LET me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
How fast the flitting figures come;
The mild, the fierce, the stony face――
Some bright, with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have left their trace.
They pass to toil, to strife, to rest――
To halls in which the feast is spread――
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the bed.
And some to happy homes repair,
Where children pressing cheek to cheek,
With mute caresses shall declare
The tenderness they cannot speak.
And some who walk in calmness here,
Shall shudder as they reach the door
Where one who made their dwelling dear,
Its flower, its light, is seen no more.
Youth, with pale cheek and tender frame,
And dreams of greatness in thine eye,
Go’st thou to build an early name,
Or early in the task to die?
Keen son of trade, with eager brow,
Who is now fluttering in thy snare,
Thy golden fortunes tower they now,
Or melt the glittering spires in air?
Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
The dance till daylight gleams again?
To sorrow o’er the untimely dead?
Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?
Some, famine struck, shall think how long
The cold, dark hours, how slow the light;
And some, who flaunt amid the throng,
Shall hide in dens of shame to night.
Each where his tasks or pleasure call,
They pass and heed each other not;
There is one who heeds, who holds them all
In His large love and boundless thought.
These struggling tides of life that seem
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end.
* * * * *
NOTICE OF FITZ-GREEN HALLECK.
As a specimen of Mr. Bryant’s prose, of which he wrote much,
and also as a sample of his criticism, we reprint the following
extract from a Commemorative Address which he delivered
before the New York Historical Society in February 1869. This
selection is also valuable as a character sketch and a literary
estimate of Mr. Halleck.
“WHEN I look back upon Halleck’s literary life, I cannot help thinking
that if his death had happened forty years earlier, his life would
have been regarded as a bright morning prematurely overcast. Yet
Halleck’s literary career may be said to have ended then. All that
will hand down his name to future years had already been produced. Who
shall say to what cause his subsequent literary inaction was owing? It
was not the decline of his powers; his brilliant conversation showed
that it was not. Was it then indifference to fame? Was it because he
put an humble estimate on what he had written, and therefore resolved
to write no more? Was it because he feared lest what he might write
would be unworthy of the reputation he had been so fortunate as to
acquire?
“I have my own way of accounting for his literary silence in the
latter half of his life. One of the resemblances which he bore to
Horace consisted in the length of time for which he kept his poems
by him, that he might give them the last and happiest touches. Having
composed his poems without committing them to paper, and retaining
them in his faithful memory, he revised them in the same manner,
murmuring them to himself in his solitary moments, recovering the
enthusiasm with which they were first conceived, and in this state of
mind heightening the beauty of the thought or of the expression....
“In this way I suppose Halleck to have attained the gracefulness
of his diction, and the airy melody of his numbers. In this way I
believe that he wrought up his verses to that transparent clearness
of expression which causes the thought to be seen through them without
any interposing dimness, so that the thought and the phrase seem
one, and the thought enters the mind like a beam of light. I suppose
that Halleck’s time being taken up by the tasks of his vocation, he
naturally lost by degrees the habit of composing in this manner, and
that he found it so necessary to the perfection of what he wrote that
he adopted no other in its place.”
* * * * *
A CORN-SHUCKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
_From “The Letters of a Traveler.”_
In 1843, during Mr. Bryant’s visit to the South, he had
the pleasure of witnessing one of those antebellum southern
institutions known as a Corn-Shucking――one of the ideal
occasions of the colored man’s life, to which both men and
women were invited. They were free to tell all the jokes, sing
all the songs and have all the fun they desired as they rapidly
shucked the corn. Two leaders were usually chosen and the
company divided into two parties which competed for a prize
awarded to the first party which finished shucking the allotted
pile of corn. Mr. Bryant thus graphically describes one of
these novel occasions:
BARNWELL DISTRICT,
South Carolina, March 29, 1843.
BUT you must hear of the corn-shucking. The one at which I was present
was given on purpose that I might witness the humors of the Carolina
negroes. A huge fire of _light-wood_ was made near the corn-house.
Light-wood is the wood of the long-leaved pine, and is so called, not
because it is light, for it is almost the heaviest wood in the world,
but because it gives more light than any other fuel.
The light-wood-fire was made, and the negroes dropped in from the
neighboring plantations, singing as they came. The driver of the
plantation, a colored man, brought out baskets of corn in the husk,
and piled it in a heap; and the negroes began to strip the husks from
the ears, singing with great glee as they worked, keeping time to the
music, and now and then throwing in a joke and an extravagant burst
of laughter. The songs were generally of a comic character; but one of
them was set to a singularly wild and plaintive air, which some of our
musicians would do well to reduce to notation. These are the words:
Johnny come down de hollow.
Oh hollow!
Johnny come down de hollow.
Oh hollow!
De nigger-trader got me.
Oh hollow!
De speculator bought me.
Oh hollow!
I’m sold for silver dollars.
Oh hollow!
Boys, go catch the pony.
Oh hollow!
Bring him round the corner.
Oh hollow!
I’m goin’ away to Georgia.
Oh hollow!
Boys, good-by forever!
Oh hollow!
The song of “Jenny gone away,” was also given, and another, called the
monkey-song, probably of African origin, in which the principal singer
personated a monkey, with all sorts of odd gesticulations, and the
other negroes bore part in the chorus, “Dan, dan, who’s the dandy?”
One of the songs commonly sung on these occasions, represents the
various animals of the woods as belonging to some profession or trade.
For example――
De cooter is de boatman――
The cooter is the terrapin, and a very expert boatman he is.
De cooter is de boatman.
John John Crow.
De red-bird de soger.
John John Crow.
De mocking-bird de lawyer.
John John Crow.
De alligator sawyer.
John John Crow.
The alligator’s back is furnished with a toothed ridge, like the edge
of a saw, which explains the last line.
When the work of the evening was over the negroes adjourned to a
spacious kitchen. One of them took his place as musician, whistling,
and beating time with two sticks upon the floor. Several of the men
came forward and executed various dances, capering, prancing, and
drumming with heel and toe upon the floor, with astonishing agility
and perseverance, though all of them had performed their daily tasks
and had worked all the evening, and some had walked from four to seven
miles to attend the corn-shucking. From the dances a transition was
made to a mock military parade, a sort of burlesque of our militia
trainings, in which the words of command and the evolutions were
extremely ludicrous. It became necessary for the commander to make a
speech, and confessing his incapacity for public speaking, he called
upon a huge black man named Toby to address the company in his stead.
Toby, a man of powerful frame, six feet high, his face ornamented
with a beard of fashionable cut, had hitherto stood leaning against
the wall, looking upon the frolic with an air of superiority. He
consented, came forward, demanded a bit of paper to hold in his hand,
and harangued the soldiery. It was evident that Toby had listened to
stump-speeches in his day. He spoke of “de majority of Sous Carolina,”
“de interests of de state,” “de honor of ole Ba’nwell district,” and
these phrases he connected by various expletives, and sounds of which
we could make nothing. At length he began to falter, when the captain
with admirable presence of mind came to his relief, and interrupted
and closed the harangue with an hurrah from the company. Toby was
allowed by all the spectators, black and white, to have made an
excellent speech.
Illustration: CORN-SHUCKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
EDGAR ALLEN POE.
THE WEIRD AND MYSTERIOUS GENIUS.
EDGAR Allen Poe, the author of “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” “The
Haunted Palace,” “To One in Paradise,” “Israfel” and “Lenore,” was
in his peculiar sphere, the most brilliant writer, perhaps, who ever
lived. His writings, however, belong to a different world of thought
from that in which Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier and Lowell
lived and labored. Theirs was the realm of nature, of light, of human
joy, of happiness, ease, hope and cheer. Poe spoke from the dungeon of
depression. He was in a constant struggle with poverty. His whole life
was a tragedy in which sombre shades played an unceasing role, and
yet from out these weird depths came forth things so beautiful that
their very sadness is charming and holds us in a spell of bewitching
enchantment. Edgar Fawcett says of him:――
“He loved all shadowy spots, all seasons drear;
All ways of darkness lured his ghastly whim;
Strange fellowships he held with goblins grim,
At whose demoniac eyes he felt no fear.
