Chapter XXVIII: Introduction (13)

And the words break from his lips:
“I am the builder of ships,
And my ships shall sail these seas
To the Pillars of Hercules!
I say it; the White Czar,
Batyushka! Gosudar!

“The Bosphorus shall be free;
It shall make room for me;
And the gates of its water-streets
Be unbarred before my fleets.
I say it; the White Czar,
Batyushka! Gosudar!

“And the Christian shall no more
Be crushed, as heretofore,
Beneath thine iron rule,
O Sultan of Istamboul!
I swear it! I the Czar,
Batyushka! Gosudar!”

[58] The White Czar is Peter the Great. Batyushka (_Father dear_) and Gosudar (_Sovereign_) are titles the Russian people are fond of giving to the Czar in their popular songs.

THE LEAP OF ROUSHAN BEG.

Mounted on Kyrat strong and fleet,
His chestnut steed with four white feet,
Roushan Beg, called Kurroglou,
Son of the road and bandit chief,
Seeking refuge and relief,
Up the mountain pathway flew.

Such was Kyrat’s wondrous speed,
Never yet could any steed
Reach the dust-cloud in his course.
More than maiden, more than wife,
More than gold, and next to life
Roushan the Robber loved his horse.

In the land that lies beyond
Erzeroum and Trebizond,
Garden-girt his fortress stood;
Plundered khan, or caravan
Journeying north from Koordistan,
Gave him wealth and wine and food.

Seven hundred and fourscore
Men at arms his livery wore,
Did his bidding night and day.
Now, through regions all unknown,
He was wandering, lost, alone,
Seeking without guide his way.

Suddenly the pathway ends,
Sheer the precipice descends,
Loud the torrent roars unseen;
Thirty feet from side to side
Yawns the chasm; on air must ride
He who crosses this ravine.

Following close in his pursuit,
At the precipice’s foot,
Reyhan the Arab, of Orfah,
Halted with his hundred men,
Shouting upward from the glen,
“La il Allah-Allah-la!”

Gently Roushan Beg caressed
Kyrat’s forehead, neck, and breast;
Kissed him upon both his eyes;
Sang to him in his wild way,
As upon the topmost spray
Sings a bird before it flies.

“O my Kyrat, O my steed,
Round and slender as a reed,
Carry me this peril through!
Satin housings shall be thine,
Shoes of gold, O Kyrat mine,
O thou soul of Kurroglou!

“Soft thy skin as silken skein,
Soft as woman’s hair thy mane,
Tender are thine eyes and true;
All thine hoofs like ivory shine,
Polished bright; O, life of mine,
Leap, and rescue Kurroglou!”

Kyrat, then, the strong and fleet,
Drew together his four white feet,
Paused a moment on the verge,
Measured with his eye the space,
And into the air’s embrace
Leaped as leaps the ocean surge.

As the ocean surge o’er silt and sand
Bears a swimmer safe to land,
Kyrat safe his rider bore;
Rattling down the deep abyss
Fragments of the precipice
Rolled like pebbles on a shore.

Roushan’s tasselled cap of red
Trembled not upon his head,
Careless sat he and upright;
Neither hand nor bridle shook,
Nor his head he turned to look,
As he galloped out of sight.

Flash of harness in the air,
Seen a moment like the glare
Of a sword drawn from its sheath;
Thus the phantom horseman passed,
And the shadow that he cast
Leaped the cataract underneath.

Reyhan the Arab held his breath
While this vision of life and death
Passed above him. “Allahu!”
Cried he. “In all Koordistan
Lives there not so brave a man
As this Robber Kurroglou!”

HAROUN AL RASCHID.

One day, Haroun Al Raschid read
A book wherein the poet said:—

“Where are the kings, and where the rest
Of those who once the world possessed?

“They’re gone with all their pomp and show,
They’re gone the way that thou shalt go.

“O thou who choosest for thy share
The world, and what the world calls fair,

“Take all that it can give or lend,
But know that death is at the end!

Haroun Al Raschid bowed his head;
Tears fell upon the page he read.

THE THREE KINGS.

Three Kings came riding from far away,
Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar;
Three Wise Men out of the East were they,
And they travelled by night and they slept by day,
For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star.

The star was so beautiful, large, and clear,
That all the other stars of the sky
Became a white mist in the atmosphere,
And by this they knew that the coming was near
Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy.

Three caskets they bore on their saddle-bows,
Three caskets of gold with golden keys;
Their robes were of crimson silk with rows
Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows,
Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees.

And so the Three Kings rode into the West,
Through the dusk of night over hills and dells,
And sometimes they nodded with beard on breast,
And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest,
With the people they met at the wayside wells.

“Of the child that is born,” said Baltasar,
“Good people, I pray you, tell us the news;
For we in the East have seen his star,
And have ridden fast, and have ridden far,
To find and worship the King of the Jews.”

And the people answered, “You ask in vain;
We know of no king but Herod the Great!”
They thought the Wise Men were men insane,
As they spurred their horses across the plain,
Like riders in haste who cannot wait.

And when they came to Jerusalem,
Herod the Great, who had heard this thing,
Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them;
And said, “Go down unto Bethlehem,
And bring me tidings of this new king.”

So they rode away; and the star stood still,
The only one in the grey of morn;
Yes, it stopped, it stood still of its own free will,
Right over Bethlehem on the hill,
The city of David where Christ was born.

And the Three Kings rode through the gate and the guard,
Through the silent street, till their horses turned
And neighed as they entered the great inn-yard;
But the windows were closed, and the doors were barred,
And only a light in the stable burned.

And cradled there in the scented hay,
In the air made sweet by the breath of kine
The little child in the manger lay,
The Child that would be King one day
Of a kingdom not human but divine.

