IN THE HARBOR
BECALMED
Becalmed upon the sea of Thought, Still unattained the land it sought, My mind, with loosely-hanging sails, Lies waiting the auspicious gales.
On either side, behind, before, The ocean stretches like a floor,— A level floor of amethyst, Crowned by a golden dome of mist.
Blow, breath of inspiration, blow! Shake and uplift this golden glow! And fill the canvas of the mind With wafts of thy celestial wind.
Blow, breath of song! until I feel The straining sail, the lifting keel, The life of the awakening sea, Its motion and its mystery!
THE POET'S CALENDAR
JANUARY
Forward I look, and backward, and below
I count, as god of avenues and gates,
The years that through my portals come and go.
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow;
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen;
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow,
My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men.
FEBRUARY
I wash the sands and headlands with my tide;
My brow is crowned with branches of the pine;
Before my chariot-wheels the fishes glide.
By me all things unclean are purified,
By me the souls of men washed white again;
E'en the unlovely tombs of those who died
Without a dirge, I cleanse from every stain.
MARCH
To lead the Year was my appointed place;
A mortal dispossessed me by a word,
And set there Janus with the double face.
Hence I make war on all the human race;
I shake the cities with my hurricanes;
I flood the rivers and their banks efface,
And drown the farms and hamlets with my rains.
APRIL
To welcome the procession of the flowers,
With their gay banners, and the birds that sing
Their song of songs from their aerial towers.
I soften with my sunshine and my showers
The heart of earth; with thoughts of love I glide
Into the hearts of men; and with the Hours
Upon the Bull with wreathed horns I ride.
MAY
My coming, and the swarming of the bees.
These are my heralds, and behold! my name
Is written in blossoms on the hawthorn-trees.
I tell the mariner when to sail the seas;
I waft o'er all the land from far away
The breath and bloom of the Hesperides,
My birthplace. I am Maia. I am May.
JUNE
The Month of Marriages! All pleasant sights
And scents, the fragrance of the blossoming vine,
The foliage of the valleys and the heights.
Mine are the longest days, the loveliest nights;
The mower's scythe makes music to my ear;
I am the mother of all dear delights;
I am the fairest daughter of the year.
JULY
The breath of Libyan deserts o'er the land;
My sickle as a sabre I unsheathe,
And bent before me the pale harvests stand.
The lakes and rivers shrink at my command,
And there is thirst and fever in the air;
The sky is changed to brass, the earth to sand;
I am the Emperor whose name I bear.
AUGUST
I being his favorite, bestowed his name
Upon me, and I hold it still in trust,
In memory of him and of his fame.
I am the Virgin, and my vestal flame
Burns less intensely than the Lion's rage;
Sheaves are my only garlands, and I claim
The golden Harvests as my heritage.
SEPTEMBER
The night and day; and when unto my lips
I put my trumpet, with its stress and noise
Fly the white clouds like tattered sails of ships;
The tree-tops lash the air with sounding whips;
Southward the clamorous sea-fowl wing their flight;
The hedges are all red with haws and hips,
The Hunter's Moon reigns empress of the night.
OCTOBER
Woven like cloth of gold, and crimson dyed;
I do not boast the harvesting of sheaves,
O'er orchards and o'er vineyards I preside.
Though on the frigid Scorpion I ride,
The dreamy air is full, and overflows
With tender memories of the summer-tide,
And mingled voices of the doves and crows.
NOVEMBER
Born of Ixion's and the cloud's embrace;
With sounding hoofs across the earth I fly,
A steed Thessalian with a human face.
Sharp winds the arrows are with which I chase
The leaves, half dead already with affright;
I shroud myself in gloom; and to the race
Of mortals bring nor comfort nor delight.
DECEMBER
I come, the last of all. This crown of mine
Is of the holly; in my hand I bear
The thyrsus, tipped with fragrant cones of pine.
I celebrate the birth of the Divine,
And the return of the Saturnian reign;—
My songs are carols sung at every shrine,
Proclaiming "Peace on earth, good will to men."
AUTUMN WITHIN
But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
It is I that have grown old.
Singing, building without rest;
Life is stirring everywhere,
Save within my lonely breast.
Fall and rustle and are still;
Beats no flail upon the sheaves
Comes no murmur from the mill.