By desolate paths of dream where fancy’s owl
Sent long lugubrious hoots through sombre air,
Amid thought’s gloomiest caves he went to prowl
And met delirium in her awful lair.”
Edgar Poe was born in Boston February 19th, 1809. His father was
a Marylander, as was also his grandfather, who was a distinguished
Revolutionary soldier and a friend of General Lafayette. The parents
of Poe were both actors who toured the country in the ordinary manner,
and this perhaps accounts for his birth in Boston. Their home was in
Baltimore, Maryland.
When Poe was only a few years old both parents died, within two weeks,
in Richmond, Virginia. Their three children, two daughters, one older
and one younger than the subject of this sketch, were all adopted
by friends of the family. Mr. John Allen, a rich tobacco merchant
of Richmond, Virginia, adopted Edgar (who was henceforth called
Edgar Allen Poe), and had him carefully educated, first in England,
afterwards at the Richmond Academy and the University of Virginia,
and subsequently at West Point. He always distinguished himself in his
studies, but from West Point he was dismissed after one year, it is
said because he refused to submit to the discipline of the institution.
In common with the custom in the University of Virginia at that time,
Poe acquired the habits of drinking and gambling, and the gambling
debts which he contracted incensed Mr. Allen, who refused to pay
them. This brought on the beginning of a series of quarrels which
finally led to Poe’s disinheritance and permanent separation from
his benefactor. Thus turned out upon the cold, unsympathetic world,
without business training, without friends, without money, knowing
not how to make money――yet, with a proud, imperious, aristocratic
nature,――we have the beginning of the saddest story of any life in
literature――struggling for nearly twenty years in gloom and poverty,
with here and there a ray of sunshine, and closing with delirium
tremens in Baltimore, October 7th, 1849, at forty years of age.
To those who know the full details of the sad story of Poe’s life it
is little wonder that his sensitive, passionate nature sought surcease
from disappointment in the nepenthe of the intoxicating cup. It was
but natural for a man of his nervous temperament and delicacy of
feeling to fall into that melancholy moroseness which would chide even
the angels for taking away his beautiful “Annabel Lee;” or that he
should wail over the “Lost Lenore,” or declare that his soul should
“nevermore” be lifted from the shadow of the “Raven” upon the floor.
These poems and others are but the expressions of disappointment
and despair of a soul alienated from happy human relations. While we
admire their power and beauty, we should remember at what cost of pain
and suffering and disappointment they were produced. They are powerful
illustrations of the prodigal expense of human strength, of broken
hopes and bitter experiences through which rare specimens of our
literature are often grown.
To treat the life of Edgar Allen Poe, with its lessons, fully, would
require the scope of a volume. Both as a man and an author there is
a sad fascination which belongs to no other writer, perhaps, in the
world. His personal character has been represented as pronouncedly
double. It is said that Stevenson, who was a great admirer of Poe,
received the inspiration for his novel, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” from
the contemplation of his double character. Paul Hamilton Hayne has
also written a poem entitled, “Poe,” which presents in a double shape
the angel and demon in one body. The first two stanzas of which we
quote:――
“Two mighty spirits dwelt in him:
One, a wild demon, weird and dim,
The darkness of whose ebon wings
Did shroud unutterable things:
One, a fair angel, in the skies
Of whose serene, unshadowed eyes
Were seen the lights of Paradise.
To these, in turn, he gave the whole
Vast empire of his brooding soul;
Now, filled with strains of heavenly swell,
Now thrilled with awful tones of hell:
Wide were his being’s strange extremes,
’Twixt nether glooms, and Eden gleams
Of tender, or majestic dreams.”
It must be said in justice to Poe’s memory, however, that the above
idea of his being both demon and angel became prevalent through
the first biography published of him, by Dr. Rufus Griswold, who no
doubt sought to avenge himself on the dead poet for the severe but
unanswerable criticisms which the latter had passed upon his and other
contemporaneous authors’ writings. Later biographies, notably those
of J. H. Ingram and Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman, as well as published
statements from his business associates, have disproved many of
Griswold’s damaging statements, and placed the private character
of Poe in a far more favorable light before the world. He left off
gambling in his youth, and the appetite for drink, which followed him
to the close of his life, was no doubt inherited from his father who,
before him, was a drunkard.
It is natural for admirers of Poe’s genius to contemplate with regret
akin to sorrow those circumstances and characteristics which made
him so unhappy, and yet the serious question arises, was not that
character and his unhappy life necessary to the productions of his
marvelous pen? Let us suppose it was, and in charity draw the mantle
of forgetfulness over his misguided ways, covering the sad picture
of his personal life from view, and hang in its place the matchless
portrait of his splendid genius, before which, with true American
pride, we may summon all the world to stand with uncovered heads.
As a writer of short stories Poe had no equal in America. He is said
to have been the originator of the modern detective story. The artful
ingenuity with which he works up the details of his plot, and minute
attention to the smallest illustrative particular, give his tales a
vivid interest from which no reader can escape. His skill in analysis
is as marked as his power of word painting. The scenes of gloom and
terror which he loves to depict, the forms of horror to which he gives
almost actual life, render his mastery over the reader most exciting
and absorbing.
As a poet Poe ranks among the most original in the world. He is
pre-eminently a poet of the imagination. It is useless to seek in his
verses for philosophy or preaching. He brings into his poetry all the
weirdness, subtlety, artistic detail and facility in coloring which
give the charm to his prose stories, and to these he adds a musical
flow of language which has never been equalled. To him poetry was
music, and there was no poetry that was not musical. For poetic
harmony he has had no equal certainly in America, if, indeed, in the
world. Admirers of his poems are almost sure to read them over and
over again, each time finding new forms of beauty or charm in them,
and the reader abandons himself to a current of melodious fancy that
soothes and charms like distant music at night, or the rippling of
a nearby, but unseen, brook. The images which he creates are vague
and illusive. As one of his biographers has written, “He heard in his
dreams the tinkling footfalls of angels and seraphim and subordinated
everything in his verse to the delicious effect of musical sound.”
As a literary critic Poe’s capacities were of the greatest. “In that
large part of the critic’s perceptions,” says Duyckinck, “in knowledge
of the mechanism of composition, he has been unsurpassed by any writer
in America.”
Poe was also a fine reader and elocutionist. A writer who attended
a lecture by him in Richmond says: “I never heard a voice so musical
as his. It was full of the sweetest melody. No one who heard his
recitation of the ‘Raven’ will ever forget the beauty and pathos with
which this recitation was rendered. The audience was still as death,
and as his weird, musical voice filled the hall its effect was simply
indescribable. It seems to me that I can yet hear that long, plaintive
‘nevermore.’”
Among the labors of Poe, aside from his published volumes and
contributions to miscellaneous magazines, should be mentioned his
various positions from 1834 to 1848 as critic and editor on the
“Literary Messenger” of Richmond, Virginia, the “Gentleman’s Magazine”
of Philadelphia, “Graham’s Magazine” of Philadelphia, the “Evening
Mirror” of New York, and the “Broadway Journal” of New York, which
positions he successively held. The last he gave up in 1848 with
the idea of starting a literary magazine of his own, but the project
failed, perhaps on account of his death, which occurred the next year.
His first volume of poems was published in 1829. In 1833 he won two
prizes, one for prose and one for poetic composition, offered by the
Baltimore “Saturday Visitor,” his “Manuscript Found in a Bottle” being
awarded the prize for prose and the poem “The Coliseum” for poetry.
