THE mountain and the squirrel_Library of the best American literature Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

Had a quarrel;

And the former called the latter “Little Prig.”

Bun replied:

“You are doubtless very big;

But all sorts of things and weather

Must be taken in together,

To make up a year

And a sphere.

And I think it no disgrace

To occupy my place.

If I’m not so large as you,

You are not so small as I,

And not half so spry.

I’ll not deny you make

A very pretty squirrel track;

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;

If I cannot carry forests on my back,

Neither can you crack a nut.”

* * * * *

THE SNOW STORM.

ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky

Arrives the snow, and driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveler stopp’d, the courier’s feet

Delay’d, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north-wind’s masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnish’d with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he

For number or proportion. Mockingly

On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,

Maugre the farmer’s sighs, and at the gate

A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are number’d, and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonish’d Art

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.

* * * * *

THE PROBLEM.

I LIKE a church, I like a cowl,

I love a prophet of the soul,

And on my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles,

Yet not for all his faith can see

Would I that cowled churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure,

Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought

His awful Jove young Phidias brought;

Never from lips of cunning fell

The thrilling Delphic oracle;

Out from the heart of nature roll’d

The burdens of the Bible old;

The litanies of nations came,

Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,

Up from the burning core below,――

The canticles of love and wo.

The hand that rounded Peter’s dome,

And groin’d the aisles of Christian Rome,

Wrought in a sad sincerity.

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew,

The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Know’st thou what wove yon wood-bird’s nest

Of leaves, and feathers from her breast;

Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,

Painting with morn each annual cell;

Or how the sacred pine tree adds

To her old leaves new myriads?

Such and so grew these holy piles,

Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon

As the best gem upon her zone;

And morning opes with haste her lids

To gaze upon the Pyramids;

O’er England’s Abbeys bends the sky

As on its friends with kindred eye;

For, out of Thought’s interior sphere

These wonders rose to upper air,

And nature gladly gave them place,

Adopted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date

With Andes and with Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the grass,

Art might obey but not surpass.

The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast Soul that o’er him plann’d,

And the same power that rear’d the shrine

Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

Ever the fiery Pentacost

Girds with one flame the countless host,

Trances the heart through chanting choirs,

And through the priest the mind inspires.

The word unto the prophet spoken,

Was writ on tables yet unbroken;

The word by seers or sybils told

In groves of oak or fanes of gold,

Still floats upon the morning wind,

Still whispers to the willing mind.

One accent of the Holy Ghost

The heedless world hath never lost

I know what say the Fathers wise,――

The book itself before me lies,――

Old _Chrysostom_, best Augustine,

And he who blent both in his line,

The younger _Golden Lips_ or mines,

Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines;

His words are music in my ear,

I see his cowled portrait dear.

And yet, for all his faith could see,

I would not the good bishop be.

* * * * *

TRAVELING.

I HAVE no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe,

for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man

is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding

somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get

somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows

old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will

and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to

ruins.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. We owe to our first journeys the

discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at

Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack

my trunk, embrace my friends, and embark on the sea, and at last wake

up at Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self,

unrelenting, identical that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the

palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions; but I

am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

But the rage of traveling is itself only a symptom of a deeper

unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is

vagabond, and the universal system of education fosters restlessness.

Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We

imitate; and what is imitation but the traveling of the mind? Our

houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with

foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our whole minds, lean to

and follow the past and the distant as the eyes of a maid follow her

mistress. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished.

It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was

an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the

conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the

Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought and quaint

expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist

will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him,

considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants

of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create

a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and

sentiment will be satisfied also.

* * * * *

THE COMPENSATION OF CALAMITY.

WE cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do

not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are

idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul,

in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is

any force in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday.

We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and

shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover and

nerve us again. We cannot find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful.

But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, “Up and

onward for evermore!” We cannot stay amid the ruins, neither will we

rely on the new; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those

monsters who look backwards.

And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the

understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a

mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of

friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure

years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The

death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing

but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius;

for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates

an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed; breaks

up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows

the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.

It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the

reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to

the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny

garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for

its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener,

is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide

neighborhoods of men.

* * * * *

SELF-RELIANCE.

INSIST on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every

moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but

of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous,

half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can

teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has

exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare?

Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington,

or Bacon or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of

Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If anybody will

tell me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis when he

performs a great act, I will tell him who else than himself can teach

him. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that

which is assigned thee, and thou canst not hope too much or dare too

much.

* * * * *

FROM “NATURE.”

TO go into solitude a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as

from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody

is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.

The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between

him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made

transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies,

the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities,

how great they are!

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how

would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the

remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night

come out these preachers of beauty and light the universe with their

admonishing smile.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because, always present,

they are always inaccessible; but all natural objects make kindred

impression when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never

wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort all her

secrets and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.

Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals,

the mountains reflected all the wisdom of his best hour as much as

they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

When we speak of Nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most

poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made

by manifold Nature objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick

of timber of the wood-cutter from the tree of the poet. The charming

landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some

twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and

Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape.

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye

can integrate all the parts――that is, the poet. This is the best part

of these men’s farms, yet to this their land-deeds give them no title.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see Nature. Most persons do not

see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun

illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the

heart of the child. The lover of Nature is he whose inward and outward

senses are still truly adjusted to each other――who has retained the

spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with

heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of

Nature a wild delight runs through the man in spite of real sorrows.

Nature says, He is my creature, and, maugre all his impertinent griefs,

he shall be glad with me. Not the sun nor the summer alone, but every

hour and season, yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and

change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind,

from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that

fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health the

air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common in

snow-puddles at twilight under a clouded sky, without having in my

thoughts any occurrence of special good-fortune, I have enjoyed a

perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think how glad I am. In the

woods, too, a man casts off his years as the snake his slough, and

at what period soever of his life is always a child. In the woods

is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and

sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees

not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we

return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me

in life――no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes)――which Nature

cannot repair.

* * * * *

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the

suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am

not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them. The waving

of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old.

It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like

that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me when I

deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight does not

reside in Nature, but in man or in a harmony of both. It is necessary

to use these pleasures with great temperance. For Nature is not always

tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed

perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs is overspread

with melancholy to-day. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

To a man laboring under calamity the heat of his own fire hath sadness

in it. Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him

who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it

shuts down over less worth in the population.

Illustration: SOUVENIR OF EMERSON

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

“THE POET OF FREEDOM.”

IN a solitary farm house near Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the valley

of the Merrimac, on the 17th day of December, 1807, John Greenleaf

Whittier was born. Within the same town, and Amesbury, nearby, this

kind and gentle man, whom all the world delights to honor for his

simple and beautiful heart-songs, spent most of his life, dying at

the ripe old age of nearly eighty-five, in Danvers, Massachusetts,

September 7th, 1892. The only distinguishing features about his

ancestors were that Thos. Whittier settled at Haverhill in 1647,

and brought with him from Newberry the first hive of bees in the

settlement, that they were all sturdy Quakers, lived simply, were

friendly and freedom loving. The early surroundings of the farmer boy

were simple and frugal. He has pictured them for us in his masterpiece,

“Snowbound.” Poverty, the necessity of laboring upon the farm, the

influence of Quaker traditions, his busy life, all conspired against

his liberal education and literary culture. This limitation of

knowledge is, however, at once to the masses his charm, and, to

scholars, his one defect. It has led him to write, as no other poet

could, upon the dear simplicity of New England farm life. He has

written from the heart and not from the head; he has composed popular

pastorals, not hymns of culture. Only such training as the district

schools afforded, with a couple of years at Haverhill Academy

comprised his advantages in education.

In referring to this _alma mater_ in after years, under the spell of

his muse, the poet thus writes:――

“Still sits the school house by the road,

A ragged beggar sunning;

Around it still the sumachs grow

And black-berry vines are running.

Within, the master’s desk is seen,

Deep-scarred by raps official;

The warping floor, the battered seats,

The jack-knife carved initial.”

It was natural for Whittier to become the poet of that combination of

which Garrison was the apostle, and Phillips and Sumner the orators.

His early poems were published by Garrison in his paper, “The Free

Press,” the first one when Whittier was nineteen years of age and

Garrison himself little more than a boy. The farmer lad was elated

when he found the verses which he had so timidly submitted in print

with a friendly comment from the editor and a request for more.

Garrison even visited Whittier’s parents and urged the importance of

giving him a finished education. Thus he fell early under the spell

of the great abolitionist and threw himself with all the ardor of his

nature into the movement. His poems against slavery and disunion have

a ringing zeal worthy of a Cromwell. “They are,” declares one writer,

“like the sound of the trumpets blown before the walls of Jericho.”

As a Quaker Whittier could not have been otherwise than an

abolitionist, for that denomination had long since abolished slavery

within its own communion. Most prominent among his poems of freedom

are “The Voice of Freedom,” published in 1849, “The Panorama and

Other Poems,” in 1856, “In War Times,” in 1863, and “Ichabod,” a

pathetically kind yet severely stinging rebuke to Daniel Webster for

his support of the Fugitive Slave Law. Webster was right from the

standpoint of law and the Constitution, but Whittier argued from the

standpoint of human right and liberty. “Barbara Frietchie,”――while it

is pronounced purely a fiction, as is also his poem about John Brown

kissing the Negro baby on his way to the gallows,――is perhaps the most

widely quoted of his famous war poems.

