Chapter V: Part III (2)

O sun-bright maiden, choose and say,
Whither shall we two sail to-day?
Our hold with love-apples is stored,
And all strange fruits, a goodly hoard;
A wingèd boy sits at the prow,
Pointing our path with beaming eye
And smile of deepest mystery;
A wreath of myrtle crowns his brow.

O sun-bright maiden, choose and say,
Whither in Love’s realm shall we stray?
Say, shall we seek some storied isle,
Where warm Ægean waters smile?
Or shall I see the Arctic sun
A flood of crimson glories shed
At midnight on that golden head,
Or sail to seas where pearls are won?

O sun-bright maiden, choose and say
Whither shall we two sail to-day?
Follow the track of Heracles—
Seeking the far Hesperides;
Or where the South Sea flower expands,
Float idly in the moonlight wan;
Or sail beneath the rainbow’s span—
Bright gateway to Love’s golden lands?

O sun-bright maiden, choose and say,
There is no one to say thee nay.
O seek, she saith, that faithful shore
Where loving hearts will change no more.
Alas, my sails for many a year
Have sped through all Love’s wide domain,
Seeking that blessed shore in vain:
That land is still unknown, my dear.

SHADOWS.

FROM THE SAME.

Be still, my heart, keep silence, O my soul,
Thy fierce rebellious transports are in vain,
Oblivion’s turbid wave must o’er thee roll.

Cease the faint pulsing of the weary brain,
Fold up the remnant of thy wings at last,
And rot, beneath the inexorable chain.

Soon shalt thou be with refuse vile outcast,
Flung down the bottomless abyss that still
Yawns to the future from the darkling past.

Thy hopes are dead, broken thy lofty will,
Thy name and memory will be blotted out
Before the rattling clods thy grave refill.

No marble shaft for thee the heavens will flout,
Nor tear-drenched willow shed her graceful spray,
No lying epitaph the truth will scout,

No choir will chant, no man of God will pray,
No tears will silver the funereal pall—
Dark cloud that hides thy shame from light of day.

The felled tree strangely moves his comrades tall,
Waking the echoes of the mountain side,
But not a leaf will quiver at thy fall.

Like the mute convoy of the suicide,
Thou shalt wind down through night to find thy doom:
Thy ashes shall be scattered far and wide.

No circling rings shall break the sullen gloom
Of the dark pool that closes o’er thy head,
No widowed soul shall hover o’er thy tomb.

For the chaste secrets which thy soul hath wed,
With thee the pit shall bury them from view,
Fathoms below the deepest deep-sea lead.

Our Mother, Nature, hath her favorites too,
Like any other dame, spoiled children they;
Unwelcome waif, why should they share with you?

Upon them fall the myrtle and the bay,
E’en in the desert they would find at need
Enchanted palaces along their way.

Though for the morrow’s morn they take no heed,
Yet through their fingers filter golden sands,
And at a generous breast they freely feed.

Kneading a withered breast with famished hands
Their outcast brethren pine, or seek in vain
Some kinder bosom in relentless lands.

And if for them upon the desert plain
Illusive gardens rise, and fountains play,
They vanish like the rainbow after rain.

Or if by chance a sunbeam gone astray
Glints through the gloom that shrouds them evermore,
A chilling cloud obscures th’ unwonted ray.

The wisest plans but mock their hopes the more,
Bringing them to derision and dismay:
The sea engulfs them though they hug the shore.

The tree shall crush them, hollow with decay,
Whose grateful shade invites them to draw nigh:
The heart they lean on wins them to betray.

A turtle drops upon them from the sky;
The tower that has braved a thousand years
Falls without warning just as they pass by.

The friend who shared their youthful smiles and tears
Accuses them of treason to the crown,
Sending them to the rack with blows and jeers.

Born on the Danube, in the Seine they drown;
Poor fools, why fly so far to find the fate
That like a slimy monster sucks them down?

Why strive with Fate? no jot will he abate;
Even the brawny knees of Hercules
Must bend or break before him soon or late.

They drain a bitter cup with poisonous lees,
A life ignoble and a death of shame,
And in some potter’s field they find surcease;

Or, dying nobly, leave behind no name,
While, mounting on their bones, some brazen cheat
Reaches the very pinnacle of Fame.

Destiny mocks them from her lofty seat,
Dipping their sponge in vinegar and gall:
Want grinds them in the dust with iron feet.

Hard by the accursed sea whose waves appal,
A scape-goat lone, beneath the wingless skies,
They wander where the ashen apples fall.

Night takes for them a thousand baleful eyes,
Piercing at once their deepest hiding-place:
Straight to their heart each poisoned arrow flies.

Thrust out of camp, the scape-goat of their race,
Abhorred they live, and dead, the loathing earth
Vomits their phantom from the burial-place.

Such is thy history, O my soul, from birth;
Dark pages with decaying odors rife,
A maze of treachery, and pain, and dearth.

Yet ’tis the story of a vulgar life;
No title casts a glamour o’er its woes,
No footlights gild its unromantic strife.

Across the web the flying shuttle goes,
Weaving with common threads a homely plot,
Yet dark and sinister the pattern shows.

Why woo so long a world that loves thee not?
O soul, whence long have perished hope and faith,
Why cling to life, when death is all thy lot?

Sweeter than bridal bed the couch of death,
More restful far than sleep; the asphodel
Is sweeter than the crimson poppy’s breath.

King, queen, and harlot, priest and infidel,
Heaped up at random peacefully they rest,
Commingling in one mighty urn pell-mell.

Despairing brother, whose fast chilling breast
Nor love, nor wine may warm, descend with me,
And burst the shadowy gates an eager guest.

Abase thy head, and bend thy stubborn knee;
And like a Scythian chief in triumph led,
Welcome the agony that sets thee free.

One short, fierce agony, and all is said;
Beneath the coffin lid, sealed once for all,
Compose thy limbs as in a royal bed.

Swift as the fleeting shadow on the wall
Thy feeble footprints fall along the sand,
Nor voice, nor echo will thy song recall.

In the Corinthian brass thy feeble hand
Can write no name; thy chisel cannot bite
The marbles of Carrara pure and grand.

