Chapter V: Appendix (4)

'I will have one more grapple with the man Charles Stuart: whom the boy o'ercame, The man stands not in awe of. I, perchance, Am one raised up by the Almighty arm To witness some great truth to all the world. Souls destined to o'erleap the vulgar lot, And mould the world unto the scheme of God, Have a fore-consciousness of their high doom, As men are known to shiver at the heart 270 When the cold shadow of some coming ill Creeps slowly o'er their spirits unawares. Hath Good less power of prophecy than Ill? How else could men whom God hath called to sway Earth's rudder, and to steer the bark of Truth, Beating against the tempest tow'rd her port, Bear all the mean and buzzing grievances, The petty martyrdoms, wherewith Sin strives To weary out the tethered hope of Faith? The sneers, the unrecognizing look of friends, 280 Who worship the dead corpse of old king Custom, Where it doth lie In state within the Church, Striving to cover up the mighty ocean With a man's palm, and making even the truth Lie for them, holding up the glass reversed, To make the hope of man seem farther off? My God! when I read o'er the bitter lives Of men whose eager heart's were quite too great To beat beneath the cramped mode of the day, And see them mocked at by the world they love, 290 Haggling with prejudice for pennyworths Of that reform which their hard toil will make The common birthright of the age to come,-- When I see this, spite of my faith in God, I marvel how their hearts bear up so long; Nor could they but for this same prophecy, This inward feeling of the glorious end.

'Deem me not fond; but in my warmer youth, Ere my heart's bloom was soiled and brushed away, I had great dreams of mighty things to come; 300 Of conquest, whether by the sword or pen I knew not; but some Conquest I would have, Or else swift death: now wiser grown in years, I find youth's dreams are but the flutterings Of those strong wings whereon the soul shall soar In after time to win a starry throne; And so I cherish them, for they were lots, Which I, a boy, cast in the helm of Fate. Now will I draw them, since a man's right hand, A right hand guided by an earnest soul, 310 With a true instinct, takes the golden prize From out a thousand blanks. What men call luck Is the prerogative of valiant souls, The fealty life pays its rightful kings. The helm is shaking now, and I will stay To pluck my lot forth; it were sin to flee!'

So they two turned together; one to die, Fighting for freedom on the bloody field; The other, far more happy, to become A name earth wears forever next her heart; 320 One of the few that have a right to rank With the true Makers: for his spirit wrought Order from Chaos; proved that right divine Dwelt only in the excellence of truth; And far within old Darkness' hostile lines Advanced and pitched the shining tents of Light. Nor shall the grateful Muse forget to tell, That--not the least among his many claims To deathless honor--he was MILTON'S friend, A man not second among those who lived 330 To show us that the poet's lyre demands An arm of tougher sinew than the sword.

A CHIPPEWA LEGEND

[Greek: algeina men moi kaalegein estin tade, algos de sigan.] AESCHYLUS, _Prom. Vinct._ 197, 198.

For the leading incidents in this tale I am indebted to the very valuable _Algic Researches_ of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq. J.R.L.

The old Chief, feeling now wellnigh his end, Called his two eldest children to his side, And gave them, in few words, his parting charge! 'My son and daughter, me ye see no more; The happy hunting-grounds await me, green With change of spring and summer through the year: But, for remembrance, after I am gone, Be kind to little Sheemah for my sake: Weakling he is and young, and knows not yet To set the trap, or draw the seasoned bow; 10 Therefore of both your loves he hath more need, And he, who needeth love, to love hath right; It is not like our furs and stores of corn, Whereto we claim sole title by our toil, But the Great Spirit plants it in our hearts, And waters it, and gives it sun, to be The common stock and heritage of all: Therefore be kind to Sheemah, that yourselves May not be left deserted in your need.'

Alone, beside a lake, their wigwam stood, 20 Far from the other dwellings of their tribe: And, after many moons, the loneliness Wearied the elder brother, and he said, 'Why should I dwell here far from men, shut out From the free, natural joys that fit my age? Lo, I am tall and strong, well skilled to hunt, Patient of toil and hunger, and not yet Have seen the danger which I dared not look Full in the face; what hinders me to be A mighty Brave and Chief among my kin?' 30 So, taking up his arrows and his bow, As if to hunt, he journeyed swiftly on, Until he gained the wigwams of his tribe, Where, choosing out a bride, he soon forgot, In all the fret and bustle of new life, The little Sheemah and his father's charge.

