,Like that more tender dawn that fliesBefore the full moon's ample rise?Methinks thy parting glory shinesThrough yonder grove of singing pines; 70At that elm-vista's end I traceDimly thy sad leave-taking face,Eurydice! Eurydice!The tremulous leaves repeat to meEurydice! Eurydice!No gloomier Orcus swallows theeThan the unclouded sunset's glow;Thine is at least Elysian woe;Thou hast Good's natural decay,And fadest like a star away 80Into an atmosphere whose shineWith fuller day o'ermasters thine,Entering defeat as 't were a shrine;For us,—we turn life's diary o'erTo find but one word,—Nevermore.
As a twig trembles, which a birdLights on to sing, then leaves unbent,So is my memory thrilled and stirred;—I only know she came and went.
As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven,The blue dome's measureless content,—So my soul held, that moment's heaven;—I only know she came and went.
As, at one bound, our swift spring heapsThe orchards full of bloom and scent,So clove her May my wintry sleeps;—I only know she came and went.
An angel stood and met my gaze,Through the low doorway of my tent;The tent is struck, the vision stays;—I only know she came and went
Oh, when the room grows slowly dim,And life's last oil is nearly spent,One gush of light these eyes will brim,Only to think she came and went.
I had a little daughter,And she was given to meTo lead me gently backwardTo the Heavenly Father's knee,That I, by the force of nature.Might in some dim wise divineThe depth of his infinite patienceTo this wayward soul of mine.
I know not how others saw her,But to me she was wholly fair,And the light of the heaven she came fromStill lingered and gleamed in her hair;For it was as wavy and golden,And as many changes took,As the shadows of sun-gilt ripplesOn the yellow bed of a brook.
To what can I liken her smilingUpon me, her kneeling lover,How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids,And dimpled her wholly over,Till her outstretched hands smiled also,And I almost seemed to seeThe very heart of her motherSending sun through her veins to me!
She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth,And it hardly seemed a day,When a troop of wandering angelsStole my little daughter away;Or perhaps those heavenly ZingariBut loosed the hampering strings,And when they had opened her cage-door.My little bird used her wings.
But they left in her stead a changelingA little angel child,That seems like her bud in full blossom,And smiles as she never smiled:When I wake in the morning, I see itWhere she always used to lie,And I feel as weak as a violetAlone 'neath the awful sky.
As weak, yet as trustful also;For the whole year long I seeAll the wonders of faithful NatureStill worked for the love of me;Winds wander, and dews drip earthward,Rain falls, suns rise and set,Earth whirls, and all but to prosperA poor little violet.
This child is not mine as the first was,I cannot sing it to rest,I cannot lift it up fatherlyAnd bliss it upon my breast:Yet it lies in my little one's cradleAnd sits in my little one's chair,And the light of the heaven she's gone toTransfigures its golden hair.
What man would live coffined with brick and stone,Imprisoned from the healing touch of air,And cramped with selfish landmarks everywhere,When all before him stretches, furrowless and lone,The unmapped prairie none can fence or own?
What man would read and read the self-same faces,And, like the marbles which the windmill grinds,Rub smooth forever with the same smooth minds,This year retracing last year's, every year's, dull traces,When there are woods and unpenfolded spaces?
What man o'er one old thought would pore and pore,Shut like a book between its covers thinFor every fool to leave his dog's ears in,When solitude is his, and God forevermore,Just for the opening of a paltry door?
What man would watch life's oozy elementCreep Letheward forever, when he mightDown some great river drift beyond men's sight,To where the undethroned forest's royal tentBroods with its hush o'er half a continent?
What man with men would push and altercate,Piecing out crooked means to crooked ends,When he can have the skies and woods for friends,Snatch back the rudder of his undismantled fate,And in himself be ruler, church, and state?
Cast leaves and feathers rot in last year's nest,The wingèd brood, flown thence, new dwellings plan;The serf of his own Past is not a man;To change and change is life, to move and never rest;—Not what we are, but what we hope, is best.