THE FOUR LAKES OF MADISON
Or sylvan deities are these,
In flowing robes of azure dressed;
Four lovely handmaids, that uphold
Their shining mirrors, rimmed with gold,
To the fair city in the West.
Drink of these waters as they run
Their swift diurnal round on high;
By night the constellations glow
Far down the hollow deeps below,
And glimmer in another sky.
Fair town, arrayed in robes of white,
How visionary ye appear!
All like a floating landscape seems
In cloud-land or the land of dreams,
Bathed in a golden atmosphere!
VICTOR AND VANQUISHED
Before his foe, bleeding and near to fall,
I turn and set my back against the wall,
And look thee in the face, triumphant Death,
I call for aid, and no one answereth;
I am alone with thee, who conquerest all;
Yet me thy threatening form doth not appall,
For thou art but a phantom and a wraith.
Wounded and weak, sword broken at the hilt,
With armor shattered, and without a shield,
I stand unmoved; do with me what thou wilt;
I can resist no more, but will not yield.
This is no tournament where cowards tilt;
The vanquished here is victor of the field.
MOONLIGHT
Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
Mysterious chambers of the air.
As if this phantom, full of pain,
Were by the crumbling walls concealed,
And at the windows seen again.
In all the splendor of her light,
She walks the terraces of cloud,
Supreme as Empress of the Night.
Objects familiar to my view;
The very pathway to my door
Is an enchanted avenue.
The elm-trees drop their curtains down;
By palace, park, and colonnade
I walk as in a foreign town.
Is clothed with a diviner air;
White marble paves the silent street
And glimmers in the empty square.
The common life of every day;
Only the spirit glorifies
With its own tints the sober gray.
Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind,
We see but what we have the gift
Of seeing; what we bring we find.
THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE
[A FRAGMENT.]
I
What is this I read in history, Full of marvel, full of mystery, Difficult to understand? Is it fiction, is it truth? Children in the flower of youth, Heart in heart, and hand in hand, Ignorant of what helps or harms, Without armor, without arms, Journeying to the Holy Land!
Who shall answer or divine? Never since the world was made Such a wonderful crusade Started forth for Palestine. Never while the world shall last Will it reproduce the past; Never will it see again Such an army, such a band, Over mountain, over main, Journeying to the Holy Land.
Like a shower of blossoms blown From the parent trees were they; Like a flock of birds that fly Through the unfrequented sky, Holding nothing as their own, Passed they into lands unknown, Passed to suffer and to die.
O the simple, child-like trust! O the faith that could believe What the harnessed, iron-mailed Knights of Christendom had failed, By their prowess, to achieve, They the children, could and must?
Little thought the Hermit, preaching Holy Wars to knight and baron, That the words dropped in his teaching, His entreaty, his beseeching, Would by children's hands be gleaned, And the staff on which he leaned Blossom like the rod of Aaron.
As a summer wind upheaves The innumerable leaves In the bosom of a wood,— Not as separate leaves, but massed All together by the blast,— So for evil or for good His resistless breath upheaved All at once the many-leaved, Many-thoughted multitude.
In the tumult of the air Rock the boughs with all the nests Cradled on their tossing crests; By the fervor of his prayer Troubled hearts were everywhere Rocked and tossed in human breasts.
For a century, at least, His prophetic voice had ceased; But the air was heated still By his lurid words and will, As from fires in far-off woods, In the autumn of the year, An unwonted fever broods In the sultry atmosphere.
II
In Cologne the bells were ringing, In Cologne the nuns were singing Hymns and canticles divine; Loud the monks sang in their stalls, And the thronging streets were loud With the voices of the crowd;— Underneath the city walls Silent flowed the river Rhine.
From the gates, that summer day, Clad in robes of hodden gray, With the red cross on the breast, Azure-eyed and golden-haired, Forth the young crusaders fared; While above the band devoted Consecrated banners floated, Fluttered many a flag and streamer, And the cross o'er all the rest! Singing lowly, meekly, slowly, "Give us, give us back the holy Sepulchre of the Redeemer!" On the vast procession pressed, Youths and maidens. . . .
III
Ah! what master hand shall paint How they journeyed on their way, How the days grew long and dreary, How their little feet grew weary, How their little hearts grew faint!
