Chapter VIII

And now as our young nationhood is struggling into birth,
God grant its infant pulse may beat with our fore-fathers’ worth!
And as we gather into _one_, let us recall with pride
That we are of the blood of those who fought where Harold died.

OCTOBER, 1866.

THE NAUGHTY BOY.

(_From H. C. Andersen’s Tales._)

A good old poet sat by his hearth,
While the wind and rain were raging abroad;
And he thought of the poor who roamed thro’ the earth
Without a home or friend but God,
While he was as snug as he could desire,
Roasting his apples before the fire.

And just with the thought came a voice outside:
“O pray, let me in, I am wet and cold.”
In a second the door has been opened wide,
And there standeth a boy with ringlets of gold.
“Come in, my boy, there is warmth for thee here;
Come in and take share of my frugal cheer.”

So the boy came in, and in spite of the storm
A cherub he seemed who had come from the skies,
With his curly locks and his graceful form,
And the sparkling beauty that lit his eyes;
But the bow that he bore was so spoilt with the rain,
One would say he could never have used it again.

Then the good old poet nursed the boy,
And dried him and warmed him and gave him wine,
And his heart grew glad, and the spirit of joy
Frolicked and danced o’er his face divine;
“Light of heart thou seemest, and light of head,
Pray, what is thy name?” the old poet said.

“My name is Love; dost thou know me not?
Look, yonder my bow and my arrows lie,
And I’d have you beware. I’m a capital shot.”
“But your bow is spoilt.” “Never mind; I’ll try.”
And he bent his bow, and he aimed a dart,
And the good old poet was shot thro’ the heart.

And he fell from his chair, and he wept full sore:
“Is this my reward for my apples and wine?”
But the Naughty Boy could be seen no more;
He was forth again, for the night grew fine.
“Bah! I’ll warn all the boys and the girls I know,
If they play with this Love, they’ll have nothing but woe.”

So the good old poet he did his best
To make others beware of a fate like his;
And he shewed them the arrow that pierced his breast:
“Now you see what a terrible boy he is!”
But an archer, who’s never two moment’s the same,
Like Proteus, it’s hard to keep clear of his aim!

ROSA.

Thou art gone, sweet love, to take thy rest,
Like a weary child on thy mother’s breast;
And thou hearest not, in thy calm deep sleep,
The voices of those that around thee weep.

Thou art gone where the weary find a home,
Where sickness and sorrow can never come;
A flower too fair for earthly skies,
Thou art gone to bloom in Paradise.

Thou art gone, and I hear not thy gladsome tone,
But my heart is still beating “_alone, alone_,”--
Yet often in dreams do I hear a strain
As of angels bearing thee back again.

Thou art gone, and the world may not miss thee long,
For thou didst not care for its idle throng;
But this fond bosom, in silent woe,
Shall carry thine image wherever I go.

Thou art gone, thou art gone! Shall we meet no more
By the sandy hill or the winding shore?
Or watch as the crested billows rise,
And the frightened curlew startling cries?

Thou art gone, but oh! in that land of peace
Where sin, and sorrow and anguish cease,
Where all is happy and bright and fair,
My own sweet love, may I meet thee there?

MARCH, 1857.

JUBAL.

(Book of Genesis iv. 21.)

The Sun soon kissed to flowers, the blood-stained sod,
From which the voice of Abel cried to God,
And drove his murderer to the land of Nod;

And smiling, kindly watched them day by day,
Till they, like Abel, died and passed away,
And other flowers grew bright above their clay.

While with impartial kindness, year by year,
He kissed from Cain’s curs’d face the awful tear
That flowed when that dread voice appalled his ear.

Still as at night the silent woods are stirred
By the lone calling of some mateless bird,
Ever that voice in Cain’s sad heart was heard.

But busy hands for good or bad are best
To still the aching voices of the breast,
And load the body with the soul’s unrest.

So, tow’rds the Sun the City Enoch rose,
Beneath Cain’s hands, as in the desert grows
A palm whose shade the tawny outcast knows.

The City Enoch! from the first-born named
Of the first-born of woman, son of blood!
Built long ere Babel’s boastful tower was shamed,
Earth’s lonely capital before the flood!

