Chapter I: Wonder (1)

I wonder sometimes if ever
The music God has sent
Will get into my heart and stay there
As I think he surely meant.

Can the voice of Laughter enter
The form where Death has been?--
Whence the spirit of Love has departed,
Can Music’s charms come in?

There’s an ache in my heart that daily
Goes out in earnest quest
Of the spirit of Love that has left me
In the sadness of unrest.

Oh, I wonder sometimes if ever
That spirit of Love will return,
And rekindle my heart’s dead ashes,--
Inspirit the dust of the urn.

I fear that the spirit would enter
The ashes in ghostly quest,
And set but the bones into motion,
The ghost of Love at the best.

Are the rivers, I wonder, ever
Brought back by the clouds from the sea
To flow in the same old channels
Over the dregs and debris?

The love of my heart has departed--
The river has run to the sea;--
And I wonder sometimes if its waters
Will ever come back to me.

Lo, there in my heart’s dead channels
Lie the stagnant pools of Time;
And I see the debris at the bottom,
The dregs and the rotting slime.

I wonder if ever the rivers,
The rivers that run to the sea,
Flow just as sweet on returning
Over the dregs and debris?

Somehow, a thought in my spirit
Comes up from the stagnant fen
That the music of Heaven shall never
Be heard in its waters again!

Yet I wonder each day as I wander
Along where the stream used to be
If the waters won’t sometime come back there
And dredge out the dregs and debris.

It may be! ’Tis a long time coming,--
Too long, I fear,--too long!--
For Love’s River must sing its music
In hearts that have never gone wrong.

Oh, will the Waters returning,
Borne by the Clouds from the Sea,
Run just as sweetly as ever
Over the Dregs and Debris?

IF SO, PEACE TILL NEXT NEW-YEAR.

(A DIRGE.)

The New Year!--hark! the bell!--oh it
Is at last here!
A solemn hush! The world sits still
With breath abated as the poet
Of the New Year
Takes an anti-bilious pill!

MY DEFEAT.

_Sweeter than any sung
My songs that found no tongue._
WHITTIER: _My Triumph_.

In the universe swept by the eyes of my soul,
Swim a myriad luminous stars and suns;
And swift through my brains burning æther they roll
Like the infinite trains of the heavenly ones.

In my dreams I outstretch my vain arms with delight
For the forms of the angels that sing round my bed;
But alas! for the chorus of seraphs take flight
And beckon me whither but angels may tread.

And I muse with my heart when my mind sits a-dream
While vibrations of light from the heavenly cars
Fleet swift thro’ the arms of my soul in bright gleam,
And leave me upreaching for aye tow’rd the stars.

THERE’S A LAUGH.

There’s the laugh of the fiend that shrivels the heart,
That burns out the eyes from their sockets of fire,
That crackles the skin and parches the breath
And bellows and shrieks with demoniac ire.

There’s the laugh of the hobgoblin, demon of night,
That frightens the children to silence their sobs,
That rings in their ears to the end of life,
And at night in their hearts like the death-watch throbs.

There’s the wild, screeching laugh from the madman’s lips
When his eyes wildly start from his reechy brain,
That haunts us, tho’ try to forget as we will,
And pierces the heart with a dagger of pain.

There’s the unearthly laugh and the sickening leer
Of the idiot--wretched Unfortunate! dead
Before born, the live sepulchre of unknown crimes,
The tomb of the lives generations have led!

There’s the blasting, blistering, withering laugh
That blights e’en the heart wherein it is born,
That bubbles and sputters and hisses and spits
As it falls from the scorching lips of scorn.

There’s a strange, weird laugh, even tho’ from a child,
That gurgles and sticks in the sleeper’s thick breath,
That startles the shivering silence with awe
And dies in the throat like the rattle of death.

There’s a laugh, like the wind’s cracked whistle, that creaks
And squeaks on the worn-out pipes of old age;
And a sigh heaves up from the heart full sad,
For we know what the ominous sounds presage.

There’s the free, wild laugh that bounds as the deer--
As free as the leap of the hart and as wild--
’Tis the laugh that I love with my heart and my soul,
The sweet, wild laugh of an innocent child.

There’s the laugh that I love, the balm of tired hearts,
That quiets the fluttering temples of care;
’Tis the soft, soothing laugh from the sweet lips of Love,
And it falls like a blessing that answers prayer.

There’s the sweetest of laughs full of music divine
That gladdens the heart and the throbbing brain;
I would give--oh what would I not, were it mine,
But to hear the sweet laugh of my mother again.

TO SLEEP.

Soft on thy breast
Where the soul in oblivious quiet may dream
While it sweeps up to heaven on a star-born beam,
There would I rest,
So peacefully rest,
Oh rest,
Rest!--
Asleep on thy breast,
Asweep to the blest
In a dream
On the gleam
Of a star
In the cradle-rocked billows of azure afar.

WHEEL AND SHUTTLE.

_Spin: God will send thee flax._--PROVERB.

[Although differing slightly from his literal experience,
nevertheless to the boy, long ago grown to manhood, who used
to cling to his mother’s dress, and fretfully toddle back and
forth as she patiently sent the big wheel whirring and then
ran backwards with her lengthening thread, then forwards, and
so on, hour after hour, spinning threads for the home-loom,
this poem, with its application to life, has in it the
pleasing scent of the roses of recollection, intoxicating even
to sadness.]

“Spin, spin!”
The warp is in
And the shuttle never slacks:
Let thy fingers never rest,
Heed the weaver’s stern behest,
“Spin, spin!”
While the woof is weaving in,
God will send thee flax.

“Spin, spin!”
The wheels begin,
And the distaff never lacks:
Let thy spindle’s endless thrum
Fill the shuttles as they hum
“Spin, spin!”
While the woof is weaving in,
God will send thee flax.