He who would climb Fame’s towering mountain height
Must have a double gift, a genius rare:
Unto a happy star he must unite.

Poet, alas! and lover, brethren are;
Twins of the soul, each hath his cherished dream,
Some saint ideal, worshipped from afar;

Some fount of youth, some pure Pactolian stream,
Some orb that beams with strange unearthly ray,
Some flaming vision potent to redeem.

The fount is dry, the vision fades away;
The mystic light that led them through the night
Dies in a marsh, and leaves them far astray.

O God, to tread but once by morning light
The alabaster palace of our dreams,
Counting its colonnades with waking sight;

To greet the lovely images that gleam
Athwart the gardens of our revery,
And drink the waters of its mystic stream;

To make the plunge, piercing triumphantly
The crystal vault, bring back the golden vase
Long buried with the treasures of the sea.

’Twere fine to feel the thrill of flight through space,
Adown the far empyrean to float,
Or track the eagle in his headlong chase.

To find the deed outstrip the noble thought,
To find fit words to mate our passion’s cry,
And pour the tide with its full burden fraught.

Sailing through unknown seas, to catch the sigh
Of mighty rivers, and through night’s eclipse
See new worlds heaving upward to the sky;

To feel upon the flower of our lips
The regal kiss that sometimes hovers there;
To find the glen wherein the rainbow dips;

To stop the wheel of fortune in the air;
To see before us on the glowing page
The wavering thoughts our midnight musings bear.

Such lots, alas, in this decrepit age
Are rare; Polycrates might wear his ring,
Nor fear to rouse the avenging goddess’ rage.

Seeking the upper chambers where we cling,
The cruel wave mounts upward step by step,
Mingling its murmur with our revelling,

Till slimy phocas, shapes that banish sleep,
Gnash foully at our very bedsides there,
Belched from the bowels of the nether deep.

The church is dark, the altar cold and bare,
And rending from their brows the aureole,
The saints blaspheming die in their despair.

The sun senescent, near his final goal,
Casts from his bloodshot eye one baleful glare,
Ere yet the heavens vanish like a scroll.

Each living thing shall perish foul or fair,
The flood will top the tallest mountain chain,
For vengeance cometh on and will not spare.

For twenty days and nights through wind and rain,
The raven’s midnight wing, cleaving the waste,
Seeks for a haven where to rest in vain.

Headlong she falls, famished and spent at last,
And as the widening circles mark the flood,
All Earth is but a tomb whence life has passed.

A common sepulchre for bad and good,
Upon this wave no ark of safety rides,
Bitter with tears and red with human blood.

No second patriarch his vessel guides,
A hive of life; a swelling fountain head,
To burst upon Ararat’s rugged sides.

Atlas has fallen! hark, O hark! o’erhead
The crack of doom, the supports of the world
Are snapped like reeds beneath Behemoth’s tread.

Our Mother Earth, by storms of chaos whirled,
Reels like a drunken harlot down through space,
By wanton buffets from her orbit hurled.

Unto the lips of an expiring race
The Son holds up the cup of human woes;
The Father sees with coldly sneering face.

When will our crucifixion cease? still flows
The ruddy current from our open side,
And red drops cluster on our pallid brows.

Enough of tears and blood; O turn aside
The poisoned chalice; doth not this suffice?
That Thy dear Son upon the cross has died?

He died for naught; man still must pay the price
Unless a newer Christ rise from the dead:
The Pontiff asks a fresher sacrifice.

For nigh two thousand years the Lamb hath bled;
His empty veins leave not the faintest stain
Upon the priestly knife that gleams o’erhead.

Messiah cometh not, we watch in vain;
The veil is rent, broken the altar stone,
The worshippers are slain, the church o’erthrown.

SONNET: _OU VONT ILS?_

FROM THE FRENCH OF SULLY PRUDHOMME.

To what strange land gather the slain of Love?
Heaven were no world for them, it hath no bliss
To match the raptures that they knew in this;
No summer night, no dark secluded grove,
Or deep ravine with sheltering boughs above;
Nor can the foul fiends of the dread abyss
So rend a soul as the fierce agonies
Of Love’s disdain, the doubts and fears thereof.

Tame were the joys of the bright sphere above
To which the saints so ardently aspire,
And vain the anguish of eternal fire
To him who knows the martyrdom of Love.
For souls consumed and dead there is no room
In heaven or hell: oblivion is their doom.

THE GAY CASHIER.

ADAPTED FROM THE FRENCH.

Two gallant burglars, who for many a day
Had laid their plans, at last had made their way
Into a bank upon a stormy night;
Then with what fond, what rapturous delight
Unto the vault they flew to seize the swag!
O cruel joke, there was no swag at all:
That night the gay cashier, a heartless wag,
With all the funds had skipped for Montreal.

THE RAVAGES OF TIME.

SCARRON.

The monuments of human pride and power,
Engulfed by ocean wave or desert sand,
And crushed by time’s inexorable hand,
Built for eternity, last but an hour.
Where are the hanging gardens and the towers
Of Babylon? the marbles tall and grand
That stood like gods on the Ægean strand?
Fallen and crumbled. So shall crumble ours.

Time slays or withers all on which we dote;
His swift, remorseless touches ne’er relent,
Destroying marble, mortar, and cement.
Then why should I repine because my coat
Is threadbare on the seams with three years’ wear,
Out at the elbows, and beyond repair?

HALLUCINATION.

FROM THE FRENCH.

I.

Last night, or did I dream? my lady led
Me to a wall I oft had passed before,
And opened there a curious secret door
Made by some cunning workmen ages dead.
We entered furtively, and as our tread
Resounded on the long untrodden floor,
Back swung the portal with a clanging roar.
Fleeing like startled children on we sped,
And found an inner chamber, where was spread
A board with gold and crystal, and a store
Of fruits and flowers from every unknown shore,
And curious flasks, whose contents gleaming red
A ruddy radiance o’er my lady shed,
And flung fantastic flames upon the floor.

II.