His mother, Mary of Nazareth,
Sat watching beside his place of rest,
Watching the even flow of his breath,
For the joy of life and the terror of death
Were mingled together in her breast.

They laid their offerings at his feet:
The gold was their tribute to a King,
The frankincense, with its odour sweet,
Was for the Priest, the Paraclete,
The myrrh for the body’s burying.

And the mother wondered and bowed her head,
And sat as still as a statue of stone;
Her heart was troubled yet comforted,
Remembering what the Angel had said
Of an endless reign and of David’s throne.

Then the Kings rode out of the city gate,
With a clatter of hoofs in proud array;
But they went not back to Herod the Great,
For they knew his malice and feared his hate,
And returned to their homes by another way.

KING TRISANKU.

Viswamitra the magician,
By his spells and incantations,
Up to Indra’s realms elysian
Raised Trisanku, king of nations.

India and the Gods offended
Hurled him downward, and descending
In the air he hung suspended,
With these equal powers contending.

Thus by aspirations lifted,
By misgivings downward driven.
Human hearts are tossed and drifted
Midway between earth and heaven.

VOX POPULI.

When Mazáran, the magician,
Journeyed westward through Cathay,
Nothing heard he but the praises
Of Badoura on his way.

But the lessening rumour ended
When he came to Khaledan;
There the folks were talking only
Of Prince Camaralzaman.

So it happens with the poets,
Every province hath its own;
Camaralzaman is famous
Where Badoura is unknown.

THE REVENGE OF RAIN-IN-THE-FACE.

In that desolate land and lone,
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
Roar down their mountain path,
By their fires the Sioux chiefs
Muttered their woes and griefs,
And the menace of their wrath.

“Revenge!” cried Rain-in-the-Face,
“Revenge upon all the race
Of the White Chief with yellow hair!”
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags re-echoed the cry
Of his anger and despair.

In the meadow, spreading wide
By woodland and river-side
The Indian village stood;
All was silent as a dream,
Save the rushing of the stream
And the blue-jay in the wood.

In his war-paint and his beads,
Like a bison among the reeds,
In ambush the Sitting Bull
Lay with three thousand braves
Crouched in the clefts and caves,
Savage, unmerciful!

Into the fatal snare
The White Chief with yellow hair
And his three hundred men
Dashed headlong, sword in hand;
But of that gallant band
Not one returned again.

The sudden darkness of death
Overwhelmed them, like the breath
And smoke of a furnace fire;
By the river’s bank, and between
The rocks of the ravine
They lay in their bloody attire.

But the foeman fled in the night,
And Rain-in-the-Face, in his flight
Uplifted high in air
As a ghastly trophy, bore
The brave heart that beat no more,
Of the White Chief with yellow hair.

Whose was the right and the wrong?
Sing it, O funeral song,
With a voice that is full of tears,
And say that our broken faith,
Wrought all this ruin and scathe,
In the Year of a Hundred Years!

TO THE RIVER YVETTE.

O lovely river of Yvette!
O darling river! like a bride,
Some dimpled, bashful, fair Lisette,
Thou goest to wed the Orge’s tide.

Maincourt, and lordly Dampierre,
See and salute thee on thy way,
And, with a blessing and a prayer,
Ring the sweet bells of St. Forget.

The valley of Chevreuse in vain
Would hold thee in its fond embrace;
Thou glidest from its arms again
And hurriest on with swifter pace.

Thou wilt not stay; with restless feet
Pursuing still thine onward flight,
Thou goest as one in haste to meet
Her sole desire, her heart’s delight.

O lovely river of Yvette!
O darling stream! on balanced wings
The wood-birds sang the chansonnette
That here an unknown poet sings.

THE EMPEROR’S GLOVE.

“Combien faudrait-il de peaux d’Espagne pour faire un gant de cette grandeur?” A play upon the words _gant_, a glove, and _Gand_, the French for Ghent.

On St. Bavon’s tower, commanding
Half of Flanders, his domain,
Charles the Emperor once was standing,
While beneath him on the landing
Stood Duke Alva and his train.

Like a print in books of fables,
Or a model made for show,
With its pointed roofs and gables,
Dormer windows, scrolls and labels,
Lay the city far below.

Through its squares and streets and alleys
Poured the populace of Ghent;
As a routed army rallies,
Or as rivers run through valleys,
Hurrying to their homes they went.

“Nest of Lutheran misbelievers!”
Cried Duke Alva as he gazed;
“Haunt of traitors and deceivers,
Stronghold of insurgent weavers,
Let it to the ground be razed!”

On the Emperor’s cap the feather
Nods, as laughing he replies:
“How many skins of Spanish leather,
Think you, would, if stitched together,
Make a glove of such a size?”

A WRAITH IN THE MIST.

“Sir, I should build me a fortification if I came to live here.”—BOSWELL’S _Johnson_.

On the green little isle of Inchkenneth
Who is it that walks by the shore,
So gay with his Highland blue bonnet,
So brave with his targe and claymore?

His form is the form of a giant,
But his face wears an aspect of pain;
Can this be the Laird of Inchkenneth?
Can this be Sir Alan McLean?

Ah, no! It is only the Rambler,
The Idler, who lives in Bolt Court,
And who says, were he Laird of Inchkenneth,
He would wall himself round with a fort.

Miscellaneous Poems.

1879 TO 1882.

THE GOLDEN SUNSET.

The golden sea its mirror spread
Beneath the golden skies,
And but a narrow strip between
Of land and shadow lies.

The cloud-like rocks, the rock-like clouds
Dissolved in glory float,
And midway of the radiant flood,
Hangs silently the boat.

The sea is but another sky,
The sky a sea as well,
And which is earth and which is heaven,
The eye can scarcely tell.

