To make you shudder with its prudish gloom.
The furniture stood round with such an air,
There seemed an old maid’s ghost in every chair,
Which looked as it had scuttled to its place
And pulled extempore a Sunday face,
Too smugly proper for a world of sin,
Like boys on whom the minister comes in.
The table, fronting you with icy stare,
Strove to look witless that its legs were bare,
While the black sofa with its horse-hair pall
Gloomed like a bier for Comfort’s funeral.
Each piece appeared to do its chilly best
To seem an utter stranger to the rest,
As if acquaintanceship were deadly sin,
Like Britons meeting in a foreign inn.
Two portraits graced the wall in grimmest truth,
Mister and Mistress W. in their youth,--
New England youth, that seems a sort of pill,
Half wish-I-dared, half Edwards on the Will,
Bitter to swallow, and which leaves a trace
Of Calvinistic cholic on the face.
Between them, o’er the mantel, hung in state
Solomon’s temple, done in copperplate;
Invention pure, but meant, we may presume,
To give some Scripture sanction to the room.
Facing this last, two samplers you might see,
Each, with its urn and stiffly-weeping tree,
Devoted to some memory long ago
More faded than their lines of worsted woe;
Cut paper decked their frames against the flies,
Though none e’er dared an entrance who were wise,
And bushed asparagus in fading green
Added its shiver to the franklin clean.
“When first arrived, I chilled a half-hour there,
Nor dared deflower with use a single chair;
I caught no cold, yet flying pains could find
For weeks in me,--a rheumatism of mind.
One thing alone imprisoned there had power
To hold me in the place that long half-hour:
A scutcheon this, a helm-surmounted shield,
Three griffins argent on a sable field;
A relic of the shipwrecked past was here,
And Ezra held some Old-World lumber dear.
Nay, do not smile; I love this kind of thing,
These cooped traditions with a broken wing,
This freehold nook in Fancy’s pipe-blown ball,
This less than nothing that is more than all!
Have I not seen sweet natures kept alive
Amid the humdrum of your business hive,
Undowered spinsters shielded from all harms,
By airy incomes from a coat of arms?”
He paused a moment, and his features took
The flitting sweetness of that inward look
I hinted at before; but, scarcely seen,
It shrank for shelter ’neath his harder mien,
And, rapping his black pipe of ashes clear,
He went on with a self-derisive sneer:
“No doubt we make a part of God’s design,
And break the forest-path for feet divine;
To furnish foothold for this grand prevision
Is good, and yet--to be the mere transition,
That, you will say, is also good, though I
Scarce like to feed the ogre By-and-by.
Raw edges rasp my nerves; my taste is wooed
By things that are, not going to be, good,
Though were I what I dreamed two lustres gone,
I’d stay to help the Consummation on,
Whether a new Rome than the old more fair,
Or a deadflat of rascal-ruled despair;
But _my_ skull somehow never closed the suture
That seems to knit yours firmly with the future,
So you ’ll excuse me if I’m sometimes fain
To tie the past’s warm nightcap o’er my brain;
I’m quite aware ’tis not in fashion here,
But then your northeast winds are _so_ severe!
“But to my story: though ’tis truly naught
But a few hints in Memory’s sketchbook caught,
And which may claim a value on the score
Of calling back some scenery now no more.
Shall I confess? The tavern’s only Lar
Seemed (be not shocked!) its homely-featured bar.
Here dozed a fire of beechen logs, that bred
Strange fancies in its embers golden-red,
And nursed the loggerhead whose hissing dip,
Timed by nice instinct, creamed the mug of flip
That made from mouth to mouth its genial round,
Nor left one nature wholly winter-bound;
Hence dropt the tinkling coal all mellow-ripe
For Uncle Reuben’s talk-extinguished pipe;
Hence rayed the heat, as from an in-door sun,
That wooed forth many a shoot of rustic fun.
Here Ezra ruled as king by right divine;
No other face had such a wholesome shine,
No laugh like his so full of honest cheer;
Above the rest it crowed like Chanticleer.
