Chapter III: Part II: Retrospection

THE grandsire, in the chimney corner, takes
The almanac from its accustomed place,
And while the kettle swings upon the crane,
And firelight flickers on his wrinkled face,
Reviews the slow procession of the months;
And sees again upon the hills of green
The gypsy Springtime pitch her airy tent
Among the blossoms. Then the silver sheen
Of harvest moon shines down on rustling corn
Until the hazy air of Autumn thrills
With sound of woodman's ax and hunter's horn,
And darker shadows climb the russet hills.

But while he ponders on the open page,
The last sand in the hour-glass slips away.
The end seems near of his long pilgrimage,
And he would call the fleeting year to stay.
But passing on, she goes--a sweet-faced nun--
To take within the Convent of the Past
The veil of silence. Then the gates swing shut,
And Time, the grim old warden, bolts them fast.
No more can come again those halcyon days
The Year took with it to its dim-lit cell;
But often at the bars they stand and gaze,
When through the heart rings memory's matin-bell.

Echoes From Erin.

ACROSS old Purple Mountain I hear a bugle call,
And down the rocks, like water, the echoes leap and fall.
One note alone can startle the voices of the peaks,
And waken songs of Erin, whene'er the bugle speaks.
They call and call and call,
Until the voices all
Ring down the dusky hollows and in the distance fall.

Methinks, like Purple Mountain, the past will sometimes rise,
And memory's call awaken its echoing replies.
Within the tower of Shandon again the bells will sway,
And follow, with their ringing, the Lee upon its way,
And chime and chime and chime,
Where ivy tendrils climb,
Till bells and river mingle to sound the silvery rhyme.

Again the daisied grasses beside the castle walls
Will stir with softest sighing, to hear the wind's footfalls;
And through the moss-grown abbey, along Killarney's shore,
The melodies of Erin will echo evermore,
And roll and roll and roll,
Till spirit hands shall toll
The music of the uplands unto the listening soul.

_Killarney, Ireland._

An Alpine Valley.

OH, happy valley at the mountain's feet,
If half your happiness you could but know!
Though over you a shadow always falls,
And far above you rise those heights of snow,
So far, your yearning love you may not speak
With rosy flush like some high sister peak,
Yet you may clasp its feet in fond embrace,
And gaze up in its face.

And sometimes down its slopes a wind will come
And bring a sudden, noiseless sweep of snow,
Like a soft greeting from those summits sent
To comfort you below.

What more? Love may not ask too great a boon.
Enough to be so near, though cast so low.
Think that a sea had rolled between you twain
If careless fortune had decreed it so,
And you could only lie and look across
To distant cloudy heights and know your loss,
And see some favored valley, fair and sweet,
Heap flowers at its feet.

_Cham, Switzerland._

Through an Amber Pane.

BY some strange alchemy that turns to gold
The light that drops from gray and leaden skies,
Though heavy mists the outer world enfold,
'Tis always sunshine where Napoleon lies.
No more an exile by an alien sea,
Forgetful of the banishment and bane;
Now lies he there, in kingly dignity,
His tomb a Mecca shrine beside the Seine.
And there the pilgrim hears the story told,
How Paris placed above her hero, dead,
A window that should turn to yellow gold
The light that on his resting place is shed.
So on him falls, though summers wane,
The sunshine of that amber pane.

By some strange miracle, maybe divine,
The sunlight falls upon the buried past
And turns its water into sparkling wine,
And gilds the coin its coffers have amassed.
Could it have been those long-lost halcyon days
Trailed not a cloud across our April sky?
Faltered we not along those untried ways?
Grew we not weary as the days went by?
Ah, yes! But unreturning feet forget
Rough places trodden in the long ago,
Rememb'ring only paths with flowers beset,
While pressing onward, wearily and slow.
For Memory's windows but retain
The sunshine of an amber pane.

The little white, wind-blown anemone
By one round dewdrop may be fully filled,
And by some light-winged, passing honey-bee
Its cup of crystal water may be spilled.
So does the child heart hold its happiness:
A drop will fill it to its rosy rim.
It is not that these later days bring less,
That joy so rarely rises to the brim;
It is because the heart has deeper grown.
A fuller knowledge must its thirst assuage.
Perhaps we would not deem those pleasures flown
As bright as those which star the present age,
Had not upon them long years lain
The sunshine of an amber pane.