So when for us life’s evening hour,
Soft fading shall descend,
May glory, born of earth and heaven,
The earth and heaven blend.

Flooded with peace the spirits float,
With silent rapture glow,
Till where earth ends and heaven begins,
The soul shall scarcely know.

FROM MY ARM-CHAIR.

_To the Children of Cambridge, who presented to me, on my Seventy-second Birthday, February 27, 1879, this Chair, made from the Wood of the Village Blacksmith’s Chestnut Tree._

Am I a king, that I should call my own
This splendid ebon throne?
Or by what reason, or what right divine,
Can I proclaim it mine?

Only, perhaps, by right divine of song
It may to me belong;
Only because the spreading chestnut tree
Of old was sung by me.

Well I remember it in all its prime,
When in the summer-time
The affluent foliage of its branches made
A cavern of cool shade.

There by the blacksmith’s forge beside the street
Its blossom white and sweet
Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
And murmured like a hive.

And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,
Tossed its great arms about,
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
Dropped to the ground beneath.

And now some fragments of its branches bare,
Shaped as a stately chair,
Have by my hearthstone found a home at last,
And whisper of the Past.

The Danish king could not in all his pride
Repel the ocean tide,
But seated in this chair, I can in rhyme
Roll back the tide of Time.

I see again, as one in vision sees,
The blossoms and the bees,
And hear the children’s voices shout and call,
And the brown chestnuts fall.

I see the smithy with its fires aglow,
I hear the bellows blow,
And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat
The iron white with heat!

And thus, dear children, have ye made for me
This day a jubilee,
And to my more than threescore years and ten
Brought back my youth again.

The heart hath its own memory, like the mind,
And in it are enshrined
The precious keepsakes, into which are wrought
The giver’s loving thought.

Only your love and your remembrance could
Give life to this dead wood,
And make these branches, leafless now so long,
Blossom again in song.

THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE.

Is it so far from thee
Thou canst no longer see
In the Chamber over the Gate
That old man desolate,
Weeping and wailing sore
For his son who is no more?
O Absalom, my son!

Is it so long ago
That cry of human woe
From the walled city came,
Calling on his dear name,
That it has died away
In the distance of to-day?
O Absalom, my son!

There is no far nor near,
There is neither there nor here,
There is neither soon nor late,
In that Chamber over the Gate,
Nor any long ago
To that cry of human woe,
O Absalom, my son!

From the ages that are past
The voice comes like a blast,
Over seas that wreck and drown,
Over tumult of traffic and town;
And from ages yet to be
Come the echoes back to me,
O Absalom, my son!

Somewhere at every hour
The watchman on the tower
Looks forth, and sees the fleet
Approach of the hurrying feet
Of messengers that bear
The tidings of despair.
O Absalom, my son!

He goes forth from the door,
Who shall return no more.
With him our joy departs;
The light goes out in our hearts;
In the Chamber over the Gate
We sit disconsolate.
O Absalom, my son!

That ’tis a common grief
Bringing but slight relief;
Ours is the bitterest loss,
Ours is the heaviest cross;
And for ever the cry will be,
“Would God I had died for thee
O Absalom, my son!”

THE FOUR LAKES OF MADISON.

Four limpid lakes—four Naiades
Or sylvan deities are these,
In flowing robes of azure dressed,
Four lovely handmaids that uphold
Their shining mirrors, rimmed with gold,
To the fair city in the West.

By day the coursers of the Sun
Drink of these waters as they run
Their swift diurnal round on high;
By night the constellations glow
Far down the hollow deeps below,
And glimmer in another sky.

Fair Lakes, serene and full of light,
Fair town, arrayed in robes of white,
How visionary ye appear!
All like a floating landscape seems
In cloud-land or the land of dreams
Bathed in a golden atmosphere.

THE SIFTING OF PETER.

A FOLK SONG.

“Behold, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat.”

—ST. LUKE XXII. 31.

In St. Luke’s Gospel we are told
How Peter in the days of old
Was sifted;
And now, though ages intervene,
Sin is the same, while time and scene
Are shifted.

Satan desires us, great and small,
As wheat, to sift us, and we all
Are tempted;
Not one, however rich or great,
Is by his station or estate
Exempted.

No house so safely guarded is
But he, by some device of his,
Can enter;
No heart hath armour so complete
But he can pierce with arrows fleet
Its centre.

For all at last the cock will crow
Who hear the warning voice, but go
Unheeding,
Till thrice and more they have denied
The Man of Sorrows, crucified
And bleeding.

One look of that pale suffering face
Will make us feel the deep disgrace
Of weakness;
We shall be sifted till the strength
Of self-conceit be changed at length
To meekness.

Wounds of the soul, though healed, will ache,
The reddening scars remain, and make
Confession;
Lost innocence returns no more;
We are not what we were before
Transgression.

But noble souls, through dust and heat,
Rise from disaster and defeat
The stronger,
And conscious still of the Divine
Within them, he on earth supine
No longer.

HELEN OF TYRE.

What phantom is this, that appears
Through the purple mists of the years
Itself but a mist like these?
A woman of cloud and of fire;
It is she; it is Helen of Tyre,
The town in the midst of the seas!

O Tyre! in thy crowded streets
The phantom appears and retreats,
And the Israelites, that sell
Thy lilies and lions of brass,
Look up as they see her pass,
And murmur “Jezebel!”

Then another phantom is seen
At her side, in a grey gabardine,
With beard that floats to his waist;
It is Simon Magus, the Seer;
He speaks, and she pauses to hear
The words he utters in haste.

He says: “From this evil fame,
From this life of sorrow and shame,
I will lift thee and make thee mine!
Thou hast been Queen Candace,
And Helen of Troy, and shalt be
The Intelligence Divine!”

