PART I.

KATHRINA

DR. J. G. HOLLAND'S WRITINGS.

_Complete Works_. 16 Volumes. Small 12mo.

Sold separately.

Bitter-Sweet

Kathrina

The Mistress of the Manse

Puritan's Guest and other Poems

Titcomb's Letters to Young People

Gold-Foil

Lessons in Life

Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects

Concerning the Jones Family

Every-Day Topics. First Series

Every-Day Topics. Second Series

Sevenoaks

The Bay Path

Arthur Bonnicastle

Miss Gilbert's Career

Nicholas Minturn

KATHRINA

A POEM

BY

J. G. HOLLAND

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1893.

COPYRIGHT BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO.

1867

COPYRIGHT BY

J. G HOLLAND

1881

TROW'S

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,

NEW YORK.

I DEDICATE

"KATHRINA"

THE WORK OF MY HAND

TO

ELIZABETH

THE WIFE OF MY HEART

CONTENTS

A TRIBUTE

PART I.

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

COMPLAINT

PART II.

LOVE

A REFLECTION

PART III.

LABOR

DESPAIR

PART IV.

CONSUMMATION

KATHRINA.

A TRIBUTE.

More human, more divine than we--

In truth, half human, half divine--

Is woman, when good stars agree

To temper with their beams benign

The hour of her nativity.

The fairest flower the green earth bears,

Bright with the dew and light of heaven,

Is, of the double life she wears,

The type, in grace and glory given

By soil and sun in equal shares.

True sister of the Son of Man:

True sister of the Son of God:

What marvel that she leads the van

Of those who in the path he trod,

Still bear the cross and wear the ban?

If God be in the sky and sea,

And live in light and ride the storm,

Then God is God, although He be

Enshrined within a woman's form;

And claims glad reverence from me.

So, as I worship Him in Christ,

And in the Forms of Earth and Air,

I worship Him imparadised,

And throned within her bosom fair

Whom vanity hath not enticed.

O! woman--mother! Woman--wife!--

The sweetest names that language knows!

Thy breast, with holy motives rife,

With holiest affection glows,

Thou queen, thou angel of my life!

Noble and fine in his degree

Is the best man my heart receives;

And this my heart's supremest plea

For him: he feels, acts, lives, believes,

And seems, and is, the likest thee.

O men! O brothers! Well I know

That with her nature in our souls

Is born the elemental woe--

The brutal impulse that controls,

And drives, or drags, the godlike low.

Ambition, appetite and pride--

These throng and thrall the hearts of men

These plat the thorns, and pierce the side

Of Him, who, in our souls again,

Is spit upon, and crucified.

The greed for gain, the thirst for power,

The lust that blackens while it burns:

Ah! these the whitest souls deflour!

And one, or all of these by turns,

Rob man of his divinest dower!

Yet man, who shivers like a straw

Before Temptation's lightest breeze,

Assumes the master--gives the law

To her who, on her bended knees,

Resists the black-winged thunder-flaw!

To him who deems her weak and vain,

And boasts his own exceeding might,

She clings through darkest fortune fain;

Still loyal though the ruffian smite;

Still true, though crime his hands distain!

And is this weakness? Is it not

The strength of God, that loves and bears

Though He be slighted or forgot

In damning crimes, or driving cares,

And closest clings in darkest lot?

Not many friends my life has made;

Few have I loved, and few are they

Who in my hand their hearts have laid;

And these were women. I am gray,

But never have I been betrayed.

These words--this tribute--for the sake

Of truth to God and womankind!

These--that my heart may cease to ache

With love and gratitude confined,

And burning from my lips to break!

These--to that sisterhood of grace

That numbers in its sacred list

My mother, risen to her place;

My wife, but yester-morning kissed,

And folded in Love's last embrace!

This tribute of a love profound

As ever moved the heart of man,

To those to whom my life is bound,

To her in whom my life began,

And her whose love my life hath crowned!

Immortal Love! Thou still hast wings

To lift me to those radiant fields,

Where Music waits with trembling strings,

And Verse her happy numbers yields,

And all the soul within me sings.

So from the lovely Pagan dream

I call no more the Tuneful Nine;

For Woman is my Muse Supreme;

And she with fire and flight divine,

Shall light and lead me to my theme.

PART I.

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.

Thou lovely vale of sweetest stream that flows:

Winding and willow-fringed Connecticut!

Swift to thy fairest scenes my fancy flies,

As I recall the story of a life

Which there began in years of sinless hope,

And merged maturely into hopeless sin.

O! golden dawning of a day of storms,

That fell ere noontide into rayless night!

O! beautiful initial, vermeil-flowered,

And bright with cherub-eyes and effigies,

To the black-letter volume of my life!

O! faƫry gateway, gilt and garlanded,

And shining in the sun, to gloomy groves

Of shadowy cypress, and to sunless streams,

Feeding with bane the deadly nightshade's roots,--

To vexing labyrinths of doubt and fear,

And deep abysses of despair and death!

Back to thy peaceful villages and fields,

My memory, like a weary pilgrim, comes

With scrip and burdon, to repose awhile,--

To pluck a daisy from a lonely grave

Where long ago, in common sepulture,

I laid my mother and my faith in God;

To fix the record of a single day

So memorably wonderful and sweet

Its power of inspiration lingers still,--

So full of her dear presence, so divine

With the melodious breathing of her words,

And the warm radiance of her loving smile,

That tears fall readily as April rain

At its recall; to pass in swift review

The years of adolescence, and the paths

Of glare and gloom through which, by passion led

I reached the fair possession of my power,

And won the dear possession of my love,

And then--farewell!