Whittier also wrote extensively on subjects relating to New England

history, witchcraft and colonial traditions. This group includes many

of his best ballads, which have done in verse for colonial romance

what Hawthorne did in prose in his “Twice-Told Tales” and “Scarlet

Letter.” It is these poems that have entitled Whittier to be called

“the greatest of American ballad writers.” Among them are to be found

“Mabel Martin,” “The Witch of Wenham,” “Marguerite” and “Skipper

Ireson’s Ride.” But it is perhaps in the third department of his

writings, namely, rural tales and idyls, that the poet is most widely

known. These pastoral poems contain the very heart and soul of New

England. They are faithful and loving pictures of humble life, simple

and peaceful in their subject and in their style. The masterpieces of

this class are “Snowbound,” “Maud Muller,” “The Barefoot Boy,” “Among

the Hills,” “Telling the Bees,” etc. The relation of these simple

experiences of homely character has carried him to the hearts of the

people and made him, next to Longfellow, the most popular of American

poets. There is a pleasure and a satisfaction in the freshness of

Whittier’s homely words and homespun phrases, which we seek in vain

in the polished art of cultivated masters. As a poet of nature he

has painted the landscapes of New England as Bryant has the larger

features of the continent.

Whittier was never married and aside from a few exquisite verses he

has given the public no clew to the romance of his youth. His home was

presided over for many years by his sister Elizabeth, a most lovely

and talented woman, for whom he cherished the deepest affection, and

he has written nothing more touching than his tribute to her memory

in “Snowbound.” The poet was shy and diffident among strangers and in

formal society, but among his friends genial and delightful, with a

fund of gentle and delicate humor which gave his conversation a great

charm.

Aside from his work as a poet Whittier wrote considerable prose.

His first volume was “Legends of New England,” published in 1831,

consisting of prose and verse. Subsequent prose publications consisted

of contributions to the slave controversy, biographical sketches of

English and American reformers, studies of scenery and folk-lore of

the Merrimac valley. Those of greatest literary interest were the

“Supernaturalisms of New England,” (1847,) and “Literary Recreations

and Miscellanies,” (1852.)

In 1836 Whittier became secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society,

and he was all his life interested in public affairs, and wrote

much for newspapers and periodicals. In 1838 he began to edit the

“Pennsylvania Freeman” in Philadelphia, but in the following year his

press was destroyed and his office burned by a pro-slavery mob, and he

returned to New England, devoting the larger part of his life, aside

from his anti-slavery political writings, to embalming its history

and legends in his literature, and so completely has it been done by

him it has been declared: “If every other record of the early history

and life of New England were lost the story could be constructed

again from the pages of Whittier. Traits, habits, facts, traditions,

incidents――he holds a torch to the dark places and illumines them

every one.”

Mr. Whittier, perhaps, is the most peculiarly American poet of any

that our country has produced. The woods and waterfowl of Bryant

belong as much to one land as another; and all the rest of our

singers――Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and their brethren――with the

single exception of Joaquin Miller, might as well have been born in

the land of Shakespeare, Milton and Byron as their own. But Whittier

is entirely a poet of his own soil. All through his verse we see the

elements that created it, and it is interesting to trace his simple

life, throughout, in his verses from the time, when like that urchin

with whom he asserts brotherhood, and who has won all affections, he

ate his

* * * “milk and bread,

Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,

On the door-stone gray and rude.

O’er me, like a regal tent,

Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,

Purple curtains fringed with gold

Looped in many a wind-swung fold;”

and, when a little older his fancy dwelt upon the adventures of

Chalkley――as

“Following my plough by Merrimac’s green shore

His simple record I have pondered o’er

With deep and quiet joy.”

In these reveries, “The Barefoot Boy” and others, thousands of his

countrymen have lived over their lives again. Every thing he wrote,

to the New Englander has a sweet, warm familiar life about it. To

them his writings are familiar photographs, but they are also treasury

houses of facts over which the future antiquarian will pour and gather

all the close details of the phase of civilization that they give.

The old Whittier homestead at Amesbury is now in charge of Mrs.

Pickard, a ♦niece of the poet. She has recently made certain changes

in the house; but this has been done so wisely and cautiously that

if the place some day becomes a shrine――as it doubtless will――the

restoration of the old estate will be a simple matter. The library is

left quite undisturbed, just as it was when Whittier died.

♦ ‘neice’ replaced with ‘niece’

* * * * *

MY PLAYMATE.

THE pines were dark on Ramoth Hill,

Their song was soft and low;

The blossoms in the sweet May wind

Were falling like the snow.

The blossoms drifted at our feet,

The orchard birds sang clear;

The sweetest and the saddest day

It seemed of all the year,

For more to me than birds or flowers,

My playmate left her home,

And took with her the laughing spring,

The music and the bloom.

She kissed the lips of kith and kin,

She laid her hand in mine:

What more could ask the bashful boy

Who fed her father’s kine?

She left us in the bloom of May:

The constant years told o’er

The seasons with as sweet May morns,

But she came back no more.

I walk with noiseless feet the round

Of uneventful years;

Still o’er and o’er I sow the Spring

And reap the Autumn ears.

She lives where all the golden year

Her summer roses blow;

The dusky children of the sun

Before her come and go.

There haply with her jeweled hands

She smooths her silken gown,――

No more the homespun lap wherein

I shook the walnuts down.

The wild grapes wait us by the brook,

The brown nuts on the hill,

And still the May-day flowers make sweet

The woods of Follymill.

The lilies blossom in the pond,

The birds build in the tree,

The dark pines sing on Ramoth Hill

The slow song of the sea.

I wonder if she thinks of them,

And how the old time seems,――

If ever the pines of Ramoth wood

Are sounding in her dreams.

I see her face, I hear her voice;

Does she remember mine?

And what to her is now the boy

Who fed her father’s kine?

What cares she that the orioles build

For other eyes than ours,――

That other hands with nuts are filled,

And other laps with flowers?

O playmate in the golden time!

Our mossy seat is green,

Its fringing violets blossom yet,

The old trees o’er it lean.

The winds so sweet with birch and fern

A sweeter memory blow;

And there in spring the veeries sing

The song of long ago.

And still the pines of Ramoth wood

Are moaning like the sea,――

The moaning of the sea of change

Between myself and thee!

* * * * *

THE CHANGELING.

FOR the fairest maid in Hampton

They needed not to search,

Who saw young Anna Favor

Come walking into church,――

Or bringing from the meadows,

At set of harvest-day,

The frolic of the blackbirds,

The sweetness of the hay.

Now the weariest of all mothers,

The saddest two-years bride,

She scowls in the face of her husband,

And spurns her child aside.

“Rake out the red coals, goodman,

For there the child shall lie,

Till the black witch comes to fetch her,

And both up chimney fly.

“It’s never my own little daughter,

It’s never my own,” she said;

“The witches have stolen my Anna,

And left me an imp instead.

“O, fair and sweet was my baby,

Blue eyes, and ringlets of gold;

But this is ugly and wrinkled,

Cross, and cunning, and old.

“I hate the touch of her fingers,

I hate the feel of her skin;

It’s not the milk from my bosom,

But my blood, that she sucks in.

“My face grows sharp with the torment;

Look! my arms are skin and bone!――

Rake open the red coals, goodman,

And the witch shall have her own.

“She’ll come when she hears it crying,

In the shape of an owl or bat,

And she’ll bring us our darling Anna

In place of her screeching brat.”

Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton,

Laid his hand upon her head:

“Thy sorrow is great, O woman!

I sorrow with thee,” he said.

“The paths to trouble are many,

And never but one sure way

Leads out to the light beyond it:

My poor wife, let us pray.”

Then he said to the great All-Father,

“Thy daughter is weak and blind;

Let her sight come back, and clothe her

Once more in her right mind.

“Lead her out of this evil shadow,

Out of these fancies wild;

Let the holy love of the mother,

Turn again to her child.

“Make her lips like the lips of Mary,

Kissing her blessed Son;

Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus,

Rest on her little one.

“Comfort the soul of thy handmaid,

Open her prison door,

And thine shall be all the glory

And praise forevermore.”

Then into the face of its mother,

The baby looked up and smiled;

And the cloud of her soul was lifted,

And she knew her little child.

A beam of slant west sunshine

Made the wan face almost fair,

Lit the blue eyes’ patient wonder

And the rings of pale gold hair.

She kissed it on lip and forehead,

She kissed it on cheek and chin;

And she bared her snow-white bosom

To the lips so pale and thin.

O, fair on her bridal morning

Was the maid who blushed and smiled

But fairer to Ezra Dalton

Looked the mother of his child.

With more than a lover’s fondness

He stooped to her worn young face

And the nursing child and the mother

He folded in one embrace.

“Now mount and ride, my goodman

As lovest thine own soul!

Woe’s me if my wicked fancies

Be the death of Goody Cole!”

His horse he saddled and bridled,

And into the night rode he,――

Now through the great black woodland;

Now by the white-beached sea.