Oh, sweet as the breath of morn,
To the fallen and forlorn
Are whispered words of praise;
For the famished heart believes
The falsehood that tempts and deceives,
And the promise that betrays.

So she follows from land to land
The wizard’s beckoning hand,
As a leaf is blown by the gust,
Till she vanishes into night!
O reader, stoop down and write
With thy finger in the dust.

O town in the midst of the seas,
With thy rafts of cedar trees,
Thy merchandise and thy ships,
Thou, too, art become as nought,
A phantom, a shadow, a thought,
A name upon men’s lips.

THE IRON PEN

MADE FROM A FETTER OF BONNIVARD, THE PRISONER OF CHILLON; THE HANDLE OF WOOD FROM THE FRIGATE “CONSTITUTION,” AND BOUND WITH A CIRCLET OF GOLD, INSET WITH THREE PRECIOUS STONES FROM SIBERIA, CEYLON, AND MAINE.

I thought this Pen would arise
From the casket where it lies—
Of itself would arise, and write
My thanks and my surprise.

When you gave it me under the pines,
I dreamed these gems from the mines
Of Siberia, Ceylon, and Maine
Would glimmer as thoughts in the lines;

That this iron link from the chain
Of Bonnivard might retain
Some verse of the Poet who sang
Of the prisoner and his pain;

That this wood from the frigate’s mast
Might write me a rhyme at last,
As it used to write on the sky
The song of the sea and the blast.

But motionless as I wait,
Like a Bishop lying in state
Lies the Pen, with its mitre of gold,
And its jewels inviolate.

Then I must speak, and say
That the light of that summer day
In the garden under the pines
Shall not fade and pass away.

I shall see you standing there,
Caressed by the fragrant air,
With the shadow on your face,
And the sunshine on your hair.

I shall hear the sweet low tone
Of a voice before unknown,
Saying, “This is from me to you—
From me, and to you alone.”

And in words not idle and vain
I shall answer, and thank you again
For the gift, and the grace of the gift,
O beautiful Helen of Maine!

And for ever this gift will be
As a blessing from you to me,
As a drop of the dew of your youth
On the leaves of an aged tree.

THE POET AND HIS SONGS.

As the birds come in the spring,
We know not from where;
As the stars come at evening
From the depths of the air;

As the rain comes from the cloud,
And the brook from the ground;
As suddenly, low or loud,
Out of silence a sound;

As the grape comes to the vine,
The fruit to the tree;
As the wind comes to the pine,
And the tide to the sea;

As come the white sails of ships
O’er the ocean’s verge;
As comes the smile to the lips;
The foam to the surge;

So come to the Poet his songs,
All hitherward blown
From the misty land, that belongs
To the vast Unknown.

His, and not his, are the lays
He sings;—and their fame
Is his, and not his;—and the praise
And the pride of a name.

For voices pursue him by day,
And haunt him by night,
And he listens, and needs must obey,
When the angel says: “Write!”

ROBERT BURNS.

I see amid the fields of Ayr
A ploughman, who in foul or fair
Sings at his task,
So clear we know not if it is
The laverock’s song we hear or his,
Nor care to ask.

For him the ploughing of those fields
A more ethereal harvest yields
Than sheaves of grain:
Songs flush with purple bloom the rye;
The plover’s call, the curlew’s cry,
Sing in his brain.

Touched by his hand, the wayside weed
Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed
Beside the stream
Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass
And heather, where his footsteps pass,
The brighter seem.

He sings of love, whose flame illumes
The darkness of lone cottage rooms;
He feels the force,
The treacherous under-tow and stress,
Of wayward passions, and no less
The keen remorse.

At moments, wrestling with his fate,
His voice is harsh, but not with hate;
The brushwood hung
Above the tavern door lets fall
Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall,
Upon his tongue.

But still the burden of his song
Is love of right, disdain of wrong;
Its master chords
Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood;
Its discords but an interlude
Between the words.

And then to die so young, and leave
Unfinished what he might achieve!
Yet better sure
Is this than wandering up and down,
An old man, in a country town,
Infirm and poor.

For now he haunts his native land
As an immortal youth; his hand
Guides every plough;
He sits beside each ingle-nook;
His voice is in each rushing brook,
Each rustling bough.

His presence haunts this room to-night,
A form of mingled mist and light,
From that far coast.
Welcome beneath this roof of mine!
Welcome! this vacant chair is thine,
Dear guest and ghost!

BAYARD TAYLOR.

Dead he lay among his books!
The peace of God was in his looks.

As the statues in the gloom
Watch o’er Maximilian’s tomb,

So those volumes from their shelves
Watched him silent as themselves.

Ah! his hand will never more
Turn their storied pages o’er,

Never more his lips repeat
Songs of theirs, however sweet.

Let the lifeless body rest!
He is gone who was its guest;

Gone, as travellers haste to leave
An inn, nor tarry until eve.

Traveller! in what realms afar
In what planet, in what star,

In what vast, aërial space
Shines the light upon thy face?

In what gardens of delight
Rest thy weary feet to-night?

Poet! thou whose latest verse
Was a garland on thy hearse;

Thou hast sung, with organ tone,
In Deukalion’s life thine own;[59]

On the ruins of the past
Blooms the perfect flower at last.

Friend! but yesterday the bells
Rang for thee their loud farewells;

And to-day they toll for thee,
Lying dead beyond the sea;

Lying dead among thy books,
The peace of God in all thy looks!

[59] Bayard Taylor published _Eastern Poems_, _El Dorado_, _Life and Landscapes from Egypt_, _Japan, India, and China_, etc.

OLD ST. DAVID’S AT RADNOR.

What an image of peace and rest
Is this little church among its graves!
All is so quiet; the troubled breast,
The wounded spirit, the heart oppressed,
Here may find the repose it craves.

