As we lay awake long before daybreak, listening to the rippling of the
river, and the rustling of the leaves, in suspense whether the wind
blew up or down the stream, was favorable or unfavorable to our voyage,
we already suspected that there was a change in the weather, from a
freshness as of autumn in these sounds. The wind in the woods sounded
like an incessant waterfall dashing and roaring amid rocks, and we even
felt encouraged by the unusual activity of the elements. He who hears
the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly
despair. That night was the turning-point in the season. We had gone to
bed in summer, and we awoke in autumn; for summer passes into autumn in
some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.
We found our boat in the dawn just as we had left it, and as if waiting
for us, there on the shore, in autumn, all cool and dripping with dew,
and our tracks still fresh in the wet sand around it, the fairies all
gone or concealed. Before five o’clock we pushed it into the fog, and,
leaping in, at one shove were out of sight of the shores, and began to
sweep downward with the rushing river, keeping a sharp lookout for
rocks. We could see only the yellow gurgling water, and a solid bank of
fog on every side, forming a small yard around us. We soon passed the
mouth of the Souhegan, and the village of Merrimack, and as the mist
gradually rolled away, and we were relieved from the trouble of
watching for rocks, we saw by the flitting clouds, by the first russet
tinge on the hills, by the rushing river, the cottages on shore, and
the shore itself, so coolly fresh and shining with dew, and later in
the day, by the hue of the grape-vine, the goldfinch on the willow, the
flickers flying in flocks, and when we passed near enough to the shore,
as we fancied, by the faces of men, that the Fall had commenced. The
cottages looked more snug and comfortable, and their inhabitants were
seen only for a moment, and then went quietly in and shut the door,
retreating inward to the haunts of summer.
“And now the cold autumnal dews are seen
To cobweb ev’ry green;
And by the low-shorn rowens doth appear
The fast-declining year.”
We heard the sigh of the first autumnal wind, and even the water had
acquired a grayer hue. The sumach, grape, and maple were already
changed, and the milkweed had turned to a deep rich yellow. In all
woods the leaves were fast ripening for their fall; for their full
veins and lively gloss mark the ripe leaf, and not the sered one of the
poets; and we knew that the maples, stripped of their leaves among the
earliest, would soon stand like a wreath of smoke along the edge of the
meadow. Already the cattle were heard to low wildly in the pastures and
along the highways, restlessly running to and fro, as if in
apprehension of the withering of the grass and of the approach of
winter. Our thoughts, too, began to rustle.
As I pass along the streets of our village of Concord on the day of our
annual Cattle-Show, when it usually happens that the leaves of the elms
and buttonwoods begin first to strew the ground under the breath of the
October wind, the lively spirits in their sap seem to mount as high as
any plough-boy’s let loose that day; and they lead my thoughts away to
the rustling woods, where the trees are preparing for their winter
campaign. This autumnal festival, when men are gathered in crowds in
the streets as regularly and by as natural a law as the leaves cluster
and rustle by the wayside, is naturally associated in my mind with the
fall of the year. The low of cattle in the streets sounds like a hoarse
symphony or running bass to the rustling of the leaves. The wind goes
hurrying down the country, gleaning every loose straw that is left in
the fields, while every farmer lad too appears to scud before
it,—having donned his best pea-jacket and pepper-and-salt waistcoat,
his unbent trousers, outstanding rigging of duck or kerseymere or
corduroy, and his furry hat withal,—to country fairs and cattle-shows,
to that Rome among the villages where the treasures of the year are
gathered. All the land over they go leaping the fences with their
tough, idle palms, which have never learned to hang by their sides,
amid the low of calves and the bleating of sheep,—Amos, Abner,
Elnathan, Elbridge,—
“From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain.”
I love these sons of earth every mother’s son of them, with their great
hearty hearts rushing tumultuously in herds from spectacle to
spectacle, as if fearful lest there should not be time between sun and
sun to see them all, and the sun does not wait more than in
haying-time.
“Wise Nature’s darlings, they live in the world
Perplexing not themselves how it is hurled.”
Running hither and thither with appetite for the coarse pastimes of the
day, now with boisterous speed at the heels of the inspired negro from
whose larynx the melodies of all Congo and Guinea Coast have broke
loose into our streets; now to see the procession of a hundred yoke of
oxen, all as august and grave as Osiris, or the droves of neat cattle
and milch cows as unspotted as Isis or Io. Such as had no love for
Nature
“at all,
Came lovers home from this great festival.”
They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits to the fair, but
they are all eclipsed by the show of men. These are stirring autumn
days, when men sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle of leaves, like
migrating finches; this is the true harvest of the year, when the air
is but the breath of men, and the rustling of leaves is as the
trampling of the crowd. We read now-a-days of the ancient festivals,
games, and processions of the Greeks and Etruscans, with a little
incredulity, or at least with little sympathy; but how natural and
irrepressible in every people is some hearty and palpable greeting of
Nature. The Corybantes, the Bacchantes, the rude primitive tragedians
with their procession and goat-song, and the whole paraphernalia of the
Panathenæa, which appear so antiquated and peculiar, have their
parallel now. The husbandman is always a better Greek than the scholar
is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, while
antiquarians and scholars grow gray in commemorating it. The farmers
crowd to the fair to-day in obedience to the same ancient law, which
Solon or Lycurgus did not enact, as naturally as bees swarm and follow
their queen.
