Dear friend, if any man I wished to please,'Twere surely you whose humor's honied easeFlows flecked with gold of thought, whose generous mindSees Paradise regained by all mankind,Whose brave example still to vanward shines,Cheeks the retreat, and spurs our lagging lines. 180Was I too bitter? Who his phrase can chooseThat sees the life-blood of his dearest ooze?I loved my Country so as only theyWho love a mother fit to die for may;I loved her old renown, her stainless fame,—What better proof than that I loathed her shame?That many blamed me could not irk me long,But, if you doubted, must I not be wrong?'Tis not for me to answer; this I know.That man or race so prosperously low 190Sunk in success that wrath they cannot feel,Shall taste the spurn of parting Fortune's heel;For never land long lease of empire wonWhose sons sate silent when base deeds were done.
Curtis, so wrote I thirteen years ago,Tost it unfinished by, and left it so;Found lately, I have pieced it out, or tried,Since time for callid juncture was denied.Some of the verses pleased me, it is true,And still were pertinent,—those honoring you. 200These now I offer: take them, if you will,Like the old hand-grasp, when at Shady HillWe met, or Staten Island, in the daysWhen life was its own spur, nor needed praise.If once you thought me rash, no longer fear;Past my next milestone waits my seventieth year.I mount no longer when the trumpets call;My battle-harness idles on the wall,The spider's castle, camping-ground of dust,Not without dints, and all in front, I trust. 210Shivering sometimes it calls me as it hearsAfar the charge's tramp and clash of spears;But 'tis such murmur only as might beThe sea-shell's lost tradition of the sea,That makes me muse and wonder Where? and When?While from my cliff I watch the waves of menThat climb to break midway their seeming gain,And think it triumph if they shake their chain.Little I ask of Fate; will she refuseSome days of reconcilement with the Muse? 220I take my reed again and blow it freeOf dusty silence, murmuring, 'Sing to me!'And, as its stops my curious touch retries,The stir of earlier instincts I surprise,—Instincts, if less imperious, yet more strong,And happy in the toil that ends with song.
Home am I come: not, as I hoped might be,To the old haunts, too full of ghosts for me,But to the olden dreams that time endears,And the loved books that younger grow with years; 230To country rambles, timing with my treadSome happier verse that carols in my head,Yet all with sense of something vainly mist,Of something lost, but when I never wist.How empty seems to me the populous street,One figure gone I daily loved to meet,—The clear, sweet singer with the crown of snowNot whiter than the thoughts that housed below!And, ah, what absence feel I at my side,Like Dante when he missed his laurelled guide, 240What sense of diminution in the airOnce so inspiring, Emerson not there!But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweetLessen like sound of friends' departing feet,And Death is beautiful as feet of friendComing with welcome at our journey's end;For me Fate gave, whate'er she else denied,A nature sloping to the southern side;I thank her for it, though when clouds ariseSuch natures double-darken gloomy skies. 250I muse upon the margin of the sea,Our common pathway to the new To Be,Watching the sails, that lessen more and more,Of good and beautiful embarked before;With bits of wreck I patch the boat shall bearMe to that unexhausted Otherwhere,Whose friendly-peopled shore I sometimes see,By soft mirage uplifted, beckon me,Nor sadly hear, as lower sinks the sun,My moorings to the past snap one by one. 260
My day began not till the twilight fell,And, lo, in ether from heaven's sweetest well,The New Moon swam divinely isolateIn maiden silence, she that makes my fateHaply not knowing it, or only soAs I the secrets of my sheep may know;Nor ask I more, entirely blest if she,In letting me adore, ennoble meTo height of what the Gods meant making man,As only she and her best beauty can. 10Mine be the love that in itself can findSeed of white thoughts, the lilies of the mind,Seed of that glad surrender of the willThat finds in service self's true purpose still:Love that in outward fairness sees the tentPitched for an inmate far more excellent;Love with a light irradiate to the core,Lit at her lamp, but fed from inborn store;Love thrice-requited with the single joyOf an immaculate vision naught could cloy, 20Dearer because, so high beyond my scope,My life grew rich with her, unbribed by hopeOf other guerdon save to think she knewOne grateful votary paid her all her due;Happy if she, high-radiant there, resignedTo his sure trust her image in his mind.O fairer even than Peace is when she comesHushing War's tumult, and retreating drumsFade to a murmur like the sough of beesHidden among the noon-stilled linden-trees, 30Bringer of quiet, thou that canst allayThe dust and din and travail of the day,Strewer of Silence, Giver of the dewThat doth our pastures and our souls renew,Still dwell remote, still on thy shoreless seaFloat unattained in silent empery,Still light my thoughts, nor listen to a prayerWould make thee less imperishably fair!
Can, then, my twofold nature find contentIn vain conceits of airy blandishment? 40Ask I no more? Since yesterday I taskMy storm-strewn thoughts to tell me what I ask:Faint premenitions of mutation strangeSteal o'er my perfect orb, and, with the change,Myself am changed; the shadow of my earthDarkens the disk of that celestial worthWhich only yesterday could still sufficeUpwards to waft my thoughts in sacrifice;My heightened fancy with its touches warmMoulds to a woman's that ideal form; 50Nor yet a woman's wholly, but divineWith awe her purer essence bred in mine.Was it long brooding on their own surmise,Which, of the eyes engendered, fools the eyes,Or have I seen through that translucent airA Presence shaped in its seclusions bare,My Goddess looking on me from aboveAs look our russet maidens when they love,But high-uplifted, o'er our human heatAnd passion-paths too rough for her pearl feet? 60
Slowly the Shape took outline as I gazedAt her full-orbed or crescent, till, bedazedWith wonder-working light that subtly wroughtMy brain to its own substance, steeping thoughtIn trances such as poppies give, I sawThings shut from vision by sight's sober law,Amorphous, changeful, but defined at lastInto the peerless Shape mine eyes hold fast.This, too, at first I worshipt: soon, like wine,Her eyes, in mine poured, frenzy-philtred mine; 70Passion put Worship's priestly raiment onAnd to the woman knelt, the Goddess gone.Was I, then, more than mortal made? or sheLess than divine that she might mate with me?If mortal merely, could my nature copeWith such o'ermastery of maddening hope?If Goddess, could she feel the blissful woeThat women in their self-surrender know?