“In this one room his dame you never saw,
Where reigned by custom old a Salic law;
Here coatless lolled he on his throne of oak,
And every tongue paused midway if he spoke.
Due mirth he loved, yet was his sway severe;
No blear-eyed driveller got his stagger here;
'Measure was happiness; who wanted more,
Must buy his ruin at the Deacon’s store;'
None but his lodgers after ten could stay,
Nor after nine on eves of Sabbath-day.
He had his favorites and his pensioners,
The same that gypsy Nature owns for hers:
Loose-ended souls, whose skills bring scanty gold,
And whom the poor-house catches when they ’re old;
Rude country-minstrels, men who doctor kine,
Or graft, and, out of scions ten, save nine;
Creatures of genius they, but never meant
To keep step with the civic regiment.
These Ezra welcomed, feeling in his mind
Perhaps some motions of the vagrant kind;
These paid no money, yet for them he drew
Special Jamaica from a tap they knew,
And, for their feelings, chalked behind the door
With solemn face a visionary score.
This thawed to life in Uncle Reuben’s throat
A torpid shoal of jest and anecdote,
Like those queer fish that doze the droughts away,
And wait for moisture, wrapt in sun-baked clay;
This warmed the one-eyed fiddler to his task,
Perched in the corner on an empty cask,
By whose shrill art rapt suddenly, some boor
Rattled a double-shuffle on the floor;
'Hull’s Victory' was, indeed, the favorite air,
Though 'Yankee Doodle' claimed its proper share.
“'Twas there I caught from Uncle Reuben’s lips,
In dribbling monologue ’twixt whiffs and sips,
The story I so long have tried to tell;
The humor coarse, the persons common,--well,
From Nature only do I love to paint,
Whether she send a satyr or a saint;
To me Sincerity’s the one thing good,
Soiled though she be and lost to maidenhood.
Quompegan is a town some ten miles south
From Jethro, at Nagumscot river-mouth,
A seaport town, and makes its title good
With lumber and dried fish and eastern wood.
Here Deacon Bitters dwelt and kept the Store,
The richest man for many a mile of shore;
In little less than everything dealt he,
From meeting-houses to a chest of tea;
So dextrous therewithal a flint to skin,
He could make profit on a single pin;
In business strict, to bring the balance true
He had been known to bite a fig in two,
And change a board-nail for a shingle-nail.
All that he had he ready held for sale,
His house, his tomb, whate’er the law allows,
And he had gladly parted with his spouse.
His one ambition still to get and get,
He would arrest your very ghost for debt.
His store looked righteous, should the Parson come,
But in a dark back-room he peddled rum,
And eased Ma’am Conscience, if she e’er would scold,
By christening it with water ere he sold.
A small, dry man he was, who wore a queue,
And one white neckcloth all the week-days through,--
On Monday white, by Saturday as dun
As that worn homeward by the prodigal son.
His frosted earlocks, striped with foxy brown,
Were braided up to hide a desert crown;
His coat was brownish, black perhaps of yore;
In summer-time a banyan loose he wore;
His trousers short, through many a season true,
Made no pretence to hide his stockings blue;
A waistcoat buff his chief adornment was,
Its porcelain buttons rimmed with dusky brass.
A deacon he, you saw it in each limb,
And well he knew to deacon-off a hymn,
Or lead the choir through all its wandering woes
With voice that gathered unction in his nose,
Wherein a constant snuffle you might hear,
As if with him ’twere winter all the year.
At pew-head sat he with decorous pains,
In sermon-time could foot his weekly gains,
Or, with closed eyes and heaven-abstracted air,
Could plan a new investment in long-prayer.
A pious man, and thrifty too, he made
The psalms and prophets partners in his trade,
And in his orthodoxy straitened more
As it enlarged the business at his store;
He honored Moses, but, when gain he planned,
Had his own notion of the Promised Land.
“Soon as the winter made the sledding good,
From far around the farmers hauled him wood,
For all the trade had gathered ’neath his thumb.
He paid in groceries and New England rum,
Making two profits with a conscience clear,--
Cheap all he bought, and all he paid with dear.
