Chapter VI: Part 6

Even there I heard a strange, wild strain
Sound high above the modern clamor,
Above the cries of greed and gain,
The curbstone war, the auction’s hammer;
And swift, on Music’s misty ways,
It led, from all this strife for millions,
To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days
Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.

And as it stilled the multitude,
And yet more joyous rose, and shriller,
I saw the minstrel, where he stood
At ease against a Doric pillar:
One hand a droning organ played,
The other held a Pan’s-pipe (fashioned
Like those of old) to lips that made
The reeds give out that strain impassioned.

’Twas Pan himself had wandered here
A-strolling through this sordid city,
And piping to the civic ear
The prelude of some pastoral ditty!
The demigod had crossed the seas,—
From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr,
And Syracusan times,—to these
Far shores and twenty centuries later.

A ragged cap was on his head;
But—hidden thus—there was no doubting
That, all with crispy locks o’erspread,
His gnarléd horns were somewhere sprouting;
His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes,
Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them,
And trousers, patched of divers hues,
Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them.

He filled the quivering reeds with sound,
And o’er his mouth their changes shifted,
And with his goat’s-eyes looked around
Where’er the passing current drifted;
And soon, as on Trinacrian hills
The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him,
Even now the tradesmen from their tills,
With clerks and porters, crowded near him.

The bulls and bears together drew
From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley,
As erst, if pastorals be true,
Came beasts from every wooded valley;
The random passers stayed to list,—
A boxer Ægon, rough and merry,
A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst
With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry.

A one-eyed Cyclops halted long
In tattered cloak of army pattern,
And Galatea joined the throng,—
A blowsy, apple-vending slattern;
While old Silenus staggered out
From some new-fangled lunch-house handy,
And bade the piper, with a shout,
To strike up Yankee Doodle Dandy!

A newsboy and a peanut-girl
Like little Fauns began to caper:
His hair was all in tangled curl,
Her tawny legs were bare and taper;
And still the gathering larger grew,
And gave its pence and crowded nigher,
While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew
His pipe, and struck the gamut higher.

O heart of Nature, beating still
With throbs her vernal passion taught her,—
Even here, as on the vine-clad hill,
Or by the Arethusan water!
New forms may fold the speech, new lands
Arise within these ocean-portals,
But Music waves eternal wands,—
Enchantress of the souls of mortals!

So thought I,—but among us trod
A man in blue, with legal baton,
And scoffed the vagrant demigod,
And pushed him from the step I sat on.
Doubting I mused upon the cry,
“Great Pan is dead!”—and all the people
Went on their ways:—and clear and high
The quarter sounded from the steeple.

ANONYMA.

HER CONFESSION.

If I had been a rich man’s girl,
With my tawny hair, and this wanton art
Of lifting my eyes in the evening whirl
And looking into another’s heart;
Had love been mine at birth, and friends
Caressing and guarding me night and day,
With doctors to watch my finger-ends,
And a parson to teach me how to pray;

If I had been reared as others have,—
With but a tithe of these looks, which came
From my reckless mother, now in her grave,
And the father who grudged me even his name,—
Why, I should have station and tender care,
Should ruin men in the high-bred way,
Passionless, smiling at their despair,
And marrying where my vantage lay.

As it is, I must have love and dress,
Jewelled trinkets, and costly food,
For I was born for plenteousness,
Music and flowers, and all things good.
To that same father I owe some thanks,
Seeing, at least, that blood will tell,
And keep me ever above the ranks
Of those who wallow where they fell.

True, there are weary, weary days
In the great hotel where I make my lair,
Where I meet the men with their brutal praise,
Or answer the women, stare for stare.
’Tis an even fight, and I’ll carry it through,—
Pit them against me, great and small:
I grant no quarter, nor would I sue
For grace to the softest of them all.

I cannot remember half the men
Whose sin has tangled them in my toils,—
All are alike before me then,
Part of my easily conquered spoils:
Tall or short, and dark or fair,
Rich or famous, haughty or fond,
There are few, I find, who will not forswear
The lover’s oath and the wedding bond.

Fools! what is it that drives them on
With their perjured lips on poison fed;
Vain of themselves, and cruel as stone,
How should they be so cheaply led?
Surely they know me as I am,—
Only a cuckoo, at the best,
Watching, careless of hate and shame,
To crouch myself in another’s nest.

But the women,—how they flutter and flout,
The stupid, terribly virtuous wives,
If I but chance to move about
Or enter within their bustling hives!
Buz! buz! in the scandalous gatherings,
When a strange queen lights amid their throng,
And their tongues have a thousand angry stings
To send her travelling, right or wrong.

Well, the earth is wide and open to all,
And money and men are everywhere,
And, as I roam, ’twill ill befall
If I do not gain my lawful share:
One drops off; but another will come
With as light a head and heavy a purse;
So long as I have the world for a home,
I’ll take my fortune, better or worse!

SPOKEN AT SEA.

THE LOG-BOOK OF THE STEAMSHIP VIRGINIA.

Twelve hundred miles and more
From the stormy English shore,
All aright, the seventh night,
On her course our vessel bore.
Her lantern shone ahead,
And the green lamp and the red
To starboard and to larboard
Shot their light.

Close on the midnight call
What a mist began to fall,
And to hide the ocean wide,
And to wrap us in a pall!
Beneath its folds we past:
Hidden were shroud and mast,
And faces, in near places
Side by side.

Sudden there also fell
A summons like a knell:
Every ear the words could hear,—
Whence spoken, who could tell?
“What ship is this? where bound?”
Gods, what a dismal sound!
A stranger, and in danger,
Sailing near.

“The Virginia, on her route
From the Mersey, seven days out;
Fore and aft, our trusty craft
Carries a thousand souls, about.”
“All these souls may travel still,
Westward bound, if so they will;
Bodies rather, I would gather!”
Loud he laughed.

“Who is’t that hails so rude,
And for what this idle mood?
Words like these, on midnight seas,
Bode no friend nor fortune good!”
“Care not to know my name,
But whence I lastly came,
At leisure, for my pleasure,
Ask the breeze.