Queen-village of the meads

Fronting the sunrise and in beauty throned,

With jewelled homes around her lifted brow,

And coronal of ancient forest trees--

Northampton sits, and rules her pleasant realm.

There where the saintly Edwards heralded

The terrors of the Lord, and men bowed low

Beneath the menace of his awful words;

And there where Nature, with a thousand tongues

Tender and true, from vale and mountain-top,

And smiling streams, and landscapes piled afar,

Proclaimed a gentler Gospel, I was born.

In an old home, beneath an older elm--

A fount of weeping greenery, that dripped

Its spray of rain and dew upon the roof--

I opened eyes on life; and now return,

Among the visions of my early years,

Two so distinct that all the rest grow dim:

My mother's pale, fond face and tearful eyes,

Bent upon me in Love's absorbing trance,

From the low window where she watched my play;

And, after this, the wondrous elm, that seemed

To my young fancy like an airy bosk,

Poised by a single stem upon the earth,

And thronged by instant marvels. There in Spring

I heard with joy the cheery blue-bird's note;

There sang rejoicing robins after rain;

And there within the emerald twilight, which

Defied the mid-day sun, from bough to bough--

A torch of downy flame--the oriole

Passed to his nest, to feed the censer-fires

Which Love had lit for Airs of Heaven to swing.

There, too, through all the weird September-eves

I heard the harsh, reiterant katydids

Rasp the mysterious silence. There I watched

The glint of stars, playing at hide-and-seek

Behind the swaying foliage, till drawn

By tender hands to childhood's balmy rest.

My Mother and the elm! Too soon I learned

That o'er me hung, and o'er the widowed one

Who gave me birth, with broader boughs,

Haunted by sabler wings and sadder sounds,

A darker shadow than the mighty elm!

I caught the secret in the street from those

Who pointed at me as I passed, or paused

To gaze in sighing pity on my play;

From playmates who, forbidden to divulge

The knowledge they possessed, with childish tricks

Of indirection strove in vain to hide

Their awful meaning in unmeaning phrase;

From kisses which were pitiful; from words

Gentler than love's because compassionate;

From deep, unconscious sighs out of the heart

Of her who loved me best, and from her tears

That freest flowed when I was happiest.

From frailest filaments of evidence,

From dark allusions faintly overheard,

From hint and look and sudden change of theme

When I approached, from widely scattered words

Remembered well, and gathered all at length

Into consistent terms, I know not how

I wrought the full conclusion, nor how young.

I only know that when a little child

I learned, though no one told, that he who gave

My life to me in madness took his own--

Took it from fear of want, though he possessed

The finest fortune in the rich old town.

Thenceforth I had a secret which I kept--

Kept by my mother with as close a tongue--

A secret which embittered every cup.

It bred rebellion in me--filled my soul,

Opening to life in innocent delight,

With baleful doubt and harrowing distrust.

Why, if my father was the godly man

His gentle widow vouched with tender tears,

Did He to whom she bowed in daily prayer--

Who loved us, as she told me, with a love

Ineffable for strength and tenderness--

Permit such fate to him, such woe to us?

Ah! many a time, repeating on my knees

The simple language of my evening prayer

Which her dear lips had taught me, came the dark

Perplexing question, stirring in my heart

A sense of guilt, or quenching all my faith.

This, too, I kept a secret. I had died

Rather than breathe the question in her ears

Who knelt beside me. I had rather died

Than add a sorrow to the load she bore.

Taught to be true, I played the hypocrite

In truthfulness to her. I had no God,

Nor penitence, nor loyalty nor love;

For any being higher than herself.

Jealous of all to whom she gave her hand,

I clung to her with fond idolatry.

I sat with her; where'er she walked, I walked

I kissed away her tears; I strove to fill,

With strange precocity of manly pride

And more than boyish tenderness, the void

Which death had made.

I could not fail to see

That ruth for me and sorrow for her loss--

Twin leeches at her heart--were drinking blood

That, from her pallid features, day by day

Sank slowly down, to feed the cruel draught.

Nay, more than this I saw, and sadly worse.

Oft when I watched her and she knew it not,

I marked a quivering horror sweep her face--

A strange, quick thrill of pain--that brought her hand

With sudden pressure to her heart, and forced

To her white lips a swiftly whispered prayer.

I fancied that I read the mystery;

But it was deeper and more terrible

Than I conjectured. Not till darker years

Came the solution.

Still, we had some days

Of pleasure. Sorrow cannot always brood

Over the shivering forms that drink her warmth;

But springs to meet the morning light, and soars

Into the empyrean, to forget

For one sweet hour the ring of greedy mouths

That surely wait, and cry for her return.

My mother's hand in mine, or mine in hers,

We often left the village far behind,

And walked the meadow-paths to gather flowers,

And watch the plowman as he turned the tilth,

Or tossed his burnished share into the sun

At the long furrow's end, the while we marked

The tipsy bobolink, struggling with the chain

Of tinkling music that perplexed his wings,

And listened to the yellow-breasted lark's

Sweet whistle from the grass.

Glad in my joy,

My mother smiled amid these scenes and sounds,

And wandered on with gentle step and slow,

While I, in boyish frolic, ran before,

Chasing the butterflies, or in her path

Tossing the gaudy gold of buttercups,

Till sometimes, ere we knew, we stood entranced

Upon the river's marge.