Bathed in the amber of an unseen flame,
A royal couch with silken curtains fair
Gleamed like a jewel in the alcove there;
A dreamy languor stole through all my frame,
Sweet beyond power of language to declare;
A breath of perfume moved the swooning air,
Stirring the golden ringlets of my dame;
And while we faltered, lo, a small voice came:
“O happy pair, with rosy forms aglow,
Here lie within the temple’s deep alcove
Sweet mysteries that I pant to have you know;
Wine that hath stained the trampling feet of Love,
And fruit that ripened in the sacred grove:
Break every seal, and let the purple flow.”

III.

I turned to seek my lady’s eyes, when lo!
The vision vanished, and I stood alone
Without the temple walls, whose cold gray stone
Mocked my endeavor, rising row on row.
I called my lady’s name, fearful and low.
No answer, save the hoot-owl’s jeering tone,
And the pale mocking moon that coldly shone.
Now, sadly round the temple walls I go,
Whose deepest mysteries I thought to know.
I thought its inmost chamber mine; fond fool,
I only stood within some vestibule,
Where all men’s feet may wander to and fro,
And saw, reflected from some mirror there,
My own imaginings too warm and fair.

IV.

IN THE GROVE.

Once more the huntress clad in silvery mail
Seeks her Endymion, over hill and glade;
Once more the hour so dear to youth and maid—
The hour that all Love’s guardian spirits hail.
Wrapped in the moonlight like a lucent veil,
Is it for me, young priestess, that, arrayed
Still in thy vestal robes, thy feet have strayed
So far from where the sacred fires pale?

Last night within the temple’s dim alcove
I durst not lift my conscious eyes to thine.
Lo, now thy lips and eyes have sought for mine,
And round my neck thy sheltering arms entwine,
While our commingling footsteps freely rove
Through all the mysteries of the silent grove.

TO MY CRITICS.

IMITATED FROM DE MUSSET.

My verse contains some images, ’tis true,
On Byron’s pages found, what then, he too
On other pages found them long before,
(Byron, I think, would hardly grudge them me,
Seeing I need them so much worse than he).
Read carefully the old Italian lore,
If you, to draw it very mild, would see
How freely Byron borrowed; he or she
As stupid as a school teacher must be
Who thinks in eighteen hundred eighty-four
To find a thought or rhyme not used before.
And yet I must not speak of “waters blue,”
Of “sunny skies,” and “eyes of heavenly hue,”
Nor use some old stock metaphor at need
Because, forsooth, pedantic fools may read,
The same in every language,—Sanscrit, Greek,
Hebrew and Latin, Dutch and Arabic.
Great bards of yore, and they of yesterday,
Before whose sun my rushlight pales away,
To whose deep flood, my song is but a rill,—
All, great and small, hear the same chorus still.
Read the old rotting magazines and see
The very venom that they void on me;
The arsenal where roving malice meets
The rusty darts that stung the heart of Keats.
Vile innuendo, and malignant sneer,
Blanche, Tray, and Sweetheart, hardly changed are here.

The lowest place amid the minstrel throng
Is all I claim; in the full tide of song
My voice is lost; upon my page appears
No burning message from supernal spheres.
But Teian glow and Lesbian passion still
A thousand lyres in every land they thrill.
A chord once found belongs, the whole world through,
To every minstrel that can strike it true.
My verses rhyme (at least some of them do),
And sweet as ever in our ear there chimes
The melody of old recurrent rhymes.
Dove ever mates with love, and bliss with kiss,
In every song from Sappho’s day to this.

THE YOUTH AND THE OLD MAN.

FLORIAN.

“Old man,” said an ambitious youth one day
“Show me the path to wealth and fame, I pray.”
Answering not, the old man mused awhile,
His thin lips wreathing with a cynic smile,
Then spoke: “Is fame thy wish? With earnest zeal
Devote thyself to serve the commonweal;
To her give all thy talents and thy time,
The flush of youth, and vigorous manhood’s prime;
And should the foeman come with deadly strife,
In her defence be swift to lose thy life,
Perchance with ‘failure’ branded on thy heart.
The road to wealth is surer; seek the mart,
Where cunning money-changers lie in wait,
Casting their nets with watered stocks for bait.
Or join the nobler throng, whose argosies
Bear on white wings across the distant seas
The honest——” “Hold, old man, I’ll none of these;
With intrigue and deceit I would not soil
My soul, and yet I shrink from sordid toil.”

Again the old man mused in silence while
Around his mouth hovered a cynic smile,
Then answered thus: “Why, simply be a fool,
And win both fame and wealth, in spite of rule.”

THE CATHEDRAL BELL AND ITS RIVAL.

IRIARTE.

In a renowned cathedral hung a bell,
The pride of all the country far and near;
A bell whose deep vibrations never fell
Save on the greatest church-days of the year.
Then for some moments brief the air was thrilled
By some deep strokes with solemn pause between;
The heart devout with pious awe was filled,
And sinners felt repentance swift and keen.

Within a neighboring hamlet poor and small,
With crumbling belfry tottering to its fall,
There stood a paltry chapel low and mean;
A cracked and rusty cow-bell hung therein,

Harsh and discordant, but the sexton sly,
Only upon the solemn days and high,
Six times a year at most, its voice awoke,
Like the cathedral bell with solemn stroke.
This strange reserve, in parish bells unknown,
Gave to the wretched bell a high renown.
Its jangling equalled to the rustic’s ear
The tones majestic of its grand compeer.

Pretentious, owl-like silence oft supplies
The lack of wit in those accounted wise.
“Be swift to listen and be slow to speak,”
If a high name for wisdom you would seek.

BLUE EYES AND BLACK EYES.

IMITATED FROM ANDALUSIAN COPLAS.

I.

Two miracles are thy blue eyes,
Haughty or tender;
Robbing our Andalusian skies
Of half their splendor.

Celestial eyes of heaven’s own hue,
Twin thrones of glory,
Whose glances every day subdue
New territory.

Blue were the waters and the skies
Of happy Eden;
And blue should be a Christian’s eyes,
Matron or maiden.

By heaven those peerless orbs of blue
To thee were given,
And all the mischief that they do
Is known in heaven.

