I do enlist me in the cause of man,
The old, dear cause of liberty for all,
The hope of history since bards began
To sing inspired heroic battle-call.
The precious purchase of ten thousand years,
The slow-won gains hard held at awful cost
Of toil and thought and grief and blood and tears--
Shall these be stolen from the world, and lost?
These to retain, must force, perforce, alas,
Lift up her banners and her thunders hurl:
Then, when the reign of cruelty shall pass,
Dare Charity her fighting ensign furl.
Where rings no song for freedom, none are free;
Where gleams no sword for justice, justice dies;
Where gates of hell prevail, then must it be
The Powers of Darkness storm the very skies.
The Prince of Gentleness, did He not bring
A brand, lest violence on earth prevail?
He preached, He prayed. And poets needs must sing
War against wrong, or Christ himself must fail.
JAMES E. MURDOCH.
On His Eightieth Birthday.
Four-score! That gallant stripling? No!
That passion-breathing Romeo,
Who climbed, last night, the garden wall,
Mocked by Mercutio’s madcap call!
Four-score? What, he? Charles Surface? Nay;
He is as young as blooming May;
You do but jest; I know him well--
Who can forget wild Mirabel?
Whatever the costume, forsooth,
The same inimitable youth!
Marked you the sables Hamlet wore,
Dark-plumed, in moonlit Elsinore?
Gray locks? Believe the joke who can!
They “make him up” to play “old man”;
Pluck off the wig! Crow’s feet erase!
And recognize wag Murdoch’s face!
Nay;--sober Time his card holds high,
And, swearing figures will not lie,
Adds up the years and proves the date:
See, in the ten’s place, here, an eight.
So be it; Chronos, go thy ways;
Our friend grows old and full of days;
His frame may bend to Time’s control,
But Time is servant to his soul.
His drama on the world’s wide stage,
Now in the last calm scene, old age,
Has been throughout legitimate,
In motive true, performance great.
Whoever thus fulfils his part
Achieves the uttermost of art;
Who thus the scene of life has trod
Pleases the Manager--his God.
Or soon or late, _exeunt_ all--
The bell will ring, the curtain fall,
And we, the actors, put away
The masking garments of the play.
When we from off the boards have passed,
And every light is out at last,
We’ll leave the theater and go
Where real life replaces show.
Play out the play! and be content
To wait for that supreme event;
Dear Murdoch! master, father, friend,--
Star on! still bright’ning to the end!
THE CONCORD SEER.
The Transcendentalist--he now transcends
The cloud of death to join exalted friends.
The Saadi of the West, the Saint, the Sage,
The north-sprung Plato of an un-Greek age,
Hath changed his habitation, and his ghost
Takes note authentic of the unknown coast.
Ah, joy serene! there doth he recognize
Congenial souls foreknown “polite and wise”:--
Two bards were first to hail his risen wraith,
One sang the Psalm of Life, one that of Death;
Then mystic Hawthorne took his willing hand,
As Vergil Dante’s in the Shadow Land;
Now haply doth his converse reconcile
Momentous discords with redeemed Carlyle;
Perhaps in Soul’s consortable domain
He meets the shade of erudite Montaigne;
Or German-Grecian Goethe shows the way
To Fields Elysian where the Ancients stray;--
By some celestial brook of lucent flow,
Where plane-trees with immortal verdure grow,
May sit, discoursing calm philosophies,
The Concord Seer, with argute Socrates.
THE POET OF CLOVERNOOK.
Read at the Celebration of Alice Cary’s birthday,
to the children of the Public Schools of
Cincinnati, April 26, 1880.
A poet born, not made,
By Nature taught, she knew,
And, knowing, still obeyed
The Beautiful, the True.
Hers was the seeing eye,
The sympathetic heart,
The subtle art whereby
Lone genius summons art.
She caught the primal charm
Of every rural scene,--
Of river, cottage, farm,
Blue sky, and woodland green.
Baptized in Sorrow’s stream,
She sang, how sweetly well,
Of true Love’s tender dream,
And Death’s pale asphodel.
Her pensive muse has fled
From hill and meadow-brook;
No more her footsteps tread
Thy paths, fair Clovernook.
No more may she behold
The dew-crowned Summer morn
On wings of sunrise gold
Fly o’er the bending corn.
