times a week, published twenty-five volumes, and left behind him several
other volumes nearly ready for the press. His health was never firm. A
rheumatic disease lurked in his system from the time of his illness at
Göttingen. Three years before he died, this disease settled in his eyes,
and made him nearly blind. But against all impediments, he struggled on,
fighting the good fight of faith, patient and resolute, till suddenly his
course was finished, and he took his crown.
POEMS.
BY JULIA WARD HOWE.
I.
THE BEE'S SONG
Do not tie my wings,
Says the honey-bee;
Do not bind my wings,
Leave them glad and free.
If I fly abroad,
If I keep afar,
Humming all the day,
Where wild blossoms are,
'Tis to bring you sweets,
Rich as summer joy,
Clear--as gold and glass;
The divinest toy
That the god's have left,
Is the pretty hive,
Where a maiden reigns,
And the busy thrive.
If you bar my way,
Your delight is gone,
No more honey-gems;
From the heather borne;
No more tiny thefts,
From your neighbor's rose,
Who were glad to guess
Where its sweetness goes.
Let the man of arts
Ply his plane and glass;
Let the vapors rise,
Let the liquor pass;
Let the dusky slave
Till the southern fields;
Not the task of both
Such a treasure yields;
Honey, Pan ordained,
Food for gods and men,
Only in my way
Shall you store again.
Leave me to my will
While the bright days glow,
While the sleepy flowers
Quicken as I go.
When the pretty ones
Look to me no more,
Dead, beneath your feet,
Crushed and dabbled o'er;
In my narrow cell
I will fold my wing;
Sink in dark and chill,
A forgotten thing.
Can you read the song
Of the suppliant bee?
'Tis a poet's soul,
Asking liberty.
II.
LIMITATIONS OF BENEVOLENCE.
"The beggar boy is none of mine,"
The reverend doctor strangely said;
"I do not walk the streets to pour
Chance benedictions on his head.
"And heaven I thank who made me so.
That toying with my own dear child,
I think not on _his_ shivering limbs,
_His_ manners vagabond and wild."
Good friend, unsay that graceless word!
I am a mother crowned with joy,
And yet I feel a bosom pang
To pass the little starveling boy.
His aching flesh, his fevered eyes
His piteous stomach, craving meat;
His features, nipt of tenderness,
And most, his little frozen feet.
Oft, by my fireside's ruddy glow,
I think, how in some noisome den,
Bred up with curses and with blows,
He lives unblest of gods or men.
I cannot snatch him from his fate,
The tribute of my doubting mind
Drops, torch-like, in the abyss of ill,
That skirts the ways of humankind.
But, as my heart's desire would leap
To help him, recognized of none,
I thank the God who left him this,
For many a precious right foregone.
My mother, whom I scarcely knew,
Bequeathed this bond of love to me;
The heart parental thrills for all
The children of humanity.
EARTH'S WITNESS.
BY ALICE B. HAVEN.
That Poet wrongs his soul, whose dreary cry
Calls "winds" and "waves," and "burning stars of night"
To bring our darkness nature's clearer light
On that just sentence, "Thou shalt surely die;"
To track the spirit as it leaves its clay
To bring back surety of its future home,
Or echo of the voice that calleth "come,"
To prove that it is borne to perfect day.
Say rather, "winds," who heard the Master speak,
And "waves," who by His voice transfixed were stayed,
And stars that lighted Christ's deep shade--
Your confirmation of our trust we seek.
Ye know how shadowy Death's dreary prison,
Because ye witnessed Christ our life, up risen.
THE WILLOWS, 1858.
THE NEW ENGLAND THANKSGIVING.
BY THE REV. HENRY W. BELLOWS, D.D.
