Poems / Household Edition

     Gifts of one who loved me,—
     'T was high time they came;
     When he ceased to love me,
     Time they stopped for shame.

     In countless upward-striving waves
     The moon-drawn tide-wave strives;
     In thousand far-transplanted grafts
     The parent fruit survives;
     So, in the new-born millions,
     The perfect Adam lives.
     Not less are summer mornings dear
     To every child they wake,
     And each with novel life his sphere
     Fills for his proper sake.

     In the suburb, in the town,
     On the railway, in the square,
     Came a beam of goodness down
     Doubling daylight everywhere:
     Peace now each for malice takes,
     Beauty for his sinful weeds,
     For the angel Hope aye makes
     Him an angel whom she leads.

     His tongue was framed to music,
     And his hand was armed with skill;
     His face was the mould of beauty,
     And his heart the throne of will.

     Who shall tell what did befall,
     Far away in time, when once,
     Over the lifeless ball,
     Hung idle stars and suns?
     What god the element obeyed?
     Wings of what wind the lichen bore,
     Wafting the puny seeds of power,
     Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade?
     And well the primal pioneer
     Knew the strong task to it assigned,
     Patient through Heaven's enormous year
     To build in matter home for mind.
     From air the creeping centuries drew
     The matted thicket low and wide,
     This must the leaves of ages strew
     The granite slab to clothe and hide,
     Ere wheat can wave its golden pride.
     What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled
     (In dizzy aeons dim and mute
     The reeling brain can ill compute)
     Copper and iron, lead and gold?
     What oldest star the fame can save
     Of races perishing to pave
     The planet with a floor of lime?
     Dust is their pyramid and mole:
     Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed
     Under the tumbling mountain's breast,
     In the safe herbal of the coal?
     But when the quarried means were piled,
     All is waste and worthless, till
     Arrives the wise selecting will,
     And, out of slime and chaos, Wit
     Draws the threads of fair and fit.
     Then temples rose, and towns, and marts,
     The shop of toil, the hall of arts;
     Then flew the sail across the seas
     To feed the North from tropic trees;
     The storm-wind wove, the torrent span,
     Where they were bid, the rivers ran;
     New slaves fulfilled the poet's dream,
     Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam.
     Then docks were built, and crops were stored,
     And ingots added to the hoard.
     But though light-headed man forget,
     Remembering Matter pays her debt:
     Still, through her motes and masses, draw
     Electric thrills and ties of law,
     Which bind the strengths of Nature wild
     To the conscience of a child.

     Flow, flow the waves hated,
     Accursed, adored,
     The waves of mutation;
     No anchorage is.
     Sleep is not, death is not;
     Who seem to die live.
     House you were born in,
     Friends of your spring-time,
     Old man and young maid,
     Day's toil and its guerdon,
     They are all vanishing,
     Fleeing to fables,
     Cannot be moored.
     See the stars through them,
     Through treacherous marbles.
     Know the stars yonder,
     The stars everlasting,
     Are fugitive also,
     And emulate, vaulted,
     The lambent heat lightning
     And fire-fly's flight.

     When thou dost return
     On the wave's circulation,
     Behold the shimmer,
     The wild dissipation,
     And, out of endeavor
     To change and to flow,
     The gas become solid,
     And phantoms and nothings
     Return to be things,
     And endless imbroglio
     Is law and the world,—
     Then first shalt thou know,
     That in the wild turmoil,
     Horsed on the Proteus,
     Thou ridest to power,
     And to endurance.

     A.H.

     High was her heart, and yet was well inclined,
     Her manners made of bounty well refined;
     Far capitals and marble courts, her eye still seemed to see,
     Minstrels and kings and high-born dames, and of the best that be.

     Every thought is public,
     Every nook is wide;
     Thy gossips spread each whisper,
     And the gods from side to side.

     He who has no hands
     Perforce must use his tongue;
     Foxes are so cunning
     Because they are not strong.