No more her mournful gaze
Shall seek the twilight sky,
When parting Autumn days
Flush hectic ere they die.
Nor note of joyous bird,
Nor April’s fragrant breath,
Nor tear, nor loving word,
May break the spell of Death.
Sleep on! and take thy rest,
In Greenwood by the sea!
Dear Poet of the West,
Thy West remembers thee.
THE GREENFIELD WIZARD.
(J. W. R.)
Two things there are in heaven above
And earth below--the greater, Love,
The lesser, Death--and therefor grew
Heart’s-ease and rosemary and rue
And myrrh and moly, magic plants;
These, and a common rose or two
Besprent with Indiana dew,
My wizard gathers from their haunts;
Distils the balmy, subtle juice
To make a spell of potent use;
Filters a seeming simple wine
Nectared with some drops most rare--
(How he finds the tinct or where,
Not the critics can divine!)
Whoso gives the wine his lips,
Sipping smiles, and laughing sips;
But, before he drinks it up,
Tears have trickled in the cup.
WILLIAM BAIRD OF RIDGEVILLE.
Now who is the delightfulest
Old soldier that shakes hands with you?
The genial host, the welcome guest,
The teeming brain, the bosom true,
The soul of song and merry jest?
The prince of all good fellows, who?
“Why, William Baird of Ridgeville!”
Whenever meets the G. A. R.,
Through rain or dust he hies to town;
He gladdens the excursion car,
And, as his regiment tramps down
The gala street, you hear afar
The marching measure, “Old John Brown,”
From William Baird of Ridgeville.
Then all the casements open wide,
A thousand flags are shaken free,
The balconies on either side
Are loud with shouts of jubilee,
And thrilling maidens wave with pride
Their kerchiefs, laughing, crying: “See!
That’s William Baird of Ridgeville!”
All children feel his gracious charm,--
Of gentle birth, or sprung of churls;
From hut and mansion, street and farm,
Troop eager round him lads and girls;
The baby leaves its mother’s arm
To ride the shoulder, pull the curls
Of William Baird of Ridgeville.
The fools in flock from William fly,
Like fluttered sparrows from a hawk;
The women hover warmly nigh,
Like bees around a lily-stalk,--
Enchanted by the sparkling eye
And by the spiced and nectared talk
Of William Baird of Ridgeville.
Yet Bill is not a ladies’ man;
He consorts with “the boys”;--he jokes--
This front-faced, sturdy veteran--
With common and uncommon folks;
He’s not the least a Puritan:--
Sometimes he drinks, and daily smokes
His briar-pipe, at Ridgeville.
Wit’s gold is minted in his brain
And glitters from his lavish tongue:
The gravest deacon frowns in vain
To quench the laughter; old and young
Report the brilliant quips that rain
Like scattered pearls at random flung
By William Baird of Ridgeville.
No wight can counterfeit or steal
What unpremeditated art
Gives him to improvise, to feel,
To waken in the answering heart;
What they from learning’s pride conceal,
The Muses uninvoked impart
To William Baird of Ridgeville.
An unambitious soul hath Bill;
The man is modest as a maid;
Down at the foot of fortune’s hill
His genius bides in calm and shade;
He reads his Shakespeare, dreams his fill;
A scythe he swings or plies a spade,--
Bold Captain Baird of Ridgeville.
Nor wife nor child his arms enfold;
No, no--he is a bachelor;
Yet, in his bosom aches an old
Deep wound which antedates the war;
He mourns--so is the secret told--
His dear, dead sweetheart, Eleanor;--
True William Baird of Ridgeville.
Bill’s time must come some day, to die!
Then like a soldier he’ll be found,
Nor fear the bullet’s whizzing cry,
Nor dread the final trumpet’s sound.
If I be breathing then, may I
Be with him on that battleground,
To kiss his lips and say good-bye
To William Baird of Ridgeville.
LET’S SHAKE.
Impromptu.
You thought you would take me, you say, by surprise!
You rascal! I knew you the moment my eyes
Lit on your old phiz, and I couldn’t mistake
Your voice nor your motions. How are you?
Let’s shake!
Train late? But you got here? Now why did you wire
Me not to expect you, you measureless liar?