“Spin, spin!”--
Thy fingers thin
Let the carded threads relax!
Lo! the wheel is standing dumb,
For the loom has ceased its grum
“Spin, spin!”--
Aye, the woof is woven in,
God has sent thee flax!

THE PRESS OF PENURY.

Out of the Press of Penury
The choicest wines have flowed
To rouse a nation’s blood
To statesmanship or poesy.

(Nor less to hearts the poet’s cause
Than statesman’s counseling:--
If but a people sing,
I care not who shall make the laws.)

With every cycling sun that slips
Through all its winding turns,
Some Lincoln or some Burns
Still lifts his spirit to our lips.

HALLOWEEN.

AN INVITATION SENT TO A LADY, OCT. 31.

I wad na gang alane to-night
An’ leave alane a lassie
Where pixies, elves, an’ goblins fight
An’ drink their bogie tassie.

Sae come wi’ me an’ gang awa’
Where oufe nor spook nor bogle
Hae ought o’ ill or guid to do
But flichter, blink, an’ ogle.

Oh we’ll be merry like the lave
Tho’ Halloween be eerie,
An’ crack an’ jauk an’ giddy ’have
Wi’ Mrs. C---- till weary.

LIFE.

_What is life?--’Tis a delicate shell
Thrown up by Eternity’s flow
On Time’s bank of quicksand to dwel.
And a moment its loveliness show.
Gone back to the elements grand
Is the billow that cast it ashore:
See! another is washing the strand,
And the beautiful shell is no more!_
--_D. A._

What is life?--’Tis the billow of bells
That the sea of eternity bears;
And in rapturous music it swells
As it kisses the sands of the years.
But the ripples are breaking in foam,--
And the billow has ceased to be!
List! the billow, gone back to its home,
Is tolling down deep in the sea!

BORROWING BRAINS.

“Lend me your brains, lend me your brains,”
Screeched a highwayman goblin ’way down in his throat
As deep as he ever could dig up a note.
And his whole gang creaked and hoarsely screaked
Like a hinge that was rusty, and constantly shrieked
“Lend us your brains, lend us your brains,”
As they seized my mare’s head at the bit by the reins

And a long-haired loon with a razory spoon
Clipped open my scalp just over my crown,
And the skull the same place, running crosswise and down;
And they hinged the two pieces with screechy brass bands
Where they singed off my hair by the touch of their hands:
And oh the pains, the pains, the pains,
When they flapped down the cover just back o’ my brains.

My mother came by with a heart-rending cry,
And a wretch popped his eyes from the crown of his hat
As he squealed, “You’ll never again do that!”
And he sharpened his spoon on the sole of his shoon,
Did the long-beard lout by the liquidy moon;
And he severed her brain and her heart in twain
While the rest held me there in my helpless pain.

And the long-beard loons with their long-eared spoons
Stood up on the top of my topless crown
And then leaped to the depths of the hollow turned down.
Oh they teetered and twinged on the part that was hinged,
And they shrieked with delight till the very air cringed
As they sang in their glee how smart they would be
When they got all my brains in their noddles, you see.

And they reached their long spoons, the reechy old loons,
’Way into the cavity made in my head,
And scraped, and scraped till they thought I was dead.
Oh the pains, the pains, the terrible pains
When they spooned from my skull every speck of my brains,
Then with spoons for their pries dragged both of my eyes
Through that hole in my head of such terrible size.

Oh they thought they would be such poets, you see,
And such wonderful, marvelous scholars, you know,
When they planted my brains in their noddles to grow!
But my--oh--oh! what fools they were though!
For poets, you know, are like underdone dough--
And oh--my--oh! what fools they were though
When they planted my brains in their noddles to grow!

But they crammed every grain, their ill-gotten gain,
Clear down in the pokes of their pocket-like ears,
And turned over my eyes to their sages and seers.
But they soon rued they had the brains I had had
For they drove every one of them stark staring mad;
For the goblins, you see, went crazy, like me,
As mad as a March hare ever could be.

To my greatest surprise they brought back my eyes
And put them both back as they always had been.
Since _Thought_ made them crazy, as each one had seen,
They restored me my brains with the greatest of _pains_,
And handed me back my mare’s bridle-reins;
Then away and up through the atmosphere flew
And left me as sound and as solid as new!

And there _was_ no loon with a goblin spoon,
And there never has been and never will be.
Whether or not this happened to me,
It needn’t at all happen this way to all:
But whatever you do, or whatever befall,
_Un-less the gob-lins get your night-mare’s reins,
Don’t ev-er nor ev-er go lend-ing your brains!_

SLEEP.

Dear Nurse that foldeth weary Nature to
Thy heart, and from tired eyes shutteth out the light,
E’en as a mother at the fall of night
Doth take her child upon her lap to undo
The snarls and tangles of the day, and woo
Away the sun-bred ills, and balm the sight
With visions of another world all bright,
Dear soothing healing Sleep! ’tis thee I sue.
Come, fold your arms about my Sweetheart-Wife;
Balm up her eyes that stare at staring Night;
Seal down her lids with sweet, refreshing gleams,
Or visions, rather, of the happy life
We’ve planned together; and leave her not till the light
Of morn, with me, shall kiss her from her dreams.

TO A WILD-ROSE BOUQUET.

Wild roses down the lane
Sweet Laeda gave in June,
To glad me
And to sad me,
Like shine and mingled rain
Atween the clouds aboon.

SONG ON THE SEA.

Merrily, merrily over the wave
We’ll laugh and we’ll sing as we’re bounding along,
Merrily, merrily, joyous and brave
We’ll echo the music of waves in our song:--
Roll, roll, break, break,
Over the merrily musical waves,
Roll, roll, wake, wake
All the glad echoes that hide in their caves.

