To you the golden, vanward years belong!
Ye need not fear to leave the shore:
Not seldom youth has shamed the sage
With riper wisdom,—but to age
Youth, youth, returns no more!
Be yours the strength by will to conquer fate,
Since to the man who sees his purpose clear,
And gains that knowledge of his sphere
Within which lies all happiness,—
Without, all danger and distress,—
And seeks the right, content to strive and wait,
To him all good things flow, nor honor crowns him late.
VIII.
PHAROS.
One such there was, that brother elder-born
And loftiest,—from your household torn
In the rathe spring-time, ere
His steps could seek their olden pathways here.
Mourn!
Mourn, for your Mother mourns, of him bereft,—
Her strong one! he is fallen:
But has left
His works your heritage and guide,
Through East and West his stalwart fame divide.
Mourn, for the liberal youth,
The undaunted spirit whose quintessence rare,
Fanned by the Norseland air,
Saw flaming in its own white heat the truth
That Man, whate’er his ancestry,
Tanned by what sun or exiled from what shore,
Hears in his soul the high command,—Be Free!
For him who, at the parting of the ways,
Disdained the flowery path, and gave
His succor to the hunted Afric slave,
Whose cause he chose nor feared the world’s dispraise;
Yet found anon the right become the might,
And, in the long revenge of time,
Lived to renown and hoary years sublime.
Ye know him now, your beacon-light!
Ay, he was fronted like a tower,—
In thought large-moulded, as of frame;
He that, in the supreme hour,
Sat brooding at the river-heads of power
With sovereign strength for every need that came!
Not for that blameless one the place
That opens wide to men of lesser race;—
Even as of old the votes are given,
And Aristides is from Athens driven;
But for our statesman, in his grander trust
No less the undefiled, The Just,—
With poesy and learning lightly worn,
And knees that bent to Heaven night and morn,—
For him that sacred, unimpassioned seat,
Where right and wrong for stainless judgment meet
Above the greed, the strife, the party call.—
Henceforth let CHASE’S robes on no base shoulders fall!
IX.
ATLANTIS SURGENS.
Well may your hearts be valiant,—ye who stand
Within that glory from the past,
And see how ripe the time, how fair the land
In which your lot is cast!
For us alone your sorrow,
Ye children of the morrow,—
For us, who struggle yet, and wait,
Sent forth too early and too late!
But yours shall be our tenure handed down,
Conveyed in blood, stamped with the martyr’s crown;
For which the toilers long have wrought,
And poets sung, and heroes fought;
The new Saturnian age is yours,
That juster season soon to be
On the near coasts (whereto your vessels sail
Beyond the darkness and the gale),
Of proud Atlantis risen from the sea!
You shall not know the pain that now endures
The surge, the smiting of the waves,
The overhanging thunder,
The shades of night which plunge engulféd under
Those yawning island-caves;
But in their stead for you shall glisten soon
The coral circlet and the still lagoon,
Green shores of freedom, blest with calms,
And sunlit streams and meads, and shadowy palms:
Such joys await you, in our sorrows’ stead;
Thither our charts have almost led;
Nor in that land shall worth, truth, courage, ask for alms.
X.
VALETE ET SALVETE.
O, trained beneath the Northern Star!
Worth, courage, honor, these indeed
Your sustenance and birthright are!
Now, from her sweet dominion freed,
Your Foster Mother bids you speed;
Her gracious hands the gates unbar,
Her richest gifts you bear away,
Her memories shall be your stay:
Go where you will, her eyes your course shall mark afar.
June 25, 1873.
HORACE GREELEY.
Earth, let thy softest mantle rest
On this worn child to thee returning,
Whose youth was nurtured at thy breast,
Who loved thee with such tender yearning!
He knew thy fields and woodland ways,
And deemed thy humblest son his brother:—
Asleep, beyond our blame or praise,
We yield him back, O gentle Mother!
Of praise, of blame, he drank his fill:
Who has not read the life-long story?
And dear we hold his fame, but still
The man was dearer than his glory.
And now to us are left alone
The closet where his shadow lingers,
The vacant chair,—that was a throne,—
The pen, just fallen from his fingers.