Long she abode aloof there in her heaven,Far as the grape-bunch of the Pleiad seven 80Beyond my madness' utmost leap; but hereMine eyes have feigned of late her rapture near,Moulded of mind-mist that broad day dispels,Here in these shadowy woods and brook-lulled dells.
Have no heaven-habitants e'er felt a voidIn hearts sublimed with ichor unalloyed?E'er longed to mingle with a mortal fateIntense with pathos of its briefer date?Could she partake, and live, our human stains?Even with the thought there tingles through my veins 90Sense of unwarned renewal; I, the dead,Receive and house again the ardor fled,As once Alcestis; to the ruddy brimFeel masculine virtue flooding every limb,And life, like Spring returning, brings the keyThat sets my senses from their winter free,Dancing like naked fauns too glad for shame.Her passion, purified to palest flame,Can it thus kindle? Is her purpose this?I will not argue, lest I lose a bliss 100That makes me dream Tithonus' fortune mine,(Or what of it was palpably divineEre came the fruitlessly immortal gift;)I cannot curb my hope's imperious driftThat wings with fire my dull mortality;Though fancy-forged, 'tis all I feel or see.
My Goddess sinks; round Latmos' darkening browTrembles the parting of her presence now,Faint as the perfume left upon the grassBy her limbs' pressure or her feet that pass 110By me conjectured, but conjectured soAs things I touch far fainter substance show.Was it mine eyes' imposture I have seenFlit with the moonbeams on from shade to sheenThrough the wood-openings? Nay, I see her nowOut of her heaven new-lighted, from her browThe hair breeze-scattered, like loose mists that blowAcross her crescent, goldening as they goHigh-kirtled for the chase, and what was shown,Of maiden rondure, like the rose half-blown. 120If dream, turn real! If a vision, stay!Take mortal shape, my philtre's spell obey!If hags compel thee from thy secret skyWith gruesome incantations, why not I,Whose only magic is that I distilA potion, blent of passion, thought, and will,Deeper in reach, in force of fate more rich,Than e'er was juice wrung by Thessalian witchFrom moon-enchanted herbs,—a potion brewedOf my best life in each diviner mood? 130Myself the elixir am, myself the bowlSeething and mantling with my soul of soul.Taste and be humanized: what though the cup,With thy lips frenzied, shatter? Drink it up!If but these arms may clasp, o'erquited so,My world, thy heaven, all life means I shall know.
Sure she hath heard my prayer and granted half,As Gods do who at mortal madness laugh.Yet if life's solid things illusion seem,Why may not substance wear the mask of dream? 140In sleep she comes; she visits me in dreams,And, as her image in a thousand streams,So in my veins, that her obey, she sees,Floating and flaming there, her imagesBear to my little world's remotest zoneGlad messages of her, and her alone.With silence-sandalled Sleep she comes to me,(But softer-footed, sweeter-browed, than she,)In motion gracious as a seagull's wing,And all her bright limbs, moving, seem to sing. 150Let me believe so, then, if so I mayWith the night's bounty feed my beggared day.In dreams I see her lay the goddess downWith bow and quiver, and her crescent-crownFlicker and fade away to dull eclipseAs down to mine she deigns her longed-for lips;And as her neck my happy arms enfold,Flooded and lustred with her loosened gold,She whispers words each sweeter than a kiss:Then, wakened with the shock of sudden bliss, 160My arms are empty, my awakener fled,And, silent in the silent sky o'erhead,But coldly as on ice-plated snow, she gleams,Herself the mother and the child of dreams.
Gone is the time when phantasms could appeaseMy quest phantasmal and bring cheated ease;When, if she glorified my dreams, I feltThrough all my limbs a change immortal meltAt touch of hers illuminate with soul.Not long could I be stilled with Fancy's dole; 170Too soon the mortal mixture in me caughtRed fire from her celestial flame, and foughtFor tyrannous control in all my veins:My fool's prayer was accepted; what remains?Or was it some eidolon merely, sentBy her who rules the shades in banishment,To mock me with her semblance? Were it thus,How 'scape I shame, whose will was traitorous?What shall compensate an ideal dimmed?How blanch again my statue virgin-limbed, 180Soiled with the incense-smoke her chosen priestPoured more profusely as within decreasedThe fire unearthly, fed with coals from farWithin the soul's shrine? Could my fallen starBe set in heaven again by prayers and tearsAnd quenchless sacrifice of all my years,How would the victim to the flamen leap,And life for life's redemption paid hold cheap!
But what resource when she herself descendsFrom her blue throne, and o'er her vassal bends 190That shape thrice-deified by love, those eyesWherein the Lethe of all others lies?When my white queen of heaven's remoteness tires,Herself against her other self conspires,Takes woman's nature, walks in mortal ways,And finds in my remorse her beauty's praise?Yet all would I renounce to dream againThe dream in dreams fulfilled that made my pain,My noble pain that heightened all my yearsWith crowns to win and prowess-breeding tears; 200Nay, would that dream renounce once more to seeHer from her sky there looking down at me!
Goddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be once moreAn inaccessible splendor to adore,A faith, a hope of such transcendent worthAs bred ennobling discontent with earth;Give back the longing, back the elated moodThat, fed with thee, spurned every meaner good;Give even the spur of impotent despairThat, without hope, still bade aspire and dare; 210Give back the need to worship, that still poursDown to the soul the virtue it adores!
Nay, brightest and most beautiful, deem naughtThese frantic words, the reckless wind of thought;Still stoop, still grant,—I live but in thy will;Be what thou wilt, but be a woman still!Vainly I cried, nor could myself believeThat what I prayed for I would fain receive;My moon is set; my vision set with her;No more can worship vain my pulses stir. 220Goddess Triform, I own thy triple spell,My heaven's queen,—queen, too, of my earth and hell!
At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay,They show you a church, or rather the grayRibs of a dead one, left there to bleachWith the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach,Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone,'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone;'Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to seeThat may have their teaching for you and me.
Something like this, then, my guide had to tell,Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell; 10But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench,He talking hispatoisand I English-French,I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone,In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own.
An abbey-church stood here, once on a time,Built as a death-bed atonement for crime:'Twas for somebody's sins, I know not whose;But sinners are plenty, and you can choose.Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat,'Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat, 20Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl,Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul.
But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fireLapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire,And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary,Where only the wind singsmiserere.
No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot,Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root,Nor sound of service is ever heard,Except from throat of the unclean bird, 30Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they passIn midnights unholy his witches' mass,Or shouting 'Ho! ho!' from the belfry highAs the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by.
But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls,Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls,Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work,The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk,The skeleton windows are traced anewOn the baleful nicker of corpse-lights blue, 40And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith,To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death.
Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fairHear the dull summons and gather there:No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail,Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale;No knight whispers love in thechâtelaine'sear,His next-door neighbor this five-hundred year;No monk has a sleekbenediciteFor the great lord shadowy now as he; 50Nor needeth any to hold his breath,Lest he lose the least word of Doctor Death.
He chooses his text in the Book Divine,Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter nine:'"Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to do,That do with thy whole might, or thou shalt rue;For no man is wealthy, or wise, or brave,In that quencher of might-be's and would-be's, the grave."Bid by the Bridegroom, "To-morrow," ye said,And To-morrow was digging a trench for your bed; 60Ye said, "God can wait; let us finish our wine;"Ye had wearied Him, fools, and that last knock was mine!'
But I can't pretend to give you the sermon,Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, or German;Whatever he preached in, I give you my wordThe meaning was easy to all that heard;Famous preachers there have been and be,But never was one so convincing as he;So blunt was never a begging friar,No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire, 70Cameronian never, nor Methodist,Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a twist.
And would you know who his hearers must be?I tell you just what my guide told me:Excellent teaching men have, day and night,From two earnest friars, a black and a white,The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life;And between these two there is never strife,For each has his separate office and station,And each his own work in the congregation; 80Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears,And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears,Awake In his coffin must wait and wait,In that blackness of darkness that meanstoo late,And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls,As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls,To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brineOf the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine.
I, walking the familiar street,While a crammed horse-car jingled through it,Was lifted from my prosy feetAnd in Arcadia ere I knew it.
Fresh sward for gravel soothed my tread,And shepherd's pipes my ear delighted;The riddle may be lightly read:I met two lovers newly plighted.
They murmured by in happy care,New plans for paradise devising, 10Just as the moon, with pensive stare,O'er Mistress Craigie's pines was rising.
Astarte, known nigh threescore years,Me to no speechless rapture urges;Them in Elysium she enspheres,Queen, from of old, of thaumaturges.
The railings put forth bud and bloom,The house-fronts all with myrtles twine them,And light-winged Loves in every roomMake nests, and then with kisses line them. 20
O sweetness of untasted life!O dream, its own supreme fulfillment!O hours with all illusion rife,As ere the heart divined what ill meant!
'Et ego', sighed I to myself,And strove some vain regrets to bridle,'Though now laid dusty on the shelf,Was hero once of such an idyl!
'An idyl ever newly sweet,Although since Adam's day recited, 30Whose measures time them to Love's feet,Whose sense is every ill requited.'
Maiden, if I may counsel, drainEach drop of this enchanted season,For even our honeymoons must wane,Convicted of green cheese by Reason.
And none will seem so safe from change,Nor in such skies benignant hover,As this, beneath whose witchery strangeYou tread on rose-leaves with your lover. 40
The glass unfilled all tastes can fit,As round its brim Conjecture dances;For not Mephisto's self hath witTo draw such vintages as Fancy's.
When our pulse beats its minor key,When play-time halves and school-time doubles,Age fills the cup with serious tea,Which once Dame Clicquot starred with bubbles.
'Fie, Mr. Graybeard! Is this wise?Is this the moral of a poet, 50Who, when the plant of Eden dies,Is privileged once more to sow it!
'That herb of clay-disdaining root,From stars secreting what it feeds on,Is burnt-out passion's slag and sootFit soil to strew its dainty seeds on?
'Pray, why, if in Arcadia once,Need one so soon forget the way there?Or why, once there, be such a dunceAs not contentedly to stay there?' 60
Dear child, 'twas but a sorry jest,And from my heart I hate the cynicWho makes the Book of Life a nestFor comments staler than rabbinic.
If Love his simple spell but keep,Life with ideal eyes to flatter,The Grail itself were crockery cheapTo Every-day's communion-platter.
One Darby is to me well known,Who, as the hearth between them blazes, 70Sees the old moonlight shine on Joan,And float her youthward in its hazes.
He rubs his spectacles, he stares,—'Tis the same face that witched him early!He gropes for his remaining hairs,—Is this a fleece that feels so curly?
'Good heavens! but now 'twas winter gray,And I of years had more than plenty;The almanac's a fool! 'Tis May!Hang family Bibles! I am twenty! 80
'Come, Joan, your arm; we'll walk the room—The lane, I mean—do you remember?How confident the roses bloom,As if it ne'er could be December!
