Yes, it was a swallow’s nest,

Built, of clay and hair of horses,

Mane or tail, or dragoon’s crest,

Found on hedge-rows east and west,

After skirmish of the forces.

Then an old Hidalgo said,

As he twirled his grey mustachio,

“Sure this swallow overhead

Thinks the Emperor’s tent a shed,

And the Emperor but a Macho!”[50]

Hearing his imperial name

Coupled with those words of malice,

Half in anger, half in shame,

Forth the great campaigner came

Slowly from his canvas palace.

“Let no hand the bird molest,”

Said he solemnly, “nor hurt her!”

Adding then, by way of jest,

“Golondrina[51] is my guest,

’Tis the wife of some deserter!”

Swift as bow-string speeds a shaft,

Through the camp was spread the rumour,

And the soldiers, as they quaffed

Flemish beer at dinner, laughed

At the Emperor’s pleasant humour.

So unharmed and unafraid

Sat the swallow still and brooded,

Till the constant cannonade

Through the walls a breach had made,

And the siege was thus concluded.

Then the army, elsewhere bent,

Struck its tents as if disbanding,

Only not the Emperor’s tent,

For he ordered, ere he went,

Very curtly, “Leave it standing.”

So it stood there all alone,

Loosely flapping, torn and tattered,

Till the brood was fledged and flown,

Singing o’er those walls of stone

Which the cannon-shot had shattered.

[50] _Macho_ is Spanish for _mule_.

[51] _Golondrina_, a swallow. It is also a cant word for a deserter.

IN THE CHURCHYARD AT CAMBRIDGE.

In the village churchyard she lies,

Dust is in her beautiful eyes,

No more she breathes, nor feels, nor stirs;

At her feet and at her head

Lies a slave to attend the dead,

But their dust is white as hers.

Was she a lady of high degree,

So much in love with the vanity

And foolish pomp of this world of ours;

Or was it Christian charity,

And lowliness and humility,

The richest and rarest of all dowers?

Who shall tell us? No one speaks;

No colour shoots into those cheeks,

Either of anger or of pride,

At the rude question we have asked;

Nor will the mystery be unmasked

By those who are sleeping at her side.

Hereafter?—And do you think to look

On the terrible pages of that Book

To find her failings, faults, and errors?

Ah, you will then have other cares,

In your own shortcomings and despairs,

In your own secret sins and terrors!

THE TWO ANGELS.[52]

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death,

Passed o’er our village as the morning broke;

The dawn was on their faces, and beneath,

The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke.

Their attitude and aspect were the same,

Alike their features and their robes of white;

But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame,

And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.

I saw them pause on their celestial way;

Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed,

“Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray

The place where thy belovèd are at rest!”

And he who wore the crown of asphodels,

Descending, at my door began to knock,

And my soul sank within me, as in wells

The waters sink before an earthquake’s shock.

I recognised the nameless agony,

The terror and the tremor and the pain,

That oft before had filled or haunted me,

And now returned with threefold strength again.

The door I opened to my heavenly guest,

And listened, for I thought I heard God’s voice;

And, knowing whatsoe’er he sent was best,

Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.

Then with a smile, that filled the house with light,

“My errand is not Death, but Life,” he said;

And, ere I answered, passing out of sight,

On his celestial embassy he sped.

’Twas at thy door, O friend! and not at mine,

The angel with the amaranthine wreath,

Pausing, descended, and with voice divine,

Whispered a word that had a sound like Death.

Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,

A shadow on those features, fair and thin;

And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,

Two angels issued, where but one went in.

All is of God! If he but wave his hand,

The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud,

Till, with a smile of light on sea and land,

Lo! he looks back from the departing cloud.

Angels of Life and Death alike are his;

Without his leave they pass no threshold o’er;

Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this,

Against his messengers to shut the door?

[52] A child was born to Longfellow the same night that his friend Mr.

Lowell’s wife died; he commemorates both events in this poem.

OLIVER BASSELIN.[53]

In the Valley of the Vire

Still is seen an ancient mill,

With its gables quaint and queer,

And beneath the window-sill,

On the stone,

These words alone:

“Oliver Basselin lived here.”

Far above it, on the steep,

Ruined stands the old Château;

Nothing but the donjon-keep

Left for shelter or for show.

Its vacant eyes

Stare at the skies,

Stare at the valley green and deep.

Once a convent, old and brown,

Looked, but ah! it looks no more,

From the neighbouring hill-side down

On the rushing and the roar

Of the stream

Whose sunny gleam

Cheers the little Norman town.

In that darksome mill of stone,

To the water’s dash and din,

Careless, humble, and unknown,

Sang the poet Basselin

Songs that fill

That ancient mill

With a splendour of its own.

Never feeling of unrest

Broke the pleasant dream he dreamed;

Only made to be his nest,

All the lovely valley seemed;

No desire

Of soaring higher

Stirred or fluttered in his breast.

True, his songs were not divine;

Were not songs of that high art,

Which, as winds do in the pine,

Find an answer in each heart;

But the mirth

Of this green earth

Laughed and revelled in his line.

From the alehouse and the inn,

Opening on the narrow street,

Came the loud, convivial din,

Singing and applause of feet,

The laughing lays

That in those days

Sang the poet Basselin.

In the castle, cased in steel,

Knights, who fought at Agincourt,

Watched and waited, spur on heel;

But the poet sang for sport

Songs that rang

Another clang,

Songs that lowlier hearts could feel.

In the convent, clad in grey,

Sat the monks in lonely cells,

Paced the cloisters, knelt to pray,

And the poet heard their bells;

But his rhymes

Found other chimes,

Nearer to the earth than they.

Gone are all the barons bold,

Gone are all the knights and squires,

Gone the abbot stern and cold,

And the brotherhood of friars;

Not a name

Remains to fame,

From those mouldering days of old!

But the poet’s memory here

Of the landscape makes a part;

Like the river, swift and clear,

Flows his song through many a heart;

Haunting still

That ancient mill,

In the Valley of the Vire.

[53] Oliver Basselin, the “_Père joyeux du Vaudeville_,” flourished

in the fifteenth century, and gave to his convivial songs the name of

his native valleys, in which he sang them, Vaux-de-Vire. This name was

afterwards corrupted into the modern _Vaudeville_.

THE JEWISH CEMETERY AT NEWPORT.

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,

Close by the street of this fair seaport town,

Silent beside the never-silent waves,

At rest in all this moving up and down.

The trees are white with dust, that o’er their sleep

Wave their broad curtains in the south wind’s breath,

While underneath these leafy tents they keep

The long mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,

That pave with level flags their burial-place,

Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down

And broken by Moses at the mountain’s base.

The very names recorded here are strange,

Of foreign accent, and of different climes;

Alvares and Rivera interchange

With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

“Blessed be God! for he created Death!”

The mourner said, “and Death is rest and peace;”

Then added, in the certainty of faith,

“And giveth Life that never more shall cease.”

Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,

No Psalms of David now the silence break,

No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue

In the grand dialect the Prophets spake.

Gone are the living, but the dead remain,

And not neglected; for a hand unseen,

Scattering its bounty, like a summer-rain,

Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,

What persecution, merciless and blind,

Drove o’er the sea—that desert desolate—

These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,

Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;

Taught in the school of patience to endure

The life of anguish and the death of fire.

All their lives long, with the unleavened bread

And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,

The wasting famine of the heart they fed,

And slaked its thirst with Marah of their tears.

Anathema maranatha! was the cry

That rang from town to town, from street to street;

At every gate the accursed Mordecai

Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.

Pride and humiliation hand in hand

Walked with them through the world where’er they went,

Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,

And yet unshaken as the continent.

For in the background figures vague and vast

Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,

And all the great traditions of the past

They saw reflected in the coming time.

And thus for ever with reverted look

The mystic volume of the world they read,

Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,

Till life became a Legend of the Dead.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more!

The groaning earth in travail and in pain

Brings forth its races, but does not restore,

And the dead nations never rise again.

VICTOR GALBRAITH.[54]

Under the walls of Monterey

At daybreak the bugles began to play,

Victor Galbraith!

In the mist of the morning damp and grey,

These were the words they seemed to say:

“Come forth to thy death,

Victor Galbraith!”

Forth he came, with a martial tread;

Firm was his step, erect his head;

Victor Galbraith,

He who so well the bugle played,

Could not mistake the words it said:

“Come forth to thy death,

Victor Galbraith!”

He looked at the earth, he looked at the sky,

He looked at the files of musketry,

Victor Galbraith!

And he said, with a steady voice and eye,

“Take good aim; I am ready to die!”

Thus challenges death

Victor Galbraith.

Twelve fiery tongues flashed straight and red,

Six leaden balls on their errand sped;

Victor Galbraith

Falls to the ground, but he is not dead;

His name was not stamped on those balls of lead,

And they only scath

Victor Galbraith.

Three balls are in his breast and brain,

But he rises out of the dust again,

Victor Galbraith!

The water he drinks has a bloody stain;

“O kill me, and put me out of my pain!”

In his agony prayeth

Victor Galbraith.

Forth dart once more those tongues of flame,

And the bugler has died a death of shame,

Victor Galbraith!

His soul has gone back to whence it came,

And no one answers to the name,

When the Sergeant saith,

“Victor Galbraith!”

Under the walls of Monterey

By night a bugle is heard to play,

Victor Galbraith!

Through the mist of the valley damp and grey

The sentinels hear the sound, and say,

“That is the wraith

Of Victor Galbraith!”

[54] This poem is founded on fact. Victor Galbraith was a bugler in a

company of volunteer cavalry; and was shot in Mexico for some breach of

discipline. It is a common superstition among soldiers, that no balls

will kill them unless their names are written on them. The old proverb

says, “Every bullet has its billet.”

DAYLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

In broad daylight, and at noon,

Yesterday I saw the moon

Sailing high, but faint and white,

As a schoolboy’s paper kite.

In broad daylight yesterday,

I read a Poet’s mystic lay;

And it seemed to me at most

As a phantom, or a ghost.

But at length the feverish day

Like a passion died away,

And the night, serene and still,

Fell on village, vale, and hill.

Then the moon, in all her pride,

Like a spirit glorified,

Filled and overflowed the night

With revelations of her light.

And the Poet’s song again

Passed like music through my brain;

Night interpreted to me

All its grace and mystery.

MY LOST YOUTH.

Often I think of the beautiful town

That is seated by the sea;

Often in thought go up and down

The pleasant streets of that dear old town,

And my youth comes back to me.

And a verse of a Lapland song

Is haunting my memory still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,

And catch, in sudden gleams,

The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,

And islands that were the Hesperides

Of all my boyish dreams.

And the burden of that old song,

It murmurs and whispers still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the black wharves and the slips,

And the sea-tides tossing free;

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,

And the beauty and mystery of the ships,

And the magic of the sea.

And the voice of that wayward song

Is singing and saying still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the bulwarks by the shore,

And the fort upon the hill;

The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,

The drum-beat repeated o’er and o’er,

And the bugle wild and shrill.