The wild, free woods make no man halt or blind;Cities rob men of eyes and hands and feet,Patching one whole of many incomplete;The general preys upon the individual mind,And each alone is helpless as the wind.
Each man is some man's servant; every soulIs by some other's presence quite discrowned;Each owes the next through all the imperfect round,Yet not with mutual help; each man is his own goal,And the whole earth must stop to pay him toll.
Here, life the undiminished man demands;New faculties stretch out to meet new wants;What Nature asks, that Nature also grants;Here man is lord, not drudge, of eyes and feet and hands,And to his life is knit with hourly bands.
Come out, then, from the old thoughts and old ways,Before you harden to a crystal coldWhich the new life can shatter, but not mould;Freedom for you still waits, still looking backward, stays,But widens still the irretrievable space.
Of all the myriad moods of mindThat through the soul come thronging,Which one was e'er so dear, so kind,So beautiful as Longing?The thing we long for, that we areFor one transcendent moment,Before the Present poor and bareCan make its sneering comment.
Still, through our paltry stir and strife,Glows down the wished ideal,And Longing moulds in clay what LifeCarves in the marble Real;To let the new life in, we know,Desire must ope the portal;Perhaps the longing to be soHelps make the soul immortal.
Longing is God's fresh heavenward will.With our poor earthward striving;We quench it that we may be stillContent with merely living;But, would we learn that heart's full scopeWhich we are hourly wronging,Our lives must climb from hope to hopeAnd realize our longing.
Ah! let us hope that to our praiseGood God not only reckonsThe moments when we tread his ways,But when the spirit beckons,—That some slight good is also wroughtBeyond self-satisfaction,When we are simply good in thought,Howe'er we fail in action.
As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanchesBuild up their imminent crags of noiseless snow,Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launchesIn unwarned havoc on the roofs below,So grew and gathered through the silent yearsThe madness of a People, wrong by wrong.There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears,No strength in suffering; but the Past was strong:The brute despair of trampled centuriesLeaped up with one hoarse yell and snapped its bands, 10Groped for its right with horny, callous hands,And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes.What wonder if those palms were all too hardFor nice distinctions,—if that mænad throng—They whose thick atmosphere no bardHad shivered with the lightning of his song,Brutes with the memories and desires of men,Whose chronicles were writ with iron pen,In the crooked shoulder and the forehead low,Set wrong to balance wrong, 20And physicked woe with woe?
They did as they were taught; not theirs the blame,If men who scattered firebrands reaped the flame:They trampled Peace beneath their savage feet,And by her golden tresses drewMercy along the pavement of the street.O Freedom! Freedom! is thy morning-dewSo gory red? Alas, thy light had ne'erShone in upon the chaos of their lair!They reared to thee such symbol as they knew, 30And worshipped it with flame and blood,A Vengeance, axe in hand, that stoodHolding a tyrant's head up by the clotted hair.
What wrongs the Oppressor suffered, these we know;These have found piteous voice in song and prose;But for the Oppressed, their darkness and their woe,Their grinding centuries,—what Muse had those?Though hall and palace had nor eyes nor ears,Hardening a people's heart to senseless stone,Thou knewest them, O Earth, that drank their tears, 40O Heaven, that heard their inarticulate moan!They noted down their fetters, link by link;Coarse was the hand that scrawled, and red the ink;Rude was their score, as suits unlettered men,Notched with a headsman's axe upon a block:What marvel if, when came the avenging shock,'Twas Atë, not Urania, held the pen?
With eye averted, and an anguished frown,Loathingly glides the Muse through scenes of strife,Where, like the heart of Vengeance up and down, 50Throbs in its framework the blood-muffled knife;Slow are the steps of Freedom, but her feetTurn never backward: hers no bloody glare;Her light is calm, and innocent, and sweet,And where it enters there is no despair:Not first on palace and cathedral spireQuivers and gleams that unconsuming fire;While these stand black against her morning skies,The peasant sees it leap from peak to peakAlong his hills; the craftsman's burning eyes 60Own with cool tears its influence mother-meek;It lights the poet's heart up like a star;Ah! while the tyrant deemed it still afar,And twined with golden threads his futile snare.That swift, convicting glow all round him ran;'Twas close beside him there,Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man.