Come up to my den, and by jolly! we’ll make
A night of it--where is your luggage?
Let’s shake!
Say, how have you been? Let me look in your face;
Have you won, have you lost, in the strenuous race?
Have you knocked the persimmons and taken the cake?
No? Here’s a small wallet--we’ll share it--
Let’s shake!
You may bank on my heart,--it is truer than gold;
Hot, hotter it grows as the world waxes cold;
Through flood and through flame I would go for your sake,
That’s so, Bill, you grizzly old humbug,
Let’s shake!
You’re married, I dare say, or leastwise, in love?
Speak out, for you know we are like hand and glove;
I used to think you and Belle Esmond would wed;--
Yes, yes, as I wrote you, the baby is dead;--
I feared for awhile that my wife’s heart must break;
Your hand, dear old comrade--don’t mind me,--
Let’s shake!
God bless you! I’m awfully glad you are here,
You must not make fun of this womanish tear;
He was only a baby, scarce two Aprils old,
But, William, I tell you they do get a hold
Of the heartstrings, these babies, and, since ours went,
Why, somehow or other, we’re not quite content
With this planet;--but when all our miseries here
Are over, I hope we may strike a new sphere
Up yonder, where hearts never hunger nor ache;--
You’ll get there, I reckon, if I do?
Let’s shake!
A WELCOME TO BOZ.
Impromptu.
In immortal Weller’s name,
By Micawber’s deathless fame,
By the flogging wreaked on Squeers,
By Job Trotter’s fluent tears,
By the beadle Bumble’s fate
At the hands of vixen mate,
By the famous Pickwick Club,
By the dream of Gabriel Grubb,
In the name of Snodgrass’ muse,
Tupman’s amorous interviews,
Winkle’s ludicrous mishaps,
And the fat boy’s countless naps,
By Ben Allen and Bob Sawyer,
By Miss Sally Brass, the lawyer,
In the name of Newman Noggs,
River Thames and London fogs,
Richard Swiveller’s excess,
Feasting with the Marchioness,
By Jack Bunsby’s oracles,
By the chime of Christmas bells,
By the cricket on the hearth,
Scrooge’s frown and Crotchit’s mirth,
By spread tables and good cheer,
Wayside inns and pots of beer,
Hostess plump and jolly host,
Coaches for the country post,
Chambermaid in love with Boots,
Toodles, Traddles, Tapley, Toots,
Jarley, Varden, Mister Dick,
Susan Nipper, Mistress Chick,
Snevellicci, Lilyvick,
Mantalini’s predilections
To transfer his “dem” affections,
Podsnap, Pecksniff, Chuzzlewit,
Quilp and Simon Tappertit,
Weg and Boffin, Smike and Paul,
Nell and Jenny Wren and all,--
Be not Sairy Gamp forgot,--
No, nor Peggotty and Trot,--
By poor Barnaby and Grip,
Dora, Flora, Di and Gip,
Perrybingle, Pinch and Pip--
Welcome, long-expected guest,
Welcome, Dickens, to the West.
1867.
THE BOOK AUCTION.
“How much am I bid?” said the spry auctioneer,
“For the lays of a well-known bard?”
The bard, incog, who was hovering near,
Glanced up, and his breath came hard.
“I am offered a dime! Just think of it, gents!
For these ‘Songs of the Dewy Dawn’!
Are you all done bidding? Ten! ten cents--
Ten cents--and--going--and--gone!
“You don’t know elegant books from trash!”
Joked the jubilant auctioneer;
The dubious author bit his mustache,
And felt confoundedly queer.
“A beautiful copy of Shakespeare’s pomes!
How much am I bid? Look alive!
A right nice work to embellish your homes;
Five cents! Sold to cash, for five!”
The incog singer twinkled his eye
And inwardly said with a thrill:
“American poetry doesn’t sell high,
But I’d hate to go cheap as old Bill.”
A GIFT ACKNOWLEDGED.
February 19, 1881.
Your Winter gift of bud and bloom
Took nature by surprise;
’Twas sudden Summer in my room,
And April in my eyes.
The kindly mist a moment stole
The flowers from my view,
But lo! they blossomed in my soul,
Where love their fragrance knew.