“To the people of your port
Bear a message of this sort:
Say, I haste unto the West,
A sharer of their sport.
Let them sweep the houses clean:
Their fathers did, I ween,
When hearing of my nearing
As a guest!

“As by Halifax ye sail
And the steamship England hail,
Of me, then, bespeak her men;
She took my latest mail,—
’Twas somewhere near this spot:
Doubtless they’ve not forgot.
Remind them (if you find them!)
Once again.

“Yet that you all may know
Who is’t that hailed you so,
(Slow he saith, and under breath,)
I leave my sign below!”
Then from our crowded hold
A dreadful cry uprolled,
Unbroken, and the token,—
It was Death.

THE DUKE’S EXEQUY.

ARRAS, A. D. 1404.

Clothed in sable, crowned with gold,
All his wars and councils ended,
Philip lay, surnamed The Bold:
Passing-bell his quittance tolled,
And the chant of priests ascended.

Mailéd knights and archers stand,
Thronging in the church of Arras;
Nevermore at his command
Shall they scour the Netherland,
Nevermore the outlaws harass;

Naught is left of his array
Save a barren territory;
Forty years of generous sway
Sped his princely hoards away,
Bartered all his gold for glory.

Forth steps Flemish Margaret then,
Striding toward the silent ashes;
And the eyes of arméd men
Fill with startled wonder, when
On the bier her girdle clashes!

Swift she drew it from her waist,
And the purse and keys it carried
On the ducal coffin placed;
Then with proud demeanor faced
Sword and shield of him she married.

“No encumbrance of the dead
Must the living clog forever;
From thy debts and dues,” she said,
“From the liens of thy bed,
We this day our line dissever.

“From thy hand we gain release,
Know all present by this token!
Let the dead repose in peace,
Let the claims upon us cease
When the ties that bound are broken.

“Philip, we have loved thee long,
But, in years of future splendor,
Burgundy shall count among
Bravest deeds of tale and song
This, our widowhood’s surrender.”

Back the stately Duchess turned,
While the priests and friars chanted,
And the swinging incense burned:
Thus by feudal rite was earned
Greatness for a race undaunted.

THE HILLSIDE DOOR.

Sometimes within my hand
A Spirit puts the silver key
Of Fairyland:
From the dark, barren heath he beckons me,
Till by that hidden hillside door,
Where bards have passed before,
I seem to stand.

The portal opens wide:
In, through the wondrous, lighted halls,
Voiceless I glide
Where tinkling music magically falls,
And fair in fountained gardens move
The heroes, blest with love
And glorified.

Then by the meadows green,
Down winding walks of elf and fay,
I pass unseen:
There rest the valiant chieftains wreathed with bay;
Here maidens to their lovers cling,
And happy minstrels sing,
Praising their queen.

For where yon pillars are,
And birds with tuneful voices call,
There shines a star,—
The crown she wears, the Fairy Queen of all!
Led to that inmost, wooded haunt
By maidens ministrant,
I halt afar.

O joy! she sees me stand
Doubting, and calls me near her throne,
And waves her wand,
As in my dreams, and smiles on me alone.
O royal beauty, proud and sweet!
I bow me at her feet
To kiss that hand:

Ah woe! ah, fate malign!
By what a rude, revengeful gust,
From that fair shrine
Which holds my sovran mistress I am thrust!
Then comes a mocking voice’s taunt,
Crying, _Thou fool, avaunt!_
_She is not thine!_

And I am backward borne
By unseen awful hands, and cast,
In utter scorn,
Forth from that brightness to the midnight blast:
Not mine the minstrel-lover’s wreath,
But the dark, barren heath,
And heart forlorn.

AT TWILIGHT.

The sunset darkens in the west,
The sea-gulls haunt the bay,
And far and high the swallows fly
To watch the dying day.
Now where is she that once with me
The rippling waves would list?
And O for the song I loved so long,
And the darling lips I kist!

Yon twinkling sail may whiter gleam
Than falcon’s snowy wing,
Her lances far the evening-star
Beyond the waves may fling;
Float on, ah float, enchanted boat,
Bear true hearts o’er the main,
But I shall guide thy helm no more,
Nor whisper love again!

II.

POEMS OF NATURE.

WOODS AND WATERS.

“O ye valleys! O ye mountains!
O ye groves and crystal fountains!
How I love at liberty,
By turns, to come and visit ye!”

Come, let us burst the cerements and the shroud,
And with the livelong year renew our breath,
Far from the darkness of the city’s cloud
Which hangs above us like the pall of Death.
Haste, let us leave the shadow of his wings!
Off from our cares, a stolen, happy time!
Come where the skies are blue, the uplands green;
For hark! the robin sings
Even here, blithe herald, his auroral rhyme,
Foretelling joy, and June his sovereign queen.

See, in our pavéd courts her missal scroll
Is dropped astealth, and every verdant line,
Emblazoned round with Summer’s aureole,
Pictures to eager eyes, like thine and mine,
Her trees new-leaved and hillsides far away.
Ransom has come: out from this vaulted town,
Poor prisoners of a giant old and blind,
Into the breezy day,
Fleeing the sights and sounds that wear us down,
And in the fields our ancient solace find!

Again I hunger for the living wood,
The laurelled crags, the hemlocks hanging wide,
The rushing stream that will not be withstood,
Bound forward to wed him with the river’s tide:
O what wild leaps through many a fettered pass,
Through knotted ambuscade of root and rock,
How white the plunge, how dark the cloven pool!
Then to rich meadow-grass,
And pastures fed by tinkling herd and flock,
Till the wide stream receives its waters cool.

Again I long for lakes that lie between
High mountains, fringed about with virgin firs,
Where hand of man has never rudely been,
Nor plashing wheel the limpid water stirs;
There let us twain begin the world again
Like those of old; while tree, and trout, and deer
Unto their kindred beings draw our own,
Till more than haunts of men,
Than place and pelf, more welcome these appear,
And better worth sheer life than we had known.