He rode through the silent clearings,

He came to the ferry wide,

And thrice he called to the boatman

Asleep on the other side.

He set his horse to the river,

He swam to Newburg town,

And he called up Justice Sewall

In his nightcap and his gown.

And the grave and worshipful justice,

Upon whose soul be peace!

Set his name to the jailer’s warrant

For Goody Cole’s release.

Then through the night the hoof-beats

Went sounding like a flail:

And Goody Cole at cock crow

Came forth from Ipswich jail.

* * * * *

THE WORSHIP OF NATURE.

THE ocean looketh up to heaven,

As ’twere a living thing;

The homage of its waves is given

In ceaseless worshiping.

They kneel upon the sloping sand,

As bends the human knee,

A beautiful and tireless band,

The priesthood of the sea!

They pour the glittering treasures out

Which in the deep have birth,

And chant their awful hymns about

The watching hills of earth.

The green earth sends its incense up

From every mountain-shrine,

From every flower and dewy cup

That greeteth the sunshine.

The mists are lifted from the rills,

Like the white wing of prayer;

They lean above the ancient hills,

As doing homage there.

The forest-tops are lowly cast

O’er breezy hill and glen,

As if a prayerful spirit pass’d

On nature as on men.

The clouds weep o’er the fallen world,

E’en as repentant love;

Ere, to the blessed breeze unfurl’d,

They fade in light above.

The sky is as a temple’s arch,

The blue and wavy air

Is glorious with the spirit-march

Of messengers at prayer.

The gentle moon, the kindling sun,

The many stars are given,

As shrines to burn earth’s incense on

The altar-fires of Heaven!

* * * * *

THE BAREFOOT BOY.

BLESSINGS on thee, little man,

Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

With thy turned up pantaloons,

And thy merry whistled tunes;

With thy red lip, redder still

Kissed by strawberries on the hill;

With the sunshine on thy face,

Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace!

From my heart I give thee joy;

I was once a barefoot boy.

Prince thou art――the grown-up man,

Only is republican.

Let the million-dollared ride!

Barefoot, trudging at his side,

Thou hast more than he can buy,

In the reach of ear and eye:

Outward sunshine, inward joy,

Blessings on the barefoot boy.

O! for boyhood’s painless play,

Sleep that wakes in laughing day,

Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,

Knowledge never learned of schools:

Of the wild bee’s morning chase,

Of the wild flower’s time and place,

Flight of fowl, and habitude

Of the tenants of the wood;

How the tortoise bears his shell,

How the woodchuck digs his cell,

And the ground-mole sinks his well;

How the robin feeds her young,

How the oriole’s nest is hung;

Where the whitest lilies blow,

Where the freshest berries grow,

Where the ground-nut trails its vine,

Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;

Of the black wasp’s cunning way,

Mason of his walls of clay,

And the architectural plans

Of gray hornet artisans!

For, eschewing books and tasks,

Nature answers all he asks;

Hand in hand with her he walks,

Part and parcel of her joy,

Blessings on the barefoot boy.

O for boyhood’s time of June,

Crowding years in one brief moon,

When all things I heard or saw,

Me, their master, waited for!

I was rich in flowers and trees,

Humming-birds and honey-bees;

For my sport the squirrel played,

Plied the snouted mole his spade;

For my taste the blackberry cone

Purpled over hedge and stone;

Laughed the brook for my delight,

Through the day, and through the night:

Whispering at the garden wall,

Talked with me from fall to fall;

Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,

Mine the walnut slopes beyond,

Mine, on bending orchard trees,

Apples of Hesperides!

Still, as my horizon grew,

Larger grew my riches too,

All the world I saw or knew

Seemed a complex Chinese toy,

Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

O, for festal dainties spread,

Like my bowl of milk and bread,

Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,

On the door-stone, gray and rude!

O’er me like a regal tent,

Cloudy ribbed, the sunset bent,

Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,

Looped in many a wind-swung fold;

While for music came the play

Of the pied frogs’ orchestra;

And, to light the noisy choir,

Lit the fly his lamp of fire.

I was monarch; pomp and joy

Waited on the barefoot boy!

Cheerily, then, my little man!

Live and laugh as boyhood can;

Though the flinty slopes be hard,

Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,

Every morn shall lead thee through

Fresh baptisms of the dew;

Every evening from thy feet

Shall the cool wind kiss the heat;

All too soon these feet must hide

In the prison cells of pride,

Lose the freedom of the sod,

Like a colt’s for work be shod,

Made to tread the mills of toil,

Up and down in ceaseless moil,

Happy if their track be found

Never on forbidden ground;

Happy if they sink not in

Quick and treacherous sands of sin.

Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,

Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

* * * * *

MAUD MULLER.

MAUD MULLER, on a summer’s day,

Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth

Of simple beauty and rustic health.

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee

The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But, when she glanced to the far off town,

White from its hill-slope looking down,

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest

And a nameless longing filled her breast――

A wish, that she hardly dared to own,

For something better than she had known.

The Judge rode slowly down the lane,

Smoothing his horse’s chestnut mane.

He drew his bridle in the shade

Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid.

And ask a draught from the spring that flowed

Through the meadow across the road.

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,

And filled for him her small tin cup,

And blushed as she gave it, looking down

On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.

“Thanks!” said the Judge, “a sweeter draught

From a fairer hand was never quaffed.”

He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,

Of the singing birds and the humming bees;

Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether

The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.

And Maud forgot her briar-torn gown,

And her graceful ankles bare and brown;

And listened, while a pleased surprise

Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.

At last, like one who for delay

Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.

Maud Muller looked and sighed: “Ah me!

That I the Judge’s bride might be!

“He would dress me up in silks so fine,

And praise and toast me at his wine.

“My father should wear a broadcloth coat;

My brother should sail a painted boat.

“I’d dress my mother so grand and gay,

And the baby should have a new toy each day.

“And I’d feed the hungry and clothe the poor,

And all should bless me who left our door.”

The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,

And saw Maud Muller standing still.

“A form more fair, a face more sweet,

Ne’er hath it been my lot to meet.

“And her modest answer and graceful air

Show her wise and good as she is fair.

“Would she were mine, and I to-day,

Like her, a harvester of hay:

“No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,

Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,

“But low of cattle, and song of birds,

And health, and quiet, and loving words.”

But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,

And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,

And Maud was left in the field alone.

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,

When he hummed in court an old love-tune;

And the young girl mused beside the well,

Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.

He wedded a wife of richest dower,

Who lived for fashion, as he for power.

Yet oft, in his marble hearth’s bright glow,

He watched a picture come and go;

And sweet Maud Muller’s hazel eyes

Looked out in their innocent surprise.

Oft when the wine in his glass was red,

He longed for the wayside well instead;

And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,

To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.

And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,

“Ah, that I were free again!

“Free as when I rode that day,

Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”

She wedded a man unlearned and poor,

And many children played round her door.

But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain,

Left their traces on heart and brain.

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot

On the new mown hay in the meadow lot,

And she heard the little spring brook fall

Over the roadside, through the wall,

In the shade of the apple-tree again

She saw a rider draw his rein,

And gazing down with timid grace,

She felt his pleased eyes read her face.

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls

Stretched away into stately halls;

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,

The tallow candle an astral burned;

And for him who sat by the chimney lug,

Dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug,

A manly form at her side she saw,

And joy was duty and love was law.

Then she took up her burden of life again,

Saying only, “It might have been.”

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,

For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,

Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies

Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may

Roll the stone from its grave away!

* * * * *

MEMORIES.

A BEAUTIFUL and happy girl

With step as soft as summer air,

And fresh young lip and brow of pearl

Shadow’d by many a careless curl

Of unconfined and flowing hair:

A seeming child in every thing

Save thoughtful brow, and ripening charms,

As nature wears the smile of spring

When sinking into summer’s arms.

A mind rejoicing in the light

Which melted through its graceful bower,

Leaf after leaf serenely bright

And stainless in its holy white

Unfolding like a morning flower:

A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute

With every breath of feeling woke,

And, even when the tongue was mute,

From eye and lip in music spoke.

How thrills once more the lengthening chain

Of memory at the thought of thee!――

Old hopes which long in dust have lain,

Old dreams come thronging back again,

And boyhood lives again in me;

I feel its glow upon my cheek,

Its fulness of the heart is mine,

As when I lean’d to hear thee speak,

Or raised my doubtful eye to thine.

I hear again thy low replies,

I feel thy arm within my own,

And timidly again uprise

The fringed lids of hazel eyes

With soft brown tresses overblown.

Ah! memories of sweet summer eves,

Of moonlit wave and willowy way,

Of stars and flowers and dewy leaves,

And smiles and tones more dear than they!

Ere this thy quiet eye hath smiled

My picture of thy youth to see,

When half a woman, half a child,

Thy very artlessness beguiled,

And folly’s self seem’d wise in thee.

I too can smile, when o’er that hour

The lights of memory backward stream,

Yet feel the while that manhood’s power

Is vainer than my boyhood’s dream.

Years have pass’d on, and left their trace

Of graver care and deeper thought;

And unto me the calm, cold face

Of manhood, and to thee the grace

Of woman’s pensive beauty brought,

On life’s rough blasts for blame or praise

The schoolboy’s name has widely flown;

Thine in the green and quiet ways

Of unobtrusive goodness known.