The City Enoch! here were sown and grew
The seeds of Art when Art and life were long;
Here Lamech turned his misery to song,
Hence Jabal journeyed, seeking pastures new!

Here man’s soft hand made brass and iron yield
To cunning shapes and uses,--wondrous skill!
Tearing earth’s iron heart with iron will,
To see what secrets in it lay concealed!

And here, O music, like a dream of heaven,
Thy subtle thrills did touch the wearied brain,
With raptured, passionate longing to regain
The bliss of having naught to be forgiven!

Let me in fancy see thee rise again
O city of the Wanderer, seldom sought!
City of that wise Jubal who first taught
The harp and organ to the sons of men!

That I may learn the secret of his might,
Who, leaving earth unto his brother’s care,
Did gentle battle with the powers of air,
And made them his and ours by victor’s right!

Adah, the first-beloved of Lamech’s wives,
Bare him two sons. Jabal, the eldest-born,
Grew up to manhood, strong and bold and free;
And leaving Enoch, sought a boundless home,
Living in tents, a king amid his flocks,
Setting his throne where’er his subjects thrived,
Lord, or allowed vicegerent under God,
Unto the “cattle on a thousand hills.”

But Jubal, wise and gentle, ’tis for thee
That we would raise to life the giant shades
That lived and loved, and sinned and wept and died
Ere Heaven’s great tears had washed away the crime
That stained the beauty of the early earth;
And Enoch, mistress of primeval Art,
Lay, the dead mistress of a drownèd world.

What was thy year, thy month, thy day of birth,
That we may mark it in our Calendar,
“On this day, in a year before the Flood,
Jubal was born, Inventor of the Harp?”
Where shall we seek this knowledge? Of the stars?
’Tis said by some our hearts and brains depend
Upon the union in their mystic dance
They happen to be forming at the hour
When we are born. Then we shall ask the stars.
For they may recollect the year and hour
They formed that wondrous figure when the power
Of music touched the soul of man
For the first time, and if they can,
’Twas then that Jubal’s life began!

Sibyl-stars, that sing the chorus
Of the life that lies before us
As we open mortal eyes!
Strange phrenologists of Heaven,
That infuse the spirit-leaven
Into nascent, infant brains,
That can make them dull or wise,
Forging subtle mental chains
That must bind us until death,
As ye calmly glitter o’er us,
When we draw our primal breath!
Mixing qualities together,
Just according to the weather,
Just according to the season,
And the point of daily time,
Noon or even, night or morn,
That we happen to be born,
For some sage, sidereal reason,
Which some sophomores call “chance,”
Some the “force of circumstance!”
Tell, O fatal stars, sublime,
What the swelling of the chime
Into which you wove your dance,
What the day and what the hour,
Was so happy as to dower
Earth with Music’s heavenly power!

Tell the day of Jubal’s birth,
Day of Jubilee to earth.

Was the “music of the spheres”
Audible to mortal ears?
Did the winds of Heaven sing
Till the forests clapped their hands?
Did the ocean, heralding,
Bear the tidings to all lands,
Whispering, “Rejoice, rejoice,”
Till the earth, unprisoning
All her sounds, became a Voice?
As the soaring of his wing
When the distant eagle moves,
Wakes to life the silent groves,
At the coming of their king!
Sibyl-stars, was this the way
That Earth greeted Jubal’s day?

In those far shadowy years before the Flood
Jubal was born, and this is all we know;
Born in the land where Cain, in solitude
And occupation sought to hide his woe
Born with a gift, well-used, of sin the foe,
A heaven-sent harbinger of promised good.

Oh! was not Adah happy in her boy?
Oh! who could tell the secret of her joy,
When, with a mother’s love, she pierced the veil
That childhood draws round genius, lest it fail
In its high aim, by adulation fed,
And only feel the poison, when ’tis dead?

And Lamech, first of bards, whose kindred art
Would welcome her sweet sister, watched his son
As day by day he saw the promise start
Towards accomplishment. Yet neither one,
Father nor mother, knew as yet the prize
For which they waited with such anxious eyes.