When cellar and barn and storehouse were filled with food for the coming
winter, our pious New England forefathers used their first common leisure
to make public and joyful acknowledgment of their blessings to the God of
sunshine and of rain; to Him, who clothes the valleys with corn, and the
hills with flocks. Almost universally, they placed the meeting-houses,
where these thanks were rendered, on the hill-top commanding the widest
view of the fields from which their prosperity sprung, and nearest to the
sky, whence their blessings came. Their modest homes were sheltered from
the winds by the barns that held their wealth and overshadowed their low
dwellings. The earth was precious in their eyes, as the source of their
living. They could spare no fertile or sheltered spot, even for the
burial-ground, but economically laid it out in the sand, or on the bleak
hill-side; while they threw away no fencing on the house of God, but
jealously preserved that costly distinction for their arable lands and
orchards. They were farmers; and it was no unmeaning thing for them to
keep the harvest feast. They had prayed in drought, with all faith and
fervor, for the blessing of rain; in seed-time, for the favoring sunshine
and soft showers; and in harvest, that blight and frost might spare their
corn; and when in the late autumn, all their prayers had been heard, and
their hands and homes were crowned with plenty, their thanksgiving anthem
was an incense of the heart, and their honored pastors knew not how to
pour out a flood of gratitude too copious for the thankful people's
"Amen." A full hour's prayer wearied not their patient knees; and the
sermon, with its sixteenthly, finally, and to conclude (before the
_improvement_, itself a modern sermon in length), did not outmeasure the
people's honest sense of their grounds of thankfulness to God.
The landscape appropriate to thanksgiving is not furnished by brick walls
and stone pavements. It is a rural festival. The smoke from scattered
cottages should be slowly curling its way through frosty air. As we look
forth from the low porch of the homestead, the ground lightly covered with
snow, stretches off to a not distant horizon, broken irregularly with
hills, clothed in spots with evergreens, but oftener with bare woods. The
distant and infrequent sleigh-bells, with the smart crack of the rifle
from the shooting match in the hollow, strike percussively upon the ear.
Vast piles of fuel, part neatly corded, part lying in huge logs, with
heaps of brush, barricade the brown, paintless farmhouses. Swine, hanging
by the ham-strings in the neighboring shed; the barn-yard speckled with
the ruffled poultry, some sedate with recent bereavement, others cackling
with a dim sense of temporary reprieve; the rough-coated steer butting in
the fold, where the timid sheep huddle together in the corner; little boys
on a single skate improving the newly frozen horse-pond--these furnish the
foreground of the picture during the earlier hours of the morning. Later
in the day, without, the sound of church bells, the farmers' pungs, or the
double sleighs, with incredible numbers stowed in their strawed bottoms,
drive up to the meeting-house door. An occasional wagon from the hills,
from which the snow has blown, with the crunching, whistling sound of
wheels upon snow, sets the teeth of the crowd in the porch on edge, as it
grinds its way to the stone steps to deposit its load. Great white coats,
with seven or eight capes apiece, dismount, and muffs and moccasins--each
a whole bearskin--follow. Long stoves, with live coals got at the
neighboring houses, occasionally join the procession. Few come afoot; for
our pious ancestors seemed to think it as much a part of their religion to
fill the family horse-shed as the family pew; and in good weather would
send a mile to pasture for the horses to drive a half mile to meeting.
But, meeting out, the parson's prayer and sermon said, the choir's
ambitious anthem lustily sung, the politics of the prayer, and the
politics of the sermon, both summarily criticised, approved, condemned,
partly with looks and winks, and partly with loud words in the porch,
there is now a little space for kind inquiries after the absent, the sick,
and the poor; a few solitary spinsters, and one old soldier, lame and
indigent, are seized on and carried off to homes, where certain blessed
Mothers in Israel, are wont to keep a vacant chair for a poor soul that
might feel desolate if left alone on this sociable day. Some full-handed
visits are paid on the way home to scattered and rickety houses; but by
one o'clock, all the people are beneath their own roofs, never so
attractive as on this glorious day. The married children from the
neighboring towns have come home, and the old house is full.
The great event of the day is at hand. It is dinner-time. The table of
unnatural length, narrower at one end, where it has been eked out for the
occasion, groans with the choicest gifts of the year. There is but one
course, but that possesses infinite variety and reckless profusion. For
one day, at least, the doctrine of an apostle is in full honor. "For every
creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with
thanksgiving." The long grace sanctifies the feast with the word of God
and with prayer. The elders and males are distributed to front the
substantial of the board--the round of _a-la-mode_, the brown crisp pig
with an apple in his mouth, the great turkey who has frightened the little
red-cloaked girls and saucy pugs for months past, the chicken-pie with
infinite crimping and stars and knobs, decorating its snowy face. The
mothers and daughters are placed over against the puddings and pies, which
have exercised their ambition for weeks--vying with rival housekeepers in
the number and variety of sorts--and which, after the faint impression
made on them to-day, shall be found for a month, filling the shelves of
spare-closets and lending a delicious though slightly musty odor to the
best wardrobe of the family. Children of all ages--to the toddling
darling, the last babe of the youngest daughter--fill up the interstices,
while the few books in the house are barely sufficient to bring the
little ones in their low chairs to an effective level with the table.