And wider yet in thought and deed

Our still diverging thoughts incline,

Thine the Genevan’s sternest creed,

While answers to my spirit’s need

The Yorkshire peasant’s simple line.

For thee the priestly rite and prayer,

And holy day and solemn psalm,

For me the silent reverence where

My brethren gather, slow and calm.

Yet hath thy spirit left on me

An impress time has not worn out,

And something of myself in thee,

A shadow from the past, I see

Lingering even yet thy way about;

Not wholly can the heart unlearn

That lesson of its better hours,

Not yet has Time’s dull footstep worn

To common dust that path of flowers.

Thus, while at times before our eye

The clouds about the present part,

And, smiling through them, round us lie

Soft hues of memory’s morning sky――

The Indian summer of the heart,

In secret sympathies of mind,

In founts of feeling which retain

Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may find

Our early dreams not wholly vain!

* * * * *

THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.

LOOK on him――through his dungeon-grate,

Feebly and cold, the morning light

Comes stealing round him, dim and late,

As if it loathed the sight.

Reclining on his strawy bed,

His hand upholds his drooping head――

His bloodless cheek is seam’d and hard,

Unshorn his gray, neglected beard;

And o’er his bony fingers flow

His long, dishevell’d locks of snow.

No grateful fire before him glows,――

And yet the winter’s breath is chill:

And o’er his half-clad person goes

The frequent ague-thrill!

Silent――save ever and anon,

A sound, half-murmur and half-groan,

Forces apart the painful grip

Of the old sufferer’s bearded lip:

O, sad and crushing is the fate

Of old age chain’d and desolate!

Just GOD! why lies that old man there?

A murderer shares his prison-bed,

Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair,

Gleam on him fierce and red;

And the rude oath and heartless jeer

Fall ever on his loathing ear,

And, or in wakefulness or sleep

Nerve, flesh, and fibre thrill and creep,

Whene’er that ruffian’s tossing limb,

Crimson’d with murder, touches him!

What has the gray-hair’d prisoner done?

Has murder stain’d his hands with gore?

Not so: his crime’s a fouler one:

_God made the old man poor!_

For this he shares a felon’s cell――

The fittest earthly type of hell!

For this――the boon for which he pour’d

His young blood on the invader’s sword,

And counted light the fearful cost――

His blood-gain’d liberty is lost!

And so, for such a place of rest,

Old prisoner, pour’d thy blood as rain

On Concord’s field, and Bunker’s crest,

And Saratoga’s plain?

Look forth, thou man of many scars,

Through thy dim dungeon’s iron bars!

It must be joy, in sooth, to see

Yon monument uprear’d to thee――

Piled granite and a prison cell――

The land repays thy service well!

Go, ring the bells and fire the guns,

And fling the starry banner out;

Shout “Freedom!” till your lisping ones

Give back their cradle-shout:

Let boasted eloquence declaim

Of honor, liberty, and fame;

Still let the poet’s strain be heard,

With “glory” for each second word,

And everything with breath agree

To praise, “our glorious liberty!”

And when the patriot cannon jars

That prison’s cold and gloomy wall,

And through its grates the stripes and stars

Rise on the wind, and fall――

Think ye that prisoner’s aged ear

Rejoices in the general cheer!

Think ye his dim and failing eye

Is kindled at your pageantry?

Sorrowing of soul, and chain’d of limb,

What is your carnival to him?

Down with the law that binds him thus!

Unworthy freemen, let it find

No refuge from the withering curse

Of GOD and human kind!

Open the prisoner’s living tomb,

And usher from its brooding gloom

The victims of your savage code,

To the free sun and air of GOD!

No longer dare as crime to brand,

The chastening of the Almighty’s hand!

* * * * *

THE STORM.

FROM “SNOW-BOUND.”

Snow-bound is regarded as Whittier’s master-piece, as a

descriptive and reminiscent poem. It is a New England Fireside

Idyl, which in its faithfulness recalls, “The Winter Evening,”

of Cowper, and Burns’ “Cotter’s Saturday Night”; but in

sweetness and animation, it is superior to either of these.

Snow-bound is a faithful description of a winter scene,

familiar in the country surrounding Whittier’s home in

Connecticut. The complete poem is published in illustrated form

by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., by whose ♦permission this

extract is here inserted.

♦ ‘permisssion’ replaced with ‘permission’

UNWARNED by any sunset light

The gray day darkened into night,

A night made hoary with the swarm

And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,

As zigzag wavering to and fro

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow;

And ere the early bedtime came

The white drift piled the window-frame,

And through the glass the clothes-line posts

Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

So all night long the storm roared on:

The morning broke without a sun;

In tiny spherule traced with lines

Of Nature’s geometric signs,

In starry flake, and pellicle,

All day the hoary meteor fell;

And, when the second morning shone,

We looked upon a world unknown,

On nothing we could call our own.

Around the glistening wonder bent

The blue walls of the firmament,

No cloud above, no earth below,――

A universe of sky and snow!

The old familiar sight of ours

Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,

Or garden wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,

A fenceless drift what once was road;

The bridle-post an old man sat

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;

The well-curb had a Chinese roof;

And even the long sweep, high aloof,

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell

Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath

Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”

Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy

Count such a summons less than joy?)

Our buskins on our feet we drew;

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,

To guard our necks and ears from snow,

We cut the solid whiteness through,

And, where the drift was deepest, made

A tunnel walled and overlaid

With dazzling crystal: we had read

Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,

And to our own his name we gave,

With many a wish the luck were ours

To test his lamp’s supernal powers.

* * * * *

ICHABOD.

The following poem was written on hearing of Daniel Webster’s

course in supporting the “Compromise Measure,” including the

“Fugitive Slave Law”. This speech was delivered in the United

States Senate on the 7th of March, 1850, and greatly incensed

the Abolitionists. Mr. Whittier, in common with many New

Englanders, regarded it as the certain downfall of Mr. Webster.

The lines are full of tender regret, deep grief and touching

pathos.

SO fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn

Which once he wore!

The glory from his gray hairs gone

For evermore!

Revile him not,――the Tempter hath

A snare for all!

And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,

Befit his fall.

Oh! dumb be passion’s stormy rage,

When he who might

Have lighted up and led his age

Falls back in night.

Scorn! would the angels laugh to mark

A bright soul driven,

Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,

From hope and heaven?

Let not the land, once proud of him,

Insult him now,

Nor brand with deeper shame his dim

Dishonor’d brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead,

From sea to lake,

A long lament, as for the dead,

In sadness make.

Of all we loved and honor’d, nought

Save power remains,――

A fallen angel’s pride of thought

Still strong in chains.

All else is gone; from those great eyes

The soul has fled:

When faith is lost, when honor dies,

The man is dead!

Then pay the reverence of old days

To his dead fame;

Walk backward with averted gaze,

And hide the shame!

Illustration: SOUVENIR OF WHITTIER

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

POET, ESSAYIST AND HUMORIST.

THIS distinguished author, known and admired throughout the English

speaking world for the rich vein of philosophy, good fellowship and

pungent humor that runs through his poetry and prose, was born in

Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 29th, 1809, and died in Boston,

October 27th, 1894, at the ripe old age of eighty-five――the “last

leaf on the tree” of that famous group, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell,

Emerson, Bryant, Poe, Willis, Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana, Thoreau,

Margaret Fuller and others who laid the foundation of our national

literature, and with all of whom he was on intimate terms as a

co-laborer at one time or another.

Holmes graduated at Harvard College in 1829. His genial disposition

made him a favorite with his fellows, to whom some of his best early

poems are dedicated. One of his classmates said of him:――“He made you

feel like you were the best fellow in the world and he was the next

best.” Benjamin Pierce, the astronomer, and Rev. Samuel F. Smith,

the author of our National Hymn, were his class-mates and have been

wittily described in his poem “The Boys.” Dr. Holmes once humorously

said that he supposed “the three people whose poems were best known

were himself, one Smith and one Brown. As for himself, everybody knew

who he was; the one Brown was author of ‘I love to Steal a While Away,’

and the one Smith was author of ‘My Country ’Tis of Thee.’”

After graduation Holmes studied medicine in the schools of Europe,

but returned to finish his course and take his degree at Harvard. For

nine years he was Professor of Physiology and Anatomy at Dartmouth

College, and in 1847 he accepted a similar position in Harvard

University, to which his subsequent professional labors were devoted.

He also published several works on medicine, the last being a volume

of medical essays, issued in 1883.

Holmes’ first poetic publication was a small volume published in 1836,

including three poems which still remain favorites, namely, “My Aunt,”

“The height of the Ridiculous” and “The Last Leaf on the Tree.” Other

volumes of his poems were issued in 1846, 1850, 1861, 1875 and 1880.