Fair embassy! their smiles I greet,
Camellia, pink and rose;
I understand the message sweet
Their gentle hearts enclose.
Their winsome beauty gladdens me
With this immortal truth:
No age can quite unhappy be
That still remembers youth.
Dear boys! companions! friends sincere!
More warm and true than men,
I thank you most because my tear
Made me a boy again.
THE OLD HOMESTEAD.
Enshrined among roses
The Homestead reposes
With vines mantled o’er;
Ground-ivy and clover
Are running all over
The stone at the door.
Pinks, lilies, are blowing,
Blue violets showing
Gold hearts to the June;
Bees going and coming
Keep evermore humming
Their Hyblean tune.
’Twas here that I wasted
Youth’s flower and tasted
Love’s first honey-dew;
A boy here I slumbered,
By care unencumbered,
Long, balmy nights through.
The wood-birds each morning
Gave musical warning
For shadows to fly;
Their rhapsody choral
Foretold the auroral
First flush of the sky.
With rising emotion
Akin to devotion
The scene I behold;--
With fond recollections
Of tender affections
Too sweet to be told.
JENNIE MOORE.
The morning air is richly rife
With southern soft perfumes;
Yon orchard glows with sudden blush
Of mingled buds and blooms;
The madrigals of wooing birds
Awaken amorous Spring,
And “Jennie Moore, sweet Jennie Moore”
Is all the song they sing.
Glad Yalobusha’s rippling waves
Repeat the darling name;
The zephyr lost among the pines
Dies murmuring the same;
And when the hush of twilight steals
Along the dreamy shore,
The blissful silence to my heart
Keeps singing “Jennie Moore.”
ASHES.
The fire of love is dead.
No spark of living red
The cold, gray ashes show.
Be still! thy sighing breath--
Can it requicken death?
Nay, hope not, dream not so.
Ah, no, no, no!
POSY.
Laura is the first to seek
Rime of March in wildwood bleak;
First to mourn the aster’s death,
Withered by November’s breath;
Every glade and glen she knows
Where the coy spring-beauty grows,
Searches sunny slope and dell
For the pearl or golden bell
Of the quivering addertongue
By the wandering zephyr swung;
She and April, comrades boon,
Hail the early-crowned puccoon;
In the dingle lone she sees
Tremulous anemones;
From the breast of June she takes
Columbines and plumy brakes;
Not a daisy she’ll forget,
Nor the humblest violet.
Lilies proud, on stately stalks,
Bow to greet her where she walks;
Roses to her pathway lean,
Queens saluting lovelier queen,
Emulous to win her eyes,
Rivals for self-sacrifice;
Blesséd they whom she shall choose
Though their fragrant lives they lose!
Joyful the elected flower
Which may triumph one brief hour,
Mingled with the clustered few,
Musical in form and hue!
Thus sweet notes that singly please
Join in chordant melodies!
So do gathered fancies twine
Graceful in the rhythmic line;--
Like a perfect lyric lay
Laura’s exquisite bouquet.
A SNOW BIRD.
Beside the curbstone, in gusty whirl
Of dust and snow-drift, stood a little girl;
The piteous tears ran down her baby face;
In dumb despair she stood, nor moved a pace,
Her flying curls and fluttering short dress
Pathetic signals of forlorn distress;
Her fondling hands, all purple with the cold,
Unto her breast a china doll did hold.
“What is the matter, dear, why do you cry?”
Her chill-cramped lips made dolefullest reply:
“I am so cold, and I don’t know the way.”
That was the most her helplessness could say.
Ere long, before a laughing, ruddy flame,
She smiled through tears and shyly told her name;
I led the strayling to her mother’s door,
And in she flew,--I never saw her more.
Yet oftentimes, when Winter scoffs the sun,
She is my bosom’s guest, that timid one;
She steals into my heart and sobbing stands,
A naked doll in her caressing hands;
I see her shiver and I hear her say,
“I am so cold, and I don’t know the way.”
THE UPSET.
Enforced pursuit of silver eagles fleet
Gave early haste to my reluctant feet,
And so it chanced I hurried--I and Care--
At sunrise down a city thoroughfare;
But by the grace of some directing fay
I met a sight that gladdened me all day.