Ever swifter day by day Flowed the homeward river; ever More and more its whitening current Broke and scattered into spray, Till the calmly-flowing river Changed into a mountain torrent, Rushing from its glacier green Down through chasm and black ravine. Like a phoenix in its nest, Burned the red sun in the West, Sinking in an ashen cloud; In the East, above the crest Of the sea-like mountain chain, Like a phoenix from its shroud, Came the red sun back again.
Now around them, white with snow, Closed the mountain peaks. Below, Headlong from the precipice Down into the dark abyss, Plunged the cataract, white with foam; And it said, or seemed to say: "Oh return, while yet you may, Foolish children, to your home, There the Holy City is!"
But the dauntless leader said: "Faint not, though your bleeding feet O'er these slippery paths of sleet Move but painfully and slowly; Other feet than yours have bled; Other tears than yours been shed Courage! lose not heart or hope; On the mountains' southern slope Lies Jerusalem the Holy!"
As a white rose in its pride, By the wind in summer-tide Tossed and loosened from the branch, Showers its petals o'er the ground, From the distant mountain's side, Scattering all its snows around, With mysterious, muffled sound, Loosened, fell the avalanche. Voices, echoes far and near, Roar of winds and waters blending, Mists uprising, clouds impending, Filled them with a sense of fear, Formless, nameless, never ending.
SUNDOWN
Only the tree-tops redden and glow:
Only the weathercock on the spire
Of the neighboring church is a flame of fire;
All is in shadow below.
What hast thou given, what taken away?
Life and death, and love and hate,
Homes made happy or desolate,
Hearts made sad or gay!
In the book of life one leaf turned o'er!
Like a red seal is the setting sun
On the good and the evil men have done,—
Naught can to-day restore!
CHIMES
Salute the passing hour, and in the dark
And silent chambers of the household mark
The movements of the myriad orbs of light!
Through my closed eyelids, by the inner sight,
I see the constellations in the arc
Of their great circles moving on, and hark!
I almost hear them singing in their flight.
Better than sleep it is to lie awake
O'er-canopied by the vast starry dome
Of the immeasurable sky; to feel
The slumbering world sink under us, and make
Hardly an eddy,—a mere rush of foam
On the great sea beneath a sinking keel.
FOUR BY THE CLOCK.
"NAHANT, September 8, 1880, Four o'clock in the morning."
Four by the clock! and yet not day; But the great world rolls and wheels away, With its cities on land, and its ships at sea, Into the dawn that is to be!
Only the lamp in the anchored bark Sends its glimmer across the dark, And the heavy breathing of the sea Is the only sound that comes to me.
AUF WIEDERSEHEN.
IN MEMORY OF J.T.F.
Of the familiar words, that men repeat
At parting in the street.
Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening
Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain
We wait for the Again!
Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay
Lamenting day by day,
And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow,
We shall not find in its accustomed place
The one beloved face.
Being released from earth, should still retain
A sense of earthly pain;
It were a double grief, if the true-hearted,
Who loved us here, should on the farther shore
Remember us no more.
That death is a beginning, not an end,
We cry to them, and send
Farewells, that better might be called predictions,
Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown
Into the vast Unknown.
And if by faith, as in old times was said,
Women received their dead
Raised up to life, then only for a season
Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain
Until we meet again!
ELEGIAC VERSE
I
Walking alone by the sea, hearing the wash of the waves,
Learned the secret from them of the beautiful verse elegiac,
Breathing into his song motion and sound of the sea.
Plunges loud on the sands, pauses, and turns, and retreats,
So the Hexameter, rising and singing, with cadence sonorous,
Falls; and in refluent rhythm back the Pentameter flows?
II
Bloom into song, as the gorse blossoms in autumn and spring.
III
Though it be Jacob's voice, Esau's, alas! are the hands.
IV
When to leave off is an art only attained by the few.
V
Hail and snow and rain, are they not three, and yet one?
VI
Ships and the shadows of ships hang in the motionless air;
So by the art of the poet our common life is uplifted,
So, transfigured, the world floats in a luminous haze.
VII
When with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.
VIII
freedom;
Little it dreams of the mill hid in the valley below;
Glad with the joy of existence, the child goes singing and
laughing,
Little dreaming what toils lie in the future concealed.