Now when the sister found her brother gone, And that, for many days, he came not back, She wept for Sheemah more than for herself; For Love bides longest in a woman's heart, 40 And flutters many times before he flies, And then doth perch so nearly, that a word May lure him back to his accustomed nest; And Duty lingers even when Love is gone, Oft looking out in hope of his return; And, after Duty hath been driven forth, Then Selfishness creeps in the last of all, Warming her lean hands at the lonely hearth, And crouching o'er the embers, to shut out Whatever paltry warmth and light are left, 50 With avaricious greed, from all beside. So, for long months, the sister hunted wide, And cared for little Sheemah tenderly; But, daily more and more, the loneliness Grew wearisome, and to herself she sighed, 'Am I not fair? at least the glassy pool, That hath no cause to flatter, tells me so; But, oh, how flat and meaningless the tale, Unless it tremble on a lover's tongue! Beauty hath no true glass, except it be 60 In the sweet privacy of loving eyes.' Thus deemed she idly, and forgot the lore Which she had learned of nature and the woods, That beauty's chief reward is to itself, And that Love's mirror holds no image long Save of the inward fairness, blurred and lost Unless kept clear and white by Duty's care. So she went forth and sought the haunts of men, And, being wedded, in her household cares, Soon, like the elder brother, quite forgot 70 The little Sheemah and her father's charge.

But Sheemah, left alone within the lodge, Waited and waited, with a shrinking heart, Thinking each rustle was his sister's step, Till hope grew less and less, and then went out, And every sound was changed from hope to fear. Few sounds there were:--the dropping of a nut, The squirrel's chirrup, and the jay's harsh scream, Autumn's sad remnants of blithe Summer's cheer, Heard at long intervals, seemed but to make 80 The dreadful void of silence silenter. Soon what small store his sister left was gone, And, through the Autumn, he made shift to live On roots and berries, gathered in much fear Of wolves, whose ghastly howl he heard ofttimes, Hollow and hungry, at the dead of night. But Winter came at last, and, when the snow, Thick-heaped for gleaming leagues o'er hill and plain, Spread its unbroken silence over all, Made bold by hunger, he was fain to glean 90 (More sick at heart than Ruth, and all alone) After the harvest of the merciless wolf, Grim Boaz, who, sharp-ribbed and gaunt, yet feared A thing more wild and starving than himself; Till, by degrees, the wolf and he grew friends, And shared together all the winter through.

Late in the Spring, when all the ice was gone, The elder brother, fishing in the lake, Upon whose edge his father's wigwam stood, Heard a low moaning noise upon the shore: 100 Half like a child it seemed, half like a wolf, And straightway there was something in his heart That said, 'It is thy brother Sheemah's voice.' So, paddling swiftly to the bank, he saw, Within a little thicket close at hand, A child that seemed fast clinging to a wolf, From the neck downward, gray with shaggy hair, That still crept on and upward as he looked. The face was turned away, but well he knew That it was Sheemah's, even his brother's face. 110 Then with his trembling hands he hid his eyes, And bowed his head, so that he might not see The first look of his brother's eyes, and cried, 'O Sheemah! O my brother, speak to me! Dost thou not know me, that I am thy brother? Come to me, little Sheemah, thou shall dwell With me henceforth, and know no care or want!' Sheemah was silent for a space, as if 'T were hard to summon up a human voice, And, when he spake, the voice was as a wolf's: 120 'I know thee not, nor art thou what thou say'st; I have none other brethren than the wolves, And, till thy heart be changed from what it is, Thou art not worthy to be called their kin.' Then groaned the other, with a choking tongue, 'Alas! my heart is changed right bitterly; 'Tis shrunk and parched within me even now!' And, looking upward fearfully, he saw Only a wolf that shrank away, and ran, Ugly and fierce, to hide among the woods. 130

STANZAS ON FREEDOM

Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave? If ye do not feel the chain, When it works a brother's pain, Are ye not base slaves indeed, Slaves unworthy to be freed?

Women! who shall one day bear Sons to breathe New England air, If ye hear, without a blush, Deeds to make the roused blood rush Like red lava through your veins, For your sisters now in chains,-- Answer! are ye fit to be Mothers of the brave and free?

Is true Freedom but to break Fetters for our own dear sake, And, with leathern hearts, forget That we owe mankind a debt? No! true freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free!

They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.

COLUMBUS

The cordage creaks and rattles in the wind, With whims of sudden hush; the reeling sea Now thumps like solid rock beneath the stern, Now leaps with clumsy wrath, strikes short, and, falling Crumbled to whispery foam, slips rustling down The broad backs of the waves, which jostle and crowd To fling themselves upon that unknown shore. Their used familiar since the dawn of time, Whither this foredoomed life is guided on To sway on triumph's hushed, aspiring poise 10 One glittering moment, then to break fulfilled.

