From which the mountain pours his streams,
Or hinders, with caressing hands,
The sunlight seeking other lands.
Like some great giant, strong and proud,
He fronts the lowering thunder-cloud,
And wrests its treasures, to bestow
A guerdon on the realm below;
Or, by the deluge roused from sleep
Within his bristling forest-keep,
Shakes all his pines, and far and wide
Sends down a rich, imperious tide.
At night the whistling tempests meet
In tryst upon his topmost seat,
And all the phantoms of the sky
Frolic and gibber, storming by.
By day I see the ocean-mists
Float with the current where it lists,
And from my summit I can hail
Cloud-vessels passing on the gale,—
The stately argosies of air,—
And parley with the helmsmen there;
Can probe their dim, mysterious source,
Ask of their cargo and their course,—
_Whence come? where bound?_—and wait reply,
As, all sails spread, they hasten by.
If, foiled in what I fain would know,
Again I turn my eyes below
And eastward, past the hither mead
Where all day long the cattle feed,
A crescent gleam my sight allures
And clings about the hazy moors,—
The great, encircling, radiant sea,
Alone in its immensity.
Even there, a queen upon its shore,
I know the city evermore
Her palaces and temples rears,
And wooes the nations to her piers;
Yet the proud city seems a mole
To this horizon-bounded whole;
And, from my station on the mount,
The whole is little worth account
Beneath the overhanging sky,
That seems so far and yet so nigh.
Here breathe I inspiration rare,
Unburdened by the grosser air
That hugs the lower land, and feel
Through all my finer senses steal
The life of what that life may be,
Freed from this dull earth’s density,
When we, with many a soul-felt thrill,
Shall thrid the ether at our will,
Through widening corridors of morn
And starry archways swiftly borne.
Here, in the process of the night,
The stars themselves a purer light
Give out, than reaches those who gaze
Enshrouded with the valley’s haze.
October, entering Heaven’s fane,
Assumes her lucent, annual reign:
Then what a dark and dismal clod,
Forsaken by the Sons of God,
Seems this sad world, to those which march
Across the high, illumined arch,
And with their brightness draw me forth
To scan the splendors of the North!
I see the Dragon, as he toils
With Ursa in his shining coils,
And mark the Huntsman lift his shield,
Confronting on the ancient field
The Bull, while in a mystic row
The jewels of his girdle glow;
Or, haply, I may ponder long
On that remoter, sparkling throng,
The orient sisterhood, around
Whose chief our Galaxy is wound;
Thus, half enwrapt in classic dreams,
And brooding over Learning’s gleams,
I leave to gloom the under-land,
And from my watch-tower, close at hand,
Like him who led the favored race,
I look on glory face to face!
So, on the mountain-top, alone,
I dwell, as one who holds a throne;
Or prince, or peasant, him I count
My peer, who stands upon a mount,
Sees farther than the tribes below,
And knows the joys they cannot know;
And, though beyond the sound of speech
They reign, my soul goes out to reach,
Far on their noble heights elsewhere,
My brother-monarchs of the air.
HOLYOKE VALLEY.
“Something sweet
Followed youth, with flying feet,
And will never come again.”
How many years have made their flights,
Northampton, over thee and me,
Since last I scaled those purple heights
That guard the pathway to the sea;
Or climbed, as now, the topmost crown
Of western ridges, whence again
I see, for miles beyond the town,
That sunlit stream divide the plain?
There still the giant warders stand
And watch the current’s downward flow,
And northward still, with threatening hand,
The river bends his ancient bow.
I see the hazy lowlands meet
The sky, and count each shining spire,
From those which sparkle at my feet
To distant steeples tipt with fire.
For still, old town, thou art the same:
The redbreasts sing their choral tune,
Within thy mantling elms aflame,
As in that other, dearer June,
When here my footsteps entered first,
And summer perfect beauty wore,
And all thy charms upon me burst,
While Life’s whole journey lay before.