And the music of that old song

Throbs in my memory still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the sea-fight far away,[55]

How it thundered o’er the tide!

And the dead captains, as they lay

in their graves o’erlooking the tranquil bay,

Where they in battle died.

And the sound of that mournful song

Goes through me with a thrill:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I can see the breezy dome of groves,

The shadows of Deering’s Woods;

And the friendships old and the early loves

Come back with a sabbath sound, as of doves

In quiet neighbourhoods.

And the verse of that sweet old song,

It flutters and murmurs still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart

Across the schoolboy’s brain;

The song and the silence in the heart,

That in part are prophecies, and in part

Are longings wild and vain.

And the voice of that fitful song

Sings on, and is never still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

There are things of which I may not speak;

There are dreams that cannot die;

There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,

And bring a pallor into the cheek,

And a mist before the eye.

And the words of that fatal song

Come over me like a chill:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

Strange to me now are the forms I meet

When I visit the dear old town;

But the native air is pure and sweet,

And the trees that o’ershadow each well-known street,

As they balance up and down,

Are singing the beautiful song,

Are sighing and whispering still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

And Deering’s Woods are fresh and fair,

And with joy that is almost pain

My heart goes back to wander there,

And among the dreams of the days that were,

I find my lost youth again.

And the strange and beautiful song,

The groves are repeating it still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

[55] This was the engagement between the _Enterprise_ and _Boxer_, off

the harbour of Portland, in which both Captains were slain. They were

buried side by side in the cemetery on Mountjoy.

THE ROPEWALK.

In that building, long and low,

With its windows all a-row,

Like the port-holes of a hulk,

Human spiders spin and spin,

Backward down their threads so thin

Dropping, each a hempen bulk.

At the end an open door;

Squares of sunshine on the floor

Light the long and dusky lane;

And the whirring of a wheel,

Dull and drowsy, makes me feel

All its spokes are in my brain.

As the spinners to the end

Downward go and re-ascend,

Gleam the long threads in the sun;

While within this brain of mine

Cobwebs brighter and more fine

By the busy wheel are spun.

Two fair maidens in a swing,

Like white doves upon the wing,

First before my vision pass;

Laughing, as their gentle hands

Closely clasp the twisted strands,

At their shadow on the grass.

Then a booth of mountebanks,

With its smell of tan and planks,

And a girl poised high in air

On a cord, in spangled dress,

With a faded loveliness,

And a weary look of care.

Then a homestead among farms,

And a woman with bare arms

Drawing water from a well;

As the bucket mounts apace,

With it mounts her own fair face,

As at some magician’s spell.

Then an old man in a tower,

Ringing loud the noontide hour,

While the rope coils round and round,

Like a serpent at his feet,

And again, in swift retreat,

Nearly lifts him from the ground.

Then within a prison-yard,

Faces fixed, and stern, and hard,

Laughter and indecent mirth;

Ah! it is the gallows-tree;

Breath of Christian charity,

Blow, and sweep it from the earth!

Then a schoolboy, with his kite,

Gleaming in a sky of light,

And an eager, upward look;

Steeds pursued through lane and field;

Fowlers with their snares concealed;

And an angler by a brook.

Ships rejoicing in the breeze,

Wrecks that float o’er unknown seas,

Anchors dragged through faithless sand;

Sea-fog drifting overhead,

And, with lessening line and lead,

Sailors feeling for the land.

All these scenes do I behold,

These, and many left untold,

In that building long and low;

While the wheel goes round and round,

With a drowsy, dreamy sound,

And the spinners backward go.

THE GOLDEN MILESTONE.

Leafless are the trees; their purple branches

Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral,

Rising silent

In the Red Sea of the Winter sunset.

From the hundred chimneys of the village,

Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,

Smoky columns

Tower aloft into the air of amber.

At the window winks the flickering fire-light;

Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer,

Social watch-fires

Answering one another through the darkness.

On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing,

And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree

For its freedom

Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them.

By the fireside there are old men seated,

Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,

Asking sadly

Of the Past what it can ne’er restore them.

By the fireside there are youthful dreamers,

Building castles fair, with stately stairways,

Asking blindly

Of the Future what it cannot give them.

By the fireside tragedies are acted

In whose scenes appear two actors only,

Wife and husband,

And above them God the sole spectator.

By the fireside there are peace and comfort,

Wives and children, with fair, thoughtful faces,

Waiting, watching

For a well-known footstep in the passage.

Each man’s chimney is his Golden Milestone,

Is the central point from which he measures

Every distance

Through the gateways of the world around him.

In his farthest wanderings still he sees it;

Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind,

As he heard them

When he sat with those who were, but are not.

Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion,

Nor the march of the encroaching city,

Drives an exile

From the hearth of his ancestral homestead.

We may build more splendid habitations,

Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures,

But we cannot

Buy with gold the old associations!

CATAWBA WINE.

This song of mine

Is a Song of the Vine,

To be sung by the glowing embers

Of wayside inns,

When the rain begins

To darken the drear Novembers.

It is not a song

Of the Scuppernong,

From warm Carolinian valleys,

Nor the Isabel

And the Muscadel

That bask in our garden alleys.

Nor the red Mustang,

Whose clusters hang

O’er the waves of the Colorado,

And the fiery flood

Of whose purple blood

Has a dash of Spanish bravado.

For richest and best

Is the wine of the West,

That grows by the Beautiful River;

Whose sweet perfume

Fills all the room

With a benison on the giver.

And as hollow trees

Are the haunts of bees,

For ever going and coming;

So this crystal hive

Is all alive

With a swarming and buzzing and humming.

Very good in its way

Is the Verzenay,

Or the Sillery soft and creamy;

But Catawba wine

Has a taste more divine,

More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.

There grows no vine

By the haunted Rhine,

By Danube or Guadalquivir,

Nor on island or cape,

That bears such a grape

As grows by the Beautiful River.

Drugged is their juice

For foreign use,

When shipped o’er the reeling Atlantic,

To rack our brains,

With the fever pains,

That have driven the Old World frantic.

To the sewers and sinks

With all such drinks,

And after them tumble the mixer;

For a poison malign

Is such Borgia wine,

Or at best but a Devil’s Elixir.

While pure as a spring

Is the wine I sing,

And to praise it, one needs but name it;

For Catawba wine

Has need of no sign,

No tavern-bush to proclaim it.

And this Song of the Vine,

This greeting of mine,

The winds and the birds shall deliver

To the Queen of the West,

In her garlands dressed,

On the banks of the Beautiful River.

DAYBREAK.

A wind came up out of the sea,

And said, “O mists, make room for me.”

It hailed the ships, and cried, “Sail on,

Ye mariners, the night is gone.”

And hurried landward far away,

Crying, “Awake! it is the day.”

It said unto the forest, “Shout!

Hang all your leafy banners out!”

It touched the wood-bird’s folded wing,

And said, “O bird, awake and sing.”

And o’er the farms, “O chanticleer,

Your clarion blow; the day is near.”

It whispered to the fields of corn,

“Bow down, and hail the coming morn.”

It shouted through the belfry-tower,

“Awake, O bell! proclaim the hour.”

It crossed the churchyard with a sigh,

And said, “Not yet! in quiet lie.”

SANTA FILOMENA.[56]

Whene’er a noble deed is wrought,

Whene’er is spoken a noble thought,

Our hearts, in glad surprise,

To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls

Into our inmost being rolls,

And lifts us unawares

Out of all meaner cares.

Honour to those whose words or deeds

Thus help us in our daily needs,

And by their overflow

Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read

Of the great army of the dead,

The trenches cold and damp,

The starved and frozen camp,—

The wounded from the battle-plain,

In dreary hospitals of pain,

The cheerless corridors,

The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery

A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,

And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss,

The speechless sufferer turns to kiss

Her shadow, as it falls

Upon the darkening walls.

As if a door in heaven should be

Opened and then closed suddenly,

The vision came and went,

The light shone and was spent.

On England’s annals, through the long

Hereafter of her speech and song,

That light its rays shall cast

From portals of the past.

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand

In the great history of the land,

A noble type of good,

Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here

The palm, the lily, and the spear,

The symbols that of yore

Saint Filomena bore.

[56] “At Pisa the Church of San Francisco contains a chapel dedicated

lately to Santa Filomena; over the altar is a picture, by Sabatelli,

representing the saint as a beautiful nymph-like figure, floating

down from heaven, attended by two angels bearing the lily, palm, and

javelin, and beneath, in the foreground, the sick and maimed, who are

healed by her intercession.”—MRS. JAMESON, _Sacred and Legendary Art_,

ii. 298.

THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ.

MAY 28, 1857.

It was fifty years ago,

In the pleasant month of May,

In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,

A child in its cradle lay.

And Nature, the old nurse, took

The child upon her knee,

Saying: “Here is a story-book

Thy Father has written for thee.”

“Come, wander with me,” she said,

“Into regions yet untrod;

And read what is still unread

In the manuscripts of God.”

And he wandered away and away

With Nature, the dear old nurse,

Who sang to him night and day

The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long,

Or his heart began to fail,

She would sing a more wonderful song,

Or tell a more marvellous tale.

So she keeps him still a child,

And will not let him go,

Though at times his heart beats wild

For the beautiful Pays de Vaud;

Though at times he hears in his dreams

The Ranz des Vaches of old,

And the rush of mountain streams

From glaciers clear and cold;

And the mother at home says, “Hark!

For his voice I listen and yearn;

It is growing late and dark,

And my boy does not return!”

THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE.

A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED’S OROSIUS.

Othere, the old sea-captain,

Who dwelt in Helgoland,

To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth,

Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,

Which he held in his brown right hand.

His figure was tall and stately,

Like a boy’s his eye appeared;

His hair was yellow as hay,

But threads of a silvery grey

Gleamed in his tawny beard.

Hearty and hale was Othere,

His cheek had the colour of oak;

With a kind of laugh in his speech,

Like the sea-tide on a beach,

As unto the king he spoke.

And Alfred, King of the Saxons,

Had a book upon his knees,

And wrote down the wondrous tale

Of him who was first to sail

Into the Arctic seas.

“So far I live to the northward,

No man lives north of me;

To the east are wild mountain-chains,

And beyond them meres and plains;

To the westward all is sea.

“So far I live to the northward,

From the harbour of Skeringes-hale,

If you only sailed by day,

With a fair wind all the way,

More than a month would you sail.

“I own six hundred reindeer,

With sheep and swine beside;

I have tribute from the Finns,

Whalebone and reindeer-skins,

And ropes of walrus-hide.

“I ploughed the land with horses,

But my heart was ill at ease,

For the old seafaring men

Came to me now and then,

With their sagas of the seas;—

“Of Iceland and of Greenland,

And the stormy Hebrides,

And the undiscovered deep;—

I could not eat nor sleep

For thinking of those seas.

