In counting somewhat freely on that Love
From which, through rolling ages, worlds have sprung,
And—last and best of all—the lords of worlds,
Through type on type uplifted from the clay;
If I have been exultant in the thought
That such humanity came so near to God,
He held us as His children, and would find
Imperial progress through the halls of Time
For every soul,—why, then, my crescent faith
Clings round the promise; if it spread beyond,
You think, too far, I say that Peter sprang
Upon the waves of surging Galilee,
While all the eleven hugged the ship in fear:
The waters were as stone unto his feet
Until he doubted, even then the Christ
Put forth a blesséd hand, and drew him on
To closer knowledge!
So, if it be mine
First of us twain to pass the sable gates,
That guard so well their mysteries, and thou,
With some dear friend, may’st stand beside my grave,
Speak no such words as these:—“Not long ago
His voice rang out as cheerly as mine own;
And we were friends, and, far into the nights,
Would analyze the wisdom of old days
By all the tests of Science in her prime;
Anon would tramp afield, to fruits and flowers,
And the long prototypes of trees and beasts
Graven in sandstone; so, at last, would come,
Through lanes of talk, to that perennial tree,—
The Tree of Life, on which redemption hangs.
But there fell out of tune; we parted there,
He bolstering up a creed too broad for me!
I held him kindly for an ardent soul,
Who lacked not skill to make his argument
Seem fair and specious. But he groped in doubt:
His head and heart were young; he wandered off,
And fell afoul of all those theorists
Who soften down our dear New England faith
With German talk of ‘Nature,’ ‘inner lights
And harmonies’: so, taken with the wind
Of those high-sounding terms, he spoke at large,
And held discussion bravely till he died.
Here sleep his ashes; where his soul may be,
Myself, who loved him, do not care to think.”
The ecstasy of Faith has no such fears
As those you nurse for me! The marvellous love,
Which folds the systems in a flood of light,
Makes no crude works to shatter out of joint
Through all the future. O, believe, with me,
For every instinct in these hearts of ours
A full fruition hastens! O, believe
That promise greater than our greatest trust
And loftiest aspiration! Tell thy friend,
Beside my grave: “He did the best he could,
With earnest spirit polishing the lens
By which he took the heavens in his ken,
And through the empyrean sought for God;
He caught, or thought he caught, from time to time,
Bright glimpses of the Infinite, on which
He fed in rapturous and quiet joy,
That helped him keep a host of troubles down.
He went his way,—a different path from mine,
But took his place among the ranks of men
Who toil and suffer. If, in sooth, it be
Religion keeps us up, this man had that.
God grant his yearnings were a living faith!
Heaven lies above us: may we find him there
Beside the waters still, and crowned with palms!”
THE FRESHET.
A CONNECTICUT IDYL.
Last August, of a three weeks’ country tour,
Five dreamy days were passed amid old elms
And older mansions, and in leafy dales,
That knew us till our elders pushed us forth
To larger life,—as eagles push their young,
New-fledged and wondering, from the eyrie’s edge,
To cater for themselves.
I fell in, there,
With Gilbert Ripley, once my chum at Yale.
Poor Gilbert groaned along a double year,—
Read, spoke, boxed, fenced, rowed, trod the foot-ball ground,—
Loving the college library more than Greek,
His meerschaum most of all. But when we came
Together, gathered from the breathing-time
They give the fellows while the dog-days last,
He found the harness chafe; then grew morose,
And kicked above the traces, going home
Hardly a Junior, but a sounder man,
In mind and body, than a host who win
Your baccalaureate honors. There he stayed,
Half tired of bookmen, on his father’s farm,
And gladly felt the plough-helve. In a year
The old man gave his blessing to the son,
And left his life, as ’twere his harvest-field,
When work was over. Gilbert hugged the farm,
Now made his own, besides a pretty sum
In good State Sixes; partly worked the land,
With separate theories for every field,
And partly led the student-life of old,
Mouthing his Shakespeare’s ballads to himself
Among the meadow-mows; or, when he read
In the evening, found a picture of his bull,
Just brought from Devon, sleek as silk, loom in
Before his vision. Thus he weighed his tastes,
Each against each, in happiest equipoise.