The latter, however, he did not ♦receive because the judges found the
same author had won them both. In 1838 Harper Brothers published his
ingenious fiction, “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.”
In 1840 “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” were issued in
Philadelphia. In 1844 he took up his residence at Fordham, New York,
where his wife died in 1847, and where he continued to reside for
the balance of his life. His famous poem the “Raven” was published in
1845, and during 1848 and 1849 he published “Eureka” and “Elalume,”
the former being a prose poem. It is the crowning work of his life, to
which he devoted the last and most matured energies of his wonderful
intellect. To those who desire a further insight into the character
of the man and his labors we would recommend the reading of J. H.
Ingram’s “Memoir” and Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman’s “Edgar Poe and His
Critics,” the latter published in 1863.
♦ ‘recieve’ replaced with ‘receive’
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
* * * * *
Illustration: THE CITY IN THE SEA.
THE CITY IN THE SEA.
LO! Death has rear’d himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim west,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines, and palaces, and towers,
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently――
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free――
Up domes――up spires――up kingly halls――
Up fanes――up Babylon-like walls――
Up shadowy, long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers――
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye――
Not the gayly-jewell’d dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass――
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea――
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave――there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide――
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow――
The hours are breathing faint and low――
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
* * * * *
ANNABEL LEE.
IT was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
_I_ was a child and _she_ was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love――
I and my ANNABEL LEE――
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre,
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me――
Yes!――that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea),
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we――
Of many far wiser than we――
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE:
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE:
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling――my darling――my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea――
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
* * * * *
TO HELEN.
The following poem was published first “To ――――,” afterwards
the title was changed, “To Helen.” It seems to have been
written by Poe to Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman whom many years
afterwards he was engaged to marry. The engagement was,
however, broken off. The poem was no doubt written before
his acquaintance with the lady; even before his marriage or
engagement to his wife, and at a time perhaps when he did not
expect to be recognized as a suitor by the unknown woman who
had completely captured his heart, in the chance meeting which
he here so beautifully describes.
I SAW thee once――once only――years ago:
I must not say how many――but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitant pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturned faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe――
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death――
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee and by the poetry of thy presence.
Illustration: CLAD ALL IN WHITE, UPON A VIOLET BANK
I SAW THEE HALF RECLINING; WHILE THE MOON
FELL ON THE UPTURNED FACES OF THE ROSES,
AND ON THINE OWN, UPTURNED――ALAS! IN SORROW.
Was it not Fate that, on this July midnight――
Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow)
That bade me pause before that garden-gate
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,
Save only thee and me. I paused――I looked――
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)
The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses’ odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All, all expired save thee――save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes――
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them――they were the world to me.
I saw but them――saw only them for hours――
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a wo, yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition! yet how deep――
How fathomless a capacity for love!
But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud,
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.
They would not go――they never yet have gone.
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.
They follow me, they lead me through the years;
They are my ministers――yet I their slave.
Their office is to illumine and enkindle――
My duty, to be saved by their bright light,
And purified in their electric fire――
And sanctified in their elysian fire.
They fill my soul with beauty (which is hope),
And are far up in heaven, the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still――two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!
* * * * *
ISRAFEL.¹
¹ “And the angel ISRAFEL, whose heart-strings are a lute,
and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.”
――KORAN.
IN heaven a spirit doth dwell
“Whose heart-strings are a lute;”
None sing so wildly well
As the angel ISRAFEL,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamour’d moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven)
Pauses in heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That ISRAFELI’S fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings――
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty――
Where Love’s a grown-up god――
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.
Therefore, thou art not wrong,
ISRAFELI, who despisest
An unimpassion’d song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!
The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit――
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute――
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely――flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where ISRAFEL
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
* * * * *
TO ONE IN PARADISE.
THOU wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine――
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreath’d with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”――but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For, alas! alas! with me
The light of life is o’er!
No more――no more――no more――
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams――
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.
* * * * *
LENORE.
Mrs. Whitman, in her reminiscences of Poe, tells us the
following incident which gave rise to the writing of these
touching lines. While Poe was in the Academy at Richmond,
Virginia,――as yet a boy of about sixteen years,――he was invited
by a friend to visit his home. The mother of this friend was a
singularly beautiful and withal a most kindly and sympathetic
woman. Having learned that Poe was an orphan she greeted him
with the motherly tenderness and affection shown toward her
own son. The boy was so overcome that it is said he stood for
a ♦minute unable to speak and finally with tears he declared
he had never before known his loss in the love of a true and
devoted mother. From that time forward he was frequently a
visitor, and the attachment between him and this kind-hearted
woman continued to grow. On Poe’s return from Europe when he
was about twenty years of age, he learned that she had died
a few days before his arrival, and was so overcome with grief
that he went nightly to her grave, even when it was dark and
rainy, spending hours in fancied communion with her spirit.
Later he idealized in his musings the embodiment of such a
spirit in a young and beautiful woman, whom he made his lover
and whose untimely death he imagined and used as the
inspiration of this poem.
♦ ‘miuute’ replaced with ‘minute’
AH, broken is the golden bowl,
The spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll!
A saintly soul
Floats on the Stygian river;
And, GUY DE VERE,
Hast _thou_ no tear?
Weep now or never more!
See, on yon drear
And rigid bier
Low lies thy love, LENORE!
Come, let the burial-rite be read――
The funeral-song be sung!――
An anthem for the queenliest dead
That ever died so young――
A dirge for her the doubly dead,
In that she died so young!
“Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth,
And hated her for her pride;
And when she fell in feeble health,
Ye bless’d her――that she died!
How _shall_ the ritual, then, be read?
The requiem how be sung
By you――by yours, the evil eye――
By yours the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence
That died, and died so young?”
_Peccavimus_;
But rave not thus!
And let a sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly, the dead may feel no wrong!
The sweet LENORE
Hath “gone before,”
With Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild
For the dear child
That should have been thy bride――
For her, the fair
And _debonair_,
That now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair
But not within her eyes――
The life still there,
Upon her hair――
The death upon her eyes.
“Avaunt! to-night
My heart is light.
No dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight
With a pæan of old days!
Let _no_ bell toll!――
Lest her sweet soul,
Amid its hallow’d mirth,
Should catch the note,
As it doth float――
Up from the damned earth.
To friends above, from fiends below,
The indignant ghost is riven――
From hell unto a high estate
Far up within the heaven――
From grief and groan,
To a golden throne,
Beside the King of Heaven.”
* * * * *
THE BELLS.
This selection is a favorite with reciters. It is an excellent
piece for voice culture. The musical flow of the metre and
happy selection of the words make it possible for the skilled
speaker to closely imitate the sounds of the ringing bells.
HEAR the sledges with the bells――
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells――
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Hear the mellow wedding bells――
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells.
On the future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,――
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells――
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
Hear the loud alarum bells――
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor,
Now――now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells――
Of the bells――
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells――
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!
Hear the tolling of the bells――
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright,
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people――ah, the people――
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone――
They are neither man nor woman――
They are neither brute nor human――
They are ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls,
A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells!
And he dances and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells――
Of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells――
Of the bells, bells, bells,
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time.
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells,――
Of the bells, bells, bells,――
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,――
Bells, bells, bells,――
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
* * * * *
THE RAVEN.
This poem is generally allowed to be one of the most remarkable
examples of a harmony of sentiment with rhythmical expression
to be found in any language. While the poet sits musing in his
study, endeavoring to win from books “surcease of sorrow for
the lost Lenore,” a raven――the symbol of despair――enters the
room and perches upon a bust of Pallas. A colloquy follows
between the poet and the bird of ill omen with its haunting
croak of “Nevermore.”