Dr. Holmes is popularly known as the poet of society, this title

attaching because most of his productions were called forth by

special occasions. About one hundred of them were prepared for his

Harvard class re-unions and his fraternity (Phi Beta Kappa) social

and anniversary entertainments. The poems which will preserve his

fame, however, are those of a general interest, like “The Deacon’s

Masterpiece,” in which the Yankee spirit speaks out, “The Voiceless,”

“The Living Temple,” “The Chambered Nautilus,” in which we find a

truly exalted treatment of a lofty theme; “The Last Leaf on the Tree,”

which is a remarkable combination of pathos and humor; “The Spectre

Pig” and “The Ballad of an Oysterman,” showing to what extent he

can play in real fun. In fact, Dr. Holmes was a many-sided man, and

equally presentable on all sides. It has been truthfully said of him,

“No other American versifier has rhymed so easily and so gracefully.”

We might further add, no other in his personality, has been more

universally esteemed and beloved by those who knew him.

As a prose writer Holmes was equally famous. His “Autocrat at the

Breakfast Table,” “Professor at the Breakfast Table” and “Poet at

the Breakfast Table,” published respectively in 1858, 1859 and 1873,

are everywhere known, and not to have read them is to have neglected

something important in literature. The “Autocrat” is especially a

masterpiece. An American boarding house with its typical characters

forms the scene. The Autocrat is the hero, or rather leader, of the

sparkling conversations which make up the threads of the book. Humor,

satire and scholarship are skilfully mingled in its graceful literary

formation. In this work will also be found “The Wonderful One Horse

Shay” and “The Chambered Nautilus,” two of the author’s best poems.

Holmes wrote two novels, “Elsie Venner” and “The Guardian Angel,”

which in their romance rival the weirdness of Hawthorne and show his

genius in this line of literature. “Mechanism in Thought and Morals”

(1871), is a scholarly essay on the function of the brain. As a

biographer Dr. Holmes has also given us excellent memoirs of John

Lothrop Motley, the historian, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Among his

later products may be mentioned “A Mortal Antipathy,” which appeared

in 1885, and “One Hundred Days in Europe” (1887).

Holmes was one of the projectors of “The Atlantic Monthly,” which was

started in 1857, in conjunction with Longfellow, Lowell and Emerson,

Lowell being its editor. It was to this periodical that the “Autocrat”

and “The Professor at the Breakfast Table” were contributed. These

papers did much to secure the permanent fame of this magazine. It is

said that its name was suggested by Holmes, and he is also credited

with first attributing to Boston the distinction of being the “Hub of

the solar system,” which he, with a mingling of humor and local pride,

declared was “located exactly at the Boston State House.”

Unlike other authors, the subject of this sketch was very much himself

at all times and under all conditions. Holmes the man, Holmes the

professor of physiology, the poet, philosopher, and essayist, were all

one and the same genial soul. His was the most companionable of men,

whose warm flow of fellowship and good cheer the winters of four score

years and five could not chill,――“The last Leaf on the Tree,” whose

greenness the frost could not destroy. He passed away at the age of

eighty-five still verdantly young in spirit, and the world will smile

for many generations good naturedly because he lived. Such lives are

a benediction to the race.

Finally, to know Holmes’ writings well, is to be made acquainted

with a singularly lovable nature. The charms of his personality

are irresistible. Among the poor, among the literary, and among

the society notables, he was ever the most welcome of guests. His

geniality, humor, frank, hearty manliness, generosity and readiness

to amuse and be amused, together with an endless store of anecdotes,

his tact and union of sympathy and originality, make him the best of

companions for an hour or for a lifetime. His friendship is generous

and enduring. All of these qualities of mind and heart are felt as

the reader runs through his poems or his prose writings. We feel that

Holmes has lived widely and found life good. It is precisely for this

reason that the reading of his writings is a good tonic. It sends the

blood more courageously through the veins. After reading Holmes, we

feel that life is easier and simpler and a finer affair altogether and

more worth living for than we had been wont to regard it.

The following paragraph published in a current periodical shortly

after the death of Mr. Holmes throws further light upon the

personality of this distinguished author:

“Holmes himself must have harked back to forgotten ancestors for his

brightness. His father was a dry as dust Congregational preacher, of

whom some one said that he fed his people sawdust out of a spoon. But

from his childhood Holmes was bright and popular. One of his college

friends said of him at Harvard, that ‘he made you think you were the

best fellow in the world, and he was the next best.’”

Dr. Holmes was first and foremost a conversationalist. He talked

even on paper. There was never the dullness of the written word. His

sentences whether in prose or verse were so full of color that they

bore the charm of speech.

One of his most quoted poems “Dorothy Q,” is full of this sparkle, and

carries a suggestion of his favorite theme:

Grandmother’s mother: her age I guess

Thirteen summers, or something less;

Girlish bust, but womanly air;

Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair;

Lips that lover has never kissed;

Taper fingers and slender wrist;

Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;

So they painted the little maid.

* * * * *

What if a hundred years ago

Those close shut lips had answered No,

When forth the tremulous question came

That cost the maiden her Norman name,

And under the folds that looked so still

The bodice swelled with the bosom’s thrill?

Should I be I, or would it be

One tenth another to nine tenths me?

* * * * *

BILL AND JOE.

COME, dear old comrade, you and I

Will steal an hour from days gone by――

The shining days when life was new,

And all was bright as morning dew,

The lusty days of long ago,

When you were Bill and I was Joe.

Your name may flaunt a titled trail,

Proud as a cockerel’s rainbow tail:

And mine as brief appendix wear

As Tam O’Shanter’s luckless mare;

To-day, old friend, remember still

That I am Joe and you are Bill.

You’ve won the great world’s envied prize,

And grand you look in people’s eyes,

With HON. and LL.D.,

In big brave letters, fair to see――

Your fist, old fellow! off they go!――

How are you, Bill? How are you, Joe?

You’ve worn the judge’s ermined robe;

You’ve taught your name to half the globe;

You’ve sung mankind a deathless strain;

You’ve made the dead past live again;

The world may call you what it will,

But you and I are Joe and Bill.

The chaffing young folks stare and say,

“See those old buffers, bent and gray;

They talk like fellows in their teens!

Mad, poor old boys! That’s what it means”――

And shake their heads; they little know

The throbbing hearts of Bill and Joe――

How Bill forgets his hour of pride,

While Joe sits smiling at his side;

How Joe, in spite of time’s disguise,

Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes――

Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill

As Joe looks fondly up at Bill.

Ah, pensive scholar! what is fame?

A fitful tongue of leaping flame;

A giddy whirlwind’s fickle gust,

That lifts a pinch of mortal dust;

A few swift years, and who can show

Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe?

The weary idol takes his stand,

Holds out his bruised and aching hand,

While gaping thousands come and go――

How vain it seems, this empty show――

Till all at once his pulses thrill:

’Tis poor old Joe’s “God bless you, Bill!”

And shall we breathe in happier spheres

The names that pleased our mortal ears,――

In some sweet lull of harp and song,

For earth-born spirits none too long,

Just whispering of the world below,

Where this was Bill, and that was Joe?

No matter; while our home is here

No sounding name is half so dear;

When fades at length our lingering day,

Who cares what pompous tombstones say?

Read on the hearts that love us still

_Hic jacet_ Joe. _Hic jacet_ Bill.

* * * * *

UNION AND LIBERTY.

FLAG of the heroes who left us their glory,

Borne through their battle-fields’ thunder and flame,

Blazoned in song and illuminated in story,

Wave o’er us all who inherit their fame.

Up with our banner bright,

Sprinkled with starry light,

Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,

While through the sounding sky

Loud rings the Nation’s cry――

UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE!

Light of our firmament, guide of our Nation,

Pride of her children, and honored afar,

Let the wide beams of thy full constellation

Scatter each cloud that would darken a star!

Empire unsceptred! What foe shall assail thee

Bearing the standard of Liberty’s van?

Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee,

Striving with men for the birthright of man!

Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted,

Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must draw,

Then with the arms to thy million united,

Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law!

Lord of the universe! shield us and guide us,

Trusting Thee always, through shadow and sun!

Thou hast united us, who shall divide us?

Keep us, O keep us the MANY IN ONE!

Up with our banner bright,

Sprinkled with starry light,

Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,

While through the sounding sky

Loud rings the Nation’s cry――

Union and Liberty! One Evermore!

* * * * *

OLD IRON SIDES.

The following poem has become a National Lyric. It was first

printed in the “Boston Daily Advertiser,” when the Frigate

“Constitution” lay in the navy-yard at Charlestown. The

department had resolved upon breaking her up; but she was

preserved from this fate by the following verses, which ran

through the newspapers with universal applause; and, according

to “Benjamin’s American Monthly Magazine,” of January, 1837,

it was printed in the form of hand-bills, and circulated in the

city of Washington.

AY, tear her tatter’d ensign down!

Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

That banner in the sky;

Beneath it rung the battle-shout,

And burst the cannon’s roar;

The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more!

Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood,

Where knelt the vanquish’d foe,

When winds were hurrying o’er the flood,

And waves were white below,

No more shall feel the victor’s tread,

Or know the conquer’d knee;

The harpies of the shore shall pluck

The eagle of the sea!

O, better that her shatter’d hulk

Should sink beneath the wave;

Her thunders shook the mighty deep,

And there should be her grave;

Nail to the mast her holy flag,

Set every threadbare sail,

And give her to the god of storms,――

The lightning and the gale!

