In thy holy need, our country,
Shatter other idols straightway;
Quench our household fires before us,
Reap the pomp of harvests low;
Strike aside each glad ambition
Born of youth and golden leisure,
Leave us only to remember
Faith we swore thee long ago!
All the passionate sweep of heart-strings,
Thirst and famine, din of battle,
All the wild despair and sorrow
That were ever or shall be,
Are too little, are too worthless,
As with our souls’ strength we lay them,
Stepping-stones, O Love! for thee.
If we be thy burden-bearers,
Let us ease thee of thy sorrow;
If our hands be thine avengers,
Life or death, they shall not fail;
If thy heart be just and tender,
Wrong us not with hesitation:
Take us, trust us, lead us, love us,
Till the eternal Truth prevail!
LO AND LU.
When we began this never-ended
Kind companionship,
Childish greetings lit the splendid
Laughter at the lip;
You were ten and I eleven;
Henceforth, as we knew,
Was all the mischief under heaven
Set down to Lo and Lu.
Long we fought and cooed together,
Held an equal reign,
Snowballs could we fire and gather,
Twine a clover chain;
Sing in G an A flat chorus
No harmonious angels o’er us
Taught us, Lo or Lu.
Pleasant studious times have seen us
Arm-in-arm of yore,
Learnèd books, well-thumbed between us,
Spread along the floor;
Perched in pine-tops, sunk in barley,
Rogues, where rogues were few,
Right or wrong, in deed and parley,
Comrades, Lo and Lu.
Which could leap where banks were wider,
Mock the cat-bird’s call?
Which preside and pop the cider
At a festival?
Who became the finer Stoic
Stabbing trouble thro’,
Thrilled to hear of things heroic
Earliest, blithest! then and ever
Mirror of my heart!
Grow we old and wise and clever
Now, so far apart;
Still as tender as a mother’s
Floats our prayer for two;
Neither yet can spare the other’s
“God bless—Lo and Lu!”
HER VOICE.
A lark from cloud to cloud along
In wildest labyrinths of song,—
So jubilant and proud and strong;
A ray that climbs the garden wall
And leaps the height at evenfall,—
So clear, so faint, so mystical;
A summer fragrance on the breeze,
A shower upon the lilied leas,
A sunburst over violet seas,
Still live the gift outrunning praise,
Inviolate from this earthly place
And fitly pure for heavenly days,
Sincerity its stay and guard,
A glowing nature, happy-starred,
Its dwelling now and afterward!
Where’er that gentle heart shall be,
Responsive to their source I see
The fount and form of melody;
And my foreshadowed spirit drawn
Of hindrance free, and unforlorn,
To list thro’ some ambrosial dawn,
To follow with oblivious eyes
The old delight, the fresh surprise,
Adown the glades of Paradise!
AN EPITAPH.
Fugitive to nobler air,
Dead avow thee who shall dare?
Freeborn spirit, eagle heart,
Full of life thou wert and art!
Tender was thy glance, and bland;
Honor swayed thy giving hand;
Sweet as fragrance on the sense
Stole thy rich intelligence,
And thy coming, like the spring,
Moved the saddest lips to sing.
Wealth above all argosies!
Sunshine of our drooping eyes!
Be to Heaven, for Heaven’s desert,
Tho’ the groping breezes moan
Here about thy burial-stone,
Never sorrow’s lightest breath
Links thy happy name with death,
Lest therein our love should be,
Thou that livest! false to thee.
THE FALCON AND THE LILY.
My darling rides across the sand;
The wind is warm, the wind is bland;
It lifts the pony’s glossy mane,
So light and proud she holds his rein.
Not easier bears a leaf the dew
Than she her scarf and kirtle blue,
And on her wrist, in bells and jess,
The falcon perched for idleness.
That merry bird, O would I were!
In joy with her, in joy with her.
My darling comes not from her bower,
The lowered pennon sweeps the tower;
The larches droop their tassels low,
My heart, my heart, beholds her now,
The pallid hands, the saintly brow,
The lily with chill death oppressed
Against the summer of her breast:
That lily pale, O would I were!
In peace with her, in peace with her.
BOSTON, FROM THE BRIDGE.
This night my heart’s world-roaming dreams are met,
The while I gaze across the river-brim,
Beyond the anchored ships with cordage dim,
To the clear lights, that like a coronet
On thee, my noble city, nobly set,
Along thy summits trail their golden rim.
Peril forsake thee! so shall peal my hymn;
Glory betide thee! Nor may men forget,
Shelter of scholars, poets, artisans!
The sap that filled the perfect vein of Greece,
And hung with bloom her fair, illustrious tree,
Unheeded, thro’ dull eras made advance,
Unfruitful, stole to topmost boughs in peace
Twice centuries twelve; and flowered again in thee.