Wrath changed to kindness on that pen;
Though dipped in gall, it flowed with honey;
One flash from out the cloud, and then
The skies with smile and jest were sunny.
Of hate he surely lacked the art,
Who made his enemy his lover:
O reverend head and Christian heart!
Where now their like the round world over?
He saw the goodness, not the taint,
In many a poor, do-nothing creature,
And gave to sinner and to saint,
But kept his faith in human nature;
Perchance he was not worldly-wise,
Yet we who noted, standing nearer,
The shrewd, kind twinkle in his eyes,
For every weakness held him dearer.
Alas that unto him who gave
So much, so little should be given!
Himself alone he might not save
Of all for whom his hands had striven.
Place, freedom, fame, his work bestowed:
Men took, and passed, and left him lonely;—
What marvel if, beneath his load,
At times he craved—for justice only!
Yet thanklessness, the serpent’s tooth,
His lofty purpose could not alter;
Toil had no power to bend his youth,
Or make his lusty manhood falter;
From envy’s sling, from slander’s dart,
That armored soul the body shielded,
Till one dark sorrow chilled his heart,
And then he bowed his head and yielded.
Now, now, we measure at its worth
The gracious presence gone forever!
The wrinkled East, that gave him birth,
Laments with every laboring river;
Wild moan the free winds of the West
For him who gathered to her prairies
The sons of men, and made each crest
The haunt of happy household fairies;
And anguish sits upon the mouth
Of her who came to know him latest:
His heart was ever thine, O South!
He was thy truest friend, and greatest!
He shunned thee in thy splendid shame,
He stayed thee in thy voiceless sorrow;
The day thou shalt forget his name,
Fair South, can have no sadder morrow.
The tears that fall from eyes unused,—
The hands above his grave united,—
The words of men whose lips he loosed,
Whose cross he bore, whose wrongs he righted,—
Could he but know, and rest with this!
Yet stay, through Death’s low-lying hollow,
His one last foe’s insatiate hiss
On that benignant shade would follow!
Peace! while we shroud this man of men
Let no unhallowed word be spoken!
He will not answer thee again,
His mouth is sealed, his wand is broken.
Some holier cause, some vaster trust
Beyond the veil, he doth inherit:
O gently, Earth, receive his dust,
And Heaven soothe his troubled spirit!
December 3, 1872.
LATER POEMS.
LATER POEMS.
THE SONGSTER.
A MIDSUMMER CAROL.
I.
Within our summer hermitage
I have an aviary,—
’Tis but a little, rustic cage,
That holds a golden-winged Canary,—
A bird with no companion of his kind.
But when the warm south-wind
Blows, from rathe meadows, over
The honey-scented clover,
I hang him in the porch, that he may hear
The voices of the bobolink and thrush,
The robin’s joyous gush,
The bluebird’s warble, and the tunes of all
Glad matin songsters in the fields anear.
Then, as the blithe responses vary,
And rise anew, and fall,
In every hush
He answers them again,
With his own wild, reliant strain,
As if he breathed the air of sweet Canary.
II.
Bird, bird of the golden wing,
Thou lithe, melodious thing!
Where hast thy music found?
What fantasies of vale and vine,
Of glades where orchids intertwine,
Of palm-trees, garlanded and crowned,
And forests flooded deep with sound,—
What high imagining
Hath made this carol thine?
By what instinct art thou bound
To all rare harmonies that be
In those green islands of the sea,
Where thy radiant, wildwood kin
Their madrigals at morn begin,
Above the rainbow and the roar
Of the long billow from the Afric shore?
Asking other guerdon
None, than Heaven’s light,
Holding thy crested head aright,
Thy melody’s sweet burden
Thou dost proudly utter,
With many an ecstatic flutter
And ruffle of thy tawny throat
For each delicious note.
—Art thou a waif from Paradise,
In some fine moment wrought
By an artist of the skies,
Thou winged, cherubic Thought?
Bird of the amber beak,
Bird of the golden wing!
Thy dower is thy carolling;
Thou hast not far to seek
Thy bread, nor needest wine
To make thine utterance divine;
Thou art canopied and clothed
And unto Song betrothed!