Ever the spell

Of lapsing water tamed my playful mood,

And I reclined in silent happiness

At the tired feet that rested in the shade.

There through the long, bright mornings we remained,

Watching the noisy ferry-boat that plied

Like a slow shuttle through the sunny warp

Of threaded silver from a thousand brooks,

That took new beauty as it wound away;

Or gazing where at Holyoke's verdant base--

Like a slim hound, stretched at his master's feet--

Lay the long, lazy hamlet, Hockanum;

Or, upward turning, traced the line that climbed

O'er splintered rock and clustered foliage

To the bare mountain-top; then followed down

The scars of fire and storm, or paths of gloom

That marked the curtained gorges, till, at last,

Caught by a wisp of white, belated mist,

Our vision rose to trace its airy flight

Beyond the height, into the distant blue.

One morning, while we rested there, she told

Of a dear friend upon the other side--

A lady who had loved her--whom she loved--

And then she promised to my eager wish

That soon, across the stream I longed to pass,

I should go with her to the lady's home.

The wishedfor day came slowly--came at last--

My birthday morning--rounding to their close

The fourteen summers of my boyhood's life.

The early mists were clinging to the side

Of the dark mountain as we left the town,

Though all the roadside fields were quick with toil

In rhythmic motion through the dewy grass

The mowers swept, and on the fragrant air

Was borne from far the soft, metallic clash

Of stones upon the steel.

This was the day

"So memorably wonderful and sweet

Its power of inspiration lingers still,--

So full of her dear presence, so divine

With the melodious breathing of her words,

And the warm radiance of her loving smile,

That tears fall readily as April rain

At its recall." And with this day there came

The revelation and the genesis

Of a new life. In intellect and heart

I ceased to be a child, and grew a man.

By one long leap I passed the hidden bound

That circumscribed my boyhood, and thenceforth

Abjured all childish pleasure, and took on

The purpose and the burden of my life.

We crossed the river--I, as in a dream;

And when I stood upon the eastern shore,

In the full presence of the mountain pile,

Strange tides of feeling thrilled me, and I wept--

Wept, though I knew not why. I could have knelt

On the white sand, and prayed. Within my soul

Prophetic whispers breathed of coming power

And new possessions. Aspiration swelled

Like a pent stream within a narrow chasm,

That finds nor vent nor overflow, but swirls

And surges and retreats, until it floods

The springs that feed it. All was chaos wild,--

A chaos of fresh passion, undefined,

Deep in whose vortices of mist and fire

A new world waited blindly for its birth.

I had no words for revelation;--none

For answer, when my mother pressed my hand,

And questioned why it trembled. I looked up

With tearful eyes, and met her loving smile,

And both of us were silent, and passed on.

We reached at length the pleasant cottage-home

Where dwelt my mother's friend, and, at the gate,

Found her with warmest welcome waiting us.

She kissed my mother's cheek, and then kissed mine,

Which shrank, and mantled with a new-born shame.

They crossed the threshold: I remained without.

Surprised--half-angry--with the burning blush

That still o'erwhelmed my face.

I looked around

For something to divert my vexing thoughts,

And saw intently gazing in my eyes,

From his long tether in the grass, a lamb--

A lusty, downy, handsome, household pet.

There was a scarlet ribbon on his neck

Which held a silver bell, whose note I heard

First when his eye met mine; for then he sprang

To greet me with a joyous bleat, and fell,

Thrown by the cord that held him. Pitying him,

I loosed his cruel leashing, with intent,

After a half-hour's frolic, to return

And fasten as I found him; but my hand,

Too careless of its charge, slipped from its hold

With the first bound he made; and with a leap

He cleared the garden wall, and flew away.

Affrighted at my deed and its mischance,

I paused a moment--then with ready feet,

And first and final impulse, I pursued.

He held the pathway to the mountain woods,

The tinkle of his bell already faint

In the long distance he had placed between

Himself and his pursuer. On and on,

Climbing the mountain path, he sped away,

I following swiftly, never losing sight

Of the bright scarlet streaming from his neck,

Or hearing of the tinkle of his bell,

Till, wearied both, and panting up the steep,

Our progress slackened to a walk.

At length

He paused and looked at me, and waited till

My foot had touched the cord he dragged, and then

Bounded away, scaling the shelvy cliffs

That bolder rose along the narrow path.

He had no choice but mount. I pressed him close,

And rocks and chasms were thick on either side;

So, pausing oft, but ever leaping on

Before my hand could reach him, he advanced.

Not once in all the passage had I paused

To look below, nor had I thought of her

Whom I had left. Absorbed in the pursuit

I pressed it recklessly, until I grasped

My fleecy prisoner, wound and tied his cord

Around my wrist, and both of us sank down

Upon the mountain summit.

In a swoon

Of breathless weariness how long I lay

I could not know; but consciousness at last

Came by my brute companion, who, alert

Among the scanty browse, tugged at my wrist,

And brought me startled to my feet. I saw

In one swift sweep of vision where I stood,--

In presence of what beauty of the earth,

What glory of the sky, what majesty

Of lofty loneliness. I drew the lamb--

The dear, dumb creature--gently to my side,

And led him out upon the beetling cliff

That fronts the plaided meadows, and knelt down.