Rocking and rolling the sea is our home
And joyous we shout from our billow-rocked boat;
Cleaving the breakers white-feathered with foam
We’ll set the sweet echoes of ocean afloat:--
Roll, roll, break, break,
Over the merrily musical waves,
Roll, roll, wake,
All the glad echoes that hide in their caves.

Merrily, merrily out of their caves
We’ll call the glad echoes sweet laughing along;
Merrily, merrily out on the waves
We’ll mingle the musical sea with our song:--
Roll, roll, break, break,
Over the merrily musical waves,
Roll, roll, wake, wake
All the glad echoes that hide in their caves.

WOODLAND LAY.

Oh come to the woodland where joys reign supreme,
Where the zephyr’s soft kiss lightly touches the brow,
And the sun gently drops thro’ the leaves in a dream
And sleeps in the shade of the wide-spreading bough.

Let the world plod along with its stern, solemn face,
With its brow deeply wrinkled with thought and with care;
Let the pleasures of life to-day’s business replace
While we list to the charm of its wild, joyous air.

The murm’ring of brooks, the singing of birds,
The whisper of winds and the leaves soft reply,
The bleating of flocks and the lowing of herds,
The breathing of nature from earth to the sky--

All combine to make music with cadence as sweet
To the ear of the mortal, as the music of spheres,
Gentle wooed from the harp at Infinity’s feet
And as softly let fall on angelical ears.

Like the soft flakes of snow as they fall on the deep,
The rhythmical notes adown tremblingly go
On the listening air, and as silently sleep
In the ocean of joys, where they melt as the snow.

IN THE ANGELS’ KEEP.

Let me not look on the dear, dead face,
I would not remember her so;
For her eyes are closed, and her hands are still,
And her lips can’t speak, you know!

Let me remember her just as she lived,
And just as I’ll meet her above--
With eyes that could talk and a touch that could soothe,
And a heart that was full of love.

Let me remember her not as one dead,
But as one that has fallen asleep;
She will wake in the morning, I know, at my call,
Awake in the angels’ keep!

THOUGHT.

_Thought alone is eternal._--YOUNG.

’Tis the whisp’ring of angels, the brush of their wings;
’Tis the flight of a soul from its fetters of clay
To the lighthouse of gold where the seraph Hope sings
And flings out its notes on life’s billowed bay.

’Tis the touch of Christ’s hand that upraiseth the dead;
’Tis the breath breathed of God in the nostrils of man;--
The stream that shall rise from its mould-made bed
And join with the clouds whence in rain-drops it ran.

Tinged with sadness of mortals, it smells of the grave;
But the Childhood of Faith and the Mother of Hope,
It beckons to fields where the palm-groves wave
And the joy-studded gates of Jerusalem ope.

WHITE-ENTHRONED ABOVE ME.

(ON A SMALL WHITE-ROSE BOUQUET PRESENTED BY A LADY AND PLACED
IN PALGRAVE’S “GOLDEN TREASURY,” OPPOSITE “THE SLEEPING
BEAUTY.”)

White roses, sweet white roses
Fair Leda smiles atween,
No soul your lily-light encloses
So pure as hers, I ween.

Here lie and dream, sweet, pure white roses
That blessed the heart of June,
And ope the budding love that closes
Around her soul aboon.

THE LONE WAYSIDE WILD ROSE.

I passed along a wilding lane
Where weeds and straying flowers grew,
Where clover-blooming meadows threw
Sweet love upon the winds in vain.

Lonely by the wayside wild
Where the earth all trodden lay,
There peeped a wild rose, one bright day,
And stretched its palms like a pleading child.

Day after day, day after day
It drank of love from heaven and earth
And lifted itself from a timid birth
To a beautiful soul in sweet array.

It breathed from out of its opening soul
The breath that heaven has given the rose,
The sweetest by far that mortal knows,
And drank sweet love from the night’s dew-bowl.

The tint of the fleecy clouds of morn
Came out of the flushing tide of its heart,
And lay on its cheek with artless art--
The fairest blush that ever was born.

’Twas when the rose was full in bloom
I passed along that wilding lane
When love upon the winds was vain,
The desert air its deathless tomb.

I loved the flower and said, “Alas!
’Tis sad to know such love must die,
Such sweetness with the mould must lie,
Such beauty into death must pass!”

I plucked the flower from off its stem
And said, “Sweet Flower! Life were Death
Without thy beauty and thy breath--
The heart must wither else for them.”

I plucked the flower--blest wild rose!--
I set it blooming in my heart,
And said, “Should my sweet rose depart
To-day--the night its dear life close,

“The love it leaves shall ever live,
Shall ever grow, and bloom and bloom,
Shall go with me thro’ Death’s dark gloom,
And hope of glad reunion give.”

The flower, blooming, lived and grew;--
That sweet wild rose is blooming still;
Its beauties every corner fill
That life and love and heart e’er knew.

And should my fond heart ever break,
That sweet wild rose would never die;--
’Twould spring from the mould where it might lie
And the fairest bloom immortal take!

TWENTY.

May the twenties yet triple,
And then add their half,
Still preserving the ripple
And ring of your laugh.

And may every bright twinkle
That falls from your eye
Serve to smooth out each wrinkle,
The track of a sigh.

When the twenties shall twinkle
And ten more shall run,
I hope every cute wink’ll
Still shine out with fun.

Oh the triple of twenty
Plus none less than ten!
May you be the same dainty
Sweet girly-girl then!

BEAUTIFUL MAY.

Oh ’tis May,
Beautiful May,
Month of beautiful May,
Beautiful month of May.

Wild flowers blooming,
Grasses growing,
Wild brooks flowing,
Pheasants booming--
Oh ’tis May,
Beautiful May
Lovelier far than month of June,
Beautiful May!
And every day
Is putting the strings of life in tune.

