Lone, tortuous stair, whereby I made
A tingling silence, a heavy concentric shade,
The twelve-years’ child of the Lord Llewellyn groped:
With May-wreaths laden, the loving strange child came!
And my pulses that throbbed at sight of her, ten years gone,
Chilled and recoiled at her delicate finger-touch, guessing
Along my brazen-wrought margin, the laud and the blessing
Traced, thro’ the vine, thro’ the tangle of star and of sun,
By her dead father’s name, by Llewellyn’s magnificent name.
And even as she stood in the dark, the doom and the horror rushed on me;
(I had weakened my soul, and they won me!)
I felt the desire at my vitals, the unbearable joy that is pain:
With one mad tigerish spring against the dim rafter,
I smote the sweet child in my rage, I smote her with laughter,
And a sound like the rain
Whirled east on the casement, died after:
And I knew that the life in her brain
I had quenched at the stroke, and flung even my darling of yore
Down the resonant, tottering stair, down, down to the centuried door!
Then the swift hurricane,
The clamoring army thronged up from below, my
allegiance to claim!
Lean goblins, brown-flecked like a toad, the gnomic horned ghosts,
Imps flickering, quarry-sprites grim, all the din of the dolorous hosts,
All the glory and glee of the cursèd hissed round me and round,
as a flame.
And they loosened my hold from the tower, and my hope from the hem
Of the garment of Him who could save, as they jeered! and with speed
Crashed down past the rocks and the wrecks; and the horrible deed
Was done. I was theirs; and I gave up my spirit to them.
V.
In a mossy minaret
Fathoms under, I am set.
All the sea-shapes undulating
At my gates forlorn are waiting,
All the dreary faint-eyed people
Watch me in my hollow steeple,
While the glass-clear city heaves
Oft beneath its earthy eaves.
So in sorrow, sorrow, sorrow
Yestereven and to-morrow,
Thro’ the æons, in a cell
Hangs Saint Cadoc’s loveless bell,
Orbèd, like a mortal’s tear,
On the moony atmosphere,
Bearing, the refrain of time,
Memory, and unrest, and crime.
Thou that hast the world sublime!
I that was free, I am lost, I am damned, I am here!
And whenever a child among men by a blow is dead,
Docile for aye from the deeps must I lift my head,
And from the heathen heart of me that breaks,
The unextinguishable music wakes,
Naught availing, naught deterred.
And the sailor heareth me,
Even as thou, alas! hast heard,
Fallen in awe upon thy knee,
Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the ominous sea.
A CHOUAN.
FROM the school-porch at Vannes
Weaponed, the children ran;
One little voice began,
Lark-like ascended:
‘Treason is on the wing,
Black vows, and menacing:
March, boys! God save the King!’
Allio ended.
Singing, with sunny head,
Battleward straight he led,
Stones for his captain’s bed,
Herbs for his diet:
He and his legion brave,
Trouble enough they gave!
Ere the Blues’ bullets drave
Them into quiet.
Spared, with a few as bold,
Once the storm over-rolled,
Allio, twelve years old,
Crept from the clamor;
Came, when the days were brief,
To the old desk in grief,
Thumbing anew the leaf
Of the old grammar.
Kings out!... rang the chime,
Kings in!... answered Time.
In his ignoring clime,
Silent, he studied;
Till, ere his youth was done,
For him, the chosen one,
Shepherd disclaimed of none,
Aaron’s rod budded.
Long, in unbroken round,
Peace on his paths he found;
Saw the glad Breton ground
Husbanded, quarried:
Blessed it, the record saith,
All the years he had breath,
Till the dim eightieth
Snowed on his forehead.
President!... Emperor!...
President!... On the floor
Spake a sharp Senator
Widening his ranges:
‘From Paris I impeach
Vannes for disloyal speech;
Send thither troops to teach,
How the world changes!’
Down on the peasants then
Rode the Republic’s men,
Trampling the corn again,
Miring the flowers;
Hewed thro’ the rebels nigh,
Scoffed at the women’s cry,
Set the tricolor high
On the church towers.
Pale in his cot that day,
Dying, the pastor lay,
Where still his eye could stray
Up valleys gleaming;
Watchers were at his side;
Prayer unto prayer replied:
Hush! what was that he spied,
Pinnacle-streaming?