When once the shrinking, dizzy spell was gone,

I saw below me, like a jewelled cup,

The valley hollowed to its heaven-kissed lip--

The serrate green against the serrate blue--

Brimming with beauty's essence; palpitant

With a divine elixir--lucent floods

Poured from the golden chalice of the sun,

At which my spirit drank with conscious growth,

And drank again with still expanding scope

Of comprehension and of faculty.

I felt the bud of being in me burst

With full, unfolding petals to a rose,

And fragrant breath that flooded all the scene.

By sudden insight of myself I knew

That I was greater than the scene,--that deep

Within my nature was a wondrous world,

Broader than that I gazed on, and informed

With a diviner beauty,--that the things

I saw were but the types of those I held,

And that above them both, High Priest and King,

I stood supreme, to choose and to combine,

And build from that within me and without

New forms of life, with meaning of my own.

And there alone, upon the mountain-top,

Kneeling beside the lamb, I bowed my head

Beneath the chrismal light, and felt my soul

Baptized and set apart to poetry.

The spell of inspiration lingered not;

But ere it passed, I knew my destiny--

The passion and the portion of my life:

Though, with the new-born consciousness of power

And organizing and creative skill,

There came a sense of poverty--a sense

Of power untrained, of skill without resource,

Of ignorance of Nature and her laws

And language and the learning of the schools.

I could not rise upon my callow wings,

But felt that I must wait until the years

Should give them plumage, and the skill for flight

Be won by trial.

Then before me rose

The long, long years of study, interposed

Between me and the goal that shone afar;

But with them rose the courage to surmount,

And I was girt for toil.

Then, for the first,

My eye and spirit that had drunk the whole

Wide vision, grew discriminate, and traced

The crystal river pouring from the North

Its twinkling tide, and winding down the vale,

Till, doubling in a serpent coil, it paused

Before the chasm that parts the frontal spurs

Of Tom and Holyoke; then in wreathing light

Sped the swart rocks, and sought the misty South.

Across the meadows--carpet for the gods,

Woven of ripening rye and greening maize

And rosy clover-blooms, and spotted o'er

With the black shadows of the feathery elms--

Northampton rose, half hidden in her trees,

Lifted above the level of the fields,

And noiseless as a picture.

At my feet

The ferry-boat, diminished to a toy,

With automatic diligence conveyed

Its puppet passengers between the shores

That hemmed its enterprise; and one low barge,

With white, square sail, bore northward languidly

The slow and scanty commerce of the stream.

Eastward, upon another fertile stretch

Of meadow-sward and tilth, embowered in elms,

Lay the twin streets, and sprang the single spire

Of Hadley, where the hunted regicides

Securely lived of old, and strangely died;

And eastward still, upon the last green step

From which the Angel of the Morning Light

Leaps to the meadow-lands, fair Amherst sat,

Capped by her many-windowed colleges;

While from his outpost in the rising North,

Bald with the storms and ruddy with the suns

Of the long eons, stood old Sugarloaf,

Gazing with changeless brow upon a scene,

Changing to fairer beauty evermore.

Save of the river and my pleasant home,

I knew not then the names and history

Borne by these visions; but upon my brain

Their forms were graved in lines indelible

As, on the rocks beneath my feet, the prints

Of life in its first motion. Later years

Renewed the picture, and its outlines filled

With fair associations,--wrought the past

And living present into fadeless wreaths

That crowned each mound and mount, and town and tower,

The king of teeming memories. Nor could

I guess with faintest foresight of the life

Which, in the years before me, I should weave

Of mingled threads of pleasure and of pain

Into these scenes, until not one of all

Could meet my eye, or touch my memory,

Without recalling an experience

That drank the sweetest ichor of my veins

Or crowded them with joy.

At length I turned

From the wide survey, and with pleased surprise

Detected, nestling at the mountain's foot,

The cottage I had left; and, on the lawn,

Two forms of life that flitted to and fro.

I knew that they had missed me; so I sought

The passage I had climbed, and, with the lamb

Still fastened to my wrist, I hasted down.

Full of the marvels of the hour I sped,

Leaping from rock to rock, or flying swift

The smoother slopes, with arms half wings, and feet

That only guarded the descent, the while

My captive led me captive at his will.

So tense the strain of sinew, so intense

The mood and motion, that before I guessed,

The headlong flight was finished, and I walked,

Jaded and reeking, in the level path

That led the lambkin home.

My mother saw,

And ran to meet me: then for long, still hours,

Couched in a dim, cool room, I lay and slept.

When I awoke, I found her at my side,

Fanning my face, and ready with her smile

And soothing words to greet me. Then I told,

With youthful volubility and wild

Extravagance of figure and of phrase,

The morning's exploit.

First she questioned me

But, as I wrought each scene and circumstance

Into consistent form, she drank my words

In eager silence; and within her eyes

I saw the glow of pride which gravity

And show of deep concern could not disguise,

I read her bosom better than she knew.

I saw that she had made discovery

Of something unsuspected in her child,

And that, by one I loved, and she the best,

The fire that burned within me and the power

That morning called to life, were recognized.

When I had told my story, and had read

With kindling pride my praises in her eyes,

She placed her soft hand on my brow, and said:

"My Paul has climbed the noblest mountain height

In all his little world, and gazed on scenes

As beautiful as rest beneath the sun.

I trust he will remember all his life

That to his best achievement, and the spot

Nearest to heaven his youthful feet have trod,

He has been guided by a guileless lamb.

It is an omen which his mother's heart

Will treasure with her jewels."