Thither, ay, thither flee, O dearest friend,
From walls wherein we grow so wan and old!
The liberal Earth will still her lovers lend
Water of life and storied sands of gold.
Though of her perfect form thou hast secured
Thy will, some charm shall aye thine hold defy,
And day by day thy passion yet shall grow,
Even as a bridegroom, lured
By the unravished secret of her eye,
Reads the bride’s soul, yet never all can know.

And when from her embrace again thou’rt torn,
(Though well for her the world were thrown away!)
At thine old tasks thou’lt not be quite forlorn,
Remembering where is peace; and thou shalt say,
“I know where beauty has not felt the curse,—
Where, though I age, all round me is so young
That in its youth my soul’s youth mirrored seems;
Yes, in their rippling verse,
For all our toil, they have not falsely sung
Who said there still was rest beyond our dreams.”

TO BAYARD TAYLOR.

WITH A COPY OF THE ILIAD.

Bayard, awaken not this music strong,
While round thy home the indolent sweet breeze
Floats lightly as the summer breath of seas
O’er which Ulysses heard the Sirens’ song.
Dreams of low-lying isles to June belong,
And Circe holds us in her haunts of ease;
But later, when these high ancestral trees
Are sere, and such melodious languors wrong
The reddening strength of the autumnal year,
Yield to heroic words thy ear and eye;—
Intent on these broad pages thou shalt hear
The trumpets’ blare, the Argive battle-cry,
And see Achilles hurl his hurtling spear,
And mark the Trojan arrows make reply!

THE MOUNTAIN.

Two thousand feet in air it stands
Betwixt the bright and shaded lands,
Above the regions it divides
And borders with its furrowed sides.
The seaward valley laughs with light
Till the round sun o’erhangs this height;
But then the shadow of the crest
No more the plains that lengthen west
Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps
Eastward, until the coolness steeps
A darkling league of tilth and wold,
And chills the flocks that seek their fold.

Not like those ancient summits lone,
Mont Blanc, on his eternal throne,—
The city-gemmed Peruvian peak,—
The sunset-portals landsmen seek,
Whose train, to reach the Golden Land,
Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,—
Or that, whose ice-lit beacon guides
The mariner on tropic tides,
And flames across the Gulf afar,
A torch by day, by night a star,—
Not thus, to cleave the outer skies,
Does my serener mountain rise,
Nor aye forget its gentle birth
Upon the dewy, pastoral earth.

But ever, in the noonday light,
Are scenes whereof I love the sight,—
Broad pictures of the lower world
Beneath my gladdened eyes unfurled.
Irradiate distances reveal
Fair nature wed to human weal;
The rolling valley made a plain;
Its checkered squares of grass and grain;
The silvery rye, the golden wheat,
The flowery elders where they meet,—
Ay, even the springing corn I see,
And garden haunts of bird and bee;
And where, in daisied meadows, shines
The wandering river through its vines,
Move specks at random, which I know
Are herds a-grazing to and fro.

Yet still a goodly height it seems
From which the mountain pours his streams,
Or hinders, with caressing hands,
The sunlight seeking other lands.
Like some great giant, strong and proud,
He fronts the lowering thunder-cloud,
And wrests its treasures, to bestow
A guerdon on the realm below;
Or, by the deluge roused from sleep
Within his bristling forest-keep,
Shakes all his pines, and far and wide
Sends down a rich, imperious tide.
At night the whistling tempests meet
In tryst upon his topmost seat,
And all the phantoms of the sky
Frolic and gibber, storming by.

By day I see the ocean-mists
Float with the current where it lists,
And from my summit I can hail
Cloud-vessels passing on the gale,—
The stately argosies of air,—
And parley with the helmsmen there;
Can probe their dim, mysterious source,
Ask of their cargo and their course,—
_Whence come? where bound?_—and wait reply,
As, all sails spread, they hasten by.

If, foiled in what I fain would know,
Again I turn my eyes below
And eastward, past the hither mead
Where all day long the cattle feed,
A crescent gleam my sight allures
And clings about the hazy moors,—
The great, encircling, radiant sea,
Alone in its immensity.

Even there, a queen upon its shore,
I know the city evermore
Her palaces and temples rears,
And wooes the nations to her piers;
Yet the proud city seems a mole
To this horizon-bounded whole;
And, from my station on the mount,
The whole is little worth account
Beneath the overhanging sky,
That seems so far and yet so nigh.
Here breathe I inspiration rare,
Unburdened by the grosser air
That hugs the lower land, and feel
Through all my finer senses steal
The life of what that life may be,
Freed from this dull earth’s density,
When we, with many a soul-felt thrill,
Shall thrid the ether at our will,
Through widening corridors of morn
And starry archways swiftly borne.

Here, in the process of the night,
The stars themselves a purer light
Give out, than reaches those who gaze
Enshrouded with the valley’s haze.
October, entering Heaven’s fane,
Assumes her lucent, annual reign:
Then what a dark and dismal clod,
Forsaken by the Sons of God,
Seems this sad world, to those which march
Across the high, illumined arch,
And with their brightness draw me forth
To scan the splendors of the North!
I see the Dragon, as he toils
With Ursa in his shining coils,
And mark the Huntsman lift his shield,
Confronting on the ancient field
The Bull, while in a mystic row
The jewels of his girdle glow;
Or, haply, I may ponder long
On that remoter, sparkling throng,
The orient sisterhood, around
Whose chief our Galaxy is wound;
Thus, half enwrapt in classic dreams,
And brooding over Learning’s gleams,
I leave to gloom the under-land,
And from my watch-tower, close at hand,
Like him who led the favored race,
I look on glory face to face!

So, on the mountain-top, alone,
I dwell, as one who holds a throne;
Or prince, or peasant, him I count
My peer, who stands upon a mount,
Sees farther than the tribes below,
And knows the joys they cannot know;
And, though beyond the sound of speech
They reign, my soul goes out to reach,
Far on their noble heights elsewhere,
My brother-monarchs of the air.

HOLYOKE VALLEY.

“Something sweet
Followed youth, with flying feet,
And will never come again.”