(Nothing was he aware
In his deaf Breton air,--
So gray traditions there
Throve unforgotten,--
That, by a final chance,
Kings all were led a dance;
Long since, in fickle France,
Sceptres were rotten!)
Sprang the old lion, still
Live with prodigious will,
To his stone casement-sill;
Foolish and true one!
Snatched up the blade he bore,
Rough with its rust of yore,
Kissed it, a saint no more--
Only a Chouan!
Barred from the charging mass
In the choked market-pass,
All he could do, alas!
Now, was to clang it:
Nay, more:--‘God save the King!’
With a last clarion ring,
Shot ere he ceased to sing,
Allio sang it.
LYRICS
YOUTH.
LET us hymn thee for our silent brothers,
Freely as the wild impellent wind blows,
Briefly, rudely, in the smoky pauses
Of a battle, in the stress and scourging
Of the sail apast thy heavenly margin;
Let us hymn thee, while the gallant pulses
In high heart and limbs one kingliest instant,
Boom and flash thy name and their allegiance;
‘Once, and for one only,’ let us hymn thee,
O Delight, O Sunrise, O sole Answer,
Empery unbought, supreme Adventure,
Youth, ah, Youth! all men’s desire and sorrow.
Let us hymn thee, we, the passing, dying,
Out of bondage by a vision lifted,
Since by chance sublime, in secret places,
Goddess! we, Aktaion-like, have seen thee.
Tho’ our voice as a spent eagle’s voice is,
Let us hymn thee, while the doom is forging;
Holding, losing, thro’ one first last moment,
One mad moment worth dull life forever,
Triumphing in anguish, let us hymn thee!
Thine, beholden Beauty, thine this heart-break,
Thine, O Hope forsworn! this salutation,
Youth, ah, Youth! all men’s desire and sorrow.
THE LAST FAUN.
HOW hath he stumbled hither, in search of love and praise,
A tardy comer and goer across the world’s highways,
A kind shape from the thicket, a wanderer all his days?
He finds a rocky seat where the moiling town recedes:
The altered shepherds flout him; but O he little heeds!
Incredulous he swings there, and drones upon his reeds.
He stamps his cloven heel, and he laughs adown the wind,
With eye that wanes and waxes at doings of mankind.
Slow, slow creeps the invader upon that happy mind.
The apple breasts his fellow; doves wheel by two and three,
And ever dance in circle the shallops on the sea;
The goats and deer are many; but playmate none hath he,
Nor nymph nor child to follow upon his signals rude;
He smiles: there is no frolic; he snarls: there is no feud.
He feels his poor heart sinking at every interlude.
His shaggy ear and freakish resents the wail and din;
Earth’s rumors chill his veins with their ghostly gliding in;
He aches to slip these tethers, and be where he hath been.
Elsewhere is waking glory, and here the dream, the thrall.
Hush! hear the sunless waters, the wrestling leaves that call!
He lops the grass, and whistles; and while he cheats them all,
Obeys, is gone, gone wholly. From alien air too cold,
The Faun, with garlands flying, with sylvan ditties trolled,
Being homesick, being patient, regains his greenwood old.
KNIGHTS OF WEATHER.
WHEN down the filmy lanes
The too wise sun goes grieving,
A wake of splendor leaving
Upbillowed from the ground;
When at the window-panes
The hooded chestnuts rattle,
And there is clash of battle
New England’s oaks around:
Oh, then we knights of weather,
We birds of sober feather,
Fill up the woods with revel
That summer’s pomp is slain;
And make a mighty shouting
For King October’s outing,
The Saracen October
Astride the hurricane!
When dappled butterflies
Have crept away to cover,
And one persistent plover
Is coaxing from the fen;
When apples show the skies
Their bubbly lush vermilion,
And from a rent pavilion
Laugh down on maids and men:
Oh, then we knights of weather,
We birds of sober feather,
Fill up the woods with revel
That summer’s pomp is slain;
And make a mighty shouting
For King October’s outing,
The Saracen October
Astride the hurricane!
When pricks the winy air;
When o’er the meadows clamber
Cloud-masonries of amber;
When brooks are silver-clear;
When conquering colors dare
The hills and cliffy places,
To hold, with braggart graces,
High wassail of the year:
Oh, then we knights of weather,
We birds of sober feather,
Fill up the woods with revel
That summer’s pomp is slain;
And make a mighty shouting
For King October’s outing,
The Saracen October
Astride the hurricane!