THE RED AND YELLOW LEAF.
The red and yellow leaf
Came down upon the wind,
Across the ripened grain;
The red and yellow leaf,
Before me and behind,
Sang shrilly in my brain:
“Pride and growth of spring,
Ease, and olden cheer,
Shall no longer be:
What benighted thing,
Dreamer, dost thou here?
Follow, follow me!
“Youth is done, and skill;
Any more to thee?
Pale thou art and chill;
All of love is dust:
Follow, follow me!”
“Thou red and yellow leaf,
O whither?” from my staff
I called adown the wind;
The red and yellow leaf,
I heard its mocking laugh
Before me and behind!
“POETE MY MAISTER CHAUCER.”[A]
Somewhere, sometime, I walked a field wherein
The daisies held high festival in white,
Thinking: Alas! he with a young delight
Among them once his golden web did spin;
He who made half-divine an olden inn,
The Tabard; sung of Ariadne bright,
And penned of Sarra’s king at fall of night,
“Where now I leave, there will I fresh begin.”
Then straightway heard I merry laughter rise
From one that wrote, thrown on a daisy-bed,
Who, seeing the two-fold wonder in mine eyes,
Spake, lifting up his fair and reverend head:
“Child! this is the earth-completing Paradise,
And thou, that strayest here, art centuries dead.”
FOOTNOTE:
[A] Lydgate so calls him,
. . . . “of righte and equitie,
Since he in Englishe in rhyming was the beste.”
MOUNT AUBURN IN MAY.
This is earth’s liberty-day:
Yonder the linden-trees sway
To music of winds from the west,
And I hear the old merry refrain,
Of the stream that has broken its chain
By the gates of the City of Rest,
The City whose exquisite towers
I see thro’ the sunny long hours
If but from my window I lean;
Yea, dearest! thy threshold of stone,
Thine ivy-grown door and my own
Have naught save the river between.
Thine on that heavenly height
Are beauty, and warmth, and delight;
And long as our parting shall be,
Live there in thy summer! nor know
How near lie the frost and the snow
On hearts that are breaking for thee.
AMONG THE FLAGS
IN DORIC HALL, MASSACHUSETTS STATE HOUSE.
Dear witnesses, all luminous, eloquent,
Stacked thickly on the tesselated floor!
The soldier-blood stirs in me, as of yore
In sire and grandsire who to battle went:
I seem to know the shaded valley tent,
The armed and bearded men, the thrill of war,
Horses that prance to hear the cannon roar,
Shrill bugle-calls, and camp-fire merriment.
And as fair symbols of heroic things,
Not void of tears mine eyes must e’en behold
These banners lovelier as the deeper marred:
A panegyric never writ for kings
On every tarnished staff and tattered fold;
And by them, tranquil spirits standing guard.
CHILD AND FLOWER.
[From the French of Chateaubriand.][B]
Along her coffin-lid the spotless roses rest
A father’s sad, sad hand culled from a happy bower;
Earth, they were born of thee: take back upon thy breast
Young child and tender flower.
To this unhallowed world, ah! let them not return,
To this dark world where grief and sin and anguish lower;
The winds might wound and break, the sun might parch and burn
Thou sleepest, O Elise! thy years were brief and bright;
The burden and the heat are spared thy noonday hour;
For dewy morn has flown, and on its pinions light,
Young child and tender flower.
FOOTNOTE:
[B] The author’s title runs: “Sur la Fille de mon Ami, enterrée devant moi hier au Cimetière de Passy: 16 Juin, 1832.”
KNIGHT FALSTAFF.
I saw the dusty curtain, ages old,
Its purple tatters twitched aside, and lo!
The fourth King Harry’s reign in lusty show
Behind, its deeds in living file outrolled
Of peace and war; some sage, some mad, and bold:
Last, near a tree, a bridled neighing row
With latest spoils encumbered, saints do know,
By Hal and Hal’s boon cronies; on the wold
Laughter of prince and commons; there and here
Travellers fleeing; drunken thieves that sang;
Wild bells; a tavern’s echoing jolly shout;
Signals along the highway, full of cheer;
A gate that closed with not incautious clang,
When that sweet rogue, bad Jack! came lumbering out.
THE POET.[C]
Listen! the mother
Croons o’er her darling;
Birds to the summer
Call from the trees;
Sailors in chorus
Chant of the ocean:
The poet’s heart singeth
Songs sweeter than these.
FOOTNOTE:
[C] For this trifle, obligations are due to Maestro Mozart. A sunny little opening Andante of his, from the Second Sonata in A major, suggested immediately and quite irresistibly the words here appended, which follow its rhythm throughout.
