THE POETICAL WORKS
OF
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _Portrait of_ HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.]
_THE “IMPERIAL” POETS._
THE POETICAL WORKS OF
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
REPRINTED FROM THE REVISED AMERICAN EDITION,
=_Including Recent Poems and Illustrated Memoir._=
[Illustration]
LONDON:
FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.
BEDFORD STREET, STRAND.
1889.
_Morrison and Gibb, Edinburgh,
Printers to Her Majesty’s Stationery Office._
PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE.
The Publishers have the pleasure of presenting to the Public in this
volume an edition of LONGFELLOW’S POEMS, revised and corrected by
comparison with his last American Edition, in which he made many
emendations; and including his earliest and latest Poems, among which
are several that have not appeared in any other edition of this popular
AUTHOR’S works.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
EARLY POEMS.
PAGE
An April Day 1
Autumn 2
Sunrise on the Hills 3
Woods in Winter 4
Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem,
at the Consecration of Pulaski’s Banner 4
Burial of the Minnisink 5
The Spirit of Poetry 5
VOICES OF THE NIGHT.
Prelude 7
Hymn to the Night 8
A Psalm of Life 9
Footsteps of Angels 9
The Reaper and the Flowers 10
The Light of Stars 11
Flowers 11
The Beleaguered City 13
L’Envoi 13
Midnight Mass for the Dying Year 14
BALLADS.
The Skeleton in Armour 15
The Wreck of the _Hesperus_ 17
POEMS ON SLAVERY.
To William E. Channing 20
The Slave’s Dream 20
The Slave in the Dismal Swamp 21
The Good Part that shall not be taken away 21
The Quadroon Girl 22
The Witnesses 23
The Warning 23
The Slave singing at Midnight 24
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
It is not always May 25
The Rainy Day 25
The Village Blacksmith 26
Endymion 26
God’s-Acre 27
To the River Charles 27
Blind Bartimeus 28
The Goblet of Life 28
The Sea-Diver 29
The Belfry of Bruges 30
Maidenhood 32
The Arsenal at Springfield 33
A Gleam of Sunshine 34
Nuremberg 35
The Indian Hunter 37
The Norman Baron 38
To a Child 39
The Occultation of Orion 43
Rain in Summer 44
The Bridge 45
Excelsior 46
To the Driving Cloud 47
Curfew 48
SONGS.
To an old Danish Song-book 49
The Arrow and the Song 50
Walter Von der Vogelweid 50
The Day is Done 51
Sea-weed 51
Drinking Song 52
The Old Clock on the Stairs 53
Afternoon in February 54
THE SPANISH STUDENT 55
EVANGELINE 106
THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE.
Dedication 139
BY THE SEASIDE.
The Building of the Ship 140
Twilight 145
The Fire of Drift-wood 145
The Lighthouse 146
Sir Humphrey Gilbert 147
The Secret of the Sea 148
The Evening Star 149
BY THE FIRESIDE.
Resignation 149
The Builders 150
Sand of the Desert in an Hour-glass 151
Pegasus in Pound 152
King Witlaf’s Drinking-horn 153
Tegner’s Drapa 153
The Singers 154
Suspiria 155
The Open Window 155
Hymn 155
Gasper Becerra 156
THE GOLDEN LEGEND.
Prologue 157
The Nativity: A Miracle-Play 197
Epilogue 249
Martin Luther 251
St. John 253
THE SONG OF HIAWATHA 255
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 314
TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN.
DAY THE FIRST.
Prelude—The Wayside Inn 338
The Landlord’s Tale—Paul Revere’s Ride 341
Interlude 344
The Student’s Tale—The Falcon of Ser Federigo 345
Interlude 351
The Spanish Jew’s Tale—The Legend of
Rabbi Ben Levi 352
Interlude 353
The Sicilian’s Tale—King Robert of Sicily 354
Interlude 358
The Musician’s Tale—The Saga of King Olaf 359
I. The Challenge of Thor 359
II. King Olaf’s Return 359
III. Thora of Rimol 360
IV. Queen Sigrid the Haughty 361
V. The Skerry of Shrieks 363
VI. The Wraith of Odin 364
VII. Iron-Beard 366
VIII. Gudrun 368
IX. Thangbrand the Priest 368
X. Raud the Strong 369
XI. Bishop Sigurd at Salten Fiord 370
XII. King Olaf’s Christmas 371
XIII. The Building of the Long Serpent 372
XIV. The Crew of the Long Serpent 373
XV. A Little Bird in the Air 374
XVI. Queen Thyri and the Angelica-stalks 374
XVII. King Svend of the Forkèd Beard 375
XVIII. King Olaf and Earl Sigvald 376
XIX. King Olaf’s War-horns 377
XX. Einar Tamberskelver 378
XXI. King Olaf’s Death-drink 378
XXII. The Nun of Nidaros 379
Interlude 380
The Theologian’s Tale—Torquemada 381
Interlude 386
The Poet’s Tale—The Birds of Killingworth 386
Close of First Day 392
THE SECOND DAY.
Prelude 392
The Sicilian’s Tale—The Bell of Atri 394
Interlude 396
The Spanish Jew’s Tale—Kambalu 397
Interlude 399
The Student’s Tale—The Cobbler of Hagenau 399
Interlude 402
The Musician’s Tale—The Ballad of Carmilhan 403
Interlude 406
The Poet’s Tale—Lady Wentworth 406
Interlude 410
The Theologian’s Tale—The Legend Beautiful 410
Interlude 412
The Student’s Second Tale—The Baron of
St. Castine 412
Finale 419
Scanderbeg 419
The Rhyme of Sir Christopher 421
Charlemagne 423
FLOWER-DE-LUCE.
Beautiful Lily 425
Palingenesis 426
Hawthorne 427
The Bells of Lynn 428
The Bridge of Cloud 429
The Wind over the Chimney 429
Killed at the Ford 430
Noël 431
Christmas Bells 432
SONNETS
Autumn 434
Giotto’s Tower 434
Dante 435
To-morrow 435
The Evening Star 435
Divina Commedia 436
On Mrs. Kemble’s Readings from Shakespeare 437
Nature 438
In the Churchyard at Tarrytown 438
Eliot’s Oak 438
The Descent of the Muses 439
Venice 439
The Two Rivers 439
Chaucer 441
Woodstock Park 441
St. John’s, Cambridge 441
Boston 442
The Burial of the Poet 442
The Three Silences of Molinos 442
My Cathedral 443
To the River Rhone 443
Wapentake 443
The Broken Oar 444
Agassiz 444
THE HANGING OF THE CRANE 445
MORITURI SALUTAMUS 447
KÉRAMOS 454
BIRDS OF PASSAGE.
FLIGHT THE FIRST.
Prometheus; or, The Poet’s Forethought 459
The Ladder of St. Augustine 460
Birds of Passage 460
The Phantom Ship 461
The Warden of the Cinque Ports 462
Haunted Houses 463
The Emperor’s Bird’s-nest 464
In the Churchyard at Cambridge 465
The Two Angels 465
Oliver Basselin 466
The Jewish Cemetery at Newport 467
Victor Galbraith 469
Daylight and Moonlight 470
My Lost Youth 470
The Ropewalk 472
The Golden Milestone 473
Catawba Wine 474
Daybreak 475
Santa Filomena 476
The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz 476
The Discoverer of the North Cape 477
Children 478
Sandalphon 479
Epimetheus; or, The Poet’s Afterthought 479
FLIGHT THE SECOND.
A Day of Sunshine 480
The Children’s Hour 481
Enceladus 481
The Cumberland 482
Something Left Undone 483
Weariness 483
Snow-flakes 484
FLIGHT THE THIRD.
Cadenabbia 484
Charles Sumner 485
Monte Cassino 485
Amalfi 487
A Dutch Picture 488
The Sermon of St. Francis 489
Travels by the Fireside 490
FLIGHT THE FOURTH.
The Herons of Elmwood 491
Vittoria Colonna 491
Song 492
A Ballad of the French Fleet 492
Castles in Spain 493
The White Czar 494
The Leap of Roushan Beg 495
Haroun Al Raschid 496
The Three Kings 496
King Trisanku 498
Vox Populi 498
The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face 498
To the River Yvette 499
The Emperor’s Glove 499
A Wraith in the Mist 499
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
The Golden Sunset 500
From my Arm-chair 500
The Chamber over the Gate 501
The Four Lakes of Madison 502
The Sifting of Peter 503
Helen of Tyre 503
The Iron Pen 504
The Poet and his Songs 504
Robert Burns 505
Bayard Taylor 506
Old St. David’s at Radnor 507
Jugurtha 508
Maiden and Weathercock 508
The Windmill 509
Via Solitaria 510
Auf Wiedersehen 511
Ultima Thule 511
Hermes Trismegistus 512
Decoration Day 513
Mad River 514
Inscription on the Shanklin Fountain,
Isle of Wight 515
The Bells of San Blas 516
President Garfield 517
EARLIEST POEMS.
Thanksgiving 518
Autumnal Nightfall 519
Italian Scenery 520
The Lunatic Girl 522
The Venetian Gondolier 524
Dirge over a Nameless Grave 525
A Song of Savoy 525
Jeckoyva 525
Musings 527
Song 528
TRANSLATIONS.
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE.
Coplas de Manrique 529
The Good Shepherd 535
The Brook 535
Santa Teresa’s Book-mark 535
To-morrow 536
The Native Land 536
The Image of God 536
Two Sonnets from Francisco de Medrano 537
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ITALIAN.
The Celestial Pilot 538
The Terrestrial Paradise 539
Beatrice 540
Three Cantos of Dante’s Paradiso 541
The Old Bridge at Florence 551
The Nature of Love 552
To Italy 552
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE FRENCH.
Spring 553
The Child Asleep 553
Rondel—From Froissard 554
Rondel—From the Duke of Orleans 554
Renouveau 555
Friar Lubin 555
Death of Archbishop Turpin 556
To Cardinal Richelieu 557
Consolation 558
The Angel and the Child 559
A Christmas Carol 560
The Blind Girl of Castèl-Cuillè 560
My Secret 569
Barréges 570
On the Terrace of the Aigalades 570
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ANGLO-SAXON.
The Grave 571
Beowulf’s Expedition to Heort 571
The Soul’s Complaint against the Body 573
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE SWEDISH.
Frithiof’s Homestead 573
Frithiof’s Temptation 574
The Children of the Lord’s Supper 576
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GERMAN.
The Statue over the Cathedral Door 585
The Hemlock-tree 586
Annie of Tharaw 586
The Legend of the Crossbill 588
Poetic Aphorisms 588
The Sea hath its Pearls 590
Song of the Silent Land 590
Blessed are the Dead 591
The Wave 591
The Bird and the Ship 592
The Happiest Land 593
Whither? 593
Beware! 594
Song of the Bell 594
The Dead 594
The Castle by the Sea 595
Wanderer’s Night-Songs 595
The Black Knight 595
Silent Love 596
The Luck of Edenhall 597
The Two Locks of Hair 598
Remorse 599
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE DANISH.
King Christian 599
The Elected Knight 600
Childhood 602
MISCELLANEOUS TRANSLATIONS.
The Fugitive 603
To the Stork 604
The Boy and the Brook 605
The Siege of Kazan 605
Columbus 606
NOTES 607
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 627
MEMOIR.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born at Portland, Maine, on the 27th of
February, 1807. His father, Mr. Stephen Longfellow, a native of Gorham,
Maine, then a District of Massachusetts, was a descendant of William
Longfellow, of Newbury, in the same state, who was born in Yorkshire,
England, in 1651, and emigrated to America in early youth. He married
Miss Anne Sewell, and after a married life of fourteen years was
drowned at Anticosti, a large desert island in the estuary of the St.
Lawrence. Mr. Stephen Longfellow, a descendant in the fourth generation
of this gentleman, was born in the year in which the colonies declared
their independence of the mother country. He graduated at Harvard
College in his twenty-second year, and devoted himself to the law,
removing to Portland at the beginning of the present century. He was a
good jurist, as the Massachusetts and Maine Reports testify, and was a
member of the national Congress when it was an honour to belong to that
body. He was also the president of the Maine Historical Society. He was
the father of our poet, whose mother was a descendant of John Alden:
who must have been a prolific old Puritan, for his descendants have
produced two American poets, William Cullen Bryant and Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow.
[Illustration: LONGFELLOW’S DRAWING-ROOM.]
The first school the young poet attended was kept by a Mrs. Fellows, in
a small house in Spring Street. Later he went to the town school, and
soon after to the private school of Nathaniel H. Carter. Afterwards he
attended the Portland Academy under the same master, and also under the
mastership of Bezaleel Cushman. He entered Bowdoin College at the age
of fourteen. It was a remarkable class in which he found himself for it
contained, among other men who have arrived at eminence in literature,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, George B. Cheever, and J. S. C. Abbott: and he
must have distinguished himself, or he would not have received—as he
did—the appointment of professor of modern languages and literatures,
shortly after he graduated, in 1825. He accepted this appointment,
with the privilege of going abroad for three years, in order to qualify
himself fully for his duties, and the following year saw him travelling
on the Continent.
During his last years at college, the future professor of modern
literature contributed in a modest way to the poetry of his native
land. There was no American poet at the time worth speaking of, except
Bryant; and there were no periodicals in the states, to which young
aspirants could send their contributions. Attempts had been made to
establish them, but without success, for they either died after a few
months’ struggle, or were merged in others, which were threatened with
dissolution. There was in New York a “Literary Gazette” (for which
Griswold says Sands wrote); then an “Atlantic Monthly”; and then the
“New York Review and Athenæum Magazine,” of which Bryant was the first
editor. This became, by the process of merging, the “New York Literary
Gazette and American Athenæum,” which culminated in the “United States
Literary Gazette.” It was in the pages of this last publication, which
was issued simultaneously in New York and Boston, that the early poems
of the young Bowdoin student were given to the world.
With rare exceptions, early poems are imitative, either of one or
more poets whom their writers have read and admired, or of what is
most marked in the poetry of the period. A careful reading of the
“United States Literary Gazette” would show, I have no doubt, that
Mr. Longfellow was not the only American singer, young and old, whose
work bore the impress of the Author of “Thanatopsis.” It is legible
in “Autumn,” “Sunrise on the Hills,” and “The Spirit of Poetry” (I
am writing of Mr. Longfellow’s early poems), and it is present, in
suggestion, in “An April Day,” “Woods in Winter,” and “The Burial of
the Minnesink.” Description of nature is the motive of these pieces,
which are written from books rather than from observation. They show
an apt ear for versification, and a sensitive temperament, which makes
its own individuality felt in the midst of alien poetic influences.
Clearly, a new poet had appeared in the “United States Literary
Gazette.”
European travel was not common among Americans fifty years ago; nor
were the places to be visited always determined beforehand. A certain
amount of originality was allowed to the tourist, and if he wrote a
book about what he saw it was not expected that he should cram it with
information. He could be desultory, scholarly, whimsical,—he might
even be a little dull: what was wanted were his impressions. The time
allotted to Mr. Longfellow by his _alma mater_ was passed in France,
Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland, and England. We have glimpses of what
he saw in the first three of these countries, and, in a measure, of his
studies and meditations therein. He has not enabled us to follow his
itinerary with any certainty.
Mr. Longfellow returned to America, and to his duties at Brunswick, and
took to himself a wife in his twenty-fourth year.
His first volume, which was published in Boston, in his twenty-sixth
year (1833), is a translation of the “Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique,”
a thin little twelvemo of eighty-nine pages, which opens with an
“Introductory Essay on the Moral and Devotional Poetry of Spain.” This
scholarly paper contains all that the average reader of forty-five
years ago would care to read in regard to the comprehensive subject
which it discussed. The preface briefly dismissed the original writer
by saying that he followed the profession of arms, as did most Spanish
poets of any eminence; that he fought beneath the banner of his father
Roderigo Manrique, Conde de Parades, and Maestre de Santiago, and that
he died on the field of battle near Cañavete, in the year 1479. This
young soldier has rendered imperishable the memory of his father, in
an ode which is a model of its kind, and which ranks among the world’s
great funeral hymns. It is admirably translated by Mr. Longfellow,
other of whose Spanish studies follow it in the little volume of which
I have spoken in the shape of seven moral and devotional sonnets;
two of which are by Lope de Vega, two by Francisco de Aldana, two by
Francisco de Medrano, the last, “The Brook,” being by an anonymous
poet. The sonnets of Medrano, “Art and Nature,” and “The Two Harvests,”
were omitted in the later editions of Mr. Longfellow’s works, but have
been restored to their proper place in this volume.
The fruits of Mr. Longfellow’s three years’ residence in Europe were
given to the world two years later. If Bryant had been unconsciously
his model in his early poems he cannot be said to have had a model in
“Outre-Mer.” It has reminded certain English critics of Washington
Irving; I fail to see in what respect. It is more scholarly than “The
Sketch Book,” and the style is sweeter and mellower than obtains
in that famous collection of papers,—the writer warbling, like
Sidney, in poetic prose. France receives the largest share of his
attention, and is most lovingly observed, partly for its old-fashioned
picturesqueness, but more, perhaps, because it happened to hit
his fancy. In the ninth chapter or section, which glances at “The
Trouvères,” we have the first French translations by Mr. Longfellow.
One is a song in praise of “Spring” by Charles d’Orleans, the other is
a copy of verses upon a sleeping child by Clotilde de Surville. They
are elegantly translated, but we feel in reading them that the subtle
aroma of their originals has somehow escaped. They do not suggest the
fifteenth but the nineteenth century.
“Outre-Mer” is interesting to the student of American literature
as an excellent example of a kind of prose—half essay and half
narrative—which ranks among the things that were. It could not flourish
now, nor can it flourish hereafter, but it delighted a literary and
sympathetic class of readers forty years ago, to whom it was a pleasant
revealment of Old World places, customs, stories, and literatures. It
was quietly humorous, it was prettily pathetic, and it was pensive and
poetical. Sentimental readers were attracted to the little sketch of
“Jacqueline,” humorous readers to “Martin Franc and the Monk of Saint
Anthony,” and “The Notary of Périgueux,” and literary readers to “The
Trouvères,” “Ancient Spanish Ballads,” and “The Devotional Poetry of
Spain.” (The last paper, by the way, was a reprint of the introduction
to the “Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique”)
The publication of “Outre-Mer,” and his growing reputation as a poet,
pointed out Mr. Longfellow as the successor of Mr. George Ticknor, who
in 1835 resigned his professorship of modern languages and literature
in Harvard College. He was elected to fill the place of the erudite
historian of Spanish Literature, and resigning his chair at Brunswick,
he went abroad a second time in order to complete his studies in the
literature of Northern Europe. He remained abroad a little over a year,
passing the summer in Denmark and Sweden and the autumn and winter in
Germany. The sudden death of his wife at Rotterdam arrested his travel
and his studies until the following spring and summer, which were
spent in the Tyrol and Switzerland. He returned to the United States
in November, 1836, and entered upon his duties at Cambridge which he
discharged for eighteen years.
[Illustration: THE REAR LAWN LOOKING TOWARD LONGFELLOW’s HOUSE. (ALL
THIS PART OF THE LAWN IS COVERED WITH GIGANTIC ELM-TREES. THE HOUSE IS
NEARLY HIDDEN BY THE TREES AND LILAC BUSHES.)]
[Illustration: THE AVENUE NORTH OF THE HOUSE.]
Mr. Longfellow’s house at Cambridge is one of the few American houses
to which pilgrimages will be made in the future. It was surrounded with
historic associations before he entered it, and it is now surrounded
with poetic ones,—a double halo encircling its time-honoured walls. It
is supposed to have been built in the first half of the last century
by Colonel John Vassal, who died in 1747, and whose ashes repose in
the churchyard at Cambridge under a freestone tablet, on which are
sculptured the words _Vas-sol_, and the emblems a goblet and sun.
He left a son John, who lived into Revolutionary times, and was a
royalist, as many of the rich colonists were. The house passed from
his hands, and came into the hands of the provincial government, who
allotted it to General Washington as his head-quarters after the battle
of Bunker’s Hill. Its next occupant was a certain Mr. Thomas Tracy, of
whom tradition says that he was very rich, and that his servants drank
his costly wines from carved pitchers. He appears to have sent out
privateers to scour the seas in the East and West Indies, and to worry
the commerce of England and Spain; though why he should include the
galleons of Spain in his free-booting voyages is not clear. He failed
one day, and the hundred guests who had been accustomed to sit down
at the banquets of Vassal house, were compelled to find other hosts.
Bankrupt Tracy was succeeded by Andrew Craigie, apothecary-general of
the northern provincial army, who amassed a fortune in that office,
which fortune took to itself wings, though not before it had enlarged
Vassal house, and built a bridge over the Charles River connecting
Cambridge with Boston and still bearing his name.
[Illustration: THE WESTERN ENTRANCE. (FROM THE PIAZZA THERE IS A VIEW
OF THE RIVER CHARLES, BRIGHTON, AND THE DISTANT HILLS.)]
In the summer of 1837, a studious young gentleman of thirty might have
been seen wending his way down the elm-shaded path which led to the
Craigie house. He lifted the huge knocker, which fell with a brazen
clang, and inquired for Mrs. Craigie. The parlour door was thrown open,
and a tall, erect figure, crowned with a turban, stood before him. It
was the relict of Andrew Craigie, whilome apothecary-general of the
dead and gone northern provincial army. The young gentleman inquired if
there was a room vacant in her house.