DAYBREAK.
THE young sun rides the mists anew; his cohorts follow from the sea.
Let Aztec children shout and sue, the Persian lend a thankful knee:
Those glad auroral eyes shall beam not anywhere henceforth on me.
Up with the banners on the height, set every matin bell astir!
The tree-top choirs carouse in light; the dew’s on phlox and lavender:
Ah, mockery! for, worlds away, the heart of morning beats with her.
ON SOME OLD-MUSIC.
TO lie beside a stream, upon the sod
At ease, while weary shepherds homeward plod,
And feel benignly by, as daylight mellows,
The mountains in their weathering period;
Aye so, with silence shod
To lie in depth of grass with man’s meek fellows,
The cattle large and calm, aware of God,
And, keen as if to flesh the spirit sprang,
To hear,--O but to hear that silvern clang
Of young hale melody! and hither rally
The thrill, the aspiration, and the pang
Again, as once it rang
Sovereign and clear thro’ all the Saco valley,
Whose slaves were we that heard, and he that sang!
Happy the spot, the hour, the spanning strain
Precious and far, the rainbow of the rain,
The seal of patience, dark endeavor’s summing,
The heaven-bright close of Pergolese’s pain!
Sighs bid it back in vain,
Nor win its peer, till craftsmen aftercoming
Lost art, lost heart, from shipwrecked years regain.
How, like an angel, it effaced the crime,
The moil and heat of our tempestuous time,
And brought from dewier air, to us who waited,
The breath of peace, the healing breath sublime!
As falls, at midnight’s chime
To an old pilgrim, plodding on belated,
The thought of Love’s remote sunshining prime.
There flits upon the wind’s wing, as we gaze,
Our northern springtime, virgin-green three days;
The racy water shallowing, the glory
Of jonquils strewn, the wafted apple-sprays:
O let it be thy praise,
Child-song too lovely and too transitory!
Thou art as they; thy feet have gone their ways.
O beauty unassailable! O bride
Of memory! while yet thou didst abide
The yester joy was ours, the joy to-morrow,
Life’s brimming whole: and since to earth denied,
Soft ebbed thy dreamy tide,
To us the first, the full, the only sorrow,
Wild as when Abel out of Eden died.
LATE PEACE.
AS a pool beset with lilies
In the May-green copses hid,
Far from wayfarers and wrongers,
Clangors, rumors, disillusions,
Neighbored by the wild-grape only,
By the hemlock’s dreamy host,
By the Rhodian nightingale,
O remote, remote, O lonely!--
So thy life is.
Whence and wherefore is it
Never peace may be co-dweller
With my lakelet
Too belovèd and too sheltered,
That, secure from broil of cities,
From a secret regnant spring
To its own wild depth awaking,
Makes but moaning and resistance,
Undiminishable protest;
Mimicking with pain and fury
Of humanity the struggle;
Fretting, foaming, pacing ever
Round and round its fragrant cloister,
All within itself perplexèd,
Every heart-vein bruised but eager;
And its clear soul, doubt-o’erladen,
’Neath the stirred and floating foulness,
Long abased, long dumb, ah! long?--
So thy life is.
Comes the respite, comes the guerdon;
The perfect truce arrives
In the honey-dropping twilight,
The southwestering pallid sunshine,
The magian clouds a-fire,
The mooring galleon-wind:
At whose spell,
Potent daily,
The lulled water is beguiled
Back to saneness, back to sweetness.
All its arrowy hissing atoms
Gather from the chase forsaken;
The sphered galaxy of bubbles,
Fragments, motes, the lees unrestful,
Disunite, as to heard music,
Like weird dancers, from their wreathings
Each to its cool grotto swaying;
Till there follows, on their fervor,
Depth, and crystal clarity.
So thy life is, so thy life!
Darkling to beatitude,
Shaken in the saving change.
And the spirit made wise, not weary
By the throes that youth endureth,
When old age falls, evening-placid,
On the mystery unriddled,
Yet in empire, yet in honor,
In submission not ignoble,
Glistens to a central quiet,
Leal to the most lovely moon.
TO A YOUNG POET.