In thy lone aërial cage
Thou hast thine ancient heritage;
There is no task-work on thee laid
But to rehearse the ditties thou hast made;
Thou hast a lordly store,
And, though thou scatterest them free,
Art richer than before,
Holding in fee
The glad domain of minstrelsy.
III.
Brave songster, bold Canary!
Thou art not of thy listeners wary,
Art not timorous, nor chary
Of quaver, trill, and tone,
Each perfect and thine own;
But renewest, shrill or soft,
Thy greeting to the upper skies,
Chanting thy latest song aloft
With no tremor or disguise.
Thine is a music that defies
The envious rival near;
Thou hast no fear
Of the day’s vogue, the scornful critic’s sneer.
Would, O wisest bard, that now
I could cheerly sing as thou!
Would I might chant the thoughts which on me throng
For the very joy of song!
Here, on the written page,
I falter, yearning to impart
The vague and wandering murmur of my heart,
Haply a little to assuage
This human restlessness and pain,
And half forget my chain:
Thou, unconscious of thy cage,
Showerest music everywhere;
Thou hast no care
But to pour out the largesse thou hast won
From the south-wind and the sun;
There are no prison-bars
Betwixt thy tricksy spirit and the stars.
When from its delicate clay
Thy little life shall pass away,
Thou wilt not meanly die,
Nor voiceless yield to silence and decay;
But triumph still in art
And act thy minstrel-part,
Lifting a last, long pæan
To the unventured empyrean.
—So bid the world go by,
And they who list to thee aright,
Seeing thee fold thy wings and fall, shall say:
“The Songster perished of his own delight!”
CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH.
Out, out, Old Age! aroint ye!
I fain would disappoint ye,
Nor wrinkled grow and learned
Before I am inurned.
Ruthless the Hours and hoary,
That scatter ills before ye!
Thy touch is pestilential,
Thy lays are penitential;
With stealthy steps thou stealest
And life’s hot tide congealest;
Before thee vainly flying
We are already dying.
Why must the blood grow colder,
And men and maidens older?
Bring not thy maledictions,
Thy grewsome, grim afflictions,—
Thy bodings bring not hither
To make us blight and wither.
When this thy frost hath bound us,
All fairer things around us
Seem Youth’s divine extortion
In which we have no portion.
“Fie, Senex!” saith a lass now,
“What need ye of a glass now?
Though flowers of May be springing
And I my songs am singing,
Thy blood no whit the faster
Doth flow, my ancient Master!”
Age is by Youth delighted,
Youth is by Age affrighted;
Blithe sunny May and joysome
Still finds December noisome.
Alack! a guest unbidden,
Howe’er our feast be hidden,
Doth enter with the feaster
And make a Lent of Easter!
I would thou wert not able
To seat thee at our table;
I would that altogether
From this thy wintry weather,
Since Youth and Love must leave us,
Death might at once retrieve us.
Old wizard, ill betide ye!
I cannot yet abide ye!
Ah, Youth, sweet Youth, I love ye!
There’s naught on Earth above ye
Thou purling bird uncaged
That never wilt grow aged,
To whom each day is giving
Increase of joyous living!
Soft words to thee are spoken,
For thee strong vows are broken,
All loves and lovers cluster,
To bask them in thy lustre.
Ah, girlhood, pout and dimple,
Half hid beneath the wimple!
Ah, boyhood, blithe and cruel,
Whose heat doth need no fuel,
No help of wine and spices
And frigid Eld’s devices!
All pleasant things ye find you,
And to your sweet selves bind you.
For you alone the motion
Of brave ships on the ocean;
All stars for you are shining,
All wreaths your foreheads twining;
All joys, your joys decreeing,
Are portions of your being,—
All fairest sights your features,
Ye selfish, soulful creatures!
Sing me no more distiches
Of glory, wisdom, riches;
Tell me no beldame’s story
Of wisdom, wealth, and glory!
To Youth these are a wonder,—
To Age a corpse-light under
The tomb with rusted portal
Of that which seemed immortal.
I, too, in Youth’s dear fetter,
Will love my foeman better,—
Ay, though his ill I study,—
So he be young and ruddy,
Than comrade true and golden,
So he be waxen olden.
Ah, winsome Youth, stay by us!
I prithee, do not fly us!