'Nor more it shall, while in your eyesMy heart its summer heat recovers,And you, howe'er your mirror lies,Find your old beauty in your lover's.'
When oaken woods with buds are pink,And new-come birds each morning sing,When fickle May on Summer's brinkPauses, and knows not which to fling,Whether fresh bud and bloom again,Or hoar-frost silvering hill and plain,
Then from the honeysuckle grayThe oriole with experienced questTwitches the fibrous bark away,The cordage of his hammock-nest.Cheering his labor with a noteRich as the orange of his throat.
High o'er the loud and dusty roadThe soft gray cup in safety swings,To brim ere August with its loadOf downy breasts and throbbing wings,O'er which the friendly elm-tree heavesAn emerald roof with sculptured eaves.
Below, the noisy World drags byIn the old way, because it must,The bride with heartbreak in her eye,The mourner following hated dust:Thy duty, wingèd flame of Spring,Is but to love, and fly, and sing.
Oh, happy life, to soar and swayAbove the life by mortals led,Singing the merry months away,Master, not slave of daily bread,And, when the Autumn comes, to fleeWherever sunshine beckons thee!
Like some lorn abbey now, the woodStands roofless in the bitter air;In ruins on its floor is strewedThe carven foliage quaint and rare,And homeless winds complain alongThe columned choir once thrilled with song.
And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praiseThe thankful oriole used to pour,Swing'st empty while the north winds chaseTheir snowy swarms from Labrador:But, loyal to the happy past,I love thee still for what thou wast.
Ah, when the Summer graces fleeFrom other nests more dear than thou,And, where June crowded once, I seeOnly bare trunk and disleaved bough;When springs of life that gleamed and gushedRun chilled, and slower, and are hushed;
When our own branches, naked long,The vacant nests of Spring betray,Nurseries of passion, love, and songThat vanished as our year grew gray;When Life drones o'er a tale twice toldO'er embers pleading with the cold,—
I'll trust, that, like the birds of Spring,Our good goes not without repair,But only flies to soar and singFar off in some diviner air,Where we shall find it in the calmsOf that fair garden 'neath the palms.
Sometimes come pauses of calm, when the rapt bard, holding his heart back,Over his deep mind muses, as when o'er awe-stricken oceanPoises a heapt cloud luridly, ripening the gale and the thunder;Slow rolls onward the verse with a long swell heaving and swinging,Seeming to wait till, gradually wid'ning from far-off horizons,Piling the deeps up, heaping the glad-hearted surges before it,Gathers the thought as a strong wind darkening and cresting the tumult.Then every pause, every heave, each trough in the waves, has its meaning;Full-sailed, forth like a tall ship steadies the theme, and around it,Leaping beside it in glad strength, running in wild glee beyond it,Harmonies billow exulting and floating the soul where it lists them,Swaying the listener's fantasy hither and thither like drift-weed.
'Twas sung of old in hut and hallHow once a king in evil hourHung musing o'er his castle wall,And, lost in idle dreams, let fallInto the sea his ring of power.
Then, let him sorrow as he might,And pledge his daughter and his throneTo who restored the jewel bright,The broken spell would ne'er unite;The grim old ocean held its own.
Those awful powers on man that wait,On man, the beggar or the king,To hovel bare or hall of stateA magic ring that masters fateWith each succeeding birthday bring.
Therein are set four jewels rare:Pearl winter, summer's ruby blaze,Spring's emerald, and, than all more fair,Fall's pensive opal, doomed to bearA heart of fire bedreamed with haze.
To him the simple spell who knowsThe spirits of the ring to sway,Fresh power with every sunrise flows,And royal pursuivants are thoseThat fly his mandates to obey.
But he that with a slackened willDreams of things past or things to be,From him the charm is slipping still,And drops, ere he suspect the ill,Into the inexorable sea.
The path from me to you that led,Untrodden long, with grass is grown,Mute carpet that his lieges spreadBefore the Prince OblivionWhen he goes visiting the dead.
And who are they but who forget?You, who my coming could surmiseEre any hint of me as yetWarned other ears and other eyes,See the path blurred without regret.
But when I trace its windings sweetWith saddened steps, at every spotThat feels the memory in my feet,Each grass-blade turns forget-me-not,Where murmuring bees your name repeat.
Ere pales in Heaven the morning star,A bird, the loneliest of its kind,Hears Dawn's faint footfall from afarWhile all its mates are dumb and blind.
It is a wee sad-colored thing,As shy and secret as a maid,That, ere in choir the robins sing,Pipes its own name like one afraid.
It seems pain-prompted to repeatThe story of some ancient ill,ButPhoebe! Phoebe!sadly sweetIs all it says, and then is still.
It calls and listens. Earth and sky,Hushed by the pathos of its fate,Listen: no whisper of replyComes from its doom-dissevered mate.
Phoebe!it calls and calls again,And Ovid, could he but have heard,Had hung a legendary painAbout the memory of the bird;
A pain articulate so long,In penance of some mouldered crimeWhose ghost still flies the Furies' thongDown the waste solitudes of time.
Waif of the young World's wonder-hour,When gods found mortal maidens fair,And will malign was joined with powerLove's kindly laws to overbear,
Like Progne, did it feel the stressAnd coil of the prevailing wordsClose round its being, and compressMan's ampler nature to a bird's?
One only memory left of allThe motley crowd of vanished scenes,Hers, and vain impulse to recallBy repetition what it means.
Phoebe!is all it has to sayIn plaintive cadence o'er and o'er,Like children that have lost their way,And know their names, but nothing more.
Is it a type, since Nature's LyreVibrates to every note in man,Of that insatiable desire,Meant to be so since life began?