* * * * *

MY AUNT.

MY aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!

Long years have o’er her flown;

Yet still she strains the aching clasp

That binds her virgin zone;

I know it hurts her,――though she looks

As cheerful as she can:

Her waist is ampler than her life,

For life is but a span.

My aunt, my poor deluded aunt!

Her hair is almost gray;

Why will she train that winter curl

In such a spring-like way?

How can she lay her glasses down,

And say she reads as well,

When, through a double convex lens,

She just makes out to spell?

Her father――grandpapa! forgive

This erring lip its smiles――

Vow’d she would make the finest girl

Within a hundred miles.

He sent her to a stylish school;

’Twas in her thirteenth June;

And with her, as the rules required,

“Two towels and a spoon.”

They braced my aunt against a board,

To make her straight and tall;

They laced her up, they starved her down,

To make her light and small;

They pinch’d her feet, they singed her hair,

They screw’d it up with pins,――

Oh, never mortal suffer’d more

In penance for her sins.

So, when my precious aunt was done,

My grandsire brought her back

(By daylight, lest some rabid youth

Might follow on the track);

“Ah!” said my grandsire, as he shook

Some powder in his pan,

“What could this lovely creature do

Against a desperate man!”

Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,

Nor bandit cavalcade

Tore from the trembling father’s arms

His all-accomplish’d maid.

For her how happy had it been!

And Heaven had spared to me

To see one sad, ungather’d rose

On my ancestral tree.

* * * * *

THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS.

I WROTE some lines once on a time

In wondrous merry mood,

And thought, as usual, men would say

They were exceeding good.

They were so queer, so very queer,

I laugh’d as I would die;

Albeit, in the general way,

A sober man am I.

I call’d my servant, and he came:

How kind it was of him,

To mind a slender man like me,

He of the mighty limb!

“These to the printer,” I exclaim’d,

And, in my humorous way,

I added (as a trifling jest),

“There’ll be the devil to pay.”

He took the paper, and I watch’d,

And saw him peep within;

At the first line he read, his face

Was all upon the grin.

He read the next; the grin grew broad,

And shot from ear to ear;

He read the third; a chuckling noise

I now began to hear.

The fourth; he broke into a roar;

The fifth, his waistband split;

The sixth, he burst five buttons off,

And tumbled in a fit.

Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye,

I watch’d that wretched man,

And since, I never dare to write

As funny as I can.

* * * * *

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,

Sails the unshadow’d main,――

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

Wreck’d is the ship of pearl!

And every chamber’d cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,

Before thee lies reveal’d,――

Its iris’d ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unseal’d!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretch’d in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:――

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

* * * * *

OLD AGE AND THE PROFESSOR.

Mr. Holmes is as famous for his prose as for his poetry. The

following sketches are characteristic of his happy and varied

style.

OLD AGE, this is Mr. Professor; Mr. Professor, this is Old Age.

_Old Age._――Mr. Professor, I hope to see you well. I have known you

for some time, though I think you did not know me. Shall we walk down

the street together?

_Professor_ (drawing back a little).――We can talk more quietly,

perhaps, in my study. Will you tell me how it is you seem to be

acquainted with everybody you are introduced to, though he evidently

considers you an entire stranger?

_Old Age._――I make it a rule never to force myself upon a person’s

recognition until I have known him at least _five years_.

_Professor._――Do you mean to say that you have known me so long as

that?

_Old Age._――I do. I left my card on you longer ago than that, but I am

afraid you never read it; yet I see you have it with you.

_Professor._――Where?

_Old Age._――There, between your eyebrows,――three straight lines

running up and down; all the probate courts know that token,――“Old Age,

his mark.” Put your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, and

your middle finger on the inner end of the other eyebrow; now separate

the fingers, and you will smooth out my sign manual; that’s the way

you used to look before I left my card on you.

_Professor._――What message do people generally send back when you

first call on them?

_Old Age._――_Not at home._ Then I leave a card and go. Next year I

call; get the same answer; leave another card. So for five or

six――sometimes ten――years or more. At last, if they don’t let me in, I

break in through the front door or the windows.

We talked together in this way some time. Then Old Age said

again,――Come, let us walk down the street together,――and offered me

a cane,――an eye-glass, a tippet, and a pair of overshoes.――No, much

obliged to you, said I. I don’t want those things, and I had a little

rather talk with you here, privately, in my study. So I dressed myself

up in a jaunty way and walked out alone;――got a fall, caught a cold,

was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to think over this whole

matter.

* * * * *

THE BRAIN.

OUR brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up

once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hands

of the Angel of the Resurrection.

Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop

them; they cannot stop themselves; sleep cannot still them; madness

only makes them go faster; death alone can break into the case, and,

seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the heart, silence

at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so

long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.

* * * * *

MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS.

I CAN’T say just how many walks she and I had taken before this one.

I found the effect of going out every morning was decidedly favorable

on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for which were just

marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when

she smiled and nodded good-morning to me from the schoolhouse steps.

* * * * *

The schoolmistress had tried life. Once in a while one meets with a

single soul greater than all the living pageant that passes before

it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin

fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are

meek, slight women who have weighed all which this planetary life can

offer, and hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender hands.

This was one of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her;

the routine of labor and the loneliness of almost friendless city-life

were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually

regaining a cheerfulness which was often sprightly, as she became

interested in the various matters we talked about and places we

visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were made

for love,――unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the

cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were meant for the

reward of nothing less than the Great Passion.

It was on the Common that we were walking. The _mall_, or boulevard

of our Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in

different directions. One of these runs downward from opposite Joy

Street southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston

Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it.

I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as

we came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I

tried to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. At

last I got out the question,――Will you take the long path with me?

Certainly,――said the schoolmistress,――with much pleasure. Think,――I

said,――before you answer: if you take the long path with me now, I

shall interpret it that we are to part no more! The schoolmistress

stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her.

One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by,――the one

you may still see close by the Gingko-tree. Pray, sit down,――I said.

No, no,――she answered softly,――I will walk the _long path_ with you!

The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm in arm, about

the middle of the long path, and said, very charmingly,――“Good-morning,

my dears!”

* * * * *

A RANDOM CONVERSATION

ON OLD MAXIMS, BOSTON AND OTHER TOWNS.

(_From “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.”_)

SIN has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

I think Sir,――said the divinity student,――you must intend that for one

of the sayings of the Seven Wise men of Boston you were speaking of

the other day.

I thank you, my young friend,――was the reply,――but I must say

something better than that, before I could pretend to fill out the

number.

The schoolmistress wanted to know how many of these sayings there were

on record, and what, and by whom said.

Why, let us see,――there is that one of Benjamin Franklin, “the great

Bostonian,” after whom this land was named. To be sure, he said

a great many wise things,――and I don’t feel sure he didn’t borrow

this,――he speaks as if it were old. But then he applied it so neatly!――

“He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you

another than he whom you yourself have obliged.”

Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my friend,

the Historian, in one of his flashing moments:――

“Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its

necessaries.”

To these must certainly be added that other saying of one of the

wittiest of men:――

“Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.”

The divinity student looked grave at her, but said nothing.

The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she didn’t think the wit

meant any irreverence. It was only another way of saying, Paris is

a heavenly place after New York or Boston.

A jaunty looking person, who had come in with the young fellow they

call John,――evidently a stranger,――said there was one more wise man’s

saying that he had heard; it was about our place, but he didn’t know

who said it.――A civil curiosity was manifested by the company to hear

the fourth wise saying. I heard him distinctly whispering to the young

fellow who brought him to dinner, _Shall I tell it?_ To which the

answer was, _Go ahead!_――Well,――he said,――this was what I heard:――

“Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn’t

pry that out of a Boston man, if you had the tire of all creation

straightened out for a crow-bar.”

Sir,――said I,――I am gratified with your remark. It expresses with

pleasing vivacity that which I have sometimes heard uttered with

malignant dullness. The satire of the remark is essentially true of

Boston,――and of all other considerable――and inconsiderable――places

with which I have had the privilege of being acquainted. Cockneys

think London is the only place in the world. Frenchmen――you remember

the line about Paris, the Court, the World, etc.――I recollect well,

by the way, a sign in that city which ran thus: “Hotel de l’Univers

et des États Unis;” and as Paris _is_ the universe to a Frenchman, of

course the United States are outside of it. “See Naples and then die.”

It is quite as bad with smaller places. I have been about lecturing,

you know, and have found the following propositions to hold true of

all of them.

1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the center of each

and every town or city.

2. If more than fifty years have passed since its foundation, it is

affectionately styled by the inhabitants the “_good old_ town of ――――”

(whatever its name may happen to be).

3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes together to listen

to a stranger is invariably declared to be a “remarkably intelligent

audience.”

4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable to longevity.

5. It contains several persons of vast talent little known to the

world. (One or two of them, you may perhaps chance to remember,

sent short pieces to the “Pactolian” some time since, which were

“respectfully declined.”)