How many years have made their flights,
Northampton, over thee and me,
Since last I scaled those purple heights
That guard the pathway to the sea;

Or climbed, as now, the topmost crown
Of western ridges, whence again
I see, for miles beyond the town,
That sunlit stream divide the plain?

There still the giant warders stand
And watch the current’s downward flow,
And northward still, with threatening hand,
The river bends his ancient bow.

I see the hazy lowlands meet
The sky, and count each shining spire,
From those which sparkle at my feet
To distant steeples tipt with fire.

For still, old town, thou art the same:
The redbreasts sing their choral tune,
Within thy mantling elms aflame,
As in that other, dearer June,

When here my footsteps entered first,
And summer perfect beauty wore,
And all thy charms upon me burst,
While Life’s whole journey lay before.

Here every fragrant walk remains,
Where happy maidens come and go,
And students saunter in the lanes
And hum the songs I used to know.

I gaze, yet find myself alone,
And walk with solitary feet:
How strange these wonted ways have grown!
Where are the friends I used to meet?

In yonder shaded Academe
The rippling metres flow to-day,
But other boys at sunset dream
Of love, and laurels far away;

And ah! from yonder trellised home,
Less sweet the faces are that peer
Than those of old, and voices come
Less musically to my ear.

Sigh not, ye breezy elms, but give
The murmur of my sweetheart’s vows,
When Life was something worth to live,
And Love was young beneath your boughs!

Fade beauty, smiling everywhere,
That can from year to year outlast
Those charms a thousand times more fair,
And, O, our joys so quickly past!

Or smile to gladden fresher hearts
Henceforth: but they shall yet be led,
Revisiting these ancient parts,
Like me to mourn their glory fled.

THE FEAST OF HARVEST.

The fair Earth smiled and turned herself and woke,
And to the Sun with nuptial greeting said:
“I had a dream, wherein it seemed men broke
A sovran league, and long years fought and bled,
Till down my sweet sides ran my children’s gore,
And all my beautiful garments were made red,
And all my fertile fields were thicket-grown,
Nor could thy dear light reach me through the air;
At last a voice cried, ‘Let them strive no more!’
Then music breathed, and to! from my despair
I wake to joy,—yet would not joy alone!

“For, hark! I hear a murmur on the meads,—
Where as of old my children seek my face,—
The low of kine, the peaceful tramp of steeds,
Blithe shouts of men in many a pastoral place,
The noise of tilth through all my goodliest land,
And happy laughter of a dusky race
Whose brethren lift them from their ancient toil,
Saying: “The year of jubilee has come;
Gather the gifts of Earth with equal hand;
Henceforth ye too may share the birthright soil,
The corn, the wine, and all the harvest-home.”

“O my dear lord, my radiant bridegroom, look!
Behold their joy who sorrowed in my dreams,—
The sword a share, the spear a pruning-hook;
Lo, I awake, and turn me toward thy beams
Even as a bride again! O, shed thy light
Upon my fruitful places in full streams!
Let there be yield for every living thing;
The land is fallow,—let there be increase
After the darkness of the sterile night;
Ay, let us twain a festival of Peace
Prepare, and hither all my nations bring!”

The fair Earth spake: the glad Sun speeded forth,
Hearing her matron words, and backward drave
To frozen caves the icy Wind of the North,—
And bade the South Wind from the tropic wave
Bring watery vapors over river and plain,—
And bade the East Wind cross her path, and lave
The lowlands, emptying there her laden mist,—
And bade the Wind of the West, the best wind, blow
After the early and the latter rain,—
And beamed himself, and oft the sweet Earth kissed,
While her swift servitors sped to and fro.

Forthwith the troop that, at the beck of Earth,
Foster her children, brought a glorious store
Of viands, food of immemorial worth,
Her earliest gifts, her tenderest evermore.
First came the Silvery Spirit, whose marshalled files
Climb up the glades in billowy breakers hoar,
Nodding their crests; and at his side there sped
The Golden Spirit, whose yellow harvests trail
Across the continents and fringe the isles,
And freight men’s argosies where’er they sail:
O, what a wealth of sheaves he there outspread!

Came the dear Spirit whom Earth doth love the best,
Fragrant of clover-bloom and new-mown hay,
Beneath whose mantle weary ones finds rest,
On whose green skirts the little children play:
She bore the food our patient cattle crave.
Next, robed in silk, with tassels scattering spray,
Followed the generous Spirit of the Maize;
And many a kindred shape of high renown
Bore in the clustering grape, the fruits that wave
On orchard branches or in gardens blaze,
And those the wind-shook forest hurtles down.

Even thus they laid a great and marvellous feast,
And Earth her children summoned joyously,
Throughout that goodliest land wherein had ceased
The vision of battle, and with glad hands free
These took their fill, and plenteous measures poured,
Beside, for those who dwelt beyond the sea;
Praise, like an incense, upward rose to Heaven
For that full harvest; and the autumnal Sun
Stayed long above; and ever at the board,
Peace, white-robed angel, held the high seat given,
And War far off withdrew his visage dun.

AUTUMN SONG.

No clouds are in the morning sky,
The vapors hug the stream,—
Who says that life and love can die
In all this northern gleam?
At every turn the maples burn,
The quail is whistling free,
The partridge whirs, and the frosted burs
Are dropping for you and me.
_Ho! hilly ho! heigh O!_
_Hilly ho!_
In the clear October morning.

Along our path the woods are bold,
And glow with ripe desire;
The yellow chestnut showers its gold,
The sumachs spread their fire;
The breezes feel as crisp as steel,
The buckwheat tops are red:
Then down the lane, love, scurry again,
And over the stubble tread!
_Ho! hilly ho! heigh O!_
_Hilly ho!_
In the clear October morning.

WHAT THE WINDS BRING.

Which is the Wind that brings the cold?
The North-Wind, Freddy, and all the snow;
And the sheep will scamper into the fold
When the North begins to blow.

Which is the Wind that brings the heat?
The South-Wind, Katy; and corn will grow,
And peaches redden for you to eat,
When the South begins to blow.

