In many a languid bloom, bow to the moon
And the dim river’s lisp; sleep weighs their eyes
With damask lashes of deep petals fringed,
That the rude, frolic bee,--rough paramour,--
So often kissed beneath the noonday sun.
How cool the breezes touch the tired head!
As if with unseen fingers, soft and slow,
Smoothing away the weariness of day.
And on the breeze, hark! to that melody,
Borne from that thorn-tree, white with fragrant bloom,
The dreaming nocturne of a mocking-bird,--
_Ave Maria_, nun-like, slumbering sung,--
There on its couch of clustered snow and scent.
See, where the violet mound nods many a flower!
Dreamily sad as Sorrow’s own sad eyes,
And lost in thought, and great with dewy grief,
As are her eyes when haltingly she bends
O’er Lethe’s waves, and, stooping down to drink,
Delays to drink, and faltering remains.
The Night with feet of moon-tinged mist and wind
Swept o’er them now, but as she passed she bent,
Meseemed, and kissed each modest bloom and left
A brilliant on its brow, that bashful hung,
Freighted with love: then, groping up her train
Of star-stained crape, that billowed breeze-like by,
I seemed to hear her whisper as she passed:
“Sleep, sleep, my children! Lo, I bring to you
God’s best gift, sleep! the soft, the misty eyed;
The strange, the wonderful! the cure for care!”
And all things slept, the trees, the rocks, the soil,
Sleep’s soft ablution in them washing out
The fever and the frenzy of the day:
But I, I slept not with them, though the world
And all its peoples slept, I could not sleep,
My heart being brimmed with love, with joy and love,
With thoughts and dreams of love’s first happiness;
Until the Night turned from the slumbering world,
From her dim vigil turned,--as, from her child,
A loving mother turns, who, all night long,
Hath bent above its cradle, and with songs
And kisses soothed to rest:--and in the east
The first faint streaks of dawn made gray the heaven,
And the rathe cock, like some clear clarion, crew.
DAWN
I
Mist on the mountain height
Silverly creeping:
Incarnate beads of light
Bloom-cradled sleeping,
Dripped from the brow of Night.
II
Shadows and winds that rise
Over the mountain:
Stars in the spar that lies
Lost in the fountain,
Cold as the waking skies.
III
Sheep in the fenced-in folds
Dreamily bleating,
Dim on the thistled wolds,
Where, glad with meeting,
Twilight the Night enfolds.
IV
Sleep on the restless sea
Hushing its trouble:
Rest on the dreams that be
Hued in Life’s bubble:
Calm on the heart of me.
V
Mist from the mountain height
Hurriedly fleeting:
Star in the locks of Night
Throbbing and beating,
Thrilled with the coming light.
VI
Flocks on the musky strips;
Pearl on the fountain:
Winds from the heavens’ lips;
And, on the mountain,
Dawn with her rose that drips.
THE OCKLAWAHA
River, winding from the west,
Winding from the River May,
Often hath the Indian pressed
Through your black-gums and your mosses,
Where the alligator crosses
Still some lily-paven bay,
Basking there in lazy rest.
Still the spider-lily loops
Sprawling flowers, peels of pearl,
Where the green magnolia stoops
Buds to yellow-lily bonnets;
Where, the morning dew upon its
Golden funnels, curl on curl,
The festooning jasmine droops.
Who may paint the beauty of
Orchids blooming late in June,
Bristling on the boughs above!
Cypress trees where vine and flower,
Long, liana’d blossoms shower
On the deer that come at noon
To the inlets that they love.
Lilied inlets,--where the teal
Dabble ’mid the water-grasses,--
That some treasure seem to seal
With white blooms that star the river:
Bays, the swift kingfishers shiver
Into circles as each passes
O’er their mirrors that reveal.
Bends, reflecting root and moss,
Where the tall palmettos throng
’Mid the live-oaks; tower and toss
Panther necks whose heads are heavy:
Hamaks, where the perfumes levy
Tribute from the birds in song,
From the mocking-birds that cross.
Logs, the turtles haunt; and deeps
Of lagoons the searching crane
Wades; and where the heron sleeps;
Where the screaming limpkins listen,
And the leaping mullet glisten;
Where the bream and bass show plain,
And the dark didapper sweeps.