The neighbor farmers seeing he had thrift
That would not run to waste, and pardoning all
Beyond their understanding, wished him well.
But when I saw him stride among his stock,—
Straight-shouldered cattle, breathing of the field,—
Saw him how blowze and hearty; then, at eve,
Close sitting by his mother in the porch,
Heard him discuss the methods of the times,
The need our country has of stalwart men,
Who scorn the counter and will till the land,
Strong-handed, free of thought,—I somehow felt
The man was noble, and his simple life
More like the pattern given in the Mount
Than mine, hedged close about with city life
And grim, conventional manners.
So much, then,
For Gilbert Ripley. Not to dwell too long
Upon his doings, let me tell the tale
I got from him, one hazy afternoon,
When he and I had wandered to the bridge,
New-built across our favorite of the streams
That skirt the village,—here three miles apart,
Twin currents, joining in a third below.
There memory’s shallop bore us dreamily,
Through changeful windings, to the long, long days
Of June vacations. How we boys would thrid
The alder thickets at the water’s edge,
Conjecturing forward, though the Present lay
Like Eden round us; for the Future shone—
The sun to which each young heart turned for light!
What wild conceits of great, oracular lives,
Ourselves would equal! but let that go by:
Each has gone by, in turn, to humbler fates.
Sometimes we angled, and our trolling hooks
Swung the gray pickerel from his reedy shoals.
Beyond a horseshoe bend, the current’s force
Wore out a deeper channel, where the shore
Fell off, precipitous, on the western side.
There dived the bathers; there I learned to swim,—
Flung far into the middle stream by one
Who watched my gaspings, laughing, till my limbs,
Half of themselves, struck out, and held me up.
Far down, a timbered dam, from bank to bank,
Shut back the waters in a shadowy lake,
About a mimic island. Languidly
The chestnuts still infoliate its space,
And still the whispering flags are intertwined
With whitest water-lilies near the marge.
Close by, the paper-mill, with murmurous wheel,
Still glistens through the branches, while its score
Of laughing maidens throng the copse at noon.
But we, with careless arms upon the rail,
Peered through and through the water; almost saw
Its silvery Naiads, from their wavering depths,
Gleam with strange faces upward; almost heard
Sweet voices carol: “Ah, you all come back!
We charm your childhood; then you roam away,
To float on alien waters, like the winds;
But, ah, you all come back,—come dreaming back!”
At last I broke the silence: “See,” I said
To Gilbert, “see how fair our dear old stream!
How calm, beneath the shadow of these piers,
It eddies in and out, and cools itself
In slumberous ripples whispering repose.”
But he made answer: “Yes, this August day
The wave is summer-charmed, the fields are hazed;
But in the callow Spring, when Easter winds
Are on us, laden with rain, these fickle streams—
More gentle now than in his cradled sleep
Some Alexander—take up arms, spread wide,
Leap high and cruel in a fierce campaign
Along their valleys. See this trellised bridge,
New-built, and firmer than the one from which
We fellows dropped the line:—_that_ went away
Two years ago, like straw before a gale,
In the great April flood, of which you heard,
When George and Lucy Dorrance lost their lives.
I saw them perish. You remember her,—
She that was Lucy Hall,—a charming girl,
The fairest of our schoolmates, with a heart
Light as her smile and fastened all upon
The boy that won her; yet her glances fell
Among us, right and left, like shooting stars
In clear October nights when winds are still.
“That year our Equinoctial came along
Ere the snow left us. Under mountain pines
White drifts lay frozen like the dead, and down
Through many a gorge the bristling hemlocks crossed
Their spears above the ice-enfettered brooks;
But the pent river wailed, through prison walls,
For freedom and the time to rend its chains.