Ah, Youth, sweet Youth, I love ye!
There’s naught on Earth above ye!
STANZAS FOR MUSIC.
(FROM AN UNFINISHED DRAMA.)
Thou art mine, thou hast given thy word;
Close, close in my arms thou art clinging;
Alone for my ear thou art singing
A song which no stranger hath heard:
But afar from me yet, like a bird,
Thy soul, in some region unstirred,
On its mystical circuit is winging.
Thou art mine, I have made thee mine own;
Henceforth we are mingled forever:
But in vain, all in vain, I endeavor—
Though round thee my garlands are thrown,
And thou yieldest thy lips and thy zone—
To master the spell that alone
My hold on thy being can sever.
Thou art mine, thou hast come unto me!
But thy soul, when I strive to be near it—
The innermost fold of thy spirit—
Is as far from my grasp, is as free,
As the stars from the mountain-tops be,
As the pearl, in the depths of the sea,
From the portionless king that would wear it.
THE FLIGHT OF THE BIRDS.
Whither away, Robin,
Whither away?
Is it through envy of the maple-leaf,
Whose blushes mock the crimson of thy breast,
Thou wilt not stay?
The summer days were long, yet all too brief
The happy season thou hast been our guest:
Whither away?
Whither away, Bluebird,
Whither away?
The blast is chill, yet in the upper sky
Thou still canst find the color of thy wing,
The hue of May.
Warbler, why speed thy southern flight? ah, why,
Thou too, whose song first told us of the Spring?
Whither away?
Whither away, Swallow,
Whither away?
Canst thou no longer tarry in the North,
Here, where our roof so well hath screened thy nest
Not one short day?
Wilt thou—as if thou human wert—go forth
And wanton far from them who love thee best?
Whither away?
HYPATIA.
’Tis fifteen hundred years, you say,
Since that fair teacher died
In learnéd Alexandria
By the stone altar’s side:—
The wild monks slew her, as she lay
At the feet of the Crucified.
Yet in a prairie-town, one night,
I found her lecture-hall,
Where bench and dais stood aright,
And statues graced the wall,
And pendent brazen lamps the light
Of classic days let fall.
A throng that watched the speaker’s face,
And on her accents hung,
Was gathered there: the strength, the grace
Of lands where life is young
Ceased not, I saw, with that blithe race
From old Pelasgia sprung.
No civic crown the sibyl wore,
Nor academic tire,
But shining skirts, that trailed the floor
And made her stature higher;
A written scroll the lecturn bore,
And flowers bloomed anigh her.
The wealth her honeyed speech had won
Adorned her in our sight;
The silkworm for her sake had spun
His cincture, day and night;
With broider-work and Honiton
Her open sleeves were bright.
But still Hypatia’s self I knew,
And saw, with dreamy wonder,
The form of her whom Cyril slew
(See Kingsley’s novel, yonder)
Some fifteen centuries since, ’tis true,
And half a world asunder.
Her hair was coifed Athenian-wise,
With one loose tress down-flowing;
Apollo’s rapture lit her eyes,
His utterance bestowing,—
A silver flute’s clear harmonies
On which a god was blowing.
Yet not of Plato’s sounding spheres,
And universal Pan,
She spoke; but searched historic years,
The sisterhood to scan
Of women,—girt with ills and fears,—
Slaves to the tyrant, Man.
Their crosiered banner she unfurled,
And onward pushed her quest
Through golden ages of a world
By their deliverance blest:—
At all who stay their hands she hurled
Defiance from her breast.
I saw her burning words infuse
A warmth through many a heart,
As still, in bright successive views,
She drew her sex’s part;
Discoursing, like the Lesbian Muse,
Of work, and song, and art.
Why vaunt, I thought, the past, or say
The later is the less?
Our Sappho sang but yesterday,
Of whom two climes confess
Heaven’s flame within her wore away
Her earthly loveliness.
So let thy wild heart ripple on,
Brave girl, through vale and city!
Spare, of its listless moments, one
To this, thy poet’s ditty;
Nor long forbear, when all is done,
Thine own sweet self to pity.