When the sun

Of the long summer day hung but an hour

Above his setting, and the cool West Wind

Bore from the purpling hills his benison,

The farewell courtesies of love were given,

And we set forth for home.

Not far we fared--

The river left behind--when, looking back,

I saw the mountain in the searching light

Of the low sun. Surcharged with youthful pride

In my adventure, I can ne'er forget

The disappointment and chagrin which fell

Upon me; for a change had passed. The steep

Which in the morning sprang to kiss the sun,

Had left the scene; and in its place I saw

A shrunken pile, whose paths my steps had climbed.

Whose proudest height my humble feet had trod.

Its grand impossibilities and all

Its store of marvels and of mysteries

Were flown away, and would not be recalled.

The mountain's might had entered into me;

And, from that fruitful hour, whatever scene

Nature revealed to me, she never caught

My spirit humbled by surprise. My thought

Built higher mountains than I ever found;

Poured wilder cataracts than I ever saw;

Drove grander storms than ever swept the sky;

Pushed into loftier heavens and lower hells

Than the abysmal reach of light and dark;

And entertained me with diviner feasts

Than ever met the appetite of sense,

And poured me wine of choicer vintages

Than fire the hearts of kings.

The frolic-flame

Which in the morning kindled in my veins

Had died away; and at my mother's side

I walked in quiet mood, and gravely spoke

Of the great future. With a tender quest

My mother probed my secret wish, and heard,

With silence new and strange respectfulness,

The revelation of my plans. I felt

In her benign attention to my words;

In her suggestions, clothed with gracious phrase

To win my judgment; and in all those shades

Of mien and manner which a mother's love

Inspires so quickly when the form it nursed

Becomes a staff in its caressing hand,

She had made space for me, and placed her life

In new relations to my own. I knew

That she who through my span of tender years

Had counselled me, had given me privilege

Within her councils; and the moment came

I learned that in the converse of that hour,

The appetency of maternity

For manhood in its offspring, had laid hold

Of the fresh growth in me, and feasted well

Its gentle passion.

Ere we reached our home,

The plans for study were matured, and I,

Who, with an aptitude beyond my years,

Had gathered learning's humbler rudiments

From her to whom I owed my earliest words,

Was, when another day should rise, to pass

To rougher teaching, and society

Of the rude youth whose wild and boisterous ways

Had scared my childish life.

I nerved my heart

To meet the change; and all the troubled night

I tossed upon my pillow, filled with fears,

Or fired with hot ambitions; shrinking oft

With girlish sensitiveness from the lot

My manly heart had chosen; rising oft

Above my cowardice, well panoplied

By fancy to achieve great victories

O'er those whose fellows I should be.

At last,

The dawn looked in upon me, and I rose

To meet its golden coming, and the life

Of golden promise whose wide-open doors

Waited my feet.

The lingering morning hours

Seemed days of painful waiting, as they fell

In slowly filling numbers from the tower

Of the old village church; but when, at length,

My eager feet had touched the street, and turned

To climb the goodly eminence where he

In whose profound and stately pages live

His country's annals, ruled his youthful realm,

My heart grew stern and strong; and nevermore

Did doubt of excellence and mastery

Drag down my soaring courage, or disturb

My purposes and plans.

What boots it here

To tell with careful chronicle the life

Of my novitiate? Up the graded months

My feet rose slowly, but with steady step,

To tall and stalwart manliness of frame,

And ever rising and expanding reach

Of intellection and the power to call

Forth from the pregnant nothingness of words

The sphered creations of my chosen art.

What boots it to recount my victories

Over my fellows, or to tell how all,

Contemptuous at first, became at length

Confessed inferiors in every strife

When brain or brawn contended? Victories

Were won too easily to bring me pride,

And only bred contempt of the low pitch

And lower purpose of the power which strove

So feebly and so clumsily. When won,

They fed my mother's passion, and she praised;

And her delight was all the boon they brought.

My fierce ambition, ever reaching up

To higher fields and nobler combatants,

Trampled its triumphs underneath its feet;

And in my heart of hearts I pitied her

To whose deep hunger of maternal pride

They bore ambrosial ministry.

In all

These years of doing and development,

My heart was haunted by a bitter pain.

In every scene of pleasure, every hour

That lacked employment, every moment's lull

Of toil or study, its familiar hand

Was raised aloft, to smite me with its pang.

From month to month, from year to year, I saw

That she who bore me, and to whom I owed

The meek and loyal reverence of a child,

Was changing places with me, and that she--

Dependent, trustful and subordinate--

Deferred to me in all things, and in all

Gave me the parent's place and took the child's.

She waited for my coming like a child;

She ran to meet and greet me like a child;

She leaned on me for guidance and defence,

And lived in me, and by me, like a child.

If I were absent long beyond my wont,

She yielded to distresses and to tears;

And when I came, she flew into my arms

With childish impulse of delight, or chid

With weak complainings my delay.

By these,

And by a thousand other childish ways,

I knew disease was busy with her life,

Working distempers in her heart and brain,

And driving her for succor to my strength.

The change was great in her, though slowly wrought,--

Though wrought so slowly that my thought and life

Had been adjusted to it, but for this:--

One dismal night, a trivial accident

Had kept me from my home beyond the hour

At which my promise stood for my return.

Arriving at the garden gate, I paused

To catch a glimpse of the accustomed light,

Through the cold mist that wrapped me, but in vain.