A CRIMINAL. 1865.
“Close as a mask he wore this fiery sin
Of hate; and daring peril foremost, died
Ere yet the wrath of law was justified,
Hopeless, with memory such as miscreants win.
One sacred head he smote, encircled in
A people’s arms; and shook, with storms allied,
The pillars of the world from side to side.”...
E’en so the Angel’s record must begin.
Show me not anguish since that traitor-stroke
Rang o’er the brunt of war; yet child, O child!
When later days bring bitter thoughts, recall,
No maledictions on his name I spoke,
Catching lost cues; but asked, well-reconciled,
God, our Interpreter, to right us all.
ORIENT-BORN.
Beautiful olive-brown brows, chin where the fairy-print lies;
Vagrant dark tresses above splendid mysterious eyes;
Mellowest fires that glow under the calm of her face,
Girl of all girls in the world for mould and for color and grace.
Such are the opal-like maids that flash in the groves to and fro,
Ptolemy’s daughter; and so, breathing faint cassia and musk,
Veilèd young Moors on divans, singing and sighing at dusk.
Never in opiate dreams have I o’ertaken you, sweet;
Never with henna-tipped hands; never with silken-shod feet;
Still the love-charm of the East must over and over be told:
By-and-by havoc with hearts!... Ah, slowly, my seven-year-old!
CHARONDAS.
He lifted his forehead, and stood at his height,
And gathered the cloak round his noble age,
This man, the law-giver, Charondas the Greek;
And loud the Eubœans called to him: “Speak,
We listen and learn, O sage!”
“In peace shall ye come where the people be,”
Spake the lofty figure with flashing eyes:
“But whoso comes armed to the public hall
Shall suffer his death before us all.”
And the hearers believed him wise.
The years sped quick and the years dragged slow;
But never the statued chamber saw
The gleam of a weapon; for loving the law,
The Greeks from their hearts obeyed.
War’s challenge knocked at the city gates;
Students flocked to the front, grown bold;
The strong men, girded, faced up to the north;
The women wept to the gods; and forth
Went the brave of the days of old.
Peace winged her flight to the city gates;
Young men and strong, they followed fast
Back to the breast of their fair, free land:
Charondas, afar on the foreign strand,
Remained at his post the last.
Their leader he, in war as in word,
The fire of youth for his life-long lease,
The strength of Mars in the arm that stood
Seven hot decades upheld for good
The fight is finished, the council meets.
Who is the tardy comer without
In cuirass and shield, and with clanking sword,
Who strides up the aisles without a word,
Rousing that awe-struck shout?
The tardy comer home from the field—
Great gods! the first to forget and belie
The law he honored, the law he formed:
“Charondas—stand! you enter armed,”
With a shudder the hundreds cry.
The men who loved him on every side,
The men he led to the victor’s gain,
He paused a moment, the fearless Greek;
A sudden glow on his ashen cheek,
A sudden thought in his brain.
“I seal the law with my soul and might:
I do not break it,” Charondas said.
He raised his blade, and plunged to the hilt.
Ah! vain their rush, for in glory and guilt,
He lay on the marble, dead.
CRAZY MARGARET.
That is she across the way,
Dressed as for a holiday,
Wandering aimlessly along
In oblivion of the throng,
With her lay of old regret;
That is crazy Margaret.
And her tale floats up and down
This enchanted Norman town,
Told among the wharves and ships,
On the children’s babbling lips,
Over gossips’ window-sills,
Very sad and very brief,
Graven on a cypress leaf,
Is the record of her days.
When the aloes were ablaze
Long ago, in summertide,
He maid Margaret cherished, died.
Hush! there is the holier part:
He knew nothing of her heart.
Tears thrilled in her lustrous eye
But to see him passing by,
And she turned from many a claim
Dreaming on that dearest name.
Solely on his thoughts intent
The rapt student came and went,
All the gladness in his looks
Sprung from visions and from books,
Grave with all, and kind to her,
So she loved him to the last,
Keeping her soul’s secret fast,
Suffering much and speaking naught
Of the woe her loving wrought;
Till the second summertide,
The young stranger drooped and died.
At the grave, before them all,
In the market, in the hall,
Down the forest-paths alone,
Ever since, in undertone
She goes singing soft and slow:
“When I meet him, he shall know.”
Therefore is she eager yet,
Poor, unhappy Margaret,
Holding still, in faith and truth,
The lost idyl of her youth,
Seeking fondly and thro’ tears,
Should he haunt our Norman coast,
Should he come, the gentle ghost;
Should she tell him of her pain,
Of her passion hushed and vain,—
Would he grieve? or would he care?