     Quit the hut, frequent the palace,
     Reck not what the people say;
     For still, where'er the trees grow biggest,
     Huntsmen find the easiest way.

     Ever the Poet from the land
     Steers his bark and trims his sail;
     Right out to sea his courses stand,
     New worlds to find in pinnace frail.

     To clothe the fiery thought
     In simple words succeeds,
     For still the craft of genius is
     To mask a king in weeds.

     Go thou to thy learned task,
     I stay with the flowers of Spring:
     Do thou of the Ages ask
     What me the Hours will bring.

     True Brahmin, in the morning meadows wet,
     Expound the Vedas of the violet,
     Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop,
     See the plum redden, and the beurré stoop.

     He took the color of his vest
     From rabbit's coat or grouse's breast;
     For, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide,
     So walks the woodman, unespied.

     The gale that wrecked you on the sand,
     It helped my rowers to row;
     The storm is my best galley hand
     And drives me where I go.

     The sea is the road of the bold,
     Frontier of the wheat-sown plains,
     The pit wherein the streams are rolled
     And fountain of the rains.

     Over his head were the maple buds,
     And over the tree was the moon,
     And over the moon were the starry studs
     That drop from the angels' shoon.

     S.H.

     With beams December planets dart
     His cold eye truth and conduct scanned,
     July was in his sunny heart,
     October in his liberal hand.

     FROM THE FRENCH

     Some of your hurts you have cured,
     And the sharpest you still have survived,
     But what torments of grief you endured
     From evils which never arrived!

     Boon Nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold,
     And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old:
     But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why,
     Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

     Her planted eye to-day controls,
     Is in the morrow most at home,
     And sternly calls to being souls
     That curse her when they come.

     Ere he was born, the stars of fate
     Plotted to make him rich and great:
     When from the womb the babe was loosed,
     The gate of gifts behind him closed.

     Cast the bantling on the rocks,
     Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat,
     Wintered with the hawk and fox,
     Power and speed be hands and feet.

     I am not wiser for my age,
     Nor skilful by my grief;
     Life loiters at the book's first page,—
     Ah! could we turn the leaf.

     Shines the last age, the next with hope is seen,
     To-day slinks poorly off unmarked between:
     Future or Past no richer secret folds,
     O friendless Present! than thy bosom holds.

     Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall
     Shadows of the thoughts of day,
     And thy fortunes, as they fall,
     The bias of the will betray.

     Love on his errand bound to go
     Can swim the flood and wade through snow,
     Where way is none, 't will creep and wind
     And eat through Alps its home to find.

     Though love repine, and reason chafe,
     There came a voice without reply,—
     ''T is man's perdition to be safe,
     When for the truth he ought to die.'

     Well and wisely said the Greek,
     Be thou faithful, but not fond;
     To the altar's foot thy fellow seek,—
     The Furies wait beyond.

     Test of the poet is knowledge of love,
     For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove;
     Never was poet, of late or of yore,
     Who was not tremulous with love-lore.

     I see all human wits
     Are measured but a few;
     Unmeasured still my Shakspeare sits,
     Lone as the blessed Jew.

     Her passions the shy violet
     From Hafiz never hides;
     Love-longings of the raptured bird
     The bird to him confides.

     As sings the pine-tree in the wind,
     So sings in the wind a sprig of the pine;
     Her strength and soul has laughing France
     Shed in each drop of wine.

     [Greek: ADAKRYN NEMONTAI AIONA]

     'A New commandment,' said the smiling Muse,
     'I give my darling son, Thou shalt not preach';—
     Luther, Fox, Behmen, Swedenborg, grew pale,
     And, on the instant, rosier clouds upbore
     Hafiz and Shakspeare with their shining choirs.