They saw that he was not of common mould:
His quiet thoughtfulness, his pensive ways,
His listening oft as to a story told,
With side-turned head, and distant, earnest gaze,
Told of some god-like purpose in his brain,
Though what it was they asked themselves in vain.
So Jubal grew in those far, shadowy years
Before the Flood; and so the music grew
Within his soul. The common air to him
Was as a constant feast; its slightest touch
Was joy to which all other joy was pain.
The first sensations of his infancy
Were blent with it. His mother’s tender sighs,--
Half sighs, half laughter,--as she looked on him,
Wondering what sort of man he should become,
Were like the breath of angels to his ear;
And when his father’s mighty voice came forth,
Majestic, through its bearded doors, he hushed
The tremulous beatings of his heart to hear.
And when his brother Jabal went away,
And there were sounds of sorrow in his home,
(And he wept too, though hardly knowing why)
He treasured up the sounds as precious things,
Until they seemed a portion of his life.

So did he gather all the tones of love
And joy and grief, by strange instinctive power;
And by and by, how anger wounds the air,
And all the passions of the fallen heart
That Satan hissed into the ear of Eve,
He sadly learned; and yet with balanced sense,
His great, high gift, he traced through all the tones
The woman struggling with her serpent-foe,
And desperate yearnings for lost innocence.

But most he joyed to listen to the words
Of happy children, respited a while,
From fearful looking to the day of death;
And it was Jubal’s chief delight to wed
Their gladsome voices with the Eden notes
To which the first sweet marriage-hymn was set--
The silver-throated wooing of the birds--
The trilling of the zephyr-courted leaves--
The merry-hearted laughter of the brooks--
The multitudinous hum of joyous life--
The weird lullaby that Nature sings
Unto the darlings fondled in her lap,
Loving but helpless, and their low response;
And all the vocal charms of summer time,
That wrap the soul in dreamy, languid bliss.

All gentle sounds nestled within his heart,
But not alone (though these he loved the most)
Were gentle sounds the study of the boy.
The mournful requiem of the dying leaves,--
The piping gales that make the forest dance,--
The tempest’s rage, to which the pine and oak
Are but as playthings to an angry child:
The rain, the whirlwind and the thundercrash,--
The mountain torrent, “the vexed ocean’s roar,”--
The noisy lapping of the tongues of fire,--
The howl of hungry, ravenous beasts of prey,--
All that is sad or mad in Nature’s voice,--
All that reminds us of the awful words
That pierced the fancied hiding place of sin,
Ere yet the curse descended,--these he knew.
For, in those giant days before the Flood,
Nature and man were ever face to face,
Till Art grew, Nature’s image, in man’s heart.

So Jubal revelled in all sweet, grand sounds,
A seeming spendthrift, but with miser craft,
Locking his airy jewels in the casket
Of lovingest remembrance,--till the boy
Dreamed himself into manhood.

Then there weighed
Upon his brain the burden of a thought,--
To bring to life the music that his soul
Had gathered from the music of the world,--
To make, by cunning union, every tone
Of its great voice obedient to his will.
And so he planned, awake, and, sleeping, dreamed
Of this, his one idea; till at last
’Neath his creative hand the “Harp” was born.
And then he planned again, for life was long
In those far, shadowy years before the Flood,
Until the “Organ,” in its mighty heart,
Echoed the throbbings of the heart of man.

APOLLO DROPT A SEED OF SONG.

I.

Apollo dropt a seed of song
Into my heart one day,
And, smiling godlike, passed along
Upon his heavenly way.

II.

I saw him make his golden arc,
For many a weary day,
But still the little seedling, dark
Lay hid beneath the clay.

III.

But gentle eyes, one joyous hour,
Shone where my seedling lay,--
O Love, tend well thy little flower,
And let it not decay.

VOX DEI.

The beauteous pyramid of harmless flame
Spelled G O D for Moses; but the thundered law
Was needed for the wild, unruly crowd.

The awful test of swift-consuming fire
Alone shewed Baal false to Baal’s friends;
The “still, small voice” touched lone Elijah’s heart.

So God speaks variously to various men:
To some in nature’s sternest parables;
To others, in the breath that woos the flowers,
Until they blush and pale, and blush again.

To _these_ the Decalogue were just as true
If uttered on a summer Sabbath-day
In village church--to _those_ there is no God,
Till fiery rain has scarred the face of earth.

THE OLD WAR-HORSE.

I.

He paweth no more in the field,
Where glitter the spear and the shield;
Nor heareth the thunder of war,
Nor smelleth the battle afar;
In his eyes is no glory of gleam,
And his strength is the strength of a dream.