The priestess of the Sestian tower,
Whose knight the sea swam over,
Among her votaries’ gifts no flower
Of heart’s-ease could discover:
She died, but in no evil hour,
Who, dying, clasped her lover.
The rose-tree has its perfect life
When the full rose is blown;
Some height of womanhood the wife
Beyond thy dream has known;
Set not thy head and heart at strife
To keep thee from thine own.
Hypatia! thine essence rare
The rarer joy should merit:
Possess thee of that common share
Which lesser souls inherit:
All gods to thee their garlands bear,—
Take one from Love and wear it!
THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND.
O long are years of waiting, when lovers’ hearts are bound
By words that hold in life and death, and last the half-world round;
Long, long for him who wanders far and strives with all his main,
But crueller yet for her who bides at home and hides her pain!
And lone are the homes of New England.
’Twas in the mellow summer I heard her sweet reply;
The barefoot lads and lassies a-berrying went by;
The locust dinned amid the trees; the fields were high with corn;
The white-sailed clouds against the sky like ships were onward borne:
And blue are the skies of New England.
Her lips were like the raspberries; her cheek was soft and fair,
And little breezes stopped to lift the tangle of her hair;
A light was in her hazel eyes, and she was nothing loth
To hear the words her lover spoke, and pledged me there her troth;
And true is the word of New England.
When September brought the golden-rod, and maples burned like fire,
And bluer than in August rose the village smoke and higher,
And large and red among the stacks the ripened pumpkins shone,—
One hour, in which to say farewell, was left to us alone;
And sweet are the lanes of New England.
We loved each other truly! hard, hard it was to part;
But my ring was on her finger, and her hair lay next my heart.
“’Tis but a year, my darling,” I said; “in one short year,
When our Western home is ready, I shall seek my Katie here”;
And brave is the hope of New England.
I went to gain a home for her, and in the Golden State
With head and hand I planned and toiled, and early worked and late;
But luck was all against me, and sickness on me lay,
And ere I got my strength again ’twas many a weary day;
And long are the thoughts of New England.
And many a day, and many a month, and thrice the rolling year,
I bravely strove, and still the goal seemed never yet more near.
My Katie’s letters told me that she kept her promise true,
But now, for very hopelessness, my own to her were few;
And stern is the pride of New England.
But still she trusted in me, though sick with hope deferred;
No more among the village choir her voice was sweetest heard;
For when the wild northeaster of the fourth long winter blew,
So thin her frame with pining, the cold wind pierced her through;
And chill are the blasts of New England.
At last my fortunes bettered, on the far Pacific shore,
And I thought to see old Windham and my patient love once more;
When a kinsman’s letter reached me: “Come at once, or come too late!
Your Katie’s strength is failing; if you love her, do not wait:
Come back to the elms of New England.”
O, it wrung my heart with sorrow! I left all else behind,
And straight for dear New England I speeded like the wind.
The day and night were blended till I reached my boyhood’s home,
And the old cliffs seemed to mock me that I had not sooner come;
And gray are the rocks of New England.
I could not think ’twas Katie, who sat before me there
Reading her Bible—’twas my gift—and pillowed in her chair.
A ring, with all my letters, lay on a little stand,—
She could no longer wear it, so frail her poor, white hand!
But strong is the love of New England.
Her hair had lost its tangle and was parted off her brow;
She used to be a joyous girl,—but seemed an angel now,—
Heaven’s darling, mine no longer; yet in her hazel eyes
The same dear love-light glistened, as she soothed my bitter cries:
And pure is the faith of New England.
A month I watched her dying, pale, pale as any rose
That drops its petals one by one and sweetens as it goes.
My life was darkened when at last her large eyes closed in death,
And I heard my own name whispered as she drew her parting breath;
Still, still was the heart of New England.
It was a woful funeral the coming sabbath-day;
We bore her to the barren hill on which the graveyard lay,
And when the narrow grave was filled, and what we might was done,
Of all the stricken group around I was the loneliest one;
And drear are the hills of New England.
I gazed upon the stunted pines, the bleak November sky,
And knew that buried deep with her my heart henceforth would lie;
And waking in the solemn nights my thoughts still thither go
To Katie, lying in her grave beneath the winter snow;
And cold are the snows of New England.
[Illustration: THE END]
Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.