I thought thy blue eyes beacons fair,—
O treacherous seeming;
O treacherous waves of golden hair,
That wrecked my dreaming!

Two saints the blue eyes seemed to me
That wrought my ruin:
Who would have thought that saints could be
A soul’s undoing?

II.

Black eyes are truer still, I ween,
Than any other:
Dark were the eyes of Eden’s Queen,
And Mary Mother.

The holy ones of sacred lore
All dark are painted,
Inspired prophetess of yore
And maiden sainted.

Blue eyes are cold as polished steel,
For all their splendor;
While thine a lambent flame reveal,
So warm and tender.

Dearer thine olive hue, and eyes
Of raven blackness,
Than all the azure of the skies,
And lily’s whiteness.

Thine eyebrows are a Moorish grove,
Whence issuing fleetly
Two wingèd archers lightly rove,
Wounding so sweetly.

But when their victims bleeding lie
Faintly appealing,
Two tender blackamoors draw nigh
With balm of healing.

COMPLAINT TO THE VIRGIN.

FROM A CUBAN POETESS.

Mother ineffable, whose radiant brow
The stars have crowned,
O’er all earth’s daughters chosen, thou
The sinless found;

Of Adam’s fallen race, the first and last
Untouched by strife,
Whose beauteous feet unstained and pure have passed
The snares of life.

The angelic heralds at those spotless feet
Once bent the knee,
And now adore at the effulgent seat
Eternally.

A gift too pure and bright for earthly bloom,
Flower of the sky;
The odors of whose matchless grace perfume
The courts on high.

Look down in pity from thy lofty throne,
Through realms of light,
To where thy sorrowing sister walks alone
In deepest night.

Oh, see the endless waves of anguish fierce
That o’er me roll!
Hast thou not bled? did not the sword once pierce
Thy tender soul?

Beating the breakers on the outer bar
My vessel lies;
For me there beams no friendly guiding-star,
No beacons rise.

Blest beacon seen in my despairing dreams,
Burst forth on me,
And light my stormy pathway with thy beams,
Star of the sea.

O baleful night, when some malignant blast,
Mocking and wild,
Into an orphan’s cradle rudely cast
A sleeping child!

Of careless childhood’s flowers and smiles and tears,
The tears were mine.
Alas! I gather in maturer years
No fruit or wine.

All night I bruise my failing wings in vain,
Seeking for rest—
A bird unmated on an arid plain
Without a nest.

I roam a timid stranger on the earth—
A foreign land—
Bewildered by the light, the joy and mirth
On every hand.

A vine-clad mountain to the beaming skies
That lifts its crest,
While an abyss of untold horror lies
Beneath its breast.

Some loving souls at birth are consecrated
To pain and grief;
Through gloomy vales they stray, unknown, unmated,
Without relief.

I seek no longer these sad mysteries
To penetrate;
I must not murmur at the high decrees
That fix my fate.

They say that God regards with pitying eye
The poor and weak,
Smiting the haughty head, and passing by
The low and meek.

No daring oak, whose branches, heaven defying,
Pierce the blue sky;
A blighted leaf before the tempest flying,
A reed am I.

A poor blind pilgrim through the wilderness
Groping my way,
Striving with agonizing tears to press
From night to day.

A heart whence all illusions long have perished
Seeks not for bliss.
I ask not human love, O Mother cherished,
I ask but this:

A lowly shelter far from tongues maligning
And bitter sneers;
There let me pray and quench all fierce repining
With grateful tears.

And some glad morning through my cloister swelling,
A golden portal
May burst, and flood with rosy light my dwelling,
And joys immortal.

THE CRUCIFIXION.

OLD FRENCH SONNET.

While Jesus suffered for the human race
Upon the tree, death came and found him there.
Transfixed with shame, at first he did not dare
To look upon his sovereign’s awful face.

But Jesus, full of majesty and grace,
Meekly bowed down his head, august and fair,
Veiling the glory that it used to wear,
And waves of darkness fell upon the place.

Then shuddering Death his shameful task fulfilled;
Earth to her centre rocked as though the day
Of doom were come; the veil was rent away—
All Nature moaned and quivered, horror-filled.

The very stones were softened, thou alone,
Vile scoffing sinner, took a heart of stone.

FROM THE SPANISH.

Unhappy he who buys
The toys that Cupid offers;
For each delight he proffers
Some dear illusion dies.
Sell not thy dearest treasures
For his too fleeting pleasures.

THE BOOK OF LIFE.

LAMARTINE.

Each soul the Book of Life must read and prove—
Fate turns the leaves whether we will or no.
We cannot linger o’er the lines we love,
Or hasten o’er the dreary lines of woe.
We have not read the page of Love aright
When, lo! the page of Death appalls our sight.

MEMORIAL DAY, AND OTHER POEMS.

DEDICATED TO THE G. A. R.

TWENTY YEARS AGO.

WRITTEN FOR MEMORIAL DAY IN 1885.

For twenty years the snowy wings of Peace
Over the land have brooded; flocks increase
Upon the fields, now blessed by smiling stars,
Where drave the reeking chariot-wheels of Mars.
How like a falcon’s flight the years have flown,
Since Appomattox rang the curtain down;
And listening to my voice are tall young men,
And women fair who were but children then.
Our young Republic, freed from all his chains,
For peaceful conquest girds his lusty reins.
The smiling Mississippi to the sea
Rolls as in days of old, unvexed and free,
And East and West in one grand commonweal
Are bound by triple bands of shining steel.
The apple tree historic rots away;
Our gunboats all have crumbled to decay;
The rifle-pits that scarred the Southern plains
Are washed away by twenty winters’ rains;
The impetuous onset of the bayonet line
Tramples no more the growing corn and vine,
And nesting birds pour forth their raptures where
The thunder-bolts of battle rent the air.
But still remain in many hearts we know
The ghastly scars of twenty years ago.
How many a comrade’s widow treads alone
A narrow path by cruel thorns o’ergrown!
’Tis long since song of mating bird has thrilled
That lonely heart, with tender memories filled,—
Memories still speeding backward to the time
When, brave and beautiful in manhood’s prime,
Her bridegroom more than twenty years ago
Sprang at the bugle call to meet the foe.
Strong men for other women dig the gold,
Tread out the wine, and weave the silken fold;
Her wine of Life in forests dark and dank
The thirsty soil of Mississippi drank;
Her daily lot for more than twenty years
Has been the widow’s toil, and widow’s tears.