With his own mete-wand measuring every load,
Each somehow had diminished on the road;
An honest cord in Jethro still would fail
By a good foot upon the Deacon’s scale,
And, more to abate the price, his gimlet eye
Would pierce to cat-sticks that none else could spy;
Yet none dared grumble, for no farmer yet
But New Year found him in the Deacon’s debt.
“While the first snow was mealy under feet,
A team drawled creaking down Quompegan street.
Two cords of oak weighed down the grinding sled,
And cornstalk fodder rustled overhead;
The oxen’s muzzles, as they shouldered through,
Were silver-fringed; the driver’s own was blue
As the coarse frock that swung below his knee.
Behind his load for shelter waded he;
His mittened hands now on his chest he beat,
Now stamped the stiffened cowhides of his feet,
Hushed as a ghost’s; his armpit scarce could hold
The walnut whipstock slippery-bright with cold.
What wonder if, the tavern as he past,
He looked and longed, and stayed his beasts at last,
Who patient stood and veiled themselves in steam
While he explored the bar-room’s ruddy gleam?
“Before the fire, in want of thought profound,
There sat a brother-townsman weather-bound:
A sturdy churl, crisp-headed, bristly-eared,
Red as a pepper; ’twixt coarse brows and beard
His eyes lay ambushed, on the watch for fools,
Clear, gray, and glittering like two bay-edged pools;
A shifty creature, with a turn for fun,
Could swap a poor horse for a better one,--
He’d a high-stepper always in his stall;
Liked far and near, and dreaded therewithal.
To him the in-comer, 'Perez, how d’ye do?'
'Jest as I’m mind to, Obed; how do you?'
Then, his eyes twinkling such swift gleams as run
Along the levelled barrel of a gun
Brought to his shoulder by a man you know
Will bring his game down, he continued, 'So,
I s’pose you’re haulin' wood? But you’re too late;
The Deacon’s off; Old Splitfoot couldn’t wait;
He made a bee-line las' night in the storm
To where he won’t need wood to keep him warm.
’Fore this he’s treasurer of a fund to train
Young imps as missionaries; hopes to gain
That way a contract that he has in view
For fireproof pitchforks of a pattern new.
It must have tickled him, all drawbacks weighed,
To think he stuck the Old One in a trade;
His soul, to start with, wasn’t worth a carrot,
And all he’d left ’ould hardly serve to swear at.'
“By this time Obed had his wits thawed out,
And, looking at the other half in doubt,
Took off his fox-skin cap to scratch his head,
Donned it again, and drawled forth, 'Mean he’s dead?'
'Jesso; he’s dead and t’other _d_ that follers
With folks that never love a thing but dollars.
He pulled up stakes last evening, fair and square,
And ever since there’s been a row Down There.
The minute the old chap arrived, you see,
Comes the Boss-devil to him, and says he,
“What are you good at? Little enough, I fear;
We callilate to make folks useful here.”
“Well,” says old Bitters, “I expect I can
Scale a fair load of wood with e’er a man.”
“Wood we don’t deal in; but perhaps you’ll suit,
Because we buy our brimstone by the foot:
Here, take this measurin'-rod, as smooth as sin,
And keep a reckonin' of what loads comes in.
You’ll not want business, for we need a lot
To keep the Yankees that you send us hot;
At firin' up they’re barely half as spry
As Spaniards or Italians, though they’re dry;
At first we have to let the draught on stronger,
But, heat ’em through, they seem to hold it longer.”
“'Bitters he took the rod, and pretty soon
A teamster comes, whistling an ex-psalm tune.
A likelier chap you wouldn’t ask to see,
No different, but his limp, from you or me'--
'No different, Perez! Don’t your memory fail?
Why, where in thunder was his horns and tail?'
'They’re only worn by some old-fashioned pokes;
They mostly aim at looking just like folks.
Sech things are scarce as queues and top-boots here;
’Twould spoil their usefulness to look too queer.
Ef you could always know ’em when they come,
They’d get no purchase on you: now be mum.
