Chapter II: Part 2

The ecstasy of Faith has no such fears
As those you nurse for me! The marvellous love,
Which folds the systems in a flood of light,
Makes no crude works to shatter out of joint
Through all the future. O, believe, with me,
For every instinct in these hearts of ours
A full fruition hastens! O, believe
That promise greater than our greatest trust
And loftiest aspiration! Tell thy friend,
Beside my grave: “He did the best he could,
With earnest spirit polishing the lens
By which he took the heavens in his ken,
And through the empyrean sought for God;
He caught, or thought he caught, from time to time,
Bright glimpses of the Infinite, on which
He fed in rapturous and quiet joy,
That helped him keep a host of troubles down.
He went his way,—a different path from mine,
But took his place among the ranks of men
Who toil and suffer. If, in sooth, it be
Religion keeps us up, this man had that.
God grant his yearnings were a living faith!
Heaven lies above us: may we find him there
Beside the waters still, and crowned with palms!”

THE FRESHET.

A CONNECTICUT IDYL.

Last August, of a three weeks’ country tour,
Five dreamy days were passed amid old elms
And older mansions, and in leafy dales,
That knew us till our elders pushed us forth
To larger life,—as eagles push their young,
New-fledged and wondering, from the eyrie’s edge,
To cater for themselves.

I fell in, there,
With Gilbert Ripley, once my chum at Yale.
Poor Gilbert groaned along a double year,—
Read, spoke, boxed, fenced, rowed, trod the foot-ball ground,—
Loving the college library more than Greek,
His meerschaum most of all. But when we came
Together, gathered from the breathing-time
They give the fellows while the dog-days last,
He found the harness chafe; then grew morose,
And kicked above the traces, going home
Hardly a Junior, but a sounder man,
In mind and body, than a host who win
Your baccalaureate honors. There he stayed,
Half tired of bookmen, on his father’s farm,
And gladly felt the plough-helve. In a year
The old man gave his blessing to the son,
And left his life, as ’twere his harvest-field,
When work was over. Gilbert hugged the farm,
Now made his own, besides a pretty sum
In good State Sixes; partly worked the land,
With separate theories for every field,
And partly led the student-life of old,
Mouthing his Shakespeare’s ballads to himself
Among the meadow-mows; or, when he read
In the evening, found a picture of his bull,
Just brought from Devon, sleek as silk, loom in
Before his vision. Thus he weighed his tastes,
Each against each, in happiest equipoise.
The neighbor farmers seeing he had thrift
That would not run to waste, and pardoning all
Beyond their understanding, wished him well.

But when I saw him stride among his stock,—
Straight-shouldered cattle, breathing of the field,—
Saw him how blowze and hearty; then, at eve,
Close sitting by his mother in the porch,
Heard him discuss the methods of the times,
The need our country has of stalwart men,
Who scorn the counter and will till the land,
Strong-handed, free of thought,—I somehow felt
The man was noble, and his simple life
More like the pattern given in the Mount
Than mine, hedged close about with city life
And grim, conventional manners.

So much, then,
For Gilbert Ripley. Not to dwell too long
Upon his doings, let me tell the tale
I got from him, one hazy afternoon,
When he and I had wandered to the bridge,
New-built across our favorite of the streams
That skirt the village,—here three miles apart,
Twin currents, joining in a third below.

There memory’s shallop bore us dreamily,
Through changeful windings, to the long, long days
Of June vacations. How we boys would thrid
The alder thickets at the water’s edge,
Conjecturing forward, though the Present lay
Like Eden round us; for the Future shone—
The sun to which each young heart turned for light!
What wild conceits of great, oracular lives,
Ourselves would equal! but let that go by:
Each has gone by, in turn, to humbler fates.
Sometimes we angled, and our trolling hooks
Swung the gray pickerel from his reedy shoals.
Beyond a horseshoe bend, the current’s force
Wore out a deeper channel, where the shore
Fell off, precipitous, on the western side.
There dived the bathers; there I learned to swim,—
Flung far into the middle stream by one
Who watched my gaspings, laughing, till my limbs,
Half of themselves, struck out, and held me up.
Far down, a timbered dam, from bank to bank,
Shut back the waters in a shadowy lake,
About a mimic island. Languidly
The chestnuts still infoliate its space,
And still the whispering flags are intertwined
With whitest water-lilies near the marge.
Close by, the paper-mill, with murmurous wheel,
Still glistens through the branches, while its score
Of laughing maidens throng the copse at noon.

But we, with careless arms upon the rail,
Peered through and through the water; almost saw
Its silvery Naiads, from their wavering depths,
Gleam with strange faces upward; almost heard
Sweet voices carol: “Ah, you all come back!
We charm your childhood; then you roam away,
To float on alien waters, like the winds;
But, ah, you all come back,—come dreaming back!”

At last I broke the silence: “See,” I said
To Gilbert, “see how fair our dear old stream!
How calm, beneath the shadow of these piers,
It eddies in and out, and cools itself
In slumberous ripples whispering repose.”

But he made answer: “Yes, this August day
The wave is summer-charmed, the fields are hazed;
But in the callow Spring, when Easter winds
Are on us, laden with rain, these fickle streams—
More gentle now than in his cradled sleep
Some Alexander—take up arms, spread wide,
Leap high and cruel in a fierce campaign
Along their valleys. See this trellised bridge,
New-built, and firmer than the one from which
We fellows dropped the line:—_that_ went away
Two years ago, like straw before a gale,
In the great April flood, of which you heard,
When George and Lucy Dorrance lost their lives.
I saw them perish. You remember her,—
She that was Lucy Hall,—a charming girl,
The fairest of our schoolmates, with a heart
Light as her smile and fastened all upon
The boy that won her; yet her glances fell
Among us, right and left, like shooting stars
In clear October nights when winds are still.

