BIRDS OF PASSAGE
FLIGHT THE FOURTH
CHARLES SUMNER
And flowers upon his hearse,
And to the tender heart and brave
The tribute of this verse.
His was the troubled life,
The conflict and the pain,
The grief, the bitterness of strife,
The honor without stain.
Like Winkelried, he took
Into his manly breast
The sheaf of hostile spears, and broke
A path for the oppressed.
Then from the fatal field
Upon a nation's heart
Borne like a warrior on his shield!—
So should the brave depart.
Death takes us by surprise,
And stays our hurrying feet;
The great design unfinished lies,
Our lives are incomplete.
But in the dark unknown
Perfect their circles seem,
Even as a bridge's arch of stone
Is rounded in the stream.
Alike are life and death,
When life in death survives,
And the uninterrupted breath
Inspires a thousand lives.
Were a star quenched on high,
For ages would its light,
Still travelling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.
So when a great man dies,
For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men.
TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE
And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
Points to the misty main,
And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
And still more pleasant dreams,
Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
Come thronging back to me.
The Alpine torrent's roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
The sea at Elsinore.
Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
And castles by the Rhine.
Beneath centennial trees,
Through fields with poppies all on fire,
And gleams of distant seas.
No more I feel fatigue,
While journeying with another's feet
O'er many a lengthening league.
And toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand
Reading these poets' rhymes.
Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes,
Better than with mine own.
CADENABBIA
LAKE OF COMO
The silence of the summer day,
As by the loveliest of all lakes
I while the idle hours away.
Where level branches of the plane
Above me weave a roof of shade
Impervious to the sun and rain.
Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead,
And gleams of sunshine toss and flare
Like torches down the path I tread.
I make the marble stairs my seat,
And hear the water, as I wait,
Lapping the steps beneath my feet.
Along the stony parapets,
And far away the floating bells
Tinkle upon the fisher's nets.
The freighted barges come and go,
Their pendent shadows gliding down
By town and tower submerged below.
With villas scattered one by one
Upon their wooded spurs, and lower
Bellaggio blazing in the sun.
Of walls and woods, of light and shade,
Stands beckoning up the Stelvio Pass
Varenna with its white cascade.
Will it all vanish into air?
Is there a land of such supreme
And perfect beauty anywhere?
Linger until my heart shall take
Into itself the summer day,
And all the beauty of the lake.
Is stamped an image of the scene,
Then fade into the air again,
And be as if thou hadst not been.
MONTE CASSINO
TERRA DI LAVORO
Unheard the Garigliano glides along;—
The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,
The river taciturn of classic song.
Where mediaeval towns are white on all
The hillsides, and where every mountain's crest
Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall.
Was dragged with contumely from his throne;
Sciarra Colonna, was that day's disgrace
The Pontiff's only, or in part thine own?
Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith,
When Manfred by his men-at-arms betrayed
Spurred on to Benevento and to death.
Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light
Still hovers o'er his birthplace like the crown
Of splendor seen o'er cities in the night.
The Angelic Doctor as a school-boy played,
And dreamed perhaps the dreams, that he repeats
In ponderous folios for scholastics made.
That pauses on a mountain summit high,
Monte Cassino's convent rears its proud
And venerable walls against the sky.
The stony pathway leading to its gate;
Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed,
Below, the darkening town grew desolate.
The court-yard with its well, the terrace wide,
From which, far down, the valley like a park
Veiled in the evening mists, was dim descried.
Caressed the mountain-tops; the vales between
Darkened; the river in the meadowlands
Sheathed itself as a sword, and was not seen.
So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread
Was a reverberation from the deep
Recesses of the ages that are dead.
Benedict fleeing from the gates of Rome,
A youth disgusted with its vice and woe,
Sought in these mountain solitudes a home.
Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer;
The pen became a clarion, and his school
Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air.
Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores
The illuminated manuscripts, that lay
Torn and neglected on the dusty floors?
Of fancy and of fiction at the best!
This the urbane librarian said, and smiled
Incredulous, as at some idle jest.
I sat conversing late into the night,
Till in its cavernous chimney the woodfire
Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite.
Myself yet not myself, in dreams I lay,
And, as a monk who hears the matin bell,
Started from sleep; already it was day.
On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed,—
The mountains and the valley in the sheen
Of the bright sun,—and stood as one amazed.
The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns;
Far off the mellow bells began to ring
For matins in the half-awakened towns.
The ideal and the actual in our life,
As on a field of battle held me fast,
Where this world and the next world were at strife.
I saw the iron horses of the steam
Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke,
And woke, as one awaketh from a dream.
AMALFI
Sweet the memory is to me Of a land beyond the sea, Where the waves and mountains meet, Where, amid her mulberry-trees Sits Amalfi in the heat, Bathing ever her white feet In the tideless summer seas.
In the middle of the town, From its fountains in the hills, Tumbling through the narrow gorge, The Canneto rushes down, Turns the great wheels of the mills, Lifts the hammers of the forge.
'T is a stairway, not a street, That ascends the deep ravine, Where the torrent leaps between Rocky walls that almost meet. Toiling up from stair to stair Peasant girls their burdens bear; Sunburnt daughters of the soil, Stately figures tall and straight, What inexorable fate Dooms them to this life of toil?