“I lodge students no longer,” she answered gravely.
“But I am not a student,” he remarked. “I am a professor in the
University.”
“A professor?” she inquired, as if she associated learning with age.
“Professor Longfellow,” said the would-be lodger.
“Ah! that is different. I will show you what there is.”
She then proceeded to show him several rooms, saying, as she closed
the door of each, “You cannot have that.” At last she opened the door
of the south-east corner room of the second story, and said that he
could have it. “This was General Washington’s chamber.” So Professor
Longfellow became a resident of this old historic house, which had been
occupied before him by Edward Everett and Jared Sparks, and which was
occupied with him by Joseph E. Worcester, the lexicographer. Truly, his
lines had fallen in pleasant places.
Professor Longfellow’s collegiate duties left him leisure for
literary pursuits, and he turned it to advantage by writing a paper
on “Frithiof’s Saga,” and another on the “Twice-told Tales” of his
fellow-collegian, Hawthorne, whose rare excellence he was among the
first to perceive. These papers were published in the “North American
Review,” in 1837. They were followed during the next year by other
papers: among them one on “Anglo-Saxon Literature,” and another on
“Paris in the Seventeenth Century,” which were contributions to the
same periodical.
[Illustration: THE STUDY.]
The papers mentioned, or some of them, were written in the chamber
which Washington had occupied, as well as a series of papers of which
European travel in Germany and Switzerland, and European experience
and legend, were the chief themes. Through these, like a silken string
through a rosary of beads, ran a slight personal narrative which may
have been real, and may have been imaginary, but which was probably
both. This narrative concerned itself with the life-history of Paul
Flemming, a tender-hearted and rather shadowy young gentleman who
had lost the friend of his youth, and who had gone abroad that the
sea might be between him and the grave. “Alas, between him and his
sorrow there could be no sea, but that of time!” He wandered from
place to place,—noting what struck his sensitive fancy and discoursing
of men and books,—student at once and pilgrim. The hand that penned
“Outre-Mer” was visible on every page of “Hyperion,” but the hand had
grown firmer in the Craigie house than it was at Brunswick; and the
scholarly sympathies of the writer had embraced a richer literature
than that of old Spain and old France. Dismissing the romantic element
of “Hyperion” for what it is worth (and there must have been genuine
worth in it, for it was the cause of its immediate popularity), the
chief and permanent value of the book lay in the new element which
it introduced into American literature—the element of German fantasy
and romanticism. It would have come in time, no doubt, but to Mr.
Longfellow belongs the honour of having hastened the time, and ushered
in the dawn. He was the herald of German poetry in the New World. The
second book of “Hyperion” contains Mr. Longfellow’s first published
translation from the German poets—the “Whither?” of Müller (“I heard
a brooklet gushing”); the third book contains the “Song of the Bell”
(“Bell, thou soundest merrily!”); “The Black Knight” (“’Twas Pentecost,
the Feast of Gladness”); “The Castle by the Sea” (“Hast thou seen that
lordly castle?”); “The Song of the Silent Land” (“Into the Silent
Land”), and “Beware!” (“I know a maiden fair to see”). Besides these
translations in verse, there is, in the first book, a dissertation or
chapter on “Jean Paul, the Only One,” and in the second book a chapter
on “Goethe,” whom Mr. Paul Flemming, by the way, does not greatly
admire. His friend the Baron defends the old heathen by saying that he
is an artist and copies nature. “So did the artists who made the bronze
lamps of Pompeii. Would you hang one of those in your hall? To say that
a man is an artist and copies nature is not enough. There are two great
schools of art, the imitative and the imaginative. The latter is the
more noble and the more enduring.”
The dignity of the literary profession was earnestly maintained by
Mr. Longfellow. “I do not see,” remarked the Baron in one of his
conversations with Paul Flemming, “I do not see why a successful book
is not as great an event as a successful campaign, only different
in kind, and not easily compared.” The lives of literary men are
melancholy pictures of man’s strength and weakness, and, on that very
account, he thought were profitable for encouragement, consolation,
and warning. “The lesson of such lives,” continued Flemming, “is told
in a single word—wait! Therefore should every man wait—should bide
his time. Not in listless idleness, not in useless pastime, not in
querulous dejection; but in constant, steady, cheerful endeavours,
always willing, and fulfilling and accomplishing his task, that, when
the occasion comes, he may be equal to the occasion. And if it never
comes, what matters it? What matters it to the world whether I or you
or another man did such a deed, or wrote such a bock, so that the
deed and book were well done? It is the part of an indiscreet and
troublesome ambition to care too much about fame—about what the world
says of us; to be always looking in the faces of others for approval;
to be always anxious for the effect of what we do and say; to be
always shouting, to hear the echo of our own voices.” “Believe me,” he
concluded, “the talent of success is nothing more than doing what you
can do well, and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.
If it come at all, it will come because it is deserved, and not because
it is sought after. And, moreover, there will be no misgivings, no
disappointment, no hasty, feverish, exhausting excitement.”
If fame comes because it is deserved, it certainly comes to some men
much sooner than to others; why, their contemporaries and rivals do not
perceive as clearly as those who come after them. Mr. Edgar Allan Poe,
for example, could never understand why Mr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
was a more successful writer than himself.
We hardly know how to characterize the seed which Mr. Longfellow began
to sow in “The Voices of the Night.” Romanticism does not describe
it, for there is nothing romantic in “The Hymn to the Night,” nor
does morality describe it, except, perhaps, as it bourgeoned in “A
Psalm of Life.” The lesson of the poem last named and of “The Light
of Stars,” was the lesson of endurance and patience and cheerfulness.
It had been taught by other poets, but not as this one taught it, not
inverse that set itself to music in the memory of thousands, and in
words that were pictures. The young man who wrote “A Psalm of Life”
possessed the art of saying rememberable things, and a very rare art
it is. Shakespeare possessed it in a supreme degree, and Pope and
Gray in a greater measure than greater poets. Merciless critics have
pointed out flaws in the literary workmanship of “A Psalm of Life,”
but its readers never saw them, or, seeing them, never cared for them.
They found it a hopeful, helpful poem. “Footsteps of Angels” is to us
the most satisfactory of all these “Voices of the Night.” There is an
indescribable tenderness in it, and the vision of the poet’s dead wife
gliding into his chamber with noiseless footsteps, taking a vacant
chair beside him, and laying her hand in his, is very pathetic. “The
Beleaguered City” is a product of poetic artifice of which there are
but few examples in English poetry. It appears to have been compounded
after a recipe which called for equal parts of outward fact and inward
meaning. Given a material city, a river, a fog, and so on, the poet
sets his wits to work to discover what corresponds, or can be made to
correspond, with them spiritually. If he is skilful, he constructs an
ingenious poem, of doubtful intellectual value. “Midnight Mass for
the Dying Year” is a medley of mediæval suggestion and Shakespearean
remembrance, which demands a large and imaginative appreciation. The
Shakespearean element appears somewhat out of place, though it adds
to the impressiveness and effectiveness as a whole. It is a medley,
however, and it must be judged by its own fantastic laws. Whatever
faults disfigured “The Voices of the Night” were lost sight of or
forgiven for the sake of their beauties and the admirable poetic spirit
which they displayed. A healthful poet was singing, and his song had
many tones.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE REAR PIAZZA. (THE OPEN GATE-WAY LEADS TO
THE LAWN, A BROAD AND SPLENDID STRETCH RUNNING TOWARD THE NORTH.)]
“Hyperion” and “The Voices of the Night,” which were published in the
same year (1839), established the reputation of Mr. Longfellow as a
graceful prose writer, and a poet who resembled no poet of the time,
either in America or England. His scholarship was evident in both, and
was not among the least of the charms which they exercised over their
readers.
Mr. Bryant was the only American poet of any note who had enriched
the literature of his native land with translations. They showed his
familiarity with other languages, and were well thought of by scholars,
but they added nothing to his fame, for famous he was from the day he
published “Thanatopsis.” It was otherwise with the translations of
Mr. Longfellow, which brought him many laurels, and were in as great
demand as his original poems. There were twenty-three of them in the
little volume which contained “The Voices of the Night,” culled from
“Hyperion,” “Outre-Mer,” his review articles, not forgetting the
great ode of Don Jorge Manrique, and they represented six different
languages. They were well chosen, with the exception of the two
versions from the French; the subjects being in themselves poetical,
and the words in which they were clothed, characteristic of the
originals. The highest compliment that can be paid to Mr. Longfellow is
to say that they read like original poems. The most felicitous among
them are “The Castle by the Sea,” “Whither?” “The Bird and the Ship,”
and the exquisite fragment entitled “The Happiest Land.” Nearly forty
years have passed since they were collected in “The Voices of the
Night,” and these years have seen no translator equal to Mr. Longfellow.
Mr. Longfellow’s second poetical venture, “Ballads and Other Poems,”
determined his character as a poet. It was more mature, not to say more
robust, than “The Voices of the Night,” and its readers felt sure of
its author hereafter, for he felt sure of himself. The opening ballad,
“The Skeleton in Armour,” was the most vigorous poem that he had yet
written,—a striking conception embodied in picturesque language,
and in a measure which had fallen into disuse for more than two
centuries—the measure of Drayton’s “Ballad of Agincourt.” I do not see
that a line or a word could be spared. There were two elements in this
collection not previously seen in Mr. Longfellow’s poetry, one being
the power of beautifying common things, the other, the often renewed
experiment of hexameter verse. What I mean by beautifying common things
is the making a village blacksmith a theme, and a legitimate theme,
too, for poetry. Mr. Longfellow has certainly done this. More purely
poetical than “The Village Blacksmith” is “Endymion” and “Maidenhood.”
The sentiment of the last is very refined and spirited. “It is not
always May,” “The Rainy Day,” and “God’s Acre,” are each perfect of its
kind, and the kinds are very different. “The Rainy Day,” for instance,
is in the manner of “The Beleaguered City,” which for once has produced
a good poem,—I suspect, because it is a short one. “To the River
Charles” is a pleasant glimpse of Mr. Longfellow’s early Cambridge
life, and the art of it is perfect.
[Illustration: CHARLES RIVER.]
The most popular poem in Mr. Longfellow’s second
collection—“Excelsior”—has more moral than poetical value. The
conception of a young man carrying a banner up a mountain, suggests
a set scene in a drama, and the end of this imaginary person does
not affect us as it should, his attempt to excel being so fool-hardy.
That he would be frozen to death was a foregone conclusion. The most
important of the translations here (all of which are excellent) was
“The Children of the Lord’s Supper,” from the Swedish of Tegnér. It
renewed, as I have said, the often baffled attempt to naturalize
hexameters in English poetry,—an attempt which Mr. Longfellow had
made four years before, in his paper on “Frithiof’s Saga,” when he
translated the description of Frithiof’s ancestral estate at Framnäs
into this measure. The poets and poetasters of the Elizabethan era
tried in vain to revive it. Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Spenser,
projected a reform of English poetry,—a reform which, if it had
succeeded, would have caused “a general surceasing of rhyme” and a
return to certain, or uncertain, rules of quantity. “Spenser suffered
himself to be drawn into this foolish scheme,” says Professor Child,
“and for a year worked away at hexameters and iambic trimeters quite
seriously.” (The year in question, I take it, was 1580.) Harvey’s
project was taken up with zeal by a coterie over which Sidney and
Dyer presided; but the wits, notably Nash, ridiculed it, the latter
saying (in substance) that the hexameter was a gentleman of an ancient
house, but that the English language was too craggy for him to run
his long plough in it. And Ascham wrote of it, about fifteen years
before, that it rather trotted and hobbled than ran smoothly “in our
English tong.” So thought not Master Abraham Fraunce, who, in 1587,
published a translation of the “Aminta” of Tasso, in hexameters, and
in the following year a work entitled “Lawier’s Logicke,” wherein
he stowed away a version of Virgil’s Eclogue of Alexis, in the same
measure. Less than a century from this date, Edward Phillips, the
nephew of Milton, paid his respects and disrespects to the ancient
and modern poets in his “Theatrum Poetarum” (1675),—a curious little
book, which is thought to reflect the opinions of his illustrious
uncle. He sums up the unlucky translator of Tasso in a few lines:
“Abraham Fraunce, a versifier of Queen Elizabeth’s time, who, imitating
Latin measure in English verse, wrote his ‘Ivy Church’ and some other
things in hexameter, some also in hexameter and pentameter; nor was
he altogether singular in this way of writing for Sir Philip Sidney,
in the pastoral interludes of his ‘Arcadia,’ uses not only those, but
all other sorts of Latin measure, in which no wonder he is followed
by so few, since they neither become the English nor any other modern
language.” Winstanley expressed the same unfavourable opinion of
Fraunce’s hexameters twelve years later (1687), stealing the very words
of Phillips for that purpose.
Langbaine, in his “Account of the English Dramatick Poets” (1691),
adds four separate works, not mentioned by Winstanley and Phillips,
to the list of Fraunce’s productions (all in hexameters), and records
the disuse of quantitive experiments in English versification.
“Notwithstanding Mr. Chapman in his translation of Homer, and Sir
Philip Sydney in his Eclogues, have practised this way of writing, yet
this way of imitating the Latin measures of verses, particularly the
hexameter, is now laid aside, and the verse of ten syllables, which
we style heroic verse, is most in use.” The next attempt to revive
hexameters on any scale was made by that metrical experimentalist,
Southey, in his “Vision of Judgment,” in 1821,—a piece of obsequious
profanity which richly deserved the ridicule that Byron cast upon it.
Such, so far as I know, is the history of this alien measure in English
poetry. Mr. Longfellow thought well of it, as we have seen, and was
justified in so thinking by the excellence of his own practice therein.
“The Children of the Lord’s Supper” is a charming poem, to which its
antique setting is very becoming.
Mr. Longfellow made a third voyage to Europe after publishing his
“Ballads and other Poems,” and passed the summer on the Rhine. He
returned after a few months, bringing with him a number of poems which
were written at sea, and in which he expressed his detestation of
slavery. “Poems on Slavery” were published in 1843, and dedicated to
W. E. Channing, who did not live to read the poet’s admiration of his
character and his work. This dedication, which is spirited, contains a
noble stanza:
“Well done! Thy words are great and bold,
At times they seem to me
Like Luther’s, in the days of old,
Half battles for the free.”
“The Slave’s Dream” is one of the few rememberable poems of which
the “peculiar institution” was the inspiration. It is exceedingly
picturesque, and its versification is masterly. The harmony of sound
and sense,—the movement of the fourth stanza is very fine:
“And then at furious speed he rode
Along the Niger’s bank,
His bridle-reins were golden chains,
And, with a martial clank,
At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel
Smiting his stallion’s flank.”
The fertility of Mr. Longfellow’s mind, and the variety of his powers,
were manifested in his thirty-sixth year, when he published the “Poems
on Slavery,” of which I have just spoken, and “The Spanish Student,”—a
dramatic poem, the actors in which were the antipodes of the dusky
figures which preceded them. Judged by the laws of its construction,
and by the intention of its creator, “The Spanish Student” is a
beautiful production. It should be read for what it is,—a poem, and
without the slightest thought of the stage, which was not in the mind
of the author when he wrote it. So read, it will be found radiant with
poetry, not of a passionate or profound kind, which would be out of
place; for the plot is in no sense a tragic one, but of a kind that
suggests the higher walks of serious poetic comedy. The characters
of the different actors in this little closet play are sketched with
sufficient distinctness, and the conversation, which is lively and
bustling, is suited to the speakers and their station in life. The
gipsy dancing girl, Preciosa, is a lovely creation of the poet’s fancy.
In 1843, Mr. Longfellow was married for the second time, and became
the possessor of the Craigie house. Three years later he published
“The Belfry of Bruges and other Poems.” Traces of his early manner,
as unsuccessfully manifested in “The Beleaguered City,” appear in
“Carillon,” the prologue to the volume, and in “The Arrow and the
Song,” which is perhaps the most perfect of all his smaller pieces.
“The Belfry of Bruges” is a picturesque description of that quaint
old city, as seen from the belfry-tower in the market-place one
summer morning, and an imaginative remembrance of its past history,
which passes like a pageant before the eyes of the poet. Everything
is clearly conceived and in orderly succession, and in no poem that
he had previously written had the hand of the artist been so firm.
“Nuremberg,” a companion-piece in the same measure, is distinguished
by the same precision of touch and the same broad excellence. There is
an indescribable charm, a grace allied to melancholy, in “A Gleam of
Sunshine,” which is one of the few poems that refuse to be forgotten.
“The Arsenal at Springfield” is in a certain sense didactic, I suppose,
but I do not quite see how it could be otherwise, and be a poem at all.
A poet should be a poet first, but he should also be a man, and a man
who concerns himself with the joys and sorrows of his fellow-creatures.
There was a great lesson in the burnished arms at Springfield, and a
lesser poet than Mr. Longfellow would not have guessed it.
“Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals and forts:
The warrior’s name would be a name abhorred,
And every nation that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Should wear for evermore the curse of Cain!”
“The Norman Baron” is a study of the mediæval age, and “Rain in
Summer,” a fresh and offhand description of a country shower.
Not many English-writing poets, good fathers as most of them were,
have addressed poems to their children. Ben Jonson wrote some lines
about his first daughter, who died in infancy. Coleridge sang a
serious cradle-song over his son Hartley, in “Frost at Midnight.”
Shelley bewailed the early death of his son William; and Leigh Hunt
celebrated two of his children in two characteristic poems, the most
natural of which he inscribed to his son John, “A Nursery Song for a
Four-Year-Old Romp.” These are some of the best-known English poets, to
whom childhood was a source of inspiration. Mr. Longfellow distanced
all of them, and apparently without an effort, in the volume under
consideration. His poem “To my Child,” has no superior of its kind in
the language. We have a glimpse of the poet’s house for the first time
in verse, and of the chamber in which he wrote so many of his poems,
which had now become the child’s nursery. Its chimney was adorned with
painted tiles, among which he enumerates:
“The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o’er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.”
[Illustration: VIEW ACROSS THE LAWN, NORTH-WEST OF THE HOUSE.]
The child shakes his coral rattle with its silver bells, and is content
for the moment with its merry tune. The poet listens to other bells
than these, and they tell him that the coral was growing thousands
of years in the Indian seas, and that the bells once reposed as
shapeless ore in darksome mines, beneath the base of Chimborazo or the
overhanging pines of Potosi.
“And thus for thee, O little child.
Through many a danger and escape,
The tall ships passed the stormy cape;
For thee, in foreign lands remote,
Beneath a burning, tropic clime,
The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat,
Himself as swift and wild,
In falling, clutched the frail arbute,
The fibres of whose shallow root,
Uplifted from the soil, betrayed
The silver veins beneath it laid
The buried treasures of the miser Time.”
He turns from the child to the memory of one who formerly dwelt within
the walls of his historic mansion:
“Up and down these echoing stairs
Heavy with the weight of cares,
Sounded his majestic tread:
Yes, within this very room
Sat he, in those hours of gloom,
Weary both in heart and head.”
These grave thoughts are succeeded by pictures of the child at play,
now in the orchard and now in the garden-walks, where his little
carriage-wheels efface whole villages of sand-roofed tents that rise
above the secret homes of nomadic tribes of ants. But, tired already,
he comes back to parley with repose, and, seated with his father on a
rustic seat in an old apple-tree, they see the waters of the river, and
a sailless vessel dropping down the stream:
“And like it, to a sea as wide and deep,
Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.”
[Illustration: THE OLD WILLOW.]
The poet speculates gravely on the future of his child, and bids him
remember that if his fate is an untoward one, even in the perilous hour
“When most afflicted and oppressed
From labour there shall come forth rest.”
In this poem, and in “The Occultation of Orion,” Mr. Longfellow has
reached a table-land of imagination not hitherto attained by his Muse.
“The Bridge” is a revealment of his personality, and a phase of his
genius which has never ceased to charm the majority of his readers. The
train of thought which it suggests is not new, but what thought that
embraces mankind is new? Enough that it is natural, and sympathetic,
and tender. The lines to “The Driving Cloud” are an admirable specimen
of hexameters, and a valuable addition to America’s scanty store of
aboriginal poetry—the forerunner of an immortal contribution not yet
transmuted into verse.
[Illustration: “THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.”]
Under the head of “Songs” we have eight poems, two of which are
modelled after a fashion that Mr. Longfellow had succeeded in making
his own. I refer to “Sea-weed” and “The Arrow and the Song,” two
charming fantasies in which the doctrine of poetic correspondence (if I
may be allowed the phrase) works out a triumphant excuse for its being.
“The Day is Done” belongs to a class of poems which depend for their
success upon the human element they contain, or suggest, and to which
they appeal. “The Old Clock on the Stairs” is an illustration of what I
mean, and as good a one as can be found in the writings of any modern
poet. The humanities (to adapt a phrase) were never long absent from
Mr. Longfellow’s thoughts. We feel their presence in “The Old Clock on
the Stairs,” in “The Bridge,” and in the unrhymed stanzas “To an Old
Danish Song-book.” This volume introduced Mr. Longfellow in a species
of composition in which we have not hitherto seen him—the sonnet, of
which there are three specimens here, neither of the strictest Italian
form; the best, perhaps, being the one on “Dante,” of whom, by the way,
we had three translations, all from the “Purgatorio,” in the “Voices of
the Night.”