Coäcoochee! Coäcoochee!
Still your loved magnolias bloom,
Still the tangled Cherokee;
Still the blazing-star spreads splendor
Through the forest, and the tender
Discs of the hibiscus loom,
Rosy, where you once roamed free.
Osceola! Osceola!
Phantoms of your vanquished race
Seem around me: overawe
All my soul here. Mossy regions
Swarm with Seminoles: lost legions
Rise, the war-paint on each face--
Dead, long dead for Florida!
THE MINORCAN
I
The mocking-bird may sing
Loud welcomes in the Spring;
The farewell of our nightingales
Prevails, prevails!
No thing may hush their song:
In sleep they sing the clearer--
It’s “home, home, home,” the whole night long--
What wonder that we feel our wrong
The nearer!
II
Hibiscus blooms surprise
The swamp with rosy eyes;
The Balearic girl but knows
Our rose, our rose!
No slavery may undo
Her dream it makes the purer,
With “love, love, love,” the long night through,--
That makes the day’s long heartbreak too
The surer.
III
The wind from out the west
Would teach our souls unrest;
We will not hear until hath ceased
The East, the East!
Within its whispering sweep
The olive sounds and rushes;
It’s “rest, rest, rest,” while night doth keep
The weight of memory asleep
That crushes.
IV
Deep ocean brings us shells,
Like dead but fond farewells,
And calls to us with all its tongues of foam,
“From home! from home!”
And then the stars on high
Look down and say, “Come, cherish
Hope, hope, sweet hope,” our hearts deny
Us while we toil all day and sigh,
And perish.
THE SPRING IN FLORIDA
I
Crab-apples make the western belt
Of hamak one gay holiday of pink;
And through palmetto deeps, on winds like felt,
The jasmine odors sink.
The wind blows blurs of peach and pearl
Around the villa by the river’s side;
The guava blossoms and the orange-trees whirl
Aroma far and wide.
“He courts her!” sings the mocking-bird;
“He courts her, and she misses
This word, or that, she might have heard,
Had he not crushed a sweeter word
On her sweet mouth with kisses.
He courts her.”
II
Chameleons haunt the sunlight there,
Where lemons firmament with blooms the way:
The white rose gives its soul up and the air
Ensnares it in a ray.
Great lilies open mouths of musk
And stun the wind with scent; the loaded light
Swoons with japonicas; and, tusk on tusk,
Magnolias bud in sight.
The red-bird sings, “Oh, haste, haste, haste!
Sweetheart! no longer tarry!
Go, clasp her sweetly by the waist!
And ask her, like a poppy faced,
Sweetheart! if she will marry.
Oh, haste, haste, haste!”
III
There the verandah, spilled and spun
With deep bignonia, foaming all its frame
With fiery blooms, seems pouring for the sun
A cataract of flame.
The oleander hedges soak
The dusk with fragrance: and the gray moss sweeps
Its streamers from the cypress and live-oak
Where blue the ocean sleeps.
“Oh, love, love, love!” the wood-dove coos;
“Oh, love, love, love, for ever!
They who the crimson rose refuse,
All other flowers, too, may lose--
So choose thou now or never!
Oh, love, love, love!”
LONG AGO
When the winter wind comes sighing
Like a ghost, and softly trying
Door and window, and the dying
Light upon the hearth burns low;
How his heart, that’s old, remembers
Love that faded as the embers
Into ashes, or December’s
Vanished snow.
And he seems to see her sitting
With the tranquil firelight flitting
On her face and fitful knitting,
While her chair goes to and fro;
As she sat once in the hours
That are gone; that, like the flowers,
Died, with all that youth embowers,
Long ago.
Then he seems to hear her speaking,
And her rocker faintly creaking,
And his hand goes dimly seeking
Hers that is not there, ah, no!
Hers, whose memory keeps reaching
From the past fond arms, beseeching
Heart and soul till, past all preaching,
Both o’erflow.
Oh, caresses lost that take him
In his dreams and wildly wake him!
Tears that blind and sighs that shake him,
Is there any cure for woe?--
Answer, love, whose eyes once merried!