Here every fragrant walk remains,
Where happy maidens come and go,
And students saunter in the lanes
And hum the songs I used to know.
I gaze, yet find myself alone,
And walk with solitary feet:
How strange these wonted ways have grown!
Where are the friends I used to meet?
In yonder shaded Academe
The rippling metres flow to-day,
But other boys at sunset dream
Of love, and laurels far away;
And ah! from yonder trellised home,
Less sweet the faces are that peer
Than those of old, and voices come
Less musically to my ear.
Sigh not, ye breezy elms, but give
The murmur of my sweetheart’s vows,
When Life was something worth to live,
And Love was young beneath your boughs!
Fade beauty, smiling everywhere,
That can from year to year outlast
Those charms a thousand times more fair,
And, O, our joys so quickly past!
Or smile to gladden fresher hearts
Henceforth: but they shall yet be led,
Revisiting these ancient parts,
Like me to mourn their glory fled.
THE FEAST OF HARVEST.
The fair Earth smiled and turned herself and woke,
And to the Sun with nuptial greeting said:
“I had a dream, wherein it seemed men broke
A sovran league, and long years fought and bled,
Till down my sweet sides ran my children’s gore,
And all my beautiful garments were made red,
And all my fertile fields were thicket-grown,
Nor could thy dear light reach me through the air;
At last a voice cried, ‘Let them strive no more!’
Then music breathed, and to! from my despair
I wake to joy,—yet would not joy alone!
“For, hark! I hear a murmur on the meads,—
Where as of old my children seek my face,—
The low of kine, the peaceful tramp of steeds,
Blithe shouts of men in many a pastoral place,
The noise of tilth through all my goodliest land,
And happy laughter of a dusky race
Whose brethren lift them from their ancient toil,
Saying: “The year of jubilee has come;
Gather the gifts of Earth with equal hand;
Henceforth ye too may share the birthright soil,
The corn, the wine, and all the harvest-home.”
“O my dear lord, my radiant bridegroom, look!
Behold their joy who sorrowed in my dreams,—
The sword a share, the spear a pruning-hook;
Lo, I awake, and turn me toward thy beams
Even as a bride again! O, shed thy light
Upon my fruitful places in full streams!
Let there be yield for every living thing;
The land is fallow,—let there be increase
After the darkness of the sterile night;
Ay, let us twain a festival of Peace
Prepare, and hither all my nations bring!”
The fair Earth spake: the glad Sun speeded forth,
Hearing her matron words, and backward drave
To frozen caves the icy Wind of the North,—
And bade the South Wind from the tropic wave
Bring watery vapors over river and plain,—
And bade the East Wind cross her path, and lave
The lowlands, emptying there her laden mist,—
And bade the Wind of the West, the best wind, blow
After the early and the latter rain,—
And beamed himself, and oft the sweet Earth kissed,
While her swift servitors sped to and fro.
Forthwith the troop that, at the beck of Earth,
Foster her children, brought a glorious store
Of viands, food of immemorial worth,
Her earliest gifts, her tenderest evermore.
First came the Silvery Spirit, whose marshalled files
Climb up the glades in billowy breakers hoar,
Nodding their crests; and at his side there sped
The Golden Spirit, whose yellow harvests trail
Across the continents and fringe the isles,
And freight men’s argosies where’er they sail:
O, what a wealth of sheaves he there outspread!
Came the dear Spirit whom Earth doth love the best,
Fragrant of clover-bloom and new-mown hay,
Beneath whose mantle weary ones finds rest,
On whose green skirts the little children play:
She bore the food our patient cattle crave.
Next, robed in silk, with tassels scattering spray,
Followed the generous Spirit of the Maize;
And many a kindred shape of high renown
Bore in the clustering grape, the fruits that wave
On orchard branches or in gardens blaze,
And those the wind-shook forest hurtles down.