Mr. Longfellow’s next volume was, in a certain sense, the gift of
Hawthorne, to whom he was indebted for its theme. It is stated briefly
in the first volume of his “American Note-books,” in a cluster of
memoranda written between October 24th, 1838, and January 4th, 1839.
_Voilá_: “H. L. C—— heard from a French Canadian a story of a young
couple in Acadie. On their marriage day, all the men of the province
were summoned to assemble in the church to hear a proclamation. When
assembled, they were all seized and shipped off to be distributed
through New England, among them the new bridegroom. His bride set off
in search of him, wandered about New England all her lifetime, and at
last, when she was old, she found her bridegroom on his death-bed.
The shock was so great that it killed her likewise.” This forcible
deportation of a whole people occurred in 1755, when the French, to the
extent of eighteen thousand souls, were seized by the English, in the
manner stated. History, which excuses so much, has perhaps excused the
act; but humanity never can. It is as indefensible as the Inquisition.
“Evangeline,” which was published in 1847, disputed the palm with “The
Princess,” which was published in the same year. The two volumes are so
unlike that no comparison can, or should, be made between them. Each
shows its writer at his best, as a story-teller, and if the mediæval
medley surpasses the modern pastoral in richness of colouring, it
is surpassed, in turn, by the tender human interest of the latter.
Evangeline, loving, patient, sorrowful wanderer, has taken a permanent
place, I think, among the heroines of English song; but, whether
the picturesque hexameters in which her pathetic story is told will
hereafter rank among the standard measures of the language, can only be
conjectured. That the poets have fancied them is certain, for the year
after the publication of “Evangeline” saw Clough writing them in “The
Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich,” and ten years later saw Kingsley writing
them in his “Andromeda.” Matthew Arnold maintains that the hexameter is
the only proper measure in which to translate Homer; and already two
versions of the Iliad in this measure have been made, one by Herschel
(1866) and another by Cochrane (1867).
[Illustration: A CORNER OF THE STUDY]
Two years before the publication of “Evangeline” (1845), Mr. Longfellow
conferred a scholarly obligation upon the admirers of foreign poetry
by editing “The Poets of Europe,” a closely printed octavo of nearly
eight hundred pages, containing specimens of European poets in ten
different languages, representing the labours of upward of one hundred
translators, including himself. Four years later (1849) he published a
tale, entitled “Kavanagh.” It has no plot to speak of, but its sketches
of character are bright and amusing, and its glimpses of New England
village life are pleasantly authentic.
The five years which included the publication of the next three volumes
of his poetical writings—“The Seaside and the Fireside” (1850), “The
Golden Legend” (1851), and “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855),—added largely
to his reputation as a man of varied attainments, to whom poetry was an
art in which he was perpetually discovering new possibilities. There
are twenty-three poems in “The Seaside and the Fireside” (including the
dedication and the translations), no two of which are alike, though
they all disclose the skilful hand by which they were wrought. The
most important of them, as a work of art, is the best poem, of which
Schiller’s “Song of the Bell” was the model—“The Building of the Ship.”
“The Golden Legend” transports us back to the Middle Ages, of which we
have had transitory gleams in the earlier writings of Mr. Longfellow.
The poetic atmosphere of that remote period envelops a lovely story,
which turns, like that of “Evangeline,” upon the love and devotion of
woman, that in this instance is happily rewarded.
The figure of Elsie, the peasant girl, who determines to sacrifice
her life to restore her prince to happiness, is worthy of an exalted
place in any poet’s dream of fair women. The charm of the poem, apart
from its poetry, is the thorough and easy scholarship of the writer,
who contrives to conceal the evidences of his reading,—an art which
few poets have possessed in an equal degree, and which Moore did not
possess at all. Mr. Ruskin reflected, I think, the judgment of most
scholarly readers of this poem, when he wrote in his “Modern Painters”
that its author had entered more closely into the temper of the monk,
for good and for evil, than ever yet theological writer or historian,
though they may have given their life’s labour to the analysis.
[Illustration: WEST SIDE OF LONGFELLOW’S HOUSE. (TAKEN FROM A POINT
NEAR THE OLD WILLOW.)]
That there was a poetic element in the North American Indian several
American poets had believed, and, so believing, had striven to quicken
their verse with its creative energies. Sands and Eastburn wrote
together the ponderous poem of “Yamoyden.” Hoffmann wrote a “Vigil
of Faith;” Seba Smith a “Powhattan;” Street a “Frontenac.” They were
unanimous in one thing,—they all failed to interest their readers. The
cause of this was not far to seek, we can see, since success has been
achieved, but it demanded a vision which was not theirs, and which, it
seemed, only one American poet had. He saw that the Indian himself,
as he figures in our history, was not capable of being made a poetic
hero, but he saw that there might be a poetic side to him, and that it
existed in his legends, if he had any. That he had many, and that they
were remarkable for a certain primitive imagination, was well known.
They were brought to light by the late Henry R. Schoolcraft who heard
of their existence among the Odjibwa Nation, inhabiting the region
about Lake Superior in 1822.
Specimens of these aboriginal fictions were published by Mr Schoolcraft
in his “Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley”
(1825), and his “Narrative of the Expedition to Itaska Lake” (1834),
but they were not given to the world in their entirety until 1839 in
his “Algic Researches.” They were as good as manuscript for the next
sixteen years, though one American poet had mastered them thoroughly.
This was Mr. Longfellow, who, in 1855, turned this Indian Edda, as
he happily called it, into “The Song of Hiawatha.” The great and
immediate success of this poem, and the increase of reputation which
it brought its author, recalled the early years of the present century
when Scott and Byron were sure of thousands of readers whenever it
pleased them to write a metrical romance. It was eagerly read by all
classes, who suddenly found themselves interested in the era of flint
arrow-heads, earthen pots, and skin clothes, and in its elemental
inhabitants, who, dead centuries ago, if they ever existed, were now
living the everlasting life of poetry. Everybody read “The Song of
Hiawatha,” which passed through many editions. Its intellectual value
was universally admitted, but its form was questioned, as all new forms
are sure to be. For the form was new to most readers, though not to
scholars in the literatures of Northern Europe. It is original with
Mr. Longfellow, his friends declared. No, his enemies answered, he
has borrowed it from the Finnish epic, “The Kalewala.” The temporary
novelty of its form led to innumerable parodies, but to nothing
serious, that I remember; which I take to be a silent verdict against
its permanency in English versification.
Mr. Longfellow added, three years later, to the laurels he had won
by “Evangeline,” by a second narrative poem in hexameters,—“The
Courtship of Miles Standish.” It lacks the pathetic interest which
is the charm of the earlier poem, but it possesses the same merit of
picturesqueness, and a firmer power of delineating character. Priscilla
is a very vital little Puritan maiden, who sees no impropriety in
asking the man she loves why he does not speak for himself, and not
for Miles Standish, who might find time to attend to his own wooing.
The Puritan atmosphere here is as perfect of its kind as the Catholic
atmosphere of “Evangeline,” and is thoroughly in keeping with the grim
old days in which the story is laid. The versification of the poem is
more vigorous than that of the sister poem, the hexameters having a
sort of martial movement about them.
We do not see that the poetry of Mr. Longfellow has changed much in
the last twenty years, except that it has become graver in its tone
and more serious in its purpose. Its technical excellence has steadily
increased. He has more than held his own against all English-writing
poets, and in no walk of poetry so positively as that of telling a
story. In an age of story-tellers he stands at their head, not only
in the narrative poems I have mentioned, but in the lesser stories
included in his “Tales of a Wayside Inn,” for which he has laid all the
literatures of the world under contribution.
The most distinctive of Mr. Longfellow’s poems are probably those which
he entitles “Birds of Passage,” and which he has from time to time
published as portions of separate volumes. They were inspired by many
literatures, and are in many measures, among which, however, that of
“The Song of Hiawatha” does not reappear, though the hexameter does.
He has the art of finding unwritten poems in the most out-of-the-way
books, and in every-day occurrences. A great man dies,—the Duke of
Wellington, for example,—and he hymns his departure in “The Warden
of the Cinque Ports,” which many prefer to the Laureate’s scholarly
ode. His good friend Hawthorne dies, and he embalms his memory and his
unfinished romance in imperishable verse.
“Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost clew regain?
The unfinished window in Aladdin’s tower
Unfinished must remain!”
Sumner dies, and he drops a melodious tear upon his grave.
“Were a star quenched on high,
For ages would its light,
Still travelling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.
“So when a great man dies,
For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men.”
And again he bids him farewell in a touching sonnet, with a pathetic
and unexpected ending:
“Good-night! good-night! as we so oft have said
Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days
That are no more, and shall no more return.
Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed:
I stay a little longer, as one stays
To cover up the embers that still burn.”
A child is born to him, and his friend Lowell’s wife dies on the same
night, and he commemorates both in “The Two Angels,” one of his perfect
poems.
Mr. Longfellow published few translations while he was writing his
more important works, such as the “Tales of a Wayside Inn” and “The
Story of Hiawatha.” That he had not forgotten his cunning, however, was
evident in his “Three Books of Song” (1872), where he printed several
translations of Eastern Songs, and in “Keramos, and other Poems,” which
contains two hexameter translations from Virgil and Ovid, and twelve
translations from French, German, and Italian poets. The volume last
mentioned is remarkable in many ways. It not only shows no diminution
of mental vigour, which one might naturally expect in a poet whose
years have exceeded the allotted age of man, but it recalls the young
poet who wrote “The Skeleton in Armour,” and “The Slave’s Dream.”
I know not where to look for more fire than I find in “The Leap of
Roushan Beg,” nor more delicious picturesqueness than in “Castles in
Spain.” “Keramos” belongs to the same class of poems as “The Building
of the Ship,” and is as perfect a piece of poetic art as that exquisite
poem. That the making of pottery could be so effectively handled in
verse reminds us of what Stella said of Swift, viz. that he could write
beautifully about a broom-stick.
Mr. Longfellow’s friendliness, not to say generosity, to his brother
authors, is not the least among his poetic virtues. He sends a greeting
to Lowell in “The Herons of Elmwood,” and honours the memory of Irving
in a tender sonnet, “In the Churchyard at Tarrytown.” In “The Three
Silences of Molinos” (which are those of Speech, Desire, and Thought),
he recognizes the excellence of the poet whom New England delights to
honour next to himself:
“O thou, whose daily life anticipates
The world to come, and in whose thought and word
The spiritual world preponderates,
Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heard
Voices and melodies from beyond the gates,
And speakest only when thy soul is stirred.”
If there was any doubt before that Mr. Longfellow was the first
of living sonneteers it is settled by “A Book of Sonnets” in this
collection, the workmanship of which is simply perfect.
Mr. Longfellow’s translation of Dante’s “Divina Commedia” is highly
thought of by scholarly readers. I state, however, as a fact, that he
was not engaged upon it over twenty-five years, as we are told in the
“Life and Letters of George Ticknor”; nor more than thirty years, as
we are told in Richardson’s “Primer of American Literature.” It was
executed in less than two years.
It has not been given to many poets to carry out the ideal of a poetic
life as he has done, and to win a great reputation at an early age,—a
reputation which has not lessened or suffered from any fluctuation of
public taste. The singer of “Keramos” addresses a different public
from the one that welcomed “The Voices of the Night,” but he holds it
nevertheless. In looking back upon his long literary career, one can
see that he has been true to himself as he was manifested to us in his
early prose and verse; that he has fulfilled his scholarly intentions;
and that he has created and satisfied a taste for a literature which
did not exist in America until he began to write,—a literature drawn
from the different languages of Europe, now in the shape of direct
translation, and now in the shape of suggestions, alien to the mass
of English and American readers, but gladly received by both as
new intellectual possessions. He has broadened American culture in
completing his own, and has enlarged American sympathies until they
embrace all other peoples,—the sturdy Norseman, the simple Swede, the
patient Acadien, and the marvel-believing red man of prehistoric times.
Cardinal Wiseman delivered a lecture some years ago on the “Home
Education of the Poor.” In the course of this lecture he commented upon
the fact that England has no poet who is to its labouring classes what
Goethe is to the peasant of Germany, and said: “There is one writer
who approaches nearer than any other to this standard, and he has
already gained such a hold on our hearts that it is almost unnecessary
for me to mention his name. Our hemisphere cannot claim the honour of
having brought him forth, but he still belongs to us, for his works
have become as household words wherever the English language is spoken.
And whether we are charmed by his imagery, or soothed by his melodious
versification, or elevated by the high moral teachings of his pure
muse, or follow with sympathetic hearts the wanderings of Evangeline, I
am sure that all who hear my voice will join with me in the tribute I
desire to pay to the genius of Longfellow.”
The Rev. Lyman Abbott, also recently in the “Christian Union,” remarks
that “There are many persons who regard Christianity as a new form
or a new philosophy, and one might read Longfellow’s songs ‘from
beginning to end,’ and not guess with what form he worshipped or of
what philosophy he is a disciple. But if the Master knew aright His own
mission, He came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly;
and if Paul comprehended the tenour of that life aright, its fruits
are ‘love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance.’ This life pulsates through all Longfellow’s
words; of these fruits the orchard of his song is full indeed. I do
not recall a single hymn of his which has become a favourite voice
of worship in our churches; but worship has gone up from thousands
of hearts, lowlier and holier for his singing. He does not swing the
censer, but he fills it with his aromatic incense.” ... “Submission
never sang a sweeter song in the night than ‘Resignation;’ devout love
to God never breathed a more Christly petition than in Elsie‘s prayer;
never more unaffected reverence bowed its head than in ’Christus.’”
The Christianity of Longfellow is as simple as that of the New
Testament, and as catholic; his creed, his worship, and his life are
love.
“My work is finished; I am strong
In faith and hope and charity;
For I have written the things I see,
The things that have been and shall be.
Conscious of right, nor fearing wrong
Because I am in love with Love,
And the sole thing I hate is Hate;
For Hate is death; and Love is life.
A peace, a splendour from above;
And Hate a never-ending strife,
A smoke, a blackness from the abyss
Where unclean serpents coil and hiss!
Love is the Holy Ghost within;
Hate the unpardonable sin!
Who preaches otherwise than this
Betrays his Master with a kiss.”
The poet died on the 24th March 1882, at Cambridge, Massachusetts and
was buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery, amidst public and private
evidences of the grief of many thousands of the American people; and in
the United Kingdom his death has been felt as the loss of a familiar
friend, almost irreparable.
THE POETICAL WORKS OF
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
_Early Poems._
[WRITTEN FOR THE MOST PART DURING MY COLLEGE LIFE, AND ALL OF THEM
BEFORE THE AGE OF NINETEEN.]
AN APRIL DAY.
When the warm sun, that brings
Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
’Tis sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
The first flower of the plain.
I love the season well,
When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
The coming-on of storms.
From the earth’s loosened mould
The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives;
Though stricken to the heart with Winter’s cold,
The drooping tree revives.
The softly-warbled song
Comes from the pleasant woods, and coloured wings
Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along
The forest openings.
When the bright sunset fills
The silver woods with light, the green slope throws
Its shadows in the hollows of the hills,
And wide the upland glows.
And, when the eve is born,
In the blue lake the sky, o’er-reaching far,
Is hollowed out, and the moon dips her horn,
And twinkles many a star.
Inverted in the tide,
Stand the grey rocks, and trembling shadows throw;
And the fair trees look over, side by side,
And see themselves below.
Sweet April!—many a thought
Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed;
Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought,
Life’s golden fruit is shed.
AUTUMN.
With what a glory comes and goes the year!
The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers
Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy
Life’s newness, and earth’s garniture spread out.
And when the silvery habit of the clouds
Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with
A sober gladness the old year takes up
His bright inheritance of golden fruits,
A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.
There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,
And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life
Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned;
And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved,
Where autumn, like a faint old man, sits down
By the wayside a-weary. Through the trees
The golden robin moves. The purple finch,
That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds,
A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle,
And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud
From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings,
And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke,
Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.
O what a glory doth this world put on
For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves,
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings.
He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long resting-place without a tear.
SUNRISE ON THE HILLS.
I stood upon the hills, when heaven’s wide arch
Was glorious with the sun’s returning march,
And woods were brightened, and soft gales
Went forth to kiss the sun-clad vales.
The clouds were far beneath me;—bathed in light,
They gathered midway round the wooded height,
And, in their fading glory, shone
Like hosts in battle overthrown,
As many a pinnacle, with shifting glance,
Through the grey mist thrust up its shattered lance,
And rocking on the cliff was left
The dark pine blasted, bare, and cleft.
The veil of cloud was lifted, and below
Glowed the rich valley, and the river’s flow
Was darkened by the forest’s shade,
Or glistened in the white cascade;
Where upward, in the mellow blush of day,
The noisy bittern wheeled his spiral way.
I heard the distant waters dash,
I saw the current whirl and flash,—
And richly, by the blue lake’s silver beach,
The woods were bending with a silent reach.
Then o’er the vale, with gentle swell,
The music of the village bell
Came sweetly to the echo-giving hills;
And the wild horn, whose voice the woodland fills,
Was ringing to the merry shout,
That faint and far the glen sent out,
Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke,
Through thick-leaved branches, from the dingle broke.
If thou art worn and hard beset
With sorrows, that thou wouldst forget,
If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills!—No tears
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.
WOODS IN WINTER.
When Winter winds are piercing chill,
And through the hawthorn blows the gale,
With solemn feet I tread the hill
That overbrows the lonely vale.
O’er the bare upland, and away
Through the long reach of desert woods,
The embracing sunbeams chastely play,
And gladden these deep solitudes.
Where, twisted round the barren oak,
The summer vine in beauty clung,
And summer winds the stillness broke,
The crystal icicle is hung.
Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs
Pour out the river’s gradual tide,
Shrilly the skaters’ iron rings,
And voices fill the woodland side.
Alas! how changed from the fair scene,
When birds sang out their mellow lay,
And winds were soft, and woods were green,
And the song ceased not with the day.
But still wild music is abroad,
Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;
And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,
Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.
Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear
Has grown familiar with your song;
I hear it in the opening year,—
I listen, and it cheers me long.
HYMN OF THE MORAVIAN NUNS OF BETHLEHEM.
AT THE CONSECRATION OF PULASKI’S BANNER.
When the dying flame of day
Through the chancel shot its ray,
Far the glimmering tapers shed
Faint light on the cowled head;
And the censer burning swung,
Where, before the altar, hung
The blood-red banner, that with prayer
Had been consecrated there.
And the nun’s sweet hymn was heard the while,
Sung low in the dim, mysterious aisle.
“Take thy banner! May it wave
Proudly o’er the good and brave;
When the battle’s distant wail
Breaks the sabbath of our vale,
When the clarion’s music thrills
To the hearts of these lone hills,
When the spear in conflict shakes,
And the strong lance shivering breaks.
“Take thy banner! and, beneath
The battle-cloud’s encircling wreath,
Guard it!—till our homes are free!
Guard it!—God will prosper thee!
In the dark and trying hour,
In the breaking forth of power,
In the rush of steeds and men,
His right hand will shield thee then.
“Take thy banner! But, when night
Closes round the ghastly fight,
If the vanquished warrior bow,
Spare him!—By our holy vow,
By our prayers and many tears,
By the mercy that endears,
Spare him!—he our love hath shared!
Spare him!—as thou wouldst be spared!
“Take thy banner!—and if e’er
Thou shouldst press the soldier’s bier,
And the muffled drums should beat
To the tread of mournful feet,
Then this crimson flag shall be
Martial cloak and shroud for thee.”
The warrior took that banner proud,
And it was his martial cloak and shroud!
BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK.
On sunny slope and beechen swell,
The shadowed light of evening fell;
And, where the maple’s leaf was brown,
With soft and silent lapse came down
The glory, that the wood receives,
At sunset, in its brazen leaves.
Far upward in the mellow light
Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white,
Around a far uplifted cone,
In the warm blush of evening shone;
An image of the silver lakes,
By which the Indian’s soul awakes.
But soon a funeral hymn was heard
Where the soft breath of evening stirred
The tall, grey forest; and a band
Of stern in heart, and strong in hand,
Came winding down beside the wave,
To lay the red chief in his grave.
They sang, that by his native bowers
He stood in the last moon of flowers,
And thirty snows had not yet shed
Their glory on the warrior’s head;
But, as the summer fruit decays,
So died he in those naked days.
A dark cloak of the roebuck’s skin
Covered the warrior, and within
Its heavy folds the weapons, made
For the hard toils of war were laid;
The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds,
And the broad belt of shells and beads.
Before, a dark-haired virgin train
Chanted the death-dirge of the slain;
Behind, the long procession came
Of hoary men and chiefs of fame,
With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief,
Leading the war-horse of their chief.
Stripped of his proud and martial dress,
Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless,
With darting eye, and nostril spread,
And heavy and impatient tread,
He came; and oft that eye so proud
Asked for his rider in the crowd.
They buried the dark chief—they freed
Beside the grave his battle steed;
And swift an arrow cleaved its way
To his stern heart! One piercing neigh
Arose,—and, on the dead man’s plain,
The rider grasps his steed again.
THE SPIRIT OF POETRY.