Joy, whose cheeks and lips were cherried!
You, whom long ago he buried,
Long ago.
SELF
A Sufi said to me in dreams:
Behold! from Sodomite to Peri
Earth tablets us: man lives and is
Man’s own long commentary.
Is one begat at Bassora,
One lies at Damietta dying--
The plausibilities of God
All possibles o’erlying.
But when lust burns within the flesh--
Hell’s but a homily on Heaven--
Put then the individual first,
And of thyself be shriven.
Neither in adamant nor brass
The scrutinizing eye records it:
The arm is rooted in the heart,
The heart that rules and lords it.
Be that it is and thou art all:
And what thou art so hast thou written
Thee of the lutanists of Love,
Or of the torture-smitten.
ASPIRATION
God knew he strove against pale lust and vice,
Wound in the net of their voluptuous hair:
God knew that to their kisses he was ice,
Their arms around him there.
God knew against the front of fate he set
A front as stern, with lips as sternly pressed;
Raised clenched and ineffectual hands that met
The iron of her breast.
God knew what motive his sad soul inspired:
God knew the star for which he climbed and craved:
God knew, and only God, the hell that fired
His heart and in it raved.
And yet he failed! failed utterly!--No lie
Of Hell, that writhes within its simmering pit,
Sank deeper down than he, who, with the cry,
“Now shall I rest from it!”
Died; was remembered, haply, for a day;
Who hoped to rise rolled in the morning’s rose,
The flame of fame, and still lies laid away
Where no one cares or knows.
PEACE
I
When rose-leaves ’neath the rose-bush lie
And lilies bloom and lilacs die,
When days fall sadder than a sigh,
Lay me asleep;
Where breezes blow the rose-leaves by,
Lay me asleep.
II
When to the dusty, dreary day
No lonely cloud brings cooling gray,
And languidly the tree-tops sway
And flowers there,
Come thou as silently and pray
As flowers there.
III
Then pass as softly: shed no tear
Nor flaw with sighs the peace that’s here;
The pallid silence, far and near,
So weary grown;
Nor bring the world to jar the ear
So weary grown.
SIN
There is a legend of an old Hartz tower
That tells of one, a noble, who had sold
His soul unto the Fiend; who grew not old
On this condition: that the Demon’s power
Cease every midnight for a single hour,
And, in that hour, his body should lie cold
With limbs up-shriveled, and with face, behold!
Shrunk to a death’s-head in the taper’s glower.--
So unto Sin Life gives his best. Her arts
Make all his outward seeming beautiful
Before the world; but in his heart of hearts
Abides an hour when her strength is null;
When he shall feel the death through all his parts
Strike, and his countenance become a skull.
THE HOUSE OF FEAR
Vast are its halls, as vast the halls and lone
Where Death sits, listening to the wind and rain;
And dark the house, where I shall meet again
That long-dead Sin in some dread way unknown:
For I have dreamed of stairs of haunted stone,
And spectre footsteps I have fled in vain;
And windows glaring with a blood-red stain,
And hollow eyes, that burn me to the bone,
Within a face that looks as that black night
It looked when deep I dug for it a grave,--
The dagger wound above the brow, the thin
Blood trickling slantwise down the cheek’s dead white;--
And I have dreamed not even God can save
Me and my soul from that arisen Sin.
SATAN
Still shall I stand the everlasting hate
Colossal Chaos builded ’neath thine eyes,
The symbol of all evil, that defies
Thy victory, and, vanquished, still can wait.
Scar me again with such vast flame as late
Hurled abrupt thunder and archangel cries,
’Mid fiery whirlwinds of the terrible skies,
Down the deep’s roar against Hell’s monster gate!
Thy wrath can not abolish or make less
Me, an eternal wile opposed to wrath:
Me, who to thwart thee evermore shall plan!
Behold thy Eden’s vanished loveliness!--
Why hast thou set a sword within its path,
And cursed and exiled thine own image, Man?