What a tragic chance is there!
TO THE WINDING CHARLES.
Thou wanderer, what longing hath
Thee peace on earth denied,
Ah, tell me: constant in no path,
Thy pensive currents glide.
From dim pursuit and mocking zest,
Would I could set thee free!
My soul hath its divine unrest,
Dear river, like to thee.
MY NEIGHBOR.[D]
Who art thou that nigh to me
Alone dost dwell, perpetually?
The latch against thy door is mute,
I have not heard thy kind salute,
And though I live here at the gate,
Have never known thy birth or state,
Nor seen thy wide colonial lands
With slaves obeying all commands,
Or children playing at thy knee;
Ah, neighbor mine, unneighborly!
The sun beats hard upon thy roof,
Thou dost not heed, nor speak in ire,
Nor wound thy calm with vain desire.
The cones that patter as they fall,
The drifts that build thine outer wall,
The rains that glisten in the trace
Of thine inscription, dimmed apace,
The winds that blow, the birds that sing,—
Thou carest not for any thing!
Two centuries and more art thou
In solitude abiding; now
This town is other than thy town;
Its lanes are highways broad and brown;
The oaken houses of thy day,
And inns, and booths, are swept away.
Strange spires would meet thine eager eye,
New ships sail in, new banners fly;
And names are kept of them that fell
How beautiful thine endless rest!
The quiet conscience in thy breast,
Thy hidden place of peace, where pass
The ghost-like stirrings of the grass;
The long immunity from strife,
The tumult, love; the trouble, life;
The blossom at thy feet, to be
A thousand summers, dust like thee;
The winding-sheet, that white as worth,
Shuts all thy failings in the earth.
My silent neighbor! thou and I
Keep unobtrusive company.
For us each wild October weaves
The glistening clouds, the glowing leaves,
And March by March the robin sings,
Against the solemn porch of King’s,
His sweet good-morrow to us both.
O be not harsh with me, nor wroth,
That I, apart from all the throng,
Break, too, thy silence with a song!
FOOTNOTES:
[D] Jacob Sheafe, an old Boston worthy, laid away in 1658, in a quiet northerly corner of King’s Chapel Burying-Ground.
THE SEA-GULL.
Over the ships that are anchored,
Over the fleets that part,
Over the cities dark by the shore,
High as a dream thou art!
Beautiful is thy coming,
Light is thy wing as it goes;
And O but to leap and follow this hour
Thy perfect flight to the close,
O but to leap and follow
Where freedom and rest may be;
Where the soul that I loved in surpassing love
Hath vanished away, with thee!
LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY.
Darling of the cloistered flowers,
Rising meekly after showers,
Every cup a waving censer,—
Winds are softer at thy coming;
By thee goes the wild bee, humming
Music richer and intenser.
Indian balsam is thy breathing,
Sabbath stillness thy enwreathing;
Peace and thee no thought can sever.
In thy plaintive looks and tender,
Things of long-forgotten splendor
Thrill my inmost spirit ever.
And I love thee in such fashion,
With so much of truth and passion,
Only pure hearts be thy wearers,
Only gentlest hands thy bearers,
Even if therefore mine resign thee;
Even if now I yield thee wholly
To the pure and gentle solely,
On whose breast thy cheek is lying!
Droop and glisten where she laid thee,
And remember me that made thee,
Dear, so happy in thy dying.
LOVER LOQUITUR.
Liege lady! believe me,
All night, from my pillow
I heard, but to grieve me,
The plash of the willow;
The rain on the towers,
The winds without number,
In the gloom of the hours,
And denial of slumber:
And nigh to the dawning,—
My heart aching blindly,
Unresting and mourning
That you were unkindly—
What did I ostensibly,
Ah, what under heaven,
Liege lady! but sensibly
Doze till eleven?
VITALITY.
When I was born and wheeled upon my way,
As fire in stars my ready life did glow,
And thrill me thro’, and mount to lips and lids:
I was as dead when I died yesterday
As those mild shapes Egyptian, that we know
Since Memnon sang, are housed in pyramids.
TO THE RIVER.
Friend Charles! ’tis long since even for a space
We stood in cordial parley: you and I,
(Albeit about the selfsame city lie
The daily orbits we in silence pace),
Seldom, how seldom, see each other’s face!
Always had you a mill to turn near by,
A race to aid; and I, with scarce a sigh,
Passed, on like duties bound with heavy grace.
But now good Leisure puts all things in tune,
Now o’er their brimming bowls in odorous whiff
The gods send up the clouds above us curled,
Let us go forth, my Charles! thro’ fields of June
Together, gladly, lovingly, as if
We could not have enough of this sweet world.