Chapter V: The Songs of Seventy Years

J. G. W.

Master! let stronger lips than these
Turn melody to harmony,
Poet! mine tremble as they crave
A word alone with thee.

Thy songs melt on the vibrant air,
The wild birds know them, and the wind;
The common light hath claim on them,
The common heart and mind.

And air, and light, and wind, shall be
Thy fellow-singers, while they say
How seventy years of music stir
The common pulse to-day.

Hush, sweetest songs! Mine ears are deaf
To all of ye save only one.
Blind are the eyes that turn the leaf
Against the Autumn sun.

Oh, blinder once were fading eyes,
Close folded now from shine and rain,
And duller were the dying ears
That heard the chosen strain.

Stay, solemn chant! 'T is mine to sing
Your notes alone below the breath.
'T is mine to bless the poet who
Can bless the hour of death.

For once a spirit "sighed for home,"
A "longed-for light whereby to see,"
And "wearied," found the way to them,
O Christian seer, through thee!

Passed--with thy words on paling lips,
Passed--with thy courage to depart;
Passed--with thy trust within the soul,
Thy music in the heart.

Oh, calm above our restlessness,
And rich beyond our dreaming, yet
In heaven, I know, one owes to thee
A glad and grateful debt.

From it may learn some tenderer art,
May find and take some better way
Than all our tenderest and best,
To crown thy life to-day.

BIRTHDAY VERSES.

H. B. S.

Arise, and call her blessed,--seventy years!
Each one a tongue to speak for her, who needs
No poor device of ours to tell to-day
The story of her glory in our hearts.
Precede us all, ye quiet lips of love,
Ye honors high of home--nobilities
Of mother and of wife--the heraldry
Of happiness; dearer to her than were
The homage of the world. We yield unto
The royal claims of tenderness. Speak thou
Before all voices, ripened human life!

Arise, and call her blessed, dark-browed men!
She put the silver lyre aside for you.
She could not stroll across the idle strings
Of fancy, while you wept uncomforted,
But rang upon the fetters of a race
Enchained, the awful chord which pealed along,
And echoed in the cannon-shot that broke
The manacle, and bade the bound go free.
She brought a Nation on its knees for shame,
She brought a world into a black slave's heart.
Where are our lighter laurels? O my friends!
Brothers and sisters of the busy pen,
Five million freemen crown her birthday feast,
Before whose feet our little leaf we lay.

Arise and call her blessed, fainting souls!
For whom she sang the strains of holy hope.
Within the gentle twilight of her days,
Like angels, bid her own hymns visit her.
Her life no ivy-tangled door, but wide
And welcome to His solemn feet, who need
Not knock for entrance, nor one ever ask
"Who cometh there?" so still and sure the step,
So well we know God doth "abide in her."

Oh, wait to make her blessed, happy world!--
To which she looketh onward, ardently.
Lie in fair distance far, ye streets of gold,
Where up and down light-hearted spirits walk,
And wonder that they stayed so long away.
Be patient for her coming, for our sakes,
Who will love Heaven better, keeping her.
This only ask we:--When from prayer to praise
She moves, and when from peace to joy; be hers
To know she hath the life eternal, since
Her own heart's dearest wish did meet her there.

A TRIBUTE.

Blinded I groped--you gave me sight.
Perplexed I turned--you sent me light.
You speak unto a thousand ears:
I pay you tribute in hid tears.
I pay you homage in the hopes
That rise to scale life's scathed slopes.
I give you gratitude in this:
That, midway on the precipice
You never trod and never saw,
Where air you never drank, strikes raw
And wan upon the wasted breath,
And gulfs you never passed, gape death,
And crags you gained some sunlit way
Frown threatening over me to-day,--
That here with bruised hand I cling,
Because I heard you yonder sing
With those who conquer. If through joy,
Then deeper be our shame who toy
And loiter in the scourging rain,
And did not pass by strength of pain.
Laggard below, I reach to bless
You who are King of happiness;
You are the victor, you the brave,
Who could not stoop to be _her_ slave.
Downward to me, rebuking, fling
My privilege of suffering.
I take and listen. Teach me. See!
Nearer than you, I ought to be;
Nearer the height man never trod,
Nearer the veiled face of God.
I ought, and am not. Comrade! be
Unconscious captain unto me.
Unknowing, beckon and command:
I answer you with unseen hand.
You read in vain these lines between,
And smiling, wonder whom I mean.

TO O. W. H.

AUGUST 29, 1879.

I had no song so wise and sweet,
As birthday songs, dear friend, should be.
Silent, among a hundred guests,
I only prayed for thee.

Such wishes held the speaking lip,
Such mood of blessing took me, there,
That music, like a bird to heaven,
Flew, and was lost in prayer.

WHOSE SHALL THE WELCOME BE?

H. W. L.

The wave goes down, the wind goes down,
The gray tide glitters on the sea,
The moon seems praying in the sky.
Gates of the New Jerusalem
(A perfect pearl each gate of them)
Wide as all heaven swing on high;
Whose shall the welcome be?

The wave went down, the wind went down,
The tide of life turned out to sea;
Patience of pain and grace of deed,
The glories of the heart and brain,
Treasure that shall not come again;
The human singing that we need,
Set to a heavenly key.

The wave goes down, the wind goes down,
All tides at last turn to the sea.
We learn to take the thing we have.
Thou who hast taught us strength in grief,
As moon to shadow, high and chief,
Shine out, white soul, beyond the grave,
And light our loss of thee!

EXEAT.

To the hope that he has taught,
To the beauty he has wrought,
To the comfort he has been;
To the dream that poets tell,
To the land where Gabriel
Can not lose Evangeline;--
Hush! let him go.

GEORGE ELIOT.[1]

At evening once, the lowly men who loved
Our Master were found desolate, and grieved
For Him whose eyes had been the glory of
Their lives. He, silent, followed them, and joined
Himself unto their sorrow; with the voice
Of love that liveth past the end, and yearns
Like empty arms across the sepulchre,
Did comfort them. They heard, and knew Him not.

At eventide, O Lord, one trod for us
The solitary way of a great Soul;
Whereof the peril, pain, and debt, alone
He knows, who marked the road.
We watched, and held
Her in our arms of prayer. We wept, and said:
Our sister hath a heavy hurt. We bow,
And cry: The crown is buried with the Queen.

At twilight, as she, groping, sought for rest,
What solemn footfall echoed down the dark?
What tenderness that would not let her go?
And patience that Love only knoweth, paced
Silent, beside her, to the last, faint step?
What scarred Hand gently caught her as she sank?
Thou being with her, though she knew Thee not.

[1] The last book which she read was Thomas a Kempis's _Imitation of Christ_.

HER JURY.

A lily rooted in a sacred soil,
Arrayed with those who neither spin nor toil;
Dinah, the preacher, through the purple air,
Forever in her gentle evening prayer
Shall plead for Her--what ear too deaf to hear?--
"As if she spoke to some one very near."

And he of storied Florence, whose great heart
Broke for its human error; wrapped apart,
And scorching in the swift, prophetic flame
Of passion for late holiness; and shame
Than untried glory grander, gladder, higher--
Deathless, for Her, he "testifies by fire."

A statue fair and firm on shining feet,
Womanhood's woman, Dorothea, sweet
As strength, and strong as tenderness, to make
A "struggle with the dark" for white light's sake,
Immortal stands, unanswered speaks. Shall they,
Of Her great hand the moulded, breathing clay,
Her fit, select, and proud survivors be?
Possess the life eternal, and not _She_?