Lord of vineyards and of lands, Far above the convent stands. On its terraced walk aloof Leans a monk with folded hands, Placid, satisfied, serene, Looking down upon the scene Over wall and red-tiled roof; Wondering unto what good end All this toil and traffic tend, And why all men cannot be Free from care and free from pain, And the sordid love of gain, And as indolent as he.
Where are now the freighted barks From the marts of east and west? Where the knights in iron sarks Journeying to the Holy Land, Glove of steel upon the hand, Cross of crimson on the breast? Where the pomp of camp and court? Where the pilgrims with their prayers? Where the merchants with their wares, And their gallant brigantines Sailing safely into port Chased by corsair Algerines?
Vanished like a fleet of cloud, Like a passing trumpet-blast, Are those splendors of the past, And the commerce and the crowd! Fathoms deep beneath the seas Lie the ancient wharves and quays, Swallowed by the engulfing waves; Silent streets and vacant halls, Ruined roofs and towers and walls; Hidden from all mortal eyes Deep the sunken city lies: Even cities have their graves!
This is an enchanted land! Round the headlands far away Sweeps the blue Salernian bay With its sickle of white sand: Further still and furthermost On the dim discovered coast Paestum with its ruins lies, And its roses all in bloom Seem to tinge the fatal skies Of that lonely land of doom.
On his terrace, high in air, Nothing doth the good monk care For such worldly themes as these, From the garden just below Little puffs of perfume blow, And a sound is in his ears Of the murmur of the bees In the shining chestnut-trees; Nothing else he heeds or hears. All the landscape seems to swoon In the happy afternoon; Slowly o'er his senses creep The encroaching waves of sleep, And he sinks as sank the town, Unresisting, fathoms down, Into caverns cool and deep!
Walled about with drifts of snow, Hearing the fierce north-wind blow, Seeing all the landscape white, And the river cased in ice, Comes this memory of delight, Comes this vision unto me Of a long-lost Paradise In the land beyond the sea.
THE SERMON OF ST. FRANCIS
Up soared the lark into the air, A shaft of song, a winged prayer, As if a soul, released from pain, Were flying back to heaven again.
St. Francis heard; it was to him An emblem of the Seraphim; The upward motion of the fire, The light, the heat, the heart's desire.
Around Assisi's convent gate The birds, God's poor who cannot wait, From moor and mere and darksome wood Came flocking for their dole of food.
"O brother birds," St. Francis said, "Ye come to me and ask for bread, But not with bread alone to-day Shall ye be fed and sent away.
"Ye shall be fed, ye happy birds, With manna of celestial words; Not mine, though mine they seem to be, Not mine, though they be spoken through me.
"O, doubly are ye bound to praise The great Creator in your lays; He giveth you your plumes of down, Your crimson hoods, your cloaks of brown.
"He giveth you your wings to fly And breathe a purer air on high, And careth for you everywhere, Who for yourselves so little care!"
With flutter of swift wings and songs Together rose the feathered throngs, And singing scattered far apart; Deep peace was in St. Francis' heart.
He knew not if the brotherhood His homily had understood; He only knew that to one ear The meaning of his words was clear.
BELISARIUS
The sun burns me, and the wind
Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
From the wheels of the august
Justinian the Great.
The Persians o'er wild and waste,
As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
Their forage was my feast.
And torches at mast-head,
Piloting the great fleet,
I swept the Afric coasts
And scattered the Vandal hosts,
Like dust in a windy street.
The Ausonian realm and reign,
Rome and Parthenope;
And all the land was mine
From the summits of Apennine
To the shores of either sea.
I dared the battle's rage,
To save Byzantium's state,
When the tents of Zabergan,
Like snow-drifts overran
The road to the Golden Gate.
Infirm and blind and old,
With gray, uncovered head,
Beneath the very arch
Of my triumphal march,
I stand and beg my bread!
Sounding distinct and near,
The Vandal monarch's cry,
As, captive and disgraced,
With majestic step he paced,—
"All, all is Vanity!"
Is the gratitude of kings;
The plaudits of the crowd
Are but the clatter of feet
At midnight in the street,
Hollow and restless and loud.
Is to see forever the face
Of the Monk of Ephesus!
The unconquerable will
This, too, can bear;—I still
Am Belisarius!
SONGO RIVER
Nowhere such a devious stream, Save in fancy or in dream, Winding slow through bush and brake Links together lake and lake.
Walled with woods or sandy shelf, Ever doubling on itself Flows the stream, so still and slow That it hardly seems to flow.
Never errant knight of old, Lost in woodland or on wold, Such a winding path pursued Through the sylvan solitude.
Never school-boy in his quest After hazel-nut or nest, Through the forest in and out Wandered loitering thus about.
In the mirror of its tide Tangled thickets on each side Hang inverted, and between Floating cloud or sky serene.
Swift or swallow on the wing Seems the only living thing, Or the loon, that laughs and flies Down to those reflected skies.
Silent stream! thy Indian name Unfamiliar is to fame; For thou hidest here alone, Well content to be unknown.
But thy tranquil waters teach Wisdom deep as human speech, Moving without haste or noise In unbroken equipoise.
Though thou turnest no busy mill, And art ever calm and still, Even thy silence seems to say To the traveller on his way:—
"Traveller, hurrying from the heat Of the city, stay thy feet! Rest awhile, nor longer waste Life with inconsiderate haste!
"Be not like a stream that brawls Loud with shallow waterfalls, But in quiet self-control Link together soul and soul"