Illustration: THE RAVEN.
ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of ♦forgotten lore,――
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber-door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I mutter’d, “tapping at my chamber-door――
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow――sorrow for the lost Lenore,――
For the rare and ♣radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,――
Nameless here forevermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain,
Thrilled me,――filled me with fantastic terrors never felt
before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood
repeating,
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber-door,――
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber-door;
That it is, and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger: hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber-door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”――here I opened wide the
door:
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering,
fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream
before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word,
“Lenore!”
This _I_ whispered, and an echo murmured back the word,
“LENORE!”
Merely this, and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my
window-lattice;
Let me see then what thereat is and this mystery explore,――
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore;――
’Tis the wind, and nothing more.”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and
flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or
stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my
chamber-door,――
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber-door――
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebon bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art
sure no craven;
Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly
shore,
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night’s Plutonian
shore?”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”
Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so
plainly,
Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber-door,
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber-door
With such name as “Nevermore!”
But the raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered; not a feather then he
fluttered――
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown
before,
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore!”
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and
store,
Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
Follow’d fast and follow’d faster, till his songs one burden
bore,
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore,
Of――‘Never――nevermore!’”
But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust
and door,
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore――
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of
yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore!”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated
o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating
o’er
She shall press――ah! nevermore!
Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen
censer
Swung by seraphim, whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted
floor,
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee,――by these angels
he hath sent thee
Respite――respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget the lost
Lenore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”
“Prophet!” cried I, “thing of evil!――prophet still, if bird or
devil!
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here
ashore,
Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted――
On this home by horror haunted――tell me truly, I implore,――
Is there――is there balm in Gilead?――tell me――tell me, I
implore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”
“Prophet!” cried I, “thing of evil!――prophet still, if bird or
devil!
By that heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore,
Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if within the distant
Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore;
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked,
upstarting,――
“Get thee back into the tempest and the night’s Plutonian
shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath
spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!――quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my
door!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is
sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber-door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is
dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the
floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the
floor
Shall be lifted――nevermore!
♦ ‘forgotton’ replaced with ‘forgotten’
♣ ‘raidant’ replaced with ‘radiant’
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
THE POET OF THE PEOPLE.
_“He who sung to one clear harp in divers tones.”_
“IN an old square wooden house upon the edge of the sea” the most
famous and most widely read of all American poets was born in Portland,
Maine, February 7th, 1807.
In his personality, his wide range of themes, his learning and his
wonderful power of telling stories in song, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
stood in his day and still stands easily in front of all other poets
who have enriched American literature. Admitting that he was not
rugged and elemental like Bryant and did not possess the latter’s
feelings for the colossal features of wild scenery, that he was not
profoundly thoughtful and transcendental like Emerson, that he was not
so earnestly and passionately sympathetic as Whittier, nevertheless he
was our first artist in poetry. Bryant, Emerson and Whittier commanded
but a few stops of the grand instrument upon which they played;
Longfellow understood perfectly all its capabilities. Critics also
say that “he had not the high ideality or dramatic power of Tennyson
or Browning.” But does he not hold something else which to the world
at large is perhaps more valuable? Certainly these two great poets
are inferior to him in the power to sweep the chords of daily human
experiences and call forth the sweetness and beauty in common-place
every day human life. It is on these themes that he tuned his
harp without ever a false tone, and sang with a harmony so well
nigh perfect that the universal heart responded to his music. This
common-place song has found a lodgement in every household in America,
“swaying the hearts of men and women whose sorrows have been soothed
and whose lives raised by his gentle verse.”
“Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.”
Longfellow’s life from the very beginning moved on even lines. Both
he and William Cullen Bryant were descendants of John Alden, whom
Longfellow has made famous in “The Courtship of Miles Standish.”
The Longfellows were a family in comfortable circumstances, peaceful
and honest, for many generations back. The poet went to school with
Nathaniel P. Willis and other boys who at an early age were thinking
more of verse making than of pleasure. He graduated at Bowdoin College
in 1825 with Nathaniel Hawthorne, John S. C. Abbott, and others who
afterwards attained to fame. Almost immediately after his graduation
he was requested to take the chair of Modern Languages and Literature
in his _alma mater_, which he accepted; but before entering upon
his duties spent three years in Germany, France, Spain and Italy
to further perfect himself in the languages and literature of those
nations. At Bowdoin College Longfellow remained as Professor of
Modern Languages and Literature until 1835, when he accepted a similar
position in Harvard University, which he continued to occupy until
1854, when he resigned, devoting the remainder of his life to literary
work and to the enjoyment of the association of such friends as
Charles Sumner the statesman, Hawthorne the romancer, Louis Agassiz
the great naturalist, and James Russell Lowell, the brother poet who
succeeded to the chair of Longfellow in Harvard University on the
latter’s resignation.
The home of Longfellow was not only a delightful place to visit on
account of the cordial welcome extended by the companionable poet, but
for its historic associations as well; for it was none other than the
old “Cragie House” which had been Washington’s headquarters during the
Revolutionary War, the past tradition and recent hospitality of which
have been well told by G. W. Curtis in his “Homes of American Authors.”
It was here that Longfellow surrounded himself with a magnificent
library, and within these walls he composed all of his famous
productions from 1839 until his death, which occurred there in 1882 at
the age of seventy-five. The poet was twice married and was one of the
most domestic of men. His first wife died suddenly in Europe during
their sojourn in that country while Longfellow was pursuing his post
graduate course of study before taking the chair in Bowdoin College.
In 1843 he married Miss Frances Appleton, whom he had met in Europe
and who figures in the pages of his romance “Hyperion.” In 1861 she
met a most tragic death by stepping on a match which set fire to her
clothing, causing injuries from which she died. She was buried on the
19th anniversary of their marriage. By Longfellow’s own direction she
was crowned with a wreath of orange blossoms commemorative of the day.
The poet was so stricken with grief that for a year afterwards he did
practically no work, and it is said neither in conversation nor in
writing to his most intimate friends could he bear to refer to the sad
event.
Longfellow was one of the most bookish men in our literature. His
knowledge of others’ thoughts and writings was so great that he became,
instead of a creator in his poems, a painter of things already created.
It is said that he never even owned a style of his own like Bryant
and Poe, but assimilated what he saw or heard or read from books,
reclothing it and sending it out again. This does not intimate that he
was a plagiarist, but that he wrote out of the accumulated knowledge
of others. “Evangeline,” for instance, was given him by Hawthorne,
who had heard of the young people of Acadia and kept them in mind,
intending to weave them into a romance. The forcible deportation of
18,000 French people touched Hawthorne as it perhaps never could have
touched Longfellow except in literature, and also as it certainly
never would have touched the world had not Longfellow woven the woof
of the story in the threads of his song.
“Evangeline” was brought out the same year with Tennyson’s “Princess”
(1847), and divided honors with the latter even in England. In this
poem, and in “The Courtship of Miles Standish” and other poems, the
pictures of the new world are brought out with charming simplicity.
Though Longfellow never visited Acadia or Louisiana, it is the real
French village of Grand Pré and the real Louisiana, not a poetic dream
that are described in this poem. So vivid were his descriptions that
artists in Europe painted the scenes true to nature and vied with
each other in painting the portrait of Evangeline, among several of
which there is said to be so striking a resemblance as to suggest
the idea that one had served as a copy for the others. The poem took
such a hold upon the public, that both the poor man and the rich knew
Longfellow as they knew not Tennyson their own poet. It was doubtless
because he, though one of the most scholarly of men, always spoke so
the plainest reader could understand.