It is worth the while to see the country’s people, how they pour into
the town, the sober farmer folk, now all agog, their very shirt and
coat-collars pointing forward,—collars so broad as if they had put
their shirts on wrong end upward, for the fashions always tend to
superfluity,—and with an unusual springiness in their gait, jabbering
earnestly to one another. The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to
appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to
disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, in an
ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer’s best, yet never
dressed; come to see the sport, and have a hand in what is going,—to
know “what’s the row,” if there is any; to be where some men are drunk,
some horses race, some cockerels fight; anxious to be shaking props
under a table, and above all to see the “striped pig.” He especially is
the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his
character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the
social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him.
I love to see the herd of men feeding heartily on coarse and succulent
pleasures, as cattle on the husks and stalks of vegetables. Though
there are many crooked and crabbled specimens of humanity among them,
run all to thorn and rind, and crowded out of shape by adverse
circumstances, like the third chestnut in the burr, so that you wonder
to see some heads wear a whole hat, yet fear not that the race will
fail or waver in them; like the crabs which grow in hedges, they
furnish the stocks of sweet and thrifty fruits still. Thus is nature
recruited from age to age, while the fair and palatable varieties die
out, and have their period. This is that mankind. How cheap must be the
material of which so many men are made.
The wind blew steadily down the stream, so that we kept our sails set,
and lost not a moment of the forenoon by delays, but from early morning
until noon were continually dropping downward. With our hands on the
steering-paddle, which was thrust deep into the river, or bending to
the oar, which indeed we rarely relinquished, we felt each palpitation
in the veins of our steed, and each impulse of the wings which drew us
above. The current of our thoughts made as sudden bends as the river,
which was continually opening new prospects to the east or south, but
we are aware that rivers flow most rapidly and shallowest at these
points. The steadfast shores never once turned aside for us, but still
trended as they were made; why then should we always turn aside for
them?
A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be
conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.
These winged thoughts are like birds, and will not be handled; even
hens will not let you touch them like quadrupeds. Nothing was ever so
unfamiliar and startling to a man as his own thoughts.
To the rarest genius it is the most expensive to succumb and conform to
the ways of the world. Genius is the worst of lumber, if the poet would
float upon the breeze of popularity. The bird of paradise is obliged
constantly to fly against the wind, lest its gay trappings, pressing
close to its body, impede its free movements.
He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the
wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most
begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as
within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass,
there are some harbors which they can never reach.
The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar
institutions and edicts for his defence, but the toughest son of earth
and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting
companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshippers of
beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.
The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his faults, and in
spite of his beauties too. He will hit the nail on the head, and we
shall not know the shape of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth
and heart, which is greater than to offer one the freedom of a city.
Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great
who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their
high estimate beyond the stars.
Orpheus does not hear the strains which issue from his lyre, but only
those which are breathed into it; for the original strain precedes the
sound, by as much as the echo follows after. The rest is the perquisite
of the rocks and trees and beasts.
When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world,
but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not truly cumulative
treasure, where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies
which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already
spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of
what poetry is,—I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee
into what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a
true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole!
The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember only that he
saw truth and beauty from his position, and expect the time when a
vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.
We are often prompted to speak our thoughts to our neighbors, or the
single travellers whom we meet on the road, but poetry is a
communication from our home and solitude addressed to all Intelligence.
It never whispers in a private ear. Knowing this, we may understand
those sonnets said to be addressed to particular persons, or “To a
Mistress’s Eyebrow.” Let none feel flattered by them. For poetry write
love, and it will be equally true.
No doubt it is an important difference between men of genius or poets,
and men not of genius, that the latter are unable to grasp and confront
the thought which visits them. But it is because it is too faint for
expression, or even conscious impression. What merely quickens or
retards the blood in their veins and fills their afternoons with
pleasure they know not whence, conveys a distinct assurance to the
finer organization of the poet.
We talk of genius as if it were a mere knack, and the poet could only
express what other men conceived. But in comparison with his task, the
poet is the least talented of any; the writer of prose has more skill.
See what talent the smith has. His material is pliant in his hands.
When the poet is most inspired, is stimulated by an _aura_ which never
even colors the afternoons of common men, then his talent is all gone,
and he is no longer a poet. The gods do not grant him any skill more
than another. They never put their gifts into his hands, but they
encompass and sustain him with their breath.
To say that God has given a man many and great talents, frequently
means that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.
When the poetic frenzy seizes us, we run and scratch with our pen,
intent only on worms, calling our mates around us, like the cock, and
delighting in the dust we make, but do not detect where the jewel lies,
which, perhaps, we have in the mean time cast to a distance, or quite
covered up again.
The poet’s body even is not fed like other men’s, but he sometimes
tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives a divine
life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life
is preserved to a serene old age.
Some poems are for holidays only. They are polished and sweet, but it
is the sweetness of sugar, and not such as toil gives to sour bread.
The breath with which the poet utters his verse must be that by which
he lives.
Great prose, of equal elevation, commands our respect more than great
verse, since it implies a more permanent and level height, a life more
pervaded with the grandeur of the thought. The poet often only makes an
irruption, like a Parthian, and is off again, shooting while he
retreats; but the prose writer has conquered like a Roman, and settled
colonies.
The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem
not printed on paper, coincident with the production of this,
stereotyped in the poet’s life. It is _what he has become through his
work_. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper,
is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in the
life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince’s
gallery.
My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.