“That year our Equinoctial came along
Ere the snow left us. Under mountain pines
White drifts lay frozen like the dead, and down
Through many a gorge the bristling hemlocks crossed
Their spears above the ice-enfettered brooks;
But the pent river wailed, through prison walls,
For freedom and the time to rend its chains.
At last it came: five days a drenching rain
Flooded the country; snow-drifts fell away;
The brooks grew rivers, and the river here—
A ravenous, angry torrent—tore up banks,
And overflowed the meadows, league on league.
Great cakes of ice, four-square, with mounds of hay,
Fence-rails, and scattered drift-wood, and huge beams
From broken dams above us, mill-wheel ties,
Smooth lumber, and the torn-up trunks of trees,
Swept downward, strewing all the land about.
Sometimes the flood surrounded, unawares,
Stray cattle, or a flock of timorous sheep,
And bore them with it, struggling, till the ice
Beat shape and being from them. You know how
These freshets scour our valleys. So it raged
A night and day; but when the day grew night
The storm fell off; lastly, the sun went down
Quite clear of clouds, and ere he came again
The flood began to lower.

“Through the rise
We men had been at work, like water-sprites,
Lending a helping hand to cottagers
Along the lowlands. Now, at early morn,
The banks were sentry-lined with thrifty swains,
Who hauled great stores of drift-wood up the slope.
But toward the bridge our village maidens soon
Came flocking, thick as swallows after storms,
When, with light wing, they skim the happy fields
And greet the sunshine. Danger mostly gone,
They watched the thunderous passage of the flood
Between the abutments, while the upper stream,
Far as they saw, lay like a seething strait,
From hill to hill. Below, with gradual fall
Through narrower channels, all was clash and clang
And inarticulate tumult. Through the grove
Yonder, our picnic-ground, the driving tide
Struck a new channel, and the craggy ice
Scored down its saplings. Following with the rest
Came George and Lucy, not three honeymoons
Made man and wife, and happier than a pair
Of cooing ring-doves in the early June.

“Two piers, you know, bore up the former bridge,
Cleaving the current, wedge-like, on the north;
Between them stood our couple, intergrouped
With many others. On a sudden loomed
An immolating terror from above,—
A floating field of ice, where fifty cakes
Had clung together, mingled with a mass
Of _débris_ from the upper conflict, logs
Woven in with planks and fence-rails; and in front
One huge, old, fallen trunk rose like a wall
Across the channel. Then arose a cry
From all who saw it, clamoring, _Flee the bridge!_
_Run shoreward for your lives!_ and all made haste,
Eastward and westward, till they felt the ground
Stand firm beneath them; but, with close-locked arms,
Lucy and George still looked, from the lower rail,
Toward the promontory where we stood,
Nor saw the death, nor seemed to hear the cry.
_Run George! run Lucy!_ shouted all at once;
Too late, too late! for, with resistless crash,
Against both piers that mighty ruin lay
A space that seemed an hour, yet far too short
For rescue. Swaying slowly back and forth,
With ponderous tumult, all the bridge went off;
Piers, beams, planks, railings snapped their groaning ties
And fell asunder!

“But the middle part,
Wrought with great bolts of iron, like a raft
Held out awhile, whirled onward in the wreck
This way and that, and washed with freezing spray.
Faster than I can tell you, it came down
Beyond our point, and in a flash we saw
George, on his knees, close-clinging for dear life,
One arm around the remnant of the rail,
One clasping Lucy. We were pale as they,
Powerless to save; but even as they swept
Across the bend, and twenty stalwart men
Ran to and fro with clamor for _A rope!_
_A boat!_—their cries together reached the shore:
_Save her! Save him!_—so true Love conquers all.
Furlongs below they still more closely held
Each other, ’mid a thousand shocks of ice
And seething horrors; till, at last, the end
Came, where the river, scornful of its bed,
Struck a new channel, roaring through the grove.
There, dashed against a naked beech that stood
Grimly in front, their shattered raft gave up
Its precious charge; and then a mist of tears
Blinded all eyes, through which we seemed to see
Two forms in death-clasp whirled along the flood,
And all was over.

“Then from out the crowd
Certain went up the lane, and broke the news
To Lucy’s widowed mother; she spoke not,
Nor wept, nor murmured, but with stony glare
Took in her loss, like Niobe, and to bed
Moved stolidly and never rose again.
Old Farmer Dorrance gave a single groan,
And hurried down among us—all the man,
Though white with anguish—as we took our course
Around the meadows, searching for the dead.

“An eddying gulf ran up the hither bank,
Close by the paper-mill, and there the flood
Gave back its booty; there we found them laid,
Covered with floating leaves and twigs of trees,
Not many feet apart: so Love’s last clasp
Held lingeringly, until the cruel ice
Battered its fastenings. On a rustic bier,
Made of loose boughs and strewn with winter ferns,
We placed them, side by side, and bore them home.
The old man walked behind them, by himself,
And wrung his hands and bowed his head in tears.”

So Gilbert told his story; I, meanwhile,
Followed his finger’s pointing, as it marked
Each spot he mentioned, like a teacher’s wand.
But now the sun hung low; from many a field
The loitering kine went home with tinkling bells.
Slow-turning, toward the farm we made our way,
And met a host of maidens, merry-eyed,
Whom I knew not, yet caught a frequent glance
I seemed to know, that half-way brought to mind
Sweet eyes I loved to watch in school-boy days,—
Sweet sister-eyes to those that glistened now.

THE SLEIGH-RIDE.

Hark! the jingle
Of the sleigh-bells’ song!
Earth and air in snowy sheen commingle;
Swiftly throng
Norseland fancies, as we sail along.

Like the maiden
Of some fairy-tale,
Lying, spell-bound, in her diamond-laden
Bridal veil,
Sleeps the Earth beneath a garment pale.

High above us
Gleams the ancient moon,
Gleam the eyes of shining ones that love us:
Could their tune
Only fill our ears at heaven’s noon,

You and I, love,
With a wild delight,
Hearing that seraphic strain would die, love,
This same night,
Straight to join them in their starry height!

Closer nestle,
Dearest, to my side.
What enchantment, in our magic vessel
Thus to glide,
Making music, on a silver tide!

Jingle! jingle!
How the fields go by!
Earth and air in snowy sheen commingle,
Far and nigh;
Is the ground beneath us, or the sky?