Only one window glimmered through the gloom,

Through whose uncurtained panes I dimly saw

My mother in her chamber. She was clad

In the white robe of rest; but to and fro

She crossed the light, sometimes with hands pressed close

Upon her brow, sometimes raised up toward heaven,

As if in deprecation or despair;

And through the strident soughing of the elm

I heard her voice, still musical in woe,

Wailing and calling.

With a noiseless step

I reached the door, and, with a noiseless key,

Turned back the bolt, and stood within. I could

Have called her to my arms, and quelled her fears

By one dear word, and yet, I spoke it not.

I longed to learn her secret, and to know

In what recess of history or heart

It hid, and wrought her awful malady.

Not long I waited, when I heard her voice

Wail out again in wild, beseeching prayer,--

Her voice so sweet and soulful, that it seemed

As if a listening fiend could not refuse

Such help as in him lay, although her tongue

Should falter to articulate her pain.

I heard her voice--O God! I heard her words!

Not bolts of burning from the vengeful sky

Had scathed or stunned me more. I shook like one

Powerless within the toils of some great sin,

Or some o'ermastering passion; or like one

Whose veins turn ice at onset of the plague.

"O God," she said, "my Father and my Friend!

Spare him to me, and save me from myself!

O! if thou help me not--if thou forsake--

This hand which thou hast made, will take the life

Thou mad'st the hand to feed. I cling to him,

My son,--my boy. If danger come to him,

No one is left to save me from this crime.

Thou knowest, O! my God, how I have striven

To quench the awful impulse; how, in vain,

My prayers have gone before thee, for release

From the foul demon who would drive my soul

To crime that leaves no space for penitence.

O! Father! Father! Hear me when I call!

Hast thou not made me? Am I not thy child?

Why, why this mad, mysterious desire

To follow him I loved, by the dark door

Through which he forced his passage to the realm

That death throws wide to all? O why must I,

A poor, weak woman--"

I could hear no more,

But dropped my dripping cloak, and, with a voice,

Toned to its tenderest cadence, I pronounced

The sweet word, "mother!"

Her excess of joy

Burst in a cry, and in a moment's space

I sat within her room, and she, my child,

Was sobbing in my arms. I spoke no word,

But sat distracted with my tenderness

For her who threw herself upon my heart

In perfect trust, and bitter thoughts of Him

Whose succor, though importunately sought

In piteous pleadings by a gentle saint,

Was grudgingly withheld. Her closing words:

"O why must I, a poor, weak woman--" rang

Through every chamber of my tortured soul,

And called to conclave and rebellion all

The black-browed passions thitherto restrained.

Ay, why should she, who only sought for God,

Be given to a devil? Why should she

Who begged for bread be answered with a stone?

Ay, why should she whose soul recoiled from sin

As from a fiend, find in her heart a fiend

To urge the sin she hated?--questions all

The fiends within me answered as they would.

O God! O Father! How I hated thee!

Nay, how within my angry soul I dared

To curse thy sacred name!

Then other thoughts--

Thoughts of myself and of my destiny--

Succeeded. Who and what was I? A youth,

Doomed by hereditary taint to crime,

A youth whose every artery and vein

Was doubly charged with suicidal blood.

When the full consciousness of what I was

Possessed my thought, and I gazed down the abyss

God had prepared for me, I shrank aghast;

And there in silence, with an awful oath

I dare not write, I swore my will was mine,

And mine my hand; and that, though all the fiends

That cumber hell and overrun the earth

Should spur the deadly impulse of my blood,

And heaven withhold the aid I would not ask;

Though woes unnumbered should beset my life,

And reason fall, and uttermost despair

Hold me a hopeless prisoner in its glooms,

I would resist and conquer, and live out

My complement of years. My bosom burned

With fierce defiance, and the angry blood

Leaped from my heart, and boomed within my brain

With throbs that stunned me, though each fiery thrill

Was charged with tenderness for her whose head

Was pillowed on its riot.

Long I sat--

How long, I know not--but at last the sad,

Hysteric sobs and suspirations ceased,

Or only at wide intervals recurred;

And then I rose, and to her waiting bed

Led my doomed mother. With a cheerful voice--

Cheerful as I could summon--and a kiss,

I bade her a good night and pleasant dreams;

And then, across the hall, I sought my room

Where neither sleep nor dream awaited me,

But only blasphemous, black thoughts, and strife

With God and Destiny.

I saw it all:

The lamp that from my mother's window beamed,

Illumined other nights and other storms,

And by its lurid light revealed to me

The secrets of a life. Her sudden pangs,

Her brooding woes, her terrors when alone,

The strange surrender of her will to mine,

Her hunger for my presence, and her fear

That by some slip of fortune she should lose

Her hold on me, were followed to their home--

To her poor heart, that fluttered every hour

With conscious presence of an enemy

That would not be expelled, and strove to spill

The life it spoiled.

From that eventful night

She was not left alone. I called a friend,

A cheerful lady, whose companionship

Was music, medicine and rest; and she,

Wanting a home, and with a ready wit

Learning my mother's need and my desire,

Assumed the place of matron in the house;

And, in return for what we gave to her,

Gave us herself.

My mother's confidence,

By her self-confidence, she quickly won;

And thus, though sadly burdened at my heart,

I found one burden lifted from my hands.

More liberty of movement and of toil

I needed; for the time was drawing near

When I should turn my feet toward other halls,

To seek maturer study, and complete

The work of culture faithfully begun.

