My name is Water: I have spedThrough strange, dark ways, untried before,By pure desire of friendship led,Cochituate's ambassador;He sends four royal gifts by me:Long life, health, peace, and purity.
I'm Ceres' cup-bearer; I pour,For flowers and fruits and all their kin,Her crystal vintage, from of yoreStored in old Earth's selectest bin,Flora's Falernian ripe, since GodThe wine-press of the deluge trod.
In that far isle whence, iron-willed,The New World's sires their bark unmoored,The fairies' acorn-cups I filledUpon the toadstool's silver board,And, 'neath Herne's oak, for Shakespeare's sight,Strewed moss and grass with diamonds bright.
No fairies in the Mayflower came,And, lightsome as I sparkle here,For Mother Bay State, busy dame,I've toiled and drudged this many a year,Throbbed in her engines' iron veins,Twirled myriad spindles for her gains.
I, too, can weave: the warp I setThrough which the sun his shuttle throws,And, bright as Noah saw it, yetFor you the arching rainbow glows,A sight in Paradise deniedTo unfallen Adam and his bride.
When Winter held me in his grip,You seized and sent me o'er the wave,Ungrateful! in a prison-ship;But I forgive, not long a slave,For, soon as summer south-winds blew,Homeward I fled, disguised as dew.
For countless services I'm fit,Of use, of pleasure, and of gain,But lightly from all bonds I flit,Nor lose my mirth, nor feel a stain;From mill and wash-tub I escape,And take in heaven my proper shape.
So, free myself, to-day, elateI come from far o'er hill and mead,And here, Cochituate's envoy, waitTo be your blithesome Ganymede,And brim your cups with nectar trueThat never will make slaves of you.
The same good blood that now refillsThe dotard Orient's shrunken veins,The same whose vigor westward thrills,Bursting Nevada's silver chains,Poured here upon the April grass,Freckled with red the herbage new;On reeled the battle's trampling mass,Back to the ash the bluebird flew.
Poured here in vain;—that sturdy bloodWas meant to make the earth more green,But in a higher, gentler moodThan broke this April noon serene;Two graves are here: to mark the place,At head and foot, an unhewn stone,O'er which the herald lichens traceThe blazon of Oblivion.
These men were brave enough, and trueTo the hired soldier's bull-dog creed;What brought them here they never knew,They fought as suits the English breed:They came three thousand miles, and died,To keep the Past upon its throne:Unheard, beyond the ocean tide,Their English mother made her moan.
The turf that covers them no thrillSends up to fire the heart and brain;No stronger purpose nerves the will,No hope renews its youth again:From farm to farm the Concord glides,And trails my fancy with its flow;O'erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides,Twinned in the river's heaven below.
But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs,Proud of thy birth and neighbor's right,Where sleep the heroic villagersBorne red and stiff from Concord fight;Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun,Or Seth, as ebbed the life away,What earthquake rifts would shoot and runWorld-wide from that short April fray?
What then? With heart and hand they wrought,According to their village light;'Twas for the Future that they fought,Their rustic faith in what was right.Upon earth's tragic stage they burstUnsummoned, in the humble sock;Theirs the fifth act; the curtain firstRose long ago on Charles's block.
Their graves have voices; if they threwDice charged with fates beyond their ken,Yet to their instincts they were true,And had the genius to be men.Fine privilege of Freedom's host,Of humblest soldiers for the Right!—Age after age ye hold your post,Your graves send courage forth, and might.
We, too, have autumns, when our leavesDrop loosely through the dampened air,When all our good seems bound in sheaves,And we stand reaped and bare.
Our seasons have no fixed returns,Without our will they come and go;At noon our sudden summer burns,Ere sunset all is snow.
But each day brings less summer cheer,Crimps more our ineffectual spring,And something earlier every yearOur singing birds take wing.
As less the olden glow abides,And less the chillier heart aspires,With drift-wood beached in past spring-tidesWe light our sullen fires.
By the pinched rushlight's starving beamWe cower and strain our wasted sight,To stitch youth's shroud up, seam by seam,In the long arctic night.
It was not so—we once were youngWhen Spring, to womanly Summer turning,Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung,In the red sunrise burning.
We trusted then, aspired, believedThat earth could be remade to-morrow;Ah, why be ever undeceived?Why give up faith for sorrow?
O thou, whose days are yet all spring,Faith, blighted one, is past retrieving;Experience is a dumb, dead thing;The victory's in believing.
Are we, then, wholly fallen? Can it beThat thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringestTheir spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea,Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom flingest,As on an altar,—can it be that yeHave wasted inspiration on dead ears,Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains?The people's heart is like a harp for yearsHung where some petrifying torrent rainsIts slow-incrusting spray: the stiffened chords 10Faint and more faint make answer to the tearsThat drip upon them: idle are all words:Only a golden plectrum wakes the toneDeep buried 'neath that ever-thickening stone.