Heavenward yonder,
In the lurid north,
From Valhalla’s gates that roll asunder,
Red and wroth,
Balder’s funeral flames are blazing forth.

O, what splendor!
How the hues expire!
All the elves of light their tribute render
To the pyre,
Clad in robes of gold and crimson fire.

Jingle! jingle!
Let the Earth go by!
With a wilder thrill our pulses tingle;
You and I
Will shout our loves, but aye forget to sigh!

THE BALLAD OF LAGER BIER.

In fallow college days, Tom Harland,
We both have known the ways of Yale,
And talked of many a nigh and far land,
O’er many a famous tap of ale.
There still they sing their Gaudeamus,
And see the road to glory clear;
But taps, that in our day were famous,
Have given place to Lager Bier.

Now, settled in this island-city,
We let new fashions have their weight;
Though none too lucky—more’s the pity!—
Can still beguile our humble state
By finding time to come together,
In every season of the year,
In sunny, wet, or windy weather,
And clink our mugs of Lager Bier.

On winter evenings, cold and blowing,
’Tis good to order “’alf-and-’alf”;
To watch the fire-lit pewter glowing,
And laugh a hearty English laugh;
Or even a sip of mountain whiskey
Can raise a hundred phantoms dear
Of days when boyish blood was frisky,
And no one heard of Lager Bier.

We’ve smoked in summer with Oscanyan,
Cross-legged in that defunct bazaar,
Until above our heads the banyan
Or palm-tree seemed to spread afar;
And, then and there, have drunk his sherbet,
Tinct with the roses of Cashmere:
That Orient calm! who would disturb it
With Norseland calls for Lager Bier?

There’s Paris chocolate,—nothing sweeter,
At midnight, when the dying strain,
Just warbled by La Favorita,
Still hugs the music-haunted brain;
Yet of all bibulous compoundings,
Extracts or brewings, mixed or clear,
The best, in substance and surroundings,
For frequent use, is Lager Bier.

Karl Schæffer is a stalwart brewer,
Who has above his vaults a hall,
Where—fresh-tapped, foaming, cool, and pure—
He serves the nectar out to all.
Tom Harland, have you any money?
Why, then, we’ll leave this hemisphere,
This western land of milk and honey,
For one that flows with Lager Bier.

Go, flaxen-haired and blue-eyed maiden,
My German Hebe! hasten through
Yon smoke-cloud, and return thou laden
With bread and cheese and bier for two.
Limburger suits this bearded fellow;
His brow is high, his taste severe:
But I’m for Schweitzer, mild and yellow,
To eat with bread and Lager Bier.

Ah, yes! the Schweitzer hath a savor
Of marjoram and mountain thyme,
An odoriferous, Alpine flavor;
You almost hear the cow-bells chime
While eating it, or, dying faintly,
The _Ranz-des-vaches_ entrance the ear,
Until you feel quite Swiss and saintly,
Above your glass of Lager Bier.

Here comes our drink, froth-crowned and sunlit,
In goblets with high-curving arms,
Drawn from a newly opened runlet,
As bier must be, to have its charms.
This primal portion each shall swallow
At one draught, for a pioneer;
And thus a ritual usage follow
Of all who honor Lager Bier.

Glass after glass in due succession,
Till, borne through midriff, heart, and brain,
He mounts his throne and takes possession,—
The genial Spirit of the grain!
Then comes the old Berserker madness
To make each man a priest and seer,
And, with a Scandinavian gladness,
Drink deeper draughts of Lager Bier!

Go, maiden, fill again our glasses!
While, with anointed eyes, we scan
The blouse Teutonic lads and lasses,
The Saxon—Pruss—Bohemian,
The sanded floor, the cross-beamed gables,
The ancient Flemish paintings queer,
The rusty cup-stains on the tables,
The terraced kegs of Lager Bier.

And is it Göttingen, or Gotha,
Or Munich’s ancient Wagner Brei,
Where each Bavarian drinks his quota,
And swings a silver tankard high?
Or some ancestral Gast-Haus lofty
In Nuremburg—of famous cheer
When Hans Sachs lived, and where, so oft, he
Sang loud the praise of Lager Bier?

For even now some curious glamour
Has brought about a misty change!
Things look, as in a moonlight dream, or
Magician’s mirror, quaint and strange.
Some weird, phantasmagoric notion
Impels us backward many a year,
And far across the northern ocean,
To Fatherlands of Lager Bier.

As odd a throng I see before us
As ever haunted Brocken’s height,
Carousing, with unearthly chorus,
On any wild Walpurgis-night;
I see the wondrous art-creations!
In proper guise they all appear,
And, in their due and several stations,
Unite in drinking Lager Bier.

I see in yonder nook a trio:
There’s Doctor Faust, and, by his side,
Not half so love-distraught as Io,
Is gentle Margaret, heaven-eyed;
That man in black beyond the waiter—
I know him by his fiendish leer—
Is Mephistophiles, the traitor!
And how he swigs his Lager Bier!

Strange if great Goethe should have blundered,
Who says that Margaret slipt and fell
In Anno Domini Sixteen Hundred,
Or thereabout; and Faustus,—well,
We won’t deplore his resurrection,
Since Margaret is with him here,
But, under her serene protection,
May boldly drink our Lager Bier.

That bare-legged gypsy, small and lithy,
Tanned like an olive by the sun,
Is little Mignon; sing us, prithee,
_Kennst du das Land_, my pretty one!
Ah, no! she shakes her southern tresses,
As half in doubt and more in fear;
Perhaps the elvish creature guesses
We’ve had too much of Lager Bier.

There moves, full-bodiced, ripe, and human,
With merry smiles to all who come,
Karl Schæffer’s wife,—the very woman
Whom Rubens drew his Venus from!
But what a host of tricksome graces
Play round our fairy Undine here,
Who pouts at all the bearded faces,
And, laughing, brings the Lager Bier.

“Sit down, nor chase the vision farther,
You’re tied to Yankee cities still!”
I hear you, but so much the rather
Should Fancy travel where she will.
Yet let the dim ideals scatter;
One puff, and lo! they disappear;
The comet, next, or some such matter,
We’ll talk above our Lager Bier.