SIGH not to be remembered, dear,
Nor for Time’s fickle graces strive;
Vex not thy spirit’s songful cheer
With the sick ardor to survive.
But be content, thou quick bright thing
A while than lasting stars more fair:
A lone high-flashing skylark’s wing
Across obliterating air.
O rich in immortality!
Not thee Fame’s graven stones benight;
But ever, to some world-worn eye,
All Heaven is bluer for thy flight.
DE MORTUIS.
THE skilfullest of mankind!
So praise him, reckoning
By shot in the sea-gull’s wing,
By doubts in boyhood’s mind.
DOWN STREAM.
SCARRED hemlock roots,
Oaks in mail, and willow-shoots
Spring’s first-knighted;
Clinging aspens grouped between,
Slender, misty-green,
Faintly affrighted:
Far hills behind,
Sombre growth, with sunlight lined,
On their edges;
Banks hemmed in with maiden-hair,
And the straight and fair
Phalanx of sedges:
Wee wings and eyes,
Wild blue gemmy dragon-flies,
Fearless rangers;
Drowsy turtles in a tribe
Diving, with a gibe
Muttered at strangers;
Wren, bobolink,
Robin, at the grassy brink;
Great frogs jesting;
And the beetle, for no grief
Half-across his leaf
Sighing and resting;
In the keel’s way,
Unwithdrawing bream at play,
Till from branches
Chestnut-blossoms, loosed aloft,
Graze them with their soft
Full avalanches!
This is very odd!
Boldly sings the river-god:
‘Pilgrim rowing!
From the Hyperborean air
Wherefore, and O where
Should man be going?’
Slave to a dream,
Me no urgings and no theme
Can embolden;
Now no more the oars swing back,
Drip, dip, till black
Waters froth golden.
Musketaquid!
I have loved thee, all unbid,
Earliest, longest;
Thou hast taught me thine own thrift:
Here I sit, and drift
Where the wind’s strongest.
If, furthermore,
There be any pact ashore,
I forget it!
If, upon a busy day
Beauty make delay,
Once over, let it!
Only,--despite
Thee, who wouldst unnerve me quite
Like a craven,--
Best the current be not so,
Heart and I must row
Into our haven!
THE INDIAN PIPE.
(TO R. L. S.)
YOUR bays shall all men bring,
And flowers the children strew you.
Once, as I stood in a thick west wood,
I took from a fissure a precious thing,
The homage whereof be to you!
A thing pearl-pale, yet stung
With fire, as the morning’s beam is;
Hid underground thro’ a solar round,
Hardy and fragile, antique and young,
More exquisite than a dream is.
No rose had so bright birth;
No gem of romance surpassed it,
By a minstrel-knight, for his maid’s delight,
Borne from the moon-burnt marge of the earth,
Where Paynim breakers cast it.
Rude-named, memorial, quaint,
The dews and the darkness mould it:
Scarce twice in an age is our heritage
This glory and mystery without taint.
Dear Stevenson, do you hold it
A text of grace, ah! much
Beyond what the praising throng say:
Only your art is its peer at heart,
Only your touch is a wonder such,
My wild little loving song says!
BROOK FARM.
DOWN the long road bent and brown,
Youth, that dearly loves a vision,
Ventures to the gates Elysian,
As a palmer from the town,
Coming not so late, so far,
Rocks and birches! for your story,
Nor to prate of vanished glory
Where of old was quenched a star;
Where, of old, in lapse of toil,
Time, that has for weeds a dower,
Bade the supersensual flower
Starve in our New England soil.
But to Youth, whose radiant eyes
Shatter mists of grief and daunting,
Lost glad voices still are chanting
’Neath those unremaining skies;
Still the dreams of fellowship
Beat their wings of aspiration;
And a smile of soft elation
Trembles from his haughty lip,
If another dare deride
Hopes heroic snapped and parted,
Disillusion so high-hearted,
All success is mean beside!
‘MY TIMES ARE IN THY HANDS.’
‘MY times are in Thy hands!’
It rumbles from the sea;
It jingles ever, inland far,
From the reddening rowan-tree.
Let me not sit inert,
Let me not be afraid!
Teach me to dare and to resist
Like the first mortal made,
To whom of fate’s dread strength
No sickening rumors ran;
Who with whatever grim event
Grappled, as man with man.