May-buds peep
At robins chattering
To their mates
And those asleep,
Always flattering
With nodding pates
And promises free
The farmer asnooze
That they will keep
From others the news
That cherries are in the tree.

The playful dawn
Is after the moon,
And the moon is running away.
Oh the stars like sheep are all running away
After the moon,
Away from the dawn,
Away from the dawn of the month of May,
Away, away, away.

With skip and play
They dance away
After the dizzy moon
That pales with the pallor of fright so soon
At the brightening sight,
Affright of the light
Of the morn of a lovelier month than June,
So soon, soon, soon.

Oh sweet May,
Beautiful May
Thus brightens her face each day,
And lets the light of her tresses stray
Into each part
Of the earth’s dark heart
Where flashes like lashes from diamonds play
--Astray each day at play.

The light from her eyes
In the spring’s emprise
Sinks deep in the soul of the sands;
And with glittering, flying hands
Every one
Of the sands doth run
And lift into life the clod from its bonds
That climbs to a soul like man’s.

She breathes on the air,
And the sweet winds wear
Her blooms in their billowy hair,
And pour out their perfumes and nectars rare
Distilled in the cup
That the goddesses sup
For the beautiful dutiful May so fair,
So rare and fairy fair.

She drinks of the stream,
And the glad waters gleam
With delight as they leap to her lips.
She creeps up the mountains and merrily sips
Of the fountains that spring
From the snows as they string
Up their bows for a shot at the lower rock-crypts
Where the sun like the dew-drop drips.

She skims to the plain
And frightens the train
That the winter has left on guard.
She whistles her bird-notes soft and hard
And calls from retreat
The bickering feet
Of the green that the winter in prison has barred,
--Sweet, te-weet, wheat.

DEEP UNTO DEEP.

A DOUBLE THRENODY.

Oh the bounding of the billows of the sea
Rolls the rhythm of their music unto me;
And a footstep that has fallen on the lea
Seems to echo from the boundless, soundless deep.
But the breaking of the billows--the billows as they leap,
Makes the silence of my sorrow with them weep;
While the echoes of the grottoes--the grottoes wildly start,
Ever throbbing to the music of my heart;--
Throbbing to the threnode,
Rocking to the rhythm,
Moaning to the music of my heart,--
Threnode throbbing ever,
Rhythm rocking ever,
Music moaning ever in my heart.

Oh my Love is on the billows of the sea,
Sending messages along the waves to me;
And the ever-singing shells along the lea
With my longing heart a constant chorus keep.
But the breaking of the message--the message from the deep,
Makes the silence of my sorrow inly weep;
While the moaning shells intoning, intoning griefs impart
Ever sobbing to the silence of my heart;--
Sobbing to the silence,
Intoning to the moaning,
Breaking to the breaking of my heart,--
Silent sobbing ever,
Grief intoning ever,
Breaking, breaking ever in my heart.

A HUMPTY-DUMPTY IDIOTIC CHAP.

There was once a little humpty-dumpty idiotic chap,
Who had both a mug an’ muzzle most remarkable to see.
An’ he couldn’t do a solitary thing but grin an’ gap,
But he done that simply awful an’ he done it constantly.
His tater head was sorto’ meller like a punkin over-ripe
An’ his yaller face was puckered like a lemon with the gripe;
An’ his front teeth like stalites--or what you call ’em--always gave
To the cavity behind them the appearance of a cave,--
Jist forever an’ forever from life’s earliest beginnin’
Simply nachelly a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin an’ a-grinnin’.

Well, you see, _he_ couldn’t help it, couldn’t help it not a bit,
’Cause for some peculiar reason he was born jist that-a-way.
An’ if Nater marks a feller he had better jist submit,
’Cause she wants that mark for somepm, an’ she’s goin to have it
stay.
Caint no doctor make a rose-bud of a busted-thistle mouth,
Nor he caint turn north a foot that’s got to growin’ sorto’ south.
Spect this chap inside him knowed it wa’n’t no earthly kind o’ use
To be squeezin’ on a lemon that didn’t have a bit o’ juice;
--Maybe ’lowed his ugly mug ’ould be a doin’ less of sinnin’
If he’d leave it jist a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.

’Course he didn’t reason on it, cause he didn’t have no sense;
But I kindo’ sorto’ reckon that he done like others do--
Jist set down up where he’d clum on top o’ Nater’s ol worm-fence
An’ let the sun bile down onto him an’ soak him clean plum thro’
an’ thro’
While with busy boom an’ buzz the plunder’n’ bug an’ bumble-bee
Went a-nosin’ thro’ the clover where the rosy-posies be.
An’ with one eye squinted up an’ t’other squinted down plum shet,
Up on top the fence, I spect, twixt brute an’ human there he set,
An’ jist let the whirly-gigy world whirl off its spindle spinnin’
While he joyed hisself a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.

_Hope_ he _did_ enjoy hisself, ’cause he didn’t have enough
Sense to know what trouble was,--he was a idiotic chap.
An’ he couldn’t tell to save him if a voice was soft or gruff
For he couldn’t _talk_, nor _hear_, nor--_nothin’_ only grin
an’ gap.
An’ his eyes that kept a winkin an’ a squintin up an’ down
Never let the glorious sunlight paint no picter in his crown.
Plum stone deef an’ dumb an’ blind--a hunch-backed idiot at that!
Oh ’t’ould ’most-a broke your heart, as mine, to see him sittin’
flat
On the floor in sich an awful fix as he was dyin’ in an’
Rockin back an’ forth, a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.

GOOD-NIGHT.

A SONG OF THE CLOSE OF LIFE.

_Infant._

Good-night, good-night!--the brightest day must fall,
The sweetest joys, alas! must fade the sight;
Sad Night shall weep her silent tears o’er all--
Good-night, good-night, sweet babe, good-night.