There is a quiet spirit in these woods,
That dwells where’er the gentle south wind blows;
Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade,
The wild-flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air,
The leaves above their sunny palms outspread.
With what a tender and impassioned voice
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought,
When the fast-ushering star of Morning comes
O’er-riding the grey hills with golden scarf;
Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve,
In mourning weeds, from out the western gate,
Departs with silent pace! That spirit moves
In the green valley, where the silver brook,
From its full laver, pours the white cascade;
And, babbling low amid the tangled woods,
Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter.
And frequent, on the everlasting hills,
Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself
In all the dark embroidery of the storm,
And shouts the stern, strong wind. And here, amid
The silent majesty of these deep woods,
Its presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth,
As to the sunshine and the pure, bright air
Their tops the green trees lift. Hence gifted bards
Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades.
For them there was an eloquent voice in all
The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden sun,
The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way,
Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle winds,—
The swelling upland, where the sidelong sun
Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes,—
Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in,
Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunny vale,
The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees,
In many a lazy syllable, repeating
Their old poetic legends to the wind.
And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill
The world; and, in these wayward days of youth,
My busy fancy oft embodies it,
As a bright image of the light and beauty
That dwell in nature,—of the heavenly forms
We worship in our dreams, and the soft hues
That stain the wild bird’s wing, and flush the clouds
When the sun sets. Within her eye
The heaven of April, with its changing light,
And when it wears the blue of May, is hung,
And on her lip the rich, red rose. Her hair
Is like the summer tresses of the trees,
When twilight makes them brown, and on her cheek
Blushes the richness of an autumn sky,
With ever-shifting beauty. Then her breath,—
It is so like the gentle air of Spring,
As, from the morning’s dewy flowers, it comes
Full of their fragrance, that it is a joy
To have it round us,—and her silver voice
Is the rich music of a summer bird,
Heard in the still night, with its passionate cadence.
[Illustration]
_Voices of the Night._
1839.
Πότνια, πότνια νὺξ,
ὑπνοδότειρα τῶν πολυπόνων βροτῶν,
Ἐρεβόθεν ἴθι· μόλε μόλε κατάπτερος
Ἀγαμεμνόνιον ἐπὶ δόμον·
ὑπὸ γὰρ ἀλγέων, ὑπό τε συμφορᾶς
διοιχόμεθ’, οἰχόμεθα.—EURIPIDES.
PRELUDE.
Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;
Or, where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.
Beneath some patriarchal tree,
I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,
With one continuous sound;—
A slumberous sound,—a sound that brings
The feelings of a dream,—
As of innumerable wings;
As, when a bell no longer swings,
Faint the hollow murmur rings
O’er meadow, lake, and stream.
And dreams of that which cannot die,
Bright visions, came to me,
As lapped in thought I used to lie,
And gaze into the summer sky,
Where the sailing clouds went by,
Like ships upon the sea;
Dreams that the soul of youth engage
Ere fancy has been quelled;
Old legends of the monkish page,
Traditions of the saint and sage,
Tales that have the rime of age,
And chronicles of eld.
And, loving still these quaint old themes,
Even in the city’s throng
I feel the freshness of the streams,
That, crossed by shades and sunny gleams,
Water the green land of dreams,
The holy land of song.
Therefore, at Pentecost, which brings
The Spring, clothed like a bride,
When nestling buds unfold their wings,
And bishop’s-caps have golden rings,
Musing upon many things,
I sought the woodlands wide.
The green trees whispered low and mild;
It was a sound of joy!
They were my playmates when a child,
And rocked me in their arms so wild!
Still they looked at me and smiled,
As if I were a boy;
And ever whispered, mild and low,
“Come, be a child once more!”
And waved their long arms to and fro,
And beckoned solemnly and slow;
Oh, I could not choose but go
Into the woodlands hoar;
Into the blithe and breathing air,
Into the solemn wood,
Solemn and silent everywhere!
Nature with folded hands seemed there,
Kneeling at her evening prayer!
Like one in prayer I stood.
Before me rose an avenue
Of tall and sombrous pines;
Abroad their fan-like branches grew,
And, where the sunshine darted through,
Spread a vapour soft and blue,
In long and sloping lines.
And, falling on my weary brain
Like a fast-falling shower,
The dreams of youth came back again,
Low lispings of the summer rain,
Dropping on the ripened grain,
As once upon the flower.
Visions of childhood! Stay, oh stay!
Ye were so sweet and wild!
And distant voices seemed to say,
“It cannot be! They pass away!
Other themes demand thy lay;
Thou art no more a child!
“The land of song within thee lies,
Watered by living springs;
The lids of Fancy’s sleepless eyes
Are gates unto that Paradise,
Holy thoughts, like stars, arise,
Its clouds are angels’ wings.
“Learn, that henceforth thy song shall be,
Not mountains capped with snow,
Nor forests sounding like the sea,
Nor rivers flowing ceaselessly,
Where the woodlands bend to see
The bending heavens below.
“There is a forest where the din
Of iron branches sounds!
A mighty river roars between,
And whosoever looks therein,
Sees the heavens all black with sin,—
Sees not its depths nor bounds.
“Athwart the swinging branches cast,
Soft rays of sunshine pour;
Then comes the fearful wintry blast;
Our hopes, like withered leaves, fall fast;
Pallid lips say, ‘It is past!
We can return no more!’
“Look, then, into thine heart, and write!
Yes, into Life’s deep stream!
All forms of sorrow and delight,
All solemn Voices of the Night,
That can soothe thee, or affright—
Be these henceforth thy theme.”
HYMN TO THE NIGHT.
Ἀσπασίη, τρίλλιστος.
I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls,
I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
Stoop o’er me from above;
The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
As of the one I love.
I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
The manifold, soft chimes,
That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,
Like some old poet’s rhymes.
From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
My spirit drank repose;
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,—
From those deep cisterns flows.
O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
What man has borne before:
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
And they complain no more.
Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer;
Descend with broad-winged flight,
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
The best belovèd Night!
A PSALM OF LIFE.
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
“Life is but an empty dream!”
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,”
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act—act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;—
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS.
When the hours of Day are numbered,
And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
To a holy, calm delight;
Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
And, like phantoms grim and tall
Shadows from the fitful fire-light
Dance upon the parlour wall;
Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door;
The belovèd, the true-hearted,
Come to visit me once more;
He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the road-side fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life!
They, the holy ones and weakly,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more!
And with them the Being Beauteous,
Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me,
And is now a saint in heaven.
With a slow and noiseless footstep
Comes that messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,
Lays her gentle hand in mine.
And she sits and gazes at me
With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
Looking downward from the skies.
Uttered not, yet comprehended,
Is the spirit’s voiceless prayer,
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended,
Breathing from her lips of air.
O, though oft depress’d and lonely,
All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember only
Such as these have lived and died!
THE REAPER AND THE FLOWERS.
There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.
“Shall I have nought that is fair,” saith he;
“Have nought but the bearded grain?
Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me,
I will give them all back again.”
He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,
He kissed their drooping leaves;
It was for the Lord of Paradise
He bound them in his sheaves.
“My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,”
The Reaper said, and smiled;
“Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where He was once a child.
“They shall all bloom in fields of light,
Transplanted by my care,
And saints, upon their garments white,
These sacred blossoms wear.”
And the mother gave, in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;
She knew she should find them all again
In the fields of light above.
Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;
’Twas an angel visited the green earth,
And took the flowers away.
THE LIGHT OF STARS.
The night is come, but not too soon;
And sinking silently,
All silently, the little moon
Drops down behind the sky.
There is no light in earth or heaven,
But the cold light of stars;
And the first watch of night is given
To the red planet Mars.
Is it the tender star of love?
The star of love and dreams?
Oh, no! from that blue tent above
A hero’s armour gleams.
And earnest thoughts within me rise,
When I behold afar,
Suspended in the evening skies,
The shield of that red star.
O star of strength! I see thee stand
And smile upon my pain;
Thou beckonest with thy mailèd hand,
And I am strong again.
Within my breast there is no light,
But the cold light of stars;
I give the first watch of the night
To the red planet Mars.
The star of the unconquered will,
He rises in my breast,
Serene, and resolute, and still,
And calm, and self-possessed.
And thou, too, whosoe’er thou art,
That readest this brief psalm,
As one by one thy hopes depart,
Be resolute and calm.
Oh, fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know ere long,
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
FLOWERS.
Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth’s firmament do shine.
Stars they are, wherein we read our history,
As astrologers and seers of eld;
Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery,
Like the burning stars, which they beheld.
Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous,
God hath written in those stars above;
But not less in the bright flowerets under us
Stands the revelation of His love.
Bright and glorious is that revelation,
Written all over this great world of ours;
Making evident our own creation,
In these stars of earth,—these golden flowers.
And the Poet, faithful and far-seeing,
Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a part
Of the selfsame universal being
Which is throbbing in his brain and heart.
Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining,
Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day,
Tremulous leaves with soft and silver lining,
Buds that open only to decay;
Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues,
Flaunting gaily in the golden light;
Large desires, with most uncertain issues,
Tender wishes, blossoming at night!
These in flowers and men are more than seeming;
Workings are they of the selfsame powers,
Which the Poet, in no idle dreaming,
Seeth in himself and in the flowers.
Everywhere about us are they glowing,
Some like stars, to tell us Spring is born;
Others, their blue eyes with tears o’erflowing,
Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn;
Not alone in Spring’s armorial bearing,
And in Summer’s green emblazoned field,
But in arms of brave old Autumn’s wearing,
In the centre of his brazen shield;
Not alone in meadows and green alleys,
On the mountain-top, and by the brink
Of sequestered pools in woodland valleys,
Where the slaves of Nature stoop to drink;
Not alone in her vast dome of glory,
Not on graves of bird and beast alone,
But in old cathedrals, high and hoary,
On the tombs of heroes, carved in stone;
In the cottage of the rudest peasant,
In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers,
Speaking of the Past unto the Present,
Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers;
In all places, then, and in all seasons,
Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings,
Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons,
How akin they are to human things.
And with childlike, credulous affection
We behold their tender buds expand;
Emblems of our own great resurrection,
Emblems of the bright and better land.
THE BELEAGUERED CITY.
I have read, in some old marvellous tale,
Some legend strange and vague,
That a midnight host of spectres pale
Beleaguered the walls of Prague.
Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream,
With the wan moon overhead,
There stood, as in an awful dream,
The army of the dead.
White as a sea-fog, landward bound,
The spectral camp was seen,
And, with a sorrowful, deep sound,
The river flowed between.
No other voice nor sound was there,
No drum, nor sentry’s pace;
The mist-like banners clasped the air
As clouds with clouds embrace.
But, when the old cathedral bell
Proclaimed the morning prayer,
The white pavilions rose and fell
On the alarmèd air.
Down the broad valley fast and far
The troubled army fled;
Up rose the glorious morning star,
The ghastly host was dead.
I have read, in the marvellous heart of man,
That strange and mystic scroll,
That an army of phantoms vast and wan
Beleaguer the human soul.
Encamped beside Life’s rushing stream,
In Fancy’s misty light,
Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam
Portentous through the night.
Upon its midnight battle-ground
The spectral camp is seen,
And, with a sorrowful, deep sound,
Flows the River of Life between.
No other voice nor sound is there,
In the army of the grave;
No other challenge breaks the air,
But the rushing of Life’s wave.
And, when the solemn and deep church-bell
Entreats the soul to pray,
The midnight phantoms feel the spell,
The shadows sweep away.
Down the broad Vale of Tears afar
The spectral camp is fled;
Faith shineth as a morning star,
Our ghastly fears are dead.
MIDNIGHT MASS FOR THE DYING YEAR.
Yes, the Year is growing old,
And his eye is pale and bleared!
Death, with frosty hand and cold,
Plucks the old man by the beard,
Sorely,—sorely!
The leaves are falling, falling,
Solemnly and slow;
Caw! caw! the rooks are calling,
It is a sound of woe,
A sound of woe!
Through woods and mountain-passes
The winds, like anthems, roll;
They are chanting solemn masses,
Singing, “Pray for this poor soul,
Pray,—pray!”
And the hooded clouds, like friars,
Tell their beads in drops of rain,
And patter their doleful prayers;—
But their prayers are all in vain,
All in vain!
There he stands in the foul weather,
The foolish, fond Old Year,
Crowned with wild flowers and with heather,
Like weak, despisèd Lear,
A king,—a king!
Then comes the summer-like day,
Bids the old man rejoice!
His joy! his last! Oh, the old man grey
Loveth that ever-soft voice,
Gentle and low.
To the crimson woods he saith,
To the voice gentle and low
Of the soft air, like a daughter’s breath,
“Pray do not mock me so!
Do not laugh at me!”
And now the sweet day is dead!
Cold in his arms it lies;
No stain from its breath is spread
Over the glassy skies,
No mist or stain!
Then, too, the Old Year dieth,
And the forests utter a moan,
Like the voice of one who crieth
In the wilderness alone,
“Vex not his ghost!”
Then comes, with an awful roar,
Gathering and sounding on,
The storm-wind from Labrador,
The wind Euroclydon,
The storm-wind!
Howl! howl! and from the forest
Sweep the red leaves away!
Would the sins that thou abhorrest,
O Soul! could thus decay,
And be swept away!
For there shall come a mightier blast,
There shall be a darker day;
And the stars, from heaven downcast,
Like red leaves be swept away!
Kyrie, eleyson!
Christe, eleyson!
L’ENVOI.
Ye voices, that arose
After the Evening’s close,
And whispered to my restless heart repose!
Go, breathe it in the ear
Of all who doubt and fear,
And say to them, “Be of good cheer!”
Ye sounds, so low and calm,
That in the groves of balm
Seemed to me like an angel’s psalm!
Go, mingle yet once more
With the perpetual roar
Of the pine forest, dark and hoar!
Tongues of the dead, not lost,
But speaking from death’s frost,
Like fiery tongues at Pentecost!
Glimmer, as funeral lamps,
Amid the chills and damps
Of the vast plain where Death encamps!
[Illustration]
_Ballads._
1842.
THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR.
PREFATORY NOTE.
The following Ballad was suggested to me while riding on the sea-shore
at Newport. A year or two previous a skeleton had been dug up at Fall
River, clad in broken and corroded armour; and the idea occurred to
me of connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport, generally known
hitherto as the Old Windmill, though now claimed by the Danes as a
work of their early ancestors. Professor Rafn, in the _Mémoires de la
Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord_, for 1838-39, says:—
“There is no mistaking in this instance the style in which the more
ancient stone edifices of the North were constructed, the style
which belongs to the Roman or Ante-Gothic architecture, and which,
especially after the time of Charlemagne, diffused itself from Italy
over the whole of the West and North of Europe, where it continued to
predominate until the close of the twelfth century; that style which
some authors have, from one of its most striking characteristics,
called the round-arch style, the same which in England is denominated
Saxon and sometimes Norman architecture.
“On the ancient structure in Newport there are no ornaments remaining
which might possibly have served to guide us in assigning the probable
date of its erection. That no vestige whatever is found of the pointed
arch, nor any approximation to it, is indicative of an earlier rather
than of a later period. From such characteristics as remain, however,
we can scarcely form any other inference than one, in which I am
persuaded that all who are familiar with Old Northern architecture
will concur, THAT THIS BUILDING WAS ERECTED AT A PERIOD DECIDEDLY NOT
LATER THAN THE TWELFTH CENTURY. This remark applies, of course, to the
original building only, and not to the alterations that it subsequently
received; for there are several such alterations in the upper part
of the building which cannot be mistaken, and which were most likely
occasioned by its being adapted in modern times to various uses, for
example, as the substructure of a windmill, and latterly as a hay
magazine. To the same times may be referred the windows, the fireplace,
and the apertures made above the columns. That this building could
not have been erected for a windmill is what an architect will easily
discern.”
I will not enter into a discussion of the point. It is sufficiently
well established for the purpose of a ballad, though doubtless many an
honest citizen of Newport, who has passed his days within sight of the
Round Tower, will be ready to exclaim with Sancho, “God bless me! did
I not warn you to have a care of what you were doing, for that it was
nothing but a windmill? and nobody could mistake it but one who had the
like in his head.”
“Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armour drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?”
Then, from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seemed to rise,
As when the Northern skies
Gleam in December;
And, like the water’s flow
Under December’s snow,
Came a dull voice of woe
From the heart’s chamber.
“I was a Viking old!
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told,
No Saga taught thee!
Take heed, that in thy verse
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else dread a dead man’s curse!
For this I sought thee.
“Far in the Northern Land,
By the wild Baltic’s strand,
I, with my childish hand,
Tamed the gerfalcon;
And, with my skates fast-bound,
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
That the poor whimpering hound
Trembled to walk on.
“Oft to his frozen lair
Tracked I the grisly bear,
While from my path the hare
Fled like a shadow;
Oft through the forest dark
Followed the were-wolf’s bark,
Until the soaring lark
Sang from the meadow.
“But when I older grew,
Joining a corsair’s crew,
O’er the dark sea I flew
With the marauders.
Wild with the life we led;
Many the souls that sped,
Many the hearts that bled,
By our stern orders.
“Many a wassail-bout
Wore the long Winter out;
Often our midnight shout
Set the cocks crowing,
As we the Berserk’s tale
Measured in cups of ale,
Draining the oaken pail,
Filled to o’erflowing.
“Once, as I told in glee
Tales of the stormy sea,
Soft eyes did gaze on me,
Burning, yet tender;
And as the white stars shine
On the dark Norway pine,
On that dark heart of mine
Fell their soft splendour.
“I wooed the blue-eyed maid,
Yielding, yet half afraid,
And in the forest’s shade
Our vows were plighted.
Under its loosened vest
Fluttered her little breast,
Like birds within their nest
By the hawk frighted.
“Bright in her father’s hall
Shields gleamed upon the wall,
Loud sang the minstrels all,
Chanting his glory;
When of old Hildebrand
I asked his daughter’s hand,
Mute did the minstrel stand
To hear my story.
“While the brown ale he quaffed,
Loud then the champion laughed,
And as the wind-gusts waft
The sea-foam brightly,
So the loud laugh of scorn,
Out of those lips unshorn,
From the deep drinking-horn
Blew the foam lightly.
“She was a Prince’s child,
I but a Viking wild,
And though she blushed and smiled,
I was discarded!
Should not the dove so white
Follow the sea-mew’s flight,
Why did they leave that night
Her nest unguarded?
“Scarce had I put to sea,
Bearing the maid with me,—
Fairest of all was she
Among the Norsemen!—
When on the white-sea strand,
Waving his armèd hand,
Saw we old Hildebrand,
With twenty horsemen.
“Then launched they to the blast,
Bent like a reed each mast,
Yet we were gaining fast,
When the wind failed us;
And with a sudden flaw
Came round the gusty Skaw,
So that our foe we saw
Laugh as he hailed us.
“And as to catch the gale
Round veered the flapping sail,
Death! was the helmsman’s hail,
Death without quarter!
Mid-ships with iron-keel
Struck we her ribs of steel;
Down her black hulk did reel
Through the black water.
“As with his wings aslant,
Sails the fierce cormorant,
Seeking some rocky haunt,
With his prey laden:
So toward the open main,
Beating the sea again,
Through the wild hurricane,
Bore I the maiden.
“Three weeks we westward bore,
And when the storm was o’er,
Cloud-like we saw the shore
Stretching to leeward;
There for my lady’s bower
Built I the lofty tower,
Which, to this very hour,
Stands looking seaward.
“There lived we many years;
Time dried the maiden’s tears;
She had forgot her fears,
She was a mother;
Death closed her mild blue eyes,
Under that tower she lies;
Ne’er shall the sun arise
On such another!
“Still grew my bosom then,
Still as a stagnant fen!
Hateful to me were men,
The sunlight hateful!
In the vast forest here,
Clad in my warlike gear,
Fell I upon my spear,
Oh, death was grateful!
“Thus, seamed with many scars,
Bursting these prison bars,
Up to its native stars
My soul ascended!
There from the flowing bowl
Deep drinks the warrior’s soul,
_Skoal!_ to the Northland! _Skoal!_”[1]
—Thus the tale ended.
[1] In Scandinavia this is the customary salutation when drinking a
health. I have slightly changed the orthography of the word, in order
to preserve the correct pronunciation.
THE WRECK OF THE _HESPERUS_.
It was the schooner _Hesperus_,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old Sailòr,
Had sailed the Spanish Main,
“I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.
“Last night the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!”
The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.
Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the North-east;
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable’s length.
“Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow.”
He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat,
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
“O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
O say what may it be?”
“’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!”—
And he steered for the open sea.
“O father! I hear the sound of guns,
O say, what may it be?”
“Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!”
“O father, I see a gleaming light,
O say, what may it be?”
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,
On the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept
Towards the reef of Norman’s Woe.
And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Look soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on a bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the _Hesperus_,
In the midnight and the snow;
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s Woe!
[Illustration]
_Poems on Slavery._
1842.
[The following Poems, with one exception, were written at sea, in the
latter part of October 1842. I had not then heard of Dr. Channing’s
death. Since that event, the poem addressed to him is no longer
appropriate. I have decided, however, to let it remain as it was
written, in testimony of my admiration for a great and good man.]
TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING.
The pages of thy book I read,
And as I closed each one,
My heart, responding, ever said,
“Servant of God! well done!”
Well done! Thy words are great and bold;
At times they seem to me
Like Luther’s, in the days of old,
Half-battles for the free.