Which is the Wind that brings the rain?
The East-Wind, Arty; and farmers know
That cows come shivering up the lane
When the East begins to blow.

Which is the Wind that brings the flowers?
The West-Wind, Bessy; and soft and low
The birdies sing in the summer hours
When the West begins to blow.

BETROTHED ANEW.

The sunlight fills the trembling air,
And balmy days their guerdons bring;
The Earth again is young and fair,
And amorous with musky Spring.

The golden nurslings of the May
In splendor strew the spangled green,
And hues of tender beauty play,
Entangled where the willows lean.

Mark how the rippled currents flow:
What lustres on the meadows lie!
And hark, the songsters come and go,
And trill between the earth and sky.

Who told us that the years had fled,
Or borne afar our blissful youth?
Such joys are all about us spread,
We know the whisper was not truth.

The birds, that break from grass and grove,
Sing every carol that they sung
When first our veins were rich with love,
And May her mantle round us flung.

O fresh-lit dawn! immortal life!
O Earth’s betrothal, sweet and true,
With whose delights our souls are rife
And aye their vernal vows renew!

Then, darling, walk with me this morn:
Let your brown tresses drink its sheen;
These violets, within them worn,
Of floral fays shall make you queen.

What though there comes a time of pain
When autumn winds forbode decay;
The days of love are born again,
That fabled time is far away!

And never seemed the land so fair
As now, nor birds such notes to sing,
Since first within your shining hair
I wove the blossoms of the Spring.

III.

SHADOW-LAND.

“THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.”

Could we but know
The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel,
Where lie those happier hills and meadows low,—
Ah, if beyond the spirit’s inmost cavil,
Aught of that country could we surely know,
Who would not go?

Might we but hear
The hovering angels’ high imagined chorus,
Or catch, betimes, with wakeful eyes and clear,
One radiant vista of the realm before us,—
With one rapt moment given to see and hear,
Ah, who would fear?

Were we quite sure
To find the peerless friend who left us lonely,
Or there, by some celestial stream as pure,
To gaze in eyes that here were lovelit only,—
This weary mortal coil, were we quite sure,
Who would endure?

“DARKNESS AND THE SHADOW.”

Waking, I have been nigh to Death,—
Have felt the chillness of his breath
Whiten my cheek and numb my heart,
And wondered why he stayed his dart,—
Yet quailed not, but could meet him so,
As any lesser friend or foe.

But sleeping, in the dreams of night,
His phantom stifles me with fright!
O God! what frozen horrors fall
Upon me with his visioned pall:
The movelessness, the unknown dread,
Fair life to pulseless silence wed!

And _is_ the grave so darkly deep,
So hopeless, as it seems in sleep?
Can our sweet selves the coffin hold
So dumb within its crumbling mould?
And is the shroud so dank and drear
A garb,—the noisome worm so near?

Where then is Heaven’s mercy fled,—
To quite forget the voiceless dead?

THE ASSAULT BY NIGHT.

All night we hear the rattling flaw,
The casements shiver with each breath;
And still more near the foemen draw,
The pioneers of Death.
Their grisly chieftain comes:
He steals upon us in the night;
Call up the guards! light every light!
Beat the alarum drums!

His tramp is at the outer door;
He bears against the shuddering walls;
Lo! what a dismal frost and hoar
Upon the window falls!
Outbar him while ye may!
Feed, feed the watch-fires everywhere,—
Even yet their cheery warmth will scare
This thing of night away.

Ye cannot! something chokes the grate
And clogs the air within its flues,
And runners from the entrance-gate
Come chill with evil news:
The bars are broken ope!
Ha! he has scaled the inner wall!
But fight him still, from hall to hall;
While life remains, there’s hope.

Too late! the very frame is dust,
The locks and trammels fall apart;
He reaches, scornful of their trust,
The portals of the heart.
Ay, take the citadel!
But where, grim Conqueror, is thy prey?
In vain thou’lt search each secret way,
Its flight is hidden well.

We yield thee, for thy paltry spoils,
This shell, this ruin thou hast made;
Its tenant has escaped thy toils,
Though they were darkly laid.
Even now, immortal, pure,
It gains a house not made with hands,
A refuge in serener lands,
A heritage secure.

GEORGE ARNOLD.

GREENWOOD, NOVEMBER 13, 1865.

We stood around the dreamless form
Whose strength was so untimely shaken,
Whose sleep not all our love could warm,
Nor any dearest voice awaken;

And while the Autumn breathed her sighs,
And dropped a thousand leafy glories,
And all the pathways, and the skies,
Were mindful of his songs and stories,

Nor failed to wear the mingled hues
He loved, and knew so well to render,
But wooed,—alas, in vain!—their Muse
For one more tuneful lay and tender,

We paused awhile,—the gathered few
Who came, in longing, not in duty,—
With eyes that full of weeping grew,
To look their last upon his beauty.

Death would not rudely rob that face,
Nor dim its fine Arcadian brightness,
But gave the lines a clearer grace,
And sleep’s repose, and marble’s whiteness.

And, gazing there on him so young,
We thought of all his ended mission,
The broken links, the songs unsung,
The love that found no ripe fruition;

Till last the old, old question came
To hearts that beat with life around him,
Why Death, with downward torch aflame,
Had searched our number till he found him?

Why passed the one who poorly knows,
That blithesome spell for either fortune,
Or mocked with lingering menace those
Whose pains the final thrust importune;

Or left the toiling ones who bear
The crowd’s neglect, the want that presses,
The woes no human soul can share,
Nor look, nor spoken word, confesses.

And from the earth no answer came,
The forest wore a stillness deeper,
The sky and lake smiled on the same,
And voiceless as the silent sleeper.

And so we turned ourselves away,
By earth and air and water chidden,
And left him with them, where he lay,
A sharer of their secret hidden.

And each the staff and shell again
Took up, and marched with memories haunted;
But henceforth, in our pilgrim-strain,
We’ll miss a voice that sweetly chaunted!

THE SAD BRIDAL.