_Child._

The day has kissed thy happy heart to sleep
And left thy lips apart in sweet delight;
But oh the Night, I know, must slowly creep--
Good-night, good-night, my child, good-night.

_Youth._

Good-night, good-night!--thy care and day is done.
The stars thy camp, the Deity thy light,
Thy soldier hand and heart at rest sleep on,--
Good-night, good-night, my boy, good-night!

_Man._

Or griefs or joys thy lot, the past be past!--
The star of hope is on the mountain height,
For sun and life must sleep and rise at last,--
Good-night, good-night, worn heart, good-night.

_All._

Good-night, Sad Heart, to Light and Darkness born!
The sun is sunk--but Stars and Hope are bright;--
And all that sleep at night will wake at Morn!--
Good-night, good-night, Dear Heart, good-night!

TO FANCY.

Light and gay
Flight away
Over the rolling sea,
Night and day
Bright my fay
Bringing sweet music to me.

Deep in the sea
Leap with glee
Braiding the mermaiden’s hair;
Leap the sea,
Sweep to me,
Bearing her kisses rare.

O my fay,
Row away
Out in a nautilus shell,
Glowingly,
Flowingly,
Its rhythmical story to tell.

Greet the morn
Fleetly borne
Over the foam of the sea,
Meet the morn,
Sweet return
Bringing its beauties to me.

Lie and dream
By the beam
Thrown from the rolling moon,
Lie and dream
Night its gleam
Asleep in some deep lagoon.

Far enskyed
Star-like ride
Down in the doming deep,
Where the wide
Bar and tide
Croon to the moon asleep.

GOOD-NIGHT, MY LOVE.

Good-night, good-night!
Thy dreams to-night,
Thy dreams, thy silent dreams,
Be sweet as love, as chaste as light,
Thy dreams be sweet and deep.

Oh dream, my Love,
And sleep, my Love,
While star-laced moon-light beams
Above so bright with love and light,
Good-night, good-night, my Love.

THROUGH REVERENT EYES.

To-night I saw her. Strange indeed
My faint heart should thus fail me;--strange
That after such transporting love
In me three days should work such change.

Not more than three?--Nay, barely three;
And yet, within that raptured time
I’ve lived, it seems, a century
Of hope in Love’s own blissful clime.

’Tis strange, this love of mine, so strange;
So strange I fear sometimes I do
Not love, but only dream I love,
And sleep the mid-life watches through.

How many, many is the time
I’ve looked upon some face, some form,
And felt the sudden thrill of some
Fair hand awake the passion-storm!

But only momentary; and then
That old, old longing for the real
And soul-enlighted face of her
Whose image is my heart’s ideal.

Ah yes! to-night as I sit and write
Sweet visions come before my eyes.
Sweet visions only! and like lights
Along the shore they fall and rise.

Who are they? Friends of my happy days,
The friends of my childhood, boyhood, youth,
And later age. Yet none there are,
I fear, I ever loved in truth.

I’ve often wondered what love is.
I’ve heard men speak of it,--ah yes!
I’ve heard fair women, too! but what
It is, I wonder did they guess?

I’ve read of love; I’ve thought of love;
I’ve read and thought that in that hour
When love should truly come to one,
’Twould come an all-possessing power;

’Twould smite upon the chord of self,
And break the faulty string in twain;
’Twould touch a more melodious chord
And wake a glad, harmonious strain.

And so I wonder what love is;
And if I ever knew before
A few short, happy days ago
How love can rise, and sing, and soar.

Too sacred for my heart to hold,
To me a woman is divine--
As far above me as the stars
That I adore because they shine.

I can but stand and gaze above,
I can but worship and adore,
Nor dream that I could reach her height--
I could but drag her down; no more.

Yet other men have loved. Must I,
Must I alone throughout the night
Stand gazing at a star that shines
For me alone upon the mountain height?

Ah yes! I fear me that all night
I’ll watch the silent waning star
Adoring and revering till
It sinks behind some rugged scar.

I fear I do not love; I hold
The fairer sex too high, I fear;
And bowed with awe and humbleness,
Instead of loving I revere.

Among the noisy human crowd,
I stand as stands the silent stone;
And like it, too, I dumbly pray
To whom I love, and inly moan.

And thus it is my reverence brings
Me woe. As silent as the tomb,
My heart bowed down with sacred awe
Still wanders thro’ Love’s trackless dome.

Men call me cold. Alas! could they
But feel the half, the tenth I feel,
Could they but look thro’ reverent eyes,
They might my sealed heart unseal.

Too deep the mighty river flows;
Too deep the silent waters are;
I catch the image, not the form,
Embrace the vision, not the star.

Can heart of man pluck down a star
And wear it on his breast? or dip
Its gleam from out the soundless sea
And press it to his loving lip?

No more, no more indeed can I,
No more can I pluck down the love
That like an angel day and night
Still wanders through the dome above.

Oh could I ask a woman’s love?
I could not, would not drag her down!
I could not gratify a thought
So selfish--wed her to a clown!

No! no! my only hope must be
To rise above this selfish self;
To grow more pure in heart and hope,
To lose myself in her sweet self.

To-night, I say, I saw her; her
Who wakes in me such thoughts as these;
I felt her hand as I sometimes feel
An angel’s hand in the dreamy breeze.

She seemed far off--so far away!
And yet, I knew and saw her near:
I touched her hand; I heard her voice,
And oh the music thrilled my ear.

When here alone within my room,
I feel most brave; but when before
The one I love, my heart grows faint,
I can but silently adore.

I talk to her? Ah yes, sweet hours!
Tho’ every act and word I know
Must say my heart is full of love,
I dare not, can not tell her so.

Some day, perhaps,--some bright, sweet day!--
My tongue may tell her as my song
The struggle of my striving soul
To rise to her above the throng.

