Chapter I: COME where the wry road leads

Thro’ the pines and the alder scents,
Sated of books, with a start,
Sharp on the gang to-day:
Scarce see the Romany steeds,
Scarce hear the flap of the tents,
When hillo! my heart, my heart
Is out of its leash, and away.

Gypsies, gypsies, the whole
Tatterdemalion crew!
Brown and sly and severe
With curious trades in hand.
A string snaps in my soul,
The one high answer due
If an exile chance to hear
The songs of his fatherland.

... To be abroad with the rain,
And at home with the forest hush,
With the crag, and the flower-urn,
And the wan sleek mist upcurled;
To break the lens and the plane,
To burn the pen and the brush,
And, clean and alive, return
Into the old wild world!...

How is it? O wind that bears
The arrow from its mark,
The sea-bird from the sea,
The moth from his midnight lamp,
Fate’s self, thou mocker of prayers!
Whirl up from the mighty dark,
And even so, even me
Blow far from the gypsy camp!

FOR A CHILD.

Schumann’s ‘Erinnerung: Novbr. 4, 1847.’

IN memory of dear Mendelssohn, the loving song I made
Fain would I sing for you, my own, but that I am afraid,
Aye, truly, sore afraid:

For sweet as was its every tone, once freed to mortal ears,
In memory of dear Mendelssohn, the ghostly wand of tears
Would yet be strong to break my song,
Thro’ all these after-years!

AGLAUS.

THE ash hath no perfidious mind;
The open fields are just and kind;
Tho’ loves betray, I hear this way
The feathery step of the faithful wind.

Thorn-apple, bayberry and rose
Around me, talismanic, close:
The frosty flakes, the thunder-quakes,
Are bulwarks twain of my year’s repose.

No struggle, no delight, no moan,
But at my hearthstone I have known!
All thoughts that pass, as in a glass
The gods have bared to me for mine own.

Wisdom, the sought and unpossessed,
Hath of her own will been my guest;
Not smoking feud, but quietude
My heart hath chosen, at her behest.

‘This is of men the happiest man
Who hath his plot Arcadian,’
Apollo cried, my gates beside,
‘Nor ever wanders beyond its span.’

Now, like my sheep, I seek the fold;
My hair is shaken in the cold;
The night is nigh; but ere I die,
Bear witness, brothers! that young and old,

My name I wear without regret:
The Home-Keeper am I, and yet
At every inn my feet have been,
Above all travellers I am set.

Tho’ ocean currents by me purled,
The sails of my desire were furled.
What pilgrims crave, three acres gave;
And I, Aglaus, have seen the world!

AN AUDITOR.

WHY chide me that mutely I listen, ah, jester?
For either thou knowest
Too much, or thou knowest not aught of this aching vexed
planet down-whirling:
Thou knowest?--Thy wit is but fortitude; would’st have me
laugh in its presence?
Thou knowest not?--Laugh I can never, for innocence also is sacred.

THE WATER-TEXT.

WATCHING my river marching overland,
By mighty tides, transfigured and set free,--
My river, lapped in idle-hearted mirth,
Made at a touch a glory to the earth,
And leaving, wheresoever falls his hand,
The balm and benediction of the sea,--

O soon, I know, the hour whereof we dreamed,
The saving hour miraculous, arrives!
When, ere to darkness winds our sordid course,
Some glad, new, potent, consecrating force
Shall speed us, so uplifted, so redeemed,
Along the old worn channel of our lives.

CYCLAMEN.

ON me, thro’ joy’s eclipse, and inward dark,
First fell thy beauty like a star new-lit;
To thee my carol now! albeit no lark
Hath for thy praise a throat too exquisite.
O would that song might fit
These harsh north slopes for thine inhabiting,
Or shelter lend thy loveliest laggard wing,
Thou undefiled estray of earth’s o’ervanished spring!

Here is the sunless clime, the fallen race;
Down our green dingles is no peer of thee:
Why art thou such, dear outcast, who hadst place
With shrine, and bower, and olive-silvery
Peaked islets in mid-sea?
Thou seekest thine Achaian dews in vain,
And osiered nooks jocose, at summer’s wane,
With gossip spirit-fine of chill and widening rain.