At last it came: five days a drenching rain
Flooded the country; snow-drifts fell away;
The brooks grew rivers, and the river here—
A ravenous, angry torrent—tore up banks,
And overflowed the meadows, league on league.
Great cakes of ice, four-square, with mounds of hay,
Fence-rails, and scattered drift-wood, and huge beams
From broken dams above us, mill-wheel ties,
Smooth lumber, and the torn-up trunks of trees,
Swept downward, strewing all the land about.
Sometimes the flood surrounded, unawares,
Stray cattle, or a flock of timorous sheep,
And bore them with it, struggling, till the ice
Beat shape and being from them. You know how
These freshets scour our valleys. So it raged
A night and day; but when the day grew night
The storm fell off; lastly, the sun went down
Quite clear of clouds, and ere he came again
The flood began to lower.
“Through the rise
We men had been at work, like water-sprites,
Lending a helping hand to cottagers
Along the lowlands. Now, at early morn,
The banks were sentry-lined with thrifty swains,
Who hauled great stores of drift-wood up the slope.
But toward the bridge our village maidens soon
Came flocking, thick as swallows after storms,
When, with light wing, they skim the happy fields
And greet the sunshine. Danger mostly gone,
They watched the thunderous passage of the flood
Between the abutments, while the upper stream,
Far as they saw, lay like a seething strait,
From hill to hill. Below, with gradual fall
Through narrower channels, all was clash and clang
And inarticulate tumult. Through the grove
Yonder, our picnic-ground, the driving tide
Struck a new channel, and the craggy ice
Scored down its saplings. Following with the rest
Came George and Lucy, not three honeymoons
Made man and wife, and happier than a pair
Of cooing ring-doves in the early June.
“Two piers, you know, bore up the former bridge,
Cleaving the current, wedge-like, on the north;
Between them stood our couple, intergrouped
With many others. On a sudden loomed
An immolating terror from above,—
A floating field of ice, where fifty cakes
Had clung together, mingled with a mass
Of _débris_ from the upper conflict, logs
Woven in with planks and fence-rails; and in front
One huge, old, fallen trunk rose like a wall
Across the channel. Then arose a cry
From all who saw it, clamoring, _Flee the bridge!_
_Run shoreward for your lives!_ and all made haste,
Eastward and westward, till they felt the ground
Stand firm beneath them; but, with close-locked arms,
Lucy and George still looked, from the lower rail,
Toward the promontory where we stood,
Nor saw the death, nor seemed to hear the cry.
_Run George! run Lucy!_ shouted all at once;
Too late, too late! for, with resistless crash,
Against both piers that mighty ruin lay
A space that seemed an hour, yet far too short
For rescue. Swaying slowly back and forth,
With ponderous tumult, all the bridge went off;
Piers, beams, planks, railings snapped their groaning ties
And fell asunder!
“But the middle part,
Wrought with great bolts of iron, like a raft
Held out awhile, whirled onward in the wreck
This way and that, and washed with freezing spray.
Faster than I can tell you, it came down
Beyond our point, and in a flash we saw
George, on his knees, close-clinging for dear life,
One arm around the remnant of the rail,
One clasping Lucy. We were pale as they,
Powerless to save; but even as they swept
Across the bend, and twenty stalwart men
Ran to and fro with clamor for _A rope!_
_A boat!_—their cries together reached the shore:
_Save her! Save him!_—so true Love conquers all.
Furlongs below they still more closely held
Each other, ’mid a thousand shocks of ice
And seething horrors; till, at last, the end
Came, where the river, scornful of its bed,
Struck a new channel, roaring through the grove.
There, dashed against a naked beech that stood
Grimly in front, their shattered raft gave up
Its precious charge; and then a mist of tears
Blinded all eyes, through which we seemed to see
Two forms in death-clasp whirled along the flood,
And all was over.
“Then from out the crowd
Certain went up the lane, and broke the news
To Lucy’s widowed mother; she spoke not,
Nor wept, nor murmured, but with stony glare
Took in her loss, like Niobe, and to bed
Moved stolidly and never rose again.