Great God, lift up my failing soul,
And purify this heart of mine.
Oh lead me through the realms of love
With that unfailing hand of Thine.

I ask nor wealth, nor fame, nor power;
I ask a pure and loving heart
That I may join that heart to hers
Forever nevermore to part.

And oh then peace, peace, the peace of love
For that old, old longing; and the real
And soul-enlighted face of her,
The image of my heart’s ideal.

WHAT IS POETRY?

Proper conception and appreciation of the poetic, whether in objects of nature or in the mirror of words reflecting the human heart, presupposes a delicate and divinely wrought nature tuned to the touch of the Maker’s hand. Only such a beauty-loving soul finds responsive a chord to the soul of beauty that dwells in the bodying words of poetry. The finer the soul, the finer the music. To possess this light-receiving and radiant Divinity is to possess at once both the highest attainment of human culture and aspiration and the greatest gift of God. It is thus at the same time both a growing seed and the seed’s growth. That is, the poetic soul is both a gift divine and a cultivation of it consecrated to the Divine Giver. Or, in other words, the poet is both born and made. _Poeta nascitur non fit_--the poet is born, not made--is true in this sense and in no other; for the feelings, the gifts of the poet, are the gifts of every human soul in greater or less degree. Else the proverb is not true, and we must say, _Poeta nascitur et fit_; which would, no doubt, be equally misunderstood. But _Poeta nascitur non fit_ is true; and if, instead of being translated literally, it is rendered in an explanatory way, it means simply:--“The poet possesses the same faculties that others do; but the poetic faculty in him at birth is more highly developed than it is in others, and is consequently susceptible of a higher degree of cultivation. If the poetic faculty is naturally slight or insignificant at birth, no amount of cultivating and polishing can create, or make, a poet of its possessor.” This is the ancient meaning, and the only sensible meaning, the meaning accepted by all who understand the subject.

To see it from a different angle. The true poet has both genius and talent--or rather, genius has the poet and compels the poet to have talent. Genius is the divine gift; talent is the cultivation. Genius--poetic genius--, the highest harmonious union of the feelings, is the part of the poet that is born; talent, the ability to reveal that genius, is the part that is cultivated, or made. Genius is power; talent is skill. The man of poetic genius cannot help writing; the man of poetic talent can help it, but won’t. That’s the main difference.

If you can’t help writing, nine chances out of nine you are a poet, and are unconscious of your great power from the simple fact that it is natural to you. If you can help writing, don’t write; for you are evidently no poet, though you may have talent, and may believe (very likely will) from the unnaturalness of it that you are great.

The genius which forces the poet to write is the same genius that is ever reaching out of the poem and beckoning us upwards. Thus much for the present as to what constitutes the poet.

Now as to poetry. Though we cannot hope to arrive at the seat of its mysterious fountain of inspiration and bind its hidden springs of immortality, we shall nevertheless, in earnest search, by upward, honest, toilsome flight, at least behold the beauty-embodying mountain heights whence its rivers of eternal glory flow, and whither the soul must ever soar to drink of its purest living waters;--waters that purify mortality and reflect Divinity, and make the soul bathed in them and drunken of them better know its own vastness, grandeur, and divinity.

Until the soul by this upward flight shall have beheld itself thus divinely reflected in the immortal streams of poetry, it can never feel and know its own vastness, its infinitude. Likewise, until it shall have bathed in and drunk of these mighty purifying waters of goodness, truth, and beauty, the soul can never know the divinity and immortality of poetry. Thus, if the soul know not the one, it cannot know the other; the two knowledges are reciprocal.

It may be said æsthetically and as nearly scientifically as it can well be said, that poetry is naturally rhythmical and metrical imaginative language interpreting the Divine in the human heart. This defines at once, as nearly as can well be defined in a single sentence, the Form (or mechanism), the Spirit, and the Mission of poetry.

Form we can define and anatomize, just as we can define and anatomize the human body. The spirit of poetry we cannot define and anatomize, just as we cannot define and anatomize the human soul. Form alone cannot constitute a poem, just as body alone cannot constitute a man. Spirit alone may constitute poetry (in the abstract) though not a concrete poem, just as the soul alone may constitute life though not a living man. Just as both body and soul are necessary to constitute a man, so also both form and spirit are necessary to constitute any of his visible art-creations, as a poem.

FORM.

The requisites of form are rhythm and metre. The accidents of form are rhyme (consonance), assonance, stanza, alliteration, onomatopœia, etc., etc.

Rhythm has to do with the kind of feet in a line, while metre has to do with the number of feet in a line. Rhythm corresponds with the regular rise and fall of the waves of the sea, each wave-length being counted a poetic foot. Metre corresponds with the swell of the sea, composed of several successive waves. Thus metre is, after all, a kind of rhythm,--the larger ebb and flow of rhythm.

The accidents of form, such as rhyme, stanza, alliteration, etc., we find worthily and advantageously used in much true poetry, as well as worthlessly used in the tawdry puppet-shows of mere mechanicians;--those persons who, having nothing to say, yet attempting to say something, mistake rhyme for sense, a tickling jingle for meaning, their desire to create for the creative power. They do not rightly read nor well heed the trite epigrammatic precept, “When you have nothing to say, say it.”

But these accidents of form, I say, are sometimes material aids to the thought; indeed, always are when used not for their own sakes but for the meaning’s sake. Notwithstanding this fact, many of our greatest poems, such as Paradise Lost and others on the epic order, as well as many not epic, lack these accidents either wholly or in part.

On the other hand, rhythm and metre are found in all poetic forms, and are the only two elements of the form of poetry that are thus found. Hence, rhythm and metre are not only essentials but they are the only essentials of form, and constitute the complete body in which the spirit of poetry naturally and inevitably clothes itself. They are, therefore, just as necessary to poetry in its concrete or visible forms as the spirit is.