     Never did sculptor's dream unfold
     A form which marble doth not hold
     In its white block; yet it therein shall find
     Only the hand secure and bold
     Which still obeys the mind.
     So hide in thee, thou heavenly dame,
     The ill I shun, the good I claim;
     I alas! not well alive,
     Miss the aim whereto I strive.
     Not love, nor beauty's pride,
     Nor Fortune, nor thy coldness, can I chide,
     If, whilst within thy heart abide
     Both death and pity, my unequal skill
     Fails of the life, but draws the death and ill.

     FROM THE PERSIAN OF KERMANI

     In Farsistan the violet spreads
     Its leaves to the rival sky;
     I ask how far is the Tigris flood,
     And the vine that grows thereby?

     Except the amber morning wind,
     Not one salutes me here;
     There is no lover in all Bagdat
     To offer the exile cheer.

     I know that thou, O morning wind!
     O'er Kernan's meadow blowest,
     And thou, heart-warming nightingale!
     My father's orchard knowest.

     The merchant hath stuffs of price,
     And gems from the sea-washed strand,
     And princes offer me grace
     To stay in the Syrian land;

     But what is gold for, but for gifts?
     And dark, without love, is the day;
     And all that I see in Bagdat
     Is the Tigris to float me away.

     I said to heaven that glowed above,
     O hide yon sun-filled zone,
     Hide all the stars you boast;
     For, in the world of love
     And estimation true,
     The heaped-up harvest of the moon
     Is worth one barley-corn at most,
     The Pleiads' sheaf but two.

If my darling should depart,
     And search the skies for prouder friends,
     God forbid my angry heart
     In other love should seek amends.

     When the blue horizon's hoop
     Me a little pinches here,
     Instant to my grave I stoop,
     And go find thee in the sphere.

     Bethink, poor heart, what bitter kind of jest
     Mad Destiny this tender stripling played;
     For a warm breast of maiden to his breast,
     She laid a slab of marble on his head.

They say, through patience, chalk
     Becomes a ruby stone;
     Ah, yes! but by the true heart's blood
     The chalk is crimson grown.

     Thou foolish Hafiz! Say, do churls
     Know the worth of Oman's pearls?
     Give the gem which dims the moon
     To the noblest, or to none.

Dearest, where thy shadow falls,
     Beauty sits and Music calls;
     Where thy form and favor come,
     All good creatures have their home.

On prince or bride no diamond stone
     Half so gracious ever shone,
     As the light of enterprise
     Beaming from a young man's eyes.

     Each spot where tulips prank their state
     Has drunk the life-blood of the great;
     The violets yon field which stain
     Are moles of beauties Time hath slain.

Unbar the door, since thou the Opener art,
     Show me the forward way, since thou art guide,
     I put no faith in pilot or in chart,
     Since they are transient, and thou dost abide.

     He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
     And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.

On two days it steads not to run from thy grave,
     The appointed, and the unappointed day;
     On the first, neither balm nor physician can save,
     Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay.

     Two things thou shalt not long for, if thou love a mind serene;—
     A woman to thy wife, though she were a crowned queen;
     And the second, borrowed money,—though the smiling lender say
     That he will not demand the debt until the Judgment Day.

     FROM HILALI

     Hark, what, now loud, now low, the pining flute complains,
     Without tongue, yellow-cheeked, full of winds that wail and sigh;
     Saying, Sweetheart! the old mystery remains,—
     If I am I; thou, thou; or thou art I?

     FROM HAFIZ

     Thy foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down,
     Poises Arcturus aloft morning and evening his spear.

     FROM ENWERI

     Not in their houses stand the stars,
     But o'er the pinnacles of thine!

     FROM ENWERI

     From thy worth and weight the stars gravitate,
     And the equipoise of heaven is thy house's equipoise.

         [Among the religious customs of the dervishes is an astronomical
         dance, in which the dervish imitates the movements of the heavenly
         bodies, by spinning on his own axis, whilst at the same time he
         revolves round the Sheikh in the centre, representing the sun; and,
         as he spins, he sings the Song of Seyd Nimetollah of Kuhistan.]