O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit?A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weedGrown rankly in a night, that leaves no seed! 70Could eighteen years strike down no deeper root?But now thy vulture eye was turned on Spain;A shout from Paris, and thy crown falls off,Thy race has ceased to reign,And thou become a fugitive and scoff:Slippery the feet that mount by stairs of gold,And weakest of all fences one of steel;Go and keep school again like him of old,The Syracusan tyrant;—thou mayst feelRoyal amid a birch-swayed commonweal! 80
Not long can he be ruler who allowsHis time to run before him; thou wast naughtSoon as the strip of gold about thy browsWas no more emblem of the People's thought:Vain were thy bayonets against the foeThou hadst to cope with; thou didst wageWar not with Frenchmen merely;—no,Thy strife was with the Spirit of the Age,The invisible Spirit whose first breath divine 89Scattered thy frail endeavor,And, like poor last year's leaves, whirled thee and thineInto the Dark forever!
Is here no triumph? Nay, what thoughThe yellow blood of Trade meanwhile should pourAlong its arteries a shrunken flow,And the idle canvas droop around the shore?These do not make a state,Nor keep it great;I think God madeThe earth for man, not trade; 100And where each humblest human creatureCan stand, no more suspicious or afraid,Erect and kingly in his right of nature,To heaven and earth knit with harmonious ties,—Where I behold the exultationOf manhood glowing in those eyesThat had been dark for ages,Or only lit with bestial loves and rages,There I behold a Nation:The France which lies 110Between the Pyrenees and RhineIs the least part of France;I see her rather in the soul whose shineBurns through the craftsman's grimy countenance,In the new energy divineOf Toil's enfranchised glance.
And if it be a dream,If the great Future be the little Past'Neath a new mask, which drops and shows at lastThe same weird, mocking face to balk and blast, 120Yet, Muse, a gladder measure suits the theme,And the Tyrtæan harpLoves notes more resolute and sharp,Throbbing, as throbs the bosom, hot and fast:Such visions are of morning,Theirs is no vague forewarning,The dreams which nations dream come true.And shape the world anew;If this be a sleep, 129Make it long, make it deep,O Father, who-sendest the harvests men reap!While Labor so sleepeth,His sorrow is gone,No longer he weepeth,But smileth and steepethHis thoughts in the dawn;He heareth Hope yonderRain, lark-like, her fancies,His dreaming hands wanderMid heart's-ease and pansies; 140''Tis a dream! 'Tis a vision!'Shrieks Mammon aghast;'The day's broad derisionWill chase it at last;Ye are mad, ye have takenA slumbering krakenFor firm land of the Past!'Ah! if he awaken,God shield us all then, 149If this dream rudely shakenShall cheat him again!
Since first I heard our Northwind blow,Since first I saw Atlantic throwOn our grim rocks his thunderous snow,I loved thee, Freedom; as a boyThe rattle of thy shield at MarathonDid with a Grecian joyThrough all my pulses run;But I have learned to love thee nowWithout the helm upon thy gleaming brow, 160A maiden mild and undefiledLike her who bore the world's redeeming child;And surely never did thine altars glanceWith purer fires than now in France;While, in their clear white flashes,Wrong's shadow, backward cast,Waves cowering o'er the ashesOf the dead, blaspheming Past,O'er the shapes of fallen giants,His own unburied brood, 170Whose dead hands clench defianceAt the overpowering Good:And down the happy future runs a floodOf prophesying light;It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood,Blossom and fruit where now we see the budOf Brotherhood and Right.
Praisest Law, friend? We, too, love it much as they that love it best;'Tis the deep, august foundation, whereon Peace and Justice rest;On the rock primeval, hidden in the Past its bases be,Block by block the endeavoring Ages built it up to what we see.