“To the northward stretched the desert,

How far I fain would know;

So at last I sallied forth,

And three days sailed due north,

As far as the whale-ships go.

“To the west of me was the ocean,

To the right the desolate shore,

But I did not slacken sail

For the walrus or the whale,

Till after three days more.

“The days grew longer and longer,

Till they became as one,

And southward through the haze

I saw the sullen blaze

Of the red midnight sun.

“And then uprose before me,

Upon the water’s edge,

The huge and haggard shape

Of that unknown North Cape,

Whose form is like a wedge.

“The sea was rough and stormy,

The tempest howled and wailed,

And the sea-fog, like a ghost,

Haunted that dreary coast,

But onward still I sailed.

“Four days I steered to eastward,

Four days without a night:

Round in a fiery ring

Went the great sun, O King,

With red and lurid light.”

Here Alfred, King of the Saxons,

Ceased writing for a while;

And raised his eyes from his book,

With a strange and puzzled look,

And an incredulous smile.

But Othere, the old sea-captain,

He neither paused nor stirred,

Till the King listened, and then

Once more took up his pen,

And wrote down every word.

“And now the land,” said Othere,

“Bent southward suddenly,

And I followed the curving shore,

And ever southward bore

Into a nameless sea.

“And there we hunted the walrus,

The narwhale, and the seal;

Ha! ’twas a noble game!

And like the lightning’s flame

Flew our harpoons of steel.

“There were six of us all together,

Norsemen of Helgoland;

In two days and no more

We killed of them threescore,

And dragged them to the strand!”

Here Alfred, the Truth-Teller,

Suddenly closed his book,

And lifted his blue eyes,

With doubt and strange surmise

Depicted in their look.

And Othere the old sea-captain

Stared at him wild and weird,

Then smiled, till his shining teeth

Gleamed white from underneath

His tawny, quivering beard.

And to the King of the Saxons,

In witness of the truth,

Raising his noble head,

He stretched his brown hand, and said,

“Behold this walrus-tooth!”

CHILDREN.

Come to me, O ye children!

For I hear you at your play,

And the questions that perplexed me

Have vanished quite away.

Ye open the eastern windows,

That look towards the sun,

Where thoughts are singing swallows,

And the brooks of morning run.

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,

In your thoughts the brooklet’s flow,

But in mine is the wind of Autumn,

And the first fall of the snow.

Ah! what would the world be to us,

If the children were no more?

We should dread the desert behind us

Worse than the dark before.

What the leaves are to the forest,

With light and air for food,

Ere their sweet and tender juices

Have been hardened into wood,—

That to the world are children;

Through them it feels the glow

Of a brighter and sunnier climate

Than reaches the trunks below.

Come to me, O ye children!

And whisper in my ear

What the birds and the winds are singing

In your sunny atmosphere.

For what are all our contrivings,

And the wisdom of our books,

When compared with your caresses,

And the gladness of your looks?

Ye are better than all the ballads

That ever were sung or said;

For ye are living poems,

And all the rest are dead.

SANDALPHON.

Have you read in the Talmud of old,

In the Legends the Rabbins have told

Of the limitless realms of the air,—

Have you read it,—the marvellous story

Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory,

Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer?

How, erect, at the outermost gates

Of the City Celestial he waits,

With his feet on the ladder of light,

That, crowded with angels unnumbered,

By Jacob was seen, as he slumbered

Alone in the desert at night?

The Angels of Wind and of Fire

Chant only one hymn, and expire

With the song’s irresistible stress;

Expire in their rapture and wonder,

As harp-strings are broken asunder

By music they throb to express.

But serene in the rapturous throng,

Unmoved by the rush of the song,

With eyes unimpassioned and slow,

Among the dead angels, the deathless

Sandalphon stands listening breathless

To sounds that ascend from below;—

From the spirits on earth that adore,

From the souls that entreat and implore

In the fervour and passion of prayer;

From the hearts that are broken with losses,

And weary with dragging the crosses

Too heavy for mortals to bear.

And he gathers the prayers as he stands,

And they change into flowers in his hands,

Into garlands of purple and red;

And beneath the great arch of the portal,

Through the streets of the City Immortal

Is wafted the fragrance they shed.

It is but a legend, I know,—

A fable, a phantom, a show,

Of the ancient Rabbinical lore;

Yet the old mediæval tradition,

The beautiful, strange superstition,

But haunts me and holds me the more.

When I look from window at night,

And the welkin above is all white,

All throbbing and panting with stars,

Among them majestic is standing

Sandalphon the angel, expanding

His pinions in nebulous bars.

And the legend, I feel, is a part

Of the hunger and thirst of the heart,

The frenzy and fire of the brain,

That grasps at the fruitage forbidden,

The golden pomegranates of Eden,

To quiet its fever and pain.

EPIMETHEUS; OR,

THE POET’S AFTERTHOUGHT.

Have I dreamed? or was it real,

What I saw as in a vision,

When to marches hymeneal

In the land of the Ideal

Moved my thought o’er Fields Elysian?

What! are these the guests whose glances

Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me?

These the wild, bewildering fancies,

That with dithyrambic dances,

As with magic circles, bound me?

Ah! how cold are their caresses!

Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms!

Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses,

And from loose, dishevelled tresses

Fall the hyacinthine blossoms!

O my songs! whose winsome measures

Filled my heart with secret rapture!

Children of my golden leisures!

Must even your delights and pleasures

Fade and perish with the capture?

Fair they seemed, those songs sonorous,

When they came to me unbidden;

Voices single, and in chorus,

Like the wild birds singing o’er us

In the dark of branches hidden.

Disenchantment! Disillusion!

Must each noble aspiration

Come at last to this conclusion,

Jarring discord, wild confusion,

Lassitude, renunciation?

Not with steeper fall nor faster,

From the sun’s serene dominions,

Not through brighter realms nor vaster,

In swift ruin and disaster,

Icarus fell with shattered pinions!

Sweet Pandora! dear Pandora!

Why did mighty Jove create thee

Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora,

Beautiful as young Aurora,

If to win thee is to hate thee?

No, not hate thee! for this feeling

Of unrest and long resistance

Is but passionate appealing,

A prophetic whisper stealing

O’er the chords of our existence.

Him whom thou dost once enamour,

Thou, belovèd, never leavest;

In life’s discord, strife, and clamour,

Still he feels thy spell of glamour;

Him of Hope thou ne’er bereavest.

Weary hearts by thee are lifted,

Struggling souls by thee are strengthened,

Clouds of fear asunder rifted,

Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted,

Lives, like days in summer, lengthened!

Therefore art thou ever dearer,

O my Sibyl, my deceiver!

For thou makest each mystery clearer,

And the unattained seems nearer,

When thou fillest my heart with fever!

Muse of all the Gifts and Graces!

Though the fields around us wither,

There are ampler realms and spaces,

Where no foot has left its traces:

Let us turn and wander thither!

FLIGHT THE SECOND.

A DAY OF SUNSHINE.

O gift of God! O perfect day:

Whereon shall no man work, but play;

Whereon it is enough for me,

Not to be doing, but to be!

Through every fibre of my brain,

Through every nerve, through every vein,

I feel the electric thrill, the touch

Of life, that seems almost too much.

I hear the wind among the trees

Playing celestial symphonies;

I see the branches downward bent,

Like keys of some great instrument.

And over me unrolls on high

The splendid scenery of the sky,

Where through a sapphire sea the sun

Sails like a golden galleon,

Towards yonder cloud-land in the West,

Towards yonder Islands of the Blest,

Whose steep sierra far uplifts

Its craggy summits white with drifts.

Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms

The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms!

Blow, winds! and bend within my reach

The fiery blossoms of the peach.

O Life and Love! O happy throng

Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!

O heart of man! canst thou not be

Blithe as the air is, and as free?

THE CHILDREN’S HOUR.

Between the dark and the daylight,

When the night is beginning to lower,

Comes a pause in the day’s occupations

That is known as the Children’s Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me

The patter of little feet,

The sound of a door that is opened,

And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,

Descending the broad hall stair,

Grave Alice and laughing Allegra,

And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper and then a silence;

Yet I know by their merry eyes

They are plotting and planning together

To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,

A sudden raid from the hall!

By three doors left unguarded

They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret

O’er the arms and back of my chair;

If I try to escape they surround me;

They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,

Their arms about me entwine,

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen

In his Mouse Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

Because you have scaled the wall,

Such an old moustache as I am

Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,

And will not let you depart,

But put you down into the dungeon

In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you for ever,

Yes, for ever and a day,

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,

And moulder in dust away!

ENCELADUS.

Under Mount Etna he lies,

It is slumber, it is not death;

For he struggles at times to arise,

And above him the lurid skies

Are hot with his fiery breath.

The crags are piled on his breast,

The earth is heaped on his head;

But the groans of his wild unrest,

Though smothered and half suppressed,

Are heard, and he is not dead.

And the nations far away

Are watching with eager eyes;

They talk together and say,

“To-morrow, perhaps to-day,

Enceladus will arise!”

And the old gods, the austere

Oppressors in their strength,

Stand aghast and white with fear

At the ominous sounds they hear,

And tremble, and mutter, “At length!”

Ah me! for the land that is sown

With the harvest of despair,

Where the burning cinders, blown

From the lips of the overthrown

Enceladus, fill the air.

Where ashes are heaped in drifts

Over vineyard and field and town,

Whenever he starts and lifts

His head through the blackened rifts

Of the crags that keep him down.

See, see! the red light shines!

’Tis the glare of his awful eyes!

And the storm-wind shouts through the pines

Of Alps and of Apennines,

“Enceladus, arise!”

THE _CUMBERLAND_.

At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay,

On board of the _Cumberland_, sloop of war;

And at times from the fortress across the bay

The alarum of drums swept past,

Or a bugle blast

From the camp on the shore.

Then far away to the south uprose

A little feather of snow-white smoke,

And we knew that the iron ship of our foe

Was steadily steering its course

To try the force

Of our ribs of oak.

Down upon us heavily runs,

Silent and sullen, the floating fort;

Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns,

And leaps the terrible death,

With fiery breath,

From each open port.

We are not idle, but send her straight

Defiance back in a full broadside!

As hail rebounds from a roof of slate

Rebounds our heavier hail

From each iron scale

Of the monster’s hide.

“Strike your flag!” the rebel cries,

In his arrogant old plantation strain.

“Never!” our gallant Morris replies;

“It is better to sink than to yield!”

And the whole air pealed

With the cheers of our men.

Then, like a kraken huge and black,

She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp!

Down went the _Cumberland_ all a wrack,

With a sudden shudder of death,

And the cannon’s breath

For her dying gasp.

Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay,

Still floated our flag at the mainmast head.

Lord, how beautiful was thy day!

Every waft of the air

Was a whisper of prayer,

Or a dirge for the dead.

Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas!

Ye are at peace in the troubled stream,

Ho! brave land! with hearts like these,

Thy flag, that is rent in twain,

Shall be one again,

And without a seam!