How lonely is the sea's perpetual swing, The melancholy wash of endless waves, The sigh of some grim monster undescried, Fear-painted on the canvas of the dark, Shifting on his uneasy pillow of brine! Yet, night brings more companions than the day To this drear waste; new constellations burn, And fairer stars, with whose calm height my soul Finds nearer sympathy than with my herd 20 Of earthen souls, whose vision's scanty ring Makes me its prisoner to beat my wings Against the cold bars of their unbelief, Knowing in vain my own free heaven beyond. O God! this world, so crammed with eager life, That comes and goes and wanders back to silence Like the idle wind, which yet man's shaping mind Can make his drudge to swell the longing sails Of highest endeavor,--this mad, unthrift world, Which, every hour, throws life enough away 30 To make her deserts kind and hospitable, Lets her great destinies be waved aside By smooth, lip-reverent, formal infidels, Who weigh the God they not believe with gold, And find no spot in Judas, save that he, Driving a duller bargain than he ought, Saddled his guild with too cheap precedent. O Faith! if thou art strong, thine opposite Is mighty also, and the dull fool's sneer Hath ofttimes shot chill palsy through the arm 40 Just lifted to achieve its crowning deed, And made the firm-based heart, that would have quailed The rack or fagot, shudder like a leaf Wrinkled with frost, and loose upon its stem, The wicked and the weak, by some dark law, Have a strange power to shut and rivet down Their own horizon round us, to unwing Our heaven-aspiring visions, and to blur With surly clouds the Future's gleaming peaks, Far seen across the brine of thankless years. 50 If the chosen soul could never be alone In deep mid-silence, open-doored to God, No greatness ever had been dreamed or done; Among dull hearts a prophet never grew; The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.

The old world is effete; there man with man Jostles, and, in the brawl for means to live, Life is trod underfoot,--Life, the one block Of marble that's vouchsafed wherefrom to carve Our great thoughts, white and godlike, to shine down 60 The future, Life, the irredeemable block, Which one o'er-hasty chisel-dint oft mars, Scanting our room to cut the features out Of our full hope, so forcing us to crown With a mean head the perfect limbs, or leave The god's face glowing o'er a satyr's trunk, Failure's brief epitaph.

Yes, Europe's world Reels on to judgment; there the common need, Losing God's sacred use, to be a bond 'Twixt Me and Thee, sets each one scowlingly 70 O'er his own selfish hoard at bay; no state, Knit strongly with eternal fibres up Of all men's separate and united weals, Self-poised and sole as stars, yet one as light, Holds up a shape of large Humanity To which by natural instinct every man Pays loyalty exulting, by which all Mould their own lives, and feel their pulses filled With the red, fiery blood of the general life, Making them mighty in peace, as now in war 80 They are, even in the flush of victory, weak, Conquering that manhood which should them subdue. And what gift bring I to this untried world? Shall the same tragedy be played anew, And the same lurid curtain drop at last On one dread desolation, one fierce crash Of that recoil which on its makers God Lets Ignorance and Sin and Hunger make, Early or late? Or shall that commonwealth Whose potent unity and concentric force 90 Can draw these scattered joints and parts of men Into a whole ideal man once more, Which sucks not from its limbs the life away, But sends it flood-tide and creates itself Over again in every citizen, Be there built up? For me, I have no choice; I might turn back to other destinies, For one sincere key opes all Fortune's doors; But whoso answers not God's earliest call Forfeits or dulls that faculty supreme 100 Of lying open to his genius Which makes the wise heart certain of its ends.

Here am I; for what end God knows, not I; Westward still points the inexorable soul: Here am I, with no friend but the sad sea, The beating heart of this great enterprise, Which, without me, would stiffen in swift death; This have I mused on, since mine eye could first Among the stars distinguish and with joy Rest on that God-fed Pharos of the north, 110 On some blue promontory of heaven lighted That juts far out into the upper sea; To this one hope my heart hath clung for years, As would a foundling to the talisman Hung round his neck by hands he knew not whose; A poor, vile thing and dross to all beside, Yet he therein can feel a virtue left By the sad pressure of a mother's hand, And unto him it still is tremulous With palpitating haste and wet with tears, 120 The key to him of hope and humanness, The coarse shell of life's pearl, Expectancy. This hope hath been to me for love and fame, Hath made me wholly lonely on the earth, Building me up as in a thick-ribbed tower, Wherewith enwalled my watching spirit burned, Conquering its little island from the Dark, Sole as a scholar's lamp, and heard men's steps, In the far hurry of the outward world, Pass dimly forth and back, sounds heard in dream, 130 As Ganymede by the eagle was snatched up From the gross sod to be Jove's cup-bearer, So was I lifted by my great design: And who hath trod Olympus, from his eye Fades not that broader outlook of the gods; His life's low valleys overbrow earth's clouds, And that Olympian spectre of the past Looms towering up in sovereign memory, Beckoning his soul from meaner heights of doom. Had but the shadow of the Thunderer's bird, 140 Flashing athwart my spirit, made of me A swift-betraying vision's Ganymede, Yet to have greatly dreamed precludes low ends; Great days have ever such a morning-red, On such a base great futures are built up, And aspiration, though not put in act, Comes back to ask its plighted troth again, Still watches round its grave the unlaid ghost Of a dead virtue, and makes other hopes, Save that implacable one, seem thin and bleak 150 As shadows of bare trees upon the snow, Bound freezing there by the unpitying moon.