Now, then, your eyes begin to brighten,
And marvellous theories to flow;
A philosophic theme you light on,
And, spurred and booted, off you go!
If e’er—to drive Apollo’s phaeton—
I need an earthly charioteer,
This tall-browed genius I will wait on,
And prime him first with Lager Bier.

But higher yet, in middle Heaven,
Your steed seems taking flight, my friend;
You read the secret of the Seven,
And on through trackless regions wend!
Don’t vanish in the Milky Way, for
This afternoon you’re wanted here;
Come back! come back! and help me pay for
The bread and cheese and Lager Bier.

HOW OLD BROWN TOOK HARPER’S FERRY.

John Brown in Kansas settled, like a steadfast Yankee farmer,
Brave and godly, with four sons, all stalwart men of might.
There he spoke aloud for freedom, and the Border-strife grew warmer,
Till the Rangers fired his dwelling, in his absence, in the night;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Came homeward in the morning—to find his house burned down.

Then he grasped his trusty rifle and boldly fought for freedom;
Smote from border unto border the fierce, invading band;
And he and his brave boys vowed—so might Heaven help and speed ’em!—
They would save those grand old prairies from the curse that blights
the land;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Said, “Boys, the Lord will aid us!” and he shoved his ramrod down.

And the Lord _did_ aid these men, and they labored day and even,
Saving Kansas from its peril; and their very lives seemed charmed,
Till the ruffians killed one son, in the blessed light of Heaven,—
In cold blood the fellows slew him, as he journeyed all unarmed;
Then Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Shed not a tear, but shut his teeth, and frowned a terrible frown!

Then they seized another brave boy,—not amid the heat of battle,
But in peace, behind his ploughshare,—and they loaded him with chains,
And with pikes, before their horses, even as they goad their cattle,
Drove him cruelly, for their sport, and at last blew out his brains;
Then Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Raised his right hand up to Heaven, calling Heaven’s vengeance down.

And he swore a fearful oath, by the name of the Almighty,
He would hunt this ravening evil that had scathed and torn him so;
He would seize it by the vitals; he would crush it day and night; he
Would so pursue its footsteps, so return it blow for blow,
That Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Should be a name to swear by, in backwoods or in town!

Then his beard became more grizzled, and his wild blue eye grew wilder,
And more sharply curved his hawk’s-nose, snuffing battle from afar;
And he and the two boys left, though the Kansas strife waxed milder,
Grew more sullen, till was over the bloody Border War,
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Had gone crazy, as they reckoned by his fearful glare and frown.

So he left the plains of Kansas and their bitter woes behind him,
Slipt off into Virginia, where the statesmen all are born,
Hired a farm by Harper’s Ferry, and no one knew where to find him,
Or whether he’d turned parson, or was jacketed and shorn;
For Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Mad as he was, knew texts enough to wear a parson’s gown.

He bought no ploughs and harrows, spades and shovels, and such trifles;
But quietly to his rancho there came, by every train,
Boxes full of pikes and pistols, and his well-beloved Sharp’s rifles;
And eighteen other madmen joined their leader there again.
Says Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
“Boys, we’ve got an army large enough to march and take the town!

“Take the town, and seize the muskets, free the negroes and then arm
them;
Carry the County and the State, ay, and all the potent South.
On their own heads be the slaughter, if their victims rise to harm them—
These Virginians! who believed not, nor would heed the warning mouth.”
Says Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
“The world shall see a Republic, or my name is not John Brown.”

’Twas the sixteenth of October, on the evening of a Sunday:
“This good work,” declared the captain, “shall be on a holy night!”
It was on a Sunday evening, and before the noon of Monday,
With two sons, and Captain Stephens, fifteen privates—black and white,
Captain Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Marched across the bridged Potomac, and knocked the sentry down;

Took the guarded armory-building, and the muskets and the cannon;
Captured all the county majors and the colonels, one by one;
Scared to death each gallant scion of Virginia they ran on,
And before the noon of Monday, I say, the deed was done.
Mad Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
With his eighteen other crazy men, went in and took the town.

Very little noise and bluster, little smell of powder made he;
It was all done in the midnight, like the Emperor’s _coup d’état_.
“Cut the wires! Stop the rail-cars! Hold the streets and bridges!” said
he,
Then declared the new Republic, with himself for guiding star,—
This Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown;
And the bold two thousand citizens ran off and left the town.

Then was riding and railroading and expressing here and thither;
And the Martinsburg Sharpshooters and the Charlestown Volunteers,
And the Shepherdstown and Winchester Militia hastened whither
Old Brown was said to muster his ten thousand grenadiers.
General Brown!
Osawatomie Brown!!
Behind whose rampant banner all the North was pouring down.

But at last, ’tis said, some prisoners escaped from Old Brown’s durance,
And the effervescent valor of the Chivalry broke out,
When they learned that nineteen madmen had the marvellous assurance—
Only nineteen—thus to seize the place and drive them straight about;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Found an army come to take him, encamped around the town.

But to storm, with all the forces I have mentioned, was too risky;
So they hurried off to Richmond for the Government Marines,
Tore them from their weeping matrons, fired their souls with Bourbon
whiskey,
Till they battered down Brown’s castle with their ladders and machines;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Received three bayonet stabs, and a cut on his brave old crown.

Tallyho! the old Virginia gentry gather to the baying!
In they rushed and killed the game, shooting lustily away;
And whene’er they slew a rebel, those who came too late for slaying,
Not to lose a share of glory, fired their bullets in his clay;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Saw his sons fall dead beside him, and between them laid him down.

How the conquerors wore their laurels; how they hastened on the trial;
How Old Brown was placed, half dying, on the Charlestown court-house
floor;
How he spoke his grand oration, in the scorn of all denial;
What the brave old madman told them,—these are known the country o’er.
“Hang Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,”
Said the judge, “and all such rebels!” with his most judicial frown.

But, Virginians, don’t do it! for I tell you that the flagon,
Filled with blood of Old Brown’s offspring, was first poured by
Southern hands;
And each drop from Old Brown’s life-veins, like the red gore of the
dragon,
May spring up a vengeful Fury, hissing through your slave-worn lands!
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
May trouble you more than ever, when you’ve nailed his coffin down!