Thou wert among Thessalia’s hoofy host,
Their radiant shepherd stroked thee with a sigh;
When falchioned Perseus spied the Æthiop coast,
Unto his love’s sad feet thy cheek was nigh;
And all thy blood beat high
With woodland Rhœcus at the brink of bliss;
Thy leaf the Naiad plucked by Thyamis,
And she, the straying maid, the bride beguiled of Dis.

These, these are gone. The air is wan and cold,
The choric gladness of the woods is fled:
But thou, aye dove-like, rapt in memories old,
Inclinest to the ground thy fragile head,
In ardor and in dread.
Searcher of yesternight! how wilt thou find
In any dolven aisle or cavern blind,
In any ocean-hall, the glory left behind?

June’s butterfly, poised o’er his budded sweet,
Is scarce so quiet-winged, betimes, as thou.
Fail twilight’s thrill, and noonday’s wavy heat
To kiss the fever from thy downcast brow.
Ah, cease that vigil now!
No west nor east thine unhoused vision keeps,
Nor yet in heaven’s pale purpureal deeps
Of worlds unnavigate, the dream of childhood sleeps.

Flower of the joyous realm! thy rivers lave
Their once proud valleys with forgetful moan;
Thy kindred nod on many a trodden grave
Among marmorean altars overthrown;
For thou art left alone,
Alone and dying, duped for love’s extreme:
Hope not! thy Greece is over, as a dream;
Stay not! but follow her down Time’s star-lucent stream.

Less art thou of the earth than of the air,
A frail outshaken splendor of the morn;
Dimmest desire, the softest throb of prayer,
Impels thee out of bondage to thy bourn:
Ere thou art half forlorn,
Farewell, farewell! for from thy golden stem
Thou slippest like a wild enchanter’s gem.
Swift are the garden-ghosts, and swiftest thou of them!

Yea, speed thy freeborn life no doubts debar,
O blossom-breath of that which was delight!
In cooling whirl and undulation far
The wind shall be thy bearer all the night
Thro’ ether trembling-white:
And I that clung with thee, as exiles may
Whose too slight roots in every zephyr sway,
Thy little soul salute along her homeward way!

A PASSING SONG.

WHERE thrums the bee and the honeysuckle hovers,
Gather, golden lasses, to a roundelay;
Dance, dance, yokefellows and lovers,
Headlong down the garden, in the heart of May!
Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away.

Dance! what if last year Winnie’s cheek were rounder?
Dance! tho’ that foot, Hal, were nimbler yesterday.
Spread the full sail! for soon the ship must founder;
Flaunt the red rose! soon the canker-worm has sway:
Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away.

See the dial shifting, hear the night-birds calling!
Dance, you starry striplings! round the fountain-spray;
With its mellow music out of sunshine falling,
With its precious waters trickling into clay,
Youth is slipping, dripping, pearl on pearl, away!

IN TIME.

HER little dumb child, for whom hope was none
In any mind, she watched from sun to sun,
Until three years her mighty faith had run;

Then, in an agony of love, laid by
The bright head from her breast, and went to lie
’Neath cedarn shadows, and the wintry sky,

Not having, for her long desire and prayer,
One sign from those shut lips, so rosy-fair
It seemed all eloquence must nestle there.

That day, to her near grave, thro’ frost and sleet,
He, following from his toys on truant feet,
Cried: ‘Mother, mother!’ joyous and most sweet.

And as their souls ached in them at the word,
The father lifted his new-wakened bird
With one rapt tear, that now at last she heard!

THE WILD RIDE.

_I HEAR in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;
All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing._

Cowards and laggards fall back; but alert to the saddle,
Straight, grim, and abreast, vault our weather-worn, galloping legion,
With a stirrup-cup each to the one gracious woman that loves him.

The road is thro’ dolor and dread, over crags and morasses;
There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:
What odds? We are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding!

_I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;
All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing._

We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind;
We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil.
Thou leadest, O God! All’s well with Thy troopers that follow.

THE LIGHT OF THE HOUSE.