On come the teamster, smart as Davy Crockett,
Jinglin' the red-hot coppers in his pocket,
And clost behind, ('twas gold-dust, you’d ha' sworn,)
A load of sulphur yallower’n seed-corn;
To see it wasted as it is Down There
Would make a Friction-Match Co. tear its hair!
“Hold on!” says Bitters, “stop right where you be;
You can’t go in athout a pass from me.”
“All right,” says t’other, “only step round smart;
I must be home by noon-time with the cart.”
Bitters goes round it sharp-eyed as a rat,
Then with a scrap of paper on his hat
Pretends to cipher. “By the public staff,
That load scarce rises twelve foot and a half.”
“There’s fourteen foot and over,” says the driver,
“Worth twenty dollars, ef it’s worth a stiver;
Good fourth-proof brimstone, that’ll make ’em squirm,--
I leave it to the Headman of the Firm;
After we masure it, we always lay
Some on to allow for settlin' by the way.
Imp and full-grown, I’ve carted sulphur here,
And given fair satisfaction, thirty year.”
With that they fell to quarrellin' so loud
That in five minutes they had drawed a crowd,
And afore long the Boss, who heard the row,
Comes elbowin' in with “What’s to pay here now?”
Both parties heard, the measurin'-rod he takes,
And of the load a careful survey makes.
“Sence I’ve bossed the business here,” says he,
“No fairer load was ever seen by me.”
Then, turnin' to the Deacon, “You mean cus,
None of your old Quompegan tricks with us!
They won’t do here: we’re plain old-fashioned folks,
And don’t quite understand that kind o' jokes.
I know this teamster, and his pa afore him,
And the hard-working Mrs. D. that bore him;
He wouldn’t soil his conscience with a lie,
Though he might get the custom-house thereby.
Here, constable, take Bitters by the queue,
And clap him into furnace ninety-two,
And try this brimstone on him; if he’s bright,
He’ll find the masure honest afore night.
He isn’t worth his fuel, and I’ll bet
The parish oven has to take him yet!”’
“This is my tale, heard twenty years ago
From Uncle Reuben, as the logs burned low,
Touching the walls and ceiling with that bloom
That makes a rose’s calyx of a room.
I could not give his language, wherethrough ran
The gamy flavor of the bookless man
Who shapes a word before the fancy cools,
As lonely Crusoe improvised his tools.
I liked the tale,--’twas like so many told
By Rutebeuf and his brother Trouvères bold;
Nor were the hearers much unlike to theirs,
Men unsophisticate, rude-nerved as bears.
Ezra is gone and his large-hearted kind,
The landlords of the hospitable mind;
Good Warriner of Springfield was the last;
An inn is now a vision of the past;
One yet-surviving host my mind recalls,--
You’ll find him if you go to Trenton Falls.”
THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC POETRY.
When wise Minerva still was young
And just the least romantic,
Soon after from Jove’s head she flung
That preternatural antic,
’Tis said, to keep from idleness
Or flirting, those twin curses,
She spent her leisure, more or less,
In writing po----, no, verses.
How nice they were! to rhyme with _far_
A kind _star_ did not tarry;
The metre, too, was regular
As schoolboy’s dot and carry;
And full they were of pious plums,
So extra-super-moral,--
For sucking Virtue’s tender gums
Most tooth-enticing coral.
A clean, fair copy she prepares,
Makes sure of moods and tenses,
With her own hand,--for prudence spares
A man-(or woman-)-uensis;
Complete, and tied with ribbons proud,
She hinted soon how cosy a
Treat it would be to read them loud
After next day’s Ambrosia.
The Gods thought not it would amuse
So much as Homer’s Odyssees,
But could not very well refuse
The properest of Goddesses;
So all sat round in attitudes
Of various dejection,
As with a _hem!_ the queen of prudes
Began her grave prelection.
At the first pause Zeus said, “Well sung!--
I mean--ask Phœbus,--_he_ knows.”
Says Phœbus, “Zounds! a wolf’s among
Admetus’s merinos!