I, in strange lands at gray of dawn,Wakeful, have heard that fruitless plaintThrough Memory's chambers deep withdrawnRenew its iterations faint.
So nigh! yet from remotest yearsIt summons back its magic, rifeWith longings unappeased, and tearsDrawn from the very source of life.
How was I worthy so divine a loss,Deepening my midnights, kindling all my morns?Why waste such precious wood to make my cross,Such far-sought roses for my crown of thorns?
And when she came, how earned I such a gift?Why spend on me, a poor earth-delving mole,The fireside sweetnesses, the heavenward lift,The hourly mercy, of a woman's soul?
Ah, did we know to give her all her right,What wonders even in our poor clay were done!It is not Woman leaves us to our night,But our brute earth that grovels from her sun.
Our nobler cultured fields and gracious domesWe whirl too oft from her who still shines onTo light in vain our caves and clefts, the homesOf night-bird instincts pained till she be gone.
Still must this body starve our souls with shade;But when Death makes us what we were before,Then shall her sunshine all our depths invade,And not a shadow stain heaven's crystal floor.
Come back before the birds are flown,Before the leaves desert the tree,And, through the lonely alleys blown,Whisper their vain regrets to meWho drive before a blast more rude,The plaything of my gusty mood,In vain pursuing and pursued!
Nay, come although the boughs be bare,Though snowflakes fledge the summer's nest,And in some far Ausonian airThe thrush, your minstrel, warm his breast.Come, sunshine's treasurer, and bringTo doubting flowers their faith in spring,To birds and me the need to sing!
Sleep is Death's image,—poets tell us so;But Absence is the bitter self of Death,And, you away, Life's lips their red forego,Parched in an air unfreshened by your breath.
Light of those eyes that made the light of mine,Where shine you? On what happier fields and flowers?Heaven's lamps renew their lustre less divine,But only serve to count my darkened hours.
If with your presence went your image too,That brain-born ghost my path would never crossWhich meets me now where'er I once met you,Then vanishes, to multiply my loss.
She gave me all that woman can,Nor her soul's nunnery forego,A confidence that man to manWithout remorse can never show.
Rare art, that can the sense refineTill not a pulse rebellious stirs,And, since she never can be mine,Makes it seem sweeter to be hers!
Turbid from London's noise and smoke,Here I find air and quiet too;Air filtered through the beech and oak,Quiet by nothing harsher brokeThan wood-dove's meditative coo.
The Truce of God is here; the breezeSighs as men sigh relieved from care,Or tilts as lightly in the treesAs might a robin: all is ease,With pledge of ampler ease to spare.
Time, leaning on his scythe, forgetsTo turn the hour-glass in his hand,And all life's petty cares and frets,Its teasing hopes and weak regrets,Are still as that oblivious sand.
Repose fills all the generous spaceOf undulant plain; the rook and crowHush; 'tis as if a silent grace,By Nature murmured, calmed the faceOf Heaven above and Earth below.
From past and future toils I rest,One Sabbath pacifies my year;I am the halcyon, this my nest;And all is safely for the bestWhile the World's there and I am here.
So I turn tory for the nonce,And think the radical a bore,Who cannot see, thick-witted dunce,That what was good for people onceMust be as good forevermore.
Sun, sink no deeper down the sky;Earth, never change this summer mood;Breeze, loiter thus forever by,Stir the dead leaf or let it lie;Since I am happy, all is good.
With what odorous woods and spicesSpared for royal sacrifices,With what costly gums seld-seen,Hoarded to embalm a queen,With what frankincense and myrrh,Burn these precious parts of her,Full of life and light and sweetnessAs a summer day's completeness,Joy of sun and song of birdRunning wild in every word,Full of all the superhumanGrace and winsomeness of woman?
O'er these leaves her wrist has slid,Thrilled with veins where fire is hid'Neath the skin's pellucid veil,Like the opal's passion pale;This her breath has sweetened; thisStill seems trembling with the kissShe half-ventured on my name,Brow and cheek and throat aflame;Over all caressing liesSunshine left there by her eyes;From them all an effluence rareWith her nearness fills the air,Till the murmur I half-hearOf her light feet drawing near.
Rarest woods were coarse and rough,Sweetest spice not sweet enough,Too impure all earthly fireFor this sacred funeral-pyre;These rich relics must sufficeFor their own dear sacrifice.
Seek we first an altar fitFor such victims laid on it:It shall be this slab brought homeIn old happy days from Rome,—Lazuli, once blest to lineDian's inmost cell and shrine.Gently now I lay them there.Pure as Dian's forehead bare,Yet suffused with warmer hue,Such as only Latmos knew.
Fire I gather from the sunIn a virgin lens; 'tis done!Mount the flames, red, yellow, blue,As her moods were shining through,Of the moment's impulse born,—Moods of sweetness, playful scorn,Half defiance, half surrender,More than cruel, more than tender,Flouts, caresses, sunshine, shade,Gracious doublings of a maidInfinite in guileless art,Playing hide-seek with her heart.
On the altar now, alas,There they lie a crinkling mass,Writhing still, as if with griefWent the life from every leaf;Then (heart-breaking palimpsest!)Vanishing ere wholly guessed,Suddenly some lines flash back,Traced in lightning on the black,And confess, till now denied,All the fire they strove to hide.What they told me, sacred trust,Stays to glorify my dust,There to burn through dust and dampLike a mage's deathless lamp,While an atom of this frameLasts to feed the dainty flame.
All is ashes now, but theyIn my soul are laid away,And their radiance round me hoversSoft as moonlight over lovers,Shutting her and me aloneIn dream-Edens of our own;First of lovers to inventLove, and teach men what it meant.