Go on, until this land revokes
The old and chartered Lie,
The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes
Insult humanity.
A voice is ever at thy side,
Speaking in tones of might,
Like the prophetic voice, that cried
To John in Patmos, “Write!”
Write! and tell out this bloody tale;
Record this dire eclipse,
This Day of Wrath, this Endless Wail,
This dread Apocalypse!
THE SLAVE’S DREAM.
Beside the ungathered rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;
His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand.
Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
He saw his Native Land.
Wide through the landscape of his dreams
The lordly Niger flowed;
Beneath the palm-trees on the plain
Once more a king he strode;
And heard the tinkling caravans
Descend the mountain-road.
He saw once more his dark-eyed queen
Among her children stand;
They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks,
They held him by the hand!—
A tear burst from the sleeper’s lids,
And fell into the sand.
And then at furious speed he rode
Along the Niger’s bank;
His bridle-reins were golden chains,
And, with a martial clank,
At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel
Smiting his stallion’s flank.
Before him, like a blood-red flag,
The bright flamingoes flew;
From morn till night he followed their flight,
O’er plains where the tamarind grew,
Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts,
And the ocean rose to view.
At night he heard the lion roar,
And the hyæna scream;
And the river-horse as he crushed the reeds
Beside some hidden stream;
And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums,
Through the triumph of his dream.
The forests, with their myriad tongues,
Shouted of liberty;
And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud,
With a voice so wild and free,
That he started in his sleep and smiled
At their tempestuous glee.
He did not feel the driver’s whip,
Nor the burning heat of day;
For death had illumined the Land of Sleep,
And his lifeless body lay
A worn-out fetter, that the soul
Had broken and thrown away!
THE SLAVE IN THE DISMAL SWAMP.
In dark fens of the Dismal Swamp
The hunted Negro lay;
He saw the fire of the midnight camp,
And heard at times a horse’s tramp,
And a bloodhound’s distant bay.
Where will-o’-the-wisps and glow-worms shine,
In bulrush and in brake;
Where waving mosses shroud the pine,
And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine
Is spotted like the snake;
Where hardly a human foot could pass,
Or a human heart would dare,
On the quaking turf of the green morass
He crouched in the rank and tangled grass,
Like a wild beast in his lair.
A poor old slave, infirm and lame;
Great scars deformed his face;
On his forehead he bore the brand of shame,
And the rags, that hid his mangled frame,
Were the livery of disgrace.
All things above were bright and fair,
All things were glad and free;
Lithe squirrels darted here and there,
And wild birds filled the echoing air
With songs of Liberty!
On him alone was the doom of pain,
From the morning of his birth;
On him alone the curse of Cain
Fell, like a flail on the garnered grain,
And struck him to the earth!
THE GOOD PART THAT SHALL NOT BE TAKEN AWAY.
She dwells by great Kenhawa’s side,
In valleys green and cool;
And all her hope and all her pride
Are in the village school.
Her soul, like the transparent air
That robes the hills above,
Though not of earth, encircles there
All things with arms of love.
And thus she walks among her girls
With praise and mild rebukes;
Subduing even rude village churls
By her angelic looks.
She reads to them at eventide
Of One who came to save;
To cast the captive’s chains aside,
And liberate the slave.
And oft the blessed time foretells
When all men shall be free;
And musical, as silver bells,
Their falling chains shall be.
And following her beloved Lord,
In decent poverty,
She makes her life one sweet record
And deed of charity.
For she was rich and gave up all
To break the iron bands
Of those who waited in her hall,
And laboured in her lands.
Long since beyond the Southern Sea
Their outbound sails have sped,
While she, in meek humility,
Now earns her daily bread.
It is their prayers, which never cease,
That clothe her with such grace;
Their blessing is the light of peace
That shines upon her face.
THE QUADROON GIRL.
The Slaver in the broad lagoon
Lay moored with idle sail;
He waited for the rising moon,
And for the evening gale.
Under the shore his boat was tied,
And all her listless crew
Watched the gray alligator slide
Into the still bayou.
Odours of orange-flowers, and spice,
Reached them from time to time,
Like airs that breathe from Paradise
Upon a world of crime.
The Planter, under his roof of thatch,
Smoked thoughtfully and slow;
The Slaver’s thumb was on the latch,
He seemed in haste to go.
He said, “My ship at anchor rides
In yonder broad lagoon;
I only wait the evening tides,
And the rising of the moon.”
Before them, with her face upraised,
In timid attitude,
Like one half curious, half amazed,
A Quadroon maiden stood.
Her eyes were large, and full of light,
Her arms and neck were bare;
No garment she wore, save a kirtle bright,
And her own long, raven hair.
And on her lips there played a smile
As holy, meek, and faint,
As lights in some cathedral aisle
The features of a saint.
“The soil is barren,—the farm is old;”
The thoughtful Planter said;
Then looked upon the Slaver’s gold,
And then upon the maid.
His heart within him was at strife
With such accursèd gains;
For he knew whose passions gave her life,
Whose blood ran in her veins.
But the voice of nature was too weak;
He took the glittering gold!
Then pale as death grew the maiden’s cheek,
Her hands as icy cold.
The Slaver led her from the door,
He led her by the hand,
To be his slave and paramour
In a strange and distant land!
THE WITNESSES.
In Ocean’s wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.
Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.
There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.
These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning waves,
“We are the Witnesses!”
Within Earth’s wide domains
Are markets for men’s lives;
Their necks are galled with chains,
Their wrists are cramped with gyves.
Dead bodies, that the kite
In deserts makes its prey;
Murders, that with affright
Scare school-boys from their play!
All evil thoughts and deeds;
Anger, and lust, and pride;
The foulest, rankest weeds.
That choke Life’s groaning tide!
These are the woes of Slaves;
They glare from the abyss;
They cry from unknown graves,
“We are the Witnesses!”
THE WARNING.
Beware! The Israelite of old, who tore
The lion in his path,—when, poor and blind,
He saw the blessed light of heaven no more,
Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind
In prison, and at last led forth to be
A pander to Philistine revelry,—
Upon the pillars of the temple laid
His desperate hands, and in its overthrow
Destroyed himself, and with him those who made
A cruel mockery of his sightless woe;
The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all,
Expired, and thousands perished in the fall!
There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,
Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel
Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,
And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,
Till the vast Temple of our liberties
A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.
THE SLAVE SINGING AT MIDNIGHT.
Loud he sang the Psalm of David!
He, a Negro, and enslaved,
Sang of Israel’s victory,
Sang of Zion, bright and free.
In that hour, when night is calmest,
Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist,
In a voice so sweet and clear
That I could not choose but hear.
Songs of triumph, and ascriptions,
Such as reached the swart Egyptians,
When upon the Red Sea coast
Perished Pharaoh and his host.
And the voice of his devotion
Filled my soul with strange emotion;
For its tones by turns were glad,
Sweetly solemn, wildly sad.
Paul and Silas, in their prison,
Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen,
And an earthquake’s arm of might
Broke their dungeon-gates at night.
But, alas! what holy angel
Brings the slave this glad evangel?
And what earthquake’s arm of might
Breaks his dungeon-gates at night?
[Illustration]
_Miscellaneous Poems._
1841-46.
IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY.
NO HAY PÁJAROS EN LOS NIDOS DE ANTAÑO.
_Spanish Proverb._
The sun is bright, the air is clear,
The darting swallows soar and sing,
And from the stately elms I hear
The blue-bird prophesying Spring.
So blue yon winding river flows,
It seems an outlet from the sky,
Where, waiting till the west wind blows,
The freighted clouds at anchor lie.
All things are new;—the buds, the leaves,
That gild the elm-tree’s nodding crest,
And even the nest beneath the eaves;—
There are no birds in last year’s nest!
All things rejoice in youth and love,
The fulness of their first delight!
And learn from the soft heavens above
The melting tenderness of night.
Maiden, that read’st this simple rhyme,
Enjoy thy youth, it will not stay;
Enjoy the fragrance of thy prime,
For O! it is not always May!
Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth,
To some good angel leave the rest;
For time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year’s nest.
THE RAINY DAY.
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.
And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Toiling—rejoicing—sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
ENDYMION.
The rising moon has hid the stars;
Her level rays, like golden bars,
Lie on the landscape green,
With shadows brown between.
And silver white the river gleams,
As if Diana in her dreams,
Had dropt her silver bow
Upon the meadows low.
On such a tranquil night as this,
She woke Endymion with a kiss,
When sleeping in the grove,
He dreamed not of her love.
Like Dian’s kiss, unasked, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought;
Nor voice nor sound betrays
Its deep, impassioned gaze.
It comes—the beautiful, the free,
The crown of all humanity—
In silence and alone
To seek the elected one.
It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep
Are life’s oblivion, the soul’s sleep,
And kisses the closed eyes
Of him who slumbering lies.
O, weary hearts! O, slumbering eyes!
O, drooping souls whose destinies
Are fraught with fear and pain,
Ye shall be loved again!
No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.
Responds—as if with unseen wings
An angel touched its quivering strings;
And whispers, in its song,
“Where hast thou stayed so long?”
GOD’S-ACRE.
I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God’s-Acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o’er the sleeping dust.
God’s-Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts
Comfort to those who in the grave have sown
The seed, that they had garnered in their hearts,
Their bread of life—alas! no more their own.
Into its furrows shall we all be cast,
In the sure faith that we shall rise again
At the great harvest, when the archangel’s blast
Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain.
Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,
In the fair gardens of that second birth;
And each bright blossom mingle its perfume
With that of flowers, which never bloomed on earth.
With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God,
This is the place where human harvests grow.
TO THE RIVER CHARLES.
River! that in silence windest
Through the meadows bright and free,
Till at length thy rest thou findest
In the bosom of the sea!
Four long years of mingled feeling,
Half in rest, and half in strife,
I have seen thy waters stealing
Onward, like the stream of life.
Thou hast taught me, Silent River!
Many a lesson, deep and long;
Thou hast been a generous giver;
I can give thee but a song.
Oft in sadness and in illness,
I have watched thy current glide,
Till the beauty of its stillness
Overflowed me, like a tide.
And in better hours and brighter,
When I saw thy waters gleam,
I have felt my heart beat lighter,
And leap onward with thy stream.
Not for this alone I love thee,
Nor because thy waves of blue
From celestial seas above thee
Take their own celestial hue.
Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee,
And thy waters disappear,
Friends I love have dwelt beside thee,
And have made thy margin dear.
More than this;—thy name reminds me
Of three friends, all true and tried;
And that name, like magic, binds me
Closer, closer to thy side.
Friends my soul with joy remembers!
How like quivering flames they start,
When I fan the living embers
On the hearthstone of my heart!
’Tis for this, thou Silent River!
That my spirit leans to thee;
Thou hast been a generous giver,
Take this idle song from me.
BLIND BARTIMEUS.
Blind Bartimeus at the gates
Of Jericho in darkness waits;
He hears the crowd;—he hears a breath
Say, “It is Christ of Nazareth!”
And calls in tones of agony,
=Ἰηδοῦ, ἐλέηδόν υε!=
The thronging multitudes increase;
Blind Bartimeus, hold thy peace!
But still, above the noisy crowd,
The beggar’s cry is shrill and loud;
Until they say, “He calleth thee!”
=Θάξσει, ἔλξιζαι, φωνεἶ σε!=
Then saith the Christ, as silent stands
The crowd, “What wilt thou at my hands?”
And he replies, “O give me light!
Rabbi, restore the blind man’s sight!”
And Jesus answers, “=Υπαγε=
=Ἠ πίστις σον σέσωκέ σε!=”
Ye that have eyes, yet cannot see,
In darkness and in misery,
Recall those mighty Voices Three,
=Ἰηδοῦ, ἐλέηδόν υε!=
=Θάξσει, ἔλξιζαι, Υπαγε!=
=Ἠ πίστις σον σέσωκέ σε!=”
THE GOBLET OF LIFE.
Filled is Life’s goblet to the brim;
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
And chant a melancholy hymn
With solemn voice and slow.
No purple flowers,—no garlands green,
Conceal the goblet’s shade or sheen,
Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene,
Like gleams of sunshine, flash between
Thick leaves of mistletoe.
This goblet, wrought with curious art,
Is filled with waters, that upstart,
When the deep fountains of the heart,
By strong convulsions rent apart,
Are running all to waste.
And as it mantling passes round,
With fennel is it wreathed and crowned,
Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned
Are in its waters steeped and drowned,
And give a bitter taste.
Above the lowly plants it towers,
The fennel, with its yellow flowers,
And in an earlier age than ours
Was gifted with the wondrous powers,
Lost vision to restore.
It gave new strength, and fearless mood;
And gladiators, fierce and rude,
Mingled it in their daily food;
And he who battled and subdued,
A wreath of fennel wore.
Then in Life’s goblet freely press
The leaves that give it bitterness,
Nor prize the coloured waters less,
For in thy darkness and distress
New light and strength they give!
And he who has not learned to know
How false its sparkling bubbles show,
How bitter are the drops of woe,
With which its brim may overflow,
He has not learned to live.
The prayer of Ajax was for light;
Through all that dark and desperate fight,
The blackness of that noonday night,
He asked but the return of sight,
To see his foeman’s face.
Let our unceasing, earnest prayer
Be, too, for light,—for strength to bear
Our portion of the weight of care,
That crushes into dumb despair
One half the human race.
O suffering, sad humanity!
O ye afflicted ones who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, and yet afraid to die,
Patient, though sorely tried!
I pledge you in this cup of grief,
Where floats the fennel’s bitter leaf,
The Battle of our Life is brief,
The alarm,—the struggle,—the relief,—
Then sleep we side by side.
THE SEA-DIVER.
My way is on the bright blue sea,
My sleep upon the rocky tide;
And many an eye has followed me,
Where billows clasp the worn sea-side.
My plumage bears the crimson blush,
When ocean by the sun is kissed!
When fades the evening’s purple flush,
My dark wing cleaves the silver mist.
Full many a fathom down beneath
The bright arch of the splendid deep,
My ear has heard the sea-shell breathe
O’er living myriads in their sleep.
They rested by the coral throne,
And by the pearly diadem,
Where the pale sea-grape had overgrown
The glorious dwelling made for them.
At night, upon my storm-drenched wing,
I poised above a helmless bark,
And soon I saw the shattered thing
Had passed away and left no mark.
And when the wind and storm had done,
A ship, that had rode out the gale,
Sunk down without a signal-gun,
And none was left to tell the tale.
I saw the pomp of day depart—
The cloud resign its golden crown,
When to the ocean’s beating heart
The sailor’s wasted corse went down.
Peace be to those whose graves are made
Beneath the bright and silver sea!
Peace that their relics there were laid,
With no vain pride and pageantry.
THE BELFRY OF BRUGES.
CARILLON. 1845.
In the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet’s rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes,
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
Then, with deep sonorous clangour
Calmly answering their sweet anger,
When the wrangling bells had ended,
Slowly struck the clock eleven,
And, from out the silent heaven,
Silence on the town descended.
Silence, silence everywhere,
On the earth and in the air,
Save that footsteps here and there
Of some burgher home returning,
By the street lamps faintly burning,
For a moment woke the echoes
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
But amid my broken slumbers
Still I heard those magic numbers,
As they loud proclaimed the flight
And stolen marches of the night;
Till their chimes in sweet collision
Mingled with each wandering vision,
Mingled with the fortune-telling
Gipsy-bands of dreams and fancies,
Which amid the waste expanses
Of the silent land of trances
Have their solitary dwelling.
All else seemed asleep in Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city.
And I thought how like these chimes
Are the poet’s airy rhymes,
All his rhymes and roundelays,
His conceits, and songs, and ditties,
From the belfry of his brain,
Scattered downward, though in vain,
On the roofs and stones of cities!
For by night the drowsy ear
Under its curtains cannot hear,
And by day men go their ways,
Hearing the music as they pass,
But deeming it no more, alas!
Than the hollow sound of brass.
Yet perchance a sleepless wight,
Lodging at some humble inn
In the narrow lanes of life,
When the dusk and hush of night
Shut out the incessant din
Of daylight and its toil and strife,
May listen with a calm delight
To the poet’s melodies,
Till he hears, or dreams he hears,
Intermingled with the song,
Thoughts that he has cherished long;
Hears amid the chime and singing
The bells of his own village ringing,
And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes
Wet with most delicious tears.
Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay
In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Blé,
Listening with a wild delight
To the chimes that, through the night,
Rang their changes from the Belfry
Of that quaint old Flemish city.
THE BELFRY OF BRUGES.
In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o’er the
town.
As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood,
And the world threw off the darkness, like the weeds of
widowhood.
Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and
vapours grey,
Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the
landscape lay.
At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys, here and
there,
Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like,
into air.
Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour,
But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower.
From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and
high,
And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than
the sky.
Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times,
With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy
chimes.
Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in
the choir;
And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a
friar.
Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain;
They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again;
All the Foresters of Flanders,[2]—mighty Baldwin Bras de
Fer,[3]
Lyderick du Bucq[4] and Cressy, Philip, Guy de Dampierre.[5]
I beheld the pageants splendid, that adorned those days of old;
Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the
Fleece of Gold;
Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.
I beheld proud Maximilian,[6] kneeling humbly on the ground;
I beheld the gentle Mary,[7] hunting with her hawk and hound;
And her lighted bridal chamber, where a duke slept with the
queen,
And the armèd guard around them, and the sword unsheathed
between.[8]
I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers bold,
Marching homeward from the bloody battle of the Spurs of
Gold;[9]
Saw the fight at Minnewater,[10] saw the White Hoods moving
West,
Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon’s
nest;[11]
And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote;
And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin’s throat;
Till the bell of Ghent responded o’er lagoon and dike of sand,
“I am Roland! I am Roland![12] there is victory in the land!”
Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city’s roar
Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once
more.
Hours had passed away like minutes; and, before I was aware,
Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square.
[2] The title of “Foresters of Flanders” was given by the French kings
to those governors whom they appointed.
[3] Who stole the daughter of Charles the Bald from the French court,
and married her at Bruges.
[4] Lyderick du Bucq was the first governor of Flanders in the reign of
Clotaire II.
[5] Succeeding Foresters who took the title of Count.
[6] Archduke of Austria.
[7] The daughter of Charles the Bold, who succeeded him as Duchess of
Burgundy and Countess of Flanders, 1471.
[8] See long notes in Appendix.
[9] Fought, 11th of July 1302, between the French and Flemings. The
flower of the French nobility perished in it; and it was named from the
number of golden spurs found on the field of battle. Seven hundred were
hung up in the church of Notre-Dame du Courtray.
[10] The battle at Minnewater was fought with the citizens of Ghent,
who wished to prevent the Flemings from opening a canal there. The
White Hoods were a military body of Ghent.
[11] The Golden Dragon was taken from Bruges to Antwerp by Philip
von Artevelot. It came originally from the Church of St. Sophia in
Constantinople.
[12] On the alarm-bell of Bruges is inscribed: “My name is Roland; when
I toll, there is fire; when I ring, there is victory in the land.”
MAIDENHOOD.
Maiden! with the meek, brown eyes,
In whose orbs a shadow lies,
Like the dusk in evening skies!
Thou whose locks outshine the sun,
Golden tresses, wreathed in one,
As the braided streamlets run!
Standing, with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet!
Gazing, with a timid glance,
On the brooklet’s swift advance,
On the river’s broad expanse!
Deep and still, that gliding stream
Beautiful to thee must seem,
As the river of a dream.
Then why pause with indecision,
When bright angels in thy vision
Beckon thee to fields Elysian?
Seest thou shadows sailing by,
As the dove, with startled eye,
Sees the falcon’s shadow fly?
Hearest thou voices on the shore,
That our ears perceive no more,
Deafened by the cataract’s roar?
O thou child of many prayers!
Life hath quicksands,—Life hath snares!
Care and age come unawares!
Like the swell of some sweet tune,
Morning rises into noon,
May glides onward into June.
Childhood is the bough, where slumbered
Birds and blossoms many-numbered;—
Age, that bough with snows encumbered.
Gather, then, each flower that grows,
When the young heart overflows,
To embalm that tent of snows.
Bear a lily in thy hand;
Gates of brass cannot withstand
One touch of that magic wand.
Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth,
In thy heart the dew of youth,
On thy lips the smile of truth.
O, that dew, like balm, shall steal
Into wounds, that cannot heal,
Even as sleep our eyes doth seal;
And that smile, like sunshine, dart
Into many a sunless heart,
For a smile of God thou art.
THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD.
This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.
Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal Miserere
Will mingle with their awful symphonies!
I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.
On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer,
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman’s song,
And loud, amid the universal clamour,
O’er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.
I hear the Florentine, who from his palace
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din,
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis
Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent’s skin;
The tumult of each sacked and burning village;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldier’s revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;
The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder,
The diapason of the cannonade.
Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursèd instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature’s sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies?
Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals nor forts:
The warrior’s name would be a name abhorrèd!
And every nation that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain!
Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter, and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,
I hear once more the voice of Christ say, “Peace!”
Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of War’s great organ shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise.
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE.
This is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been.
The Past and Present here unite
Beneath Time’s flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.
Here runs the highway to the town;
There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
O gentlest of my friends!
The shadow of the linden-trees
Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
A shadow, thou didst pass.