Incredible stowage having been effected, the sleepy after-dinner hours are
somewhat heavily passed; but with the lamps and the tea-board, sociability
revives. The evening passes among the old people, with chequers and
back-gammon. Puss-in-the-corner, the game of forfeits--blind-man's-buff
entertain the young folks. Apples, nuts and cider come in at nine o'clock,
and perhaps a mug of flip--but it is rather for form's sake than for
appetite. At ten o'clock the fire is raked up, and the household is a-bed.
Excepting some bad-dreams, Thanksgiving day is over.
SONG OF THE ARCHANGELS
(FROM GOETHE'S FAUST.)
BY GEORGE P. MARSH.
RAPHAEL.
E'en as at first, in rival song
Of brother orbs, still chimes the SUN,
And his appointed path along
Rolls with harmonious thundertone;
With strength the sight doth Angels fill,
Though none can solve its law divine;
Creation's wonders glorious still,
As erst they shone, eternal shine.
GABRIEL.
The gorgeous EARTH doth whirl for aye
In swift, sublime, mysterious flight,
And alternates elysian day
With deep, chaotic, shuddering night;
With swelling billows foams the sea.
Chafing the cliff's deep-rooted base,
While sea and cliff both hurrying flee
In swift, eternal, circling race.
MICHAEL.
And howling TEMPESTS scour amain
From sea to land, from land to sea,
And, raging, weave around a chain
Of deepest, wildest energy;
The scathing bolt with flashing glare
Precedes the pealing thunder's way;
And yet Thine Angels, LORD, revere
The gentle movement of Thy day.
TRIO.
With strength the sight doth Angels fill,
For power to fathom THEE hath none.
The works of Thy supernal will
Still glorious shine, as erst they shone.
A NIGHT AND DAY AT VALPARAISO.
BY ROBERT TOMES.
As night came on, the steamer doubled the rocky cape, and, steaming with
all its engine force, stood right for Valparaiso. Her speed soon
slackened, and she began to feel her way cautiously, going ahead, backing,
turning, and coming to a full stop. "Let go the anchor," was now the word,
followed by a hoarse rumble of the chains and a noisy burst of steam. A
fleet of shadowy ships and small craft surrounded us, and ahead glimmered
the lights of the city, which, irregularly scattered about the dark
hill-sides, appeared in the night like so many stars dimly twinkling
through a broken rain cloud. With the quick instinct of the presence of a
stranger, the dogs became at once conscious of our arrival, and began a
noisy welcome of barks and yelps, which continued throughout the night.
The port officials in tarnished gilt came alongside the steamer, had their
talk with the captain and pushed off again. Two or three gusty-looking
sea-captains boarded us, gave their rough grasps of welcome, drank off
their stiff supplies of grog, and pulled back to their ships. Some few of
the more impatient of our comrades turned out from the bottom of their
trunks their "best," and went ashore in glossy coats and shining boots.
Most of us, however, awaited the coming of the morning.
I was up on deck at the earliest dawn of day. The steamer was at anchor
close before the city, and I looked with no admiring eyes upon its flimsy
white-washed houses and wooden spires, scattered about the base and sides
of the cindery, earth-quaky hills upon which it is built. There was hardly
a blade of grass or tree to be seen anywhere, except where the thriving
European and American residents had perched themselves on one of the
acclivities. The dwarfed trees here, moreover, all in a row before the
little painted bird-cage-looking houses, appeared to have no more life of
growth and color in them than so many painted semblances in a toy village.
Familiar looking shanties, of the tumble-down sort, built of pine wood and
shingles, crowded the ground by the water side, and indeed the low land
seemed better suited to their staggering aspect than the steep
acclivities. Painted signs with English names and English words, stared
familiarly from every building. The universal "John Smith" there
conspicuously posted his name and his "Bakery." Mine host of the "Hole in
the Wall" invited the thirsty in good round Saxon to drink of his "Best
Beer on Tap," or his "Bottled Porter," as "you pays your money and take
your choice."