Into my mother's ear I breathed my plans

With careful words. The university

Was but a short remove--a morning's walk--

Away from her; and ever at her wish--

Nay, always when I could--I would return;

And separation would but sweeten love,

And joy of meeting recompense the pain

Of parting and of absence.

She was calm

And leaning in her thought upon her friend.

Gave her consent. So, on a summer day,

I kissed her faded cheek, and turned from home

To seek the college halls that I had seen

From boyhood's mount of vision.

Of the years

Passed there in study--of the rivalries,

The long, stern struggles for pre-eminence,

The triumphs hardly won, but won at last

Beyond all cavil, matters not to tell.

It was my grief that while I gained and grew,

My mother languished momently, and lost,--

A grief that turned to poison in my blood.

The college prayers were mummeries to me,

And with disdainful passion I repelled

All Christian questionings of heart and life,

By old and young.

I stood, I moved alone.

I sought no favors, took no courtesies

With grateful grace, and nursed my haughty pride.

The men who kneeled and gloomed, and prayed and sang,

Seemed but a brood of dullards, whom contempt

Would honor overmuch. No tender spot

Was left within my indurated heart,

Save that which moved with ever-melting ruth

For her whose breast had nursed me, and whose love

Had given my life the only happiness

It yet had known.

With her I kept my pledge

With more than faithful punctuality.

Few weeks passed by in all those busy years

In which I did not walk the way between

The college and my home, and bear to her

Such consolation as my presence gave.

In truth, my form was as familiar grown

To all the rustic dwellers on the road

As I had been a post-boy.

Little joy

These visits won for me--little beyond

That which I found in bearing joy to her--

For every year marked on her slender frames

And on her cheeks, and on her failing brain,

Its record of decadence. I could see

That she was sinking into helplessness,

And that too soon her inoffensive soul,

With all its sweet affections, would go down

To hopeless wreck and darkness.

From her friend

I learned that still the burden of her prayer

Was, that she might be saved from one great sin--

The sin of self-destruction. Every hour

This one petition struggled from her heart,

To reach the ear of heaven; yet never help

Came down in answer to her cry.

The Spring

That ushered in my closing college-year

Came up the valley on her balmy wings,

And Winter fled away, and left no trace,

Save, here and there a snowy drift, to show

Where his cold feet had rested in their flight.

But one still night, within the span of sleep,

A shivering winter cloud that wandered late

Shook to the frosty ground its inch of rime.

So, when the morning rose, the earth was white;

And shrubs and trees, and roofs and rocks and walls,

Fulgent with downy crystals, made a world

To which a breath were ruin; and a breath

Wrecked it for me, and, by a few sad words,

Blotted the sunlit splendor from my sight.

As I looked out upon the scene, and mused

Of her to whom I hoped it might impart

Some healthy touch of joy, I heard the beat

Of hoofs upon the trackless blank, and saw

A horseman speeding up the avenue.

I raised my sash (I knew he came for me),

And faltered forth my question. From his breast

He drew a folded slip: dismounting then,

He stooped and pressed the missive in a mass

Of clinging snow, and tossed it to my hand.

I closed the window, burst the frosty seal,

And read: "Your mother cannot long survive:

Come home to her to-day." I did not pause

To break the fast of night, but rushing forth,

I followed close the messenger's return.

It was a morning, such as comes but once

In all the Spring,--so still and beautiful,

So full of promise, so exhilarant

With frost and fire, in earth and air, that life

Had been a brimming joy but for the scene

That waited for my eyes--the scene of death--

From which imagination staggered back,

And every sensibility recoiled.

The smoke from distant sugar-camps rolled up

Through the still ether in columnar coils--

Blue pillars of a bluer dome--and all

The resonant air was full of sounds of Spring.

The sheep were bleating round their empty ricks;

Horses let loose were calling from afar,

And winning fierce replies; the axeman's blows

Fell nimbly at the piles which wintry woods

Had lent to summer stores; while far and faint,

The rhythmic ululations of the hound

On a fresh trail, upon the mountain's side,

Added their strange wild music to the morn.

The beauty and the music caught my sense,

But woke within my sick and sinking heart

No motion of response. I walked as one

Condemned to dungeon-glooms might walk

Through shouts of mirth and festal pageantry,

Hearing and seeing all, yet over all

Hearing the clank of chains and clash of bars,

And seeing but the reptiles of his cell.

How I arrived at home, without fatigue,

Without a thought of effort--onward borne

By one absorbing and impelling thought--

As one within a minute's mete may slide,

O'er leagues of sunny dreamland in a dream,

By magic or by miracle--I found

No time to question.

At my mother's door

I stood and listened: soon I heard my name

Pronounced within in spiteful whisperings.

I raised the latch, and met her burning eyes.

She stared a wild, mad stare, then raised herself,

And in weak fury poured upon my head

The vials of her wrath. I stood like stone,

Without the power to speak, the while she rained

Her maledictions on me, and in words

Fit only for the damned, accused my life

Of crimes my language could not name, and deeds

Which only outcast wretches know.

At length,

I gained my tongue, and tried to take her hand;

But with a shriek which cut me like a knife

She shrank from me, and hid her quivering face

Within her pillow.

Then I turned away,

And sought the room where oft in better days

We both had knelt together at my bed,

And, making fast my door, I threw myself

Prone on the precious couch, and gave to grief

My strong and stormy nature. All the day

With bursts of passion I bewailed my loss,

Or lay benumbed in feeling and in thought,

Tasting no food, and shutting out my soul

From all approach of human sympathy,

Till the light waned, and through the leafless boughs

Of the old elm I caught the sheen of stars.