NOVEMBER, 1859.

SONNETS.

HOPE DEFERRED.

Bring no more flowers and books and precious things!
O speak no more of our beloved Art,
Of summer haunts,—melodious wanderings
In leafy refuge from this weary mart!
Surely such thoughts were dear unto my heart;
Now every word a newer sadness brings!
Thus oft some forest-bird, caged far apart
From verdurous freedom, droops his careless wings,
Nor craves for more than food from day to day;
So long bereft of wildwood joy and song,
Hopeless of all he dared to hope so long,
The music born within him dies away;
Even the song he loved becomes a pain,
Full-freighted with a yearning all in vain.

A MOTHER’S PICTURE.

She seemed an angel to our infant eyes!
Once, when the glorifying moon revealed
Her who at evening by our pillow kneeled,—
Soft-voiced and golden-haired, from holy skies
Flown to her loves on wings of Paradise,—
We looked to see the pinions half concealed.
The Tuscan vines and olives will not yield
Her back to me, who loved her in this wise,
And since have little known her, but have grown
To see another mother, tenderly
Watch over sleeping children of my own.
Perchance the years have changed her: yet alone
This picture lingers; still she seems to me
The fair young angel of my infancy.

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH.

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH.

ELFIN SONG.

FROM “THE RIME OF THE ELLE-KING.”

1. Far in the western ocean’s breast
The summer fairies have found a nest;
The heavens ever unclouded smile
Over the breadth of their beautiful isle;
Through it a hundred streamlets flow,
In spangled paths, to the sea below,
And woo the vales that beside them lie
With a low and tremulous minstrelsy.
The elfin brood have homes they love
In the earth below and skies above;
But the haunt which of all they love the best
Is the palm-crowned isle, in the ocean’s breast,
That mortals call Canary;
And many an Ariel, blithesome, airy,
And each laughing Fay and lithesome Fairy,
Know well the mystical way in the West
To the sweet isle of Canary.

2. With an ever-sounding choral chant,
And a clear, cerulean, wild desire
To clasp that fairy island nigher,
The sinuous waves of ocean pant;
For here all natural things are free
To mingle in passionate harmony.
The light from their mirror turns away
With a golden splendor, in the day,
But nightly, when coroneted Even
Marshals the shining queen of heaven,
There gleams a silvery scenery,
From the rim of the great prismatic sea
Around the isle of Canary,
To the central crags of Pisgatiri,
Where the crested eagle builds his eyry,
Scanning the shores of sweet Canary.

3. Lustrously sailing here and there,
Afloat in the beatific air,
Birds, of purple and blue and gold,
Pour out their music manifold;
All day long in the leas they sing,
While the sun-kissed flowers are blossoming;
At eve, when the dew-drop feeds the rose,
And the fragrant water-lilies close,
The marvellous-throated nightingale
With a dying music floods each vale,
Till the seaward breezes, listening, stay
To catch the harmony of his lay
And cool the air of Canary;
And thus the melodies ever vary,
In the vales of the ocean aviary,
In the blissful valleys of sweet Canary.

4. The Elle-King’s palace was builded there
By elves of water and earth and air;
Lovingly worked each loyal sprite,
And it grew to life in a summer night.
Over the sheen of its limpid moat,
Wafted along, in a magic boat,
By fairy wings that fan the sails,
And eddying through enchanted vales,
Through walls of amber and crystal gates,
We come where a fairy warder waits;
And so, by many a winding way
Where sweet bells jingle and fountains play,
To the inmost, royalest room of all,—
The elfin monarch’s reception-hall,
The pearl and pride of Canary!
To guard its fastness the elves are wary,
And no weird thing, of pleasure chary,
Can enter with evil in sweet Canary!

5. All that saddens, and care and pain,
Are banished far from that fair domain;
There forever, by day and night,
Is naught but pleasance and love’s delight;
Daily, the Genii of the flowers
Shade with beauty a hundred bowers;
Nightly, the Gnomes of precious stones
Emblazon and light a hundred thrones;
And the Elves of the field, so swift and mute,
Bring wine and honey and luscious fruit;
And the Sylphs of the air, at noontide, cool
The depths of each bower and vestibule;
And all are gay,—from the tricksome Fay
Who flutters in woodlands far away,
To the best-beloved attendant Elf,
And the royal heart of the King himself,
Who rules in bright Canary;
And the laboring Fairies are blithe and merry,
Who press the juice from the swollen berry
That reddens the vines of sweet Canary.

6. What if there be a fated day
When the Faëry Isle shall pass away,
And its beautiful groves and fountains seem
The myths of a long, delicious dream!
A century’s joys shall first repay
Our hearts, for the evil of that day;
And the Elfin-King has sworn to wed
A daughter of Earth, whose child shall be,
By cross and water hallowéd,
From the fairies’ doom forever free.
What if there be a fated day!
It is far away! it is far away!
Maiden, fair Maiden, I, who sing
Of this summer isle am the island King.
I come from its joys to make thee mine:
Half of my kingdom shall be thine;
Our horses of air and ocean wait—
Then hasten, and share the Elle-King’s state
In the sweet isle of Canary;
And many an Ariel, blithesome, airy,
And each laughing Fay and lithesome Fairy,
Shall rovingly hover around and over thee,
And the love of a king shall evermore cover thee,
Nightly and daily in sweet Canary.

1850.

AMAVI.

I loved: and in the morning sky,
A magic castle upward grew!
Cloud-haunted turrets pointing high
Forever to the dreamy blue;
Bright fountains leaping through and through
The golden sunshine; on the air
Gay banners streaming;—never drew
Painter or poet scene more fair.

And in that castle I would live,
And in that castle I would die;
And there, in curtained bowers, would give
Heart-warm responses, sigh for sigh;
There, when but one sweet face was nigh,
The hours should lightly move along,
And ripple, as they glided by,
Like stanzas of an antique song.

O foolish heart! O young romance,
That faded with the noonday sun!
Alas, for gentle dalliance,
For life-long pleasures never won!
O for a season dead and gone!
A wizard time, which then did seem
Only a prelude, leading on
To sweeter portions of the dream.