See how the ivy climbs and expands
Over this humble hermitage,
And seems to caress with its little hands
The rough grey stones, as a child that stands
Caressing the wrinkled cheeks of age!

You cross the threshold; and dim and small
Is the space that serves for the Shepherd’s Fold;
The narrow aisle, the bare white wall,
The pews, and the pulpit quaint and tall,
Whisper and say, “Alas! we are old.”

Herbert’s Chapel at Bemerton,
Hardly more spacious is than this;
But Poet and Pastor, blent in one,
Clothed with a splendour as of the sun,
That lowly and holy edifice.

It is not the wall of stone without
That makes the building small or great,
But the soul’s light shining round about,
And the faith that overcometh doubt,
And the love that stronger is than hate.

Were I a pilgrim in search of peace,
Were I a pastor of Holy Church,
More than a bishop’s diocese
Should I prize this place of rest and release
From further longing and further search.

Here would I stay, and let the world
With its distant thunder roar and roll;
Storms do not rend the sail that is furled;
Nor like a dead leaf tossed and whirled
In an eddy of wind is the anchored soul.

JUGURTHA.

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
Cried the African monarch the splendid,
As down to his death in the hollow
Dark dungeons of Rome he descended,
Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended;
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended,
As the vision that lured him to follow
With the mist and the darkness blended,
And the dream of his life was ended;
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

MAIDEN AND WEATHERCOCK.

A FOLK SONG.

MAIDEN.
O weathercock on the village spire,
With your golden feathers all on fire,
Tell me, what can you see from your perch,
Above there over the towers of the church?

WEATHERCOCK.
I can see the roofs and the streets below,
And the people moving to and fro,
And beyond, without either roof or street,
The great salt sea and the fishermen’s fleet.

I can see a ship come sailing in
Beyond the headlands and harbour of Lynn,
And a young man standing on the deck
With a silken ’kerchief round his neck.

Now he is pressing it to his lips,
And now he is kissing his finger tips,
And now he is lifting and waving his hand,
And blowing the kisses toward the land.

MAIDEN.
Ah, that is the ship from over the sea,
That is bringing my lover back to me;
Bringing my lover so fond and true,
Who does not change with the wind like you.

WEATHERCOCK.
If I change with all the winds that blow,
It is only because they made me so;
And people would think it wondrous strange
If I, a weathercock, should not change.

O pretty maiden, so fine and fair,
With your dreamy eyes and your golden hair,
When you and your lover meet to-day,
You will thank me for looking some other way.

THE WINDMILL.

A FOLK SONG.

Behold! a giant am I!
Aloft here in my tower
With my granite jaws I devour
The maize, and the wheat, and the rye,
And grind them into flour.

I look down over the farms;
In the fields of grain I see
The harvest that is to be;
And I fling to the air my arms,
For I know it is all for me.

I hear the sound of flails,
Far off from the threshing-floors
In barns, with their open doors,
And the wind, the wind in my sails
Louder and louder roars.

I stand here in my place,
With my foot on the rock below,
And whichever way it may blow
I meet it face to face
As a brave man meets his foe.

And while we wrestle and strive,
My master the miller stands
And feeds me with his hands;
For he knows who makes him thrive,
Who makes him lord of lands.

On Sundays I take my rest;
Church-going bells begin
Their low melodious din;
I cross my arms on my breast,
And all is peace within.

VIA SOLITARIA.

Alone I walk the peopled city,
Where each seems happy with his own;
Oh! friends, I ask not for your pity—
I walk alone.

No more for me yon lake rejoices,
Though moved by loving airs of June;
Oh! birds, your sweet and piping voices
Are out of tune.

In vain for me the elm tree arches
Its plumes in many a feathery spray;
In vain the evening’s starry marches
And sunlit day.

In vain your beauty, Summer flowers;
Ye cannot greet these cordial eyes;
They gaze on other fields than ours—
On other skies.

The gold is rifled from the coffer,
The blade is stolen from the sheath;
Life has but one more boon to offer,
And that is—Death.

Yet well I know the voice of Duty,
And, therefore, life and health must crave,
Though she who gave the world its beauty
Is in her grave.

I live, O lost one! for the living
Who drew their earliest life from thee,
And wait, until with glad thanksgiving
I shall be free.

For life to me is as a station
Wherein apart a traveller stands—
One absent long from home and nation,
In other lands.

And I, as he who stands and listens,
Amid the twilight’s chill and gloom,
To hear, approaching in the distance,
The train for home.

For death shall bring another mating,
Beyond the shadows of the tomb,
On yonder shores a bride is waiting
Until I come.

In yonder field are children playing,
And there—oh! vision of delight!—
I see the child and mother straying
In robes of white.

Thou, then, the longing heart that breakest,
Stealing the treasures one by one,
I’ll call Thee blessed when thou makest
The parted—one.

AUF WIEDERSEHEN.[60]

Until we meet again! That is the meaning
Of the familiar words that men repeat
At parting in the street.
Ah, yes, till then! but when death intervening
Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain
We wait for the Again!

The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow
Of parting as we feel it who must stay
Lamenting day by day,
And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow,
We shall not find in its accustomed place
The one belovèd face.

It were a double grief, if the departed,
Being released from earth, should still retain
A sense of earthly pain;
It were a double grief if the true-hearted
Who loved us here, should on the farther shore
Remember us no more.

Believing, in the midst of our afflictions,
That death is a beginning, not an end,
We cry to them, and send
Farewells, that better might be called predictions,
Being foreshadowings of the future thrown
Into the vast Unknown.

Faith overleaps the confines of our reason,
And if by faith, as in old times was said,
Women received their dead
Raised up to life, then only for a season
Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain
Until we meet again.