While other youths perplexed their mandolins, Praying that Thetis would her fingers twine In the loose glories of her lover's hair, And wile another kiss to keep back day, I, stretched beneath the many-centuried shade Of some writhed oak, the wood's Laocoön, Did of my hope a dryad mistress make, Whom I would woo to meet me privily, 160 Or underneath the stars, or when the moon Flecked all the forest floor with scattered pearls. O days whose memory tames to fawning down The surly fell of Ocean's bristled neck!

I know not when this hope enthralled me first, But from my boyhood up I loved to hear The tall pine-forests of the Apennine Murmur their hoary legends of the sea, Which hearing, I in vision clear beheld The sudden dark of tropic night shut down 170 O'er the huge whisper of great watery wastes, The while a pair of herons trailingly Flapped inland, where some league-wide river hurled The yellow spoil of unconjectured realms Far through a gulf's green silence, never scarred, By any but the Northwind's hurrying keels. And not the pines alone; all sights and sounds To my world-seeking heart paid fealty, And catered for it as the Cretan bees Brought honey to the baby Jupiter, Who in his soft hand crushed a violet, 181 Godlike foremusing the rough thunder's gripe; Then did I entertain the poet's song, My great Idea's guest, and, passing o'er That iron bridge the Tuscan built to hell, I heard Ulysses tell of mountain-chains Whose adamantine links, his manacles, The western main shook growling, and still gnawed. I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale. Of happy Atlantis, and heard Björne's keel 190 Crunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland shore: I listened, musing, to the prophecy Of Nero's tutor-victim; lo, the birds Sing darkling, conscious of the climbing dawn. And I believed the poets; it is they Who utter wisdom from the central deep, And, listening to the inner flow of things, Speak to the age out of eternity.

Ah me! old hermits sought for solitude In caves and desert places of the earth, 200 Where their own heart-beat was the only stir Of living thing that comforted the year; But the bald pillar-top of Simeon, In midnight's blankest waste, were populous, Matched with the isolation drear and deep Of him who pines among the swarm of men, At once a new thought's king and prisoner, Feeling the truer life within his life, The fountain of his spirit's prophecy, Sinking away and wasting, drop by drop, 210 In the ungrateful sands of sceptic ears. He in the palace-aisles of untrod woods Doth walk a king; for him the pent-up cell Widens beyond the circles of the stars, And all the sceptred spirits of the past Come thronging in to greet him as their peer; But in the market-place's glare and throng He sits apart, an exile, and his brow Aches with the mocking memory of its crown.

Yet to the spirit select there is no choice; 220 He cannot say, This will I do, or that, For the cheap means putting Heaven's ends in pawn, And bartering his bleak rocks, the freehold stern Of destiny's first-born, for smoother fields That yield no crop of self-denying will; A hand is stretched to him from out the dark, Which grasping without question, he is led Where there is work that he must do for God. The trial still is the strength's complement, And the uncertain, dizzy path that scales 230 The sheer heights of supremest purposes Is steeper to the angel than the child. Chances have laws as fixed as planets have, And disappointment's dry and bitter root, Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind, And break a pathway to those unknown realms That in the earth's broad shadow lie enthralled; 239 Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts; These are their stay, and when the leaden world Sets its hard face against their fateful thought, And brute strength, like the Gaulish conqueror, Clangs his huge glaive down in the other scale, The inspired soul but flings his patience in, And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe,-- One faith against a whole earth's unbelief, One soul against the flesh of all mankind.

Thus ever seems it when my soul can hear 250 The voice that errs not; then my triumph gleams, O'er the blank ocean beckoning, and all night My heart flies on before me as I sail; Far on I see my lifelong enterprise. That rose like Ganges mid the freezing snows Of a world's solitude, sweep broadening down, And, gathering to itself a thousand streams, Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea; I see the ungated wall of chaos old, With blocks Cyclopean hewn of solid night, 260 Fade like a wreath of unreturning mist Before the irreversible feet of light;-- And lo, with what clear omen in the east On day's gray threshold stands the eager dawn, Like young Leander rosy from the sea Glowing at Hero's lattice!

One day more These muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me: God, let me not in their dull ooze be stranded: Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart 270 Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off His cheek-swollen pack, and from the leaning mast Fortune's full sail strains forward!

One poor day!-- Remember whose and not how short it is! It is God's day, it is Columbus's. A lavish day! One day, with life and heart, Is more than time enough to find a world.

AN INCIDENT OF THE FIRE AT HAMBURG

The tower of old Saint Nicholas soared upward to the skies, Like some huge piece of Nature's make, the growth of centuries; You could not deem its crowding spires a work of human art, They seemed to struggle lightward from a sturdy living heart.

Not Nature's self more freely speaks in crystal or in oak, Than, through the pious builder's hand, in that gray pile she spoke; And as from acorn springs the oak, so, freely and alone, Sprang from his heart this hymn to God, sung in obedient stone.