I saw a beer-plump Saxon--Bacchus’ son--
His red, round face the symbol of slow fun;
Unconscious he of all ’twixt sky and earth
Except one soul-engrossing cause of mirth:
He dragged a painted sled, and, perched thereon,
Sat snug a three-years’ maiden, bright as dawn,
And happy as the sparrows chirping round,
Crumb-hunting near her on the snowy ground.
A sudden turn! a laughing cry, and lo!
The sled upsets, and Mädchen prints the snow.
She laughs; I laugh; loud ha-ha’s Bacchus’ son;--
Then gravely he,--“By yolly! dot vas fun.”
THE SCHOOL GIRL.
From some sweet home the morning train
Brings to the city,
Five days a week, in sun or rain,
Returning like a song’s refrain,
A school girl pretty.
A violet’s unaffected grace
Is dainty miss’s,
Yet, in her shy, expressive face,
The touch of urban arts I trace,
And artifices.
No one but she and Heaven knows
Of what she’s thinking;
It may be either books or beaux,
Fine scholarship or stylish clothes,
Per cents or prinking.
How happy must the household be
This morn who kissed her;
Not every one can make so free;
Who sees her, inly wishes she
Were his own sister.
How favored is the book she cons,
The slate she uses,
The hat she lightly doffs and dons,
The orient sunshade that she owns,
The desk she chooses.
Is she familiar with the wars
Of Julius Caesar?
Do crucibles, and Leyden jars,
And Browning, and the moons of Mars,
And Euclid, please her?
She studies music, I opine;
O day of knowledge!
And other mysteries divine
Of imitation or design,
Taught in the college.
A charm attends her everywhere,
A sense of beauty;
Care smiles to see her free of care;
The hard heart loves her unaware;
Age pays her duty.
Her innocence is panoply,
Her weakness, power;
The earth her guardian, and the sky;
God’s every star is her ally,
And every flower.
THE READERS.
Come hither, my ten years’ maiden;
O’er what do you ponder so much?
“I am reading in Tanglewood Stories,
The tale of the Golden Touch.”
Ah! Hattie, my flax-haired darling,
How buried in study you seem.
“I am reading in Tales from Shakespeare,
Of Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
And there on the sofa is Mayo;
My laddie, what pleases you so?
“This picture and fable in Æsop,--
See here,--of the Pitcher and Crow.”
Come hither, my dream-eyed baby,
You’re falling asleep on the floor!
“I’m reading in Sing Song, papa,--
I wish you would read me some more.”
WAG.
Obiit, February 7, 1878.
He was only a dog, and a mongrel at that,
And worthless and troublesome, lazy and fat,--
Was Wag, who died yesterday night;
Yet now that his barking forever is o’er,
And his caudal appendage can waggle no more,
His elegy I will indite.
’Twas seldom authority mastered his will;
He always was noisy when bid to be still;
He slumbered while danger was near;
He ran after chickens against all command;
When ordered to “sick” he would heedlessly stand;
His principal passion was fear.
From morning till night he would dig in the ground
To get at a rabbit, but, when it was found,
In terror he took to his heels;
But there was one duty he never did shun,
From that naught could drive him, to that he would run:
Wag never neglected his meals.
The tax that I paid the police on his poll,
A dollar a year, I begrudged in my soul,
For Wag I thought dear at a cent;
And once, in my hardness, I gloomily said,
“I wish that the no-account puppy were dead!”
But now he _is_ dead, I repent.
Wag came from Kentucky, a waif, bundled up
And packed in a basket, a charity pup,--
In pity we warmed him and fed;
The only return that his nature could give
For preserving his life, was serenely to live,
Content with his board and his bed.
He was kind to the dogs upon Tusculum Hill;
He followed them all with fraternal good will,
From coach dog to commonest cur;
He was grateful to _people_ who treated him right,
And for his young mistress he even would fight,
But not lose his dinner for her.
I miss his black body curled up and asleep,
I miss his contortions, his bark, and his leap,
And the sound of his gnawing at bones;
The very same night that the Pope died at Rome,
Poor Wag, all alone, in the wash-house at home,
Yielded up his last shivering moans.
And when to the children, next morning, I said,
As they sat at the table, “Yes, Wag--he is dead,”
There was not a dry eye in the room;
And Auntie began, with remorse, to recall
How lately she’d driven deceased from the hall,
With scoldings and blows of a broom.