She died,—nor wore my orange flowers:—
No longer, in the morning sky,
That magic castle lifts its towers
Which shone, awhile, so lustrously.
Torn are the bannerols, and dry
The silver fountains in its halls;
But the drear sea, with endless sigh,
Moans round and over the crumbled walls.

Let the winds blow! let the white surge
Ever among those ruins wail!
Its moaning is a welcome dirge
For wishes that could not avail.
Let the winds blow! a fiercer gale
Is wild within me! what may quell
That sullen tempest? I must sail
Whither, O whither, who can tell!

ODE TO PASTORAL ROMANCE.

“_Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not._”

THE TEMPEST.

I.

Queen of the shadowy clime!
Thou of the fairy-spell and wondrous lay:
Sweet Romance! breathe upon my way,
Not with the breath of this degenerate time,
But of that age when life was summer play,
When Nature wore a verdurous hue,
And Earth kept holiday;
When on the ground Chaldæan shepherds lay,
Gazing all night, with calm, creative view,
Into the overhanging blue,
And found, amid the many-twinkling stars,
Warriors and maidens fair,
Heroes of marvellous deeds and direful wars,
Serpents and flaming hair,
The Dragon and the Bear,
A silvery Venus and a lurid Mars.

II.

Come at thy lover’s call,
Thou, that, with embraces kind,
Throwing thy tendrils round the lives of all,
Something in all to beautify dost find!
So thine own ivy, on the Gothic wall,
Or pendent from the arms
Of gnarléd oaks, where’er its clusters fall,
Clings to adorn and adds perennial charms.
And therefore, Romance, would I greet
Thee by the fairest of fair names,
Calling thee debonair and sweet;
For sweet thou art—inspiring Manhood’s dreams,
When all aweary of the actual life;
And sweet thy influence seems
To Woman, shrinking from the strife,
The sordid tumult of the wrangling mart.
But doubly sweet thou art,
Leading the tender child by gentle streams,
Among the lilies of our flowery Youth;
Filling his all-believing heart
With thoughts that glorify the common truth;
Building before him, in the lustrous air,
Ethereal palaces and castles fair.

III.

With such mild innocence the Earth
Received thy blessings at her birth;
And in the pastoral days of yore,
To Man’s enchanted gaze,
Nature was fair—O, how much more
Than in our wiser days!
Then deities of sylvan form,
While yet the hearts of men were young and warm,
Like shepherds wandered through the arching groves,
Or sang aloud, the listening flocks among,
Sweet legends of their loves;
Then Cupid and fair Psyche breathed their vows,—
He with the feathered darts and bow unstrung,
And garlands on his brows;
She folding gently to her bosom doves
Snow-white, forever, as their mistress, young;
And, as they sighed together, peerless Joy
Enwreathed the maiden and the raptured boy!

IV.

Yes! on romantic pilgrimage,
To the calm piety of Nature’s shrine,
Through summer-paths, thou ledst our human-kind,
With influence divine.
In that orient, elden age,
Ere man had learned to wage
Dispassionate war against his natural mind,
Thy voice of mystery,
Reading aloud the Earth’s extended page,
Bade human aspirations find
In the cool fountain and the forest-tree
A sentient imagery;
The flowing river and the murmuring wind,
The land—the sea—
Were all informed by thee!

V.

Through coral grottoes wandering and singing,
The merry Nereid glided to her cave;
Anon, with warm, luxurious motion flinging
Her sinuous form above the moonlit wave,
To the charmed mariner gave
A glimpse of snowy arms and amber tresses,
While on his startled ear
The sea-nymph’s madrigal fell clear;
Then to the far recesses,
Where drowsy Neptune wears the emerald crown,
Serenely floated down,
Leaving the mariner all amort with fear.
In the under-opening wood,
What time the Gods had crowned the full-grown year,
The Dryad and the Hamadryad stood
Among the fallow deer;
Bending the languid branches of their trees,
With every breeze,
To view their image in the fountains near:—
The fountains! whence the white-limbed Naiads sang,
Pouring upon the air melodious trills,
And, while the echoes through the forest rang,
The white-limbed Naiads of a thousand rills
Far o’er the Arcadian vales a pæan spread.
Led by Diana, in the dewy dawn,
The Oread sisters chased the dappled fawn
Through all the coverts of their native hills;
Home, with the spoils, at sultry noon they fled,—
Home to their shaded bowers,
Where, with the ivy, and those sacred flowers
That now have faded from the weary earth,
Each laughing Oread crowned an Oread’s head.
The mountains echoed back their maiden mirth,
Rousing old Pan, who, from a secret lair,
Shook the wild tangles of his frosty hair,
And laid him down again with sullen roar:
But now the frightened nymphs like statues stand,
One balancing her body half in air,
Dreading to hear again that tumult sore;
One, with a liquid tremor in her eye,
Waving above her head a glimmering hand;
Till suddenly, like dreams, away they fly,
Leaving the forest stiller than before!

VI.

Such was thy power, O Pastoral Romance!
In that ambrosial age of classic fame,
The spirit to entrance.
Fain would I whisper of the latter days,
When, in thy royal name,
The mailéd knights encountered lance to lance,
All for sweet Romance and fair ladies’ praise;
But no! I bowed the knee
And vowed allegiance to thee,
As I beheld thee in thy golden prime,
And now from thy demesne must haste away:
Perchance that of the aftertime,
Of nodding plumes and chivalrous array,
In aftertime I sing a roundelay.

VII.

Fair Spirit of ethereal birth,
In whom such mysteries and beauties blend!
Still from thine ancient dwelling-place descend
And idealize our too material earth;
Still to the Bard thy chaste conceptions lend,
To him thine early purity renew;
Round every image grace majestic throw!
Till rapturously the living song shall glow
With inspiration as thy being true,
And Poesy’s creations, decked by thee,
Shall wake the tuneful thrill of sensuous ecstasy.

1850.

ALICE OF MONMOUTH, AN _IDYL OF THE GREAT WAR_; AND OTHER POEMS.