We are not free: doth Freedom, then, consistIn musing with our faces toward the Past,While petty cares and crawling interests twistTheir spider-threads about us, which at lastGrow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bindIn formal narrowness heart, soul and mind? 20Freedom is re-created year by year,In hearts wide open on the Godward side,In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere,In minds that sway the future like a tide.He broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes;She chooses men for her august abodes,Building them fair and fronting to the dawn;Yet, when we seek her, we but find a fewLight footprints, leading mornward through the dew:Before the day had risen, she was gone. 30
And we must follow: swiftly runs she on,And, if our steps should slacken in despair,Half turns her face, half smiles through golden hair,Forever yielding, never wholly won:That is not love which pauses in the raceTwo close-linked names on fleeting sand to trace;Freedom gained yesterday is no more ours;Men gather but dry seeds of last year's flowers;Still there's a charm uugranted, still a grace,Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained, 40Makes us Possession's languid hand let fall;'Tis but a fragment of ourselves is gained,The Future brings us more, but never all.
And, as the finder of some unknown realm,Mounting a summit whence he thinks to seeOn either side of him the imprisoning sea,Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelmThe valley-land, peak after snowy peakStretch out of sight, each like a silver helmBeneath its plume of smoke, sublime and bleak, 50And what he thought an island finds to beA continent to him first oped,—so weCan from our height of Freedom look alongA boundless future, ours if we be strong;Or if we shrink, better remount our shipsAnd, fleeing God's express design, trace backThe hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet-trackTo Europe entering her blood-red eclipse.
* * * * *
Therefore of Europe now I will not doubt,For the broad foreheads surely win the day, 60And brains, not crowns or soul-gelt armies, weighIn Fortune's scales: such dust she brushes out.Most gracious are the conquests of the Word,Gradual and silent as a flower's increase,And the best guide from old to new is Peace—Yet, Freedom, than canst sanctify the sword!
Bravely to do whate'er the time demands,Whether with pen or sword, and not to flinch,This is the task that fits heroic hands;So are Truth's boundaries widened inch by inch. 70
I do not love the Peace which tyrants make;The calm she breeds let the sword's lightning break!It is the tyrants who have beaten outPloughshares and pruning-hooks to spears and swords,And shall I pause and moralize and doubt?Whose veins run water let him mete his words!Each fetter sundered is the whole world's gain!And rather than humanity remainA pearl beneath the feet of Austrian swine,Welcome to me whatever breaks a chain. 80Thatsurely is of God, and all divine!
Bowing thyself in dust before a Book,And thinking the great God is thine alone,O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brookWhat gods the heathen carves in wood and stone,As if the Shepherd who from the outer coldLeads all his shivering lambs to one sure foldWere careful for the fashion of his crook.
There is no broken reed so poor and base,No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue,But He therewith the ravening wolf can chase,And guide his flock to springs and pastures new;Through ways unloosed for, and through many lands,Far from the rich folds built with human hands,The gracious footprints of his love I trace.
And what art thou, own brother of the clod,That from his hand the crook wouldst snatch awayAnd shake instead thy dry and sapless rod,To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day?Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew,That with thy idol-volume's covers twoWouldst make a jail to coop the living God?
Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ-toneBy prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught,Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brainsDrew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought,Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire,Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desireTo weld anew the spirit's broken chains.
God is not dumb, that He should speak no more;If thou hast wanderings in the wildernessAnd find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor;There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less,Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends,Intent on manna still and mortal ends,Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore.
Slowly the Bible of the race is writ,And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone;Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it,Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan.While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud,While thunder's surges burst on cliffs and cloud,Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.
Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill,And, minuting the long day's loss,The cedar's shadow, slow and still,Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss.
Warm noon brims full the valley's cup,The aspen's leaves are scarce astir;Only the little mill sends upIts busy, never-ceasing burr.
Climbing the loose-piled wall that hemsThe road along the mill-pond's brink,From 'neath the arching barberry-stems,My footstep scares the shy chewink.
Beneath a bony buttonwoodThe mill's red door lets forth the din;The whitened miller, dust-imbued,Flits past the square of dark within.
No mountain torrent's strength is here;Sweet Beaver, child of forest still,Heaps its small pitcher to the ear,And gently waits the miller's will.
Swift slips Undine along the raceUnheard, and then, with flashing bound,Floods the dull wheel with light and grace,And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round.
The miller dreams not at what costThe quivering millstones hum and whirl,Nor how for every turn are tostArmfuls of diamond and of pearl.
But Summer cleared my happier eyesWith drops of some celestial juice,To see how Beauty underliesForevermore each form of use.
And more; methought I saw that flood,Which now so dull and darkling steals,Thick, here and there, with human blood,To turn the world's laborious wheels.
No more than doth the miller there,Shut in our several cells, do weKnow with what waste of beauty rareMoves every day's machinery.
Surely the wiser time shall comeWhen this fine overplus of might,No longer sullen, slow, and dumb,Shall leap to music and to light.
In that new childhood of the EarthLife of itself shall dance and play,Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make mirth,And labor meet delight halfway.
A race of nobles may die out,A royal line may leave no heir;Wise Nature sets no guards aboutHer pewter plate and wooden ware.
But they fail not, the kinglier breed,Who starry diadems attain;To dungeon, axe, and stake succeedHeirs of the old heroic strain.
The zeal of Nature never cools,Nor is she thwarted of her ends;When gapped and dulled her cheaper tools,Then she a saint and prophet spends.
Land of the Magyars! though it beThe tyrant may relink his chain,Already thine the victory,As the just Future measures gain.