II.

He never turned back from the sword,
When the pride of the land was his lord,
Yet his neck is bowed meekly--the brave
Can be meek, aye, as meek as a slave,--
And he works near the dark of his day,--
’Twas _his_ pride (he was taught) to obey.

III.

In the gloaming of life his old eyes
May see visions of glory arise;
Who knows but within his old heart
May thousands of memories start
Of the march and the drum and the fife,
Of the charge and the cry and the strife?

IV.

Who can tell? But, hark! once again
He hears, as in whispers the strain
Of that long-ago hid in his blood;
It comes nearer; he paweth the mud
Of the street, and his sinews rejoice,
And he hears not his slave-master’s voice!

V.

Though his form no gay war-trappings deck,
The thunder returns to his neck;
Ha! ha! he is free! for the sound
Of the trumpet his soul has unbound!
He is off! not a pause, till he comes
To the midst of the din of the drums.

VI.

He has taken his place, as of yore,
He is marching to battle once more;
They may mock him as haggard and thin,
They may laugh at the marks on his skin,
But naught recks he; the master he bore,
_His_ name may well cover them o’er.

VII.

The music is hushed; the array
Of the soldiers has vanished away;
The old charger, poor fellow, elate
No longer, returns to his fate;
And the light of his eyes has burned low,
And his paces are feeble and slow.

* * * * *

VIII.

He has heard his last call to parade
From the trumpet of death and obeyed;
And the brave soldier-steed from all harness is freed
Evermore, and his sleep
Is so placid and deep,
He needs fear no awakening. Rest to his shade!

* * * * *

IX.

There are men, there are women who toil
At the mill or the mart or the soil,
Who wearily drudge day by day
Till the soul of them seems to decay;
Only _seems_,--for within, after all,
There’s a something that waits for its call.

X.

And if even the call never come
In this world of the deaf and the dumb,
When the Great Trumpet music shall fall
On the ears of the quick and the dead,
They shall burst from their clay
And hasten away
To their place in that host of which God is the Head.

ELOISE.

I.

I’ll call thee Elöise. Such eyes as thine
With fatal beauty marred
The peace of Abelard,
And dimmed with human love the light divine
That lingers near Religion’s holy shrine!

II.

O pitiless eyes, you burn unto my soul,
Each one a living coal
From off Love’s altar! Fall, O silken lashes,
And shade me, like a screen, from their control,
Ere all my warm delight be turned to ashes!

III.

Oh, no! I cannot bear the shade. Burn on,
And let me slowly perish with sweet fire,
Myself at once the victim and the pyre,--
I die of cold when that dear heat is gone.

WHEN THE SPRING-TIME COMES.

I.

“When the Spring-time comes”--
So we say in wintry hours;
And we look upon the snow,
While we think upon the flowers.
And we gaze till hope’s bright glory is kindled in our eyes,
And earth becomes an Eden full of beauty and delight,
Where the air is far too happy to bear any weight of sighs,
And myriad forms of gentle things bring gladness to the sight.
And we wander through and through,
Past the fairest trees and flowers,
Till we find the friends we knew,
And link their hands in ours,
And then, in ecstacy of bliss, we seek the sweetest bowers.

II.

“When the Spring-time comes”--
But ah! the snow is cold,
And Death is colder still,--
Whom may he not enfold?
The glory in our eyes that shone is dimmed with bitter tears,
And our Eden-flowers have faded into nothingness again;
And we wander sadly, darkly, through a labyrinth of years,
And we call for vanished faces, and act wildly in our pain.
And then there comes a calm,
And our sorrow grows less bold,
As Nature’s mighty psalm,
O’er God’s own mountain rolled,
Once heralded the still, small voice to that lone seer of old.

III.

“When the Spring-time comes”--
Think we of griefs we know;
Had we foreseen them long,
Could we have stood the blow?
Then should we not be thankful for the mercy that conceals
The future, whether dark or bright, from our too curious eyes?
God knows what’s best for all of us; He covers or reveals,
As it seemeth to him best, the ill that in our pathway lies.
So let us journey on,
Content in weal or woe
To feel at least that One
Smiles on us as we go,
Who in sublime humility once suffered here below.