Thy dress was like the lilies,
And thy heart as pure as they:
One of God’s holy messengers
Did walk with me that day.
I saw the branches of the trees
Bend down thy touch to meet,
The clover-blossoms in the grass
Rise up to kiss thy feet.
“Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares,
Of earth and folly born!”
Solemnly sang the village choir
On that sweet Sabbath morn.
Through the closed blinds the golden sun
Poured in a dusty beam,
Like the celestial ladder seen
By Jacob in his dream.
And ever and anon the wind,
Sweet-scented with the hay,
Turned o’er the hymn-book’s fluttering leaves
That on the window lay.
Long was the good man’s sermon,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For he spake of Ruth the beautiful,
And still I thought of thee.
Long was the prayer he uttered,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For in my heart I prayed with him,
And still I thought of thee.
But now, alas! the place seems changed;
Thou art no longer here:
Part of the sunshine of the scene
With thee did disappear.
Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart,
Like pine-trees, dark and high,
Subdue the light of noon, and breathe
A low and ceaseless sigh;
This memory brightens o’er the past,
As when the sun, concealed
Behind some cloud that near us hangs,
Shines on a distant field.
NUREMBERG.
In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg the ancient
stands.
Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and
song,
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round
them throng:
Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold,
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old;
And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth
rhyme,
That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every
clime.[13]
In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band,
Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde’s hand;
On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days
Sat the poet Melchior[14] singing Kaiser Maximilian’s praise.
Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art:
Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common
mart;
And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in
stone,
By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own.
In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy
dust,[15]
And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their
trust;
In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture
rare,
Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted
air.
Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent
heart,
Lived and laboured Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art;
Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand,
Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.
_Emigravit_ is the inscription on the tombstone where he
lies;
Dead he is not,—but departed,—for the artist never dies.
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more
fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed
its air!
Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and
dismal lanes,
Walked of yore the Master-singers, chanting rude poetic
strains.
From remote and sunless suburbs, came they to the friendly
guild,
Building nests in Fame’s great temple, as in spouts the
swallows build.
As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme,
And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil’s chime;
Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy
bloom
In the forge’s dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.
Here Hans Sachs,[16] the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle
craft,
Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and
laughed.
But his house is now an alehouse, with a nicely sanded floor,
And a garland in the window, and his face above the door;
Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman’s song,[17]
As “the old man grey and dove-like,” with his great beard white
and long.
And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and
care,
Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master’s antique
chair.
Vanished is the ancient splendour, and before my dreamy eye
Wave these mingling shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry.
Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world’s
regard;
But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs, thy
cobbler-bard.
Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away,
As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his
careless lay:
Gathering from the pavement’s crevice, as a floweret of the
soil,
The nobility of labour,—the long pedigree of toil.
[13] An ancient proverb of the town ran thus:—
“Nürnberg’s Hand
Geht durch alle Land.”
Nuremberg’s hand
Goes through every land.
[14] Melchior Pfinzing, one of the celebrated German poets of the
sixteenth century. The hero of his _Tenerdank_ was the reigning Emperor
Maximilian (Mary of Burgundy’s former husband); the poem was to the
Germans of that age what the _Orlando Furioso_ was to the Italians.
[15] The tomb of St. Sebald in this church is one of the richest works
of art in Nuremberg. It was cast in bronze by Peter Vischer and his
sons, who laboured on it for thirteen years. It is adorned with nearly
a hundred figures, among which are the Twelve Apostles.
[16] He flourished in the sixteenth century, and left behind him 208
plays, 1700 comic tales, and four or five thousand lyric poems. The
Twelve Wise Masters was the title of the original corporation of the
Master-singers. Hans Sachs, the cobbler of Nuremberg, though not one
of the original Twelve, was the most renowned of the Master-singers,
as well as the most voluminous. He left thirty-four folio volumes of
manuscript containing the above number of plays, tales, and lyric
poetry.
[17] Adam Puschman, in his poem on the death of Hans Sachs, describes
him as he appeared in a vision:—
“An old man,
Grey and white, and dove-like,
Who had, in sooth, a great beard;
And read in a fair great book,
Beautiful with golden clasps.”
THE INDIAN HUNTER.
When the summer harvest was gathered in,
And the sheaf of the gleaner grew white and thin,
And the ploughshare was in its furrow left,
Where the stubble land had been lately cleft,
An Indian hunter, with unstrung bow,
Looked down where the valley lay stretched below.
He was a stranger there, and that day
Had been out on the hills, a perilous way,
But the foot of the deer was far and fleet,
And the wolf kept aloof from the hunter’s feet,
And bitter feelings passed o’er him then,
As he stood by the populous haunts of men.
The winds of autumn came over the woods,
As the sun stole out from their solitudes;
The moss was white on the maple’s trunk,
And dead from its arms the pale vine shrunk,
And ripened the mellow fruit hung, and red
Where the trees’ withered leaves around it shed.
The foot of the reaper moved slow on the lawn,
And the sickle cut down the yellow corn;
The mower sang loud by the meadow side,
Where the mists of evening were spreading wide;
And the voice of the herdsman came up the lea,
And the dance went round by the greenwood tree.
Then the hunter turned away from that scene,
Where the home of his fathers once had been,
And heard, by the distant and measured stroke,
That the woodman hewed down the giant oak—
And burning thoughts flashed over his mind,
Of the white man’s faith, and love unkind.
The moon of the harvest grew high and bright,
As her golden horn pierced the cloud of white,—
A footstep was heard in the rustling brake,
Where the beech overshadowed the misty lake,
A mourning voice, and a plunge from shore,
And the hunter was seen on the hills no more.
When years had passed on, by that still lake side,
The fisher looked down through the silver tide,
And there, on the smooth yellow sand displayed,
A skeleton wasted and white was laid,
And ’twas seen, as the waters moved deep and slow,
That the hand was still grasping a hunter’s bow.
THE NORMAN BARON.
[Dans les moments de la vie où la réflexion devient plus
calme et plus profonde, où l’intérêt et l’avarice parlent
moins haut que la raison, dans les instants de chagrin
domestique, de maladie, et de péril de mort, les nobles se
repentirent de posséder des serfs, comme d’une chose peu
agréable à Dieu, qui avait créé tous les hommes à son image.]
THIERRY, _Conquête de l’Angleterre_.
In his chamber, weak and dying,
Was the Norman baron lying;
Loud, without, the tempest thundered,
And the castle-turret shook.
In this fight was Death the gainer,
Spite of vassal and retainer,
And the lands his sires had plundered,
Written in the Doomsday Book.
By his bed a monk was seated,
Who in a humble voice repeated
Many a prayer and pater-noster,
From the missal on his knee;
And, amid the tempest pealing,
Sounds of bells came faintly stealing,
Bells that, from the neighbouring kloster,
Rang for the Nativity.
In the hall, the serf and vassal
Held, that night, their Christmas wassail;
Many a carol, old and saintly,
Sang the minstrels and the waits.
And so loud these Saxon gleemen
Sang to slaves the songs of freemen,
That the storm was heard but faintly,
Knocking at the castle-gates.
Till at length the lays they chanted
Reached the chamber terror-haunted,
Where the monk, with accents holy,
Whispered at the baron’s ear.
Tears upon his eyelids glistened,
As he paused awhile and listened,
And the dying baron slowly
Turned his weary head to hear.
“Wassail for the kingly stranger
Born and cradled in a manger!
King, like David, priest, like Aaron,
Christ is born to set us free!”
And the lightning showed the sainted
Figures on the casement painted,
And exclaimed the shuddering baron,
“Miserere, Domine!”
In that hour of deep contrition,
He beheld, with clearer vision,
Through all outward show and fashion,
Justice, the Avenger, rise.
All the pomp of earth had vanished,
Falsehood and deceit were banished,
Reason spake more loud than passion,
And the truth wore no disguise.
Every vassal of his banner,
Every serf born to his manor,
All those wronged and wretched creatures,
By his hand were freed again.
And, as on the sacred missal
He recorded their dismissal,
Death relaxed his iron features,
And the monk replied, “Amen!”
Many centuries have been numbered
Since in death the baron slumbered
By the convent’s sculptured portal,
Mingling with the common dust:
But the good deed, through the ages
Living in historic pages,
Brighter grows and gleams immortal,
Unconsumed by moth or rust.
TO A CHILD.
Dear child! how radiant on thy mother’s knee,
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Thou gazest at the painted tiles,
Whose figures grace,
With many a grotesque form and face,
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the brave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o’er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.
With what a look of proud command
Thou shakest in thy little hand
The coral rattle with its silver bells,
Making a merry tune!
Thousands of years in Indian seas
That coral grew, by slow degrees,
Until some deadly and wild monsoon
Dashed it on Coromandel’s sand!
Those silver bells
Reposed of yore,
As shapeless ore,
Far down in the deep sunken wells
Of darksome mines,
In some obscure and sunless place,
Beneath huge Chimborazo’s base,
Or Potosí’s o’erhanging pines!
And thus for thee, O little child,
Through many a danger and escape,
The tall ships passed the stormy cape;
For thee in foreign lands remote,
Beneath the burning, tropic clime,
The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat,
Himself as swift and wild,
In falling, clutched the frail arbute,
The fibres of whose shallow root,
Uplifted from the soil, betrayed
The silver veins beneath it laid,
The buried treasures of the miser, Time.
But, lo! thy door is left ajar!
Thou hearest footsteps from afar!
And, at the sound,
Thou turnest round
With quick and questioning eyes,
Like one who, in a foreign land,
Beholds on every hand
Some source of wonder and surprise!
And, restlessly, impatiently,
Thou strivest, strugglest, to be free.
The four walls of thy nursery
Are now like prison walls to thee.
No more thy mother’s smiles,
No more the painted tiles,
Delight thee, nor the playthings on the floor
That won thy little, beating heart before;
Thou strugglest for the open door.
Through these once solitary halls
Thy pattering footstep falls.
The sound of thy merry voice
Makes the old walls
Jubilant, and they rejoice
With the joy of thy young heart,
O’er the light of whose gladness
No shadows of sadness
From the sombre background of memory start.
Once, ah, once, within these walls,
One whom memory oft recalls,
The Father of his Country, dwelt.
And yonder meadows broad and damp
The fires of the besieging camp
Encircled with a burning belt.
Up and down these echoing stairs,
Heavy with the weight of cares,
Sounded his majestic tread;
Yes, within this very room
Sat he in those hours of gloom,
Weary both in heart and head.
But what are these grave thoughts to thee?
Out, out! into the open air!
Thy only dream is liberty,
Thou carest little how or where.
I see thee eager at thy play,
Now shouting to the apples on the tree,
With cheeks as round and red as they;
And now among the yellow stalks,
Among the flowering shrubs and plants,
As restless as the bee.
Along the garden walks,
The tracks of thy small carriage-wheels I trace;
And see at every turn how they efface
Whole villages of sand-roofed tents,
That rise like golden domes
Above the cavernous and secret homes
Of wandering and nomadic tribes of ants.
Ah, cruel little Tamerlane,
Who, with thy dreadful reign,
Dost persecute and overwhelm
These hapless Troglodytes of thy realm!
What! tired already! with those suppliant looks,
And voice more beautiful than a poet’s books,
Or murmuring sound of water as it flows,
Thou comest back to parley with repose!
This rustic seat in the old apple-tree,
With its o’erhanging golden canopy
Of leaves illuminate with autumnal hues,
And shining with the argent light of dews,
Shall for a season be our place of rest.
Beneath us, like an oriole’s pendent nest,
From which the laughing birds have taken wing,
By thee abandoned, hangs thy vacant swing.
Dreamlike the waters of the river gleam;
A sailless vessel drops adown the stream,
And like it, to a sea as wide and deep,
Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.
O child! O new-born denizen
Of life’s great city! on thy head
The glory of the morn is shed,
Like a celestial benison!
Here at the portal thou dost stand,
And with thy little hand
Thou openest the mysterious gate
Into the future’s undiscovered land,
I see its valves expand,
As at the touch of Fate!
Into those realms of love and hate,
Into that darkness blank and drear,
By some prophetic feeling taught,
I launch the bold, adventurous thought,
Freighted with hope and fear;
As upon subterranean streams,
In caverns unexplored and dark,
Men sometimes launch a fragile bark,
Laden with flickering fire,
And watch its swift-receding beams,
Until at length they disappear,
And in the distant dark expire.
By what astrology of fear or hope
Dare I to cast thy horoscope!
Like the new moon thy life appears;
A little strip of silver light,
And widening outward into night
The shadowy disk of future years;
And yet upon its outer rim,
A luminous circle, faint and dim,
And scarcely visible to us here,
Rounds and completes the perfect sphere;
A prophecy and intimation,
A pale and feeble adumbration,
Of the great world of light, that lies
Behind all human destinies.
Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught,
Should be to wet the dusty soil
With the hot tears and sweat of toil,—
To struggle with imperious thought,
Until the overburdened brain,
Weary with labour, faint with pain,
Like a jarred pendulum, retain
Only its motion, not its power,—
Remember, in that perilous hour,
When most afflicted and oppressed,
From labour there shall come forth rest.
And if a more auspicious fate
On thy advancing steps await,
Still let it ever be thy pride
To linger by the labourer’s side;
With words of sympathy or song
To cheer the dreary march along
Of the great army of the poor,
O’er desert sand, o’er dangerous moor.
Nor to thyself the task shall be
Without reward; for thou shalt learn
The wisdom early to discern
True beauty in utility;
As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith’s door,
And hearing the hammers, as they smote
The anvils with a different note,
Stole from the varying tones, that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,
The secret of the sounding wire,
And formed the seven-chorded lyre.
Enough! I will not play the Seer;
I will no longer strive to ope
The mystic volume, where appear
The herald Hope, forerunning Fear,
And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope.
Thy destiny remains untold;
For, like Acestes’ shaft of old,
The swift thought kindles as it flies,
And burns to ashes in the skies.
THE OCCULTATION OF ORION.
I saw, as in a dream sublime,
The balance in the hand of Time.
O’er East and West its beam impended;
And day, with all its hours of light,
Was slowly sinking out of sight,
While, opposite, the scale of night
Silently with the stars ascended.
Like the astrologers of eld,
In that bright vision I beheld
Greater and deeper mysteries.
I saw, with its celestial keys,
Its chords of air, its frets of fire,
The Samian’s great Æolian lyre,
Rising through all its sevenfold bars,
From earth unto the fixèd stars.
And through the dewy atmosphere,
Not only could I see, but hear,
Its wondrous and harmonious strings,
Its sweet vibration, sphere by sphere,
From Dian’s circle light and near,
Onward to vaster and wider rings,
Where, chanting through his beard of snows,
Majestic, mournful, Saturn goes,
And down the sunless realms of space
Reverberates the thunder of his bass.
Beneath the sky’s triumphal arch
This music sounded like a march,
And with its chorus seemed to be
Preluding some great tragedy.
Sirius was rising in the east;
And, slow ascending one by one,
The kindling constellations shone.
Begirt with many a blazing star,
Stood the great giant Algebar,
Orion, hunter of the beast!
His sword hung gleaming by his side.
And, on his arm, the lion’s hide
Scattered across the midnight air
The golden radiance of its hair.
The moon was pallid, but not faint,
And beautiful as some fair saint,
Serenely moving on her way
In hours of trial and dismay.
As if she heard the voice of God,
Unharmed with naked feet she trod
Upon the hot and burning stars,
As on the glowing coals and bars
That were to prove her strength, and try
Her holiness and her purity.
Thus moving on, with silent pace,
And triumph in her sweet, pale face,
She reached the station of Orion.
Aghast he stood in strange alarm!
And suddenly from his outstretched arm
Down fell the red skin of the lion
Into the river at his feet.
His mighty club no longer beat
The forehead of the bull; but he
Reeled as of yore beside the sea,
When, blinded by Œnopion,
He sought the blacksmith at his forge,
And, climbing up the mountain gorge,
Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun.
Then, through the silence overhead,
An angel with a trumpet said,
“For evermore, for evermore,
The reign of violence is o’er!”
And like an instrument that flings
Its music on another’s strings,
The trumpet of the angel cast
Upon the heavenly lyre its blast,
And on from sphere to sphere the words
Re-echoed down the burning chords,—
“For evermore, for evermore,
The reign of violence is o’er!”
RAIN IN SUMMER.
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.
From the neighbouring school
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise
And commotion;
And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Engulfs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.
In the country, on every side
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard’s tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!
In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
And the vapours that arise
From the well-watered and smoking soil.
For this rest in the furrow after toil
Their large and lustrous eyes
Seem to thank the Lord,
More than man’s spoken word.
Near at hand,
From under the sheltering trees,
The farmer sees
His pastures, and his fields of grain,
As they bend their tops
To the numberless beating drops
Of the incessant rain.
He counts it as no sin
That he sees therein
Only his own thrift and gain.
These, and far more than these,
The Poet sees!
He can behold
Aquarius old
Walking the fenceless fields of air,
And from each ample fold
Of the clouds about him rolled
Scattering everywhere
The showery rain,
As the farmer scatters his grain.
He can behold
Things manifold
That have not yet been wholly told,
Have not been wholly sung or said.
For his thought, that never stops,
Follows the water-drops
Down to the graves of the dead,
Down through chasms and gulfs profound,
To the dreary fountain-head
Of lakes and rivers underground;
And sees them, when the rain is done,
On the bridge of colours seven
Climbing up once more to heaven,
Opposite the setting sun.
Thus the Seer,
With vision clear,
Sees forms appear and disappear,
In the perpetual round of strange,
Mysterious change
From birth to death, from death to birth,
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth;
Till glimpses more sublime
Of things, unseen before,
Unto his wondering eyes reveal
The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel
Turning for evermore
In the rapid and rushing river of Time.
THE BRIDGE.
I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o’er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.
I saw her bright reflection
In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet falling
And sinking into the sea.
And far in the hazy distance
Of that lovely night in June,
The blaze of the flaming furnace
Gleamed redder than the moon.
Among the long, black rafters
The wavering shadows lay,
And the current that came from the ocean
Seemed to lift and bear them away;
As, sweeping and eddying through them,
Rose the belated tide,
And, streaming into the moonlight,
The sea-weed floated wide.
And like those waters rushing
Among the wooden piers,
A flood of thoughts came o’er me
That filled my eyes with tears.
How often, oh, how often,
In the days that had gone by,
I had stood on that bridge at midnight,
And gazed on that wave and sky!
How often, oh, how often,
I had wished that the ebbing tide
Would bear me away on its bosom
O’er the ocean wild and wide!
For my heart was hot and restless,
And my life was full of care,
And the burden laid upon me
Seemed greater than I could bear.
But now it has fallen from me,
It is buried in the sea;
And only the sorrow of others
Throws its shadow over me.
Yet whenever I cross the river,
On its bridge with wooden piers,
Like the odour of brine from the ocean
Comes the thought of other years.
And I think how many thousands
Of care-encumbered men,
Each bearing his burden of sorrow,
Have crossed the bridge since then!
I see the long procession
Still passing to and fro,
The young heart hot and restless,
And the old subdued and slow.
And for ever and for ever,
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes;
The moon and its broken reflection
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.
EXCELSIOR.
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ’mid snow and ice,
A banner, with the strange device,
Excelsior!
His brow was sad; his eye beneath
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!
In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!
“Try not the Pass!” the old man said;
“Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!”
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!
“O stay,” the maiden said, “and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!”
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!
“Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!”
This was the peasant’s last Good-night,
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!
At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!
A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
There in the twilight cold and grey,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!
TO THE DRIVING CLOUD.
Gloomy and dark art thou, O chief of the mighty Omahas;
Gloomy and dark, as the driving cloud, whose name thou hast
taken!
Wrapt in thy scarlet blanket, I see thee stalk through the
city’s
Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers
Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their
footprints.
What, in a few short years, will remain of thy race but the
footprints?
How canst thou walk these streets, who hast trod the green turf
of the prairies?
How canst thou breathe this air, who hast breathed the sweet
air of the mountains?
Ah! ’tis in vain that with lordly looks of disdain thou dost
challenge
Looks of disdain in return, and question these walls and these
pavements,
Claiming the soil for thy hunting-grounds, while down-trodden
millions
Starve in the garrets of Europe, and cry from its caverns that
they, too,
Have been created heirs of the earth, and claim its division!
Back, then, back to thy woods in the regions west of the Wabash!
There as a monarch thou reignest. In autumn the leaves of the
maple
Pave the floors of thy palace-halls with gold, and in summer
Pine-trees waft through its chambers the odorous breath of
their branches.
There thou art strong and great, a hero, a tamer of horses!
There thou chasest the stately stag on the banks of the
Elk-horn,
Or by the roar of the Running-Water, or where the Omawhaw
Calls thee, and leaps through the wild ravine like a brave of
the Blackfeet!
Hark! what murmurs arise from the heart of those mountainous
deserts?
Is it the cry of the Foxes and Crows, or the mighty Behemoth,
Who, unharmed, on his tusks once caught the bolts of the
thunder,
And now lurks in his lair to destroy the race of the red man?
Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the Crows and the
Foxes,
Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the tread of Behemoth,
Lo! the big thunder-canoe, that steadily breasts the Missouri’s
Merciless current! and yonder, afar on the prairies, the
camp-fires
Gleam through the night; and the cloud of dust in the grey of
the daybreak
Marks not the buffalo’s track, nor the Mandan’s dexterous
horse-race;
It is a caravan, whitening the desert where dwell the Camanches!