Thou hast succeeded, thou hast wonThe deathly travail's amplest worth;A nation's duty thou hast done,Giving a hero to our earth.
And he, let come what will of woeHath saved the land he strove to save;No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow,Can quench the voice shall haunt his grave.
'I Kossuth am: O Future, thouThat clear'st the just and blott'st the vile,O'er this small dust in reverence bow,Remembering what I was erewhile.
'I was the chosen trump wherethroughOur God sent forth awakening breath;Came chains? Came death? The strain He blewSounds on, outliving chains and death.'
1848
I did not praise thee when the crowd,'Witched with the moment's inspiration,Vexed thy still ether with hosannas loud,And stamped their dusty adoration;I but looked upward with the rest,And, when they shouted Greatest, whispered Best.
They raised thee not, but rose to thee,Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging;So on some marble Phoebus the swol'n seaMight leave his worthless seaweed clinging,But pious hands, with reverent care,Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare.
Now thou'rt thy plain, grand self again,Thou art secure from panegyric,Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain,And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric;This side the Blessed Isles, no treeGrows green enough to make a wreath for thee.
Nor can blame cling to thee; the snowFrom swinish footprints takes no staining,But, leaving the gross soils of earth below,Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining,And unresentful falls again,To beautify the world with dews and rain.
The highest duty to mere man vouchsafedWas laid on thee,—out of wild chaos,When the roused popular ocean foamed and chafedAnd vulture War from his ImausSnuffed blood, to summon homely Peace,And show that only order is release.
To carve thy fullest thought, what thoughTime was not granted? Aye in history,Like that Dawn's face which baffled AngeloLeft shapeless, grander for its mystery,Thy great Design shall stand, and dayFlood its blind front from Orients far away.
Who says thy day is o'er? Control,My heart, that bitter first emotion;While men shall reverence the steadfast soul,The heart in silent self-devotionBreaking, the mild, heroic mien,Thou'lt need no prop of marble, Lamartine.
If France reject thee, 'tis not thine,But her own, exile that she utters;Ideal France, the deathless, the divine,Will be where thy white pennon flutters,As once the nobler Athens wentWith Aristides into banishment.
No fitting metewand hath To-dayFor measuring spirits of thy stature;Only the Future can reach up to layThe laurel on that lofty nature,Bard, who with some diviner artHast touched the bard's true lyre, a nation's heart.
Swept by thy hand, the gladdened chords,Crashed now in discords fierce by others,Gave forth one note beyond all skill of words,And chimed together, We are brothers.O poem unsurpassed! it ranAll round the world, unlocking man to man.
France is too poor to pay aloneThe service of that ample spirit;Paltry seem low dictatorship and throne,Weighed with thy self-renouncing merit;They had to thee been rust and loss;Thy aim was higher,—thou hast climbed a Cross!
There are who triumph in a losing cause,Who can put on defeat, as 'twere a wreathUnwithering in the adverse popular breath,Safe from the blasting demagogue's applause;'Tis they who stand for Freedom and God's laws.
And so stands Palfrey now, as Marvell stood,Loyal to Truth dethroned, nor could be wooedTo trust the playful tiger's velvet paws:And if the second Charles brought in decayOf ancient virtue, if it well might wringSouls that had broadened 'neath a nobler day,To see a losel, marketable kingFearfully watering with his realm's best bloodCromwell's quenched bolts, that erst had cracked and flamed,Scaring, through all their depths of courtier mud,Europe's crowned bloodsuckers,—how more ashamedOught we to be, who see Corruption's floodStill rise o'er last year's mark, to mine awayOur brazen idol's feet of treacherous clay!
O utter degradation! Freedom turnedSlavery's vile bawd, to cozen and betrayTo the old lecher's clutch a maiden prey,If so a loathsome pander's fee be earned!And we are silent,—we who daily treadA soil sublime, at least, with heroes' graves!—Beckon no more, shades of the noble dead!Be dumb, ye heaven-touched lips of winds and waves!Or hope to rouse some Coptic dullard, hidAges ago, wrapt stiffly, fold on fold,With cerements close, to wither in the cold,Forever hushed, and sunless pyramid!
Beauty and Truth, and all that these contain,Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet;We climb to them through years of sweat and pain;Without long struggle, none did e'er attainThe downward look from Quiet's blissful seat:Though present loss may be the hero's part,Yet none can rob him of the victor heartWhereby the broad-realmed future is subdued,And Wrong, which now insults from triumph's car,Sending her vulture hope to raven far,Is made unwilling tributary of Good.
O Mother State, how quenched thy Sinai fires!Is there none left of thy stanch Mayflower breed?No spark among the ashes of thy sires,Of Virtue's altar-flame the kindling seed?Are these thy great men, these that cringe and creep,And writhe through slimy ways to place and power?—How long, O Lord, before thy wrath shall reapOur frail-stemmed summer prosperings in their flower?Oh for one hour of that undaunted stockThat went with Vane and Sidney to the block!
Oh for a whiff of Naseby, that would sweep,With its stern Puritan besom, all this chaffFrom the Lord's threshing-floor! Yet more than halfThe victory is attained, when one or two,Through the fool's laughter and the traitor's scorn,Beside thy sepulchre can bide the morn,Crucified Truth, when thou shalt rise anew.