SOMETHING LEFT UNDONE.

Labour with what zeal we will,

Something still remains undone,

Something uncompleted still

Waits the rising of the sun.

By the bedside, on the stair,

At the threshold, near the gates,

With its menace or its prayer,

Like a mendicant it waits;

Waits, and will not go away;

Waits, and will not be gainsaid

By the cares of yesterday

Each to-day is heavier made;

Till at length the burden seems

Greater than our strength can bear;

Heavy as the weight of dreams,

Pressing on us everywhere.

And we stand from day to day,

Like the dwarfs of times gone by,

Who, as Northern legends say,

On their shoulders held the sky.

WEARINESS.

O little feet! that such long years

Must wander on through hopes and fears,

Must ache and bleed beneath your load;

I, nearer to the Wayside Inn

Where toil shall cease and rest begin,

Am weary, thinking of your road!

O little hands! that, weak or strong,

Have still to serve or rule so long,

Have still so long to give or ask;

I, who so much with book and pen

Have toiled among my fellow-men,

Am weary, thinking of your task.

O little hearts! that throb and beat

With such impatient, feverish heat,

Such limitless and strong desires;

Mine that so long has glowed and burned,

With passions into ashes turned,

Now covers and conceals its fires.

O little souls! as pure and white

And crystalline as rays of light

Direct from heaven, their source divine;

Refracted through the mist of years,

How red my setting sun appears,

How lurid looks this soul of mine!

SNOW-FLAKES.

Out of the bosom of the Air,

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow

Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take

Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

In the white countenance confession,

The troubled sky reveals

The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the Air,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

Now whispered and revealed

To wood and field.

FLIGHT THE THIRD.

1874.

CADENABBIA.

No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks

The silence of the summer day,

As by the loveliest of all lakes

I while the idle hours away.

I pace the leafy colonnade,

Where level branches of the plane

Above me weave a roof of shade

Impervious to the sun and rain.

At times a sudden rush of air

Flutters the lazy leaves o’erhead,

And gleams of sunlight toss and flare

Like torches down the path I tread.

By Somariva’s garden gate

I make the marble stairs my seat;

And hear the water, as I wait,

Lapping the steps beneath my feet.

The undulation sinks and swells

Along the stony parapets;

And far away the floating bells

Tinkle upon the fisher’s nets.

Silent and slow, by tower and town,

The freighted barges come and go;

Their pendent shadow gliding down,

By town and tower submerged below.

The hills sweep upward from the shore,

With villas scattered one by one

Upon their wooded spurs, and lower

Bellaggio blazing in the sun.

And dimly seen, a tangled mass

Of walls and woods, of light and shade,

Stands beck’ning up the Stelvio pass

Varenna with its wide cascade.

I ask myself, Is this a dream?

Will it all vanish into air?

Is there a land of such supreme

And perfect beauty anywhere?

Sweet vision! Do not fade away;

Linger until my heart shall take

Into itself the summer day

And all the beauty of the lake.

Linger until upon my brain

Is stamped an image of the scene;

Then fade into the air again,

And be as if thou hadst not been.

CHARLES SUMNER.

MARCH 30, 1874.

Garlands upon his grave,

And flowers upon his hearse;

And to the tender heart and brave,

The tribute of this verse.

His was the troubled life,

The conflict and the pain;

The griefs, the bitterness of strife,

The honour without stain.

Like Winkelried, he took

Into his manly breast

The sheaf of hostile spears, and broke

A path for the oppressed;

Then from the fatal field,

Upon a nation’s heart,

Borne like a warrior on his shield!—

So should the brave depart.

Death takes us by surprise,

And stays our hurrying feet;

The great design unfinished lies,

Our lives are incomplete.

But in the dark unknown,

Perfect their circles seem,

Even as a bridge’s arch of stone

Is rounded in the stream.

Alike are life and death

When life in death survives,

And the uninterrupted breath

Inspires a thousand lives.

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.

MONTE CASSINO.

Beautiful valley, through whose verdant meads

Unheard the Garigliano glides along,—

The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,

The river taciturn of classic song!

The Land of Labour and the Land of Rest,

Where mediæval towns are white on all

The hillsides, and where every mountain crest

Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall!

There is Alagna, there Pope Boniface

Was dragged with contumely from his throne;

Sciarra Colonna, was that day’s disgrace

The Pontiff’s only, or in part thine own?

There is Ceprano, where a renegade

Was each Apulian as great Dante saith,

When Manfred, by his men-at-arms betrayed,

Spurred on to Benevento and to death.

There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town,

Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light

Still hovers o’er his birthplace, like the crown

Of splendour over cities seen at night.

Doubled the splendour is, that in its streets

The angelic Doctor as a schoolboy played,

And dreamed perhaps the dreams that he repeats

In ponderous folios for scholastics made.

And there, uplifted like a passing cloud,

That pauses on a mountain summit high,

Monte Cassino’s convent rears its proud

And venerable walls against the sky.

Well I remember how on foot I climbed

The stony pathway leading to its gate:

Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed;

Below, the darkening town grew desolate.

Well I remember the low arch and dark,

The court-yard with its well, the terrace wide,

From which, far down, diminished to a park,

The valley veiled in mist was dim descried.

The day was dying, and with feeble hands

Caressed the mountain-tops; the vales between

Darkened; the river in the meadow-lands

Sheathed itself as a sword and was not seen.

The silence of the place was like a sleep,

So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread

Was a reverberation from the deep

Recesses of the ages that are dead.

For, more than thirteen centuries ago,

Benedict, fleeing from the gates of Rome,

A youth disgusted with its vice and woe,

Sought in these mountain solitudes a home.

He founded here his Convent and his Rule

Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer.

His pen became a clarion, and his school

Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air.

What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way

Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores

The illuminated manuscripts that lay

Torn and neglected on the dusty floors?

Boccaccio was a novelist, a child

Of fancy and of fiction at the best;

This the urbane librarian said and smiled,

Incredulous as at some idle jest.

Upon such themes as these with one young friar

I sat conversing late into the night,

Till in its cavernous chimney the wood fire

Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite.

And then translated, in my convent cell,

Myself yet not myself in dreams I lay;

And, as a monk who hears the matin bell,

Started from sleep; already it was day.

From the high window I beheld the scene

On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed;

The mountains and the valley in the sheen

Of the bright sun, and stood as one amazed.

Grey mists were rolling, rising, vanishing;

The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns.

Far off the mellow bells began to ring

For matins in the half-awakened towns.

The conflict of the Present and the Past,

The ideal and the actual in our life,

As on a field of battle held me fast,

Where this world and the next world were at strife.

For, as the valley from its sleep awoke,

I saw the iron horses of the steam

Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke,

And woke as one awaketh from a dream.

AMALFI.

Sweet the memory is to me

Of the land beyond the sea,

Where the waves and mountains meet;

Where amid her mulberry-trees

Sits Amalfi in the heat,

Bathing ever her white feet

In the tideless, summer seas.

In the middle of the town,

From its fountains in the hills,

Tumbling through the narrow gorge,

The Canneto rushes down,

Turns the great wheels of the mills,

Lifts the hammers of the forge.

’Tis a stairway, not a street,

That ascends the deep ravine,

Where the torrent leaps between

Rocky walls that almost meet.

Toiling up from stair to stair

Peasant girls their burdens bear;

Sunburnt daughters of the soil,

Stately figures tall and straight;

What inexorable fate

Dooms them to this life of toil?

Lord of vineyards and of lands,

Far above the convent stands,

On its terraced walk aloof

Leans a monk with folded hands,

Placid, satisfied, serene,

Looking down upon the scene

Over wall and red-tiled roof;

Wondering unto what good end

All this toil and traffic tend,

And why all men cannot be

Free from care, and free from pain,

And the sordid love of gain,

And as indolent as he.

Where are now the freighted barks

From the marts of east and west?

Where the knights in iron sarks

Journeying to the Holy Land,

Glove of steel upon the hand,

Cross of crimson on the breast?

Where the pomp of camp and court?

Where the pilgrims with their prayers?

Where the merchants with their wares,

And their gallant brigantines

Sailing safely into port,

Chased by corsair Algerines?

Vanished like a fleet of cloud,

Like a passing trumpet-blast,

Are those splendours of the past,

And the commerce and the crowd!

Fathoms deep beneath the seas

Lie the ancient wharves and quays,

Swallowed by the engulfing waves;

Silent streets, and vacant halls,

Ruined roofs and towers and walls;

Hidden from all mortal eyes

Deep the sunken city lies:

Even cities have their graves!

This is an enchanted land!

Round the headlands far away

Sweeps the blue Salernian bay

With its sickle of white sand;

Farther still and farthermost

On the dim discovered coast

Pæstum with its ruins lies,

And its roses all in bloom

Seem to tinge the fatal skies

Of that lonely land of doom.

On his terrace, high in air,

Nothing doth the good monk care

For such worldly themes as these.

From the garden just below

Little puffs of perfume blow,

And a sound is in his ears

Of the murmur of the bees

In the shining chestnut-trees;

Nothing else he heeds or hears.

All the landscape seems to swoon

In the happy afternoon;

Slowly o’er his senses creep

The encroaching waves of sleep

And he sinks as sank the town,

Unresisting, fathoms down

Into caverns cool and deep!

Walled about with drifts of snow,

Hearing the fierce north wind blow,

Seeing all the landscape white,

And the river cased in ice,

Comes this memory of delight,

Comes this vision unto me

Of a long-lost Paradise

In the land beyond the sea.

A DUTCH PICTURE.

Simon Danz has come home again,

From cruising about with his buccaneers;

He has singed the beard of the King of Spain,

And carried away the Dean of Jaen

And sold him in Algiers.

In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles

And weathercocks flying aloft in air,

There are silver tankards of antique styles,

Plunder of convent and castle, and piles

Of carpets rich and rare.

In his tulip-garden there by the town,

Overlooking the sluggish stream,

With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown

The old sea-captain, hale and brown,

Walks in a waking dream.

A smile in his grey mustachio lurks

Whenever he thinks of the King of Spain

And the listed tulips look like Turks,

And the silent gardener as he works

Is changed to the Dean of Jaen.

The windmills on the outermost

Verge of the landscape in the haze,

To him are towers on the Spanish coast,

With whiskered sentinels at their post,

Though this is the river Maese.

But when the winter rains begin,

He sits and smokes by the blazing brands,

And old seafaring men come in,

Goat-bearded, grey, and with double chin,

And rings upon their hands.

They sit there in the shadow and shine

Of the flickering fire of the winter night;

Figures in colour and design

Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine,

Half darkness and half light.

And they talk of their ventures lost or won,

And their talk is ever and ever the same,

While they drink the red wine of Tarragon,

From the cellars of some Spanish Don,

Or convent set on flame.

Restless at times, with heavy strides

He paces his parlour to and fro;

He is like a ship that at anchor rides,

And swings with the rising and falling tides

And tugs at her anchor-tow.