Ha! how the breath of these Saxons and Celts, like the blast of
the east-wind,
Drifts evermore to the west the scanty smokes of thy wigwams!
CURFEW.
I.
Solemnly, mournfully,
Dealing its dole,
The Curfew Bell
Is beginning to toll.
Cover the embers,
And put out the light;
Toil comes with the morning,
And rest with the night.
Dark grow the windows,
And quenched is the fire,
Sound fades into silence,—
All footsteps retire.
No voice in the chambers,
No sound in the hall!
Sleep and oblivion
Reign over all.
II.
The book is completed,
And closed, like the day;
And the hand that has written it
Lays it away.
Dim grow its fancies,
Forgotten they lie;
Like coals in the ashes,
They darken and die.
Song sinks into silence,
The story is told,
The windows are darkened,
The hearthstone is cold.
Darker and darker
The black shadows fall;
Sleep and oblivion
Reign over all.
_Songs._
TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-BOOK.
Welcome, my old friend,
Welcome to a foreign fireside,
While the sullen gales of autumn
Shake the windows.
The ungrateful world
Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee,
Since, beneath the skies of Denmark,
First I met thee.
There are marks of age,
There are thumb-marks on thy margin,
Made by hands that clasped thee rudely
At the alehouse.
Soiled and dull thou art;
Yellow are thy time-worn pages,
As the russet, rain-molested
Leaves of autumn.
Thou art stained with wine
Scattered from hilarious goblets,
As the leaves with the libations
Of Olympus.
Yet dost thou recall
Days departed, half-forgotten,
When in dreamy youth I wandered
By the Baltic,—
When I paused to hear
The old ballad of King Christian
Shouted from suburban taverns
In the twilight.
Thou recallest bards,
Who, in solitary chambers,
And with hearts by passion wasted,
Wrote thy pages.
Thou recallest homes
Where thy songs of love and friendship
Made the gloomy Northern winter
Bright as summer.
Once some ancient Scald,
In his bleak, ancestral Iceland,
Chanted staves of these old ballads
To the Vikings.
Once in Elsinore,
At the court of old King Hamlet,
Yorick and his boon companions
Sang these ditties.
Once Prince Frederick’s Guard
Sang them in their smoky barracks;—
Suddenly the English cannon
Joined the chorus!
Peasants in the field,
Sailors on the roaring ocean,
Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics,
All have sung them.
Thou hast been their friend;
They, alas, have left thee friendless;
Yet at least by one warm fireside
Art thou welcome.
And, as swallows build
In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys,
So thy twittering songs shall nestle
In my bosom,—
Quiet, close, and warm,
Sheltered from all molestation,
And recalling by their voices
Youth and travel.
THE ARROW AND THE SONG.
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID.[18]
Vogelweid the Minnesinger,
When he left this world of ours,
Laid his body in the cloister,
Under Würtzburg’s minster towers.
And he gave the monks his treasures,
Gave them all with this behest:
They should feed the birds at noontide
Daily on his place of rest;
Saying, “From these wandering minstrels
I have learned the art of song;
Let me now repay the lessons
They have taught so well and long.”
Thus the bard of love departed;
And, fulfilling his desire,
On his tomb the birds were feasted
By the children of the choir.
Day by day, o’er tower and turret,
In foul weather and in fair,
Day by day, in vaster numbers,
Flocked the poets of the air.
On the tree whose heavy branches
Overshadowed all the place,
On the pavement, on the tombstone,
On the poet’s sculptured face,
On the cross-bars of each window,
On the lintel of each door,
They renewed the War of Wartburg,
Which the bard had fought before.
There they sang their merry carols,
Sang their lauds on every side;
And the name their voices uttered
Was the name of Vogelweid.
Till at length the portly abbot
Murmured, “Why this waste of food?
Be it changed to loaves henceforward
For our fasting brotherhood.”
Then in vain o’er tower and turret,
From the walls and woodland nests,
When the minster bell rang noontide,
Gathered the unwelcome guests.
Then in vain, with cries discordant,
Clamorous round the Gothic spire,
Screamed the feathered Minnesingers
For the children of the choir.
Time has long effaced the inscriptions
On the cloister’s funeral stones,
And tradition only tells us
Where repose the poet’s bones.
But around the vast cathedral,
By sweet echoes multiplied,
Still the birds repeat the legend,
And the name of Vogelweid.
[18] Walter von der Vogelweid, or Bird-Meadow, was one of the principal
Minnesingers of the thirteenth century. He triumphed over Heinrich
von Ofterdingen in that poetic contest at Wartburg Castle, known in
literary history as the “War of Wartburg.”
THE DAY IS DONE.
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me,
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life’s endless toil and endeavour;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who, through long days of labour,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
SEA-WEED.
When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks:
From Bermuda’s reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,
In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing
Surges of San Salvador;
From the tumbling surf, that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting
On the desolate, rainy seas;—
Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main;
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.
So when storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean
Of the poet’s soul, ere long
From each cave and rocky fastness,
In its vastness,
Floats some fragment of a song:
From the far-off isles enchanted,
Heaven has planted
With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams Elysian
In the tropic clime of Youth;
From the strong Will and the Endeavour
That for ever
Wrestle with the tides of Fate;
From the wreck of Hopes far scattered,
Tempest-shattered,
Floating waste and desolate;—
Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart.
DRINKING SONG.
INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER.
Come, old friend! sit down and listen!
From the pitcher placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!
Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,
Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.
Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,
And possessing youth eternal.
Round about him, fair Bacchantes,
Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses,
Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante’s
Vineyards, sing delirious verses.
Thus he won, through all the nations,
Bloodless victories, and the farmer
Bore, as trophies and oblations,
Vines for banners, ploughs for armour.
Judged by no o’er-zealous rigour,
Much this mystic throng expresses:
Bacchus was the type of vigour,
And Silenus of excesses.
These are ancient ethnic revels,
Of a faith long since forsaken;
Now the Satyrs, changed to devils,
Frighten mortals wine-o’ertaken.
Now to rivulets from the mountains
Point the rods of fortune-tellers;
Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,—
Not in flasks, and casks and cellars.
Claudius, though he sang of flagons
And huge tankards filled with Rhenish,
From that fiery blood of dragons
Never would his own replenish.
Even Redi, though he chanted
Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys,
Never drank the wine he vaunted
In his dithyrambic sallies.
Then with water fill the pitcher
Wreathed about with classic fables;
Ne’er Falernian threw a richer
Light upon Lucullus’ tables.
Come, old friend, sit down and listen!
As it passes thus between us,
How its wavelets laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!
THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.
[L’éternité est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse
ces deux mots seulement, dans le silence des tombeaux: “Toujours!
jamais! Jamais! toujours!”—JACQUES BRIDAINE.]
Somewhat back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat;
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar trees their shadows throw,
And from its station in the hall
An ancient timepiece says to all,
“For ever—never!
Never—for ever!”
Half-way up the stairs it stands,
And points and beckons with its hands
From its case of massive oak,
Like a monk, who, under his cloak,
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!
With sorrowful voice to all who pass,—
“For ever—never!
Never—for ever!”
By day its voice is low and light;
But in the silent dead of night,
Distinct as a passing footstep’s fall,
It echoes along the vacant hall,
Along the ceiling, along the floor,
And seems to say at each chamber-door,—
“For ever—never!
Never—for ever!”
Through days of sorrow and of mirth,
Through days of death and days of birth,
Through every swift vicissitude
Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood,
And as if, like God, it all things saw,
It calmly repeats those words of awe,—
“For ever—never!
Never—for ever!”
In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality;
His great fires up the chimney roared;
The stranger feasted at his board;
But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased,—
“For ever—never!
Never—for ever!”
There groups of merry children played,
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;
O precious hours! O golden prime,
And affluence of love and time!
Even as a miser counts his gold,
Those hours the ancient timepiece told,—
“For ever—never!
Never—for ever!”
From that chamber, clothed in white,
The bride came forth on her wedding night:
There, in that silent room below,
The dead lay in his shroud of snow;
And in the hush that followed the prayer,
Was heard the old clock on the stair,—
“For ever—never!
Never—for ever!”
All are scattered now and fled,
Some are married, some are dead;
And when I ask, with throbs of pain,
“Ah! when shall they all meet again?”
As in the days long since gone by,
The ancient timepiece makes reply,—
“For ever—never!
Never—for ever!”
Never here, for ever there,
Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death and time shall disappear,—
For ever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,—
“For ever—never!
Never—for ever!”
AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY.
The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.
Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.
The snow recommences;
The buried fences
Mark no longer
The road o’er the plain;
While through the meadows,
Like fearful shadows,
Slowly passes
A funeral train.
The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds
To the dismal knell;
Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.
The Spanish Student.
1843.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
VICTORIAN } _Students of Alcalá_.
HYPOLITO }
THE COUNT OF LARA } _Gentlemen of Madrid_.
DON CARLOS }
THE ARCHBISHOP OF TOLEDO.
A CARDINAL.
BELTRAN CRUZADO _Count of the Gipsies_.
BARTOLOMÉ ROMAN _A young Gipsy_.
THE PADRE CURA OF GUADARRAMA.
PEDRO CRESPO _Alcalde_.
PANCHO _Alguacil_.
FRANCISCO _Lara’s Servant_.
CHISPA _Victorian’s Servant_.
BALTASAR _Innkeeper_.
PRECIOSA _A Gipsy Girl_.
ANGELICA _A poor Girl_.
MARTINA _The Padre Cura’s Niece_.
DOLORES _Preciosa’s Maid_.
_Gipsies, Musicians, etc._
ACT I.
SCENE I.—_The_ COUNT OF LARA’S _Chambers. Night. The_ COUNT _in his
dressing-gown, smoking and conversing with_ DON CARLOS.
_Lara._ You were not at the play to night, Don Carlos;
How happened it?
_Carlos._ I had engagements elsewhere.
Pray who was there?
_Lara._ Why, all the town and court.
The house was crowded; and the busy fans
Among the gaily dressed and perfumed ladies
Fluttered like butterflies among the flowers.
There was the Countess of Medina Celi;
The Goblin Lady with her Phantom Lover,
Her Lindo Don Diego; Doña Sol,
And Doña Serafina, and her cousins.
_Carlos._ What was the play?
_Lara._ It was a dull affair;
One of those comedies in which you see,
As Lope says, the history of the world
Brought down from Genesis to the Day of Judgment.
There were three duels fought in the first act,
Three gentlemen receiving deadly wounds,
Laying their hands upon their hearts, and saying,
“O, I am dead!” a lover in a closet,
An old hidalgo, and a gay Don Juan,
A Doña Inez with a black mantilla,
Followed at twilight by an unknown lover,
Who looks intently where he knows she is not!
_Carlos._ Of course, the Preciosa danced to-night?
_Lara._ And never better. Every footstep fell
As lightly as a sunbeam on the water.
I think the girl extremely beautiful.
_Carlos._ Almost beyond the privilege of woman!
I saw her in the Prado yesterday.
Her step was royal—queen-like—and her face
As beautiful as a saint’s in Paradise.
_Lara._ May not a saint fall from her Paradise,
And be no more a saint?
_Carlos._ Why do you ask?
_Lara._ Because I have heard it said this angel fell,
And, though she is a virgin outwardly,
Within she is a sinner; like those panels
Of doors and altar-pieces the old monks
Painted in convents, with the Virgin Mary
On the outside, and on the inside Venus!
_Carlos._ You do her wrong; indeed, you do her wrong!
She is as virtuous as she is fair.
_Lara._ How credulous you are! Why, look you, friend,
There’s not a virtuous woman in Madrid,
In this whole city! And would you persuade me
That a mere dancing-girl, who shows herself
Nightly, half-naked, on the stage, for money,
And with voluptuous motions fires the blood
Of inconsiderate youth, is to be held
A model for her virtue.
_Carlos._ You forget
She is a Gipsy girl.
_Lara._ And therefore won
The easier.
_Carlos._ Nay, not to be won at all!
The only virtue that a Gipsy prizes
Is chastity. This is her only virtue.
Dearer than life she holds it. I remember
A Gipsy woman, a vile, shameless bawd,
Whose craft was to betray the young and fair;
And yet this woman was above all bribes.
And when a noble lord, touched by her beauty,
The wild and wizard beauty of her race,
Offered her gold to be what she made others,
She turned upon him, with a look of scorn,
And smote him in the face!
_Lara._ And does that prove
That Preciosa is above suspicion?
_Carlos._ It proves a nobleman may be repulsed
When he thinks conquest easy. I believe
That woman, in her deepest degradation,
Holds something sacred, something undefiled,
Some pledge and keepsake of her higher nature,
And, like the diamond in the dark, retains
Some quenchless gleam of the celestial light!
_Lara._ Yet Preciosa would have taken the gold.
_Carlos_ [_rising_]. I do not think so.
_Lara._ I am sure of it.
But why this haste? Stay yet a little longer,
And fight the battles of your Dulcinea.
_Carlos._ ’Tis late. I must begone, for if I stay
You will not be persuaded.
_Lara._ Yes; persuade me.
_Carlos._ No one so deaf as he who will not hear!
_Lara._ No one so blind as he who will not see!
_Carlos._ And so good night. I wish you pleasant dreams,
And greater faith in woman. [_Exit._
_Lara._ Greater faith!
I have the greatest faith; for I believe
Victorian is her lover. I believe
That I shall be to-morrow; and thereafter
Another, and another, and another,
Chasing each other through her zodiac,
As Taurus chases Aries.
[_Enter_ FRANCISCO _with a casket_.]
Well, Francisco,
What speed with Preciosa?
_Fran._ None, my lord.
She sends your jewels back, and bids me tell you
She is not to be purchased by your gold.
_Lara._ Then I will try some other way to win her.
Pray, dost thou know Victorian?
_Fran._ Yes, my lord,
I saw him at the jeweller’s to-day.
_Lara._ What was he doing there?
_Fran._ I saw him buy
A golden ring that had a ruby in it.
_Lara._ Was there another like it?
_Fran._ One so like it
I could not choose between them.
_Lara._ It is well.
To-morrow morning bring that ring to me.
Do not forget. Now light me to my bed. [_Exeunt._
SCENE II.—_A street in Madrid. Enter_ CHISPA, _followed by musicians,
with a bagpipe, guitars, and other instruments_.
_Chis._ Abernuncio Satanas! and a plague on all lovers who ramble about
at night, drinking the elements, instead of sleeping quietly in their
beds. Every dead man to his cemetery, say I; and every friar to his
monastery. Now, here’s my master, Victorian, yesterday a cowkeeper,
and to-day a gentleman; yesterday a student, and to-day a lover; and
I must be up later than the nightingale, for as the abbot sings so
must the sacristan respond. God grant he may soon be married, for then
shall all this serenading cease. Ay, marry! marry! marry! Mother, what
does marry mean? It means to spin, to bear children, and to weep,
my daughter! And, of a truth, there is something more in matrimony
than the wedding-ring. [_To the musicians._] And now, gentlemen, Pax
vobiscum! as the ass said to the cabbages. Pray, walk this way; and
don’t hang down your heads. It is no disgrace to have an old father and
a ragged shirt. Now, look you, you are gentlemen who lead the life of
crickets; you enjoy hunger by day and noise by night. Yet, I beseech
you, for this once be not loud, but pathetic; for it is a serenade to
a damsel in bed, and not to the Man in the Moon. Your object is not to
arouse and terrify, but to soothe and bring lulling dreams. Therefore,
each shall not play upon his instrument as if it were the only one in
the universe, but gently, and with a certain modesty, according with
the others. Pray, how may I call thy name, friend?
_First Mus._ Gerónimo Gil, at your service.
_Chis._ Every tub smells of the wine that is in it. Pray, Gerónimo, is
not Saturday an unpleasant day with thee?
_First Mus._ Why so?
_Chis._ Because I have heard it said that Saturday is an unpleasant day
with those who have but one shirt. Moreover, I have seen thee at the
tavern, and if thou canst run as fast as thou canst drink, I should
like to hunt hares with thee. What instrument is that?
_First Mus._ An Aragonese bagpipe.
_Chis._ Pray, art thou related to the bagpiper of Bujalance, who asked
a maravedi for playing, and ten for leaving off?
_First Mus._ No, your honour.
_Chis._ I am glad of it. What other instruments have we?
_Second and Third Mus._ We play the bandurria.
_Chis._ A pleasing instrument. Art thou?
_Fourth Mus._ The fife.
_Chis._ I like it; it has a cheerful, soul-stirring sound, that soars
up to my lady’s window like the song of a swallow. And you others?
_Other Mus._ We are the singers, please your honour.
_Chis._ You are too many. Do you think we are going to sing mass in the
cathedral of Córdova? Four men can make but little use of one shoe, and
I see not how you can all sing in one song. But follow me along the
garden wall. That is the way my master climbs to the lady’s window. It
is by the Vicar’s skirts that the devil climbs into the belfry. Come,
follow me, and make no noise. [_Exeunt._
SCENE III.—PRECIOSA’S _Chamber. She stands at the open window._
_Pre._ How slowly through the lilac-scented air
Descends the tranquil moon! Like thistle-down
The vapoury clouds float in the peaceful sky;
And sweetly from yon hollow vaults of shade
The nightingales breathe out their souls in song.
And hark! what songs of love, what soul-like sounds,
Answer them from below!
SERENADE.
Stars of the summer night!
Far in yon azure deeps,
Hide, hide your golden light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!
Moon of the summer night!
Far down yon western steeps,
Sink, sink in silver light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!
Wind of the summer night!
Where yonder woodbine creeps,
Fold, fold thy pinions light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!
Dreams of the summer night!
Tell her, her lover keeps
Watch! while in slumbers light
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!
[_Enter_ VICTORIAN _by the balcony_.]
_Vict._ Poor little dove! Thou tremblest like a leaf!
_Pre._ I am so frightened! ’Tis for thee I tremble!
I hate to have thee climb that wall by night!
Did no one see thee?
_Vict._ None, my love, but thou.
_Pre._ ’Tis very dangerous; and when thou art gone,
I chide myself for letting thee come here
Thus stealthily by night. Where hast thou been?
Since yesterday I have no news from thee.
_Vict._ Since yesterday I’ve been in Alcalá.
Ere long the time will come, sweet Preciosa,
When that dull distance shall no more divide us,
And I no more shall scale thy wall by night
To steal a kiss from thee, as I do now.
_Pre._ An honest thief to steal but what thou givest.
_Vict._ And we shall sit together unmolested,
And words of true love pass from tongue to tongue,
As singing birds from one bough to another.
_Pre._ That were a life indeed to make time envious!
I knew that thou wouldst visit me to-night.
I saw thee at the play.
_Vict._ Sweet child of air!
Never did I behold thee so attired
And garmented in beauty as to-night!
What hast thou done to make thee look so fair?
_Pre._ Am not I always fair?
_Vict._ Ay, and so fair
That I am jealous of all eyes that see thee,
And wish that they were blind.
_Pre._ I heed them not;
When thou art present, I see none but thee!
_Vict._ There’s nothing fair nor beautiful, but takes
Something from thee, that makes it beautiful.
_Pre._ And yet thou leavest me for those dusty books.
_Vict._ Thou comest between me and those books too often!
I see thy face in everything I see!
The paintings in the chapel wear thy looks,
The canticles are changed to sarabands.
And with the learned doctors of the schools
I see thee dance cachuchas.
_Pre._ In good sooth,
I dance with learned doctors of the schools
To-morrow morning.
_Vict._ And with whom, I pray?
_Pre._ A grave and reverend Cardinal, and his Grace
The Archbishop of Toledo.
_Vict._ What mad jest
Is this?
_Pre._ It is no jest; indeed it is not.
_Vict._ Prithee, explain thyself.
_Pre._ Why, simply thus.
Thou knowest the Pope has sent here into Spain
To put a stop to dances on the stage.
_Vict._ I have heard it whispered.
_Pre._ Now the Cardinal
Who for this purpose comes, would fain behold
With his own eyes these dances; and the Archbishop
Has sent for me——
_Vict._ That thou mayst dance before them!
Now viva la cachucha! It will breathe
The fire of youth into these grey old men!
’Twill be thy proudest conquest!
_Pre._ Saving one.
And yet I fear these dances will be stopped,
And Preciosa be once more a beggar.
_Vict._ The sweetest beggar that e’er asked for alms;
With such beseeching eyes, that when I saw thee
I gave my heart away!
_Pre._ Dost thou remember
When first we met?
_Vict._ It was at Córdova,
In the cathedral garden. Thou wast sitting
Under the orange-trees, beside a fountain.
_Pre._ ’Twas Easter-Sunday. The full blossomed trees
Filled all the air with fragrance and with joy.
The priests were singing, and the organ sounded,
And then anon the great cathedral bell.
It was the elevation of the Host.
We both of us fell down upon our knees,
Under the orange boughs, and prayed together.
I never had been happy till that moment.
_Vict._ Thou blessed angel!
_Pre._ And when thou wast gone
I felt an aching here. I did not speak
To any one that day. But from that day
Bartolomé grew hateful unto me.
_Vict._ Remember him no more. Let not his shadow
Come between thee and me. Sweet Preciosa!
I loved thee even then, though I was silent!
_Pre._ I thought I ne’er should see thy face again.