Comrades, we’re growing old; upon our hairs
Gather the frosts of more than twenty years,
Since in the trench at Petersburg we lay,
Or, gayly holding our triumphal way,
Unto the sea we swept with Sherman’s pennon,
Or heard the roar of Stonewall Jackson’s cannon,
Waking the echoes of the Rapidan,
Or through the valley whirled with Sheridan.
Still surges up as though of yesterday
The memory of those that passed away;
Still floating down the vista of the years,
We hear their voices, see their smiles and tears.
In each successive strife how fast they fell—
The tried companions that we knew so well.
Some, fleeing from the ghastly prison pen,
By bloodhounds tracked were slain in swamp and fen;
Some ashes mingle with the sounding tide,
And some enrich the rugged mountain side,
Where the tall pines of frowning Kenesaw
Quivered like reeds before the blast of war;
Now looming up in shadowy ranks they stand
Like guardian phantoms brooding o’er the land.
No higher impulse thrilled the knights of old
Who to the crusades like a torrent rolled,
To pour for the dear cross their blood like wine
Upon the plains of Holy Palestine,
And feed on desert sands in the far East
The jackals ravening for their glorious feast.

They reck not where their scattered ashes rest
Who speed to the reunion of the blest;
As eaglets soaring to the gates of light
Spurn the dull shells that long confined their flight.
For you the amaranthine wreath we twine,
Raise the high song, and pour the ruddy wine;
For you the rhythmic beat of martial feet,
As the long lines go swaying down the street;
For you the plaintive reed’s subduing moan
Commingles with the hautboy’s rapturous tone,
The rolling drum, the thrilling trumpet blare,
And silken banners float upon the air
Like bright ethereal drapery trailing there.
The noblest sons of Earth, of every clime,
Welcome you to their galaxy sublime;
And flowers, by maidens fairer still than they,
Are offered to your sacred shades to-day;
Roses and dittany—and lilies fair,
Mingle their breath upon the vernal air;
But sweeter than the fleeting gifts we bring
Your memory perennial shall spring,
And loving tears each spring-time shall bedew
The flowers that loving hands shall here renew;
And younger bards, with truer touch than mine,
Will pour for you the flood of song divine,
While millions yet unborn, with quickening breath,
Will hear the tale heroic of your death.

O host of gallant comrades sweeping by,
Up the red track of glory to the sky—
Reynolds, McPherson, Dahlgren, Garesché,
And all the unknown names as brave as they,—
Great hearts and souls as those of song and story,
Whose only guerdon was a deathbed gory;
As youthful as of yore we see you now,
The flush of victory on each radiant brow,
And youthful in our withering hearts shall glow
Your generous valor in the Long Ago.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Song, legend, history, I scan in vain;
Outside of Holy Writ, no shape appears
So godlike as thy homely form; the spheres
Darken and die, thy glory shall not wane.
Monarchs have sat self-crowned upon the Seine
And on the Tiber; nations sick with fears
Have builded altars to them, drenched with tears
And smoking with a hecatomb of slain.

O Christ of Freedom, no high altars fume
For thee, but freely flow the tears and blood,
The pure sweet blood of thy own martyrdom,
And tears of mingled grief and gratitude
From the dark millions by thy pen set free,
Led from their long Gethsemane by thee.

THE PRISONER’S DREAM.

On the last sad day of the dying year,
As I lay in my prison racked with pain,
I heard the voices of children clear
Swelling out on the night in a peaceful strain.
They sang a farewell to the dying year,
And the far faint tones of an organ fell
With a soothing cadence upon my ear,
And I slept at last in my loathsome cell.
My body slept with its clanking chain,
But the prison walls fled far away,
And my spirit, glad and free again,
Went forth as upon its bridal day.
I never had thought again to sing,
But a song welled forth from my joyous heart,
As waters gush from a long-sealed spring
When the chains of winter are rent apart.
“I’m coming, I’m coming, my dove, my dear;
In the heaven of thy arms, my own sweet wife,
I’ll usher the birth of the glad new year;
I’m coming, I’m coming, my love, my life!”

* * * * *

Hark! the clang of the changing sentry’s steel;
Awaken, O fool, from thy blissful bed;
On the stony floor of thy dungeon kneel,
And hug thy chain, for the dream is fled.

HOW OFT A SENTRY SAD AND LONE.

How oft, a sentry sad and lone,
The starry midnight host I’ve counted,
As up the eastern horizon
Into the sky they slowly mounted.

Two still seemed missing from their place,
The brightest of the heavenly number;
But now I find them in thy face,
Nightly they beam upon my slumber.

FROM COPLAS OF AN ANDALUSIAN SOLDIER.

If daring deeds might win thy vows,
At nothing would I falter;
I’d dare thy father’s beetling brows,
Or those of grim Gibraltar.

I’ll seek the thickest of the strife,
And lofty deeds of glory;
My girl shall be a General’s wife,
Or mourn a lover gory.

Light batteries on the fatal field,
Their countless victims strewing,
Are the bright eyes to which I yield
For quarter meekly suing.

Thy lips are silken banners, and
Beneath their crimson lustre,
In gleaming lines the soldiers stand,
Two ranks prepared for muster.

The girl that jilts a veteran bold
To marry a clodhopper,
Would throw away the finest gold
To pick up worthless copper.

FROM THE SAME.

The conscripts march, O cruel theft,
While those that are rejected,
The crooked and the lame, are left
To comfort maids dejected.

If swift promotion you would gain,
Yet shrink from war and slaughter,
The path is old and very plain—
Marry the General’s daughter.

THE GLORY OF A SPANISH DRAGOON.

FROM THE SAME.