Old Farmer Dorrance gave a single groan,
And hurried down among us—all the man,
Though white with anguish—as we took our course
Around the meadows, searching for the dead.
“An eddying gulf ran up the hither bank,
Close by the paper-mill, and there the flood
Gave back its booty; there we found them laid,
Covered with floating leaves and twigs of trees,
Not many feet apart: so Love’s last clasp
Held lingeringly, until the cruel ice
Battered its fastenings. On a rustic bier,
Made of loose boughs and strewn with winter ferns,
We placed them, side by side, and bore them home.
The old man walked behind them, by himself,
And wrung his hands and bowed his head in tears.”
So Gilbert told his story; I, meanwhile,
Followed his finger’s pointing, as it marked
Each spot he mentioned, like a teacher’s wand.
But now the sun hung low; from many a field
The loitering kine went home with tinkling bells.
Slow-turning, toward the farm we made our way,
And met a host of maidens, merry-eyed,
Whom I knew not, yet caught a frequent glance
I seemed to know, that half-way brought to mind
Sweet eyes I loved to watch in school-boy days,—
Sweet sister-eyes to those that glistened now.
THE SLEIGH-RIDE.
Hark! the jingle
Of the sleigh-bells’ song!
Earth and air in snowy sheen commingle;
Swiftly throng
Norseland fancies, as we sail along.
Like the maiden
Of some fairy-tale,
Lying, spell-bound, in her diamond-laden
Bridal veil,
Sleeps the Earth beneath a garment pale.
High above us
Gleams the ancient moon,
Gleam the eyes of shining ones that love us:
Could their tune
Only fill our ears at heaven’s noon,
You and I, love,
With a wild delight,
Hearing that seraphic strain would die, love,
This same night,
Straight to join them in their starry height!
Closer nestle,
Dearest, to my side.
What enchantment, in our magic vessel
Thus to glide,
Making music, on a silver tide!
Jingle! jingle!
How the fields go by!
Earth and air in snowy sheen commingle,
Far and nigh;
Is the ground beneath us, or the sky?
Heavenward yonder,
In the lurid north,
From Valhalla’s gates that roll asunder,
Red and wroth,
Balder’s funeral flames are blazing forth.
O, what splendor!
How the hues expire!
All the elves of light their tribute render
To the pyre,
Clad in robes of gold and crimson fire.
Jingle! jingle!
Let the Earth go by!
With a wilder thrill our pulses tingle;
You and I
Will shout our loves, but aye forget to sigh!
THE BALLAD OF LAGER BIER.
In fallow college days, Tom Harland,
We both have known the ways of Yale,
And talked of many a nigh and far land,
O’er many a famous tap of ale.
There still they sing their Gaudeamus,
And see the road to glory clear;
But taps, that in our day were famous,
Have given place to Lager Bier.
Now, settled in this island-city,
We let new fashions have their weight;
Though none too lucky—more’s the pity!—
Can still beguile our humble state
By finding time to come together,
In every season of the year,
In sunny, wet, or windy weather,
And clink our mugs of Lager Bier.
On winter evenings, cold and blowing,
’Tis good to order “’alf-and-’alf”;
To watch the fire-lit pewter glowing,
And laugh a hearty English laugh;
Or even a sip of mountain whiskey
Can raise a hundred phantoms dear
Of days when boyish blood was frisky,
And no one heard of Lager Bier.
We’ve smoked in summer with Oscanyan,
Cross-legged in that defunct bazaar,
Until above our heads the banyan
Or palm-tree seemed to spread afar;
And, then and there, have drunk his sherbet,
Tinct with the roses of Cashmere:
That Orient calm! who would disturb it
With Norseland calls for Lager Bier?