OSSIAN
Long have I heard the noise of battle clash
Along the windy sea that roared again;
Seen helmets rise, and on the clanking plain
Barbaric chieftains meet and, howling, dash
Their mailéd thousands down, with crash on crash,
Like crags contending with the roaring main;
Torrents of shields, like rivers of rolling rain,
I have beheld within the moon’s pale flash;
The moon, that, like a spirit, o’er the wood
Hung white as steel, glimmering the spears and swords,
That shone like ripples in the iron flood,
The streams of war, that beat in heathen hordes
About their rock-like kings, whence wave-like far,
Circled the battle, warrior on warrior.
QUATRAINS
I
_The Love Chase_
On, towards the purlieus of impossible space,
From Death, enamoured, Life, capricious, flies:
Communicated sorrow of his face
Freezing her ever backward burning eyes.
II
_The Garden of Days_
Man’s days are planted as a flower-bed
With labor’s lily and the rose of folly:
Beneath grief’s cypress, pale, uncomforted,
The phantom fungus blooms of melancholy.
III
_Faith and Facts_
With starry gold Night still endorses what
Man’s soul hath written, guessing at the skies:
Day on Night’s scribble drops a fiery blot,
And ’thwart the writing scrawls, “The lie of lies.”
IV
_Hell and Heaven_
And it may be that, seamed with iron scars,
One in vast Hell oft lifts fierce eyes above,
And one, inviolate as God’s high stars,
Looks from far Heaven, sighing: “Alas, O love!”
V
_Alchemy_
Into her heart’s young crucible Life threw
Affliction first, then Faith,--by which is meant
Hope and Humility:--Love touched the two,
And, lo! the golden blessing of Content.
VI
_Trial_
As oft as Hope weighed, coaxing, on this arm,
On that Despair dashed heavily his fist:
He knew no way out of Grief’s night and storm,
Until a child, named Effort, came and kissed.
VII
_Nightmare_
Some obscene drug in her dull draught Sleep gave,
For dead I lay, yet heard a man-faced beast
Dig, dig with wolfish fingers in my grave,
With horrible laughter to a horrible feast.
VIII
_Clairvoyance_
Some few may pierce the phantom fogs, that veil
Life’s stormy seas, into futurity,
And see the Flying Dutchman’s ominous sail,
Portentous of dark things that are to be.
IX
_The Flying Dutchman_
Through hissing scud, mad mist, and roaring rain,
On thundering seas, I see her drive and drive,
Crowding wild canvas ’gainst the hurricane,
Her demon ports with glow-worm lamps alive.
X
_Destiny_
Within the volume of the universe
With worlds she writes irrevocable laws:
From everlasting unto everlasting hers
The evolutions of effect and cause.
XI
_Fame, the Mermaid_
A mirror, brilliant as a beautiful star,
She lifts and sings to her own loveliness:
Not till her light and song have lured him far
Does man behold the lie he did not guess.
XII
_The Hours_
With stars and dew and sunlight in their hair,
They come, the daughters of the Day, who saith:
“The gifts my children bring are rest and care,
Of which the last is Life, the first is Death.”
XIII
_Despair_
So sick at heart, so weary of the sun,
In her sad halls the Soul sits desolate,
Her Hope surrendered to Oblivion,
Whose coal-black charger neighs outside the gate.
XIV
_The Misanthrope_
Shut in with its own selfishness his soul
Sees,--as a screech-owl in a dead tree might,
Blinking avoided daylight through one hole,--
The white world blackened by his own dull sight.
XV
_The Hun_
On splendid infamies--a thousand years
Heaven tolerated--like a Word that trod
Incarnate of the Law, vast wrath and tears
In pagan eyes, behold the Scourge of God!
XVI
_Greece_
The godlike sister of all lands she stands
Before the World, to whom she gave her heart,
Still testifying with degenerate hands
Her bygone glory in enduring art.
XVII
_Egypt_
With ages weighed as with the pyramids
And Karnac wrecks, still--out of Sphinx-like eyes
Beneath the apathetic lotus-lids--
With Memnon moan her granite heart defies.
XVIII
_Poe_
Wild wandering witch-lights and, dark-wing’d above,
A raven; and, within a sculptured tomb,
Beside the corpse of Beauty and of Love,
Song’s everlasting-lamp that lights the gloom.