     Spin the ball! I reel, I burn,
     Nor head from foot can I discern,
     Nor my heart from love of mine,
     Nor the wine-cup from the wine.
     All my doing, all my leaving,
     Reaches not to my perceiving;
     Lost in whirling spheres I rove,
     And know only that I love.

       I am seeker of the stone,
     Living gem of Solomon;
     From the shore of souls arrived,
     In the sea of sense I dived;
     But what is land, or what is wave,
     To me who only jewels crave?
     Love is the air-fed fire intense,
     And my heart the frankincense;
     As the rich aloes flames, I glow,
     Yet the censer cannot know.
     I'm all-knowing, yet unknowing;
     Stand not, pause not, in my going.

       Ask not me, as Muftis can,
     To recite the Alcoran;
     Well I love the meaning sweet,—
     I tread the book beneath my feet.

       Lo! the God's love blazes higher,
     Till all difference expire.
     What are Moslems? what are Giaours?
     All are Love's, and all are ours.
     I embrace the true believers,
     But I reck not of deceivers.
     Firm to Heaven my bosom clings,
     Heedless of inferior things;
     Down on earth there, underfoot,
     What men chatter know I not.

     I

     Right upward on the road of fame
     With sounding steps the poet came;
     Born and nourished in miracles,
     His feet were shod with golden bells,
     Or where he stepped the soil did peal
     As if the dust were glass and steel.
     The gallant child where'er he came
     Threw to each fact a tuneful name.
     The things whereon he cast his eyes
     Could not the nations rebaptize,
     Nor Time's snows hide the names he set,
     Nor last posterity forget.
     Yet every scroll whereon he wrote
     In latent fire his secret thought,
     Fell unregarded to the ground,
     Unseen by such as stood around.
     The pious wind took it away,
     The reverent darkness hid the lay.
     Methought like water-haunting birds
     Divers or dippers were his words,
     And idle clowns beside the mere
     At the new vision gape and jeer.
     But when the noisy scorn was past,
     Emerge the wingèd words in haste.
     New-bathed, new-trimmed, on healthy wing,
     Right to the heaven they steer and sing.

     A Brother of the world, his song
     Sounded like a tempest strong
     Which tore from oaks their branches broad,
     And stars from the ecliptic road.
     Times wore he as his clothing-weeds,
     He sowed the sun and moon for seeds.
     As melts the iceberg in the seas,
     As clouds give rain to the eastern breeze,
     As snow-banks thaw in April's beam,
     The solid kingdoms like a dream
     Resist in vain his motive strain,
     They totter now and float amain.
     For the Muse gave special charge
     His learning should be deep and large,
     And his training should not scant
     The deepest lore of wealth or want:
     His flesh should feel, his eyes should read
     Every maxim of dreadful Need;
     In its fulness he should taste
     Life's honeycomb, but not too fast;
     Full fed, but not intoxicated;
     He should be loved; he should be hated;
     A blooming child to children dear,
     His heart should palpitate with fear.

     And well he loved to quit his home
     And, Calmuck, in his wagon roam
     To read new landscapes and old skies;—
     But oh, to see his solar eyes
     Like meteors which chose their way
     And rived the dark like a new day!
     Not lazy grazing on all they saw,
     Each chimney-pot and cottage door,
     Farm-gear and village picket-fence,
     But, feeding on magnificence,
     They bounded to the horizon's edge
     And searched with the sun's privilege.
     Landward they reached the mountains old
     Where pastoral tribes their flocks infold,
     Saw rivers run seaward by cities high
     And the seas wash the low-hung sky;
     Saw the endless rack of the firmament
     And the sailing moon where the cloud was rent,
     And through man and woman and sea and star
     Saw the dance of Nature forward and far,
     Through worlds and races and terms and times
     Saw musical order and pairing rhymes.