But since rhythm and metre are thus essential to a poem, it is the common custom to call anything poetry that has this external appearance of the poetic.

This is a misapplication of terms. There is so much trash masquerading in the poetic garb that this misapplication inevitably throws ridicule upon true poetry.

Rhythm, when carried to excess and when used not for the meaning’s sake, the feeling’s sake, but for the rhythm’s sake alone, becomes simply jingle; quite invariably a rhyming jingle at that.

Metre, in company with rhythm and rhyme, is often diverted from its true purpose and used solely to jiggle some fact or some epigram into the memory, as illustrated by “Thirty days,” etc., and by all other didactic metrical arrangements, as mentioned farther on.

But rhymes and jingles and metrical arrangements are not poetry. They are simply members of the form, the dancing legs and arms of the body, sometimes possessed of life with an indwelling guiding spirit, and sometimes whittled out of wood and set in motion by an inspiring string. These senseless puppets, or jumping-jacks, sometimes, indeed often, tickle the mob by their lively antics; but the great final judgment of humanity relegates them to the rubbish-heap and forgets their ephemeral and unlovely existence.

It is, I say, a misnomer to dignify such by the name of poetry. The proper name is verse. Whatever is rhythmical and metrical, whether it has any of the accidents of form or not, is verse. Hence, all poetry is verse, but not all verse is poetry. Indeed, not one ten-thousandth part of verse is poetry; for the requisite of verse is simply form,--the body into which the spirit must enter ere it becomes poetry. To illustrate,--

“Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,” etc.,

has the form of poetry without the slightest touch of the poetic spirit; thus constituting verse, simple and pure. It requires no penetration to perceive that it is not poetry, though I doubt not that nine hundred ninety-nine out of every thousand have called that stanza in the usual loose way “a verse of poetry.”

But it is not only not poetry, but it is also not a verse, though it is _verse_; for a verse is but one line of the poetic form, while _verse_ is the form itself. It is not poetry because it has merely form without spirit. As well call the dead body a man (which indeed we sometimes do in the same loose way) as call such by the name of poetry.

But the body of a man without the soul is a dead man; that is, not a man at all. So also the body of one of his visible art-creations, as of poetry, without the spirit, is dead art, a dead poem;--no poem at all.

Is it not so? Only look at our thousands of dailies, weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies, and whatnotlies, where millions of these poetry-bodies lie buried, smelling too much of mortality; then turn to the time-glorified tomes of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Burns, Milton, Homer, Virgil, and their eternal co-endurers for a breath of heaven. Let this be the final answer.

Rhythm, it may be said (taking it beyond the realms of concrete poetry), is the music of Nature. It is Nature’s natural expression, if I may so speak. All her motions are rhythmical, have ripples and waves; even at rest her forms lie in the rhythmic order.

Wherever billows beat the crags, or ripples kiss the sands; wherever winds go soughing through the pines, or zephyrs toss a curl; wherever snows may drive to drifts, or wheat-fields billow green and gold; wherever drifting clouds, or dreaming skies, or bordering trees are hung dependent on the smooth lake’s waters; wherever birds may sing, or flowers bloom, or rivers run; wherever thunders wake, or hills and valleys sleep;--there is rhythm, there is music, there is Nature’s perfect harmony.

Nor is it different in man, Nature’s crown triumphant. In throes of pain or woe’s distress; in joys that iris happy tears; in sorrow’s mournful cadences; in laughter’s lilting melody; in peace and bounteous plenty, or in war and woeful famine; in love or hate, or life or death;--through all of man’s existence, there again is rhythm, Passion’s only melody, the music of the soul.

True, in the calms of life, although ’tis there, we little feel this rhythm,--this adjusting process by which man inevitably seeks to put the heart in tune while here for higher harmonies hereafter. But when the soul’s deep feeling is aroused, then listen to its rhythmic ebb and flow like gently wimpling waters or like the surging beat, beat, beat upon the sands.

Hear the lonesome cadences of sorrow crying up to heaven; listen to the joyousness that tinkles through the melody of laughter; hark the sharp, quick, fierce beat in the surge of righteous anger; hear the tender, mellow music from the soothing lips of Love,--divine, immortal Love--and dream of other worlds and better things as you listen thus transported.

When these passions of the soul would express themselves in words, the words, too, fashioned by the spirit that enters them, must inevitably move in rhythm, and, in the greater wave-lengths, fit themselves to metre. This feeling, or passion, that enters rhythmic words--that unswervingly seeks rhythm as the only form in which it can express itself--is the spirit of poetry. Thus it is that poetry comes about; thus it is that poetry is spontaneous and not the result of long meditation; thus it is that poetry is the natural outlet of highly-wrought or great feeling.

SPIRIT.

As in man, so in all art of man, the soul within fashions the body without. True beauty is soul-beauty; that beauty that is in the heart and is felt by the heart, without which there can be no physical beauty.

Whatever in the world is beautiful, is beautiful just in proportion to the beauty of the soul that sees it. Thus if we would find beauty, we must first have it. The white-flecked blue of the skies of June; the wren or peewee pouring fourth its perfume-drunken melodies from among the apple-blossoms; the stretch of plain or towering height of mountain; the scenes of hill or valley, wood or meadow, lake or river; the Apollo Belvedere; the great Transfiguration; Paradise Lost;--nature’s various forms and reproductions--have no beauty to the heart whose cavities are empty. But to the full soul, the soul of beauty, they are perpetual springs of life, where Divinity is ever mirrored forth; for the soul gives what it gets, and gets what it gives, and the getting is proportioned to the giving. Give, and we get; keep, and we lose.