The dust of dim forgetfulness piles fast
Upon the chains that thralled us yesterday.
So will it be when this day, too, is past,
And in its arms we've seen it bear away
The cares that brooded in the tired brain;
The work that weighted down the weary hand;
The high hopes that we struggled to attain;
The problems that we could not understand.
Washed of its stain, bereft of any sting,
Seen through the window of the Memory,
Perchance, a gentler grace to it may cling
Than we may now think possible to see.
For skies will gleam, though gray with rain,
Like sunshine through that amber pane.

We may not stand on Patmos, and look through
The star-hinged portals where the great pearls gleam.
No brush that unveiled beauty ever drew,
Save one, that caught its shadow in a dream.
So lest we falter, faithless and afraid,
The Merciful, remembering we are dust,
Reveals not heaven for which our hearts have prayed,
But by a token teaches us to trust;
And day by day allows us to look through
The window of the Memory, broad and vast,
(Till jasper minarets rise into view)
Upon the happy heaven of the past;
And gives, till purer light we gain,
The sunshine of that amber pane.

At a Tenement Window.

SOMETIMES my needle stops with half-drawn thread
(Not often though, each moment's waste means bread,
And missing stitches leave the little mouths unfed).
I look down on the dingy court below:
A tuft of grass is all it has to show,--
A broken pump, where thirsty children go.
Above, there shines a bit of sky, so small
That it might be a passing blue-bird's wing.
One tree leans up against the high brick wall,
And there the sparrows twitter of the spring,
Until they waken in my heart a cry
Of hunger, that no bread can satisfy.

Always before, when Maytime took her way
Across the fields, I followed close. To-day
I can but dream of all her bright array.
My work drops down. Across the sill I lean,
And long with bitter longing, for unseen
Rain-freshened paths, where budding woods grow green.
The water trickles from the pump below
Upon the stones. With eyes half shut, I hear
It falling in a pool where rushes grow,
And feel a cooling presence drawing near.
And now the sparrows chirp again. No, hark!--
A singing as of some far meadow lark.

It is the same old miracle applied
Unto myself, that on the mountain-side
The few small loaves and fishes multiplied.
Behold, how strange and sweet the mystery!
The birds, the broken pump, the gnarled tree,
Have brought the fullness of the spring to me.
For in the leaves that rustle by the wall
All forests find a tongue. And so that grass
Can, with its struggling tuft of green, recall
Wide, bloom-filled meadows where the cattle pass.
How it can be, but dimly I divine.
These crumbs, God given, make the whole loaf mine.

A Song.

"Home-keeping hearts are happiest."--LONGFELLOW.

THERE will be distant journeyings enough
To reach that Land beyond the ether's sea,
To satisfy the veriest roaming heart,--
Let me stay home with thee!

There will be new companionships enough
In that bright spirit-life. Why should we flee
So soon to alien hearts and stranger scenes?
I would stay home with thee.

The heart grows homesick, thinking of the change
When these familiar things no more shall be;
When e'en the thought of them, perchance, shall fade,--
Let me stay home with thee.

I would imprint upon my mind each scene,
Each meadow path, and stream, and orchard-tree,
Beloved since childhood, holy with our hopes,
Sweet with the thoughts of thee.

And each dear household place, let me learn all
By heart, where I am wont thy form to see.
Who knows what things shall pass? If I may share
A hearth in heaven with thee?

Eclipse.

GOD keep us from the sordid mood
That shrinks to self-infinitude,
That sees no thing as good or grand,
That answers not the hour's demand,
And throws o'er Heaven's splendors furled
The shadow of our little world.

In the Dark.