Even thus they laid a great and marvellous feast,
And Earth her children summoned joyously,
Throughout that goodliest land wherein had ceased
The vision of battle, and with glad hands free
These took their fill, and plenteous measures poured,
Beside, for those who dwelt beyond the sea;
Praise, like an incense, upward rose to Heaven
For that full harvest; and the autumnal Sun
Stayed long above; and ever at the board,
Peace, white-robed angel, held the high seat given,
And War far off withdrew his visage dun.
AUTUMN SONG.
No clouds are in the morning sky,
The vapors hug the stream,—
Who says that life and love can die
In all this northern gleam?
At every turn the maples burn,
The quail is whistling free,
The partridge whirs, and the frosted burs
Are dropping for you and me.
_Ho! hilly ho! heigh O!_
_Hilly ho!_
In the clear October morning.
Along our path the woods are bold,
And glow with ripe desire;
The yellow chestnut showers its gold,
The sumachs spread their fire;
The breezes feel as crisp as steel,
The buckwheat tops are red:
Then down the lane, love, scurry again,
And over the stubble tread!
_Ho! hilly ho! heigh O!_
_Hilly ho!_
In the clear October morning.
WHAT THE WINDS BRING.
Which is the Wind that brings the cold?
The North-Wind, Freddy, and all the snow;
And the sheep will scamper into the fold
When the North begins to blow.
Which is the Wind that brings the heat?
The South-Wind, Katy; and corn will grow,
And peaches redden for you to eat,
When the South begins to blow.
Which is the Wind that brings the rain?
The East-Wind, Arty; and farmers know
That cows come shivering up the lane
When the East begins to blow.
Which is the Wind that brings the flowers?
The West-Wind, Bessy; and soft and low
The birdies sing in the summer hours
When the West begins to blow.
BETROTHED ANEW.
The sunlight fills the trembling air,
And balmy days their guerdons bring;
The Earth again is young and fair,
And amorous with musky Spring.
The golden nurslings of the May
In splendor strew the spangled green,
And hues of tender beauty play,
Entangled where the willows lean.
Mark how the rippled currents flow:
What lustres on the meadows lie!
And hark, the songsters come and go,
And trill between the earth and sky.
Who told us that the years had fled,
Or borne afar our blissful youth?
Such joys are all about us spread,
We know the whisper was not truth.
The birds, that break from grass and grove,
Sing every carol that they sung
When first our veins were rich with love,
And May her mantle round us flung.
O fresh-lit dawn! immortal life!
O Earth’s betrothal, sweet and true,
With whose delights our souls are rife
And aye their vernal vows renew!
Then, darling, walk with me this morn:
Let your brown tresses drink its sheen;
These violets, within them worn,
Of floral fays shall make you queen.
What though there comes a time of pain
When autumn winds forbode decay;
The days of love are born again,
That fabled time is far away!
And never seemed the land so fair
As now, nor birds such notes to sing,
Since first within your shining hair
I wove the blossoms of the Spring.
III.
SHADOW-LAND.
“THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.”
Could we but know
The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel,
Where lie those happier hills and meadows low,—
Ah, if beyond the spirit’s inmost cavil,
Aught of that country could we surely know,
Who would not go?
Might we but hear
The hovering angels’ high imagined chorus,
Or catch, betimes, with wakeful eyes and clear,
One radiant vista of the realm before us,—
With one rapt moment given to see and hear,
Ah, who would fear?
Were we quite sure
To find the peerless friend who left us lonely,
Or there, by some celestial stream as pure,
To gaze in eyes that here were lovelit only,—
This weary mortal coil, were we quite sure,
Who would endure?
“DARKNESS AND THE SHADOW.”
Waking, I have been nigh to Death,—
Have felt the chillness of his breath
Whiten my cheek and numb my heart,
And wondered why he stayed his dart,—
Yet quailed not, but could meet him so,
As any lesser friend or foe.