Seal to my utmost age
What now my youth hath known:
‘My times are in Thy hands,’ O most!
When wholly in my own.
GARDEN CHIDINGS.
THE spring being at her blessed carpentry,
This morning makes a stem, this noon a leaf,
And jewels her sparse greenery with a bud;
Fostress of happy growth is she. But thou,
O too disdainful spirit, or too shy!
Passive dost thou inhabit, like a mole,
The porch elect of darkness; for thy trade
Is underground, a barren industry,
Shivering true ardor on the nether air,
Shaping the thousandth tendril, and all year
Webbing the silver nothings to and fro.
What wonder if the gardener think thee dead,
When every punctual neighbor-root now goes
Adventurously skyward for a flower?
Up, laggard! climb thine inch; thyself fulfil;
Thou only hast no sign, no pageantry,
Save these fine gropings: soon from thy small plot
The seasonable sunshine steals away.
FRÉDÉRIC OZANAM.
UNTO the constant heart whom saints befriend
Afar in peace, what were our gaudy praise?
His course is ended, and his faith is kept.
Honor in silence to that memory! sweet
Equally in the forum of the schools,
And in the sufferer’s hovel. His, threefold,
The lowliness of Isai’s chosen son,
And zeal that fired the warring Macchabee,
About him like a wedding-garment, worn
The day of his acceptance; and we know
That for the sake of some such soul as this,--
So brave, so clean, compassionate and just,
Alert in its most meek security,--
Love beareth yet with all that stains the world.
BANKRUPT.
PAST the cold gates, a wraith without a name,
Sullen and withered, like a thing half-tame
Still for its jungle moaning, came by night,
Before the Judgment’s awful Angel came.
‘Answer, Immortal! at my high decree
Glory or shame shall flood thee as the sea:
What of the power, the skill, the graciousness,
The star-strong soul the Lord hath lent to thee?’
But the lone spectre raised a mournful hand:
‘Call me not that! Release me from this land!
What words are Heaven and Hell? They fall on me
As on a sphere the fooled and slipping sand.
‘Discerning, thou the good mayst yet belie,
By some last test, the sinner sanctify.
My guilt is neutral-safe, like innocence:
No boon nor bane of deathless days gain I,
‘Whose life is hollow shell and broken bowl,
Of all which was its treasury, the whole
Utterly, vilely squandered. O most Just!
Put down thy scales: for I have spent my soul.’
A REASON FOR SILENCE.
YOU sang, you sang! you mountain brook
Scarce by your tangly banks held in,
As running from a rocky nook,
You leaped the world, the sea to win,
Sun-bright past many a foamy crook,
And headlong as a javelin.
Now men do check and still your course
To serve a village enterprise,
And wheelward drive your sullen force,
What wonder, slave! that in no wise
Breaks from you, pooled ’mid reeds and gorse,
The voice you had in Paradise?
TEMPTATION.
I COME where the wry road leads
Thro’ the pines and the alder scents,
Sated of books, with a start,
Sharp on the gang to-day:
Scarce see the Romany steeds,
Scarce hear the flap of the tents,
When hillo! my heart, my heart
Is out of its leash, and away.
Gypsies, gypsies, the whole
Tatterdemalion crew!
Brown and sly and severe
With curious trades in hand.
A string snaps in my soul,
The one high answer due
If an exile chance to hear
The songs of his fatherland.
... To be abroad with the rain,
And at home with the forest hush,
With the crag, and the flower-urn,
And the wan sleek mist upcurled;
To break the lens and the plane,
To burn the pen and the brush,
And, clean and alive, return
Into the old wild world!...
How is it? O wind that bears
The arrow from its mark,
The sea-bird from the sea,
The moth from his midnight lamp,
Fate’s self, thou mocker of prayers!
Whirl up from the mighty dark,
And even so, even me
Blow far from the gypsy camp!
FOR A CHILD.
Schumann’s ‘Erinnerung: Novbr. 4, 1847.’
IN memory of dear Mendelssohn, the loving song I made
Fain would I sing for you, my own, but that I am afraid,
Aye, truly, sore afraid:
For sweet as was its every tone, once freed to mortal ears,
In memory of dear Mendelssohn, the ghostly wand of tears
Would yet be strong to break my song,
Thro’ all these after-years!