Fine! very fine! but I must go;
They stand in need of me there;
Excuse me!” snatched his stick, and so
Plunged down the gladdened ether.
With the next gap, Mars said, “For me
Don’t wait,--naught could be finer,
But I’m engaged at half past three,--
A fight in Asia Minor!”
Then Venus lisped, “I’m sorely tried,
These duty-calls are vip’rous;
But I _must_ go; I have a bride
To see about in Cyprus.”
Then Bacchus,--“I must say good bye,
Although my peace it jeopards;
I meet a man at four, to try
A well-broke pair of leopards.”
His words woke Hermes. “Ah!” he said,
“I _so_ love moral theses!”
Then winked at Hebe, who turned red,
And smoothed her apron’s creases.
Just then Zeus snored,--the Eagle drew
His head the wing from under;
Zeus snored,--o’er startled Greece there flew
The many-volumed thunder.
Some augurs counted nine, some, ten;
Some said ’twas war, some, famine,
And all, that other-minded men
Would get a precious----.
Proud Pallas sighed, “It will not do;
Against the Muse I’ve sinned, oh!”
And her torn rhymes sent flying through
Olympus’s back window.
Then, packing up a peplus clean,
She took the shortest path thence,
And opened, with a mind serene,
A Sunday-school in Athens.
The verses? Some in ocean swilled,
Killed every fish that bit to ’em;
Some Galen caught, and, when distilled,
Found morphine the residuum;
But some that rotted on the earth
Sprang up again in copies,
And gave two strong narcotics birth,
Didactic verse and poppies.
Years after, when a poet asked
The Goddess’s opinion,
As one whose soul its wings had tasked
In Art’s clear-aired dominion,
“Discriminate,” she said, “betimes;
The Muse is unforgiving;
Put all your beauty in your rhymes,
Your morals in your living.”
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
Don’t believe in the Flying Dutchman?
I’ve known the fellow for years;
My button I’ve wrenched from his clutch, man:
I shudder whenever he nears!
He’s a Rip van Winkle skipper,
A Wandering Jew of the sea,
Who sails his bedevilled old clipper
In the wind’s eye, straight as a bee.
Back topsails! you can’t escape him;
The man-ropes stretch with his weight,
And the queerest old toggeries drape him,
The Lord knows how long out of date!
Like a long-disembodied idea,
(A kind of ghost plentiful now,)
He stands there; you fancy you see a
Coeval of Teniers or Douw.
He greets you; would have you take letters:
You scan the addresses with dread,
While he mutters his _donners_ and _wetters_,--
They’re all from the dead to the dead!
You seem taking time for reflection,
But the heart fills your throat with a jam,
As you spell in each faded direction
An ominous ending in _dam_.
Am I tagging my rhymes to a legend?
That were changing green turtle to mock:
No, thank you! I’ve found out which wedge-end
Is meant for the head of a block.
The fellow I have in my mind’s eye
Plays the old Skipper’s part here on shore,
And sticks like a burr, till he finds I
Have got just the gauge of his bore.
This postman ’twixt one ghost and t’other,
With last dates that smell of the mould,
I have met him (O man and brother,
Forgive me!) in azure and gold.
In the pulpit I’ve known of his preaching,
Out of hearing behind the time,
Some statement of Balaam’s impeaching,
Giving Eve a due sense of her crime.
I have seen him some poor ancient thrashing
Into something (God save us!) more dry,
With the Water of Life itself washing
The life out of earth, sea, and sky.
O dread fellow-mortal, get newer
Despatches to carry, or none!
We’re as quick as the Greek and the Jew were
At knowing a loaf from a stone.
Till the couriers of God fail in duty,
We sha’n’t ask a mummy for news,
Nor sate the soul’s hunger for beauty
With your drawings from casts of a Muse.
CREDIDIMUS JOVEM REGNARE.
O days endeared to every Muse,
When nobody had any Views,
Nor, while the cloudscape of his mind
By every breeze was new designed,
Insisted all the world should see
Camels or whales where none there be!