It seemed a wondrous freak of chance, so perfect, yet so rough, A whim of Nature crystallized slowly in granite tough; The thick spires yearned towards the sky in quaint harmonious lines, And in broad sunlight basked and slept, like a grove of blasted pines.

Never did rock or stream or tree lay claim with better right To all the adorning sympathies of shadow and of light; And, in that forest petrified, as forester there dwells Stout Herman, the old sacristan, sole lord of all its bells.

Surge leaping after surge, the fire roared onward red as blood, Till half of Hamburg lay engulfed beneath the eddying flood; For miles away the fiery spray poured down its deadly rain, And back and forth the billows sucked, and paused, and burst again.

From square to square with tiger leaps panted the lustful fire, The air to leeward shuddered with the gasps of its desire; And church and palace, which even now stood whelmed but to the knee. Lift their black roofs like breakers lone amid the whirling sea.

Up in his tower old Herman sat and watched with quiet look; His soul had trusted God too long to be at last forsook; He could not fear, for surely God a pathway would unfold Through this red sea for faithful hearts, as once He did of old.

But scarcely can he cross himself, or on his good saint call, Before the sacrilegious flood o'erleaped the churchyard wall; And, ere a _pater_ half was said, mid smoke and crackling glare, His island tower scarce juts its head above the wide despair.

Upon the peril's desperate peak his heart stood up sublime; His first thought was for God above, his next was for his chime; 'Sing now and make your voices heard in hymns of praise,' cried he, 'As did the Israelites of old, safe walking through the sea!

'Through this red sea our God hath made the pathway safe to shore; Our promised land stands full in sight; shout now as ne'er before! And as the tower came crashing down, the bells, in clear accord, Pealed forth the grand old German hymn,--'All good souls, praise the Lord!'

THE SOWER

I saw a Sower walking slow
Across the earth, from east to west;
His hair was white as mountain snow,
His head drooped forward on his breast.

With shrivelled hands he flung his seed,
Nor ever turned to look behind;
Of sight or sound he took no heed;
It seemed, he was both deaf and blind.

His dim face showed no soul beneath,
Yet in my heart I felt a stir,
As if I looked upon the sheath,
That once had held Excalibur.

I heard, as still the seed he cast,
How, crooning to himself, he sung.
'I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.

'Then all was wheat without a tare,
Then all was righteous, fair, and true;
And I am he whose thoughtful care
Shall plant the Old World in the New.

'The fruitful germs I scatter free,
With busy hand, while all men sleep;
In Europe now, from sea to sea,
The nations bless me as they reap.'

Then I looked back along his path.
And heard the clash of steel on steel,
Where man faced man, in deadly wrath,
While clanged the tocsin's hurrying peal.

The sky with burning towns flared red,
Nearer the noise of fighting rolled.
And brothers' blood, by brothers shed,
Crept curdling over pavements cold.

Then marked I how each germ of truth
Which through the dotard's fingers ran
Was mated with a dragon's tooth
Whence there sprang up an armèd man.

I shouted, but he could not hear;
Made signs, but these he could not see;
And still, without a doubt or fear,
Broadcast he scattered anarchy.

Long to my straining ears the blast
Brought faintly back the words he sung:
'I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.'

HUNGER AND COLD

Sisters two, all praise to you, With your faces pinched and blue; To the poor man you've been true From of old: You can speak the keenest word, You are sure of being heard, From the point you're never stirred, Hunger and Cold!

Let sleek statesmen temporize; Palsied are their shifts and lies When they meet your bloodshot eyes, Grim and bold; Policy you set at naught, In their traps you'll not be caught, You're too honest to be bought, Hunger and Cold!

Bolt and bar the palace door; While the mass of men are poor, Naked truth grows more and more Uncontrolled; You had never yet, I guess, Any praise for bashfulness, You can visit sans court-dress, Hunger and Cold!

While the music fell and rose, And the dance reeled to its close, Where her round of costly woes Fashion strolled, I beheld with shuddering fear Wolves' eyes through the windows peer; Little dream they you are near, Hunger and Cold!

When the toiler's heart you clutch, Conscience is not valued much, He recks not a bloody smutch On his gold: Everything to you defers, You are potent reasoners, At your whisper Treason stirs, Hunger and Cold!

Rude comparisons you draw, Words refuse to sate your maw, Your gaunt limbs the cobweb law Cannot hold: You're not clogged with foolish pride, But can seize a right denied: Somehow God is on your side, Hunger and Cold!

You respect no hoary wrong More for having triumphed long; Its past victims, haggard throng, From the mould You unbury: swords and spears Weaker are than poor men's tears, Weaker than your silent years, Hunger and Cold!

Let them guard both hall and bower; Through the window you will glower, Patient till your reckoning hour Shall be tolled; Cheeks are pale, but hands are red, Guiltless blood may chance be shed, But ye must and will be fed, Hunger and Cold!

God has plans man must not spoil, Some were made to starve and toil, Some to share the wine and oil, We are told: Devil's theories are these, Stifling hope and love and peace, Framed your hideous lusts to please, Hunger and Cold!