Illustration: THE WAYSIDE INN.
Scene of Longfellow’s Famous “_Tales of the Wayside Inn_.”
In “The Tales of a Wayside Inn” (1863), the characters were not
fictions, but real persons. The _musician_ was none other than the
famous violinist, Ole Bull; Professor Luigi Monte, a close friend
who dined every Sunday with Longfellow, was the _Sicilian_; Dr. Henry
Wales was the _youth_; the _poet_ was Thomas W. Parsons, and the
_theologian_ was his brother, Rev. S. W. Longfellow. This poem shows
Longfellow at his best as a story teller, while the stories which are
put into the mouth of these actual characters perhaps could have been
written by no other living man, for they are from the literature of
all countries, with which Longfellow was so familiar.
Thus, both “The Tales of a Wayside Inn” and “Evangeline”――as many
other of Longfellow’s poems――may be called compilations or rewritten
stories, rather than creations, and it was these characteristics of
his writings which Poe and Margaret Fuller, and others, who considered
the realm of poetry to belong purely to the imagination rather than
the real world, so bitterly criticised. While they did not deny to
Longfellow a poetic genius, they thought he was prostituting it by
forcing it to drudge in the province of prosaic subjects; and for this
reason Poe predicted that he would not live in literature.
It was but natural that Longfellow should write as he did. For
thirty-five years he was an instructor in institutions of learning,
and as such believed that poetry should be a thing of use as well as
beauty. He could not agree with Poe that poetry was like music, only
a pleasurable art. He had the triple object of stimulating to research
and study, of impressing the mind with history or moral truths, and
at the same time to touch and warm the heart of humanity. In all three
directions he succeeded to such an extent that he has probably been
read by more people than any other poet except the sacred Psalmist;
and despite the predictions of his distinguished critics to the
contrary, such poems as “The Psalm of Life,” (which Chas. Sumner
allowed, to his knowledge, had saved one man from suicide), “The
Children’s Hour,” and many others touching the every day experiences
of the multitude, will find a glad echo in the souls of humanity as
long as men shall read.
* * * * *
THE PSALM OF LIFE.
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.
This poem has gained wide celebrity as one of Mr. Longfellow’s most
popular pieces, as has also the poem “Excelsior,” (hereafter quoted).
They strike a popular chord and do some clever preaching and it is
in this their chief merit consists. They are by no means among the
author’s best poetic productions from a critical standpoint. Both
these poems were written in early life.
TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,――act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwreck’d brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
* * * * *
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.
UNDER a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat;
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell
When the evening sun is low.
Illustration: THEY LOVE TO SEE THE FLAMING FORGE,
AND HEAR THE BELLOWS ROAR,
AND CATCH THE BURNING SPARKS THAT FLY
LIKE CHAFF FROM THE THRESHING FLOOR.
And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Toiling――rejoicing――sorrowing――
Onward through life he goes:
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted――something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of Life
Our fortunes must be wrought,
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
* * * * *
THE BRIDGE.
A favorite haunt of Longfellow’s was the bridge between Boston
and Cambridge, over which he had to pass, almost daily. “I
always stop on the bridge,” he writes in his journal. “Tide
waters are beautiful,” and again, “We leaned for a while on the
wooden rails and enjoyed the silvery reflections of the sea,
making sundry comparisons.” Among other thoughts, we have these
cheering ones, that “The old sea was flashing with its heavenly
light, though we saw it only in a single track; the dark waves
are dark provinces of God; illuminous though not to us.”
The following poem was the result of one of Longfellow’s
reflections, while standing on this bridge at midnight.
I STOOD on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o’er the city,
Behind the dark church tower;
And like the waters rushing
Among the wooden piers,
A flood of thought came o’er me,
That filled my eyes with tears.
How often, O how often,
In the days that had gone by,
I had stood on that bridge at midnight,
And gazed on that wave and sky!
How often, O how often,
I had wished that the ebbing tide
Would bear me away on its bosom
O’er the ocean wild and wide!
For my heart was hot and restless,
And my life was full of care,
And the burden laid upon me,
Seemed greater than I could bear.
But now it has fallen from me,
It is buried in the sea;
And only the sorrow of others
Throws its shadow over me.
Yet whenever I cross the river
On its bridge with wooden piers,
Like the odor of brine from the ocean
Comes the thought of other years.
And I think how many thousands
Of care-encumbered men,
Each having his burden of sorrow,
Have crossed the bridge since then.
I see the long procession
Still passing to and fro,
The young heart hot and restless,
And the old, subdued and slow!
And forever and forever,
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes;
The moon and its broken reflection
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.
* * * * *
RESIGNATION.
THERE is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe’r defended,
But has one vacant chair!
The air is full of farewells to the dying
And mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted!
Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.
We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
May be heaven’s distant lamps.
There is no Death! What seems so is transition:
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
She is not dead,――the child of our affection,――
But gone unto that school
Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ himself doth rule.
In that great cloister’s ♦stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin’s pollution,
She lives whom we call dead.
Day after day we think what she is doing
In those bright realms of air;
Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
Behold her grown more fair.
Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
The bond which nature gives,
Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
May reach her where she lives.
Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when with raptures wild
In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child:
But a fair maiden, in her Father’s mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace;
And beautiful with all the soul’s expansion
Shall we behold her face.
And though, at times, impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppressed,
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean
That cannot be at rest,――
We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;
By silence sanctifying, not concealing
The grief that must have way.
♦ ‘stillnes’ replaced with ‘stillness’
* * * * *
GOD’S ACRE.
I LIKE that ancient Saxon phrase which calls
The burial-ground God’s acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o’er the sleeping dust.
God’s Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts
Comfort to those who in the grave have sown
The seed that they had garnered in their hearts,
Their bread of life, alas! no more their own.
Into its furrows shall we all be cast,
In the sure faith that we shall rise again
At the great harvest, when the archangel’s blast
Shall winnow, like a fan the chaff and grain.
Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,
In the fair gardens of that second birth;
And each bright blossom mingle its perfume
With that of flowers which never bloomed on earth.
With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God!
This is the place where human harvests grow!
* * * * *
EXCELSIOR.
THE shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ’mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!
In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!
“Try not to Pass!” the old man said;
“Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!”
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!
“O, stay,” the maiden said, “and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!”
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!
“Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!”
This was the peasant’s last Good-night;
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!
At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!
A traveler, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
There, in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!
* * * * *
THE RAINY DAY.
THE day is cold, and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark dreary.
* * * * *
THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.
The writing of the following poem, “The Wreck of the Hesperus,”
was occasioned by the news of a ship-wreck on the coast near
Gloucester, and by the name of a reef――“Norman’s Woe”――where
many disasters occurred. It was written one night between
twelve and three o’clock, and cost the poet, it is said, hardly
an effort.
IT was the schooner Hesperus
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
That ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now west, now south.
Then up and spake an old sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish main:
“I pray thee put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.
“Last night the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!”
The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.
Colder and colder blew the wind,
A gale from the north-east;
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable’s length.
“Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so,
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow.”
He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat,
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
“Oh father! I hear the church-bells ring,
Oh say what may it be?”
“’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast;”
And he steered for the open sea.
“Oh father! I hear the sound of guns,
Oh, say, what may it be?”
“Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea.”
“O father! I see a gleaming light,
Oh, say, what may it be?”
But the father answered never a word――
A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face to the skies,
The lantern gleamed, through the gleaming snow,
On his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands, and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the waves
On the lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept,
Towards the reef of Norman’s Woe.
And ever, the fitful gusts between,
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts, went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank――
Ho! ho! the breakers roared.
At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow;
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s Woe
* * * * *
THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.