1864.

This Volume
IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY
OF
C. F. S.

DIED: MAY 13, 1863.

ALICE OF MONMOUTH.

I.

1. Hendrick Van Ghelt of Monmouth shore,
His fame still rings the county o’er!
The stock that he raised, the stallion he rode,
The fertile acres his farmers sowed;
The dinners he gave; the yacht which lay
At his fishing-dock in the Lower Bay;
The suits he waged, through many a year,
For a rood of land behind his pier,—
Of these the chronicles yet remain
From Navesink Heights to Freehold Plain.

2. The Shrewsbury people in autumn help
Their sandy toplands with marl and kelp,
And their peach and apple orchards fill
The gurgling vats of the cross-road mill.
They tell, as each twirls his tavern-can,
Wonderful tales of that stanch old man,
And they boast, of the draught they have tasted and smelt,
“’Tis good as the still of Hendrick Van Ghelt!”

3. Were he alive, and at his prime,
In this, our boisterous modern time,
He would surely be, as he could not then,
A stalwart leader of mounted men,—
A ranger, shouting his battle-cry,
Who knew how to fight and dared to die;
And the fame which a county’s limit spanned
Might have grown a legend throughout the land.

4. He would have scoured the Valley through,
Doing as now our bravest do;
Would have tried rough-riding on the border,
Punishing raider and marauder;
With bearded Ashby crossing swords
As he took the Shenandoah fords;
Giving bold Stuart a bloody chase
Ere he reached again his trysting-place.
Horse and horseman of the foe
The blast of his bugle-charge should know,
And his men should water their steeds, at will,
From the banks of Southern river and rill.

5. How many are there of us, in this
Discordant social wilderness,
Whose thriftiest scions the power gain,
Through meet conditions of sun and rain,
To yield, on the fairest blossoming shoot,
A mellow harvest of perfect fruit?
Fashioned after so rare a type,
How should his life grow full and ripe,
There, in the passionless haunts of Peace,
Through trade, and tillage, and wealth’s increase?

6. But at his manor-house he dwelt,
And royally bore the name Van Ghelt;
Nor found a larger part to play
Than such as a county magnate may:
Ruling the hustings as he would,
Lord of the rustic neighborhood;
With potent wishes and quiet words
Holding an undisputed sway.
The broadest meadows, the fattest herds,
The fleetest roadsters, the warmest cheer,—
These were old Hendrick’s many a year.
Daughters unto his hearthstone came,
And a son—to keep the ancient name.

7. Often, perchance, the old man’s eye
From a seaward casement would espy,
Scanning the harborage in the bay,
A ship which idly at anchor lay;
Watching her as she rose and fell,
Up and down, with the evening swell,
Her cordage slackened, her sails unbent,
And all her proud life somnolent.
And perchance he thought—“My life, it seems,
Like her, unfreighted with aught but dreams;
Yet I feel within me a strength to dare
Some outward voyage, I know not where!”
But the forceful impulse wore away
In the common life of every day,
And for Hendrick Van Ghelt no timely hour
Ruffled the calm of that hidden power;
Yet in the prelude of my song
His storied presence may well belong,
As a Lombardy poplar, lithe and hoar,
Stands at a Monmouth farmer’s door,
Set like a spire against the sky,
Marking the hours, while lover and maid
Linger long in its stately shade,
And round its summit the swallows fly.

II.

1. Nature a devious by-way finds: solve me her secret whim,
That the seed of a gnarled oak should sprout to a sapling straight and
prim;
That a russet should grow on the pippin stock, on the garden-rose a
brier;
That a stalwart race, in old Hendrick’s son, should smother its wonted
fire.

Hermann, fond of his book, and shirking the brawny out-door sports;
Sent to college, and choosing for life the law with her mouldy courts;
Proud, and of tender honor, as well became his father’s blood,
But with cold and courtly self-restraint weighing the ill and good;

Wed to a lady whose delicate veins that molten azure held,
Ichor of equal birth, wherewith our gentry their couplings weld;
Viewing his father’s careless modes with half a tolerant eye,
As one who honors, regretting not, old fashions passing by.

After a while the moment came when, unto the son and heir,
A son and heir was given in turn,—a moment of joy and prayer;
For the angel who guards the portals twain oped, in the self-same breath,
To the child the pearly gate of life, to the mother the gate of death.

Father, and son, and an infant plucking the daisies over a grave:
The swell of a boundless surge keeps on, wave following after wave;
Ever the tide of life sets toward the low invisible shore:
Whence had the current its distant source? when shall it flow no more?

2. Nature’s serene renewals, that make the scion by one remove
Bear the ancestral blossom and thrive as the forest wilding throve!
Roseate stream of life, which hides the course its ducts pursue,
To rise, like that Sicilian fount, in far-off springs anew!

For the grandsire’s vigor, rude and rare, asleep in the son had lain,
To waken in Hugh, the grandson’s frame, with the ancient force again;
And ere the boy, said the Monmouth wives, had grown to his seventh year,
Well could you tell whose mantling blood swelled in his temples clear.

Tall, and bent in the meeting brows; swarthy of hair and face;
Shoulders parting square, but set with the future huntsman’s grace;
Eyes alive with a fire which yet the old man’s visage wore
At times, like the flash of a thunder-cloud when the storm is almost
o’er.

3. Toward the mettled stripling, then, the heart of the old man yearned;
And thus—while Hermann Van Ghelt once more, with a restless hunger,
turned
From the grave of her who died so young, to his books and lawyer’s gown,
And the ceaseless clangor of mind with mind in the close and wrangling
town—

They two, the boy and the grandsire, lived at the manor-house, and grew,
The one to all manly arts apace, the other a youth anew—
Pleased with the boy’s free spirit, and teaching him, step by step, to
wield
The mastery over living things, and the craft of flood and field.

Apt, indeed, was the scholar; and born with a subtle art to gain
The love of all dumb creatures at will; now lifting himself, by the mane,
Over the neck of the three-year colt, for a random bareback ride,
Now chasing the waves on the rifted beach at the turn of the evening
tide.