IX
When we begin to write, however sluggish before.
X
If we seek it elsewhere, old shall we grow in the search.
XI
Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
XII
While we are speaking the word, it is is already the Past.
XIII
As between daylight and dark ghost-like the landscape appears.
XIV
Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.
THE CITY AND THE SEA
The panting City cried to the Sea, "I am faint with heat,—O breathe on me!"
And the Sea said, "Lo, I breathe! but my breath To some will be life, to others death!"
As to Prometheus, bringing ease In pain, come the Oceanides,
So to the City, hot with the flame Of the pitiless sun, the east wind came.
It came from the heaving breast of the deep, Silent as dreams are, and sudden as sleep.
Life-giving, death-giving, which will it be; O breath of the merciful, merciless Sea?
MEMORIES
In other days, to whom my heart was led
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their head
The stone with moss and lichens so o'erspread,
Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them? After long years,
Do they remember me in the same way,
And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
And yet the root perennial may be.
HERMES TRISMEGISTUS
as wholes in two myriads of books; or, as we are informed by
Manetho, he perfectly unfolded these principles in three myriads
six thousand five hundred and twenty-five volumes. . . .
. . . Our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to
this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of
Hermes.—IAMBLICUS.
Flows the lordly Nile,
From its banks the great stone faces
Gaze with patient smile.
Still the pyramids imperious
Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
Solemn, stony eyes.
Demi-gods and kings?
Nothing left but an inscription
Graven on stones and rings.
Where are Helios and Hephæstus,
Gods of eldest eld?
Where is Hermes Trismegistus,
Who their secrets held?
Thousand books he wrote?
By the Thaumaturgists plundered,
Lost in lands remote;
In oblivion sunk forever,
As when o'er the land
Blows a storm-wind, in the river
Sinks the scattered sand.
Seems this Theurgist,
In deep meditation mostly
Wrapped, as in a mist.
Vague, phantasmal, and unreal
To our thought he seems,
Walking in a world ideal,
In a land of dreams.
Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which, converging
Many streamlets run?
Till, with gathered power proceeding,
Ampler sweep it takes,
Downward the sweet waters leading
From unnumbered lakes.
Pausing now and then,
On the mystic union pondering
Between gods and men;
Half believing, wholly feeling,
With supreme delight,
How the gods, themselves concealing,
Lift men to their height.
In the thoroughfare
Breathing, as if consecrated,
A diviner air;
And amid discordant noises,
In the jostling throng,
Hearing far, celestial voices
Of Olympian song.
Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
Universe of thought?
Who, in his own skill confiding,
Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
Human and divine?
How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
Progeny of time!
Happy they whose written pages
Perish with their lives,
If amid the crumbling ages
Still their name survives!
Found I in the vast,
Weed-encumbered sombre, stately,
Grave-yard of the Past;
And a presence moved before me
On that gloomy shore,
As a waft of wind, that o'er me
Breathed, and was no more.
TO THE AVON
Flow on, sweet river! like his verse Who lies beneath this sculptured hearse Nor wait beside the churchyard wall For him who cannot hear thy call.
Thy playmate once; I see him now A boy with sunshine on his brow, And hear in Stratford's quiet street The patter of his little feet.
I see him by thy shallow edge Wading knee-deep amid the sedge; And lost in thought, as if thy stream Were the swift river of a dream.
He wonders whitherward it flows; And fain would follow where it goes, To the wide world, that shall erelong Be filled with his melodious song.
Flow on, fair stream! That dream is o'er; He stands upon another shore; A vaster river near him flows, And still he follows where it goes.
PRESIDENT GARFIELD
"E venni dal martirio a questa pace."
Uttered by one who, bravely dying here,
In the true faith was living in that sphere
Where the celestial cross of sacrifice
Spread its protecting arms athwart the skies;
And set thereon, like jewels crystal clear,
The souls magnanimous, that knew not fear,
Flashed their effulgence on his dazzled eyes.
Ah me! how dark the discipline of pain,
Were not the suffering followed by the sense
Of infinite rest and infinite release!
This is our consolation; and again
A great soul cries to us in our suspense,
"I came from martyrdom unto this peace!"
MY BOOKS
Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
The sword two-handed and the shining shield
Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
Of tourney or adventure in the field
Came over him, and tears but half concealed
Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
My ornaments and arms of other days;
Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways
In which I walked, now clouded and confused.