[60] Written in memory of the Poet’s long-time friend and publisher, Mr. James T. Fields.

ULTIMA THULE.

TO G. W. G.

With favouring winds, o’er sunlit seas,
We sailed for the Hesperides,
The land where golden apples grow;
But that, ah! that was long ago.

How far since then the ocean streams
Have swept us from the land of dreams.
That land of fiction and of truth,
The lost Atlantis of our youth!

Whither, ah, whither? Are not these
The tempest-haunted Hebrides,
Where sea-gulls scream, and breakers roar,
And wreck and sea-weed line the shore?

Ultima Thule! Utmost Isle!
Here in thy harbours for awhile
We lower our sails; awhile we rest
From the unending, endless quest.

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.

_As Seleucus narrates, Hermes described the principles that rank as wholes in two myriads of books; or, as we are informed by Manetho, he perfectly unfolded these principles in three myriads six thousand five hundred and twenty five Volumes._

_Our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of Hermes._—IAMBLICUS.

Still through Egypt’s desert places
Flows the lordly Nile;
From its banks the great stone faces,
Gaze with patient smile;
Still the pyramids imperious
Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
Solemn, stony eyes.

But where are the old Egyptian
Demigods and kings?
Nothing left but an inscription
Graven on stones and rings.
Where are Helius and Hephoestus,
Gods of eldest eld?
Where is Hermes Trismegistus,
Who their secrets held?

Where are now the many hundred
Thousand books he wrote?
By the Thaumaturgists plundered,
Lost in lands remote;
In oblivion sunk for ever,
As when o’er the land
Blows a storm-wind, in the river
Sinks the scattered sand.

Something unsubstantial, ghostly,
Seems this Theurgist,
In deep meditation mostly
Wrapped, as in a mist.
Vague, phantasmal, and unreal,
To our thought he seems,
Walking in a world ideal,
In the land of dreams.

Was he one, or many, merging
Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which converging
Many streamlets run?
Till, with gathered power proceeding,
Ampler sweep it takes,
Downward the sweet waters leading
From unnumbered lakes.

By the Nile I see him wandering,
Pausing now and then,
On the mystic union pondering
Between gods and men;
Half-believing, wholly feeling,
With supreme delight,
How the gods, themselves concealing,
Lift men to their height.

Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,
In the thoroughfare
Breathing, as if consecrated,
A diviner air;
And amid discordant noises,
In the jostling throng,
Hearing far, celestial voices
Of Olympian song.

Who shall call his dreams fallacious?
Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
Universe of thought?
Who, in his own skill confiding,
Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
Human and divine?

Trismegistus! three times greatest!
How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
Progeny of time!
Happy they whose written pages
Perish with their lives,
If amid the crumbling ages
Still their name survives!

Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately
Found I in the vast,
Weed-encumbered, sombre, stately
Graveyard of the Past;
And a presence moved before me
On that gloomy shore,
As a waft of wind, that o’er me
Breathed, and was no more.

DECORATION DAY.

Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
Nor sentry’s shot alarms!

Ye have slept on the ground before,
And started to your feet
At the cannon’s sudden roar,
Or the drum’s redoubling beat.

But in this camp of Death
No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
No wound that bleeds and aches.

All is repose and peace,
Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
It is the Truce of God!

Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
Your rest from danger free.

Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.

MAD RIVER.[61]

IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.

TRAVELLER.
Why dost thou wildly rush and roar,
Mad River, O Mad River?
Wilt thou not pause and cease to pour
Thy hurrying, headlong waters o’er
This rocky shelf for ever?

What secret trouble stirs thy breast?
Why all this fret and flurry?
Dost thou not know that what is best
In this too restless world is rest
From over-work and worry?

THE RIVER.
What wouldst thou in these mountains seek,
O stranger from the city?
Is it, perhaps, some foolish freak
Of thine, to put the words I speak
Into a plaintive ditty?

TRAVELLER.
Yes; I would learn of thee thy song,
With all its flowing numbers,
And in a voice as fresh and strong
As thine is, sing it all day long,
And hear it in my slumbers.

THE RIVER.
A brooklet nameless and unknown
Was I at first, resembling
A little child, that all alone
Comes venturing down the stairs of stone,
Irresolute and trembling.

Later, by wayward fancies led,
For the wide world I panted;
Out of the forest dark and dread,
Across the open fields I fled,
Like one pursued and haunted!

I tossed my arms, I sang aloud,
My voice exultant blending
With thunder from the passing cloud,
The wind, the forest bent and bowed,
The rush of rain descending.

I heard the distant ocean call,
Imploring and entreating;
Drawn onward, o’er this rocky wall,
I plunged, and the loud waterfall
Made answer to the greeting.

And now, beset with many ills,
A toilsome life I follow;
Compelled to carry from the hills
These logs to the impatient mills,
Below there in the hollow.

Yet something ever cheers and charms
The rudeness of my labours;
Daily I water with these arms
The cattle of a hundred farms,
And have the birds for neighbours.

Men call me MAD, and well they may,
When, full of rage and trouble,
I burst my banks of sand and clay,
And sweep their wooden bridge away,
Like withered reeds and stubble.

Now go and write thy little rhyme
As of thine own creating.
Thou seest the day is past its prime,
I can no longer waste my time;
The mills are tired of waiting.

[61] This was the last poem published in the Poet’s lifetime; he corrected the proof only two or three days before his death.

INSCRIPTION ON THE SHANKLIN FOUNTAIN,

ISLE OF WIGHT.