But sleeping, in the dreams of night,
His phantom stifles me with fright!
O God! what frozen horrors fall
Upon me with his visioned pall:
The movelessness, the unknown dread,
Fair life to pulseless silence wed!
And _is_ the grave so darkly deep,
So hopeless, as it seems in sleep?
Can our sweet selves the coffin hold
So dumb within its crumbling mould?
And is the shroud so dank and drear
A garb,—the noisome worm so near?
Where then is Heaven’s mercy fled,—
To quite forget the voiceless dead?
THE ASSAULT BY NIGHT.
All night we hear the rattling flaw,
The casements shiver with each breath;
And still more near the foemen draw,
The pioneers of Death.
Their grisly chieftain comes:
He steals upon us in the night;
Call up the guards! light every light!
Beat the alarum drums!
His tramp is at the outer door;
He bears against the shuddering walls;
Lo! what a dismal frost and hoar
Upon the window falls!
Outbar him while ye may!
Feed, feed the watch-fires everywhere,—
Even yet their cheery warmth will scare
This thing of night away.
Ye cannot! something chokes the grate
And clogs the air within its flues,
And runners from the entrance-gate
Come chill with evil news:
The bars are broken ope!
Ha! he has scaled the inner wall!
But fight him still, from hall to hall;
While life remains, there’s hope.
Too late! the very frame is dust,
The locks and trammels fall apart;
He reaches, scornful of their trust,
The portals of the heart.
Ay, take the citadel!
But where, grim Conqueror, is thy prey?
In vain thou’lt search each secret way,
Its flight is hidden well.
We yield thee, for thy paltry spoils,
This shell, this ruin thou hast made;
Its tenant has escaped thy toils,
Though they were darkly laid.
Even now, immortal, pure,
It gains a house not made with hands,
A refuge in serener lands,
A heritage secure.
GEORGE ARNOLD.
GREENWOOD, NOVEMBER 13, 1865.
We stood around the dreamless form
Whose strength was so untimely shaken,
Whose sleep not all our love could warm,
Nor any dearest voice awaken;
And while the Autumn breathed her sighs,
And dropped a thousand leafy glories,
And all the pathways, and the skies,
Were mindful of his songs and stories,
Nor failed to wear the mingled hues
He loved, and knew so well to render,
But wooed,—alas, in vain!—their Muse
For one more tuneful lay and tender,
We paused awhile,—the gathered few
Who came, in longing, not in duty,—
With eyes that full of weeping grew,
To look their last upon his beauty.
Death would not rudely rob that face,
Nor dim its fine Arcadian brightness,
But gave the lines a clearer grace,
And sleep’s repose, and marble’s whiteness.
And, gazing there on him so young,
We thought of all his ended mission,
The broken links, the songs unsung,
The love that found no ripe fruition;
Till last the old, old question came
To hearts that beat with life around him,
Why Death, with downward torch aflame,
Had searched our number till he found him?
Why passed the one who poorly knows,
That blithesome spell for either fortune,
Or mocked with lingering menace those
Whose pains the final thrust importune;
Or left the toiling ones who bear
The crowd’s neglect, the want that presses,
The woes no human soul can share,
Nor look, nor spoken word, confesses.
And from the earth no answer came,
The forest wore a stillness deeper,
The sky and lake smiled on the same,
And voiceless as the silent sleeper.
And so we turned ourselves away,
By earth and air and water chidden,
And left him with them, where he lay,
A sharer of their secret hidden.
And each the staff and shell again
Took up, and marched with memories haunted;
But henceforth, in our pilgrim-strain,
We’ll miss a voice that sweetly chaunted!
THE SAD BRIDAL.
What would you do, my dear one said,—
What would you do, if I were dead?
If Death should mumble, as he list,
These red lips which now you kist?
What would my love do, were I wed
To that ghastly groom instead;
If o’er me, in the chancel, Death
Should cast his amaranthine wreath,—
Before my eyes, with fingers pale,
Draw down the mouldy bridal veil?