My little Pepita
Will be jealous I know,
For I promised to meet her,
But how can I go?
I come off of guard,
And go on police;
My sergeant’s a hard
One, and gives me no peace.
There’s the devil to pay
At fatigue duty too;
Every hour of the day
There is something to do.
A soldier at work,
What a pitiful sight!
I’d desert to the Turk
In the very next fight,
But his way of baptizing
You all will agree,
Is quite too surprising,
It would never suit me.
But my sergeant is worse
Than a Turk or a Jew,
He finds something to curse
At, whatever I do.
At every roll-call,
If I’m not upon time,
Drill, stables, and all,
He counts it a crime;
He laughs at my story,
In the guard-house I’m thrown,—
And this is the glory
Of a Spanish dragoon.

WRITTEN FOR A REUNION OF VETERANS IN THE YEAR 1915.

Comrades, once more to-night we gather here,
A dwindling band of graybeards; autumn sere
Pales into winter, Indian summer’s glow
Fades from the hills, reluctant still to go;
And Earth itself fades from our sight away,
Like rosy clouds that flit at close of day;
In our hearts too the flame burns low at last,—
An arctic winter closes round us fast.

While the remaining grains, how few, alas!
Of golden sand, pour through the hour-glass,
Fill up, dear friends, your goblets once again,
And warm the pulses in each shrunken vein
With sunshine garnered on some Gallic plain,
Or stolen from the vine-clad hills of Spain.
Here’s to the living absent, comrades they
So gay in camp, so dauntless in the fray,
The lingering remnant of the mighty host
That swept from far Atlanta to the coast.
Since then their prows through every sea have foamed,
And o’er five continents their feet have roamed,
And plucked the brightest bays in fields afar,
Who glittered brightest in the van of war.
But fast and faster from our sight they fail,
A few belated stragglers feebly hail
Along the banks of Styx the boatman pale.
Where’er they are, once more we pledge them all,
Ere from the thinning ranks we too shall fall.

Lift high the cup, a generous current pour,
Libations to the chosen friends of yore,
Who wander on the dim Plutonian shore.
A mist arises from the wine-stained ground,
And lo, what phantom faces gather round!
Like storm-blown wreaths they flit—e’en so must we
Soon pass like vapors blown across the sea.

Now draw together, fling apart the doors
Of wit and fancy, open up the stores
Of feeling that have been repressed so long;
Waken the voice of melody and song,
These fleeting moments sweetly to prolong,
And kindling up once more the altar fire,
Let the last embers all in flame expire.

TWENTY-FIVE SONNETS

TO ⸺.

Dear lady, doth the singer’s voice in thee
Awake an answering chord? if not so, be
Barren the song and all devoid of worth,
Save to awaken idle scorn and mirth;
Thy soul, self-poised in cold tranquillity,
Will smile to think how foolish some may be.
But if thy bosom swell with tender sighs,
If the deep fountains of thy soul are stirred,
Meeting some dear but unexpected word;
If, answering mine, responsive pulses rise,
And thy lips tremble to the happy eyes
Suffused with pleasure at the glad surprise
Of verses all too cold for thy completeness,
Know thy own heart hath lent them all their sweetness.

POESY.

Before the human hand a stylus held,
Ere papyrus’ or parchment’s mute appeal,
Sweet songs were sung whose echoes charm us still;
From dying lips undying music welled.
Wedded to strains from chosen souls that swelled,
Were rescued from oblivion’s clammy seal,
Fantastic legend, laws of commonweal,
Heroic deeds in days of hoary eld.

Muse of the lyre and harp, till latest day
Thy voice shall bear along the shores of Time,
While kingdoms crumble, and while tongues decay,
The numbers of the ancient bards sublime.
Still thy anointed favorites hold their sway,
’Mid falling stars, and gods that pass away.

THE ROSE.

The flushing wave bloomed into wondrous flower,
And rosy light burst forth unknown till then,
When Aphrodite dawned on gods and men.
Thy birth, O Rose, was in that mystic hour.
Transcendent Rose, pride of the Paphian bower,
And sweet consoler of the thorny glen,
What virgin charms thy blush illumines when
Upon the virgin heart Love seals his power.

Fair as the lily was the Rose’s breast;
But when the generous vine upon it bled,
Swift blushes o’er its swelling beauties spread
Till every leaf the tender flame confessed,
While from thy wakened heart, O queenly Rose,
Ambrosial incense on the air arose.

TO A FAIR SANTA BARBARAN.

Why blooms the fairest flower ’neath rosy skies,
Where all is bloom and fragrance? why unfold
There, where the nectar that its petals hold
Among the orange groves neglected lies,
And all its perfume all unheeded dies!
And thou, dear maid, with wealth of love untold,
More precious far than mines of gems and gold,
Why linger ’mid these cloyed and listless eyes?

O with thy voice, and smile ineffable,
And eyes so meet for sympathetic tears,
Seek some sad land oppressed by grief and fears,
A bright consoling angel there to dwell;
Fly, ere thy robes are wet with honey dew,
And thy own sweetness cloys thee through and through.

LA DIVA.

A sea of faces ripple round her where,
As on a sunny isle, the Diva glows
Behind the footlights like a full-blown rose;
A hush expectant fills the brooding air.

But hist, O hist! what dying cygnet there?
How bubbling from her alabaster throat
Pours forth the wave of every passion’s note—
Hope, fear, love’s ecstasy, and blank despair?

A moment’s silence ere the plaudits rise,
Till like a storm they beat the trembling walls,
And white hands plash like wave-crests to the skies.
Alas! ’tis o’er, the jealous curtain falls;
And as the tumult of our rapture dies,
A misty curtain veils our happy eyes.

TO A HAPPY LOVER.

Flaunt not before the world thy happy love,
Like the poor fatuous one whose pleasure lies
Not in Love’s glance, but in the envious eyes
Of other fools; deep in the myrtle grove
Seek some untrodden way, shadowed above;
There, if Love will, his unknown harmonies,
His inmost heart and core, his tears and sighs,
And unimagined mysteries thou mayest prove.

But if thou find his choicest fruits and flowers,
Guard them from eyes profane with jealous care;
Love, proud but tender, brooks no sign-board there,
Pointing the pathway to his sacred bowers;
Himself the entrance, hidden and o’ergrown,
Unto his chosen favorites will make known.