Now Wag is asleep near an apple-tree old,
And a dog-rose shall blossom above his dear mold,
And there shall a tablet be set;
For though but a dog, and a mongrel at that,
And worthless, and idle, and lazy, and fat,--
Poor Wag was _our_ dog, and a pet.
DONATELLO.
Who will capture Donatello?
Roving cat!
Fierce, ungovernable fellow;
Musical as Leporello,--
Sharp and flat!
Terrible in a duello.
Ragamuffin, have you met a
Felis fat?
Ancestored in gay Valetta,
Where brown dames in black faldetta,
Walk and chat--
Hot his blood as flame of Ætna.
Beautiful, romantic, splendid
Autocrat!
To the forest, unattended,
Daring Donatello wended:
Owl and bat,
Weasel, mole, and mink, he rended.
Savage wildwood his unbounded
Habitat;
By no man or mastiff hounded,
By the midnight mirk surrounded--
Think of that!
Oft his caterwaul he sounded.
Freedom to the gallant fellow.
Exeat!
Victor in each fierce duello,
Midnight, madcap Leporello!
Roving cat!
Graceless, graceful Donatello!
GABRIEL OF SCHWARTZENWALD.
Rhyme, and ring the changes well,
Sing the song of Gabriel,
Gabriel of Schwartzenwald.
Lo, a voice delusive called
From the Ohio’s crooked vale,
Saying, “Sail and sail and sail
Over the sea and hither away,
Westering to the Land of Play;
Happy region of Do-as-you-please,
Where the guilders grow on trees,
Where the peasants all are kings
And there be no underlings.”
Gabriel, the idle dreamer,
Heard the Utopian voice alluring;
Sought a sail-ship,--not a steamer;
Soon the vessel leaves her mooring,
Veers and tacks to Occident,
Bears him o’er the crinkled sea;
Never soul so indolent
Lounged upon a deck as he.
With the vagrant breeze he glides
Over sun-lit, moon-lit tides,
Skims to port and shore;
Spins along the shining rail,
Sleeps into Ohio’s vale,--
Wakes--the journey o’er.
Not an idler Gabriel sees,
Not a kreutzer on the trees;
Every bretzel must be bought;
Naught is proffered him for naught.
’Tis the Region of Unrest,
Busy, toiling, moiling West!
All the peasant kings he found
Building houses, tilling ground.
Gabriel of Schwartzenwald
From his dream is disenthralled;
Transatlantic, far away,
Eastward looms the Land of Play.
Like the lily, like the daisy,
Lolling Gabriel was lazy;
Clownish were his clumsy paces,
Ludicrous his slow grimaces;
Ill-defined the thoughts he spoke,
Like the wreathed tobacco smoke
From his meerschaum upward shed
Curling round his shaggy head.
Little could he understand:--
“Vish I vas in Faderland,
Nicht is goot for notings here
Only shust das lager-bier.”
Easily he wept or smiled,
Easily was he beguiled;
Rill-like, shallow, o’er his mind,
Ran affections swift and kind;
Secretly he shared his meat
With a lame cur on the street;
“Vonce I had a hund,” said he,
“Vat vas very freund to me;
Ya, mein Herr, dat hund vas mine;
Vish I heard him barkin’ here;
Vish I had a glass goot bier,
Oder flash von German wein.”
Hard by Mineami Bayou,
Where the gadding breezes cool
Loiter up from the Ohio,
Gabriel, at sink of sun,
Throned upon a wooden stool,
Fondled his accordion.
Then the ragged urchins round,
And their brown-legged sisters, maybe,
Lugging each a flax-haired baby,--
Sometimes, too, the weary mothers,
Yea, and I, and lingering others,
By sad, dulcet quaverings won,
Gathered near to catch the sound;
O’er the hill the risen moon
Paused to hear the mellow tune;
All too sadly, all too soon,
Gabriel would cease to play,
Light his pipe and puff away.
“Vas a Fräulein,”--mumbled he;
“Vish I vas to-night not hier;
Not America for me,--
Only shust das lager-bier.”
“Play a waltz now, Gabriel!” “Nein,
Rhine wein ist der beste wein.”