Scatter ashes on thy head, Tears of burning sorrow shed, Earth! and be by Pity led To Love's fold; Ere they block the very door With lean corpses of the poor, And will hush for naught but gore, Hunger and Cold!

THE LANDLORD

What boot your houses and your lands? In spite of close-drawn deed and fence, Like water, twixt your cheated hands, They slip into the graveyard's sands, And mock your ownership's pretence.

How shall you speak to urge your right, Choked with that soil for which you lust? The bit of clay, for whose delight You grasp, is mortgaged, too; Death might Foreclose this very day in dust.

Fence as you please, this plain poor man, Whose only fields are in his wit, Who shapes the world, as best he can, According to God's higher plan, Owns you, and fences as is fit.

Though yours the rents, his incomes wax By right of eminent domain; From factory tall to woodman's axe, All things on earth must pay their tax, To feed his hungry heart and brain.

He takes you from your easy-chair, And what he plans that you must do; You sleep in down, eat dainty fare,-- He mounts his crazy garret-stair And starves, the landlord over you.

Feeding the clods your idlesse drains, You make more green six feet of soil; His fruitful word, like suns and rains, Partakes the seasons' bounteous pains, And toils to lighten human toil.

Your lands, with force or cunning got, Shrink to the measure of the grave; But Death himself abridges not The tenures of almighty thought, The titles of the wise and brave.

TO A PINE-TREE

Far up on Katahdin thou towerest,
Purple-blue with the distance and vast;
Like a cloud o'er the lowlands thou lowerest,
That hangs poised on a lull in the blast,
To its fall leaning awful.

In the storm, like a prophet o'er-maddened,
Thou singest and tossest thy branches;
Thy heart with the terror is gladdened,
Thou forebodest the dread avalanches,
When whole mountains swoop valeward.

In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys
With thine arms, as if blessings imploring,
Like an old king led forth from his palace,
When his people to battle are pouring
From the city beneath him.

To the lumberer asleep 'neath thy glooming
Thou dost sing of wild billows in motion,
Till he longs to be swung mid their booming
In the tents of the Arabs of ocean,
Whose finned isles are their cattle.

For the gale snatches thee for his lyre,
With mad hand crashing melody frantic,
While he pours forth his mighty desire
To leap down on the eager Atlantic,
Whose arms stretch to his playmate.

The wild storm makes his lair in thy branches,
Swooping thence on the continent under;
Like a lion, crouched close on his haunches,
There awaiteth his leap the fierce thunder,
Growling low with impatience.

Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green glory,
Lusty father of Titans past number!
The snow-flakes alone make thee hoary,
Nestling close to thy branches in slumber,
And thee mantling with silence.

Thou alone know'st the splendor of winter,
Mid thy snow-silvered, hushed precipices,
Hearing crags of green ice groan and splinter,
And then plunge down the muffled abysses
In the quiet of midnight.

Thou alone know'st the glory of summer
Gazing down on thy broad seas of forest,
On thy subjects that send a proud murmur
Up to thee, to their sachem, who towerest
From thy bleak throne to heaven.

SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM, ADES

O wandering dim on the extremest edge
Of God's bright providence, whose spirits sigh
Drearily in you, like the winter sedge
That shivers o'er the dead pool stiff and dry,
A thin, sad voice, when the bold wind roars by
From the clear North of Duty,--
Still by cracked arch and broken shaft I trace
That here was once a shrine and holy place
Of the supernal Beauty,
A child's play-altar reared of stones and moss,
With wilted flowers for offering laid across,
Mute recognition of the all-ruling Grace.

How far are ye from the innocent, from those
Whose hearts are as a little lane serene,
Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with unbroke snows,
Or in the summer blithe with lamb-cropped green,
Save the one track, where naught more rude is seen
Than the plump wain at even
Bringing home four months' sunshine bound in sheaves!
How far are ye from those! yet who believes
That ye can shut out heaven?
Your souls partake its influence, not in vain
Nor all unconscious, as that silent lane
Its drift of noiseless apple-blooms receives.

Looking within myself, I note how thin
A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate,
Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin;
In my own heart I find the worst man's mate,
And see not dimly the smooth-hingèd gate
That opes to those abysses
Where ye grope darkly,--ye who never knew
On your young hearts love's consecrating dew,
Or felt a mother's kisses,
Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled;
Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world
The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue!

One band ye cannot break,--the force that clips
And grasps your circles to the central light;
Yours is the prodigal comet's long ellipse,
Self-exiled to the farthest verge of night;
Yet strives with you no less that inward might
No sin hath e'er imbruted;
The god in you the creed-dimmed eye eludes;
The Law brooks not to have its solitudes
By bigot feet polluted;
Yet they who watch your God-compelled return
May see your happy perihelion burn
Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods.