Boston is just like other places of its size――only, perhaps,

considering its excellent fish-market, paid fire department, superior

monthly publications, and correct habit of spelling the English

language, it has some right to look down on the mob of cities. I’ll

tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the real offense

of Boston. It drains a large water-shed of its intellect, and will

not itself be drained. If it would only send away its first-rate

men instead of its second-rate ones (no offense to the well-known

exceptions, of which we are always proud), we should be spared such

epigrammatic remarks as that the gentleman has quoted. There can never

be a real metropolis in this country until the biggest centre can

drain the lesser ones of their talent and wealth. I have observed,

by the way, that the people who really live in two great cities are

by no means so jealous of each other, as are those of smaller cities

situated within the intellectual basin, or _suction_ range, of one

large one, of the pretensions of any other. Don’t you see why? Because

their promising young author and rising lawyer and large capitalist

have been drained off to the neighboring big city,――their prettiest

girls have exported to the same market; all their ambition points

there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes from there. I hate

little, toad-eating cities.

Would I be so good as to specify any particular example?――Oh,――an

example? Did you ever see a bear trap? Never? Well, shouldn’t you

like to see me put my foot into one? With sentiments of the highest

consideration I must beg leave to be excused.

Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. If they have an

old church or two, a few stately mansions of former grandees, here

and there an old dwelling with the second story projecting (for the

convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the front-door with

their tomahawks)――if they have, scattered about, those mighty square

houses built something more than half a century ago, and standing

like architectural boulders dropped by the former diluvium of wealth,

whose refluent wave has left them as its monument,――if they have

gardens with elbowed apple-trees that push their branches over the

high board-fence and drop their fruit on the sidewalk,――if they have

a little grass in their side-streets, enough to betoken quiet without

proclaiming decay,――I think I could go to pieces, after my life’s

tranquil places, as sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be

rocked to sleep in. I visit such spots always with infinite delight.

My friend, the Poet, says, that rapidly growing towns are most

unfavorable to the imaginative and reflective faculties. Let a man

live in one of these old quiet places, he says, and the wine of his

soul, which is kept thick and turbid by the rattle of busy streets,

settles, and as you hold it up, you may see the sun through it by day

and the stars by night.

Do I think that the little villages have the conceit of the great

towns? I don’t believe there is much difference. You know how they

read Pope’s line in the smallest town in our State of Massachusetts?

Well, they read it,――

“All are but parts of one stupendous _Hull_!”

Illustration: SOUVENIR OF HOLMES

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

POET, CRITIC, AND ESSAYIST.

WHILE the popularity of Lowell has not been so great as that of

Whittier, Longfellow or Holmes, his poetry expresses a deeper thought

and a truer culture than that of any one of these; or, indeed, of

any other American poet, unless the exception be the “transcendental

philosopher,” Emerson. As an anti-slavery poet, he was second only to

Whittier.

James Russell Lowell was born in Cambridge, Mass., February 22, 1819,

and died in the same city on August 12, 1891, in the seventy-third

year of his age. He was the youngest son of the Rev. Charles Lowell,

an eminent Congregational clergyman, and was descended from the

English settlers of 1639. He entered Harvard in his seventeenth

year and graduated in 1838, before he was twenty. He began to write

verses early. In his junior year in college he wrote the anniversary

poem, and, in his senior year, was editor of the college magazine.

Subsequently, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1840; but,

it seems, never entered upon the practice of his profession. If he

did it is doubtful if he ever had even that _first client_ whom he

afterwards described in a humorous sketch.

His first appearance in literature was the publication, in 1839, of

the class poem which he had written, but was not permitted to recite

on account of his temporary suspension from College for neglect of

certain studies in the curriculum for which he had a distaste. In this

poem he satirized the Abolitionists, and the transcendental school of

writers, of which Emerson was the prophet and leader. This poem, while

faulty, contained much sharp wit and an occasional burst of feeling

which portended future prominence for its author.

Two years later, in 1841, the first volume of Lowell’s verse appeared,

entitled “A Year’s Life.” This production was so different from that

referred to above that critics would have regarded it as emanating

from an entirely different mind had not the same name been attached to

both. It illustrated entirely different feelings, thoughts and habits,

evinced a complete change of heart and an entire revolution in his

mode of thinking. His observing and suggestive imagination had caught

the tone and spirit of the new and mystical philosophy, which his

first publication had ridiculed. Henceforth, he aimed to make Nature

the representative and minister of his feelings and desires. Lowell

was not alone, however, in showing how capricious a young author’s

character may be. A notable parallel is found in the great Englishman,

Carlyle whose “Life of Schiller” and his “Sator Resartus,” are

equally as unlike himself as were Lowell’s first two publications.

In 1844, came another volume of poems, manifesting a still further

mark of advancement. The longest in this collection――“The Legend of

Brittany”――is, in imagination and artistic finish, one of his best and

secured the first general consent for the author’s admission into the

company of men of genius.

During this same year (1844) Mr. Lowell married the poetess, Maria

White, an ardent Abolitionist, whose anti-slavery convictions

influenced his after career. Two of Mrs. Lowell’s poems, “The Alpine

Sheep” and the “Morning Glory” are especially popular. Lowell was

devotedly attached to his singularly beautiful and sympathetic poet

wife and made her the subject of some of his most exquisite verses.

They were both contributors to the “Liberty Bell” and “Anti-slavery

Standard,” thus enjoying companionship in their labors.

Illustration: HOME OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

In 1845, appeared Lowell’s “Conversation on Some Old Poets,”

consisting of a series of criticisms, and discussions which evince

a careful and delicate study. This was the beginning of the critical

work in which he afterward became so famous, that he was styled “The

First Critic of America.”

Lowell was also a humorist by nature. His irrepressible perception

of the comical and the funny find expression everywhere, both in his

poetry and prose. His “Fable for Critics” was a delight to those whom

he both satirized and criticised in a good-natured manner. Bryant, Poe,

Hawthorne and Whittier, each are made to pass in procession for their

share of criticism――which is as excellent as amusing――and Carlyle

and Emerson are contrasted admirably. This poem, however, is faulty

in execution and does not do its author justice. His masterpiece in

humor is the famous “Biglow Papers.” These have been issued in two

parts; the first being inspired by the Mexican War, and the latter

by the Civil War between the states. Hosea Biglow, the country Yankee

philosopher and supposed author of the papers, and the Rev. Homer

Wilber, his learned commentator and pastor of the first church at

Jaalem, reproduce the Yankee dialect, and portray the Yankee character

as faithfully as they are amusing and funny to the reader.

In 1853, Mrs. Lowell died, on the same night in which a daughter was

born to the poet Longfellow, who was a neighbor and a close friend to

Lowell. The coincident inspired Longfellow to write a beautiful poem,

“The Two Angels,” which he sent to Mr. Lowell with his expression of

sympathy:

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

The angel with the amaranthine wreath,

Pausing, descended, and with voice divine

Uttered a word that had a sound like death.

“Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,

A ♦shaddow on those features fair and thin,

And slowly, from that hushed and darkened room,

Two angels issued, where but one went in.

“Angels of life and death alike are His;

Without His leave, they pass no threshold o’er:

Who then would wish, or dare, believing this,

Against His messengers to shut the door?”

♦ spelling not corrected: artifact of poem

Quite in contrast with Lowell, the humorist, is Lowell, the serious

and dignified author. His patriotic poems display a courage and

manliness in adhering to the right and cover a wide range in history.

But it is in his descriptions of nature that his imagination manifests

its greatest range of subtilty and power. “The Vision of Sir Launfal”

is, perhaps, more remarkable for its descriptions of the months of

June and December than for the beautiful story it tells of the search

for the “Holy Grail” (the cup) which held the wine which Christ and

the Apostles drank at the last supper.

Lowell’s prose writings consist of his contributions to magazines,

which were afterwards gathered in book form, and his public addresses

and his political essays. He was naturally a poet, and his prose

writings were the outgrowth of his daily labors, rather than a work

of choice. As a professor of modern languages in Harvard College (in

which position he succeeded the poet Longfellow); as editor of the

“Atlantic Monthly,” on which duty he entered at the beginning of that

magazine, in 1857, his editorial work on the “North American Review”

from 1863 to 1872, together with his political ministry in Spain and

England, gave him, he says, “quite enough prosaic work to do.”

It was to magazines that he first contributed “Fireside Travels,”

“Among My Books,” and “My Study Window,” which have been since

published in book form. These publications cover a wide field of

literature and impress the reader with a spirit of inspiration and

enthusiasm. Lowell, like Emerson and Longfellow, was an optimist of

the most pronounced type. In none of his writing does he express a

syllable of discontent or despair. His “Pictures from Appledore” and

“Under the Willows” are not more sympathetic and spontaneous than his

faith in mankind, his healthful nature, and his rosy and joyful hope

of the future.

In 1877, Mr. Lowell was appointed minister to Spain by President Hayes,

and, in 1880, was transferred, in the same capacity to London. This

position he resigned in 1885 and returned to America to resume his

lectures in Harvard University. While in England, Mr. Lowell was

lionized as no other minister at that time had been and was in great

demand as a public lecturer and speaker. Oliver Wendell Holmes thus

writes of his popularity with the “British Cousins:”

By what enchantment, what alluring arts,

Our truthful James led captive British hearts,――

* * * * *

Like honest Yankees we can simply guess;

But that he did it, all must needs confess.