Thy farewell had a sound of sorrow in it.
_Vict._ That was the first sound in the song of love!
Scarce more than silence is, and yet a sound.
Hands of invisible spirits touch the strings
Of that mysterious instrument, the soul,
And play the prelude of our fate. We hear
The voice prophetic, and are not alone.
_Pre._ That is my faith. Dost thou believe these warnings?
_Vict._ So far as this. Our feelings and our thoughts
Tend ever on, and rest not in the Present.
As drops of rain fall into some dark well,
And from below comes a scarce audible sound,
So fall our thoughts into the dark Hereafter,
And their mysterious echo reaches us.
_Pre._ I have felt it so, but found no words to say it!
I cannot reason; I can only feel!
But thou hast language for all thoughts and feelings.
Thou art a scholar; and sometimes I think
We cannot walk together in this world!
The distance that divides us is too great!
Henceforth thy pathway lies among the stars;
I must not hold thee back.
_Vict._ Thou little sceptic!
Dost thou still doubt? What I most prize in woman
Is her affections, not her intellect!
The intellect is finite; but the affections
Are infinite, and cannot be exhausted.
Compare me with the great men of the earth;
What am I? Why, a pigmy among giants!
But if thou lovest,—mark me! I say lovest,
The greatest of thy sex excels thee not!
The world of the affections is thy world,
Not that of man’s ambition. In that stillness
Which most becomes a woman, calm and holy,
Thou sittest by the fireside of the heart,
Feeding its flame. The element of fire
Is pure. It cannot change nor hide its nature,
But burns as brightly in a Gipsy camp
As in a palace hall. Art thou convinced?
_Pre._ Yes, that I love thee, as the good love heaven;
But not that I am worthy of that heaven.
How shall I more deserve it?
_Vict._ Loving more.
_Pre._ I cannot love thee more; my heart is full.
_Vict._ Then let it overflow, and I will drink it,
As in the summer time the thirsty sands
Drink the swift waters of the Manzanares,
And still do thirst for more.
_A Watchman_ [_in the street_]. Ave Maria
Purissima! ’Tis midnight and serene!
_Vict._ Hear’st thou that cry?
_Pre._ It is a hateful sound,
To scare thee from me!
_Vict._ As the hunter’s horn
Doth scare the timid stag, or bark of hounds
The moor-fowl from his mate.
_Pre._ Pray, do not go!
_Vict._ I must away to Alcalá to-night.
Think of me when I am away.
_Pre._ Fear not!
I have no thoughts that do not think of thee.
_Vict._ [_giving her a ring_]. And to remind thee of
my love, take this;
A serpent, emblem of Eternity;
A ruby,—say, a drop of my heart’s blood.
_Pre._ It is an ancient saying, that the ruby
Brings gladness to the wearer, and preserves
The heart pure, and, if laid beneath the pillow,
Drives away evil dreams. But then, alas!
It was a serpent tempted Eve to sin.
_Vict._ What convent of barefooted Carmelites
Taught thee so much theology?
_Pre._ [_laying her hand upon his mouth_]. Hush! Hush!
Good night! and may all holy angels guard thee!
_Vict._ Good night! good night! Thou art my guardian angel!
I have no other saint than thou to pray to!
[_He descends by the balcony._]
_Pre._ Take care, and do not hurt thee. Art thou safe?
_Vict._ [_from the garden_]. Safe as my love for thee!
But art thou safe?
Others can climb a balcony by moonlight
As well as I. Pray shut thy window close;
I am jealous of the perfumed air of night
That from this garden climbs to kiss thy lips.
_Pre._ [_throwing down her handkerchief_].
Thou silly child; take this to bind thine eyes.
It is my benison!
_Vict._ And brings to me
Sweet fragrance from thy lips, as the soft wind
Wafts to the outbound mariner the breath
Of the belovèd land he leaves behind.
_Pre._ Make not thy voyage long.
_Vict._ To-morrow night
Shall see me safe returned. Thou art the star
To guide me to an anchorage. Good night!
My beauteous star! My star of love, good night!
_Pre._ Good night!
_Watchman_ [_at a distance_]. Ave Maria Purissima!
SCENE IV.—_An inn on the road to Alcalá._ BALTASAR _asleep on a bench.
Enter_ CHISPA.
_Chis._ And here we are, half-way to Alcalá, between cocks and
midnight. Body of me! what an inn this is! The lights out, and the
landlord asleep. Holá! ancient Baltasar!
_Balt._ [_waking_]. Here I am.
_Chis._ Yes, there you are, like a one-eyed Alcalde in a town without
inhabitants. Bring a light, and let me have supper.
_Balt._ Where is your master?
_Chis._ Do not trouble yourself about him. We have stopped a moment
to breathe our horses; and, if he chooses to walk up and down in the
open air, looking into the sky as one who hears it rain, that does not
satisfy my hunger, you know. But be quick, for I am in a hurry, and
every man stretches his legs according to the length of his coverlet.
What have we here?
_Balt._ [_setting a light on the table_]. Stewed rabbit.
_Chis._ [_eating_]. Conscience of Portalegre! Stewed kitten, you mean!
_Balt._ And a pitcher of Pedro Ximenes, with a roasted pear in it.
_Chis._ [_drinking_]. Ancient Baltasar, amigo! You know how to cry
wine and sell vinegar. I tell you this is nothing but Vino Tinto of La
Mancha, with a tang of the swine-skin.
_Balt._ I swear to you by Saint Simon and Judas, it is all as I say.
_Chis._ And I swear to you by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, that it is no
such thing. Moreover, your supper is like the hidalgo’s dinner, very
little meat, and a great deal of table-cloth.
_Balt._ Ha! ha! ha!
_Chis._ And more noise than nuts.
_Balt._ Ha! ha! ha! You must have your joke, Master Chispa. But shall I
not ask Don Victorian in, to take a draught of the Pedro Ximenes?
_Chis._ No; you might as well say, “Don’t-you-want-some?” to a dead man.
_Balt._ Why does he go so often to Madrid?
_Chis._ For the same reason that he eats no supper. He is in love. Were
you ever in love, Baltasar?
_Balt._ I was never out of it, good Chispa. It has been the torment of
my life.
_Chis._ What! are you on fire, too, old haystack? Why, we shall never
be able to put you out.
_Vict._ [_without_]. Chispa!
_Chis._ Go to bed, Pero Grullo, for the cocks are crowing.
_Vict._ Ea! Chispa! Chispa!
_Chis._ Ea! Señor. Come with me, ancient Baltasar, and bring water for
the horses. I will pay for the supper, to-morrow.
[_Exeunt._
SCENE V.—VICTORIAN’S _Chambers at Alcalá_. HYPOLITO _asleep in an
arm-chair. He awakes slowly._
_Hyp._ I must have been asleep! ay, sound asleep!
And it was all a dream. O sleep, sweet sleep!
Whatever form thou takest, thou art fair,
Holding unto our lips thy goblet filled
Out of Oblivion’s well, a healing draught!
The candles have burned low; it must be late.
Where can Victorian be? Like Fray Carillo,[19]
The only place in which one cannot find him
Is his own cell. Here’s his guitar, that seldom
Feels the caresses of its master’s hand.
Open thy silent lips, sweet instrument!
And make dull midnight merry with a song.
[_He plays and sings._]
Padre Francisco!
Padre Francisco!
What do you want of Padre Francisco?
Here is a pretty young maiden
Who wants to confess her sins.
Open the door and let her come in,
I will shrive her from every sin.
[_Enter_ VICTORIAN.]
[19] The allusion is to a Spanish epigram. See Appendix.
_Vict._ Padre Hypolito! Padre Hypolito!
_Hyp._ What do you want of Padre Hypolito?
_Vict._ Come, shrive me straight; for, if love be a sin,
I am the greatest sinner that doth live.
I will confess the sweetest of all crimes,
A maiden wooed and won.
_Hyp._ The same old tale
Of the old woman in the chimney corner,
Who, while the pot boils, says, “Come here, my child;
I’ll tell thee a story of my wedding-day.”
_Vict._ Nay, listen, for my heart is full; so full
That I must speak.
_Hyp._ Alas! that heart of thine
Is like a scene in the old play; the curtain
Rises to solemn music, and lo! enter
The eleven thousand virgins of Cologne!
_Vict._ Nay, like the Sibyl’s volumes, thou shouldst say;
Those that remained, after the six were burned,
Being held more precious than the nine together.
But listen to my tale. Dost thou remember
The gipsy girl we saw at Córdova
Dance the Romalis in the market-place?
_Hyp._ Thou meanest Preciosa?
_Vict._ Ay, the same.
Thou knowest how her image haunted me
Long after we returned to Alcalá.
She’s in Madrid.
_Hyp._ I know it.
_Vict._ And I am in love.
_Hyp._ And therefore in Madrid when thou shouldst be
In Alcalá.
_Vict._ O pardon me, my friend,
If I so long have kept this secret from thee;
But silence is the charm that guards such treasures,
And, if a word be spoken ere the time,
They sink again, they were not meant for us.
_Hyp._ Alas! alas! I see thou art in love.
Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
It serves for food and raiment. Give a Spaniard
His mass, his olla, and his Dona Luisa,—
Thou knowest the proverb. But pray tell me, lover,
How speeds thy wooing? Is the maiden coy?
Write her a song, beginning with an _Ave_;
Sing as the monk sang to the Virgin Mary,
_Ave! cujus calcem clare,
Nec centenni commendare
Sciret Seraph studio._
_Vict._ Pray, do not jest! This is no time for it.
I am in earnest!
_Hyp._ Seriously enamoured?
What, ho! The Primus of great Alcalá
Enamoured of a Gipsy! Tell me frankly,
How meanest thou?
_Vict._ I mean it honestly.
_Hyp._ Surely thou wilt not marry her!
_Vict._ Why not?
_Hyp._ She was betrothed to one Bartolomé,
If I remember rightly, a young Gipsy
Who danced with her at Córdova.
_Vict._ They quarrelled,
And so the matter ended.
_Hyp._ But in truth
Thou wilt not marry her?
_Vict._ In truth I will.
The angels sang in heaven when she was born!
She is a precious jewel I have found
Among the filth and rubbish of the world.
I’ll stoop for it; but when I wear it here,
Set on my forehead like the morning star,
The world may wonder, but it will not laugh.
_Hyp._ If thou wear’st nothing else upon thy forehead,
’Twill be indeed a wonder.
_Vict._ Out upon thee,
With thy unseasonable jests! Pray, tell me,
Is there no virtue in the world?
_Hyp._ Not much.
What, think’st thou, is she doing at this moment;
Now, while we speak of her?
_Vict._ She lies asleep,
And, from her parted lips, her gentle breath
Comes like the fragrance from the lips of flowers.
Her tender limbs are still, and, on her breast,
The cross she prayed to, ere she fell asleep,
Rises and falls with the soft tide of dreams,
Like a light barge safe moored.
_Hyp._ Which means, in prose,
She’s sleeping with her mouth a little open!
_Vict._ O, would I had the old magician’s glass
To see her as she lies in childlike sleep!
_Hyp._ And wouldst thou venture?
_Vict._ Ay, indeed I would!
_Hyp._ Thou art courageous. Hast thou e’er reflected
How much lies hidden in that one word, _now_?
_Vict._ Yes, all the awful mystery of Life!
I oft have thought, my dear Hypolito,
That could we, by some spell of magic, change
The world and its inhabitants to stone,
In the same attitudes they now are in,
What fearful glances downward might we cast
Into the hollow chasms of human life!
What groups should we behold about the death-bed,
Putting to shame the group of Niobe!
What joyful welcomes, and what sad farewells!
What stony tears in those congealèd eyes!
What visible joy or anguish in those cheeks!
What bridal pomps, and what funereal shows!
What foes, like gladiators, fierce and struggling!
What lovers with their marble lips together!
_Hyp._ Ay, there it is! and, if I were in love,
That is the very point I most should dread.
This magic glass, these magic spells of thine,
Might tell a tale were better left untold.
For instance, they might show us thy fair cousin,
The Lady Violante, bathed in tears
Of love and anger, like the maid of Colchis,
Whom thou, another faithless Argonaut,
Having won that golden fleece, a woman’s love,
Desertest for this Glaucè.
_Vict._ Hold thy peace!
She cares not for me. She may wed another,
Or go into a convent, and, thus dying,
Marry Achilles in the Elysian Fields.
_Hyp._ [_rising_]. And so, good night! Good morning,
I should say.
[_Clock strikes three._]
Hark! how the loud and ponderous mace of Time
Knocks at the golden portals of the day!
And so, once more, good night! We’ll speak more largely
Of Preciosa when we meet again.
Get thee to bed, and the magician, Sleep,
Shall show her to thee, in his magic glass,
In all her loveliness. Good night! [_Exit._
_Vict._ Good night!
But not to bed; for I must read awhile.
[_Throws himself into the arm-chair which_ HYPOLITO _has left, and lays
a large book open upon his knees_.]
Must read, or sit in reverie and watch
The changing colour of the waves that break
Upon the idle sea-shore of the mind!
Visions of Fame! that once did visit me,
Making night glorious with your smile, where are ye?
O, who shall give me, now that ye are gone,
Juices of those immortal plants that bloom
Upon Olympus, making us immortal?
Or teach me where that wondrous mandrake grows
Whose magic root, torn from the earth with groans,
At midnight hour, can scare the fiends away,
And make the mind prolific in its fancies?
I have the wish, but want the will, to act!
Souls of great men departed! Ye whose words
Have come to light from the swift river of Time,
Like Roman swords found in the Tagus’ bed,
Where is the strength to wield the arms ye bore?
From the barred visor of Antiquity
Reflected shines the eternal light of Truth,
As from a mirror! All the means of action—
The shapeless masses—the materials—
Lie everywhere about us. What we need
Is the celestial fire to change the flint
Into transparent crystal, bright and clear.
That fire is genius! The rude peasant sits
At evening in his smoky cot, and draws
With charcoal uncouth figures on the wall.
The son of genius comes, footsore with travel,
And begs a shelter from the inclement night.
He takes the charcoal from the peasant’s hand,
And, by the magic of his touch at once
Transfigured, all its hidden virtues shine,
And, in the eyes of the astonished clown,
It gleams a diamond! Even thus transformed,
Rude popular traditions and old tales
Shine as immortal poems, at the touch
Of some poor, houseless, homeless, wandering bard,
Who had but a night’s lodgings for his pains.
But there are brighter dreams than those of Fame,
Which are the dreams of Love! Out of the heart
Rises the bright ideal of these dreams,
As from some woodland fount a spirit rises
And sinks again into its silent deeps,
Ere the enamoured knight can touch her robe!
’Tis this ideal that the soul of man,
Like the enamoured knight beside the fountain,
Waits for upon the margin of Life’s stream;
Waits to behold her rise from the dark waters,
Clad in a mortal shape! Alas! how many
Must wait in vain! The stream flows evermore,
But from its silent deeps no spirit rises!
Yet I, born under a propitious star,
Have found the bright ideal of my dreams.
Yes! she is ever with me. I can feel,
Here, as I sit at midnight and alone,
Her gentle breathing! on my breast can feel
The pressure of her head! God’s benison
Rest ever on it! Close those beauteous eyes,
Sweet Sleep! and all the flowers that bloom at night
With balmy lips breathe in her ears my name!
[_Gradually sinks asleep._]
ACT II.
SCENE I.—PRECIOSA’S _Chamber. Morning._ PRECIOSA _and_ ANGELICA.
_Pre._ Why will you go so soon? Stay yet awhile.
The poor too often turn away unheard
From hearts that shut against them with a sound
That will be heard in Heaven. Pray, tell me more
Of your adversities. Keep nothing from me.
What is your landlord’s name?
_Ang._ The Count of Lara.
_Pre._ The Count of Lara? O, beware that man!
Mistrust his pity,—hold no parley with him!
And rather die an outcast in the streets
Than touch his gold.
_Ang._ You know him, then!
_Pre._ As much
As any woman may, and yet be pure.
As you would keep your name without a blemish,
Beware of him!
_Ang._ Alas! what can I do?
I cannot choose my friends. Each word of kindness,
Come from whence it may, is welcome to the poor.
_Pre._ Make me your friend. A girl so young and fair
Should have no friends but those of her own sex.
What is your name?
_Ang._ Angelica.
_Pre._ That name
Was given you, that you might be an angel
To her who bore you! When your infant smile
Made her home Paradise, you were her angel.
O, be an angel still! She needs that smile.
So long as you are innocent, fear nothing.
No one can harm you! I am a poor girl,
Whom chance has taken from the public streets.
I have no other shield than mine own virtue,
That is the charm which has protected me!
Amid a thousand perils, I have worn it
Here on my heart! It is my guardian angel.
_Ang._ [_rising_]. I thank you for this counsel, dearest lady.
_Pre._ Thank me by following it.
_Ang._ Indeed I will.
_Pre._ Pray, do not go. I have much more to say.
_Ang._ My mother is alone. I dare not leave her.
_Pre._ Some other time, then, when we meet again.
You must not go away with words alone.
[_Gives her a purse._]
Take this. Would it were more.
_Ang._ I thank you, lady.
_Pre._ No thanks. To-morrow come to me again.
I dance to-night,—perhaps for the last time.
But what I gain, I promise shall be yours,
If that can save you from the Count of Lara.
_Ang._ O, my dear lady! how shall I be grateful
For so much kindness?
_Pre._ I deserve no thanks.
Thank Heaven, not me.
_Ang._ Both Heaven and you.
_Pre._ Farewell.
Remember that you come again to-morrow.
_Ang._ I will. And may the blessed Virgin guard you,
And all good angels. [_Exit._
_Pre._ May they guard thee, too,
And all the poor; for they have need of angels.
Now bring me, dear Dolores, my Basquiña,
My richest maja dress,—my dancing dress,
And my most precious jewels! Make me look
Fairer than night e’er saw me! I’ve a prize
To win this day, worthy of Preciosa!
[_Enter_ BELTRAN CRUZADO.
_Cruz._ Ave Maria!
_Pre._ O God! my evil genius!
What seekest thou here to-day?
_Cruz._ Thyself,—my child.
_Pre._ What is thy will with me?
_Cruz._ Gold! gold!
_Pre._ I gave thee yesterday; I have no more.
_Cruz._ The gold of the Busné,[20]—give me his gold!
_Pre._ I gave the last in charity to-day.
_Cruz._ That is a foolish lie.
_Pre._ It is the truth.
_Cruz._ Curses upon thee! Thou art not my child!
Hast thou given gold away, and not to me!
Not to thy father? To whom then?
[20] _Busné_ is the name given by the Gipsies to all who are not of
their race.
_Pre._ To one
Who needs it more.
_Cruz._ No one can need it more.
_Pre._ Thou art not poor.
_Cruz._ What, I, who lurk about
In dismal suburbs and unwholesome lanes;
I, who am housed worse than the galley slave;
I, who am fed worse than the kennelled hound;
I, who am clothed in rags,—Beltran Cruzado,—
Not poor!
_Pre._ Thou hast a stout heart and strong hands.
Thou canst supply thy wants; what wouldst thou more?
_Cruz._ The gold of the Busné! give me his gold!
_Pre._ Beltran Cruzado! hear me once for all.
I speak the truth. So long as I had gold,
I gave it to thee freely, at all times,
Never denied thee; never had a wish
But to fulfil thine own. Now go in peace!
Be merciful, be patient, and, ere long,
Thou shalt have more.
_Cruz._ And if I have it not,
Thou shalt no longer dwell here in rich chambers,
Wear silken dresses, feed on dainty food,
And live in idleness; but go with me,
Dance the Romalis in the public streets,
And wander wild again o’er field and fell;
For here we stay not long.
_Pre._ What! march again?
_Cruz._ Ay, with all speed. I hate the crowded town!
I cannot breathe shut up within its gates!
Air,—I want air, and sunshine, and blue sky,
The feeling of the breeze upon my face,
The feeling of the turf beneath my feet,
And no walls but the far-off mountain-tops.
Then I am free and strong,—once more myself,
Beltran Cruzado, Count of the Calés![21]
_Pre._ God speed thee on thy march!—I cannot go.
_Cruz._ Remember who I am, and who thou art.
Be silent and obey! Yet one thing more.
Bartolomé Román——
[21] The Gipsies call themselves Calés. See Burrow’s valuable and
extremely interesting work, _The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gipsies
in Spain_.
_Pre._ [_with emotion_]. O, I beseech thee!
If my obedience and blameless life,
If my humility and meek submission
In all things hitherto, can move in thee
One feeling of compassion; if thou art
Indeed my father, and canst trace in me
One look of her who bore me, or one tone
That doth remind thee of her, let it plead
In my behalf, who am a feeble girl,
Too feeble to resist, and do not force me
To wed that man! I am afraid of him!
I do not love him! On my knees I beg thee
To use no violence, nor do in haste
What cannot be undone!
_Cruz._ O child, child, child!
Thou hast betrayed thy secret, as a bird
Betrays her nest, by striving to conceal it.
I will not leave thee here in the great city
To be a grandee’s mistress. Make thee ready
To go with us; and until then remember
A watchful eye is on thee. [_Exit._
_Pre._ Woe is me!
I have a strange misgiving in my heart!
But that one deed of charity I will do,
Befall what may; they cannot take that from me. [_Exit._