[Illustration:
Egypt Page 262
_Quatrains_]
XIX
_Hawthorne_
Dim lands and dimmer walls, where Magic slips
A couch of velvet sleep beneath Romance:
Where Speculation, Prince-like, kneels; his lips
Fearing to break the long-unbroken trance.
XX
_Emerson_
Our New-World Chrysostom, whose golden tongue
Through Nature preached philosophy and truth:
Old intimate of loveliness he sung,
Wise and instructing with the lips of youth.
XXI
_Jaafer the Vizier_
Lutes, odorous torches, slaves and dancing girls
In gardens by a moonlit waterside,
And one whose wise lips scatter words like pearls--
Behold the true Haroun whom naught may hide!
THE PURITANS’ CHRISTMAS
Their only thought religion,
What Christmas joys had they,
The stern, staunch Pilgrim Fathers who
Knew never a holiday?--
A log-church in the clearing
’Mid solitudes of snow,
The wild-beast and the wilderness,
And lurking Indian foe.
No time had they for pleasure,
Whom God had put to school;
A sermon was their Christmas cheer,
A psalm their only Yule.
They deemed it joy sufficient,--
Nor would Christ take it ill,--
That service to himself and God
Employed their spirits still.
And so through faith and prayer
Their powers were renewed,
And hearts made strong to hew a world,
And tame a solitude.
A type of revolution,
Wrought from an iron plan,
In the largest mold of liberty
God cast the Puritan.
A better land they founded,
That Freedom had for bride,
The shackles of old despotism
Struck from her limbs and side.
With faith within to guide them,
And courage to perform,
A nation, from a wilderness,
They hewed with their strong arm.
For liberty to worship,
And right to do and dare,
They faced the savage and the storm
With voices raised in prayer.
For God it was who summoned,
And God it was who led,
And God would not forsake the love
That must be clothed and fed.
Great need had they of courage!
Great need of faith had they!
And, lacking these,--how otherwise
For us had been this day!
THE NEW YEAR
Lift up thy torch, O Year, and let us see
What Destiny
Hath made thee heir to, at nativity!--
Doubt, some call Faith; and ancient Wrong and Might,
Whom some name Right;
And Darkness, that the purblind world calls Light.
Despair, with Hope’s brave form; and Hate, who goes
In Friendship’s clothes;
And Joy, the smiling mask of many woes.
Neglect, whom Merit serves; Lust, to whom, see,
Love bends the knee;
And Selfishness, who preacheth charity.
Vice, in whose dungeon Virtue lies in chains;
And Cares and Pains,
That on the throne of Pleasure hold their reigns.
Corruption, known as Honesty; and Fame
That’s but a name;
And Innocence, whose other name is Shame.
And Folly men call Wisdom here, forsooth;
And, like a youth,
Fair Falsehood, whom the many take for Truth.
Abundance, who hath Famine’s house in lease;
And, high ’mid these,
War, blood-black, on the spotless shrine of Peace.
Lift up thy torch, O Year! make clear our sight!
Deep lies the night
Around us, and God grants us little light!
THE POET OF THE SIERRAS
How shall I greet him--him who seems
To me the greatest of our singers?
As one who hears Sierra streams,
And, gazing under arching fingers,
Feels all the eagle feels that screams,
The savage dreams, what time he lingers?
Son of the West, out of the West
We heard thee sing,--who still allurest,--
That land where God sits manifest;
That land where man stands freest, surest;
That land, our wildest and our best,
The grandest and the purest.
Wild hast thou sung,--as some strange bird,--
Of gold and men and peaks that glistened,
Of seas and stars, and we have heard--
And one, whose soul cried out and listened,
He sends his young, unworthy word
To thee the Master’s hand hath christened
AMERICA
Behold her stand, with power thunder-lipped,
And eagle-thoughts that soar above the storm
Convulsing ledges of the mountain Wrong!
Beside her Liberty, whose sword is tipped
With lightning, towering a majestic form,
Her voice like battle in a freedom song.
America, what hates may soil thy hands?
What kingdoms face with insult thy bold brow?