I could not bear to see those eyesOn all with wasteful largess shine,And that delight of welcome riseLike sunshine strained through amber wine,But that a glow from deeper skies,From conscious fountains more divine,Is (is it?) mine.
Be beautiful to all mankind,As Nature fashioned thee to be;'Twould anger me did all not findThe sweet perfection that's in thee:Yet keep one charm of charms behind,—Nay, thou'rt so rich, keep two or threeFor (is it?) me!
Oh, tell me less or tell me more,Soft eyes with mystery at the core,That always seem to melt my ownFrankly as pansies fully grown,Yet waver still 'tween no and yes!
So swift to cavil and deny,Then parley with concessions shy,Dear eyes, that make their youth be mineAnd through my inmost shadows shine,Oh, tell me more or tell me less!
In town I hear, scarce wakened yet,My neighbor's clock behind the wallRecord the day's increasing debt,AndCuckoo! Cuckoo!faintly call.
Our senses run in deepening grooves,Thrown out of which they lose their tact,And consciousness with effort movesFrom habit past to present fact.
So, in the country waked to-day,I hear, unwitting of the change,A cuckoo's throb from far awayBegin to strike, nor think it strange.
The sound creates its wonted frame:My bed at home, the songster hidBehind the wainscoting,—all cameAs long association bid.
Then, half aroused, ere yet Sleep's mistFrom the mind's uplands furl away,To the familiar sound I list,Disputed for by Night and Day.
I count to learn how late it is,Until, arrived at thirty-four,I question, 'What strange world is thisWhose lavish hours would make me poor?'
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!Still on it went,With hints of mockery in its tone;How could such hoards of time be spentBy one poor mortal's wit alone?
I have it! Grant, ye kindly Powers,I from this spot may never stir,If only these uncounted hoursMay pass, and seem too short, with Her!
But who She is, her form and face,These to the world of dream belong;She moves through fancy's visioned space,Unbodied, like the cuckoo's song.
One kiss from all others prevents me,And sets all my pulses astir,And burns on my lips and torments me:'Tis the kiss that I fain would give her.
One kiss for all others requites me,Although it is never to be,And sweetens my dreams and invites me:'Tis the kiss that she dare not give me.
Ah, could it he mine, it were sweeterThan honey bees garner in dream,Though its bliss on my lips were fleeterThan a swallow's dip to the stream.
And yet, thus denied, it can neverIn the prose of life vanish away;O'er my lips it must hover forever,The sunshine and shade of my day.
Walking alone where we walked together,When June was breezy and blue,I watch in the gray autumnal weatherThe leaves fall inconstant as you.
If a dead leaf startle behind me,I think 'tis your garment's hem,And, oh, where no memory could find me,Might I whirl away with them!
Silencioso por la puertaVoy de su casa desiertaDo siempre feliz entré,Y la encuentro en vano abiertaCual la boca de una muertaDespues que el alma se fué.
'What means this glory round our feet,'The Magi mused, 'more bright than morn?'And voices chanted clear and sweet,'To-day the Prince of Peace is born!'
'What means that star,' the Shepherds said,'That brightens through the rocky glen?'And angels, answering overhead,Sang, 'Peace on earth, good-will to men!'
'Tis eighteen hundred years and moreSince those sweet oracles were dumb;We wait for Him, like them of yore;Alas, He seems so slow to come!
But it was said, in words of goldNo time or sorrow e'er shall dim,That little children might be boldIn perfect trust to come to Him.
All round about our feet shall shineA light like that the wise men saw,If we our loving wills inclineTo that sweet Life which is the Law.
So shall we learn to understandThe simple faith of shepherds then,And, clasping kindly hand in hand,Sing, 'Peace on earth, good-will to men!'
And they who do their souls no wrong,But keep at eve the faith of morn,Shall daily hear the angel-song,'To-day the Prince of Peace is born!'
Oft round my hall of portraiture I gaze,By Memory reared, the artist wise and holy,From stainless quarries of deep-buried days.There, as I muse in soothing melancholy,Your faces glow in more than mortal youth,Companions of my prime, now vanished wholly,The loud, impetuous boy, the low-voiced maiden,Now for the first time seen in flawless truth.Ah, never master that drew mortal breathCan match thy portraits, just and generous Death,Whose brush with sweet regretful tints is laden!Thou paintest that which struggled here belowHalf understood, or understood for woe,And with a sweet forewarningMak'st round the sacred front an aureole glowWoven of that light that rose on Easter morning.
I was with thee in Heaven: I cannot tellIf years or moments, so the sudden bliss,When first we found, then lost, us in a kiss.Abolished Time, abolished Earth and Hell,Left only Heaven. Then from our blue there fellThe dagger's flash, and did not fall amiss,For nothing now can rob my life of this,—That once with thee in Heaven, all else is well.Us, undivided when man's vengeance came,God's half-forgives that doth not here divide;And, were this bitter whirl-blast fanged with flame,To me 'twere summer, we being side by side:This granted, I God's mercy will not blame,For, given thy nearness, nothing is denied.
As sinks the sun behind yon alien hillsWhose heather-purple slopes, in glory rolled,Flush all my thought with momentary gold,What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills?Here 'tis enchanted ground the peasant tills,Where the shy ballad dared its blooms unfold,And memory's glamour makes new sights seem old,As when our life some vanished dream fulfils.Yet not to thee belong these painless tears,Land loved ere seen: before my darkened eyes,From far beyond the waters and the years,Horizons mute that wait their poet rise;The stream before me fades and disappears,And in the Charles the western splendor dies.
Amid these fragments of heroic daysWhen thought met deed with mutual passion's leap,There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheapWhat short-lived rumor of ourselves we raise.They had far other estimate of praiseWho stamped the signet of their souls so deepIn art and action, and whose memories keepTheir height like stars above our misty ways:In this grave presence to record my nameSomething within me hangs the head and shrinks.Dull were the soul without some joy in fame;Yet here to claim remembrance were, methinks,Like him who, in the desert's awful frame,Notches his cockney initials on the Sphinx.