There’s Paris chocolate,—nothing sweeter,
At midnight, when the dying strain,
Just warbled by La Favorita,
Still hugs the music-haunted brain;
Yet of all bibulous compoundings,
Extracts or brewings, mixed or clear,
The best, in substance and surroundings,
For frequent use, is Lager Bier.
Karl Schæffer is a stalwart brewer,
Who has above his vaults a hall,
Where—fresh-tapped, foaming, cool, and pure—
He serves the nectar out to all.
Tom Harland, have you any money?
Why, then, we’ll leave this hemisphere,
This western land of milk and honey,
For one that flows with Lager Bier.
Go, flaxen-haired and blue-eyed maiden,
My German Hebe! hasten through
Yon smoke-cloud, and return thou laden
With bread and cheese and bier for two.
Limburger suits this bearded fellow;
His brow is high, his taste severe:
But I’m for Schweitzer, mild and yellow,
To eat with bread and Lager Bier.
Ah, yes! the Schweitzer hath a savor
Of marjoram and mountain thyme,
An odoriferous, Alpine flavor;
You almost hear the cow-bells chime
While eating it, or, dying faintly,
The _Ranz-des-vaches_ entrance the ear,
Until you feel quite Swiss and saintly,
Above your glass of Lager Bier.
Here comes our drink, froth-crowned and sunlit,
In goblets with high-curving arms,
Drawn from a newly opened runlet,
As bier must be, to have its charms.
This primal portion each shall swallow
At one draught, for a pioneer;
And thus a ritual usage follow
Of all who honor Lager Bier.
Glass after glass in due succession,
Till, borne through midriff, heart, and brain,
He mounts his throne and takes possession,—
The genial Spirit of the grain!
Then comes the old Berserker madness
To make each man a priest and seer,
And, with a Scandinavian gladness,
Drink deeper draughts of Lager Bier!
Go, maiden, fill again our glasses!
While, with anointed eyes, we scan
The blouse Teutonic lads and lasses,
The Saxon—Pruss—Bohemian,
The sanded floor, the cross-beamed gables,
The ancient Flemish paintings queer,
The rusty cup-stains on the tables,
The terraced kegs of Lager Bier.
And is it Göttingen, or Gotha,
Or Munich’s ancient Wagner Brei,
Where each Bavarian drinks his quota,
And swings a silver tankard high?
Or some ancestral Gast-Haus lofty
In Nuremburg—of famous cheer
When Hans Sachs lived, and where, so oft, he
Sang loud the praise of Lager Bier?
For even now some curious glamour
Has brought about a misty change!
Things look, as in a moonlight dream, or
Magician’s mirror, quaint and strange.
Some weird, phantasmagoric notion
Impels us backward many a year,
And far across the northern ocean,
To Fatherlands of Lager Bier.
As odd a throng I see before us
As ever haunted Brocken’s height,
Carousing, with unearthly chorus,
On any wild Walpurgis-night;
I see the wondrous art-creations!
In proper guise they all appear,
And, in their due and several stations,
Unite in drinking Lager Bier.
I see in yonder nook a trio:
There’s Doctor Faust, and, by his side,
Not half so love-distraught as Io,
Is gentle Margaret, heaven-eyed;
That man in black beyond the waiter—
I know him by his fiendish leer—
Is Mephistophiles, the traitor!
And how he swigs his Lager Bier!
Strange if great Goethe should have blundered,
Who says that Margaret slipt and fell
In Anno Domini Sixteen Hundred,
Or thereabout; and Faustus,—well,
We won’t deplore his resurrection,
Since Margaret is with him here,
But, under her serene protection,
May boldly drink our Lager Bier.
That bare-legged gypsy, small and lithy,
Tanned like an olive by the sun,
Is little Mignon; sing us, prithee,
_Kennst du das Land_, my pretty one!
Ah, no! she shakes her southern tresses,
As half in doubt and more in fear;
Perhaps the elvish creature guesses
We’ve had too much of Lager Bier.
There moves, full-bodiced, ripe, and human,
With merry smiles to all who come,
Karl Schæffer’s wife,—the very woman
Whom Rubens drew his Venus from!