AGLAUS.
THE ash hath no perfidious mind;
The open fields are just and kind;
Tho’ loves betray, I hear this way
The feathery step of the faithful wind.
Thorn-apple, bayberry and rose
Around me, talismanic, close:
The frosty flakes, the thunder-quakes,
Are bulwarks twain of my year’s repose.
No struggle, no delight, no moan,
But at my hearthstone I have known!
All thoughts that pass, as in a glass
The gods have bared to me for mine own.
Wisdom, the sought and unpossessed,
Hath of her own will been my guest;
Not smoking feud, but quietude
My heart hath chosen, at her behest.
‘This is of men the happiest man
Who hath his plot Arcadian,’
Apollo cried, my gates beside,
‘Nor ever wanders beyond its span.’
Now, like my sheep, I seek the fold;
My hair is shaken in the cold;
The night is nigh; but ere I die,
Bear witness, brothers! that young and old,
My name I wear without regret:
The Home-Keeper am I, and yet
At every inn my feet have been,
Above all travellers I am set.
Tho’ ocean currents by me purled,
The sails of my desire were furled.
What pilgrims crave, three acres gave;
And I, Aglaus, have seen the world!
AN AUDITOR.
WHY chide me that mutely I listen, ah, jester?
For either thou knowest
Too much, or thou knowest not aught of this aching vexed
planet down-whirling:
Thou knowest?--Thy wit is but fortitude; would’st have me
laugh in its presence?
Thou knowest not?--Laugh I can never, for innocence also is sacred.
THE WATER-TEXT.
WATCHING my river marching overland,
By mighty tides, transfigured and set free,--
My river, lapped in idle-hearted mirth,
Made at a touch a glory to the earth,
And leaving, wheresoever falls his hand,
The balm and benediction of the sea,--
O soon, I know, the hour whereof we dreamed,
The saving hour miraculous, arrives!
When, ere to darkness winds our sordid course,
Some glad, new, potent, consecrating force
Shall speed us, so uplifted, so redeemed,
Along the old worn channel of our lives.
CYCLAMEN.
ON me, thro’ joy’s eclipse, and inward dark,
First fell thy beauty like a star new-lit;
To thee my carol now! albeit no lark
Hath for thy praise a throat too exquisite.
O would that song might fit
These harsh north slopes for thine inhabiting,
Or shelter lend thy loveliest laggard wing,
Thou undefiled estray of earth’s o’ervanished spring!
Here is the sunless clime, the fallen race;
Down our green dingles is no peer of thee:
Why art thou such, dear outcast, who hadst place
With shrine, and bower, and olive-silvery
Peaked islets in mid-sea?
Thou seekest thine Achaian dews in vain,
And osiered nooks jocose, at summer’s wane,
With gossip spirit-fine of chill and widening rain.
Thou wert among Thessalia’s hoofy host,
Their radiant shepherd stroked thee with a sigh;
When falchioned Perseus spied the Æthiop coast,
Unto his love’s sad feet thy cheek was nigh;
And all thy blood beat high
With woodland Rhœcus at the brink of bliss;
Thy leaf the Naiad plucked by Thyamis,
And she, the straying maid, the bride beguiled of Dis.
These, these are gone. The air is wan and cold,
The choric gladness of the woods is fled:
But thou, aye dove-like, rapt in memories old,
Inclinest to the ground thy fragile head,
In ardor and in dread.
Searcher of yesternight! how wilt thou find
In any dolven aisle or cavern blind,
In any ocean-hall, the glory left behind?
June’s butterfly, poised o’er his budded sweet,
Is scarce so quiet-winged, betimes, as thou.
Fail twilight’s thrill, and noonday’s wavy heat
To kiss the fever from thy downcast brow.
Ah, cease that vigil now!
No west nor east thine unhoused vision keeps,
Nor yet in heaven’s pale purpureal deeps
Of worlds unnavigate, the dream of childhood sleeps.
Flower of the joyous realm! thy rivers lave
Their once proud valleys with forgetful moan;
Thy kindred nod on many a trodden grave
Among marmorean altars overthrown;
For thou art left alone,
Alone and dying, duped for love’s extreme:
Hope not! thy Greece is over, as a dream;
Stay not! but follow her down Time’s star-lucent stream.