'Some time afterward, it was reported to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all colors.'—Letter of H.G. Otis.
In a small chamber, friendless and unseen,Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young man;The place was dark, unfurnitured, and mean;Yet there the freedom of a race began.
Help came but slowly; surely no man yetPut lever to the heavy world with less:What need of help? He knew how types were set,He had a dauntless spirit, and a press.
Such earnest natures are the fiery pith,The compact nucleus, round which systems grow;Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith,And whirls impregnate with the central glow.
O Truth! O Freedom! how are ye still bornIn the rude stable, in the manger nurst!What humble hands unbar those gates of mornThrough which the splendors of the New Day burst!
What! shall one monk, scarce known beyond his cell,Front Rome's far-reaching bolts, and scorn her frown?Brave Luther answered YES; that thunder's swellRocked Europe, and discharmed the triple crown.
Whatever can be known of earth we know,Sneered Europe's wise men, in their snail-shells curled;No! said one man in Genoa, and that NoOut of the darkness summoned this New World.
Who is it will not dare himself to trust?Who is it hath not strength to stand alone?Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward MUST?He and his works, like sand, from earth are blown.
Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here!See one straightforward conscience put in pawnTo win a world; see the obedient sphereBy bravery's simple gravitation drawn!
Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old,And by the Present's lips repeated still,In our own single manhood to be bold,Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?
We stride the river daily at its spring,Nor, in our childless thoughtlessness, foreseeWhat myriad vassal streams shall tribute bring,How like an equal it shall greet the sea.
O small beginnings, ye are great and strong,Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain!Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong,Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain.
Woe worth the hour when it is crimeTo plead the poor dumb bondman's cause,When all that makes the heart sublime,The glorious throbs that conquer time,Are traitors to our cruel laws!
He strove among God's suffering poorOne gleam of brotherhood to send;The dungeon oped its hungry doorTo give the truth one martyr more,Then shut,—and here behold the end!
O Mother State! when this was done,No pitying throe thy bosom gave;Silent thou saw'st the death-shroud spun,And now thou givest to thy sonThe stranger's charity,—a grave.
Must it be thus forever? No!The hand of God sows not in vain,Long sleeps the darkling seed below,The seasons come, and change, and go,And all the fields are deep with grain.
Although our brother lie asleep,Man's heart still struggles, still aspires;His grave shall quiver yet, while deepThrough the brave Bay State's pulses leapHer ancient energies and fires.
When hours like this the senses' gushHave stilled, and left the spirit room,It hears amid the eternal hushThe swooping pinions' dreadful rush,That bring the vengeance and the doom;—
Not man's brute vengeance, such as rendsWhat rivets man to man apart,—God doth not so bring round his ends,But waits the ripened time, and sendsHis mercy to the oppressor's heart.
I do not come to weep above thy pall,And mourn the dying-out of noble powers,The poet's clearer eye should see, in allEarth's seeming woe, seed of immortal flowers.
Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deepOf everlasting Soul her strength abides,From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap,Through Nature's veins her strength, undying, tides.
Peace is more strong than war, and gentleness,Where force were vain, makes conquest o'er the wave; 10And love lives on and hath a power to bless,When they who loved are hidden in the grave.
The sculptured marble brags of deathstrewn fields,And Glory's epitaph is writ in blood;But Alexander now to Plato yields,Clarkson will stand where Wellington hath stood.
I watch the circle of the eternal years,And read forever in the storied pageOne lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears,One onward step of Truth from age to age. 20
The poor are crushed: the tyrants link their chain;The poet sings through narrow dungeon-grates;Man's hope lies quenched; and, lo! with steadfast gainFreedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates.
Men slay the prophets; fagot, rack, and crossMake up the groaning record of the past;But Evil's triumphs are her endless loss,And sovereign Beauty wins the soul at last.
No power can die that ever wrought for Truth;Thereby a law of Nature it became, 30And lives unwithered in its blithesome youth,When he who called it forth is but a name.
Therefore I cannot think thee wholly gone;The better part of thee is with us still;Thy soul its hampering clay aside hath thrown,And only freer wrestles with the ill.
Thou livest in the life of all good things;What words thou spak'st for Freedom shall not die;Thou sleepest not, for now thy Love hath wingsTo soar where hence thy Hope could hardly fly. 40
And often, from that other world, on thisSome gleams from great souls gone before may shine,To shed on struggling hearts a clearer bliss,And clothe the Right with lustre more divine.
Thou art not idle: in thy higher sphereThy spirit bends itself to loving tasks,And strength to perfect what it dreamed of hereIs all the crown and glory that it asks.
For sure, in Heaven's wide chambers, there is roomFor love and pity, and for helpful deeds; 50Else were our summons thither but a doomTo life more vain than this in clayey weeds.
From off the starry mountain-peak of song,Thy spirit shows me, in the coming time,An earth unwithered by the foot of wrong,A race revering its own soul sublime.