Oppressions brave the anger in thine eyes?--
Behind thee dies the darkness from the lands:
Before thee mounts the glory of the Now:
Around thee sit the sessions of the skies.
Thine is the land where Progress leans to heed
The lessons taught of Heaven and of God,
The golden texts of morning and of night:
The science of thy soul hath taught thee speed!
No precedent of Nations makes thee nod!
Brow-bound with bolts, thy feet are shod with light.
America, beneath thy iron heel
What Old World tyrannies, that crushed the poor,
Writhe out their lives, abolished in their ire!
Around thine arms, wrapped strong in fourfold steel,
What Old World injuries have failed to moor
Barques thou hast beaconed like a pillared fire!
Thou speakest, and Oppression’s mists divide;
And gyves of Superstition and of Lust
Fall shattered from the World; and Truth and Love
Assume their places, beautiful in pride:
And stars spring up around them from the dust,
The dust of hopes long fallen from above.
Onward thou movest: where thy steps are bent
The Earth is civilized: the desert plain
Blossoms--is citied with vast industry.--
Behold! the pagan, Violence, is spent!
His idol, Ignorance, is rent in twain
Before thy splendor that makes all men free.
“THE FATHERS OF OUR FATHERS”
_Written February 24, 1898, on reading the latest news concerning the
battleship Maine, blown up in Havana Harbor, February fifteenth._
I
The fathers of our fathers, they were men!--
What are we who now stand idle while we see our seamen slain?
Who behold our flag dishonored, and still pause!
Are we blind to her duplicity, the treachery of Spain?
To the rights, she scorns, of nations and their laws?
Let us rise, a mighty people, let us wipe away the stain!
Shall we wait till she defile us for a cause?--
The fathers of our fathers, they were men!
II
The fathers of our fathers, they were men!--
Had they nursed delay as we do? had they sat thus deaf and dumb,
With these cowards compromising year by year?
Never hearing what they should hear, never saying what should come,
While the courteous mask of Spain still hid a sneer!
No! such news had ’roused their natures like a rolling battle-drum--
God of Earth! and God of Battles! do we fear?--
The fathers of our fathers, they were men!
III
The fathers of our fathers, they were men!--
What are we who are so cautious, never venturing too far!
Shall we, at the cost of honor, still keep peace?
While we see the thousands starving and the struggling Cuban star,
And the outraged form of Freedom on her knees!
Let our long, steel ocean-bloodhounds, adamantine dogs of war,
Sweep the yellow Spanish panther from the seas!--
The fathers of our fathers, they were men!
MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN
I
Behold! we have gathered together our battleships near and afar;
Their decks, they are cleared for action; their guns, they are
shotted for war:
From the East to the West there is hurry; in the North and the
South a peal
Of hammers in fort and shipyard, and the clamor and clang of steel;
And the roar and the rush of engines, and clanking of derrick and crane--
Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the balance
of God, O Spain!
II
Behold! I have stood on the mountains, and this was writ in the sky:--
“She is weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the balance
God holds on high!”
The balance he once weighed Babylon, the Mother of Harlots, in:
One scale holds thy pride and thy power and empire, begotten of sin;
Heavy with woe and torture, the crimes of a thousand years,
Mortared and welded together with fire and blood and tears:
In the other, for justice and mercy, a blade with never a stain,
Is laid the Sword of Liberty, and the balance dips, O Spain!
III
Summon thy vessels together! great is thy need for these!--
Cristobal Colon, Vizcaya, Oquendo, and Maria Terese--
Let them be strong and many, for a vision I had by night,
That the ancient wrongs thou hast done the world came
howling to the fight:
From the New-World’s shores they gathered, Inca and Aztec slain,
To the Cuban shot but yesterday, and our own dead seamen, Spain!
IV
Summon thy ships together, gather a mighty fleet!
For a strong, young Nation is arming, that never hath known defeat.
Summon thy ships together, there by thy blood-stained sands!
For a shadowy army gathers with manacled feet and hands;
A shadowy host of sorrows and shames, too black to tell,
That reach, with their horrible wounds, for thee to drag
thee down to Hell:
A myriad phantoms and spectres, thou warrest against in vain--
Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the
balance of God, O Spain!
May, 1898.
UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES
I