But what a host of tricksome graces
Play round our fairy Undine here,
Who pouts at all the bearded faces,
And, laughing, brings the Lager Bier.
“Sit down, nor chase the vision farther,
You’re tied to Yankee cities still!”
I hear you, but so much the rather
Should Fancy travel where she will.
Yet let the dim ideals scatter;
One puff, and lo! they disappear;
The comet, next, or some such matter,
We’ll talk above our Lager Bier.
Now, then, your eyes begin to brighten,
And marvellous theories to flow;
A philosophic theme you light on,
And, spurred and booted, off you go!
If e’er—to drive Apollo’s phaeton—
I need an earthly charioteer,
This tall-browed genius I will wait on,
And prime him first with Lager Bier.
But higher yet, in middle Heaven,
Your steed seems taking flight, my friend;
You read the secret of the Seven,
And on through trackless regions wend!
Don’t vanish in the Milky Way, for
This afternoon you’re wanted here;
Come back! come back! and help me pay for
The bread and cheese and Lager Bier.
HOW OLD BROWN TOOK HARPER’S FERRY.
John Brown in Kansas settled, like a steadfast Yankee farmer,
Brave and godly, with four sons, all stalwart men of might.
There he spoke aloud for freedom, and the Border-strife grew warmer,
Till the Rangers fired his dwelling, in his absence, in the night;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Came homeward in the morning—to find his house burned down.
Then he grasped his trusty rifle and boldly fought for freedom;
Smote from border unto border the fierce, invading band;
And he and his brave boys vowed—so might Heaven help and speed ’em!—
They would save those grand old prairies from the curse that blights
the land;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Said, “Boys, the Lord will aid us!” and he shoved his ramrod down.
And the Lord _did_ aid these men, and they labored day and even,
Saving Kansas from its peril; and their very lives seemed charmed,
Till the ruffians killed one son, in the blessed light of Heaven,—
In cold blood the fellows slew him, as he journeyed all unarmed;
Then Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Shed not a tear, but shut his teeth, and frowned a terrible frown!
Then they seized another brave boy,—not amid the heat of battle,
But in peace, behind his ploughshare,—and they loaded him with chains,
And with pikes, before their horses, even as they goad their cattle,
Drove him cruelly, for their sport, and at last blew out his brains;
Then Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Raised his right hand up to Heaven, calling Heaven’s vengeance down.
And he swore a fearful oath, by the name of the Almighty,
He would hunt this ravening evil that had scathed and torn him so;
He would seize it by the vitals; he would crush it day and night; he
Would so pursue its footsteps, so return it blow for blow,
That Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Should be a name to swear by, in backwoods or in town!
Then his beard became more grizzled, and his wild blue eye grew wilder,
And more sharply curved his hawk’s-nose, snuffing battle from afar;
And he and the two boys left, though the Kansas strife waxed milder,
Grew more sullen, till was over the bloody Border War,
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Had gone crazy, as they reckoned by his fearful glare and frown.
So he left the plains of Kansas and their bitter woes behind him,
Slipt off into Virginia, where the statesmen all are born,
Hired a farm by Harper’s Ferry, and no one knew where to find him,
Or whether he’d turned parson, or was jacketed and shorn;
For Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Mad as he was, knew texts enough to wear a parson’s gown.
He bought no ploughs and harrows, spades and shovels, and such trifles;
But quietly to his rancho there came, by every train,
Boxes full of pikes and pistols, and his well-beloved Sharp’s rifles;
And eighteen other madmen joined their leader there again.
Says Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
“Boys, we’ve got an army large enough to march and take the town!
“Take the town, and seize the muskets, free the negroes and then arm
them;
Carry the County and the State, ay, and all the potent South.
On their own heads be the slaughter, if their victims rise to harm them—
These Virginians! who believed not, nor would heed the warning mouth.”
Says Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
“The world shall see a Republic, or my name is not John Brown.”