TO THE PAST

Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls,
O kingdom of the past!
There lie the bygone ages in their palls,
Guarded by shadows vast;
There all is hushed and breathless,
Save when some image of old error falls
Earth worshipped once as deathless.

There sits drear Egypt, mid beleaguering sands,
Half woman and half beast,
The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands 10
That once lit all the East;
A dotard bleared and hoary,
There Asser crouches o'er the blackened brands
Of Asia's long-quenched glory.

Still as a city buried 'neath the sea
Thy courts and temples stand;
Idle as forms on wind-waved tapestry
Of saints and heroes grand,
Thy phantasms grope and shiver,
Or watch the loose shores crumbling silently 20
Into Time's gnawing river.

Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun,
Of their old godhead lorn,
Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun,
Which they misdeem for morn;
And yet the eternal sorrow
In their unmonarched eyes says day is done
Without the hope of morrow.

O realm of silence and of swart eclipse,
The shapes that haunt thy gloom 30
Make signs to us and move their withered lips
Across the gulf of doom;
Yet all their sound and motion
Bring no more freight to us than wraiths of ships
On the mirage's ocean.

And if sometimes a moaning wandereth
From out thy desolate halls,
If some grim shadow of thy living death
Across our sunshine falls
And scares the world to error, 40
The eternal life sends forth melodious breath
To chase the misty terror.

Thy mighty clamors, wars, and world-noised deeds
Are silent now in dust,
Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds
Beneath some sudden gust;
Thy forms and creeds have vanished,
Tossed out to wither like unsightly weeds
From the world's garden banished.

Whatever of true life there was in thee 50
Leaps in our age's veins;
Wield still thy bent and wrinkled empery,
And shake thine idle chains;--
To thee thy dross is clinging,
For us thy martyrs die, thy prophets see,
Thy poets still are singing.

Here, mid the bleak waves of our strife and care,
Float the green Fortunate Isles
Where all thy hero-spirits dwell, and share
Our martyrdoms and toils; 60
The present moves attended
With all of brave and excellent and fair
That made the old time splendid.

TO THE FUTURE

O Land of Promise! from what Pisgah's height
Can I behold thy stretch of peaceful bowers,
Thy golden harvests flowing out of sight,
Thy nestled homes and sun-illumined towers?
Gazing upon the sunset's high-heaped gold,
Its crags of opal and of chrysolite,
Its deeps on deeps of glory, that unfold
Still brightening abysses,
And blazing precipices,
Whence but a scanty leap it seems to heaven, 10
Sometimes a glimpse is given
Of thy more gorgeous realm, thy more unstinted blisses.

O Land of Quiet! to thy shore the surf
Of the perturbèd Present rolls and sleeps;
Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy turf
And lure out blossoms; to thy bosom leaps,
As to a mother's, the o'erwearied heart,
Hearing far off and dim the toiling mart,
The hurrying feet, the curses without number,
And, circled with the glow Elysian 20
Of thine exulting vision,
Out of its very cares wooes charms for peace and slumber.

To thee the earth lifts up her fettered hands
And cries for vengeance; with a pitying smile
Thou blessest her, and she forgets her bands,
And her old woe-worn face a little while
Grows young and noble; unto thee the Oppressor
Looks, and is dumb with awe;
The eternal law,
Which makes the crime its own blindfold redresser, 30
Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding,
And he can see the grim-eyed Doom
From out the trembling gloom
Its silent-footed steeds towards his palace goading.

What promises hast thou for Poets' eyes,
A-weary of the turmoil and the wrong!
To all their hopes what overjoyed replies!
What undreamed ecstasies for blissful song!
Thy happy plains no war-trump's brawling clangor
Disturbs, and fools the poor to hate the poor; 40
The humble glares not on the high with anger;
Love leaves no grudge at less, no greed for more;
In vain strives Self the godlike sense to smother;
From the soul's deeps
It throbs and leaps;
The noble 'neath foul rags beholds his long-lost brother.

To thee the Martyr looketh, and his fires
Unlock their fangs and leave his spirit free;
To thee the Poet mid his toil aspires,
And grief and hunger climb about his knee, 50
Welcome as children; thou upholdest
The lone Inventor by his demon haunted;
The Prophet cries to thee when hearts are coldest,
And gazing o'er the midnight's bleak abyss,
Sees the drowsed soul awaken at thy kiss,
And stretch its happy arms and leap up disenchanted.

Thou bringest vengeance, but so loving-kindly
The guilty thinks it pity; taught by thee,
Fierce tyrants drop the scourges wherewith blindly
Their own souls they were scarring; conquerors see 60
With horror in their hands the accursed spear
That tore the meek One's side on Calvary,
And from their trophies shrink with ghastly fear;
Thou, too, art the Forgiver,
The beauty of man's soul to man revealing;
The arrows from thy quiver
Pierce Error's guilty heart, but only pierce for healing.