O happy days, when men received
From sire to son what all believed,
And left the other world in bliss,
Too busy with bedevilling this!
Beset by doubts of every breed
In the last bastion of my creed,
With shot and shell for Sabbath-chime,
I watch the storming-party climb,
Panting (their prey in easy reach),
To pour triumphant through the breach
In walls that shed like snowflakes tons
Of missiles from old-fashioned guns,
But crumble ’neath the storm that pours
All day and night from bigger bores.
There, as I hopeless watch and wait
The last life-crushing coil of Fate,
Despair finds solace in the praise
Of those serene dawn-rosy days
Ere microscopes had made us heirs
To large estates of doubts and snares,
By proving that the title-deeds,
Once all-sufficient for men’s needs,
Are palimpsests that scarce disguise
The tracings of still earlier lies,
Themselves as surely written o’er
An older fib erased before.
So from these days I fly to those
That in the landlocked Past repose,
Where no rude wind of doctrine shakes
From bloom-flushed boughs untimely flakes;
Where morning’s eyes see nothing strange,
No crude perplexity of change,
And morrows trip along their ways
Secure as happy yesterdays.
Then there were rulers who could trace
Through heroes up to gods their race,
Pledged to fair fame and noble use
By veins from Odin filled or Zeus,
And under bonds to keep divine
The praise of a celestial line.
Then priests could pile the altar’s sods,
With whom gods spake as they with gods,
And everywhere from haunted earth
Broke springs of wonder, that had birth
In depths divine beyond the ken
And fatal scrutiny of men;
Then hills and groves and streams and seas
Thrilled with immortal presences,
Not too ethereal for the scope
Of human passion’s dream or hope.
Now Pan at last is surely dead,
And King No-Credit reigns instead,
Whose officers, morosely strict,
Poor Fancy’s tenantry evict,
Chase the last Genius from the door,
And nothing dances any more.
Nothing? Ah, yes, our tables do,
Drumming the Old One’s own tattoo,
And, if the oracles are dumb,
Have we not mediums? Why be glum?
Fly thither? Why, the very air
Is full of hindrance and despair!
Fly thither? But I cannot fly;
My doubts enmesh me if I try,--
Each lilliputian, but, combined,
Potent a giant’s limbs to bind.
This world and that are growing dark;
A huge interrogation mark,
The Devil’s crook episcopal,
Still borne before him since the Fall,
Blackens with its ill-omened sign
The old blue heaven of faith benign.
Whence? Whither? Wherefore? How? Which? Why?
All ask at once, all wait reply.
Men feel old systems cracking under ’em;
Life saddens to a mere conundrum
Which once Religion solved, but she
Has lost--has Science found?--the key.
What was snow-bearded Odin, trow,
The mighty hunter long ago,
Whose horn and hounds the peasant hears
Still when the Northlights shake their spears?
Science hath answers twain, I’ve heard;
Choose which you will, nor hope a third;
Whichever box the truth be stowed in,
There’s not a sliver left of Odin.
Either he was a pinchbrowed thing,
With scarcely wit a stone to fling,
A creature both in size and shape
Nearer than we are to the ape,
Who hung sublime with brat and spouse
By tail prehensile from the boughs,
And, happier than his maimed descendants,
The culture-curtailed independents,
Could pluck his cherries with both paws,
And stuff with both his big-boned jaws;
Or else the core his name enveloped
Was from a solar myth developed,
Which, hunted to its primal shoot,
Takes refuge in a Sanskrit root,
Thereby to instant death explaining
The little poetry remaining.
Try it with Zeus, ’tis just the same;
The thing evades, we hug a name;
Nay, scarcely that,--perhaps a vapor
Born of some atmospheric caper.
All Lempriere’s fables blur together
In cloudy symbols of the weather,
And Aphrodite rose from frothy seas
But to illustrate such hypotheses.
With years enough behind his back,
Lincoln will take the selfsame track,
And prove, hulled fairly to the cob,
A mere vagary of Old Prob.
Give the right man a solar myth,
And he’ll confute the sun therewith.