METEMPSYCHOSIS.

I.

I was a huntsman in my youth, and knew
Each bird and beast that haunts the forest tall,
Or wings the air, hard by the water-fall.
Over the plain and up the mountain blue
My twanging bow was heard, my arrows flew.
My bowstring now is rent, my arrows all
Like spears that from the withered pine-cones fall,
Have from my shrunken quiver vanished too.
Yet sometimes o’er me steals the olden mood,
And wandering in the forest deep and dark,
I greet each old familiar tree and mark,
Each spot whereon the lovely quarry stood,
While faintly through my withered veins once more
Leaps the triumphant thrill I knew of yore.

II.

I shot an arrow through the wood one day
In idle sport, and following where it led,
I found a doe that I had raised and fed,
Stricken, and bleeding fast her life away,
Her tender fawn transfixed beside her lay;
One random shaft two happy lives had sped.
The dry leaves rustled to my startled tread,
And filled my fluttering heart with strange dismay;
For gazing in those failing eyes my soul
Found there another soul, its very twin;
Unseen for years, but bowered deep within
The heart’s alcove,—oh, lost beyond control!
Those murdered eyes still gaze as from a glass
Framed in with bloody leaves and trampled grass.

THREE SONNETS IN MEMORIAM.

I.

DESPAIR—THE ABYSS.

O dread abyss, narrow, but dark and deep,
Still baffling all that men may do or dare
To read the secrets of thy jealous care,
The mystery that thy shuddering caverns keep,
Over thy cruel mouth the earth I heap,
Hiding my treasure like a miser there.
My hollow doubting voice I lift in prayer;
With ghastly lips I say: “’Tis but a sleep,
And I shall find my loved one freed from sorrow,
Glowing with love, and youth ineffable.”
O fool, the only sure thing thou canst borrow
From coming years is death, thou knowest well.
Yet even this is gain; then hail each morrow
That brings thee nearer to the self-same cell.

II.

QUESTIONING.

Beneath the leafless trees alone I stand,
Where we two stood in June. O loved one, where
Are now the radiant hopes that filled the air,
Circling around us swiftly like a band
Of smiling sisters, clasping hand in hand?
Dearer to me than all their visions fair
This chill December night, so thou wert there.
And hast thou sought with them some better land?

Would heaven be darkened for one form the less
From the bright throng who in His love rejoice?
From the celestial choir could not one voice,
Sweeter than all the rest, be spared to bless
My solitude? Say, dost thou sleep alone,
Voiceless, beneath the unrelenting stone?

III.

CONSOLATION.

Alone? Ah, no: beneath the earth’s fair crust
Assemble all the beautiful and good
Whose memory transfigures womanhood;
And kingly men are there, the brave, the just;
How sweet to mingle with that sacred dust!
Standing to-night where we so oft have stood,
Their fragrance fills the silent solitude—
Sweet flowers of human love and hope and trust.

Where’er thou art, O sister of my soul,
Treading with gleaming feet the streets of gold,
Or softly mingling with the forest mold,
Swift years shall bear me to the self-same goal,
Our radiant heads in the same aureole,
Or the same flower-roots thrill our ashes cold.

IN MEMORY OF D. G. R.

Bathed in the morning sunlight thou didst stand,
The sisters nine in homage gathered round,
Son of Apollo, with his laurels crowned,
His lyre of lyres trembling in thy hand.
The brush and chisel at thy high command
Enchantment wrought, but sweeter far resounds
The music of thy verse, the soulful sounds
Flung from thy pen as from a magic wand.

Had all thy wondrous powers to song been given,
What floods of melody had filled the air—
Eros’ and Psyche’s voices mingling there.
Alas! the wine is spilled, the lyre is riven,
Stern Albion’s son, thy soft Italian name
Lives only in the Pantheon of Fame.

IN MEMORY OF JOHN BROWN OF OSSAWATTOMIE.

INSCRIBED TO JOHN J. INGALLS.

I.

A cloud for years o’erhung the border-land,
Black, ominous, wherein were dimly seen
Soul-terrifying shapes of beasts unclean,
And men uncleaner still, a hideous band,
Loathsome as reptiles from the slimy strand
Of vanished seas, in ages pliocene.
Prophets the portent read with vision keen,
But lying seers cried “Peace,” throughout the land,
’Tis but a cloud-bank changing with the wind,
And craven hearts draw their own pictures there,
And traitors sneered, and from the pulpit whined
Sleek hypocrites, blind leaders of the blind,
Buyers of souls, who gathered gold with care,
With gnashing and blaspheming filled the air.

II.

A soul flamed forth like a titanic brand,
Or fiery meteor through the murky sky,
Thrilled by electric arrows from on high;
And by swift wings of unseen seraphs fanned
The baleful clouds dispersed, as though a hand
Omnipotent had swept the firmament
And from its face the darkening veil had rent.
Vague shapes of fear, as by enchanter’s wand,
Were changed to forms substantial, and arose
The Nation’s foes, implacable and fierce.
The canting knave, who chapter gave and verse
To justify the trade in human woes,
Slunk with his broad phylacteries away,
And strong men armed them for the deadly fray.

III.

True greatness is the greatest in defeat.
A laurel wreath entwined about that head
Had but obscured the glory that it shed.
Unshaken in his high prophetic seat,
Beyond all crowns of vict’ry grand and great
In happier days, as when, illusions fled,
His fierce foes found him lying ’mid his dead,
Alike his spirit soared secure from Fate.
So, when the charging battle standards meet,
Gold fringe and silken fold are plucked away
As by the myriad beaks of birds of prey,
Still on the staff, high in his ancient seat,
The brazen eagle sits, serene, the same,
Pride of the legions o’er the battle’s flame.

OUR LOST ONES.

“Hélas! dans le cercueil ils tombent en poussière
Moins vite qu’en nos cœurs.”—HUGO.

Brethren and sisters all, what do we here,
With song and laughter, while around us stand,
With dumb reproachful gaze, a shadowy band,
The mournful shades of all our lost ones dear?
O conquering power of the eternal years!
How swiftly fade away on every hand
Their memories throughout the joyous land,
For whom we thought to shed eternal tears.