Oh, whither, whither, glory-wingèd dreams,
From out Life's, sweat and turmoil would ye bear me?
Shut, gates of Fancy, on your golden gleams,-- 70
This agony of hopeless contrast spare me!
Fade, cheating glow, and leave me to my night!
He is a coward, who would borrow
A charm against the present sorrow
From the vague Future's promise of delight:
As life's alarums nearer roll,
The ancestral buckler calls,
Self-clanging from the walls
In the high temple of the soul;
Where are most sorrows, there the poet's sphere is, 80
To feed the soul with patience,
To heal its desolations
With words of unshorn truth, with love that never wearies.

HEBE

I saw the twinkle of white feet,
I saw the flush of robes descending;
Before her ran an influence fleet,
That bowed my heart like barley bending.

As, in bare fields, the searching bees Pilot to blooms beyond our finding, It led me on, by sweet degrees Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding.

Those Graces were that seemed grim Fates;
With nearer love the sky leaned o'er me;
The long-sought Secret's golden gates
On musical hinges swung before me.

I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp
Thrilling with godhood; like a lover
I sprang the proffered life to clasp;--
The beaker fell; the luck was over.

The Earth has drunk the vintage up;
What boots it patch the goblet's splinters?
Can Summer fill the icy cup,
Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's?

O spendthrift haste! await the Gods; The nectar crowns the lips of Patience; Haste scatters on unthankful sods The immortal gift in vain libations.

Coy Hebe flies from those that woo,
And shuns the hands would seize upon her;
Follow thy life, and she will sue
To pour for thee the cup of honor.

THE SEARCH

I went to seek for Christ,
And Nature seemed so fair
That first the woods and fields my youth enticed,
And I was sure to find him there:
The temple I forsook,
And to the solitude
Allegiance paid; but winter came and shook
The crown and purple from my wood;
His snows, like desert sands, with scornful drift,
Besieged the columned aisle and palace-gate;
My Thebes, cut deep with many a solemn rift,
But epitaphed her own sepulchered state:
Then I remembered whom I went to seek,
And blessed blunt Winter for his counsel bleak.

Back to the world I turned,
For Christ, I said, is King;
So the cramped alley and the hut I spurned,
As far beneath his sojourning:
Mid power and wealth I sought,
But found no trace of him,
And all the costly offerings I had brought
With sudden rust and mould grew dim:
I found his tomb, indeed, where, by their laws,
All must on stated days themselves imprison,
Mocking with bread a dead creed's grinning jaws,
Witless how long the life had thence arisen;
Due sacrifice to this they set apart,
Prizing it more than Christ's own living heart.

So from my feet the dust
Of the proud World I shook;
Then came dear Love and shared with me his crust.
And half my sorrow's burden took.
After the World's soft bed,
Its rich and dainty fare,
Like down seemed Love's coarse pillow to my head,
His cheap food seemed as manna rare;
Fresh-trodden prints of bare and bleeding feet,
Turned to the heedless city whence I came,
Hard by I saw, and springs of worship sweet
Gushed from my cleft heart smitten by the same;
Love looked me in the face and spake no words,
But straight I knew those footprints were the Lord's.

I followed where they led,
And in a hovel rude,
With naught to fence the weather from his head,
The King I sought for meekly stood;
A naked, hungry child
Clung round his gracious knee,
And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled
To bless the smile that set him free:
New miracles I saw his presence do,--
No more I knew the hovel bare and poor,
The gathered chips into a woodpile grew,
The broken morsel swelled to goodly store;
I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek,
His throne is with the outcast and the weak.

THE PRESENT CRISIS

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe, When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro; At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart. 10

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod, Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod.

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong; Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;-- In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. 20

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand, Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land? Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong, And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong. 30

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,-- Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. 40

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great. Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din. List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,-- 'They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.'

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood, Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood, Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day, Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;-- Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play? 50

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,--they were souls that stood alone, While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design. 60

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track, Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back, And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned.

For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. 70

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;-- Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time? Turn those tracks toward Past or Future that make Plymouth Rock sublime?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's; But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free. Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee 70 The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires, Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires; Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay, From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key. 90

AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE

What visionary tints the year puts on,
When falling leaves falter through motionless air
Or humbly cling and shiver to be gone!
How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare,
As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills
The bowl between me and those distant hills,
And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!

No more the landscape holds its wealth apart,
Making me poorer in my poverty,
But mingles with my senses and my heart; 10
My own projected spirit seems to me
In her own reverie the world to steep;
'Tis she that waves to sympathetic sleep,
Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill and tree.

How fuse and mix, with what unfelt degrees,
Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms,
Each into each, the hazy distances!
The softened season all the landscape charms;
Those hills, my native village that embay,
In waves of dreamier purple roll away, 20
And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering farms.

Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee
Close at my side; far distant sound the leaves;
The fields seem fields of dream, where Memory
Wanders like gleaning Ruth; and as the sheaves
Of wheat and barley wavered in the eye
Of Boaz as the maiden's glow went by,
So tremble and seem remote all things the sense receives.