     II

     The gods talk in the breath of the woods,
     They talk in the shaken pine,
     And fill the long reach of the old seashore
     With dialogue divine;
     And the poet who overhears
     Some random word they say
     Is the fated man of men
     Whom the ages must obey:
     One who having nectar drank
     Into blissful orgies sank;
     He takes no mark of night or day,
     He cannot go, he cannot stay,
     He would, yet would not, counsel keep,
     But, like a walker in his sleep
     With staring eye that seeth none,
     Ridiculously up and down
     Seeks how he may fitly tell
     The heart-o'erlading miracle.

     Not yet, not yet,
     Impatient friend,—
     A little while attend;
     Not yet I sing: but I must wait,
     My hand upon the silent string,
     Fully until the end.
     I see the coming light,
     I see the scattered gleams,
     Aloft, beneath, on left and right
     The stars' own ether beams;
     These are but seeds of days,
     Not yet a steadfast morn,
     An intermittent blaze,
     An embryo god unborn.

     How all things sparkle,
     The dust is alive,
     To the birth they arrive:
     I snuff the breath of my morning afar,
     I see the pale lustres condense to a star:
     The fading colors fix,
     The vanishing are seen,
     And the world that shall be
     Twins the world that has been.
     I know the appointed hour,
     I greet my office well,
     Never faster, never slower
     Revolves the fatal wheel!
     The Fairest enchants me,
     The Mighty commands me,
     Saying, 'Stand in thy place;
     Up and eastward turn thy face;
     As mountains for the morning wait,
     Coming early, coming late,
     So thou attend the enriching Fate
     Which none can stay, and none accelerate.
     I am neither faint nor weary,
     Fill thy will, O faultless heart!
     Here from youth to age I tarry,—
     Count it flight of bird or dart.
     My heart at the heart of things
     Heeds no longer lapse of time,
     Rushing ages moult their wings,
     Bathing in thy day sublime.

     The sun set, but set not his hope:—
     Stars rose, his faith was earlier up:
     Fixed on the enormous galaxy,
     Deeper and older seemed his eye,
     And matched his sufferance sublime
     The taciturnity of Time.

     Beside his hut and shading oak,
     Thus to himself the poet spoke,
     'I have supped to-night with gods,
     I will not go under a wooden roof:
     As I walked among the hills
     In the love which Nature fills,
     The great stars did not shine aloof,
     They hurried down from their deep abodes
     And hemmed me in their glittering troop.

         'Divine Inviters! I accept
     The courtesy ye have shown and kept
     From ancient ages for the bard,
     To modulate
     With finer fate
     A fortune harsh and hard.
     With aim like yours
     I watch your course,
     Who never break your lawful dance
     By error or intemperance.
     O birds of ether without wings!
     O heavenly ships without a sail!
     O fire of fire! O best of things!
     O mariners who never fail!
     Sail swiftly through your amber vault,
     An animated law, a presence to exalt.'

     Ah, happy if a sun or star
     Could chain the wheel of Fortune's car,
     And give to hold an even state,
     Neither dejected nor elate,
     That haply man upraised might keep
     The height of Fancy's far-eyed steep.
     In vain: the stars are glowing wheels,
     Giddy with motion Nature reels,
     Sun, moon, man, undulate and stream,
     The mountains flow, the solids seem,
     Change acts, reacts; back, forward hurled,
     And pause were palsy to the world.—
     The morn is come: the starry crowds
     Are hid behind the thrice-piled clouds;
     The new day lowers, and equal odds
     Have changed not less the guest of gods;
     Discrowned and timid, thoughtless, worn,
     The child of genius sits forlorn:
     Between two sleeps a short day's stealth,
     'Mid many ails a brittle health,
     A cripple of God, half true, half formed,
     And by great sparks Promethean warmed,
     Constrained by impotence to adjourn
     To infinite time his eager turn,
     His lot of action at the urn.
     He by false usage pinned about
     No breath therein, no passage out,
     Cast wishful glances at the stars
     And wishful saw the Ocean stream:—
     'Merge me in the brute universe,
     Or lift to a diviner dream!'