The steamer was enlivened from the earliest hour by the native fishermen,
who, with their fleet of canoes, had sought the shades of our dark hull,
to protect them from the hot sun, which seemed to be fairly simmering the
waters of the bay. They were making most miraculous draughts of fishes. I
watched one little fellow. He was hardly a dozen years of age, but he
plied his trade with such skill and enterprise, that he nearly filled his
canoe during the half hour I was watching him. It was terrible to see with
what intense energy and cruelty the little yellow devil, with bared arms
blooded to the shoulders, pounced upon his prey. With a quick jerk he
pulled his fish in, then clutching it with one hand and thrusting the
fingers of the other with the prompt ferocity of a young tiger into the
panting gills, he tore off with a single wrench the head, and threw the
body, yet quivering with life, among the lifeless heap of his victims
lying at the bottom of his boat. The sea gulls, hovering about shrieking
shrilly and pouncing upon the heads and entrails as they were thrown into
the water, fighting over them and gulping them down with hungry voracity,
seemed to heighten this picture of the "Gentle art of angling."
The return of the steward and chaplain with a boat load of "marketing" was
a welcome surprise. The parson, whose unquestionable taste in the
æsthetics of eating had been wisely secured by the steward, dilated with
great gusto upon the juicy beefsteaks, the freshness of the fish, and the
richness of the fruit. When, at breakfast, we enjoyed as salt-sea voyagers
only could, the stores of fresh meat, fresh eggs, fresh butter, fresh
milk, juicy grapes, white and purple, with the morning's bloom still upon
them, the peaches, the apples, the pears, the tumas (prickly pear fruit),
the melons, musk and water, we acknowledged his reverence's judgment, and
gratefully thanked him for his services.
On landing to take a look at the town, I made my way through a throng of
boatmen, of picturesque native fruitsellers and loitering sailors, to the
chief business street, which ran along the shore. The stores, which were
mainly under the proprietorship of the foreign merchants, had a rich,
thriving look, being crammed full of miscellaneous goods, while the
sidewalks were heaped with bales and boxes. Odd-looking carts moved slowly
along with their drivers in picturesque costume lying in full length upon
their loads, smoking their cigarettes, and looking wondrously lazy and
happy. Stately Chilians from the interior, dressed in genuine Fra Diavolo
style, rode by on their prancing horses, all glistening and jingling with
silver. There were abundant loungers about, in the cool shade of every
corner and projecting roof. The listless men with the universal poncho--an
oblong mantle of variegated cotton or woollen, through a hole in the
centre of which the head is thrust, allowing the garment to hang in folds
about the person--looked as if they had been roused suddenly from their
beds, and not finding their coats at hand, had walked out with their
coverlets over their shoulders. The women, too, in their loose dresses and
with shawls thrown carelessly over their heads, had a very bed-chamber
look. They were mostly pretty brunettes, with large, slumbering black
eyes, which, however, were sufficiently awake to ogle effectively.
Having a letter of introduction to present, I entered the counting-house
of the merchant whose acquaintance I sought. I found him boxed off at the
further end of his long, heaped-up warehouse. He had closed his ledger,
lighted his cigar, and had just filled his glass from a bottle of wine
which stood on the window-sill, when I entered. I was not surprised,
under such provocation to good fellowship, to receive a warm welcome. My
mercantile friend was in the best possible humor, for times, he said, were
very good. Every one at Valparaiso was making his fortune. It was the
epoch of the gold excitement. Large fortunes had already been made. The
contents of the shops and warehouses had, as soon as the gold discovery
became known, been emptied into every vessel in the harbor, and sent to
San Francisco. The lucky speculators had gained five or six hundred per
cent. profit for their ventures of preserved and dried fruits, champagne,
other wines and liquors, Madeira nuts and the most paltry stuff
imaginable. In five months some of the Valparaiso merchants had cleared
five hundred thousand dollars. The excitement was still unabated. Shippers
were still loading and dispatching their goods daily for San Francisco.
Many were going there themselves, and hardly a clerk could be kept at
Valparaiso at any salary, however large.
The day was brilliantly bright, and the air so pure and bracing that it
did the lungs good to breathe. So I made my way out of counting-house and
street for a walk. I ascended the dry, crumbling hills which with long,
deep gullies and breaks in them, and friable soil, looked as if they were
ready to tumble into pieces at the first shake of one of those earthquakes
so frequent in the country. On the road, chained gangs of surly convicts
were at work, and some smart-looking soldiers, in blue and white, came
marching along! Caravans of mules, laden with goods, produce and water
casks, trotted on, and here and there rode a dashing Chilian cavalier on
his prancing steed, or a dapper citizen on his steady cob. In a ravine
between the dry hills there trickled the smallest possible stream. Above,
some water carriers were slowly filling their casks, while the mules
patiently waited for their burdens; below, was a throng of washerwomen,
beating their clothes upon the stones, just moistened by the scant water
which flowed over them, and interchanging Spanish Billingsgate with each
other and a gang of man-of-war sailors.