What wars, what martyrdoms, what crimes, may come,Thou knowest not, nor I; but God will leadThe prodigal soul from want and sorrow home,And Eden ope her gates to Adam's seed. 60
Farewell! good man, good angel now! this handSoon, like thine own, shall lose its cunning too;Soon shall this soul, like thine, bewildered stand,Then leap to thread the free, unfathomed blue:
When that day comes, oh, may this hand grow cold,Busy, like thine, for Freedom and the Right;Oh, may this soul, like thine, be ever boldTo face dark Slavery's encroaching blight!
This laurel-leaf I cast upon thy bier;Let worthier hands than these thy wreath intwine; 70Upon thy hearse I shed no useless tear,—For us weep rather thou in calm divine!
Another star 'neath Time's horizon dropped,To gleam o'er unknown lands and seas;Another heart that beat for freedom stopped,—What mournful words are these!
O Love Divine, that claspest our tired earth,And lullest it upon thy heart,Thou knowest how much a gentle soul is worthTo teach men what thou art!
His was a spirit that to all thy poorWas kind as slumber after pain:Why ope so soon thy heaven-deep Quiet's doorAnd call him home again?
Freedom needs all her poets: it is theyWho give her aspirations wings,And to the wiser law of music swayHer wild imaginings.
Yet thou hast called him, nor art thou unkind,O Love Divine, for 'tis thy willThat gracious natures leave their love behindTo work for Mercy still.
Let laurelled marbles weigh on other tombs,Let anthems peal for other dead,Rustling the bannered depth of minster-gloomsWith their exulting spread.
His epitaph shall mock the short-lived stone,No lichen shall its lines efface,He needs these few and simple lines aloneTo mark his resting-place:
'Here lies a Poet. Stranger, if to theeHis claim to memory be obscure,If thou wouldst learn how truly great was he,Go, ask it of the poor.'
According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus partook of the Last Supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but one of the keepers having broken this condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur's court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the most exquisite of his poems.
The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to include, not only other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the supposed date of King Arthur's reign.
Over his keys the musing organist,Beginning doubtfully and far away,First lets his fingers wander as they list,And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay:Then, as the touch of his loved instrumentGives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme,First guessed by faint auroral flushes sentAlong the wavering vista of his dream.
* * * * *
Not only around our infancyDoth heaven with all its splendors lie; 10Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,We Sinais climb and know it not.
Over our manhood bend the skies;Against our fallen and traitor livesThe great winds utter prophecies;With our faint hearts the mountain strives;Its arms outstretched, the druid woodWaits with its benedicite;And to our age's drowsy WoodStill shouts the inspiring sea. 20
Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,The priest hath his lee who comes and shrives us,We bargain for the graves we lie in;At the devil's booth are all things sold,Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;For a cap and bells our lives we pay,Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking:'Tis heaven alone that is given away,'Tis only God may be had for the asking 30No price is set on the lavish summer;June may be had by the poorest comer.
And what is so rare as a day in June?Then, if ever, come perfect days;Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,And over it softly her warm ear lays;Whether we look, or whether we listen,We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;Every clod feels a stir of might,An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40And, groping blindly above it for light,Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;The flush of life may well be seenThrilling back over hills and valleys;The cowslip startles in meadows green,The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,And there's never a leaf nor a blade too meanTo be some happy creature's palace;The little bird sits at his door in the sun,Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50And lets his illumined being o'errunWith the deluge of summer it receives;His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,—In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
Now is the high-tide of the year,And whatever of life hath ebbed awayComes flooding back with a ripply cheer,Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 60Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,We are happy now because God wills it;No matter how barren the past may have been,'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;We sit in the warm shade and feel right wellHow the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowingThat skies are clear and grass is growing;The breeze comes whispering in our ear,That dandelions are blossoming near, 70That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,That the river is bluer than the sky,That the robin is plastering his house hard by;And if the breeze kept the good news back,For other couriers we should not lack;We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,—And hark! how clear bold chanticleer,Warmed with the new wine of the year,Tells all in his lusty crowing!
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 80Everything is happy now,Everything is upward striving;'Tis as easy now for the heart to be trueAs for grass to be green or skies to be blue,—'Tis the natural way of living:Who knows whither the clouds have fled?In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake;And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;The soul partakes the season's youth, 90And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woeLie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.What wonder if Sir Launfal nowRemembered the keeping of his vow?
'My golden spurs now bring to me,And bring to me my richest mail,For to-morrow I go over land and seaIn search of the Holy Grail;Shall never a bed for me be spread, 100Nor shall a pillow be under my head,Till I begin my vow to keep;Here on the rushes will I sleep,And perchance there may come a vision trueEre day create the world anew.'Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim,Slumber fell like a cloud on him,And into his soul the vision flew.
The crows flapped over by twos and threes,In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 110The little birds sang as if it wereThe one day of summer in all the year,And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees:The castle alone in the landscape layLike an outpost of winter, dull and gray:'Twas the proudest hall in the North Countree,And never its gates might opened be,Save to lord or lady of high degree;Summer besieged it on every side,But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 120She could not scale the chilly wall,Though around it for leagues her pavilions tallStretched left and right,Over the hills and out of sight;Green and broad was every tent,And out of each a murmur wentTill the breeze fell off at night.
The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang,And through the dark arch a charger sprang,Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 130In his gilded mail, that flamed so brightIt seemed the dark castle had gathered allThose shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wallIn his siege of three hundred summers long,And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf,Had cast them forth: so, young and strong,And lightsome as a locust-leaf,Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail,To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail.