BEYOND the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live;
You pace the garden-walks secure and sensitive;
You linger on the stair: Love’s lonely pulses leap!
The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep.

Years after, and years after, you keep your heirdom still,
Your winning youth about you, your joyous force and skill,
Unvexed, unapprehended, with waking sense adored;
And still the house is happy that hath so dear a lord.

To every quiet inmate, strong in the cheer you brought,
Your name is as a spell midway of speech and thought;
And unto whoso knocks, an awe-struck visitor,
The sunshine that was you floods all the open door!

A LAST WORD ON SHELLEY.

EACH ninth hierarchal wave, a league of sound,
To phantom shreds the hostile crags confound,
To wreck on wreck forlorn. The crags remain.

Smile at the storm for our safe poet’s sake!
Not ever this ordainèd world shall break
That mounting, foolish, foam-bright heart again.

IMMUNITY.

LEAF of the deep-leaved holly-tree,
Long spared the weather-god’s disdain,
Have not thy brothers borne for thee
June’s inavertible raging rain?

And they are beautiful and hale,
Those sun-veined revellers; and thou
Still crippled, still afraid and pale,
Sole discord of the singing bough!

PAULA’S EPITAPH.

GO you by with gentle tread.
This was Paula, who is dead:
Eyes dark-lustrous to the look
As a leaf-pavilioned brook,
Voice upon the ear to cling
Sweeter than the cithern-string;
Whose shy spirit, unaware
Loosed into refreshful air,
With it took for talisman,
Climbing past the starry van,
Names to which the heavens do ope,
Candor, Chastity, and Hope.

JOHN BROWN: A PARADOX.

COMPASSIONATE eyes had our brave John Brown,
And a craggy stern forehead, a militant frown;
He, the storm-bow of peace. Give him volley on volley,
The fool who redeemed us once of our folly,
And the smiter that healed us, our right John Brown!

Too vehement, verily, was John Brown!
For waiting is statesmanlike; his the renown
Of the holy rash arm, the equipper and starter
Of freedmen; aye, call him fanatic and martyr:
He can carry both halos, our plain John Brown.

A scandalous stumbling-block was John Brown,
And a jeer; but ah! soon from the terrified town,
In his bleeding track made over hilltop and hollow,
Wise armies and councils were eager to follow,
And the children’s lips chanted our lost John Brown.

Star-led for us, stumbled and groped John Brown,
Star-led, in the awful morasses to drown;
And the trumpet that rang for a nation’s upheaval,
From the thought that was just, thro’ the deed that was evil,
Was blown with the breath of this dumb John Brown!

Bared heads and a pledge unto mad John Brown!
Now the curse is allayed, now the dragon is down,
Now we see, clear enough, looking back at the onset,
Christianity’s flood-tide and Chivalry’s sunset
In the old broken heart of our hanged John Brown!

SONNETS

APRIL DESIRE.

WHILE in these spacious fields is my sojourn,
Needs must I bless the blossomy outbreak
Of earth’s pent beauty, and for old love’s sake
Trembling, the bees’ on-coming chant discern;
Hail the rash hyacinth, the ambushed fern,
High-bannered boughs that green defiance make,
And watch from sheathing ice the brave Spring take
Her broad, bright river-blade. Ah! then, in turn
Long-hushèd forces stir in me; I feel
All the most sharp unrest of the young year;
Fain would my spirit, too, like idling steel
Be snatched from its dull scabbard, for a strife
With cold oppressions! straightway, if not here,
In consummated freedom, ampler life.

TWOFOLD SERVICE.

CHAMPIONS of men with brawny fist and lung,
You righteous! with eyes oped and utterance terse,
Whose greed of energies would fain disperse
Ere any mould be cast, or roundel sung,
Your gentler brothers still at play among
The smirch and jangle of the universe,
Mere fool-blind trespassers for you to curse,
The Sabbath-breakers, the unchristened young;--
Peace! These, too, know: these are as ye employed,
Nor of laborious help and value void,
Living; who, faithful to their fellows’ need,
Fling life away for truth, art, fatherland,
Like a gold largess from a princely hand,
Without one trading thought of heavenly meed.

IN THE GYMNASIUM.