The following quotation from a private letter, dated “Shanklin, Isle of Wight, 1st October 1879,” is the authority for ascribing this inscription to the Poet:—

“Just look at this group of thatched cottages! The one on the right is a library where we go for books. In the middle is the Crab Inn. Do you see what looks like a pile of stones to the right of it? That is a fountain for the use of the public. I read some verses painted there on a piece of tin, and said to myself: ‘That must be from Longfellow.’ I found afterward that they were written by him, by request, when he was here some years ago:

“‘O traveller, stay thy weary feet;
Drink of this fountain, pure and sweet;
It flows for rich and poor the same.
The go thy way, remembering still
The wayside well beneath the hill,
The cup of water in His name.’”

THE BELLS OF SAN BLAS.[62]

What say the Bells of San Blas
To the ships that southward pass
From the harbour of Mazatlan?
To them it is nothing more
Than the sound of surf on the shore—
Nothing more to master or man.

But to me, a dreamer of dreams,
To whom what is and what seems
Are often one and the same,—
The Bells of San Blas to me
Have a strange, wild melody,
And are something more than a name.

For bells are the voice of the Church;
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts of young and old;
One sound to all, yet each
Lends a meaning to their speech,
And the meaning is manifold.

They are a voice of the Past,
Of an age that is fading fast,
Of a power austere and grand,
When the flag of Spain unfurled
Its folds o’er this Western world,
And the Priest was lord of the land.

The chapel that once looked down
On the little seaport town
Has crumbled into dust;
And on oaken beams below
The bells swing to and fro,
And are green with mould and rust.

“Is, then, the old faith dead,”
They say, “and in its stead
Is some new faith proclaimed,
That we are forced to remain
Naked to sun and rain,
Unsheltered and ashamed?

“Once in our tower aloof,
We rang over wall and roof
Our warnings and our complaints;
And round about us there,
The white doves filled the air
Like the white souls of the saints.

“The saints! ah, have they grown
Forgetful of their own?
Are they asleep or dead,
That open to the sky
Their ruined Missions lie,
No longer tenanted?

“Oh, bring us back once more
The vanished days of yore,
When the world with faith was filled;
Bring back the fervid zeal,
The hearts of fire and steel,
The hands that believe and build!

“Then from our tower again
We will send over land and main
Our voices of command,
Like exiled kings who return
To their thrones, and the people learn
That the Priest is lord of the land.”

O Bells of San Blas, in vain
Ye call back the Past again;
The Past is deaf to your prayer!
Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light;
It is daybreak everywhere.

[62] This poem, the last penned by the poet, bears date March 15, 1882.

PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

“E venni dal martirio a questa pace.”

These words the poet heard in Paradise,
Uttered by one who, bravely dying here.
In the true faith was living in that sphere
Where the celestial cross of sacrifice
Spread its protecting arms athwart the skies,
And set thereon, like jewels crystal clear,
The souls magnanimous, that knew not fear,
Flashed their efflulgence on his dazzled eyes.
Ah me! how dark the discipline of pain,
Were not the suffering followed by the sense
Of infinite rest and infinite release!
This is our consolation: and again
A great soul cries to us in our suspense,
“I came from martyrdom unto this peace.”

_Poems_

WRITTEN BETWEEN 1824 AND 1826, WHEN THE POET WAS BETWEEN THE AGES OF EIGHTEEN AND TWENTY. THEY HAVE NOT HITHERTO BEEN PUBLISHED WITH HIS WORKS.

THANKSGIVING.

When first in ancient time, from Jubal’s tongue
The tuneful anthem filled the morning air,
To sacred hymnings and Elysian song
His music-breathing shell the minstrel woke.
Devotion breathed aloud from every chord:—
The voice of praise was heard in every tone,
And prayer, and thanks to Him the Eternal One,
To him, that with bright inspiration touched
The high and gifted lyre of heavenly song,
And warmed the soul with new vitality.
A stirring energy through nature breathed:—
The voice of adoration from her broke,
Swelling aloud in every breeze, and heard
Long in the sullen waterfall,—what time
Soft Spring or hoary Autumn threw on earth
Its bloom or blighting,—when the Summer smiled,
Or Winter o’er the year’s sepulchre mourned.
The Deity was there!—a nameless spirit
Moved in the breasts of men to do him homage;
And when the morning smiled, or evening pale
Hung weeping o’er the melancholy urn,
They came beneath the broad o’erarching trees,
And in their tremulous shadow worshipped oft,
Where pale the vine clung round their simple altars,
And grey moss mantling hung. Above was heard
The melody of winds, breathed out as the green trees
Bowed to their quivering touch in living beauty,
And birds sang forth their cheerful hymns. Below,
The bright and widely wandering rivulet
Struggled and gushed amongst the tangled roots,
That choked its reedy fountain—and dark rocks
Worn smooth by the constant current. Even there
The listless wave, that stole with mellow voice
Where reeds grew rank on the rushy-fringed brink,
And the green sedge bent to the wandering wind,
Sang with a cheerful song of sweet tranquillity.
Men felt the heavenly influence—and it stole
Like balm into their hearts, till all was peace;
And even the air they breathed,—the light they saw,—
Became religion,—for the ethereal spirit
That to soft music wakes the chords of feeling,
And mellows every thing to beauty,—moved
With cheering energy within their breasts,
And made all holy there—for all was love.
The morning stars, that sweetly sang together—
The moon, that hung at night in the mid-sky—
Dayspring—and eventide—and all the fair
And beautiful forms of nature, had a voice
Of eloquent worship. Ocean with its tides
Swelling and deep, where low the infant storm
Hung on his dun, dark cloud, and heavily beat
The pulses of the sea—sent forth a voice
Of awful adoration to the spirit,
That, wrapt in darkness, moved upon its face.
And when the bow of evening arched the east,
Or, in the moonlight pale, the curling wave
Kissed with a sweet embrace the sea-worn beach,
And soft the song of winds came o’er the waters,
The mingled melody of wind and wave
Touched like a heavenly anthem on the ear;
For it arose a tuneful hymn of worship.
And have _our_ hearts grown cold? Are there on earth
No pure reflections caught from heavenly light?—
Have our mute lips no hymn—our souls no song?—
Let him that in the summer-day of youth
Keeps pure the holy fount of youthful feeling,—
And him that in the nightfall of his years
Lies down in his last sleep, and shuts in peace
His dim pale eyes on life’s short wayfaring,
Praise him that rules the destiny of man.