He delivered a memorial address at the unveiling of the bust of the

poet Coleridge in Westminster Abbey. On his return to America, this

oration was included with others in his volume entitled “Democracy and

Other Addresses.” (1887).

As a public man, a representative of the United States Government, in

foreign ports, he upheld the noblest ideals of the republic. He taught

the purest lessons of patriotism――ever preferring his country to his

party――and has criticised, with energy, and indignation, political

evils and selfishness in public service, regarding these as the most

dangerous elements threatening the dignity and honor of American

citizenship.

Among scholars, Lowell, next to Emerson, is regarded the profoundest

of American poets; and, as the public becomes more generally educated,

it is certain that he will grow in popular favor. To those who

understand and catch the spirit of the man, noticeable characteristics

of his writings are its richness and variety. He is at once, a

humorist, a philosopher, and a dialectic verse writer, an essayist, a

critic, and a masterful singer of songs of freedom as well as of the

most majestic memorial odes.

Unlike Longfellow and Holmes, Lowell never wrote a novel; but his

insight into character and ability to delineate it would have made

it entirely possible for him to assay, successfully, this branch of

literature. This power is seen especially in his “Biglow Papers” as

well as in other of his character sketches. The last of Lowell’s works

published was “Latest Literary Essays and Addresses,” issued in 1892,

after his death.

* * * * *

THE GOTHIC GENIUS.

FROM “THE CATHEDRAL.”

I SEEM to have heard it said by learned folk,

Who drench you with æsthetics till you feel

As if all beauty were a ghastly bore,

The faucet to let loose a wash of words,

That Gothic is not Grecian, therefore worse;

But, being convinced by much experiment

How little inventiveness there is in man,

Grave copier of copies, I give thanks

For a new relish, careless to inquire

My pleasure’s pedigree, if so it please――

Nobly I mean, nor renegade to art.

The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness,

Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained,

The one thing finished in this hasty world――

For ever finished, though the barbarous pit,

Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout

As if a miracle could be encored.

But ah! this other, this that never ends,

Still climbing, luring Fancy still to climb,

As full of morals half divined as life,

Graceful, grotesque, with ever-new surprise

Of hazardous caprices sure to please;

Heavy as nightmare, airy-light as fern,

Imagination’s very self in stone!

With one long sigh of infinite release

From pedantries past, present, or to come,

I looked, and owned myself a happy Goth.

Your blood is mine, ye architects of dream,

Builders of aspiration incomplete,

So more consummate, souls self-confident,

Who felt your own thought worthy of record

In monumental pomp! No Grecian drop

Rebukes these veins that leap with kindred thrill,

After long exile, to the mother tongue.

* * * * *

THE ROSE.

IN his tower sat the poet

Gazing on the roaring sea,

“Take this rose,” he sighed, “and throw it

Where there’s none that loveth me.

On the rock the billow bursteth,

And sinks back into the seas,

But in vain my spirit thirsteth

So to burst and be at ease.

Take, O sea! the tender blossom

That hath lain against my breast;

On thy black and angry bosom

It will find a surer rest,

Life is vain, and love is hollow,

Ugly death stands there behind,

Hate, and scorn, and hunger follow

Him that toileth for his kind.”

Forth into the night he hurled it,

And with bitter smile did mark

How the surly tempest whirled it

Swift into the hungry dark.

Foam and spray drive back to leeward,

And the gale, with dreary moan,

Drifts the helpless blossom seaward,

Through the breaking, all alone.

II.

Stands a maiden, on the morrow,

Musing by the wave-beat strand,

Half in hope, and half in sorrow

Tracing words upon the sand:

“Shall I ever then behold him

Who hath been my life so long,――

Ever to this sick heart fold him,――

Be the spirit of his song?

“Touch not, sea, the blessed letters

I have traced upon thy shore,

Spare his name whose spirit fetters

Mine with love forever more!”

Swells the tide and overflows it,

But with omen pure and meet,

Brings a little rose and throws it

Humbly at the maiden’s feet.

Full of bliss she takes the token,

And, upon her snowy breast,

Soothes the ruffled petals broken

With the ocean’s fierce unrest.

“Love is thine, O heart! and surely

Peace shall also be thine own,

For the heart that trusteth purely

Never long can pine alone.”

III.

In his tower sits the poet,

Blisses new, and strange to him

Fill his heart and overflow it

With a wonder sweet and dim.

Up the beach the ocean slideth

With a whisper of delight,

And the moon in silence glideth

Through the peaceful blue of night.

Rippling o’er the poet’s shoulder

Flows a maiden’s golden hair,

Maiden lips, with love grown bolder,

Kiss his moonlit forehead bare.

“Life is joy, and love is power,

Death all fetters doth unbind,

Strength and wisdom only flower

When we toil for all our kind.

Hope is truth, the future giveth

More than present takes away,

And the soul forever liveth

Nearer God from day to day.”

Not a word the maiden muttered,

Fullest hearts are slow to speak,

But a withered rose-leaf fluttered

Down upon the poet’s cheek.

* * * * *

THE HERITAGE.

THE rich man’s son inherits lands,

And piles of brick, and stone, and gold,

And he inherits soft white hands,

And tender flesh that fears the cold,

Nor dares to wear a garment old;

A heritage, it seems to me,

One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

The rich man’s son inherits cares;

The bank may break, the factory burn,

A breath may burst his bubble shares,

And soft, white hands could hardly earn

A living that would serve his turn;

A heritage, it seems to me,

One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

The rich man’s son inherits wants.

His stomach craves for dainty fare;

With sated heart he hears the pants

Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare,

And wearies in his easy chair;

A heritage, it seems to me,

One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man’s son inherit?

Stout muscles and a sinewy heart,

A hardy frame, a hardier spirit;

King of two hands, he does his part

In every useful toil and art;

A heritage, it seems to me,

A king might wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man’s son inherit?

Wishes o’erjoy’d with humble things,

A rank adjudged by toil-worn merit,

Content that from employment springs,

A heart that in his labor sings;

A heritage, it seems to me,

A king might wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man’s son inherit?

A patience learn’d of being poor,

Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it,

A fellow-feeling that is sure

To make the outcast bless his door;

A heritage, it seems to me,

A king might wish to hold in fee.

O rich man’s son! there is a toil,

That with all others level stands;

Large charity doth never soil,

But only whiten, soft, white hands,――

This is the best crop from thy lands;

A heritage, it seems to me,

Worth being rich to hold in fee.

O poor man’s son! scorn not thy state;

There is worse weariness than thine,

In merely being rich and great;

Toil only gives the soul to shine,

And makes rest fragrant and benign;

A heritage, it seems to me,

Worth being poor to hold in fee.

Both, heirs to some six feet of sod,

Are equal in the earth at last;

Both, children of the same dear God,

Prove title to your heirship vast

By record of a well-fill’d past;

A heritage, it seems to me,

Well worth a life to hold in fee.

* * * * *

ACT FOR TRUTH.

THE busy world shoves angrily aside

The man who stands with arms akimbo set,

Until occasion tells him what to do;

And he who waits to have his task mark’d out

Shall die and leave his errand unfulfill’d.

Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds;

Reason and Government, like two broad seas,

Yearn for each other with outstretched arms

Across this narrow isthmus of the throne,

And roll their white surf higher every day.

One age moves onward, and the next builds up

Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood

The rude log huts of those who tamed the wild,

Rearing from out the forests they had fell’d

The goodly framework of a fairer state;

The builder’s trowel and the settler’s axe

Are seldom wielded by the selfsame hand;

Ours is the harder task, yet not the less

Shall we receive the blessing for our toil

From the choice spirits of the after-time.

The field lies wide before us, where to reap

The easy harvest of a deathless name,

Though with no better sickles than our swords.

My soul is not a palace of the past,

Where outworn creeds, like Rome’s gray senate, quake,

Hearing afar the Vandal’s trumpet hoarse,

That shakes old systems with a thunder-fit.

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change;

Then let it come: I have no dread of what

Is call’d for by the instinct of mankind;

Nor think I that God’s world will fall apart

Because we tear a parchment more or less.

Truth is eternal, but her effluence,

With endless change, is fitted to the hour:

Her mirror is turn’d forward, to reflect

The promise of the future, not the past.

He who would win the name of truly great

Must understand his own age and the next,

And make the present ready to fulfil

Its prophecy, and with the future merge

Gently and peacefully, as wave with wave.

The future works out great men’s destinies;

The present is enough for common souls,

Who, never looking forward, are indeed

Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age

Are petrified forever: better those

Who lead the blind old giant by the hand

From out the pathless desert where he gropes,

And set him onward in his darksome way.

I do not fear to follow out the truth,

Albeit along the precipice’s edge.

Let us speak plain: there is more force in names

Than most men dream of; and a lie may keep

Its throne a whole age longer if it skulk

Behind the shield of some fair-seeming name.

Let us all call tyrants _tyrants_, and maintain

That only freedom comes by grace of God,

And all that comes not by His grace must fall;

For men in earnest have no time to waste

In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth.

* * * * *

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL.

THE snow had begun in the gloaming,

And busily all the night

Had been heaping field and highway

With a silence deep and white.

Library of the best American literature Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers · 第 3 / 16 章