MAD RIVER
IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
Why dost thou wildly rush and roar,
Mad River, O Mad River?
Wilt thou not pause and cease to pour
Thy hurrying, headlong waters o'er
This rocky shelf forever?
Why all this fret and flurry?
Dost thou not know that what is best
In this too restless world is rest
From over-work and worry?
What wouldst thou in these mountains seek,
O stranger from the city?
Is it perhaps some foolish freak
Of thine, to put the words I speak
Into a plaintive ditty?
Yes; I would learn of thee thy song,
With all its flowing number;
And in a voice as fresh and strong
As thine is, sing it all day long,
And hear it in my slumbers.
A brooklet nameless and unknown
Was I at first, resembling
A little child, that all alone
Comes venturing down the stairs of stone,
Irresolute and trembling.
For the wide world I panted;
Out of the forest dark and dread
Across the open fields I fled,
Like one pursued and haunted.
My voice exultant blending
With thunder from the passing cloud,
The wind, the forest bent and bowed,
The rush of rain descending.
Imploring and entreating;
Drawn onward, o'er this rocky wall
I plunged, and the loud waterfall
Made answer to the greeting.
A toilsome life I follow;
Compelled to carry from the hills
These logs to the impatient mills
Below there in the hollow.
The rudeness of my labors;
Daily I water with these arms
The cattle of a hundred farms,
And have the birds for neighbors.
When, full of rage and trouble,
I burst my banks of sand and clay,
And sweep their wooden bridge away,
Like withered reeds or stubble.
As of thine own creating.
Thou seest the day is past its prime;
I can no longer waste my time;
The mills are tired of waiting.
POSSIBILITIES
The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent
Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent,
But with the utmost tension of the thong?
Where are the stately argosies of song,
Whose rushing keels made music as they went
Sailing in search of some new continent,
With all sail set, and steady winds and strong?
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
Who shall become a master of the art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
Fearless and first and steering with his fleet
For lands not yet laid down in any chart.
DECORATION DAY
On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
Nor sentry's shot alarms!
And started to your feet
At the cannon's sudden roar,
Or the drum's redoubling beat.
No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
No wound that bleeds and aches.
Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
It is the Truce of God!
The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
Your rest from danger free.
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
A FRAGMENT
Angels are knocking at thy door!
They are in haste and cannot wait,
And once departed come no more.
Loses its strength by too much rest;
The fallow land, the untilled farm
Produces only weeds at best.
LOSS AND GAIN
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.
I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.
But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.
INSCRIPTION ON THE SHANKLIN FOUNTAIN
Drink of this fountain, pure and sweet;
It flows for rich and poor the same.
Then go thy way, remembering still
The wayside well beneath the hill,
The cup of water in His name.
THE BELLS OF SAN BLAS
To the ships that southward pass
From the harbor of Mazatlan?
To them it is nothing more
Than the sound of surf on the shore,—
Nothing more to master or man.
To whom what is and what seems
Are often one and the same,—
The Bells of San Blas to me
Have a strange, wild melody,
And are something more than a name.
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts of young and old;
One sound to all, yet each
Lends a meaning to their speech,
And the meaning is manifold.
Of an age that is fading fast,
Of a power austere and grand,
When the flag of Spain unfurled
Its folds o'er this western world,
And the Priest was lord of the land.
On the little seaport town
Has crumbled into the dust;
And on oaken beams below
The bells swing to and fro,
And are green with mould and rust.
They say, "and in its stead
Is some new faith proclaimed,
That we are forced to remain
Naked to sun and rain,
Unsheltered and ashamed?
We rang over wall and roof
Our warnings and our complaints;
And round about us there
The white doves filled the air,
Like the white souls of the saints.
Forgetful of their own?
Are they asleep, or dead,
That open to the sky
Their ruined Missions lie,
No longer tenanted?
The vanished days of yore,
When the world with faith was filled;
Bring back the fervid zeal,
The hearts of fire and steel,
The hands that believe and build.
We will send over land and main
Our voices of command,
Like exiled kings who return
To their thrones, and the people learn
That the Priest is lord of the land!"
Ye call back the Past again;
The Past is deaf to your prayer!
Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light;
It is daybreak everywhere.