Frightened away by the stony stare of the English occupant from an
imposing-looking residence on the top of the hill, I crossed the road and
entered the private hospital. Around a quadrangle, laid out in gardens
beds there was a range of low two story buildings. Some bleached sailors,
in duck trowsers and blue jackets, were about; one was reading a
song-book, another his Bible, and a third was busily making a marine swab
out of ropes' ends. Among the convalescents, out on the balconies to
catch a breath of the pure air, was a naval officer in a gilt cap, reading
a novel; and all looked snug and encouraging. On entering, I asked the
attendant, a gaunt-looking Englishman, who in his musty black suit, was
not unlike a carrion crow or a turkey buzzard, whether there was any
serious case of illness in the hospital. "There are two consumptives,"
said he, "who've been a deceiving us for the last two weeks." He seemed to
think it a very base fraud that these two consumptives had not died when
he and the doctor thought it was their duty to do so, some fortnight
before.
Coming from the one hill to another, I reached a miserable quarter of the
town, called by the sailors the "foretop." It was composed of rude mud
hovels, stuffed with a population of half-breeds, a half-naked
gipsy-looking people, grovelling in the dirt, and breathing an atmosphere
reeking with the stench of filth, garlic and frying fat. I was glad to
escape, and get to the "Star Hotel," where, refreshing myself with a chop
and brown stout, I could fancy myself, with hardly an effort of the
imagination, taking my dinner at an ordinary in the Strand.
TRANSLATIONS.
BY THE REV. THEODORE PARKER.
I.
TWO LOVERS.
(FROM THE GERMAN OF MOHRIKE.)
A light skiff swam on Danube's tide,
Where sat a bridegroom and his bride,
He this side and she that side.
Quoth she, "Heart's dearest, tell to me,
What wedding-gift shall I give thee?"
Upward her little sleeve she strips,
And in the water briskly dips.
The young man did the same straightway,
And played with her and laughed so gay.
"Ah, give to me, Dame Danube fair,
Some pretty toy for my love to wear!"
She drew therefrom a shining blade,
For which the youth so long had prayed.
The bridegroom, what holds he in hand?
Of milk-white pearls a precious band.
He twines it round her raven hair;
She looked how like a princess there!
"Oh, give to me, Dame Danube fair,
Some pretty toy for my love to wear!"
A second time her arm dips in,
A glittering helm of steel to win.
The youth, o'erjoyed the prize to view,
Brings her a golden comb thereto.
A third time she in the water dips.
Ah woe! from out the skiff she slips.
He leaps for her and grasps straightway--
Dame Danube tears them both away.
The dame began her gifts to rue--
The youth must die, the maiden too!
The little skiff floats down alone,
Behind the hills soon sinks the sun.
And when the moon was overhead,
To land the lovers floated dead,
He this side and she that side!
II.
THE FISHER-MAIDEN.
(FROM THE GERMAN OF HEINE.)
Thou handsome fisher-maiden,
Push thy canoe to land;
Come and sit down beside me--
We'll talk, love, hand in hand.
Thy head lay on my bosom,
Be not afraid of me,
For careless thou confidest
Each day in the wild sea.
My heart is like the ocean,
Has storm, and ebb, and flow;
And many pearls so handsome
Rest in its deeps below.
III.
MY CHILD WHEN WE WERE CHILDREN.
(FROM THE GERMAN OF HEINE.)
My child when we were children,
Two children small and gay,
We crept into the hen-house
And hid us under the hay.
We crowed, as do the cockerels,
When people passed the road,
"_Kikeriki!_" and they fancied
It was the cock that crowed.
The chests which lay in the court-yard,
We papered them so fair,
Making a house right famous,
And dwelt together there.
The old cat of our neighbor,
Came oft to make a call;
We made her bows and courtesies,
And compliments and all.
We asked with friendly question,
How her health was getting on:
To many an ancient pussy
The same we since have done.
In sensible discoursing
We sat like aged men,
And told how in our young days
All things had better been.
That Truth, Love and Religion
From the earth are vanished quite--
And now so dear is coffee,
And money is so tight!
But gone are childish gambols,
And all things fleeting prove--
Money, the world, our young days,
Religion, Truth and Love.
PAID FOR BY THE PAGE.
BY EDWARD S. GOULD.