Smiling above them wave the flowers and grass,
Where cold and still those cherished forms are strown,
Thickly as grain in the deep furrows sown,
Or sheaves in fields where merry reapers pass.
To dust they wither in our hearts, alas!
More swiftly than beneath the cruel stone.

THE OCEAN OF THE PAST.

My wistful eyes still sweep thy sullen breast,
Dead sea, whose waves, once, following stroke on stroke,
Have swallowed mast and sail and hull of oak.
Now all thy cruel billows are at rest;
Hushed is thy roar, and stilled each raging crest;
No phantom from thy mists may I evoke,
No more my prow or sail the waves provoke,
Where sleeps my happy island of the blest.

Lo, while I gaze, like the responsive swell
Of some great yearning heart, the billows rise,
Till, in wild tumult leaping to the skies,
They toss the beauteous wrecks I loved so well,
Resistless through the rending barriers roll
And sob through all the caverns of my soul.

EVIL DAYS.

O Youth, O Hope, O Love, all phantoms vain!
Ye lured me long with promise false as sweet,
But now your flight outstrips my faltering feet.
Dear traitors, will ye ne’er return again?
Love lingered last, but all have been too fleet.
Now sinks the light of day in tears and pain,
The glories of the night unheeded wane:
Summer is winter, truth is but deceit.

Shall I not find upon some vernal day,
Fruition for the buds that blighted here?
The golden hours of youth I cast away,
How I would hold those wasted treasures dear!
Still through the lonely chambers of my brain
No more, no more, echoes the sad refrain.

ENVY AND SLANDER.

TO N. A. M.

Envy is deathless, though the envious die,
And shafts of slander, hissing through the dark,
Have ever loved, like death, a shining mark.
Then do not think those shafts could pass thee by.

Thy conscious worth, and purpose pure and high
Cannot defend from little curs that bark;
No wall, high as the flight of morning lark,
Can top the poisoned arrows as they fly.

Rise o’er the herd in feeling, thought, or deed,
And feel the bitter sting of Envy’s tongue;
Rise higher yet, and thus confound the throng,—
Only a respite brief thy soul may read.
Success, e’en more than merit, is a crime
To tongues as tireless as the feet of Time.

TRUE FREEDOM.

TO J. F. F.

He is not truly free who fears to speak
The burning words that flame from heart to tongue,
When in the presence of a hoary wrong,
E’en though upheld by gown and surplice sleek,
And hears unheeded the oppressed and weak.
Nor friendship from the great, the rich, the strong,
Nor grateful plaudits from the servile throng,
The free-born spirit must expect or seek.

Think not that power and place will come to thee—
Sooner some sordid soul the race will win;
E’en in the days of Cid and Paladin,
And glorious days of Arthur’s chivalry,
The golden spurs by cravens oft were won,
While hearts as brave as Arthur’s died unknown.

“SOCIETY.”

Dear, simple friend, and did you think to find
Aught but hypocrisy and fair smooth lies
In this charmed circle, that would ostracize
All for a pair of gloves the most refined,
The noblest type of man or womankind?
A set whose aspirations never rise
Above the triumphs wealth and fashion buys;
Who ape the opinions with devotion blind,
The coats and gowns, of royal debauchees
And their bold paramours from over seas.
How hope a noble womanhood to gain
Nourished upon such stifling airs as these.
Fashion forbids to rise above a plane
That dudes and lah-de-dahs can just attain.

THE STAGNANT POOL.

Stooping beside a stagnant pool to drink
I saw a woman, weary and forlorn,
With hair unkempt, and garments stained and torn;
All grace of womanhood was fled, no link
Remained of happier days; along the brink
Swept by a stately dame with words of scorn;
“Though I had thirsted since the early morn,
Before my feet in that foul wave should sink
My willing lips should press the cup of death.”
O scornful dame! before the night was black,
Lo! I beheld thy swift feet speeding back,
With robes dishevelled and with gasping breath,
In this same wave thy parching lips to cool,
As eagerly as ’twere a mountain pool.

THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE.

An old and well-known allegory reading,
I found a quaint and curious picture there,
Of one who gathered straws and dirt with care,
The golden crown above his head unheeding.
Science to-day, than avarice more misleading,
Hath slain our father’s faith and hope and prayer;
We rake the seas, and sweep the earth and air
To find new theories for our own impeding.

And some for tinsel toys of social glory,
And Church and State, toil through the grovelling years.
How can we hear the music of the spheres,
Clutching the muck-rakes of the allegory?
Our blunted senses only can discern
The paltry baubles over which we yearn.

IMMORTALITY.

My vision floats far down the milky-way,
A shining track across a shoreless sea
As deep and boundless as eternity.
Suns sail in myriads there, and comets stray,
Youthful, while hoary ages roll away.
O fleeting life, the stars that shine on me
Smiled just the same when star-lit Galilee
Beneath the Saviour’s feet in slumber lay.

What countless swarms of man’s ephemeral race
Live, love, and die, while ye sail coldly on!
Yet they shall rise, the teeming millions gone,
And gaze unmoved, while from their ancient place
The morning stars like baleful meteors fleet,
And while the heavens melt with fervent heat.

TO A YOUNG ARTIST.

The matchless artists of the olden time
Knew naught of critic’s jargon; to their toil
Bending as one that digs a stony soil,
Sparing nor bloom of youth nor manhood’s prime,
They caught and fixed their floating dreams sublime.
So must we shun all vain polemic broil,
Nor vex our souls with theories’ turmoil
If to ideal heights we fain would climb.

Our vintage time is speeding fast away,
The morning faileth; then with double will,
In spite of noonday glare or evening chill,
Gather the glowing clusters while we may.
So may our failing eyes see some faint beams
Shed o’er our work from our supernal dreams.

THE END.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Note:

In poem “Shadows”, final stanza, “vail” changed to “veil”.

In poem “Twenty Years Ago”, penultimate stanza, “plantive” changed to “plaintive”.

End of Project Gutenberg's Winona, A Dakota Legend, by Eli L. Huggins