     Beside him sat enduring love,
     Upon him noble eyes did rest,
     Which, for the Genius that there strove.
     The follies bore that it invest.
     They spoke not, for their earnest sense
     Outran the craft of eloquence.

     He whom God had thus preferred,—
     To whom sweet angels ministered,
     Saluted him each morn as brother,
     And bragged his virtues to each other,—
     Alas! how were they so beguiled,
     And they so pure? He, foolish child,
     A facile, reckless, wandering will,
     Eager for good, not hating ill,
     Thanked Nature for each stroke she dealt;
     On his tense chords all strokes were felt,
     The good, the bad with equal zeal,
     He asked, he only asked, to feel.
     Timid, self-pleasing, sensitive,
     With Gods, with fools, content to live;
     Bended to fops who bent to him;
     Surface with surfaces did swim.

     'Sorrow, sorrow!' the angels cried,
     'Is this dear Nature's manly pride?
     Call hither thy mortal enemy,
     Make him glad thy fall to see!
     Yon waterflag, yon sighing osier,
     A drop can shake, a breath can fan;
     Maidens laugh and weep; Composure
     Is the pudency of man,'

     Again by night the poet went
     From the lighted halls
     Beneath the darkling firmament
     To the seashore, to the old seawalls,
     Out shone a star beneath the cloud,
     The constellation glittered soon,—
     You have no lapse; so have ye glowed
     But once in your dominion.
     And yet, dear stars, I know ye shine
     Only by needs and loves of mine;
     Light-loving, light-asking life in me
     Feeds those eternal lamps I see.
     And I to whom your light has spoken,
     I, pining to be one of you,
     I fall, my faith is broken,
     Ye scorn me from your deeps of blue.
     Or if perchance, ye orbs of Fate,
     Your ne'er averted glance
     Beams with a will compassionate
     On sons of time and chance,
     Then clothe these hands with power
     In just proportion,
     Nor plant immense designs
     Where equal means are none.'

     CHORUS OF SPIRITS

     Means, dear brother, ask them not;
       Soul's desire is means enow,
     Pure content is angel's lot,
       Thine own theatre art thou.

     Gentler far than falls the snow
     In the woodwalks still and low
     Fell the lesson on his heart
     And woke the fear lest angels part.

     POET

     I see your forms with deep content,
     I know that ye are excellent,
       But will ye stay?
     I hear the rustle of wings,
     Ye meditate what to say
     Ere ye go to quit me for ever and aye.

     SPIRITS

     Brother, we are no phantom band;
     Brother, accept this fatal hand.
     Aches thine unbelieving heart
     With the fear that we must part?
     See, all we are rooted here
     By one thought to one same sphere;
     From thyself thou canst not flee,—
     From thyself no more can we.

     POET

     Suns and stars their courses keep,
     But not angels of the deep:
     Day and night their turn observe,
     But the day of day may swerve.
     Is there warrant that the waves
     Of thought in their mysterious caves
     Will heap in me their highest tide,
     In me therewith beatified?
     Unsure the ebb and flood of thought,
     The moon comes back,—the Spirit not.

     SPIRITS

     Brother, sweeter is the Law
     Than all the grace Love ever saw;
     We are its suppliants. By it, we
     Draw the breath of Eternity;
     Serve thou it not for daily bread,—
     Serve it for pain and fear and need.
     Love it, though it hide its light;
     By love behold the sun at night.
     If the Law should thee forget,
     More enamoured serve it yet;
     Though it hate thee, suffer long;
     Put the Spirit in the wrong;
     Brother, no decrepitude
       Chills the limbs of Time;
     As fleet his feet, his hands as good,
       His vision as sublime:
     On Nature's wheels there is no rust;
     Nor less on man's enchanted dust
       Beauty and Force alight.