What would you do, my dear one said,—
What would you do, if I were dead?
If Death should mumble, as he list,
These red lips which now you kist?
What would my love do, were I wed
To that ghastly groom instead;
If o’er me, in the chancel, Death
Should cast his amaranthine wreath,—
Before my eyes, with fingers pale,
Draw down the mouldy bridal veil?
—Ah no! no! it cannot be!
Death would spare their light, and flee,
And leave my love to Life and me!

OCCASIONAL POEMS.

Several of the earlier productions under this title are reprinted in answer to frequent requests for copies of them, and in deference to a public sentiment which received them kindly when they first appeared.

OCCASIONAL POEMS.

SUMTER.

APRIL 12, 1871.

Came the morning of that day
When the God to whom we pray
Gave the soul of Henry Clay
To the land;
How we loved him, living, dying!
But his birthday banners flying
Saw us asking and replying
Hand to hand.

For we knew that far away,
Round the fort in Charleston Bay,
Hung the dark impending fray,
Soon to fall;
And that Sumter’s brave defender
Had the summons to surrender
Seventy loyal hearts and tender,—
(Those were all!)

And we knew the April sun
Lit the length of many a gun,—
Hosts of batteries to the one
Island crag;
Guns and mortars grimly frowning,
Johnson, Moultrie, Pinckney, crowning,
And ten thousand men disowning
The old flag.

O, the fury of the fight
Even then was at its height!
Yet no breath, from noon till night,
Reached us here;
We had almost ceased to wonder,
And the day had faded under,
When the echo of the thunder
Filled each ear!

Then our hearts more fiercely beat,
As we crowded on the street,
Hot to gather and repeat
All the tale;
All the doubtful chances turning,
Till our souls with shame were burning,
As if twice our bitter yearning
Could avail!

Who had fired the earliest gun?
Was the fort by traitors won?
Was there succor? What was done
Who could know?
And once more our thoughts would wander
To the gallant, lone commander,
On his battered ramparts grander
Than the foe.

Not too long the brave shall wait:
On their own heads be their fate,
Who against the hallowed State
Dare begin;
Flag defied and compact riven!
In the record of high Heaven
How shall Southern men be shriven
For the sin?

WANTED—A MAN.

Back from the trebly crimsoned field
Terrible words are thunder-tost;
Full of the wrath that will not yield,
Full of revenge for battles lost!
Hark to their echo, as it crost
The Capital, making faces wan:
“End this murderous holocaust;
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

“Give us a man of God’s own mould,
Born to marshal his fellow-men;
One whose fame is not bought and sold
At the stroke of a politician’s pen;
Give us the man of thousands ten,
Fit to do as well as to plan;
Give us a rallying-cry, and then,
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

“No leader to shirk the boasting foe,
And to march and countermarch our brave,
Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low,
And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave;
Nor another, whose fatal banners wave
Aye in Disaster’s shameful van;
Nor another, to bluster, and lie, and rave;—
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

“Hearts are mourning in the North,
While the sister rivers seek the main,
Red with our life-blood flowing forth,—
Who shall gather it up again?
Though we march to the battle-plain
Firmly as when the strife began,
Shall all our offering be in vain?—
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

“Is there never one in all the land,
One on whose might the Cause may lean?
Are all the common ones so grand,
And all the titled ones so mean?
What if your failure may have been
In trying to make good bread from bran,
From worthless metal a weapon keen?—
Abraham Lincoln, find us a MAN!

“O, we will follow him to the death,
Where the foeman’s fiercest columns are!
O, we will use our latest breath,
Cheering for every sacred star!
His to marshal us high and far;
Ours to battle, as patriots can
When a Hero leads the Holy War!—
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!”

September 8, 1862.

TREASON’S LAST DEVICE.

Sons of New England, in the fray,
Do you hear the clamor behind your back?
Do you hear the yelping of Blanche, and Tray,
Sweetheart, and all the mongrel pack?
Girded well with her ocean crags,
Little our mother heeds their noise;
Her eyes are fixed on crimsoned flags:
But you—do you hear it, Yankee boys?

Do you hear them say that the patriot fire
Burns on her altars too pure and bright,
To the darkened heavens leaping higher,
Though drenched with the blood of every fight;
That in the light of its searching flame
Treason and tyrants stand revealed,
And the yielding craven is put to shame,
On Capitol floor or foughten field?

Do you hear the hissing voice, which saith
That she—who bore through all the land
The lyre of Freedom, the torch of Faith,
And young Invention’s mystic wand—
Should gather her skirts and dwell apart,
With not one of her sisters to share her fate,—
A Hagar, wandering sick at heart;
A pariah, bearing the Nation’s hate?

Sons, who have peopled the distant West,
And planted the Pilgrim vine anew,
Where, by a richer soil carest,
It grows as ever its parent grew,
Say, do you hear,—while the very bells
Of your churches ring with her ancient voice,
And the song of your children sweetly tells
How true was the land of your fathers’ choice,—

Do you hear the traitors who bid you speak
The word that shall sever the sacred tie?
And ye, who dwell by the golden Peak,
Has the subtle whisper glided by?
Has it crost the immemorial plains,
To coasts where the gray Pacific roars
And the Pilgrim blood in the people’s veins
Is pure as the wealth of their mountain ores?

Spirits of sons who, side by side,
In a hundred battles fought and fell,
Whom now no East and West divide,
In the isles where the shades of heroes dwell;
Say, has it reached your glorious rest,
And ruffled the calm which crowns you there,—
The shame that recreants have confest,
The plot that floats in the troubled air?

Sons of New England, here and there,
Wherever men are still holding by
The honor our fathers left so fair!
Say, do you hear the cowards’ cry?
Crouching among her grand old crags,
Lightly our mother heeds their noise,
With her fond eyes fixed on distant flags;
But you—do you hear it, Yankee boys?