Voices mysterious far and near,

Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,

Are calling and whispering in his ear,

“Simon Danz! Why stayest thou here?

Come forth and follow me!”

So he thinks he shall take to the sea again

For one more cruise with his buccaneers,

To singe the beard of the King of Spain,

And capture another Dean of Jaen

And sell him in Algiers.

THE SERMON OF ST. FRANCIS.

Up soared the lark into the air,

A shaft of song, a wingèd prayer,

As if a soul, released from pain,

Were flying back to heaven again.

St. Francis heard; it was to him

An emblem of the Seraphim;

The upward motion of the fire,

The light, the heat, the heart’s desire.

Around Assisi’s convent gate

The birds, God’s poor who cannot wait,

From moor and mere and darksome wood

Came flocking for their dole of food.

“O brother birds,” St. Francis said,

“Ye come to me and ask for bread,

But not with bread alone to-day

Shall ye be fed and sent away.

“Ye shall be fed, ye happy birds,

With manna of celestial words;

Not mine, though mine they seem to be,

Not mine, though they be spoken through me.

“O, doubly are ye bound to praise

The great Creator in your lays;

He giveth you your plumes of down,

Your crimson hoods, your cloaks of brown.

“He giveth you your wings to fly

And breathe a purer air on high,

And careth for you everywhere,

Who for yourselves so little care!”

With flutter of swift wings and songs

Together rose the feathered throngs,

And singing scattered far apart;

Deep peace was in St. Francis’ heart.

He knew not if the brotherhood

His homily had understood;

He only knew that to one ear

The meaning of his words was clear.

TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE.

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,

And yonder gilded vane,

Immoveable for three days past,

Points to the misty main.

It drives me in upon myself,

And to the fireside gleams,

To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,

And still more pleasant dreams.

I read whatever bards have sung

Of lands beyond the sea,

And the bright days when I was young

Come thronging back to me.

I fancy I can hear again

The Alpine torrent’s roar,

The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,

The sea at Elsinore.

I see the convent’s gleaming wall

Rise from its groves of pine,

And towers of old cathedrals tall,

And castles by the Rhine.

I journey on by park and spire,

Beneath centennial trees,

Through fields with poppies all on fire,

And gleams of distant seas.

I fear no more the dust and heat,

No more I feel fatigue,

While journeying with another’s feet,

O’er many a lengthening league.

Let others traverse sea and land,

And toil through various climes,

I turn the world round with my hand,

Reading these poet’s rhymes.

From them I learn whatever lies

Beneath each changing zone,

And see, when looking with their eyes,

Better than with mine own.

[Illustration]

FLIGHT THE FOURTH.

THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD.

Warm and still is the summer night,

As here by the river’s brink I wander;

White overhead are the stars, and white

The glimmering lamps on the hill-side yonder.

Silent are all the sounds of day;

Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets,

And the cry of the herons winging their way

O’er the poet’s[57] house in the Elmwood thickets.

Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass

To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes,

Sing him the song of the green morass,

And the tides that water the reeds and rushes.

Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern,

And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking;

For only a sound of lament we discern,

And cannot interpret the words you are speaking.

Sing of the air, and the wild delight

Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you,

The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight

Through the drift of the floating mists that infold you;

Of the landscape lying so far below,

With its towns and rivers and desert places;

And the splendour of light above, and the glow

Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces.

Ask him if songs of the Troubadours,

Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter,

Sound in his ears more sweet than yours,

And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better.

Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate,

Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting,

Some one hath lingered to meditate,

And send him unseen this friendly greeting;

That many another hath done the same,

Though not by a sound was the silence broken;

The surest pledge of a deathless name

Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.

[57] James Russell Lowell.

VITTORIA COLONNA.

VITTORIA COLONNA, on the death of her husband, the Marchese di Pescara,

retired to her castle at Ischia (Inarimé), and there wrote the Ode upon

his death, which gained her the title of Divine.

Once more, once more, Inarimé,

I see thy purple hills!—once more

I hear the billows of the bay

Wash the white pebbles on thy shore.

High o’er the sea-surge and the sands,

Like a great galleon wrecked and cast

Ashore by storms, thy castle stands,

A mouldering landmark of the Past.

Upon its terrace-walk I see

A phantom gliding to and fro;

It is Colonna,—it is she

Who lived and loved so long ago,

Pescara’s beautiful young wife,

The type of perfect womanhood,

Whose life was love, the life of life,

That time and change and death withstood.

For death, that breaks the marriage band

In others, only closer pressed

The wedding ring upon her hand,

And closer locked and barred her breast.

She knew the lifelong martyrdom,

The weariness, the endless pain

Of waiting for some one to come

Who never more would come again.

The shadows of the chestnut-trees,

The odour of the orange blooms,

The song of birds, and, more than these,

The silence of deserted rooms;

The respiration of the sea,

The soft caresses of the air,

All things in nature seemed to be

But ministers of her despair;

Till the o’erburdened heart, so long

Imprisoned in itself, found vent

And voice in one impassioned song

Of inconsolable lament.

Then as the sun, though hidden from sight,

Transmutes to gold the leaden mist,

Her life was interfused with light,

From realms that, though unseen, exist.

Inarimé! Inarimé!

Thy castle on the crags above

In dust shall crumble and decay,

But not the memory of her love.

SONG.

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;

Home-keeping hearts are happiest,

For those that wander they know not where

Are full of trouble and full of care;

To stay at home is best.

Weary and homesick and distressed,

They wander east, they wander west,

And are baffled and beaten and blown about

By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;

To stay at home is best.

Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;

The bird is safest in its nest;

O’er all that flutter their wings and fly

A hawk is hovering in the sky;

To stay at home is best.

A BALLAD OF THE FRENCH FLEET.

OCTOBER 1746.

MR. THOMAS PRINCE _loquitur_.

A fleet with flags arrayed

Sailed from the port of Brest,

And the Admiral’s ship displayed

The signal—“Steer south-west.”

For this Admiral D’Anville

Had sworn by cross and crown

To ravage with fire and steel

Our helpless Boston town.

There were rumours in the street,

In the houses there was fear

Of the coming of the fleet,

And the danger hovering near;

And while from mouth to mouth

Spread the tidings of dismay,

I stood in the Old South,

Saying humbly, “Let us pray!

“O Lord! we would not advise;

But if in thy Providence

A tempest should arise,

To drive the French fleet hence,

And scatter it far and wide,

Or sink it in the sea,

We should be satisfied,

And thine the glory be.”

This was the prayer I made,

For my soul was all on flame,

And even as I prayed

The answering tempest came.

It came with a mighty power,

Shaking the windows and walls,

And tolling the bell in the tower,

As it tolls at funerals.

The lightning suddenly

Unsheathed its flaming sword,

And I cried, “Stand still, and see

The salvation of the Lord!”

The heavens were black with cloud,

The sea was white with hail,

And ever more fierce and loud

Blew the October gale.

The fleet it overtook,

And the broad sails in the van,

Like the tents of Cushan shook,

Or the curtains of Midian.

Down on the reeling decks

Crashed the o’erwhelming seas;

Ah, never were there wrecks

So pitiful as these!

Like a potter’s vessel broke

The great ships of the line;

They were carried away as a smoke,

Or sank like lead in the brine.

O Lord! before thy path

They vanished and ceased to be,

When thou didst walk in wrath,

With thine horses through the sea.

CASTLES IN SPAIN.

How much of my young heart, O Spain,

Went out to thee in days of yore!

What dreams romantic filled my brain,

And summoned back to life again

The Paladins of Charlemagne,

The Cid Campeador!

And shapes more shadowy than these,

In the dim twilight half revealed:

Phœnician galleys on the seas,

The Roman camps like hives of bees,

The Goth uplifting from his knees

Pelayo on his shield.

It was these memories perchance,

From annals of remotest eld,

That lent the colours of romance

To every trivial circumstance,

And changed the form and countenance

Of all that I beheld.

Old towns, whose history lies hid

In monkish chronicle or rhyme,—

Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid,

Zamora and Valladolid,

Toledo, built and walled amid

The wars of Wamba’s time;

The long straight line of the highway,

The distant town that seems so near,

The peasants in the fields, that stay

Their toil to cross themselves and pray,

When from the belfry at mid-day

The Angelus they hear;

The crosses in the mountain pass,

Mules gay with tassels, the loud din

Of muleteers, the tethered ass

That crops the dusty wayside grass,

And cavaliers with spurs of brass

Alighting at the inn;

White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat,

White cities slumbering by the sea,

White sunshine flooding square and street,

Dark mountain-ranges, at whose feet

The river-beds are dry with heat,

All was a dream to me.

Yet something sombre and severe

O’er the enchanted landscape reigned;

A terror in the atmosphere

As if King Philip listened near,

Or Torquemada, the austere,

His ghostly sway maintained.

The softer Andalusian skies

Dispelled the sadness and the gloom;

There Cadiz by the sea-side lies,

And Seville’s orange-orchards rise,

Making the land a paradise

Of beauty and of bloom.

There Córdova is hidden among

The palm, the olive, and the vine;

Gem of the South, by poets sung,

And in whose Mosque Almanzor hung

As lamps the bells that once had rung

At Compostella’s shrine.

But over all the rest supreme,

The star of stars, the cynosure,

The artist’s and the poet’s theme,

The young man’s vision, the old man’s dream,—

Granada by its winding stream,

The city of the Moor!

And there the Alhambra still recalls

Aladdin’s palace of delight:

Allah il Allah! through its halls

Whispers the fountain as it falls;

The Darro darts beneath its walls,

The hills with snow are white.

Ah yes, the hills are white with snow,

And cold with blasts that bite and freeze;

But in the happy vale below

The orange and pomegranate grow,

And wafts of air toss to and fro

The blossoming almond-trees.

The Vega cleft by the Xenil,

The fascination and allure

Of the sweet landscape chain the will.

The traveller lingers on the hill,

His parted lips are breathing still

The last sigh of the Moor.

How like a ruin overgrown

With flowers that hide the rents of time,

Stands now the Past that I have known;

Castles in Spain, not built of stone,

But of white summer cloud, and blown

Into this little mist of rhyme!

THE WHITE CZAR.

Dost thou see on the rampart’s height

That wreath of mist, in the light

Of the midnight moon? O, hist!

It is not a wreath of mist;

It is the Czar, the White Czar,

Batyushka! Gosudar![58]

He has heard, among the dead,

The artillery roll o’erhead;

The drums and the tramp of feet

Of his soldiery in the street;

He is awake! the White Czar,

Batyushka! Gosudar!

He has heard in the grave the cries

Of his people: “Awake! arise!”

He has rent the gold brocade

Whereof his shroud was made;

He is risen! the White Czar,

Batyushka! Gosudar!

From the Volga and the Don

He has led his armies on,

Over river and morass,

Over desert and mountain pass;

The Czar, the Orthodox Czar,

Batyushka! Gosudar!