AUTUMNAL NIGHTFALL.

Round Autumn’s mouldering urn,
Loud mourns the chill and cheerless gale,
When nightfall shades the quiet vale,
And stars in beauty burn.

’Tis the year’s eventide.
The wind,—like one that sighs in pain
O’er joys that ne’er will bloom again,
Mourns on the far hill-side.

And yet my pensive eye
Rests on the faint blue mountain long,
And for the fairy-land of song,
That lies beyond, I sigh.

The moon unveils her brow;
In the mid-sky her urn glows bright,
And in her sad and mellowing light
The valley sleeps below.

Upon the hazel grey
The lyre of Autumn hangs unstrung,
And o’er its tremulous chords are flung
The fringes of decay.

I stand deep musing here,
Beneath the dark and motionless beech,
Whilst wandering winds of nightfall reach
My melancholy ear.

The air breathes chill and free;
A Spirit, in soft music calls
From Autumn’s grey and moss-grown halls,
And round her withered tree.

The hoar and mantled oak,
With moss and twisted ivy brown,
Bends in its lifeless beauty down
Where weeds the fountain choke.

That fountain’s hollow voice
Echoes the sound of precious things;—
Of early feeling’s tuneful springs
Choked with our blighted joys.

Leaves, that the night-wind bears
To earth’s cold bosom with a sigh,
Are types of our mortality,
And of our fading years.

The tree that shades the plain,
Wasting and hoar as time decays,
Spring shall renew with cheerful days,—
But not my joys again.

ITALIAN SCENERY.

——Night rests in beauty on Mont Alto.
Beneath its shade the beauteous Arno sleeps
In Vallombrosa’s bosom, and dark trees
Bend with a calm and quiet shadow down
Upon the beauty of that silent river.
Still in the west, a melancholy smile
Mantles the lips of day, and twilight pale
Moves like a spectre in the dusky sky;
While eve’s sweet star on the fast-fading year
Smiles calmly:—Music steals at intervals
Across the water, with a tremulous swell,
From out the upland dingle of tall firs,
And a faint footfall sounds, where dim and dark
Hangs the grey willow from the river’s brink,
O’ershadowing its current. Slowly there
The lover’s gondola drops down the stream,
Silent,—save when its dipping oar is heard,
Or in its eddy sighs the rippling wave.
Mouldering and moss-grown, through the lapse of years,
In motionless beauty stands the giant oak,
Whilst those, that saw its green and flourishing youth,
Are gone and are forgotten. Soft the fount,
Whose secret springs the star-light pale discloses,
Gushes in hollow music, and beyond
The broader river sweeps its silent way,
Mingling a silver current with that sea,
Whose waters have no tides, coming nor going.
On noiseless wing along that fair blue sea
The halcyon flits,—and where the wearied storm
Left a loud moaning, all is peace again.

A calm is on the deep! The winds that came
O’er the dark sea-surge with a tremulous breathing.
And mourned on the dark cliff where weeds grew rank,
And to the autumnal death-dirge the deep sea
Heaved its long billows,—with a cheerless song
Have passed away to the cold earth again,
Like a wayfaring mourner. Silently
Up from the calm sea’s dim and distant verge,
Full and unveiled the moon’s broad disk emerges.
On Tivoli, and where the fairy hues
Of autumn glow upon Abruzzi’s woods,
The silver light is spreading. Far above,
Encompassed with their thin, cold atmosphere,
The Apennines uplift their snowy brows,
Glowing with colder beauty, where unheard
The eagle screams in the fathomless ether,
And stays his wearied wing. Here let us pause!
The spirit of these solitudes—the soul
That dwells within these steep and difficult places—
Speaks a mysterious language to mine own,
And brings unutterable musings. Earth
Sleeps in the shades of nightfall, and the sea
Spreads like a thin blue haze beneath my feet,
Whilst the grey columns and the mouldering tombs
Of the Imperial City, hidden deep
Beneath the mantle of their shadows, rest.
My spirit looks on earth!—A heavenly voice
Comes silently: “Dreamer, is earth thy dwelling!—
Lo! nursed within that fair and fruitful bosom
Which has sustained thy being, and within
The colder breast of Ocean, lie the germs
Of thine own dissolution! E’en the air,
That fans the clear blue sky and gives thee strength—
Up from the sullen lake of mouldering reeds,
And the wide waste of forest, where the osier
Thrives in the damp and motionless atmosphere,—
Shall bring the dire and wasting pestilence
And blight thy cheek. Dream thou of higher things;—
This world is not thy home!” And yet my eye
Rests upon earth again! How beautiful,
Where wild Velino heaves its sullen waves
Down the high cliff of grey and shapeless granite,—
Hung on the curling mist, the moonlight bow
Arches the perilous river. A soft light
Silvers the Albanian mountains, and the haze
That rests upon their summits, mellows down
The austerer features of their beauty. Faint
And dim-discovered glow the Sabine hills,
And listening to the sea’s monotonous shell,
High on the cliffs of Terracina stands
The castle of the royal Goth[63] in ruins.
But night is in her wane:—day’s early flush
Glows like a hectic on her fading cheek,
Wasting its beauty. And the opening dawn
With cheerful lustre lights the royal city,
Where, with its proud tiara of dark towers,
It sleeps upon its own romantic bay.

[63] Theodoric.

THE LUNATIC GIRL.