SOMEWHAT back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country seat;
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar trees their shadows throw;
And, from its station in the hall,
An ancient timepiece says to all,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
Half-way up the stairs it stands,
And points and beckons with its hands,
From its case of massive oak,
Like a monk who, under his cloak,
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!
With sorrowful voice to all who pass,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
By day its voice is low and light;
But in the silent dead of night,
Distinct as a passing footstep’s fall,
It echoes along the vacant hall,
Along the ceiling, along the floor,
And seems to say at each chamber door,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
Through days of sorrow and of mirth,
Through days of death and days of birth,
Through every swift vicissitude
Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood,
And as if, like God, it all things saw,
It calmly repeats those words of awe,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality;
His great fires up the chimney roared;
The stranger feasted at his board;
But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
There groups of merry children played;
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;
Oh, precious hours! oh, golden prime
And affluence of love and time!
Even as a miser counts his gold,
Those hours the ancient timepiece told,――
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
From that chamber, clothed in white,
The bride came forth on her wedding night;
There, in that silent room below,
The dead lay, in his shroud of snow;
And, in the hush that followed the prayer,
Was heard the old clock on the stair,――
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
All are scattered now, and fled,――
Some are married, some are dead:
And when I ask, with throbs of pain,
“Ah!” when shall they all meet again?
As in the days long since gone by,
The ancient timepiece makes reply,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
Never here, forever there,
Where all parting, pain, and care
And death, and time shall disappear,――
Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
* * * * *
THE SKELETON IN ARMOR.
The writing of this famous ballad was suggested to Mr.
Longfellow by the digging up of a mail-clad skeleton at
Fall-River, Massachusetts――a circumstance which the poet linked
with the traditions about the Round Tower at Newport, thus
giving to it the spirit of a Norse Viking song of war and of
the sea. It is written in the swift leaping meter employed by
Drayton in his “Ode to the Cambro Britons on their Harp.”
SPEAK! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretch’d, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?”
Then, from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seemed to rise,
As when the Northern skies
Gleam in December;
And, like the water’s flow
Under December’s snow,
Came a dull voice of woe
From the heart’s chamber.
“I was a Viking old!
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told,
No Saga taught thee!
Take heed, that in thy verse
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else dread a dead man’s curse!
For this I sought thee.
“Far in the Northern Land,
By the wild Baltic’s strand,
I, with my childish hand,
Tamed the ger-falcon;
And, with my skates fast-bound,
Skimm’d the half-frozen Sound,
That the poor whimpering hound
Trembled to walk on.
“Oft to his frozen lair
Track’d I the grizzly bear,
While from my path the hare
Fled like a shadow;
Oft through the forest dark
Followed the were-wolf’s bark,
Until the soaring lark
Sang from the meadow.
“But when I older grew,
Joining a corsair’s crew,
O’er the dark sea I flew
With the marauders.
Wild was the life we led;
Many the souls that sped,
Many the hearts that bled,
By our stern orders.
“Many a wassail-bout
Wore the long winter out;
Often our midnight shout
Set the cocks crowing,
As we the Berserk’s tale
Measured in cups of ale,
Draining the oaken pail,
Fill’d to o’erflowing.
“Once as I told in glee
Tales of the stormy sea,
Soft eyes did gaze on me,
Burning out tender;
And as the white stars shine
On the dark Norway pine,
On that dark heart of mine
Fell their soft splendor.
“I woo’d the blue-eyed maid,
Yielding, yet half afraid,
And in the forest’s shade
Our vows were plighted.
Under its loosen’d vest
Flutter’d her little breast,
Like birds within their nest
By the hawk frighted.
“Bright in her father’s hall
Shields gleam’d upon the wall,
Loud sang the minstrels all,
Chanting his glory;
When of old Hildebrand
I ask’d his daughter’s hand,
Mute did the minstrel stand
To hear my story.
“While the brown ale he quaff’d
Loud then the champion laugh’d,
And as the wind-gusts waft
The sea-foam brightly,
So the loud laugh of scorn,
Out of those lips unshorn,
From the deep drinking-horn
Blew the foam lightly.
“She was a Prince’s child,
I but a Viking wild,
And though she blush’d and smiled,
I was discarded!
Should not the dove so white
Follow the sea-mew’s flight,
Why did they leave that night
Her nest unguarded?
“Scarce had I put to sea,
Bearing the maid with me,――
Fairest of all was she
Among the Norsemen!――
When on the white sea-strand,
Waving his armed hand,
Saw we old Hildebrand,
With twenty horsemen.
“Then launch’d they to the blast,
Bent like a reed each mast,
Yet we were gaining fast,
When the wind fail’d us;
And with a sudden flaw
Came round the gusty Skaw,
So that our foe we saw
Laugh as he hail’d us.
“And as to catch the gale
Round veer’d the flapping sail,
Death! was the helmsman’s hail,
Death without quarter!
Mid-ships with iron keel
Struck we her ribs of steel;
Down her black hulk did reel
Through the black water.
“As with his wings aslant,
Sails the fierce cormorant,
Seeking some rocky haunt,
With his prey laden.
So toward the open main,
Beating to sea again,
Through the wild hurricane,
Bore I the maiden.
“Three weeks we westward bore,
And when the storm was o’er,
Cloud-like we saw the shore
Stretching to lee-ward;
There for my lady’s bower
Built I the lofty tower,
Which, to this very hour,
Stands looking sea-ward.
“There lived we many years;
Time dried the maiden’s tears;
She had forgot her fears,
She was a mother;
Death closed her mild blue eyes,
Under that tower she lies;
Ne’er shall the sun arise
On such another!
“Still grew my bosom then,
Still as a stagnant fen!
Hateful to me were men,
The sun-light hateful!
In the vast forest here,
Clad in my warlike gear,
Fell I upon my spear,
O, death was grateful!
“Thus, seam’d with many scars
Bursting these prison bars,
Up to its native stars
My soul ascended!
There from the flowing bowl
Deep drinks the warrior’s soul,
_Skål!_ to the Northland! _skål!_”¹
――Thus the tale ended.
¹ Skål! is the Swedish expression for “Your Health.”
* * * * *
KING WITLAF’S DRINKING-HORN.
WITLAF, a king of the Saxons,
Ere yet his last he breathed,
To the merry monks of Croyland
His drinking-horn bequeathed,――
That, whenever they sat at their revels,
And drank from the golden bowl,
They might remember the donor,
And breathe a prayer for his soul.
So sat they once at Christmas,
And bade the goblet pass;
In their beards the red wine glistened
Like dew-drops in the grass.
They drank to the soul of Witlaf,
They drank to Christ the Lord,
And to each of the Twelve Apostles,
Who had preached his holy word.
They drank to the Saints and Martyrs
Of the dismal days of yore,
And as soon as the horn was empty
They remembered one Saint more.
And the reader droned from the pulpit,
Like the murmur of many bees,
The legend of good Saint Guthlac
And Saint Basil’s homilies;
Till the great bells of the convent,
From their prison in the tower,
Guthlac and Bartholomæus,
Proclaimed the midnight hour.
And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney
And the Abbot bowed his head,
And the flamelets flapped and flickered,
But the Abbot was stark and dead.
Yet still in his pallid fingers
He clutched the golden bowl,
In which, like a pearl dissolving,
Had sunk and dissolved his soul.
But not for this their revels
The jovial monks forbore,
For they cried, “Fill high the goblet!
We must drink to one Saint more!”
* * * * *
EVANGELINE ON THE PRAIRIE.
BEAUTIFUL was the night. Behind the black wall of the forest,
Tipping its summit with silver, arose the moon. On the river
Fell here and there through the branches a tremulous gleam of
the moonlight,
Like the sweet thoughts of love on a darkened and devious
spirit.
Nearer and round about her, the manifold flowers of the garden
Poured out their souls in odors, that were their prayers and
confessions
Unto the night, as it went its way, like a silent Carthusian.