Washington, January 19, 1863.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

ASSASSINATED GOOD FRIDAY, 1865.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do!”
He said, and so went shriven to his fate,—
Unknowing went, that generous heart and true.
Even while he spoke the slayer lay in wait,
And when the morning opened Heaven’s gate
There passed the whitest soul a nation knew.
Henceforth all thoughts of pardon are too late;
They, in whose cause that arm its weapon drew,
Have murdered Mercy. Now alone shall stand
Blind Justice, with the sword unsheathed she wore.
Hark, from the eastern to the western strand,
The swelling thunder of the people’s roar:
What words they murmur,—Fetter not her hand!
So let it smite, such deeds shall be no more!

ISRAEL FREYER’S BID FOR GOLD.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1869.

Zounds! how the price went flashing through
Wall street, William, Broad street, New!
All the specie in all the land
Held in one Ring by a giant hand—
For millions more it was ready to pay,
And throttle the Street on hangman’s-day.
Up from the Gold Pit’s nether hell,
While the innocent fountain rose and fell,
Loud and higher the bidding rose,
And the bulls, triumphant, faced their foes.
It seemed as if Satan himself were in it:
Lifting it—one per cent a minute—
Through the bellowing broker, there amid,
Who made the terrible, final bid!
High over all, and ever higher,
Was heard the voice of Israel Freyer,—
A doleful knell in the storm-swept mart,—
“Five millions more! and for any part
“I’ll give One Hundred and Sixty!”

Israel Freyer—the Government Jew—
Good as the best—soaked through and through
With credit gained in the year he sold
Our Treasury’s precious hoard of gold;
Now through his thankless mouth rings out
The leaguers’ last and cruellest shout!
Pity the shorts? Not they, indeed,
While a single rival’s left to bleed!
Down come dealers in silks and hides,
Crowding the Gold Room’s rounded sides,
Jostling, trampling each other’s feet,
Uttering groans in the outer street;
Watching, with upturned faces pale,
The scurrying index mark its tale;
Hearing the bid of Israel Freyer,—
That ominous voice, would it never tire?
“Five millions more!—for any part,
(If it breaks your firm, if it cracks your heart,)
I’ll give One Hundred and Sixty!”

One Hundred and Sixty! Can’t be true!
What will the bears-at-forty do?
How will the merchants pay their dues?
How will the country stand the news?
What’ll the banks—but listen! hold!
In screwing upward the price of gold
To that dangerous, last, particular peg,
They had killed their Goose with the Golden Egg!
Just there the metal came pouring out,
All ways at once, like a water-spout,
Or a rushing, gushing, yellow flood,
That drenched the bulls wherever they stood!
Small need to open the Washington main,
Their coffer-dams were burst with the strain!
It came by runners, it came by wire,
To answer the bid of Israel Freyer,
It poured in millions from every side,
And almost strangled him as he cried,—
“I’ll give One Hundred and Sixty!”

Like Vulcan after Jupiter’s kick,
Or the aphoristical Rocket’s stick,
Down, down, down, the premium fell,
Faster than this rude rhyme can tell!
Thirty per cent the index slid,
Yet Freyer still kept making his bid,—
“One Hundred and Sixty for any part!”
—The sudden ruin had crazed _his_ heart,
Shattered his senses, cracked his brain,
And left him crying again and again,—
Still making his bid at the market’s top
(Like the Dutchman’s leg that never could stop,)
“One Hundred and Sixty—Five Millions more!”
Till they dragged him, howling, off the floor.
The very last words that seller and buyer
Heard from the mouth of Israel Freyer—
A cry to remember long as they live—
Were, “I’ll take Five Millions more! I’ll give,—
I’ll give One Hundred and Sixty!”

Suppose (to avoid the appearance of evil)
There’s such a thing as a Personal Devil,
It would seem that his Highness here got hold,
For once, of a bellowing Bull in Gold!
Whether bull or bear, it wouldn’t much matter
Should Israel Freyer keep up his clatter
On earth or under it (as, they say,
He is doomed) till the general Judgment Day,
When the Clerk, as he cites him to answer for’t,
Shall bid him keep silence in that Court!
But it matters most, as it seems to me,
That my countrymen, great and strong and free,
So marvel at fellows who seem to win,
That if even a Clown can only begin
By stealing a railroad, and use its purse
For cornering stocks and gold, or—worse—
For buying a Judge and Legislature,
And sinking still lower poor human nature,
The gaping public, whatever befall,
Will swallow him, tandem, harlots, and all!
While our rich men drivel and stand amazed
At the dust and pother his gang have raised,
And make us remember a nursery tale
Of the four-and-twenty who feared one snail.

What’s bred in the bone will breed, you know;
Clowns and their trainers, high and low,
Will cut such capers, long as they dare,
While honest Poverty says its prayer.
But tell me what prayer or fast can save
Some hoary candidate for the grave,
The market’s wrinkled Giant Despair,
Muttering, brooding, scheming there,—
Founding a college or building a church
Lest Heaven should leave him in the lurch!
Better come out in the rival way,
Issue your scrip in open day,
And pour your wealth in the grimy fist
Of some gross-mouthed, gambling pugilist;
Leave toil and poverty where they lie,
Pass thinkers, workers, artists, by,
Your pot-house fag from his counters bring
And make him into a Railway King!
Between such Gentiles and such Jews
Little enough one finds to choose:
Either the other will buy and use,
Eat the meat and throw him the bone,
And leave him to stand the brunt alone.

—Let the tempest come, that’s gathering near,
And give us a better atmosphere!

CUBA.

Is it naught? Is it naught
That the South-wind brings her wail to our shore,
That the spoilers compass our desolate sister?
Is it naught? Must we say to her, “Strive no more.”
With the lips wherewith we loved her and kissed her?
With the mocking lips wherewith we said,
“Thou art the dearest and fairest to us
Of all the daughters the sea hath bred,
Of all green-girdled isles that woo us!”
Is it naught?

Must ye wait? Must ye wait.
Till they ravage her gardens of orange and palm,
Till her heart is dust, till her strength is water?
Must ye see them trample her, and be calm
As priests when a virgin is led to slaughter?
Shall they smite the marvel of all lands,—
The nation’s longing, the Earth’s completeness,—
On her red mouth dropping myrrh, her hands
Filled with fruitage and spice and sweetness?
Must ye wait?