He looks from the mountain-chain

Toward the seas, that cleave in twain

The continents; his hand

Points southward o’er the land

Of Roumele! O Czar,

Batyushka! Gosudar!

And the words break from his lips:

“I am the builder of ships,

And my ships shall sail these seas

To the Pillars of Hercules!

I say it; the White Czar,

Batyushka! Gosudar!

“The Bosphorus shall be free;

It shall make room for me;

And the gates of its water-streets

Be unbarred before my fleets.

I say it; the White Czar,

Batyushka! Gosudar!

“And the Christian shall no more

Be crushed, as heretofore,

Beneath thine iron rule,

O Sultan of Istamboul!

I swear it! I the Czar,

Batyushka! Gosudar!”

[58] The White Czar is Peter the Great. Batyushka (_Father dear_) and

Gosudar (_Sovereign_) are titles the Russian people are fond of giving

to the Czar in their popular songs.

THE LEAP OF ROUSHAN BEG.

Mounted on Kyrat strong and fleet,

His chestnut steed with four white feet,

Roushan Beg, called Kurroglou,

Son of the road and bandit chief,

Seeking refuge and relief,

Up the mountain pathway flew.

Such was Kyrat’s wondrous speed,

Never yet could any steed

Reach the dust-cloud in his course.

More than maiden, more than wife,

More than gold, and next to life

Roushan the Robber loved his horse.

In the land that lies beyond

Erzeroum and Trebizond,

Garden-girt his fortress stood;

Plundered khan, or caravan

Journeying north from Koordistan,

Gave him wealth and wine and food.

Seven hundred and fourscore

Men at arms his livery wore,

Did his bidding night and day.

Now, through regions all unknown,

He was wandering, lost, alone,

Seeking without guide his way.

Suddenly the pathway ends,

Sheer the precipice descends,

Loud the torrent roars unseen;

Thirty feet from side to side

Yawns the chasm; on air must ride

He who crosses this ravine.

Following close in his pursuit,

At the precipice’s foot,

Reyhan the Arab, of Orfah,

Halted with his hundred men,

Shouting upward from the glen,

“La il Allah-Allah-la!”

Gently Roushan Beg caressed

Kyrat’s forehead, neck, and breast;

Kissed him upon both his eyes;

Sang to him in his wild way,

As upon the topmost spray

Sings a bird before it flies.

“O my Kyrat, O my steed,

Round and slender as a reed,

Carry me this peril through!

Satin housings shall be thine,

Shoes of gold, O Kyrat mine,

O thou soul of Kurroglou!

“Soft thy skin as silken skein,

Soft as woman’s hair thy mane,

Tender are thine eyes and true;

All thine hoofs like ivory shine,

Polished bright; O, life of mine,

Leap, and rescue Kurroglou!”

Kyrat, then, the strong and fleet,

Drew together his four white feet,

Paused a moment on the verge,

Measured with his eye the space,

And into the air’s embrace

Leaped as leaps the ocean surge.

As the ocean surge o’er silt and sand

Bears a swimmer safe to land,

Kyrat safe his rider bore;

Rattling down the deep abyss

Fragments of the precipice

Rolled like pebbles on a shore.

Roushan’s tasselled cap of red

Trembled not upon his head,

Careless sat he and upright;

Neither hand nor bridle shook,

Nor his head he turned to look,

As he galloped out of sight.

Flash of harness in the air,

Seen a moment like the glare

Of a sword drawn from its sheath;

Thus the phantom horseman passed,

And the shadow that he cast

Leaped the cataract underneath.

Reyhan the Arab held his breath

While this vision of life and death

Passed above him. “Allahu!”

Cried he. “In all Koordistan

Lives there not so brave a man

As this Robber Kurroglou!”

HAROUN AL RASCHID.

One day, Haroun Al Raschid read

A book wherein the poet said:—

“Where are the kings, and where the rest

Of those who once the world possessed?

“They’re gone with all their pomp and show,

They’re gone the way that thou shalt go.

“O thou who choosest for thy share

The world, and what the world calls fair,

“Take all that it can give or lend,

But know that death is at the end!

Haroun Al Raschid bowed his head;

Tears fell upon the page he read.

THE THREE KINGS.

Three Kings came riding from far away,

Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar;

Three Wise Men out of the East were they,

And they travelled by night and they slept by day,

For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star.

The star was so beautiful, large, and clear,

That all the other stars of the sky

Became a white mist in the atmosphere,

And by this they knew that the coming was near

Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy.

Three caskets they bore on their saddle-bows,

Three caskets of gold with golden keys;

Their robes were of crimson silk with rows

Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows,

Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees.

And so the Three Kings rode into the West,

Through the dusk of night over hills and dells,

And sometimes they nodded with beard on breast,

And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest,

With the people they met at the wayside wells.

“Of the child that is born,” said Baltasar,

“Good people, I pray you, tell us the news;

For we in the East have seen his star,

And have ridden fast, and have ridden far,

To find and worship the King of the Jews.”

And the people answered, “You ask in vain;

We know of no king but Herod the Great!”

They thought the Wise Men were men insane,

As they spurred their horses across the plain,

Like riders in haste who cannot wait.

And when they came to Jerusalem,

Herod the Great, who had heard this thing,

Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them;

And said, “Go down unto Bethlehem,

And bring me tidings of this new king.”

So they rode away; and the star stood still,

The only one in the grey of morn;

Yes, it stopped, it stood still of its own free will,

Right over Bethlehem on the hill,

The city of David where Christ was born.

And the Three Kings rode through the gate and the guard,

Through the silent street, till their horses turned

And neighed as they entered the great inn-yard;

But the windows were closed, and the doors were barred,

And only a light in the stable burned.

And cradled there in the scented hay,

In the air made sweet by the breath of kine

The little child in the manger lay,

The Child that would be King one day

Of a kingdom not human but divine.

His mother, Mary of Nazareth,

Sat watching beside his place of rest,

Watching the even flow of his breath,

For the joy of life and the terror of death

Were mingled together in her breast.

They laid their offerings at his feet:

The gold was their tribute to a King,

The frankincense, with its odour sweet,

Was for the Priest, the Paraclete,

The myrrh for the body’s burying.

And the mother wondered and bowed her head,

And sat as still as a statue of stone;

Her heart was troubled yet comforted,

Remembering what the Angel had said

Of an endless reign and of David’s throne.

Then the Kings rode out of the city gate,

With a clatter of hoofs in proud array;

But they went not back to Herod the Great,

For they knew his malice and feared his hate,

And returned to their homes by another way.

KING TRISANKU.

Viswamitra the magician,

By his spells and incantations,

Up to Indra’s realms elysian

Raised Trisanku, king of nations.

India and the Gods offended

Hurled him downward, and descending

In the air he hung suspended,

With these equal powers contending.

Thus by aspirations lifted,

By misgivings downward driven.

Human hearts are tossed and drifted

Midway between earth and heaven.

VOX POPULI.

When Mazáran, the magician,

Journeyed westward through Cathay,

Nothing heard he but the praises

Of Badoura on his way.

But the lessening rumour ended

When he came to Khaledan;

There the folks were talking only

Of Prince Camaralzaman.

So it happens with the poets,

Every province hath its own;

Camaralzaman is famous

Where Badoura is unknown.

THE REVENGE OF RAIN-IN-THE-FACE.

In that desolate land and lone,

Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone

Roar down their mountain path,

By their fires the Sioux chiefs

Muttered their woes and griefs,

And the menace of their wrath.

“Revenge!” cried Rain-in-the-Face,

“Revenge upon all the race

Of the White Chief with yellow hair!”

And the mountains dark and high

From their crags re-echoed the cry

Of his anger and despair.

In the meadow, spreading wide

By woodland and river-side

The Indian village stood;

All was silent as a dream,

Save the rushing of the stream

And the blue-jay in the wood.

In his war-paint and his beads,

Like a bison among the reeds,

In ambush the Sitting Bull

Lay with three thousand braves

Crouched in the clefts and caves,

Savage, unmerciful!

Into the fatal snare

The White Chief with yellow hair

And his three hundred men

Dashed headlong, sword in hand;

But of that gallant band

Not one returned again.

The sudden darkness of death

Overwhelmed them, like the breath

And smoke of a furnace fire;

By the river’s bank, and between

The rocks of the ravine

They lay in their bloody attire.

But the foeman fled in the night,

And Rain-in-the-Face, in his flight

Uplifted high in air

As a ghastly trophy, bore

The brave heart that beat no more,

Of the White Chief with yellow hair.

Whose was the right and the wrong?

Sing it, O funeral song,

With a voice that is full of tears,

And say that our broken faith,

Wrought all this ruin and scathe,

In the Year of a Hundred Years!

TO THE RIVER YVETTE.

O lovely river of Yvette!

O darling river! like a bride,

Some dimpled, bashful, fair Lisette,

Thou goest to wed the Orge’s tide.

Maincourt, and lordly Dampierre,

See and salute thee on thy way,

And, with a blessing and a prayer,

Ring the sweet bells of St. Forget.

The valley of Chevreuse in vain

Would hold thee in its fond embrace;

Thou glidest from its arms again

And hurriest on with swifter pace.

Thou wilt not stay; with restless feet

Pursuing still thine onward flight,

Thou goest as one in haste to meet

Her sole desire, her heart’s delight.

O lovely river of Yvette!

O darling stream! on balanced wings

The wood-birds sang the chansonnette

That here an unknown poet sings.

THE EMPEROR’S GLOVE.

“Combien faudrait-il de peaux d’Espagne pour faire un gant de cette

grandeur?” A play upon the words _gant_, a glove, and _Gand_, the

French for Ghent.

On St. Bavon’s tower, commanding

Half of Flanders, his domain,

Charles the Emperor once was standing,

While beneath him on the landing

Stood Duke Alva and his train.

Like a print in books of fables,

Or a model made for show,

With its pointed roofs and gables,

Dormer windows, scrolls and labels,

Lay the city far below.

Through its squares and streets and alleys

Poured the populace of Ghent;

As a routed army rallies,

Or as rivers run through valleys,

Hurrying to their homes they went.

“Nest of Lutheran misbelievers!”

Cried Duke Alva as he gazed;

“Haunt of traitors and deceivers,

Stronghold of insurgent weavers,

Let it to the ground be razed!”

On the Emperor’s cap the feather

Nods, as laughing he replies:

“How many skins of Spanish leather,

Think you, would, if stitched together,

Make a glove of such a size?”

A WRAITH IN THE MIST.

“Sir, I should build me a fortification if I came to live

here.”—BOSWELL’S _Johnson_.

On the green little isle of Inchkenneth

Who is it that walks by the shore,

So gay with his Highland blue bonnet,

So brave with his targe and claymore?

His form is the form of a giant,

But his face wears an aspect of pain;

Can this be the Laird of Inchkenneth?