It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 140And morning in the young knight's heart;Only the castle moodilyRebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free,And gloomed by itself apart;The season brimmed all other things upFull as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup.
As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate,He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same,Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate;And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; 150The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill,The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl,And midway its leap his heart stood stillLike a frozen waterfall;For this man, so foul and bent of stature,Rasped harshly against his dainty nature,And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,—So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn.
The leper raised not the gold from the dust:'Better to me the poor man's crust, 160Better the blessing of the poor,Though I turn me empty from his door;That is no true alms which the hand can hold;He gives only the worthless goldWho gives from a sense of duty;But he who gives but a slender mite,And gives to that which is out of sight,That thread of the all-sustaining BeautyWhich runs through all and doth all unite,—The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 170The heart outstretches its eager palms,For a god goes with it and makes it storeTo the soul that was starving in darkness before.'
Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,From the snow five thousand summers old;On open wold and hilltop bleakIt had gathered all the cold,And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek;It carried a shiver everywhereFrom the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 180The little brook heard it and built a roof'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof;All night by the white stars' frosty gleamsHe groined his arches and matched his beams;Slender and clear were his crystal sparsAs the lashes of light that trim the stars:He sculptured every summer delightIn his halls and chambers out of sight;Sometimes his tinkling waters sliptDown through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 190Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed treesBending to counterfeit a breeze;Sometimes the roof no fretwork knewBut silvery mosses that downward grew;Sometimes it was carved in sharp reliefWith quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;Sometimes it was simply smooth and clearFor the gladness of heaven to shine through, and hereHe had caught the nodding bulrush-topsAnd hung them thickly with diamond drops, 200That crystalled the beams of moon and sun,And made a star of every one:No mortal builder's most rare deviceCould match this winter-palace of ice;'Twas as if every image that mirrored layIn his depths serene through the summer day,Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky,Lest the happy model should be lost,Had been mimicked in fairy masonryBy the elfin builders of the frost. 210
Within the hall are song and laughter,The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly,And sprouting is every corbel and rafterWith lightsome green of ivy and holly;Through the deep gulf of the chimney wideWallows the Yule-log's roaring tide;The broad flame-pennons droop and flapAnd belly and tug as a flag in the wind;Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap,Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 220And swift little troops of silent sparks,Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear,Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darksLike herds of startled deer.
But the wind without was eager and sharp,Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp,And rattles and wringsThe icy strings,Singing, in dreary monotone,A Christmas carol of its own, 230Whose burden still, as he might guess,Was 'Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!'The voice of the seneschal flared like a torchAs he shouted the wanderer away from the porch,And he sat in the gateway and saw all nightThe great hall-fire, so cheery and bold,Through the window-slits of the castle old,Build out its piers of ruddy lightAgainst the drift of the cold.
There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 240The bare boughs rattled shudderingly;The river was dumb and could not speak,For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun;A single crow on the tree-top bleakFrom his shining feathers shed off the cold sun;Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold,As if her veins were sapless and old,And she rose up decrepitlyFor a last dim look at earth and sea.
Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 250For another heir in his earldom sate;An old, bent man, worn out and frail,He came back from seeking the Holy Grail;Little he recked of his earldom's loss,No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross,But deep in his soul the sign he wore,The badge of the suffering and the poor.
Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spareWas idle mail 'gainst the barbèd air,For it was just at the Christmas time; 260So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime,And sought for a shelter from cold and snowIn the light and warmth of long-ago;He sees the snake-like caravan crawlO'er the edge of the desert, black and small,Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one,He can count the camels in the sun,As over the red-hot sands they passTo where, in its slender necklace of grass,The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 270And with its own self like an infant played,And waved its signal of palms.
'For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;'The happy camels may reach the spring,But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing,The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone,That cowers beside him, a thing as loneAnd white as the ice-isles of Northern seasIn the desolate horror of his disease.
And Sir Launfal said, 'I behold in thee 280An image of Him who died on the tree;Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns,And to thy life were not deniedThe wounds in the hands and feet and side:Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me;Behold, through him, I give to thee!'
Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyesAnd looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway heRemembered in what a haughtier guise 290He had flung an alms to leprosie,When he girt his young life up in gilded mailAnd set forth in search of the Holy Grail.The heart within him was ashes and dust;He parted in twain his single crust,He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink,And gave the leper to eat and drink.'Twas a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread,'Twas water out of a wooden bowl,—Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 300And 'twas red wine he drank with his thirsty soul.
As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face,A light shone round about the place;The leper no longer crouched at his side,But stood before him glorified,Shining and tall and fair and straightAs the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,—Himself the Gate whereby men canEnter the temple of God in Man.
His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, 310And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine,That mingle their softness and quiet in oneWith the shaggy unrest they float down upon;And the voice that was softer than silence said,'Lo, it is I, be not afraid!In many climes, without avail,Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail;Behold, it is here,—this cup which thouDidst fill at the streamlet for me but now;This crust is my body broken for thee, 320This water his blood that died on the tree;The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,In whatso we share with another's need;Not what we give, but what we share,For the gift without the giver is bare;Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.'
Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound:'The Grail in my castle here is found!Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 330Let it be the spider's banquet hall;He must be fenced with stronger mailWho would seek and find the Holy Grail.'
The castle gate stands open now,And the wanderer is welcome to the hallAs the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough;No longer scowl the turrets tall,The Summer's long siege at last is o'er;When the first poor outcast went in at the door,She entered with him in disguise,And mastered the fortress by surprise; 341There is no spot she loves so well on ground,She lingers and smiles there the whole year round;The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's landHas hall and bower at his command;And there's no poor man in the North CountreeBut is lord of the earldom as much as he.
December, 1846.
Dear M——By way of saving time,I'll do this letter up in rhyme,Whose slim stream through four pages flowsEre one is packed with tight-screwed prose,Threading the tube of an epistle,Smooth as a child's breath through a whistle.
The great attraction now of allIs the 'Bazaar' at Faneuil Hall,Where swarm the anti-slavery folksAs thick, dear Miller, as your jokes. 10There's GARRISON, his features veryBenign for an incendiary,Beaming forth sunshine through his glassesOn the surrounding lads and lasses,(No bee could blither be, or brisker,)—A Pickwick somehow turned John Ziska,His bump of firmness swelling upLike a rye cupcake from its cup.And there, too, was his English tea-set, 19Which in his ear a kind of flea set,His Uncle Samuel for its beautyDemanding sixty dollars duty,('Twas natural Sam should serve his trunk ill;For G., you know, has cut his uncle,)Whereas, had he but once made tea in't,His uncle's ear had had the flea in't,There being not a cent of dutyOn any pot that ever drew tea.
There was MARIA CHAPMAN, too,With her swift eyes of clear steel-blue, 30The coiled-up mainspring of the Fair,Originating everywhereThe expansive force without a soundThat whirls a hundred wheels around,Herself meanwhile as calm and stillAs the bare crown of Prospect Hill;A noble woman, brave and apt,Cumæan sibyl not more rapt,Who might, with those fair tresses shorn,The Maid of Orleans' casque have worn, 40Herself the Joan of our Ark,For every shaft a shining mark.
And there, too, was ELIZA FOLLEN,Who scatters fruit-creating pollenWhere'er a blossom she can findHardy enough for Truth's north wind,Each several point of all her faceTremblingly bright with the inward grace,As if all motion gave it lightLike phosphorescent seas at night.
There jokes our EDMUND, plainly son 51Of him who bearded Jefferson,A non-resistant by conviction,But with a bump in contradiction,So that whene'er it gets a chanceHis pen delights to play the lance,And—you may doubt it, or believe it—Full at the head of Joshua LeavittThe very calumet he'd launch,And scourge him with the olive branch. 60A master with the foils of wit,'Tis natural he should love a hit;A gentleman, withal, and scholar,Only base things excite his choler,And then his satire's keen and thinAs the lithe blade of Saladin.Good letters are a gift apart,And his are gems of Flemish art,True offspring of the fireside Muse,Not a rag-gathering of news 70Like a new hopfield which is all poles,But of one blood with Horace Walpole's.
There, with cue hand behind his back,Stands PHILLIPS buttoned in a sack,Our Attic orator, our Chatham;Old fogies, when he lightens at 'em,Shrivel like leaves; to him 'tis grantedAlways to say the word that's wanted,So that he seems but speaking clearerThe tiptop thought of every hearer; 80Each flash his brooding heart lets fallFires what's combustible in all,And sends the applauses bursting inLike an exploded magazine.His eloquence no frothy show,The gutter's street-polluted flow,No Mississippi's yellow floodWhose shoalness can't be seen for mud;—So simply clear, serenely deep, 89So silent-strong its graceful sweep,None measures its unrippling forceWho has not striven to stem its course;How fare their barques who think to playWith smooth Niagara's mane of spray,Let Austin's total shipwreck say.He never spoke a word too much—Except of Story, or some such,Whom, though condemned by ethics strict,The heart refuses to convict.
Beyond; a crater in each eye, 100Sways brown, broad-shouldered PILLSBURY,Who tears up words like trees by the roots,A Theseus in stout cow-hide boots,The wager of eternal warAgainst that loathsome MinotaurTo whom we sacrifice each yearThe best blood of our Athens here,(Dear M., pray brush up your Lempriere.)A terrible denouncer he,Old Sinai burns unquenchably 110Upon his lips; he well might be aHot-blazing soul from fierce Judea,Habakkuk, Ezra, or Hosea.His words are red hot iron searers,And nightmare-like he mounts his hearers,Spurring them like avenging Fate, orAs Waterton his alligator.
Hard by, as calm as summer even,Smiles the reviled and pelted STEPHEN,The unappeasable Boanerges 120To all the Churches and the Clergies,The grimsavantwho, to completeHis own peculiar cabinet,Contrived to label 'mong his kicksOne from the followers of Hicks;Who studied mineralogyNot with soft book upon the knee,But learned the properties of stonesBy contact sharp of flesh and bones,And made theexperimentum crucis130With his own body's vital juices;A man with caoutchouc endurance,A perfect gem for life insurance,A kind of maddened John the Baptist,To whom the harshest word comes aptest,Who, struck by stone or brick ill-starred,Hurls back an epithet as hard,Which, deadlier than stone or brick,Has a propensity to stick.His oratory is like the scream 140Of the iron-horse's frenzied steamWhich warns the world to leave wide spaceFor the black engine's swerveless race.Ye men with neckcloths white, I warn you—Habeta whole haymowin cornu.