But dig down: the Old unbury; thou shalt find on every stoneThat each Age hath carved the symbol of what god to them was known,Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but the fairest that they knew;If their sight were dim and earthward, yet their hope and aim were true.
Surely as the unconscious needle feels the far-off loadstar draw,So strives every gracious nature to at-one itself with law; 10And the elder Saints and Sages laid their pious framework rightBy a theocratic instinct covered from the people's sight.
As their gods were, so their laws were; Thor the strong could reave andsteal,So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman's eager keel;But a new law came when Christ came, and not blameless, as before,Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our lives and faiths to Thor.
Law is holy: ay, but what law? Is there nothing more divineThan the patched-up broils of Congress, venal, full of meat and wine?Is there, say you, nothing higher? Naught, God save us! that transcendsLaws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends? 20
Did Jehovah ask their counsel, or submit to them a plan,Ere He filled with loves, hopes, longings, this aspiring heart of man?For their edict does the soul wait, ere it swing round to the poleOf the true, the free, the God-willed, all that makes it be a soul?
Law is holy; but not your law, ye who keep the tablets wholeWhile ye dash the Law to pieces, shatter it in life and soul;Bearing up the Ark is lightsome, golden Apis hid within,While we Levites share the offerings, richer by the people's sin.
Give to Cæsar what is Cæsar's? yes, but tell me, if you can,Is this superscription Cæsar's here upon our brother man? 30Is not here some other's image, dark and sullied though it be,In this fellow-soul that worships, struggles Godward even as we?
It was not to such a future that the Mayflower's prow was turned,Not to such a faith the martyrs clung, exulting as they burned;Not by such laws are men fashioned, earnest, simple, valiant, greatIn the household virtues whereon rests the unconquerable state.
Ah! there is a higher gospel, overhead the God-roof springs,And each glad, obedient planet like a golden shuttle singsThrough the web which Time is weaving in his never-resting loom,Weaving seasons many-colored, bringing prophecy to doom. 40
Think you Truth a farthing rushlight, to be pinched out when you willWith your deft official fingers, and your politicians' skill?Is your God a wooden fetish, to be hidden out of sightThat his block eyes may not see you do the thing that is not right?
But the Destinies think not so; to their judgment-chamber loneComes no noise of popular clamor, there Fame's trumpet is not blown;Your majorities they reck not; that you grant, but then you sayThat you differ with them somewhat,—which is stronger, you or they?
Patient are they as the insects that build islands in the deep;They hurl not the bolted thunder, but their silent way they keep; 50Where they have been that we know; where empires towered that werenot just;Lo! the skulking wild fox scratches in a little heap of dust.
Said Christ our Lord, 'I will go and seeHow the men, my brethren, believe in me.'He passed not again through the gate of birth,But made himself known to the children of earth.
Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and kings,'Behold, now, the Giver of all good things;Go to, let us welcome with pomp and stateHim who alone is mighty and great.'
With carpets of gold the ground they spreadWherever the Son of Man should tread,And in palace-chambers lofty and rareThey lodged him, and served him with kingly fare.
Great organs surged through arches dimTheir jubilant floods in praise of him;And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall,He saw his own image high over all.
But still, wherever his steps they led,The Lord in sorrow bent down his head,And from under the heavy foundation-stones,The son of Mary heard bitter groans.
And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall,He marked great fissures that rent the wall,And opened wider and yet more wideAs the living foundation heaved and sighed.
'Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then,On the bodies and souls of living men?And think ye that building shall endure,Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?
'With gates of silver and bars of goldYe have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold;I have heard the dropping of their tearsIn heaven these eighteen hundred years.'
'O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt,We build but as our fathers built;Behold thine images, how they stand,Sovereign and sole, through all our land.
'Our task is hard,—with sword and flameTo hold thine earth forever the same,And with sharp crooks of steel to keepStill, as thou leftest them, thy sheep.'
Then Christ sought out an artisan,A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,And a motherless girl, whose fingers thinPushed from her faintly want and sin.
These set he in the midst of them,And as they drew back their garment-hem,For fear of defilement, 'Lo, here,' said he,'The images ye have made of me!'