But what is it in an Apollo, a Transfiguration, a Paradise Lost that feeds this soul-hunger; that possesses this beauty?--The marble of the Apollo? Hard by lies the rough, unchiseled Parian marble; but it has no beauty.--The painted canvas of the Transfiguration? Sitting before it, there are yearly hundreds of canvases and brushes and paints and paintings; but they lack the beauty.--The words, the rhythm, the metre, the music of Paradise Lost? Millions of productions, from musty tomes in the British Museum to the upper left-hand corner of the “patent inside” of a newspaper, have all these; but no beauty.

What then? That same indefinable something which in man we call the soul, and in art, the spirit; that which the admiring soul instinctively feels and recognizes.

Had the sculptor never touched his chisel to the marble, nor the painter his brush to the canvas, nor the poet his pen to the paper, that same spirit, yet not bodied, would have existed within his own soul, but never would have been beheld by others. To be seen by other eyes, it must needs take on a visible body, a concrete form, in which it shall dwell.

Thus all forms of Nature and all forms of Art, whatsoever, are the mere bodying expressions of the spirit that inhabits them. Form is necessary, but only as a medium through which the spirit may reveal itself visibly.

The intuitive and unconscious recognition of this principle, that the soul within fashions the body it inhabits,--the grandest principle of all God’s great laws, the foundation of them all, illimitable as the immortal Giver--is the door-way through which he who thus recognizes must inevitably enter Nature and Art to enjoy the full communion of the soul within, and to interpret the beauties of that soul’s divinity to us.

He who thus enters is possessed of genius. In other words, he has a great soul and lives close to Nature’s heart. We of lesser genius, or of less loving souls (for a great soul is one that loves greatly) commune with the indwelling spirit less freely. If we approach Nature or Art consciously and try to unlock some side-door by the key of the intellect, we shall probably find only cast-off garments; nay, many of us may find that the door will not open and we must content ourselves with a peep through the key-hole. Indeed, do not the multitude behold the elegant structures of Nature and Art wonderingly for but a moment, without even so much as attempting the key-hole, and then plod on, unconscious that there is an indwelling soul that has thus fashioned its earthly home?

This same great foundation-principle of Nature is likewise the fundamental law of poetry and of all other art. For art, at best, is nature wrought by man. What else can it be? It is fashioned by simply a lesser Divinity, the soul of man, consequently less perfectly, and follows the same law. Or better yet, art is nature wrought through the instrumentality of man by the great Divinity that works in him. Art is simply a name used to designate a specific manifestation or kind of nature;--that kind that comes through man, and has, not life, but spirit; not life, but the picture, the show, the mirrored image of life: a sort of record of the soul, and a lamp for its future guidance.

He who, by means of rhythmic words inspirited, can paint this picture, represent this show, mirror this image of life, historicize this record of the soul, light this lamp and hold it above the heads of the trampling ages for the guidance of humanity, is the great poet.

Just in proportion to the greatness of such a soul will be the spirit that imbues his creations. It cannot create a new form unless it first implants some germ from its own spiritual self. Not only must there be the spirit as the prime essential of poetry, the soul within that fashions the rhythmical and metrical form it inhabits, but that spirit must partake of that divinity that is in every human heart;--that divine flower, deep-rooted in the soil of God, sometimes blossoming to an angel-image, sometimes painting the glories of heaven on its petals, sometimes breathing its deepest-drawn perfumes up from its muse-beloved blooms to the throne above.

Would the soul create a statue, it must see “an angel in that marble” ere it give the angel form; would it paint a picture, it must behold within itself the transfiguration ere it live transfigured on the canvas; would it write a poem, it must be a paradise of eternal love and beauty ere it breathe immortal glory into words.

It is this soul within that comes out of the maker of the statue, the maker of the picture, the maker of the melody, the maker of the poem, and enters his creations, that distinguishes true art from mere mechanism of art.

It is this same soul within that renders the artist, not a chiseler of stone, a painter of canvas, a placer of notes, a rhymer of words, but a maker, a creator, in his own lesser realm of nature.

It is this same intangible soul, just within yet just beyond the touch of our finger-tips as we reach out farther and farther into the dim unknown, this same indefinable spirit of beauty, shining through the form that it inhabits, permeating it inscrutably, that somehow passes out of the poem into the heart of the admirer, then slips out of his heart into the poem again, and so on and on, again and again, ever lifting the admiring soul as the poem itself is lifted higher still and ever higher.

MISSION.

This practical age, “this nineteenth century with its knife and glass,” ever botanizing and anatomizing, analyzing and scrutinizing in every possible way, is constantly asking, “What is it good for?”; “Of what use is it?” And whatever the knife and glass cannot explain to the fact-loving intellect; whatever the age cannot thus analyze and convert into ready cash or daily bread, it is wont to relegate to the Lethean Limbo of Uselessness.--As if the mind of man were constituted of intellect, pocket, and stomach, and whatever did not go to the filling of these were useless.

It is well and just and right, indeed, that any age should thus inquire, especially as to material things, so long as it does not dwarf other faculties by giving all sustenance to one. To ask concerning poetry, “What is it good for?”, “Of what use is it?”, is simply to ask in a different form, “What is the soul good for?”; “Of what use is a God!” There is nothing in God’s universe that does not have utility.

But to examine specifically and logically, and thus to discover somewhat of the mission, the utility of poetry.

In order to do this, we must naturally refer to the human mind, since thence poetry is brought forth and there it is perceived.

There are three great divisions of the mind; namely, Intellect, Sensibilities, or Feelings, and Will.

The intellect is that power of the mind by which we think and know. The sensibilities, or feelings, constitute that power of the mind by which we feel. The will is that power of the mind by which we resolve to do or not to do. These explanations are sufficient for our present purpose.

Therefore, whatever furnishes food for the intellect, the knowing-power of the mind, must be of the nature of knowledge, didactic. Whatever ministers to the feelings must waken emotion. Whatever gives action to the will must rouse resolution.