Proud, in sooth, was the master: the youngster, he oft and roundly swore,
Was fit for the life a gentleman led in the lusty days of yore!
And he took the boy wherever he drove,—to a county fair or race;
Gave him the reins and watched him guide the span at a spanking pace;

Taught him the sportsman’s keen delight: to swallow the air of morn,
And start the whistling quail that hides and feeds in the dewy corn;
Or in clear November underwoods to bag the squirrels, and flush
The brown-winged, mottled partridge a-whir from her nest in the tangled
brush;

Taught him the golden harvest laws, and the signs of sun and shower,
And the thousand beautiful secret ways of graft and fruit and flower;
Set him straight in his saddle, and cheered him galloping over the sand;
Sailed with him to the fishing-shoals and placed the helm in his hand.

Often the yacht, with all sail spread, was steered by the fearless twain
Around the beacon of Sandy Hook, and out in the open main;
Till the great sea-surges rolling in, as south-by-east they wore,
Lifted the bows of the dancing craft, and the buoyant hearts she bore.

But in dreamy hours, which young men know, Hugh loved with the tide to
float
Far up the deep, dark-channeled creeks, alone in his two-oared boat;
While a fiery woven tapestry o’erhung the waters low,
The warp of the frosted chestnut, the woof with maple and birch aglow;

Picking the grapes which dangled down; or watching the autumn skies,
The osprey’s slow imperial swoop, the scrawny heron’s rise;
Nursing a longing for larger life than circled a rural home,
An instinct of leadership within, and of action yet to come.

4. Curtain of shifting seasons dropt on moor and meadow and hall,
Open your random vistas of changes that come with time to all!
Hugh grown up to manhood; foremost, searching the county through,
Of the Monmouth youth, in birth and grace, and the strength to will
and do.

The father, past the prime of life, and his temples flecked with toil,
A bookman still, and leaving to Hugh the care of stock and soil.
Hendrick Van Ghelt, a bowed old man in a fireside-corner chair,
Counting the porcelain Scripture tiles which frame the chimney there,—

The shade of the stalwart gentleman the people used to know,
Forgetful of half the present scenes, but mindful of long-ago;
Aroused, mayhap, by growing murmurs of Southern feud, that came
And woke anew in his fading eyes a spark of their ancient flame.

5. Gazing on such a group as this, folds of the curtain drop,
Hiding the grandsire’s form; and the wheels of the sliding picture stop.
Gone, that stout old Hendrick, at last! and from miles around they came,—
Farmer, and squire, and whispering youths, recalling his manhood’s fame.

Dead: and the Van Ghelt manor closed, and the homestead acres leased;
For their owner had moved more near the town, where his daily tasks
increased,
Choosing a home on the blue Passaic, whence the Newark spires and lights
Were seen, and over the salt sea-marsh the shadows of Bergen Heights.

Back and forth from his city work, the lawyer, day by day,
With the press of eager and toiling men, followed his wonted way;
And Hugh,—he dallied with life at home, tending the garden and grounds;
But the mansion longed for a woman’s voice to soften its lonely sounds.

“Hugh,” said Hermann Van Ghelt, at length, “choose for yourself a wife,
Comely, and good, and of birth to match the mother who gave you life.
No words of woman have charmed my ear since last I heard her voice;
And of fairest and proudest maids her son should make a worthy choice.”

But now the young man’s wandering heart from the great world turned away,
To long for the healthful Monmouth meads, the shores of the breezy bay;
And often the scenes and mates he knew in boyhood he sought again,
And roamed through the well-known woods, and lay in the grass where he
once had lain.

III.

Ladies, in silks and laces,
Lunching with lips agleam,
Know you aught of the places
Yielding such fruit and cream?

South from your harbor-islands
Glisten the Monmouth hills;
There are the ocean highlands,
Lowland meadows and rills,

Berries in field and garden,
Trees with their fruitage low,
Maidens (asking your pardon)
Handsome as cities show.

Know you that, night and morning,
A beautiful water-fay,
Covered with strange adorning,
Crosses your rippling bay?

Her sides are white and sparkling;
She whistles to the shore;
Behind, her hair is darkling,
And the waters part before.

Lightly the waves she measures
Up to the wharves of the town;
There, unlading her treasures,
Lovingly puts them down.

Come with me, ladies; cluster
Here on the western pier;
Look at her jewels’ lustre,
Changed with the changing year!

First of the months to woo her,
June his strawberries flings
Over her garniture,
Bringing her exquisite things;

Rifling his richest casket;
Handing her, everywhere,
Garnets in crate and basket;
Knowing she soon will wear

Blackberry jet and lava,
Raspberries ruby-red,
Trinkets that August gave her,
Over her toilet spread.

After such gifts have faded,
Then the peaches are seen,—
Coral and ivory braided,
Fit for an Indian queen.

And September will send her,
Proud of his wealth, and bold,
Melons glowing in splendor,
Emeralds set with gold.

So she glides to the Narrows,
Where the forts are astir:
Her speed is a shining arrow’s!
Guns are silent for her.

So she glides to the ringing
Bells of the belfried town,
Kissing the wharves, and flinging
All of her jewels down.

Whence she gathers her riches,
Ladies, now would you see?
Leaving your city niches,
Wander awhile with me.

IV.

1. The strawberry-vines lie in the sun,
Their myriad tendrils twined in one;
Spread like a carpet of richest dyes,
The strawberry-field in sunshine lies.
Each timorous berry, blushing red,
Has folded the leaves above her head,
The dark, green curtains gemmed with dew;
But each blushful berry, peering through,
Shows like a flock of the underthread,—
The crimson woof of a downy cloth
Where the elves may kneel and plight their troth.

2. Run through the rustling vines, to show
Each picker an even space to go,
Leaders of twinkling cord divide
The field in lanes from side to side;
And here and there with patient care,
Lifting the leafage everywhere,
Rural maidens and mothers dot
The velvet of the strawberry-plot:
Fair and freckled, old and young,
With baskets at their girdles hung,
Searching the plants with no rude haste,
Lest berries should hang unpicked, and waste:—
Of the pulpy, odorous, hidden quest,
First gift of the fruity months, and best.