Can this be Sir Alan McLean?

Ah, no! It is only the Rambler,

The Idler, who lives in Bolt Court,

And who says, were he Laird of Inchkenneth,

He would wall himself round with a fort.

Miscellaneous Poems.

1879 TO 1882.

THE GOLDEN SUNSET.

The golden sea its mirror spread

Beneath the golden skies,

And but a narrow strip between

Of land and shadow lies.

The cloud-like rocks, the rock-like clouds

Dissolved in glory float,

And midway of the radiant flood,

Hangs silently the boat.

The sea is but another sky,

The sky a sea as well,

And which is earth and which is heaven,

The eye can scarcely tell.

So when for us life’s evening hour,

Soft fading shall descend,

May glory, born of earth and heaven,

The earth and heaven blend.

Flooded with peace the spirits float,

With silent rapture glow,

Till where earth ends and heaven begins,

The soul shall scarcely know.

FROM MY ARM-CHAIR.

_To the Children of Cambridge, who presented to me, on my

Seventy-second Birthday, February 27, 1879, this Chair, made from the

Wood of the Village Blacksmith’s Chestnut Tree._

Am I a king, that I should call my own

This splendid ebon throne?

Or by what reason, or what right divine,

Can I proclaim it mine?

Only, perhaps, by right divine of song

It may to me belong;

Only because the spreading chestnut tree

Of old was sung by me.

Well I remember it in all its prime,

When in the summer-time

The affluent foliage of its branches made

A cavern of cool shade.

There by the blacksmith’s forge beside the street

Its blossom white and sweet

Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,

And murmured like a hive.

And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,

Tossed its great arms about,

The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,

Dropped to the ground beneath.

And now some fragments of its branches bare,

Shaped as a stately chair,

Have by my hearthstone found a home at last,

And whisper of the Past.

The Danish king could not in all his pride

Repel the ocean tide,

But seated in this chair, I can in rhyme

Roll back the tide of Time.

I see again, as one in vision sees,

The blossoms and the bees,

And hear the children’s voices shout and call,

And the brown chestnuts fall.

I see the smithy with its fires aglow,

I hear the bellows blow,

And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat

The iron white with heat!

And thus, dear children, have ye made for me

This day a jubilee,

And to my more than threescore years and ten

Brought back my youth again.

The heart hath its own memory, like the mind,

And in it are enshrined

The precious keepsakes, into which are wrought

The giver’s loving thought.

Only your love and your remembrance could

Give life to this dead wood,

And make these branches, leafless now so long,

Blossom again in song.

THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE.

Is it so far from thee

Thou canst no longer see

In the Chamber over the Gate

That old man desolate,

Weeping and wailing sore

For his son who is no more?

O Absalom, my son!

Is it so long ago

That cry of human woe

From the walled city came,

Calling on his dear name,

That it has died away

In the distance of to-day?

O Absalom, my son!

There is no far nor near,

There is neither there nor here,

There is neither soon nor late,

In that Chamber over the Gate,

Nor any long ago

To that cry of human woe,

O Absalom, my son!

From the ages that are past

The voice comes like a blast,

Over seas that wreck and drown,

Over tumult of traffic and town;

And from ages yet to be

Come the echoes back to me,

O Absalom, my son!

Somewhere at every hour

The watchman on the tower

Looks forth, and sees the fleet

Approach of the hurrying feet

Of messengers that bear

The tidings of despair.

O Absalom, my son!

He goes forth from the door,

Who shall return no more.

With him our joy departs;

The light goes out in our hearts;

In the Chamber over the Gate

We sit disconsolate.

O Absalom, my son!

That ’tis a common grief

Bringing but slight relief;

Ours is the bitterest loss,

Ours is the heaviest cross;

And for ever the cry will be,

“Would God I had died for thee

O Absalom, my son!”

THE FOUR LAKES OF MADISON.

Four limpid lakes—four Naiades

Or sylvan deities are these,

In flowing robes of azure dressed,

Four lovely handmaids that uphold

Their shining mirrors, rimmed with gold,

To the fair city in the West.

By day the coursers of the Sun

Drink of these waters as they run

Their swift diurnal round on high;

By night the constellations glow

Far down the hollow deeps below,

And glimmer in another sky.

Fair Lakes, serene and full of light,

Fair town, arrayed in robes of white,

How visionary ye appear!

All like a floating landscape seems

In cloud-land or the land of dreams

Bathed in a golden atmosphere.

THE SIFTING OF PETER.

A FOLK SONG.

“Behold, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat.”

—ST. LUKE XXII. 31.

In St. Luke’s Gospel we are told

How Peter in the days of old

Was sifted;

And now, though ages intervene,

Sin is the same, while time and scene

Are shifted.

Satan desires us, great and small,

As wheat, to sift us, and we all

Are tempted;

Not one, however rich or great,

Is by his station or estate

Exempted.

No house so safely guarded is

But he, by some device of his,

Can enter;

No heart hath armour so complete

But he can pierce with arrows fleet

Its centre.

For all at last the cock will crow

Who hear the warning voice, but go

Unheeding,

Till thrice and more they have denied

The Man of Sorrows, crucified

And bleeding.

One look of that pale suffering face

Will make us feel the deep disgrace

Of weakness;

We shall be sifted till the strength

Of self-conceit be changed at length

To meekness.

Wounds of the soul, though healed, will ache,

The reddening scars remain, and make

Confession;

Lost innocence returns no more;

We are not what we were before

Transgression.

But noble souls, through dust and heat,

Rise from disaster and defeat

The stronger,

And conscious still of the Divine

Within them, he on earth supine

No longer.

HELEN OF TYRE.

What phantom is this, that appears

Through the purple mists of the years

Itself but a mist like these?

A woman of cloud and of fire;

It is she; it is Helen of Tyre,

The town in the midst of the seas!

O Tyre! in thy crowded streets

The phantom appears and retreats,

And the Israelites, that sell

Thy lilies and lions of brass,

Look up as they see her pass,

And murmur “Jezebel!”

Then another phantom is seen

At her side, in a grey gabardine,

With beard that floats to his waist;

It is Simon Magus, the Seer;

He speaks, and she pauses to hear

The words he utters in haste.

He says: “From this evil fame,

From this life of sorrow and shame,

I will lift thee and make thee mine!

Thou hast been Queen Candace,

And Helen of Troy, and shalt be

The Intelligence Divine!”

Oh, sweet as the breath of morn,

To the fallen and forlorn

Are whispered words of praise;

For the famished heart believes

The falsehood that tempts and deceives,

And the promise that betrays.

So she follows from land to land

The wizard’s beckoning hand,

As a leaf is blown by the gust,

Till she vanishes into night!

O reader, stoop down and write

With thy finger in the dust.

O town in the midst of the seas,

With thy rafts of cedar trees,

Thy merchandise and thy ships,

Thou, too, art become as nought,

A phantom, a shadow, a thought,

A name upon men’s lips.

THE IRON PEN

MADE FROM A FETTER OF BONNIVARD, THE PRISONER OF CHILLON; THE HANDLE OF

WOOD FROM THE FRIGATE “CONSTITUTION,” AND BOUND WITH A CIRCLET OF GOLD,

INSET WITH THREE PRECIOUS STONES FROM SIBERIA, CEYLON, AND MAINE.

I thought this Pen would arise

From the casket where it lies—

Of itself would arise, and write

My thanks and my surprise.

When you gave it me under the pines,

I dreamed these gems from the mines

Of Siberia, Ceylon, and Maine

Would glimmer as thoughts in the lines;

That this iron link from the chain

Of Bonnivard might retain

Some verse of the Poet who sang

Of the prisoner and his pain;

That this wood from the frigate’s mast

Might write me a rhyme at last,

As it used to write on the sky

The song of the sea and the blast.

But motionless as I wait,

Like a Bishop lying in state

Lies the Pen, with its mitre of gold,

And its jewels inviolate.

Then I must speak, and say

That the light of that summer day

In the garden under the pines

Shall not fade and pass away.

I shall see you standing there,

Caressed by the fragrant air,

With the shadow on your face,

And the sunshine on your hair.

I shall hear the sweet low tone

Of a voice before unknown,

Saying, “This is from me to you—

From me, and to you alone.”

And in words not idle and vain

I shall answer, and thank you again

For the gift, and the grace of the gift,

O beautiful Helen of Maine!

And for ever this gift will be

As a blessing from you to me,

As a drop of the dew of your youth

On the leaves of an aged tree.

THE POET AND HIS SONGS.

As the birds come in the spring,

We know not from where;

As the stars come at evening

From the depths of the air;

As the rain comes from the cloud,

And the brook from the ground;

As suddenly, low or loud,

Out of silence a sound;

As the grape comes to the vine,

The fruit to the tree;

As the wind comes to the pine,

And the tide to the sea;

As come the white sails of ships

O’er the ocean’s verge;

As comes the smile to the lips;

The foam to the surge;

So come to the Poet his songs,

All hitherward blown

From the misty land, that belongs

To the vast Unknown.

His, and not his, are the lays

He sings;—and their fame

Is his, and not his;—and the praise

And the pride of a name.

For voices pursue him by day,

And haunt him by night,

And he listens, and needs must obey,

When the angel says: “Write!”

ROBERT BURNS.

I see amid the fields of Ayr

A ploughman, who in foul or fair

Sings at his task,

So clear we know not if it is

The laverock’s song we hear or his,

Nor care to ask.

For him the ploughing of those fields

A more ethereal harvest yields

Than sheaves of grain:

Songs flush with purple bloom the rye;

The plover’s call, the curlew’s cry,

Sing in his brain.

Touched by his hand, the wayside weed

Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed

Beside the stream

Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass

And heather, where his footsteps pass,

The brighter seem.

He sings of love, whose flame illumes

The darkness of lone cottage rooms;

He feels the force,

The treacherous under-tow and stress,

Of wayward passions, and no less

The keen remorse.

At moments, wrestling with his fate,

His voice is harsh, but not with hate;

The brushwood hung

Above the tavern door lets fall

Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall,

Upon his tongue.

But still the burden of his song

Is love of right, disdain of wrong;

Its master chords

Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood;

Its discords but an interlude

Between the words.

And then to die so young, and leave

Unfinished what he might achieve!

Yet better sure

Is this than wandering up and down,

An old man, in a country town,

Infirm and poor.

For now he haunts his native land

As an immortal youth; his hand

Guides every plough;

He sits beside each ingle-nook;

His voice is in each rushing brook,

Each rustling bough.

His presence haunts this room to-night,

A form of mingled mist and light,

From that far coast.

Welcome beneath this roof of mine!

Welcome! this vacant chair is thine,

Dear guest and ghost!

BAYARD TAYLOR.

Dead he lay among his books!

The peace of God was in his looks.

As the statues in the gloom

Watch o’er Maximilian’s tomb,

So those volumes from their shelves

Watched him silent as themselves.