In the day, in the night,
In the burning day, in the dolorous night,
Her sun-browned cheeks are stained with weeping.
Her watch-fires beacon the misty height:—
Why are her friends and lovers sleeping?
“Ye, at whose ear the flatterer bends,
Who were my kindred before all others,—
Hath he set your hearts afar, my friends?
Hath he made ye alien, my brothers,
Day and night?”

Hear ye not? Hear ye not
From the hollow sea the sound of her voice;
The passionate, far-off tone, which sayeth:
“Alas, my brothers! alas, what choice,—
The lust that shameth, the sword that slayeth?
They bind me! they rend my delicate locks;
They shred the beautiful robes I won me!
My round limbs bleed on the mountain rocks:
Save me, ere they have quite undone me!”
Hear ye not?

Speak at last! Speak at last!
In the might of your strength, in the strength of your right,
Speak out at last to the treacherous spoiler!
Say: “Will ye harry her in our sight?
Ye shall not trample her down, nor soil her!
Loose her bonds! let her rise in her loveliness,—
Our virginal sister; or, if ye shame her,
Dark Amnon shall rue for her sore distress,
And her sure revenge shall be that of Tamar!”
Speak at last!

1870.

CRETE.

Though Arkádi’s shattered pile
Hides her dead without a dirge,
Lo! where still the mountain isle
Fronts the angry Moslem surges!
Hers, in old, heroic days,
Her unfettered heights afar
’Twixt the Grecian Gulf to raise,
And the torrid Libyan star.

From her bulwarks to the North
Stretched the glad Ægæan Sea,
Sending bards and warriors forth
To the triumphs of the free;
Ill the fierce invader throve,
When, from island or from main,
Side by side the Grecians strove:
Swift he sought his lair again!

Though the Cretan eagle fell,
And the ancient heights were won,
Freedom’s light was guarded well,—
Handed down from sire to son;
Through the centuries of shame,
Ah! it never wholly died,
But was hid, a sacred flame,
There on topmost Ida’s side.

Shades of heroes Homer sung—
Wearing once her hundred crowns—
Rise with shadowy swords among
Candia’s smoking fields and towns;
Not again their souls shall sleep,
Nor the crescent wane in peace,
Till from every island-keep
Shines the starry Cross of Greece.

THE OLD ADMIRAL.

Gone at last,
That brave old hero of the Past!
His spirit has a second birth,
An unknown, grander life;—
All of him that was earth
Lies mute and cold,
Like a wrinkled sheath and old
Thrown off forever from the shimmering blade
That has good entrance made
Upon some distant, glorious strife.

From another generation,
A simpler age, to ours Old Ironsides came;
The morn and noontide of the nation
Alike he knew, nor yet outlived his fame,—
O, not outlived his fame!
The dauntless men whose service guards our shore
Lengthen still their glory-roll
With his name to lead the scroll,
As a flagship at her fore
Carries the Union, with its azure and the stars,
Symbol of times that are no more
And the old heroic wars.

He was the one
Whom Death had spared alone
Of all the captains of that lusty age,
Who sought the foeman where he lay,
On sea or sheltering bay,
Nor till the prize was theirs repressed their rage.
They are gone,—all gone:
They rest with glory and the undying Powers;
Only their name and fame and what they saved are ours!

It was fifty years ago,
Upon the Gallic Sea,
He bore the banner of the free,
And fought the fight whereof our children know.
The deathful, desperate fight!—
Under the fair moon’s light
The frigate squared, and yawed to left and right.
Every broadside swept to death a score!
Roundly played her guns and well, till their fiery ensigns fell,
Neither foe replying more.

All in silence, when the night-breeze cleared the air,
Old Ironsides rested there,
Locked in between the twain, and drenched with blood.
Then homeward, like an eagle with her prey!
O, it was a gallant fray,
That fight in Biscay Bay!
Fearless the Captain stood, in his youthful hardihood;
He was the boldest of them all,
Our brave old Admiral!

And still our heroes bleed,
Taught by that olden deed.
Whether of iron or of oak
The ships we marshal at our country’s need,
Still speak their cannon now as then they spoke;
Still floats our unstruck banner from the mast
As in the stormy Past.

Lay him in the ground:
Let him rest where the ancient river rolls;
Let him sleep beneath the shadow and the sound
Of the bell whose proclamation, as it tolls,
Is of Freedom and the gift our fathers gave.
Lay him gently down:
The clamor of the town
Will not break the slumbers deep, the beautiful ripe sleep
Of this lion of the wave,
Will not trouble the old Admiral in his grave.

Earth to earth his dust is laid.
Methinks his stately shade
On the shadow of a great ship leaves the shore;
Over cloudless western seas

Seeks the far Hesperides,
The islands of the blest,
Where no turbulent billows roar,—
Where is rest.
His ghost upon the shadowy quarter stands
Nearing the deathless lands.
There all his martial mates, renewed and strong,
Await his coming long.
I see the happy Heroes rise
With gratulation in their eyes:
“Welcome, old comrade,” Lawrence cries;
“Ah, Stewart, tell us of the wars!
Who win the glory and the scars?
How floats the skyey flag,—how many stars?
Still speak they of Decatur’s name,
Of Bainbridge’s and Perry’s fame?
Of me, who earliest came?
Make ready, all:
Room for the Admiral!
Come, Stewart, tell us of the wars!”

GETTYSBURG.

Wave, wave your glorious battle-flags, brave soldiers of the North,
And from the field your arms have won to-day go proudly forth!
For now, O comrades dear and leal,—from whom no ills could part,
Through the long years of hopes and fears, the nation’s constant heart,—
Men who have driven so oft the foe, so oft have striven in vain,
Yet ever in the perilous hour have crossed his path again,—
At last we have our hearts’ desire, from them we met have wrung
A victory that round the world shall long be told and sung!
It was the memory of the past that bore us through the fray,
That gave the grand old Army strength to conquer on this day!