Then sleep descended--such a sleep as comes

To uttermost exhaustion,--sleep with dreams

Wild as the waking fantasies of her

Whose screams and incoherent words gave voice

To all their phantom brood.

At length I woke.

The house was still as death; and yet I heard,

Or thought I heard, the touch of crafty feet

Upon the carpet, creeping by my door.

It passed away, away; and then a pause,

Still and presageful as the breathless calm

On which the storm-cloud mounts the pallid West,

Succeeded. I could hear the parlor-clock

Counting the beaded silence, and my bed,

Rustling beneath my breathing and my pulse,

Was sharply crepitant, and gave me pain.

An hour passed by (it loitered like an age),

And then came hurried words and hasty fall

Of footsteps in the passage. I could hear

Screams, sobs, and whispered calls and closing doors

And heavy feet that jarred my bed, and shook

The windows of my room. I did not stir:

I dared not stir, but lay in deathly dread,

Waiting the sad denouement. Soon it came.

A man approached my door, and tried the latch;

Then knocked, and called. I knew the kindly voice

Of the physician, and threw back the bolt.

Then by the light he held before his face

I read the fact of death.

I took his arm,

And, as I feebly staggered down the stairs,

He broke to me with lack of useless words

The awful truth.... The old familiar tale:

She counterfeited sleep: the nurses both,

Weary with over-watching in their chairs,

Under the cumbrous stillness, slept indeed;

And when she knew it, she escaped; and then

She did the deed to which for many years

She had been predisposed. Perhaps I knew

The nature of the case: perhaps I knew

My father went that way. I clutched his arm:

There was no need of words.

The parlor door

Stood open, and a throng of silent friends,

Choking with tears, gazed on a silent form

Shrouded in snowy linen. They made way

For me and my companion. On my knees

I clasped the precious clay, and pouring forth

My pitying love and tenderness for her,

I gave indignant voice to my complaint

Against the Being who, to all her prayers

For succor and security, had turned

A deaf, dead ear and a repelling hand.

To what blaspheming utterance I gave

My raving passion, may the God I cursed

Forbid my shrinking memory to recall!

I now remember only that when drawn

By strong, determined hands away from her,

The room was vacant. Every pitying friend

Had flown my presence and the room, to find

Release of sensibility from words

That roused their superstitious souls to fear

That God would smite me through the blinding smoke

Of my great torment.

Silence, for the rest!

It was a dream; and only as a dream

Do I remember it: the coffined form,

The funeral--a concourse of the town--

The trembling prayer for me, the choking sobs,

The long procession, the descending clods,

The slow return, articulated all

With wild, mad words of mine, and gentle speech

Of those who sought to curb or comfort me--

All was a dream, from which I woke at length

With heart as dead as hers who slept. The heavens

Were brass above me, and the breathing world

Was void and meaningless. When told to pray,

This was the logic of my heart's reply:

If God be Love, not such is He to me

Nor such to mine. If He heard not the voice

Of such a lovely saint as she I mourned,

Mine would but rouse His vengeance.

So I closed

With Reason's hand the adamantine doors

Which only Faith unlocks, and shut my soul

Away from God, the warder of a gang

Of passions that in darkness stormed or gloomed

And with each other fought, or on themselves

Gnawed for the nourishment which I denied.

COMPLAINT.

River, sparkling river, I have fault to find with thee

River, thou dost never give a word of peace to me!

Dimpling to each touch of sunshine, wimpling to each air that blows,

Thou dost make no sweet replying to my sighing for repose.

Flowers of mount and meadow, I have fault to find with you;

So the breezes cross and toss you, so your cups are filled with dew,

Matters not though sighs give motion to the ocean of your breath;

Matters not though you are filling with the chilling drops of death!

Birds of song and beauty, lo! I charge you all with blame:--

Though all hapless passions thrill and fill me, you are still the same.

I can borrow for my sorrow nothing that avails

From your lonely note, that only speaks of joy that never fails.

O! indifference of Nature to the fact of human pain!

Every grief that seeks relief entreats it at her hand in vain;

Not a bird speaks forth its passion, not a river seeks the sea,

Nor a flower from wreaths of Summer breathes in sympathy with me.

O! the rigid rock is frigid, though its bed be summer mould,

And the diamond glitters ever in the grasp of changeless gold;

And the laws that bring the seasons swing their cycles as they must,

Though the ample road they trample blind the eyes with human dust.

Moons will wax in argent glory, though man wane to hopeless gloom;

Stars will sparkle in their splendor, though he darkle to his doom;

Winds of heaven he calls to fan him ban him with an icy chill,

And the shifting crowds of clouds go drifting o'er him as they will.

Yet within my inmost spirit I can hear an undertone,

That by law of prime relation holds these voices as its own,--

The full tonic whose harmonic grandeurs rise through Nature's words,

From the ocean's thundrous rolling to the trolling of the birds.

Spirit, O! my spirit! Is it thou art out of tune?

Art thou clinging to December while the earth is in its June?

Hast thou dropped thy part in nature? Hast thou touched another key?

Art thou angry that the anthem will not, cannot, wait for thee?

Spirit, thou art left alone--alone on waters wild;

For God is gone, and Love is dead, and Nature spurns her child.

Thou art drifting in a deluge, waves below and clouds above,

And with weary wings come back to thee, thy raven and thy dove.