Fuller of fragrance than they, and as heavy with shadows and
night dews,
Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm and the magical
moonlight
Seemed to inundate her soul with indefinable longings,
As, through the garden gate, and beneath the shade of the
oak-trees,
Passed she along the path to the edge of the measureless
prairie.
Silent it lay, with a silvery haze upon it, and fire-flies
Gleaming and floating away in mingled and infinite numbers.
Over her head the stars, the thoughts of God in the heavens,
Shone on the eyes of man, who had ceased to marvel and worship,
Save when a blazing comet was seen on the walls of that temple,
As if a hand had appeared and written upon them, “Upharsin.”
And the soul of the maiden, between the stars and the
fire-flies,
Wandered alone, and she cried, “O Gabriel! O my beloved!
Art thou so near unto me, and yet I cannot behold thee?
Art thou so near unto me, and yet thy voice does not reach me?
Ah! how often thy feet have trod this path to the prairie!
Ah! how often thine eyes have looked on the woodlands around
me!
Ah! how often beneath this oak, returning from labor,
Thou hast lain down to rest, and to dream of me in thy
slumbers.
When shall these eyes behold, these arms be folded about thee?”
Loud and sudden and near the note of a whippoorwill sounded
Like a flute in the woods; and anon, through the neighboring
thickets,
Farther and farther away it floated and dropped into silence.
“Patience!” whispered the oaks from oracular caverns of
darkness;
And, from the moonlit meadow, a sigh responded, “To-morrow!”
* * * * *
LITERARY FAME.
As a specimen of Mr. Longfellow’s prose style we present the
following extract from his “_Hyperion_,” written when the poet
was comparatively a young man.
TIME has a Doomsday-Book, upon whose pages he is continually recording
illustrious names. But, as often as a new name is written there, an
old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never
to be effaced. These are the high nobility of Nature,――Lords of the
Public Domain of Thought. Posterity shall never question their titles.
But those, whose fame lives only in the indiscreet opinion of unwise
men, must soon be as well forgotten as if they had never been. To
this great oblivion must most men come. It is better, therefore, that
they should soon make up their minds to this: well knowing that, as
their bodies must ere long be resolved into dust again, and their
graves tell no tales of them, so must their names likewise be utterly
forgotten, and their most cherished thoughts, purposes, and opinions
have no longer an individual being among men; but be resolved and
incorporated into the universe of thought.
Yes, it is better that men should soon make up their minds to be
forgotten, and look about them, or within them, for some higher motive,
in what they do, than the approbation of men, which is Fame; namely,
their duty; that they should be constantly and quietly at work, each
in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their fame to take
care of itself. Difficult must this indeed be, in our imperfection;
impossible, perhaps, to achieve it wholly. Yet the resolute, the
indomitable will of man can achieve much,――at times even this victory
over himself; being persuaded that fame comes only when deserved, and
then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
It has become a common saying, that men of genius are always in
advance of their age; which is true. There is something equally true,
yet not so common; namely, that, of these men of genius, the best and
bravest are in advance not only of their own age, but of every age. As
the German prose-poet says, every possible future is behind them. We
cannot suppose that a period of time will ever arrive, when the world,
or any considerable portion of it, shall have come up abreast with
these great minds, so as fully to comprehend them.
And, oh! how majestically they walk in history! some like the sun,
“with all his traveling glories round him;” others wrapped in gloom,
yet glorious as a night with stars. Through the else silent darkness
of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn footsteps. Onward
they pass, like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision of an
earthly paradise, attendant angels bearing golden lights before them,
and, above and behind, the whole air painted with seven listed colors,
as from the trail of pencils!
And yet, on earth, these men were not happy,――not all happy, in the
outward circumstance of their lives. They were in want, and in pain,
and familiar with prison-bars, and the damp, weeping walls of dungeons.
Oh, I have looked with wonder upon those who, in sorrow and privation,
and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the shadow of death,
have worked right on to the accomplishment of their great purposes;
toiling much, enduring much, fulfilling much;――and then, with
shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung, have laid themselves down
in the grave, and slept the sleep of death,――and the world talks of
them, while they sleep!
It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings had but sanctified
them! As if the death-angel, in passing, had touched them with the
hem of his garment, and made them holy! As if the hand of disease had
been stretched out over them only to make the sign of the cross upon
their souls! And as in the sun’s eclipse we can behold the great stars
shining in the heavens, so in this life-eclipse have these men beheld
the lights of the great eternity, burning solemnly and forever!
Illustration: SOUVENIR OF LONGFELLOW
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
THE LIBERATOR OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.
TO classify Emerson is a matter of no small difficulty. He was a
philosopher, he was an essayist, he was a poet――all three so eminently
that scarcely two of his friends would agree to which class he most
belonged. Oliver Wendell Holmes asks:
“Where in the realm of thought whose air is song
Does he the Buddha of the west belong?
He seems a winged Franklin sweetly wise,
Born to unlock the secret of the skies.”
But whatever he did was done with a poetic touch. Philosophy, essay
or song, it was all pregnant with the spirit of poetry. Whatever else
he was, Emerson was pre-eminently a poet. It was with this golden
key that he unlocked the chambers of original thought, that liberated
American letters.
Until Emerson came, American authors had little independence. James
Russell Lowell declares, “We were socially and intellectually bound to
English thought, until Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at
the dangers and glories of blue waters. He was our first optimistic
writer. Before his day, Puritan theology had seen in man only a vile
nature and considered his instincts for beauty and pleasure, proofs of
his total depravity.” Under such conditions as these, the imagination
was fettered and wholesome literature was impossible. As a reaction
against this Puritan austerity came Unitarianism, which aimed to
establish the dignity of man, and out of this came the further growth
of the idealism or transcendentalism of Emerson. It was this idea and
these aspirations of the new theology that Emerson converted into
literature. The indirect influence of his example on the writings of
Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier and Lowell, and its direct influence on
Thoreau, Hawthorne, Chas. A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, G. W. Curtis and
others, formed the very foundation for the beautiful structure of our
representative American literature.
Emerson was profoundly a thinker who pondered the relation of man to
God and to the universe. He conceived and taught the noblest ideals of
virtue and a spiritual life. The profound study which Emerson devoted
to his themes and his philosophic cast of mind made him a writer for
scholars. He was a prophet who, without argument, announced truths
which, by intuition, he seems to have perceived; but the thought is
often so shadowy that the ordinary reader fails to catch it. For this
reason he will never be like Longfellow or Whittier, a favorite with
the masses. Let it not be understood, however, that all of Emerson’s
writings are heavy or shadowy or difficult to understand. On the
contrary, some of his poems are of a popular character and are easy
of comprehension. For instance, “The Hymn,” sung at the completion
of the Concord Monument in 1836, was on every one’s lips at the time
of the Centennial celebration, in 1876. His optimistic spirit is also
beautifully and clearly expressed in the following stanza of his
“Voluntaries:”
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When duty whispers low, “Thou must,”
The youth replies, “I can.”
These are but two instances of many that may be cited. No author is,
perhaps, more enjoyed by those who understand him. He was a master
of language. He never used the wrong word. His sentences are models.
But he was not a logical or methodical writer. Every sentence stands
by itself. His paragraphs might be arranged almost at random without
essential loss to the essays. His philosophy consists largely in an
array of golden sayings full of vital suggestions to help men make the
best and most of themselves. He had no compact system of philosophy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803, within “A
kite-string of the birth place of Benjamin Franklin” with whom he is
frequently compared. The likeness, however, consists only in the fact
that they were both decidedly representative Americans of a decidedly
different type. Franklin was prose, Emerson poetry; Franklin common
sense, real; Emerson imaginative, ideal. In these opposite respects
they both were equally representative of the highest type. Both were
hopeful, kindly and shrewd. Both equally powerful in making, training
and guiding the American people.