HERE in the dark I lie, and watch the stars
That through the soft gloom shine like tear-bright eyes
Behind a mourner's veil. The darkness seems
Almost a vapor, palpable and dense,
In which my room's familiar outlines melt,
And all seems one black pall that folds me round.
Only a mirror glimmers through the dusk,
And on the wall a dim, uncertain square
Shows where a portrait hangs. Ah, even so
Beloved faces fade into the past
And naught remains except a space of light
To show us where they were.
How still it seems!
The busy clock, whose tell-tale talk was drowned
By Day's uproarious voices, calls aloud,
Undaunted by the dark, the flight of time,
And through the halls its tones ring drearily.
The breeze on tiptoe seems to tread, as though
It were afraid to rouse the drowsy leaves.
The long, dim street is quiet. Nothing breaks
The dream of Night, asleep on Nature's breast.
Hark! Some one passes. On the pavement stones
Each stealthy step gives back a muffled sound,
Till the last foot-fall seems in distance drowned.
So Death might pass, bent on his mission dread,
Adown the silent street, and none might know
What hour he passed or what he bore away.
Ah, sadder thought! So Life goes, unawares,
Noiseless and swift and resolutely on,
While the dumb world lies folded in the gloom,
Unconscious and uncaring in its sleep.
And towards the west, the stars, all silently
Like golden sands in God's great hour-glass, glide
And fall into the nether crystal globe.

Felipa, Wife of Columbus.

MORE than the compass to the mariner,
Wast thou, Felipa, to his dauntless soul.
Through adverse winds that threatened wreck, and nights
Of rayless gloom, thou pointed ever to
The North Star of his great ambition. He
Who once has lost an Eden, or has gained
A paradise by Eve's sweet influence,
Alone can know how strong a spell lies in
The witchery of a woman's beckoning hand.
And thou didst draw him, tide-like, higher still,
Felipa, whispering the lessons learned
From thy courageous father, till the flood
Of his ambition burst all barriers
And swept him onward to his longed-for goal.

Before the jewels of a Spanish queen
Built fleets to waft him on his untried way,
Thou gavest thy wealth of wifely sympathy
To build the lofty purpose of his soul.
And now the centuries have cycled by,
Till thou art all-forgotten by the throng
That lauds the great Pathfinder of the deep.
It matters not in that infinitude
Of space, where thou dost guide thy spirit-bark
To undiscovered lands, supremely fair.
If to this little planet thou couldst turn
And voyage, wraithlike, to its cloud-hung rim,
Thou wouldst not care for praise. And if, perchance,
Some hand held out to thee a laurel bough,
Thou wouldst not claim one leaf, but fondly turn
To lay thy tribute, also, at his feet.

'Twixt Creek and Bay.

'TWIXT creek and bay
We whisper to our white sails "stay!
Oh, Life, a little while delay!
'Twixt creek and bay."

So loath to go
From these calm shallows that we know,
We fain would stay the year's swift flow,
Nor onward go

To banks more wide,
Where seaward drawings of the tide
Impel to deeper depths untried,
Where Life grows wide.

'Twixt creek and bay--
The morning deepens into day,
And richer freight we bear, alway,
When in the bay.

When Youth is Gone.

HOW can we know when youth is gone,--
When age has surely come at last?
There is no marked meridian
Through which we sail, and feel when past.

A keener air our faces strike,
A chiller current swifter run;
They meet and glide like tide with tide,
Our youth and age, when youth is done.

The Fickle Heart.

CANST tell me, thou inconstant heart,
What like unto thou art?
A gypsy wandering up and down
Through April's green and Autumn's brown,
Until the year is spent;
And then, when hills are white with snow,
And brooks, ice-bound, have ceased to flow,
No place to pitch his tent.

Banditti.

UPON Life's lonely highway, robber bands
Of grim-faced years seize with relentless hands
Each traveler, and wrest from out his grasp
The treasures that he fain would closer clasp.
None can escape. Each year demands its toll,
Till robbed of youth, we grope toward the goal,
Halting and blind, of all but life bereft,
And death claims that--the only boon that's left.

The Silent Brotherhood.

ON through the cloisters of eternity
The years, like monks, in slow procession pass,
Telling their rosary beads, the golden days,
With penance prayers of dark and dismal nights.
Hooded and cowled, with silence on they pass,
Nor will they pause until their vesper rings
A solemn curfew at the sunset hour,
When all the fires of life are buried low,
And all the worlds drop down upon their knees,
To say a last mass ere the death of Time.

Spendthrift.

HE was a king one time,
And they wrapped the ermine around him,
And the bells rang out when they crowned him,
Rang with a joyful chime.