—Ah no! no! it cannot be!
Death would spare their light, and flee,
And leave my love to Life and me!
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
Several of the earlier productions under this title are reprinted in
answer to frequent requests for copies of them, and in deference to a
public sentiment which received them kindly when they first appeared.
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
SUMTER.
APRIL 12, 1871.
Came the morning of that day
When the God to whom we pray
Gave the soul of Henry Clay
To the land;
How we loved him, living, dying!
But his birthday banners flying
Saw us asking and replying
Hand to hand.
For we knew that far away,
Round the fort in Charleston Bay,
Hung the dark impending fray,
Soon to fall;
And that Sumter’s brave defender
Had the summons to surrender
Seventy loyal hearts and tender,—
(Those were all!)
And we knew the April sun
Lit the length of many a gun,—
Hosts of batteries to the one
Island crag;
Guns and mortars grimly frowning,
Johnson, Moultrie, Pinckney, crowning,
And ten thousand men disowning
The old flag.
O, the fury of the fight
Even then was at its height!
Yet no breath, from noon till night,
Reached us here;
We had almost ceased to wonder,
And the day had faded under,
When the echo of the thunder
Filled each ear!
Then our hearts more fiercely beat,
As we crowded on the street,
Hot to gather and repeat
All the tale;
All the doubtful chances turning,
Till our souls with shame were burning,
As if twice our bitter yearning
Could avail!
Who had fired the earliest gun?
Was the fort by traitors won?
Was there succor? What was done
Who could know?
And once more our thoughts would wander
To the gallant, lone commander,
On his battered ramparts grander
Than the foe.
Not too long the brave shall wait:
On their own heads be their fate,
Who against the hallowed State
Dare begin;
Flag defied and compact riven!
In the record of high Heaven
How shall Southern men be shriven
For the sin?
WANTED—A MAN.
Back from the trebly crimsoned field
Terrible words are thunder-tost;
Full of the wrath that will not yield,
Full of revenge for battles lost!
Hark to their echo, as it crost
The Capital, making faces wan:
“End this murderous holocaust;
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!
“Give us a man of God’s own mould,
Born to marshal his fellow-men;
One whose fame is not bought and sold
At the stroke of a politician’s pen;
Give us the man of thousands ten,
Fit to do as well as to plan;
Give us a rallying-cry, and then,
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!
“No leader to shirk the boasting foe,
And to march and countermarch our brave,
Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low,
And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave;
Nor another, whose fatal banners wave
Aye in Disaster’s shameful van;
Nor another, to bluster, and lie, and rave;—
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!
“Hearts are mourning in the North,
While the sister rivers seek the main,
Red with our life-blood flowing forth,—
Who shall gather it up again?
Though we march to the battle-plain
Firmly as when the strife began,
Shall all our offering be in vain?—
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!
“Is there never one in all the land,
One on whose might the Cause may lean?
Are all the common ones so grand,
And all the titled ones so mean?
What if your failure may have been
In trying to make good bread from bran,
From worthless metal a weapon keen?—
Abraham Lincoln, find us a MAN!
“O, we will follow him to the death,
Where the foeman’s fiercest columns are!
O, we will use our latest breath,
Cheering for every sacred star!
His to marshal us high and far;
Ours to battle, as patriots can
When a Hero leads the Holy War!—
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!”
September 8, 1862.
TREASON’S LAST DEVICE.
Sons of New England, in the fray,
Do you hear the clamor behind your back?
Do you hear the yelping of Blanche, and Tray,
Sweetheart, and all the mongrel pack?
Girded well with her ocean crags,
Little our mother heeds their noise;
Her eyes are fixed on crimsoned flags:
But you—do you hear it, Yankee boys?