In his eighth year young Emerson was sent to a grammar school, where
he made such rapid progress, that he was soon able to enter a higher
department known as a Latin school. His first attempts at writing were
not the dull efforts of a school boy; but original poems which he read
with real taste and feeling. He completed his course and graduated
from Harvard College at eighteen. It is said that he was dull in
mathematics and not above the average in his class in general standing;
but he was widely read in literature, which put him far in advance,
perhaps, of any young man of his age. After graduating, he taught
school for five years in connection with his brother; but in 1825,
gave it up for the ministry. For a time he was pastor of a Unitarian
Congregation in Boston; but his independent views were not in
accordance with the doctrine of his church, therefore, he resigned in
1835, and retired to Concord, where he purchased a home near the spot
on which the first battle of the Revolution was fought in 1775, which
he commemorated in his own verse:――
“There first the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.”
In this city, Emerson resided until the day of his death, which
occurred in Concord, April 27, 1882, in the seventy-eighth year of
his age.
Illustration: HOME OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, CONCORD, MASS.
It was in Concord that the poet and essayist, as the prophet of the
advanced thought of his age, gathered around him those leading spirits
who were dissatisfied with the selfishness and shallowness of existing
society, and, who had been led by him to dream of an ideal condition
in which all should live as one family. Out of this grew the famous
“Brook Farm Community.” This was not an original idea of Emerson’s,
however. Coleridge and Southey, of England, had thought of founding
such a society in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River. Emerson
regarded this community of interests as the clear teachings of Jesus
Christ; and, to put into practical operation this idea, a farm of
about two hundred acres was bought at Roxbury, Mass., and a stock
company was formed under the title of “The Brook Farm Institution
of Agriculture and Education.” About seventy members joined in the
enterprise. The principle of the organization was coöperative, the
members sharing the profits. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest of
romancers, Chas. A. Dana, of the New York Tribune, Geo. W. Curtis, of
Harper’s Monthly, Henry D. Thoreau, the poet naturalist, Amos Bronson
Alcott, the transcendental dreamer and writer of strange shadowy
sayings, and Margaret Fuller, the most learned woman of her age, were
prominent members who removed to live on the farm. It is said that
Emerson, himself, never really lived there; but was a member and
frequent visitor, as were other prominent scholars of the same school.
The project was a failure. After five years of experience, some of
the houses were destroyed by fire, the enterprise given up, and the
membership scattered.
But the Brook Farm served its purpose in literature by bringing
together some of the best intellects in America, engaging them for
five years in a common course of study, and stimulating a commerce
of ideas. The breaking up of the community was better, perhaps, than
its success would have been. It dispersed and scattered abroad the
advanced thoughts of Emerson, and the doctrine of the society into
every profession. Instead of being confined to the little paper,
“The Dial,” (which was the organ of the society) its literature was
transferred into a number of widely circulated national mediums.
Thus, it will be seen how Emerson, the “Sage of Concord,” gathered
around him and dominated, by his charming personality, his powerful
mind, and his wholesome influence, some of the brightest minds that
have figured in American literature; and how, through them, as well as
his own writings, he has done so much, not only to lay the foundation
of a new literature, but to mould and shape leading minds for
generations to come. The Brook Farm idea was the uppermost thought in
Edward Bellamy’s famous novel, “Looking Backward,” which created such
a sensation in the reading world a few years since. The progressive
thought of Emerson was father to the so-called “New Theology,” or
“Higher Criticism,” of modern scholars and theologians. It is, perhaps,
for the influence which Emerson has exerted, rather than his own works,
that the literature of America is mostly indebted to him. It was
through his efforts that the village of Concord has been made more
famous in American letters than the city of New York.
The charm of Emerson’s personality has already been referred to,――and
it is not strange that it should have been so great. His manhood, no
less than his genius was worthy of admiration and of reverence. His
life corresponded with his brave, cheerful and steadfast teachings. He
“practiced what he preached.” His manners were so gentle, his nature
so transparent, and his life so singularly pure and happy, that he
was called, while he lived, “the good and great Emerson;” and, since
his death, the memory of his life and manly example are among the
cherished possessions of our literature.
The reverence of his literary associates was little less than worship.
Amos Bronson Alcott,――father of the authoress, Louisa M. Alcott,――one
of the Brook Farm members, though himself a profound scholar and
several years Emerson’s senior, declared that it would have been his
great misfortune to have lived without knowing Emerson, whom he styled,
“The magic minstrel and speaker! whose rhetoric, voiced as by organ
stops, delivers the sentiment from his breast in cadences peculiar to
himself; now hurling it forth on the ear, echoing them; then,――as his
mood and matter invite it――dying like
Music of mild lutes
Or silver coated flutes.
... such is the rhapsodist’s cunning in its structure and delivery.”
Referring to his association with Emerson, the same writer
acknowledges in a poem, written after the sage’s death:
Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend:
By the hand thou took’st me, and did’st condescend
To bring me straightway into thy fair guild;
And life-long hath it been high compliment
By that to have been known, and thy friend styled,
Given to rare thought and to good learning bent;
Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled.
Permit me, then, thus honored, still to be
A scholar in thy university.
* * * * *
HYMN SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT, 1836.
BY the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to day a votive stone,
That memory may their deed redeem
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit that made those heroes dare
To die or leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
* * * * *
THE RHODORA.
IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook;
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black waters with their beauty gay;
Young RAPHAEL might covet such a school;
The lively show beguiled me from my way.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky,
Dear tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.
Why, thou wert there, O, rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew,
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The selfsame Power that brought me there, brought you.
* * * * *
THE TRUE HERO.
AN EXTRACT FROM “VOLUNTARIES.”
The following story is told of the manner in which the poem,
“Voluntaries,” obtained its title. In 1863, Mr. Emerson came
to Boston and took a room in the Parker House, bringing with
him the unfinished sketch of a few verses which he wished
Mr. Fields, his publisher, to hear. He drew a small table to
the centre of the room and read aloud the lines he proposed
giving to the press. They were written on separate slips of
paper which were flying loosely about the room. (Mr. Emerson
frequently wrote in such independent paragraphs, that many of
his poems and essays might be rearranged without doing them
serious violence.) The question arose as to title of the verses
read, when Mr. Fields suggested ♦“Voluntaries,” which was
cordially accepted by Mr. Emerson.
O WELL for the fortunate soul
Which Music’s wings unfold,
Stealing away the memory
Of sorrows new and old!
Yet happier he whose inward sight,
Stayed on his subtle thought,
Shuts his sense on toys of time,
To vacant bosoms brought;
But best befriended of the God
He who, in evil times,
Warned by an inward voice,
Heeds not the darkness and the dread,
Biding by his rule and choice,
Telling only the fiery thread,
Leading over heroic ground
Walled with immortal terror round,
To the aim which him allures,
And the sweet heaven his deed secures.
Peril around all else appalling,
Cannon in front and leaden rain,
Him duty through the clarion calling
To the van called not in vain.
Stainless soldier on the walls,
Knowing this,――and knows no more,――
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore,
Justice after as before;――
And he who battles on her side,
God, though he were ten times slain,
Crowns him victor glorified,
Victor over death and pain
Forever: but his erring foe,
Self-assured that he prevails,
Looks from his victim lying low,
And sees aloft the red right arm
Redress the eternal scales.
He, the poor for whom angels foil,
Blind with pride and fooled by hate,
Writhes within the dragon coil,
Reserved to a speechless fate.
♦ ‘Voluntaires’ replaced with ‘Voluntaries’
* * * * *
MOUNTAIN AND SQUIRREL.