And he sat on a throne!
The wealth that a world could offer
Was heaped in the New Year's coffer,
For the world was his own.

He was a spendthrift though,
And the coins of his lavish giving
Were the golden moments of living,--
Coins that he squandered so.

He is a beggar now.
In the night and the storm he lingers,
No gold in his prodigal fingers,--
King with the uncrowned brow.

Nothing to call his own!
His fortune scattered behind him;
Death empty-handed shall find him,--
A New Year takes his throne.

Lost.

CHILDHOOD flits by with flowers in both its hands,--
We know not why it leaves, nor when it goes;
But suddenly we miss some subtle grace,
As perfume passes from a fading rose;
We scarce divine, yet somehow faintly feel
In the soft air a far-blown breath of snows.

Straying afar, unheeded and alone
Upon life's highway 'mid the busy throng,
Swept in its eager, restless race along
To the great future, unexplored, unknown,
The little child is lost. And when with haste
The wanderer's footsteps through the streets are traced,
They find a man with features pale and stern,
But the lost child will nevermore return.

The Robber.

DO you know why Time flies by so slow
When we are sad and old?
Why he turns and waits as if loath to go
On his journey cold?
Because from our coffers of hope and youth,
Where we kept life's gold,
He has stolen our treasures all, in sooth,
From their sacred hold.
He who came with a gift in hand
Was a robber bold.
He whose greeting was smooth and bland
Was a wolf in the fold.
And this is the reason that he goes by,
When we're worn and old,
So slowly, because he can scarcely fly
With his weight of gold.

My Carol.

'TIS the time when holly berries
Grow red as the Yule-log's glow,
And hearth and hall are decked by all
With the green of the mistletoe.
Time when the joy of giving
Is felt at each fireside,
And wings seek rest in the old home nest,
For the time is Christmas-tide.

Though only a carol singer
With nothing of gold in store,
And little to bring as an offering,
I stand outside your door.
Open! This blessed morning
Peace be to thee and thine!
Here to you all I gaily call
A greeting from me and mine.

Haply it may awaken
Some joy that so long ago,
On the frosty dawn of a Christmas gone,
You found in your stocking toe.
Though but an old, old carol,
It bears love's myrrh and gold,
And the frankincense of a joy intense
That the angel hosts foretold.

Carol.

_Listen! The heralds proclaim Him!
Follow! A star leads the way!
Oh, joy, in the City of David
The Christ-child reigns to-day!_

I greet you this blessed morning.
Peace be to thee and thine!
To the dear ones here be Christmas cheer,
And the love of me and mine.

"In This Cradle Life of Ours."

THE world swings slowly back and forth,
From dawn to dusk, from dusk to dawn,
And we forget the hand that rocks,
But, cradle-like, the world swings on.

A little while to stir and fret,
Or sob with trembling lip
Because the sunbeams we would grasp
Through helpless fingers slip.

A little while to moan, and start
From fevered dreams, and weep,
For still the cradle sways and swings
Until we fall asleep.

The broad earth's pillow is so soft
To weary heads, and who can tell
But through that sleep sound lullabies
Of the white angel, Israfel?

Here and There.

HOW must they sing, those angel choirs,
Who breathe Heaven's pure, sweet air!
They need but waft it from their lips
To make it music rare.

Here on these chill, damp plains below,
Where stifling vapors rise,
We draw the heavy air of earth,
And breathe it out in sighs.

The Milky Way.

UP the steep heights whereon God's citadel
Is set, the prayers of mortals to that bourne,
For ages toiling, in the adamant,
Across the sky a glittering path have worn.

INTERLUDE.

Interlude.

WITHIN the pauses of the anthem falls a hush,
And the deep organ's solemn voice goes on alone
In a low undertone,
As rain comes sometimes with a sudden sweeping rush,
And then is still, save that it slowly drips and falls
From leaves at intervals.
So memory sings alone
Between the busy hours when comes a lull,
And naught is audible
But its low undertone.
So darkness drops between the days, an interlude
When night's low sighing stirs the sleepy solitude.
So, when the little cycle of this life is rounded,
Before the spirit enters into life unbounded,
It waits to hear, with bated breath,
The solemn interlude of death.