Far over Elf-land poets stretch their sway,And win their dearest crowns beyond the goalOf their own conscious purpose; they controlWith gossamer threads wide-flown our fancy's play,And so our action. On my walk to-day,A wallowing bear begged clumsily his toll,When straight a vision rose of Atta Troll,And scenes ideal witched mine eyes away.'Merci, Mossieu!' the astonished bear-ward cried,Grateful for thrice his hope to me, the slaveOf partial memory, seeing at his sideA bear immortal. The glad dole I gaveWas none of mine; poor Heine o'er the wideAtlantic welter stretched it from his grave.
The Maple puts her corals on in May,While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling,To be in tune with what the robins sing,Plastering new log-huts 'mid her branches gray;But when the Autumn southward turns away,Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring.And every leaf, intensely blossoming,Makes the year's sunset pale the set of day.O Youth unprescient, were it only soWith trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined,Thinking their drifting blooms Fate's coldest snow,You carve dear names upon the faithful rind,Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknowThat Age shall bear, silent, yet unresigned!
While the slow clock, as they were miser's gold,Counts and recounts the mornward steps of Time,The darkness thrills with conscience of each crimeBy Death committed, daily grown more bold.Once more the list of all my wrongs is told,And ghostly hands stretch to me from my primeHelpless farewells, as from an alien clime;For each new loss redoubles all the old.This morn 'twas May; the blossoms were astirWith southern wind; but now the boughs are bentWith snow instead of birds, and all things freeze.How much of all my past is dumb with her,And of my future, too, for with her wentHalf of that world I ever cared to please!
Hers all that Earth could promise or bestow,—Youth, Beauty, Love, a crown, the beckoning years,Lids never wet, unless with joyous tears,A life remote from every sordid woe,And by a nation's swelled to lordlier flow.What lurking-place, thought we, for doubts or fears,When, the day's swan, she swam along the cheersOf the Alcalá, five happy months ago?The guns were shouting Io Hymen thenThat, on her birthday, now denounce her doom;The same white steeds that tossed their scorn of menTo-day as proudly drag her to the tomb.Grim jest of fate! Yet who dare call it blind,Knowing what life is, what our human-kind?
Seat of all woes? Though Nature's firm decreeThe narrowing soul with narrowing dungeon bind,Yet was his free of motion as the wind,And held both worlds, of spirit and sense, in fee.In charmed communion with his dual mindHe wandered Spain, himself both knight and hind,Redressing wrongs he knew must ever be.His humor wise could see life's long deceit,Man's baffled aims, nor therefore both despise;His knightly nature could ill fortune greetLike an old friend. Whose ever such kind eyesThat pierced so deep, such scope, save his whose feetBy Avon ceased 'neath the same April's skies?
So dreamy-soft the notes, so far awayThey seem to fall, the horns of OberonBlow their faint Hunt's-up from the good-time gone;Or, on a morning of long-withered May,Larks tinkle unseen o'er Claudian arches gray,That Romeward crawl from Dreamland; and anonMy fancy flings her cloak of Darkness on,To vanish from the dungeon of To-day.In happier times and scenes I seem to be,And, as her fingers flutter o'er the strings,The days return when I was young as she,And my fledged thoughts began to feel their wingsWith all Heaven's blue before them: MemoryOr Music is it such enchantment sings?
Gold of the reddening sunset, backward thrownIn largess on my tall paternal trees,Thou with false hope or fear didst never teaseHis heart that hoards thee; nor is childhood flownFrom him whose life no fairer boon hath knownThan that what pleased him earliest still should please:And who hath incomes safe from chance as these,Gone in a moment, yet for life his own?All other gold is slave of earthward laws;This to the deeps of ether takes its flight,And on the topmost leaves makes glorious pauseOf parting pathos ere it yield to night:So linger, as from me earth's light withdraws,Dear touch of Nature, tremulously bright!
Ye little think what toil it was to buildA world of men imperfect even as this,Where we conceive of Good by what we miss,Of ill by that wherewith best days are filled;A world whose every atom is self-willed,Whose corner-stone is propt on artifice,Whose joy is shorter-lived than woman's kiss,Whose wisdom hoarded is but to be spilled.Yet this is better than a life of caves,Whose highest art was scratching on a bone,Or chipping toilsome arrowheads of flint;Better, though doomed to hear while Cleon raves,To see wit's want eterned in paint or stone,And wade the drain-drenched shoals of daily print.
What countless years and wealth of brain were spentTo bring us hither from our caves and huts,And trace through pathless wilds the deep-worn rutsOf faith and habit, by whose deep indentPrudence may guide if genius be not lent,Genius, not always happy when it shutsIts ears against the plodder's ifs and buts,Hoping in one rash leap to snatch the event.The coursers of the sun, whose hoofs of flameConsume morn's misty threshold, are exactAs bankers' clerks, and all this star-poised frame,One swerve allowed, were with convulsion rackt;This world were doomed, should Dulness fail, to tameWit's feathered heels in the stern stocks of fact.
What were the whole void world, if thou wert dead,Whose briefest absence can eclipse my day,And make the hours that danced with Time awayDrag their funereal steps with muffled head?Through thee, meseems, the very rose is red,From thee the violet steals its breath in May,From thee draw life all things that grow not gray,And by thy force the happy stars are sped.Thou near, the hope of thee to overflowFills all my earth and heaven, as when in Spring,Ere April come, the birds and blossoms know,And grasses brighten round her feet to cling;Nay, and this hope delights all nature soThat the dumb turf I tread on seems to sing.