Do you hear them say that the patriot fire
Burns on her altars too pure and bright,
To the darkened heavens leaping higher,
Though drenched with the blood of every fight;
That in the light of its searching flame
Treason and tyrants stand revealed,
And the yielding craven is put to shame,
On Capitol floor or foughten field?
Do you hear the hissing voice, which saith
That she—who bore through all the land
The lyre of Freedom, the torch of Faith,
And young Invention’s mystic wand—
Should gather her skirts and dwell apart,
With not one of her sisters to share her fate,—
A Hagar, wandering sick at heart;
A pariah, bearing the Nation’s hate?
Sons, who have peopled the distant West,
And planted the Pilgrim vine anew,
Where, by a richer soil carest,
It grows as ever its parent grew,
Say, do you hear,—while the very bells
Of your churches ring with her ancient voice,
And the song of your children sweetly tells
How true was the land of your fathers’ choice,—
Do you hear the traitors who bid you speak
The word that shall sever the sacred tie?
And ye, who dwell by the golden Peak,
Has the subtle whisper glided by?
Has it crost the immemorial plains,
To coasts where the gray Pacific roars
And the Pilgrim blood in the people’s veins
Is pure as the wealth of their mountain ores?
Spirits of sons who, side by side,
In a hundred battles fought and fell,
Whom now no East and West divide,
In the isles where the shades of heroes dwell;
Say, has it reached your glorious rest,
And ruffled the calm which crowns you there,—
The shame that recreants have confest,
The plot that floats in the troubled air?
Sons of New England, here and there,
Wherever men are still holding by
The honor our fathers left so fair!
Say, do you hear the cowards’ cry?
Crouching among her grand old crags,
Lightly our mother heeds their noise,
With her fond eyes fixed on distant flags;
But you—do you hear it, Yankee boys?
Washington, January 19, 1863.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
ASSASSINATED GOOD FRIDAY, 1865.
“Forgive them, for they know not what they do!”
He said, and so went shriven to his fate,—
Unknowing went, that generous heart and true.
Even while he spoke the slayer lay in wait,
And when the morning opened Heaven’s gate
There passed the whitest soul a nation knew.
Henceforth all thoughts of pardon are too late;
They, in whose cause that arm its weapon drew,
Have murdered Mercy. Now alone shall stand
Blind Justice, with the sword unsheathed she wore.
Hark, from the eastern to the western strand,
The swelling thunder of the people’s roar:
What words they murmur,—Fetter not her hand!
So let it smite, such deeds shall be no more!
ISRAEL FREYER’S BID FOR GOLD.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1869.
Zounds! how the price went flashing through
Wall street, William, Broad street, New!
All the specie in all the land
Held in one Ring by a giant hand—
For millions more it was ready to pay,
And throttle the Street on hangman’s-day.
Up from the Gold Pit’s nether hell,
While the innocent fountain rose and fell,
Loud and higher the bidding rose,
And the bulls, triumphant, faced their foes.
It seemed as if Satan himself were in it:
Lifting it—one per cent a minute—
Through the bellowing broker, there amid,
Who made the terrible, final bid!
High over all, and ever higher,
Was heard the voice of Israel Freyer,—
A doleful knell in the storm-swept mart,—
“Five millions more! and for any part
“I’ll give One Hundred and Sixty!”
Israel Freyer—the Government Jew—
Good as the best—soaked through and through
With credit gained in the year he sold
Our Treasury’s precious hoard of gold;
Now through his thankless mouth rings out
The leaguers’ last and cruellest shout!
Pity the shorts? Not they, indeed,
While a single rival’s left to bleed!
Down come dealers in silks and hides,
Crowding the Gold Room’s rounded sides,
Jostling, trampling each other’s feet,
Uttering groans in the outer street;
Watching, with upturned faces pale,
The scurrying index mark its tale;
Hearing the bid of Israel Freyer,—
That ominous voice, would it never tire?
“Five millions more!—for any part,
(If it breaks your firm, if it cracks your heart,)
I’ll give One Hundred and Sixty!”