A Judith, there, turned Quakeress,Sits ABBY in her modest dress,Serving a table quietly,As if that mild and downcast eyeFlashed never, with its scorn intense, 150More than Medea's eloquence.So the same force which shakes its dreadFar-blazing blocks o'er Ætna's head,Along the wires in silence faresAnd messages of commerce bears.No nobler gift of heart and brain,No life more white from spot or stain,Was e'er on Freedom's altar laidThan hers, the simple Quaker maid.
These last three (leaving in the lurch 160Some other themes) assault the Church,Who therefore writes them in her listsAs Satan's limbs and atheists;For each sect has one argumentWhereby the rest to hell are sent,Which serve them like the Graiæ's tooth,Passed round in turn from mouth to mouth;—If anyismshould arise,Then look on it with constable's eyes, 169Tie round its neck a heavyathe-,And give it kittens' hydropathy.This trick with other (useful very) tricksIs laid to the Babylonianmeretrix,But 'twas in vogue before her dayWherever priesthoods had their way,And Buddha's Popes with this struck dumbThe followers of Fi and Fum.
Well, if the world, with prudent fearPay God a seventh of the year,And as a Farmer, who would packAll his religion in one stack, 181For this world works six days in sevenAnd idles on the seventh for Heaven,Expecting, for his Sunday's sowing,In the next world to go a-mowingThe crop of all his meeting-going;—If the poor Church, by power enticed,Finds none so infidel as Christ,Quite backward reads his Gospel meek,(As 'twere in Hebrew writ, not Greek,) 190Fencing the gallows and the swordWith conscripts drafted from his word,And makes one gate of Heaven so wideThat the rich orthodox might rideThrough on their camels, while the poorSquirm through the scant, unyielding door,Which, of the Gospel's straitest size,Is narrower than bead-needles' eyes,What wonder World and Church should callThe true faith atheistical? 200
Yet, after all, 'twixt you and me,Dear Miller, I could never seeThat Sin's and Error's ugly smirchStained the walls only of the Church;There are good priests, and men who takeFreedom's torn cloak for lucre's sake;I can't believe the Church so strong,As some men do, for Right or Wrong,But, for this subject (long and vext)I must refer you to my next, 210As also for a list exactOf goods with which the Hall was packed.
READER!walk up at once (it will soon be too late), and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate.
I like, as a thing that the reader's first fancy may strike, an old fashioned title-page, such as presents a tabular view of the volumes contents,—
(Mrs. Malaprop's Word)
Who accompanies himself with a rub-a-dub-dub, full of spirit and grace, on the top of the tub.
October, the 21st day, in the year '48.
It being the commonest mode of procedure, I premise a few candid remarks
This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come to that very conclusion, I asked their advice when 'twould make no confusion. For though (in the gentlest of ways) they had hinted it was scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it.
I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhymeywinged, with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously planned, digressions chance-hatched, like birds' eggs in the sand, and dawdlings to suit every whimsey's demand (always freeing the bird which I held In my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the tree),—it grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the old woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and laugh; and when, my strained arms with their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, they call it a bull.
Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that is neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a person whom nobody knows, some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than it is becoming to be, that I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in following wherever I wander at pleasure, that, in short, I take more than a young author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer way so like Mephistopheles, that the Public will doubt, as they grope through my rhythm, if in truth I am making funofthem orwiththem.
So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale of my book is already secured. For there is not a poet throughout the whole land but will purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond expectation of being amused in it, by seeing his betters cut up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are something like ten thousand bards in the nation, of that special variety whom the Review and Magazine critics callloftyandtrue, and about thirty thousand (thistribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termedfull of promiseandpleasing. The Public will see by a glance at this schedule, that they cannot expect me to be over-sedulous about courtingthem, since it seems I have got enough fuel made sure of for boiling my pot.
As for such of our poets as find not their names mentioned once in my pages, with praises or blames, let them SEND IN THEIR CARDS, without further DELAY, to my friend G.P. PUTNAM, Esquire, in Broadway, where a LIST will be kept with the strictest regard to the day and the hour of receiving the card. Then, taking them up as I chance to have time (that is, if their names can be twisted in rhyme), I will honestly give each his PROPER POSITION, at the rate of ONE AUTHOR to each NEW EDITION. Thus a PREMIUM is offered sufficiently HIGH (as the magazines say when they tell their best lie) to induce bards to CLUB their resources and buy the balance of every edition, until they have all of them fairly been run through the mill.
One word to such readers (judicious and wise) as read books with something behind the mere eyes, of whom in the country, perhaps, there are two, including myself, gentle reader, and you. All the characters sketched in this slightjeu d'esprit, though, it may be, they seem, here and there, rather free, and drawn from a somewhat too cynical standpoint, aremeantto be faithful, for that is the grand point, and none but an owl would feel sore at a rub from a jester who tells you, without any subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes' tub.