What mean these banners spread,These paths with royal redSo gaily carpeted?Comes there a prince to-day?Such footing were too fineFor feet less argentineThan Dian's own or thine,Queen whom my tides obey.
Surely for thee are meantThese hues so orientThat with a sultan's tentEach tree invites the sun;Our Earth such homage pays,So decks her dusty ways,And keeps such holidays,For one and only one.
My brain shapes form and face,Throbs with the rhythmic graceAnd cadence of her paceTo all fine instincts true;Her footsteps, as they pass,Than moonbeams over grassFall lighter,—but, alas,More insubstantial too!
DAPHNISwaiting
'O Dryad feet,Be doubly fleet,Timed to my heart's expectant beatWhile I await her!"At four," vowed she;'Tis scarcely three,Yet bymytime it seems to beA good hour later!'
'Bid me not stay!Hear reason, pray!'Tis striking six! Sure never dayWas short as this is!'
'Reason nor rhymeIs in the chime!It can't be five; I've scarce had timeTo beg two kisses!'
'Early or late,When lovers wait,And Love's watch gains, if Time a gaitSo snail-like chooses,Why should his feetBecome more fleetThan cowards' are, when lovers meetAnd Love's watch loses?'
Light of triumph in her eyes,Eleanor her apron ties;As she pushes back her sleeves,High resolve her bosom heaves.Hasten, cook! impel the fireTo the pace of her desire;As you hope to save your soul,Bring a virgin casserole,Brightest bring of silver spoons,—Eleanor makes macaroons!
Almond-blossoms, now adanceIn the smile of Southern France,Leave your sport with sun and breeze,Think of duty, not of ease;Fashion, 'neath their jerkins brown,Kernels white as thistle-down,Tiny cheeses made with creamFrom the Galaxy's mid-stream,Blanched in light of honeymoons,—Eleanor makes macaroons!
Now for sugar,—nay, our planTolerates no work of man.Hurry, then, ye golden bees;Fetch your clearest honey, please,Garnered on a Yorkshire moor,While the last larks sing and soar,From the heather-blossoms sweetWhere sea-breeze and sunshine meet,And the Augusts mask as Junes,—Eleanor makes macaroons!
Next the pestle and mortar find.Pure rock-crystal,—these to grindInto paste more smooth than silk,Whiter than the milkweed's milk:Spread it on a rose-leaf, thus,Cate to please Theocritus;Then the fire with spices swell,While, for her completer spell,Mystic canticles she croons,—Eleanor makes macaroons!
Perfect! and all this to wasteOn a graybeard's palsied taste!Poets so their verses write,Heap them full of life and light,And then fling them to the rudeMumbling of the multitude.Not so dire her fate as theirs,Since her friend this gift declaresChoicest of his birthday boons,—Eleanor's dear macaroons!
February22, 1884.
'And how could you dream of meeting?'Nay, how can you ask me, sweet?All day my pulse had been beatingThe tune of your coming feet.
And as nearer and ever nearerI felt the throb of your tread,To be in the world grew clearer,And my blood ran rosier red.
Love called, and I could not linger,But sought the forbidden tryst,As music follows the fingerOf the dreaming lutanist
And though you had said it and said it,'We must not be happy to-day,'Was I not wiser to creditThe fire in my feet than your Nay?
When the down is on the chinAnd the gold-gleam in the hair,When the birds their sweethearts winAnd champagne is in the air,Love is here, and Love is there,Love is welcome everywhere.
Summer's cheek too soon turns thin,Days grow briefer, sunshine rare;Autumn from his cannekinBlows the froth to chase Despair:Love is met with frosty stare,Cannot house 'neath branches bare.
When new life is in the leafAnd new red is in the rose,Though Love's Maytlme be as briefAs a dragon-fly's repose,Never moments come like those,Be they Heaven or Hell: who knows?
All too soon comes Winter's grief,Spendthrift Love's false friends turn foes;Softly comes Old Age, the thief,Steals the rapture, leaves the throes:Love his mantle round him throws,—'Time to say Good-by; it snows.'
That's a rather bold speech, my Lord Bacon,For, indeed, is't so easy to knowJust how much we from others have taken,And how much our own natural flow?
Since your mind bubbled up at its fountain,How many streams made it elate,While it calmed to the plain from the mountain,As every mind must that grows great?
While you thought 'twas You thinking as newlyAs Adam still wet with God's dew,You forgot in your self-pride that trulyThe whole Past was thinking through you.
Greece, Rome, nay, your namesake, old Roger,With Truth's nameless delvers who wroughtIn the dark mines of Truth, helped to prod yourFine brain with the goad of their thought.
As mummy was prized for a rich hueThe painter no elsewhere could find,So 'twas buried men's thinking with which youGave the ripe mellow tone to your mind.
I heard the proud strawberry saying,'Only look what a ruby I've made!'It forgot how the bees in their mayingHad brought it the stuff for its trade.
And yet there's the half of a truth in it,And my Lord might his copyright sue;For a thought's his who kindles new youth in it,Or so puts it as makes it more true.
The birds but repeat without endingThe same old traditional notes,Which some, by more happily blending,Seem to make over new in their throats;
And we men through our old bit of song run,Until one just improves on the rest,And we call a thing his, in the long run,Who utters it clearest and best.
My heart, I cannot still it,Nest that had song-birds in it;And when the last shall go,The dreary days, to fill it,Instead of lark or linnet,Shall whirl dead leaves and snow.
Had they been swallows only,Without the passion strongerThat skyward longs and sings,—Woe's me, I shall be lonelyWhen I can feel no longerThe impatience of their wings!
A moment, sweet delusion,Like birds the brown leaves hover;But it will not be longBefore their wild confusionFall wavering down to coverThe poet and his song.