Ah! his hand will never more

Turn their storied pages o’er,

Never more his lips repeat

Songs of theirs, however sweet.

Let the lifeless body rest!

He is gone who was its guest;

Gone, as travellers haste to leave

An inn, nor tarry until eve.

Traveller! in what realms afar

In what planet, in what star,

In what vast, aërial space

Shines the light upon thy face?

In what gardens of delight

Rest thy weary feet to-night?

Poet! thou whose latest verse

Was a garland on thy hearse;

Thou hast sung, with organ tone,

In Deukalion’s life thine own;[59]

On the ruins of the past

Blooms the perfect flower at last.

Friend! but yesterday the bells

Rang for thee their loud farewells;

And to-day they toll for thee,

Lying dead beyond the sea;

Lying dead among thy books,

The peace of God in all thy looks!

[59] Bayard Taylor published _Eastern Poems_, _El Dorado_, _Life and

Landscapes from Egypt_, _Japan, India, and China_, etc.

OLD ST. DAVID’S AT RADNOR.

What an image of peace and rest

Is this little church among its graves!

All is so quiet; the troubled breast,

The wounded spirit, the heart oppressed,

Here may find the repose it craves.

See how the ivy climbs and expands

Over this humble hermitage,

And seems to caress with its little hands

The rough grey stones, as a child that stands

Caressing the wrinkled cheeks of age!

You cross the threshold; and dim and small

Is the space that serves for the Shepherd’s Fold;

The narrow aisle, the bare white wall,

The pews, and the pulpit quaint and tall,

Whisper and say, “Alas! we are old.”

Herbert’s Chapel at Bemerton,

Hardly more spacious is than this;

But Poet and Pastor, blent in one,

Clothed with a splendour as of the sun,

That lowly and holy edifice.

It is not the wall of stone without

That makes the building small or great,

But the soul’s light shining round about,

And the faith that overcometh doubt,

And the love that stronger is than hate.

Were I a pilgrim in search of peace,

Were I a pastor of Holy Church,

More than a bishop’s diocese

Should I prize this place of rest and release

From further longing and further search.

Here would I stay, and let the world

With its distant thunder roar and roll;

Storms do not rend the sail that is furled;

Nor like a dead leaf tossed and whirled

In an eddy of wind is the anchored soul.

JUGURTHA.

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

Cried the African monarch the splendid,

As down to his death in the hollow

Dark dungeons of Rome he descended,

Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended;

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended,

As the vision that lured him to follow

With the mist and the darkness blended,

And the dream of his life was ended;

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

MAIDEN AND WEATHERCOCK.

A FOLK SONG.

MAIDEN.

O weathercock on the village spire,

With your golden feathers all on fire,

Tell me, what can you see from your perch,

Above there over the towers of the church?

WEATHERCOCK.

I can see the roofs and the streets below,

And the people moving to and fro,

And beyond, without either roof or street,

The great salt sea and the fishermen’s fleet.

I can see a ship come sailing in

Beyond the headlands and harbour of Lynn,

And a young man standing on the deck

With a silken ’kerchief round his neck.

Now he is pressing it to his lips,

And now he is kissing his finger tips,

And now he is lifting and waving his hand,

And blowing the kisses toward the land.

MAIDEN.

Ah, that is the ship from over the sea,

That is bringing my lover back to me;

Bringing my lover so fond and true,

Who does not change with the wind like you.

WEATHERCOCK.

If I change with all the winds that blow,

It is only because they made me so;

And people would think it wondrous strange

If I, a weathercock, should not change.

O pretty maiden, so fine and fair,

With your dreamy eyes and your golden hair,

When you and your lover meet to-day,

You will thank me for looking some other way.

THE WINDMILL.

A FOLK SONG.

Behold! a giant am I!

Aloft here in my tower

With my granite jaws I devour

The maize, and the wheat, and the rye,

And grind them into flour.

I look down over the farms;

In the fields of grain I see

The harvest that is to be;

And I fling to the air my arms,

For I know it is all for me.

I hear the sound of flails,

Far off from the threshing-floors

In barns, with their open doors,

And the wind, the wind in my sails

Louder and louder roars.

I stand here in my place,

With my foot on the rock below,

And whichever way it may blow

I meet it face to face

As a brave man meets his foe.

And while we wrestle and strive,

My master the miller stands

And feeds me with his hands;

For he knows who makes him thrive,

Who makes him lord of lands.

On Sundays I take my rest;

Church-going bells begin

Their low melodious din;

I cross my arms on my breast,

And all is peace within.

VIA SOLITARIA.

Alone I walk the peopled city,

Where each seems happy with his own;

Oh! friends, I ask not for your pity—

I walk alone.

No more for me yon lake rejoices,

Though moved by loving airs of June;

Oh! birds, your sweet and piping voices

Are out of tune.

In vain for me the elm tree arches

Its plumes in many a feathery spray;

In vain the evening’s starry marches

And sunlit day.

In vain your beauty, Summer flowers;

Ye cannot greet these cordial eyes;

They gaze on other fields than ours—

On other skies.

The gold is rifled from the coffer,

The blade is stolen from the sheath;

Life has but one more boon to offer,

And that is—Death.

Yet well I know the voice of Duty,

And, therefore, life and health must crave,

Though she who gave the world its beauty

Is in her grave.

I live, O lost one! for the living

Who drew their earliest life from thee,

And wait, until with glad thanksgiving

I shall be free.

For life to me is as a station

Wherein apart a traveller stands—

One absent long from home and nation,

In other lands.

And I, as he who stands and listens,

Amid the twilight’s chill and gloom,

To hear, approaching in the distance,

The train for home.

For death shall bring another mating,

Beyond the shadows of the tomb,

On yonder shores a bride is waiting

Until I come.

In yonder field are children playing,

And there—oh! vision of delight!—

I see the child and mother straying

In robes of white.

Thou, then, the longing heart that breakest,

Stealing the treasures one by one,

I’ll call Thee blessed when thou makest

The parted—one.

AUF WIEDERSEHEN.[60]

Until we meet again! That is the meaning

Of the familiar words that men repeat

At parting in the street.

Ah, yes, till then! but when death intervening

Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain

We wait for the Again!

The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow

Of parting as we feel it who must stay

Lamenting day by day,

And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow,

We shall not find in its accustomed place

The one belovèd face.

It were a double grief, if the departed,

Being released from earth, should still retain

A sense of earthly pain;

It were a double grief if the true-hearted

Who loved us here, should on the farther shore

Remember us no more.

Believing, in the midst of our afflictions,

That death is a beginning, not an end,

We cry to them, and send

Farewells, that better might be called predictions,

Being foreshadowings of the future thrown

Into the vast Unknown.

Faith overleaps the confines of our reason,

And if by faith, as in old times was said,

Women received their dead

Raised up to life, then only for a season

Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain

Until we meet again.

[60] Written in memory of the Poet’s long-time friend and publisher,

Mr. James T. Fields.

ULTIMA THULE.

TO G. W. G.

With favouring winds, o’er sunlit seas,

We sailed for the Hesperides,

The land where golden apples grow;

But that, ah! that was long ago.

How far since then the ocean streams

Have swept us from the land of dreams.

That land of fiction and of truth,

The lost Atlantis of our youth!

Whither, ah, whither? Are not these

The tempest-haunted Hebrides,

Where sea-gulls scream, and breakers roar,

And wreck and sea-weed line the shore?

Ultima Thule! Utmost Isle!

Here in thy harbours for awhile

We lower our sails; awhile we rest

From the unending, endless quest.

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.

_As Seleucus narrates, Hermes described the principles that rank as

wholes in two myriads of books; or, as we are informed by Manetho, he

perfectly unfolded these principles in three myriads six thousand five

hundred and twenty five Volumes._

_Our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to this deity,

inscribing all their own writings with the name of Hermes._—IAMBLICUS.

Still through Egypt’s desert places

Flows the lordly Nile;

From its banks the great stone faces,

Gaze with patient smile;

Still the pyramids imperious

Pierce the cloudless skies,

And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,

Solemn, stony eyes.

But where are the old Egyptian

Demigods and kings?

Nothing left but an inscription

Graven on stones and rings.

Where are Helius and Hephoestus,

Gods of eldest eld?

Where is Hermes Trismegistus,

Who their secrets held?

Where are now the many hundred

Thousand books he wrote?

By the Thaumaturgists plundered,

Lost in lands remote;

In oblivion sunk for ever,

As when o’er the land

Blows a storm-wind, in the river

Sinks the scattered sand.

Something unsubstantial, ghostly,

Seems this Theurgist,

In deep meditation mostly

Wrapped, as in a mist.

Vague, phantasmal, and unreal,

To our thought he seems,

Walking in a world ideal,

In the land of dreams.

Was he one, or many, merging

Name and fame in one,

Like a stream, to which converging

Many streamlets run?

Till, with gathered power proceeding,

Ampler sweep it takes,

Downward the sweet waters leading

From unnumbered lakes.

By the Nile I see him wandering,

Pausing now and then,

On the mystic union pondering

Between gods and men;

Half-believing, wholly feeling,

With supreme delight,

How the gods, themselves concealing,

Lift men to their height.

Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,

In the thoroughfare

Breathing, as if consecrated,

A diviner air;

And amid discordant noises,

In the jostling throng,

Hearing far, celestial voices

Of Olympian song.

Who shall call his dreams fallacious?

Who has searched or sought

All the unexplored and spacious

Universe of thought?

Who, in his own skill confiding,

Shall with rule and line

Mark the border-land dividing

Human and divine?

Trismegistus! three times greatest!

How thy name sublime

Has descended to this latest

Progeny of time!

Happy they whose written pages

Perish with their lives,

If amid the crumbling ages

Still their name survives!

Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately

Found I in the vast,

Weed-encumbered, sombre, stately

Graveyard of the Past;

And a presence moved before me

On that gloomy shore,

As a waft of wind, that o’er me

Breathed, and was no more.

DECORATION DAY.

Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest

On this Field of the Grounded Arms,

Where foes no more molest,

Nor sentry’s shot alarms!

Ye have slept on the ground before,

And started to your feet

At the cannon’s sudden roar,

Or the drum’s redoubling beat.

But in this camp of Death

No sound your slumber breaks;

Here is no fevered breath,

No wound that bleeds and aches.

All is repose and peace,

Untrampled lies the sod;

The shouts of battle cease,

It is the Truce of God!

Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!

The thoughts of men shall be

As sentinels to keep

Your rest from danger free.

Your silent tents of green

We deck with fragrant flowers;

Yours has the suffering been,

The memory shall be ours.

MAD RIVER.[61]

IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.

TRAVELLER.

Why dost thou wildly rush and roar,

Mad River, O Mad River?

Wilt thou not pause and cease to pour

Thy hurrying, headlong waters o’er

This rocky shelf for ever?

What secret trouble stirs thy breast?

Why all this fret and flurry?

Dost thou not know that what is best

In this too restless world is rest

From over-work and worry?