C458 e UC-NRLF 13 am OEM fe*wwfcte&^^ ELIOT. BY WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING. BOSTON: CUPPLES, UPHAM AND COMPANY. 1885. COPYRIGHT, 1885, BY WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. ALFRED I^UDGE & SON, PRINTERS, BOSTON. CONTENTS. I. IN THE CAVE 5 II. MORNING 17 III. NIGHT AGAIN 31 IV. IN THE PAST 42 V. COMO THE SETTLEMENT . . 55 VI. LISA 66 VII. LIGHT AND SHADOW ... 76 VIII. THE TESTAMENT .... 89 960438 ELIOT; I. IN THE CAVE. once the lynx and panther made his house, Or the fat bear brought up his family, Poor nurslings of the Wild, I find my place Of shelter from the world, and man remote. Nearly two decades of this mortal coil Kun off ; my sands of life mostly run out; And yet the everlasting voice I hear, And never find the silence. On these rocks, Old as the pillars of the earth, I make My couch, table, and seat; and the iron door Grates on its hinges to my touch alone, 6 Alone, alone, alone by night, by day. Ko friendly voice e er sweetness to my ear; No frieutfly. thciiglit e er warming to my heart ; Sea ved by misfortune;, with its life-blood scant, And soon to stop! Alone ! Yes. But I hear! Was that a human step, or a dry leaf Dropped from the oak-tree ? And that echo soft, Was it the splinter of the waterfall That down the glen flies from the moon light s clutch? This awful silence ! And I ever hear Sounds that surprise me, born, I feel, of fear ; Sounds faint and far, that drench me with affright, Here as L sit, and see the bloodstained scroll, Those letters that I plucked from out his breast, As slowly from his heart the red drop oozed, Those, and her portrait, and his own! Lisa! I see her near me! T is her hand I touch! Her soft brown hair, her gentle hazel eyes. Cruel, say you, was something in her smile, And sensual or vindictive? Oh ! to me The very sweetness of God s deepest love Beamed from those faithful orbs; and when that mouth Was pressed to mine I never felt its scorn. Thus, thus to live, should this, indeed, be life, - Within this cavern which my hands have scooped To the convenient largeness for my wants; Hight enough, and so secured that none can come Without I know them here. And this, my rifle, Time once, that was a joy, far off, in deed, 8 But now one loathsome thing, since flowed his blood. And yet to know that from this dungeon here I still must roam the tall wood s broken gloom; Far down the glen, where the sharp ripple glides Of the cold stream, like arrows in its haste, Curving and curving fast, and kill the deer, Most graceful of their kind. For I have vowed, In this self -punishing, I will not steal my life; And naught but these fair creatures make me live. Tis late; the night draws on ; no human love To cheer me in my grief. Society! Oh, well I do remember in those days When I had Lisa, and I owned a home, How dear the firelight blaze lit up the walls Of our Kentucky house, that ample hall, There where our mother dwelt, and he, the judge, My father, all the children round, the dogs Stretched out along the floor, and often heard .The flying hoof-beats of the full-blood steed; Some social neighbor, on his round of calls, Proud of his good gray mare; the kindly hopes, The tidings from the town, the postman s shout; And heard afar that soothing Sabbath bell, Sweet in my childish heart ! Hush ! Was it a step ? Again ? Something along the leaves; the night Crawling in the cool air amid the oaks, Or the soft panther s foot seeking the meat That s hanging at the door. Again! the whisper ! Can it be ? Who comes ? Tis Gordon s form. His hand across his heart, as on that day; 10 Slowly the red drop oozing from the spot. See I and he shot as well as I; closer! God! why was it not his ball through mine, Not mine in his ? And Lisa at his side ! 1 often say it : Eliot, the blow was yours. And now you live, frozen to the heart, for life, Until on yonder heap of leaves you rest, Mourned for by none unless some wander ing wind. Yes, tis midnight; I feel it in my soul. Yon star that strikes beyond the cavern s roof Brings me that fated hour, the time to sleep. I call it sleep, but all along my mind Hovers the contribution of the day. The curse of Cain weighs worlds upon my soul, Whoso sheds human blood, his own shall flow. How often have I sought the fatal stroke ; 11 How often bared my breast to the light ning s stab, Or begged the wild man of the woods to dart His arrow through me; and the venomous snake, Whose measured warnings in the grass I hear, As oft I thread the glade, his rattle shrill. No, no ; they harm me not, fated to live. The sweetest draught that ever touched my lips Will be the wine of death, a cordial draught. Would but the sisters brew it speedily, And let me drain that glass. And yet I live ! As now, to meet this midnight hour and say, One more, one more, another sun must rise ; Another day, the same as all that go; Tied to myself, and these dread, pitiless thoughts, As when Prometheus lay and felt the eagle 12 Lnpping his blool, chained on the Cau- "O casus. T is silence sears my brain. No pleasant words ; No smile over her lips; no gentlest part ing When she ope d the door, and lingered long, Waiting to hear my latest foot-tread fall; No glance upon her face, as oft she sat Wondering at my strange fancies and strange acts. I vainly stretch my hands. I meet the air Empty and wan and cold and pitiless. I ask for mercy! On the rocks I kneel, Long ere this hour is passed, hoping for mercy: That some voice will say, u Go forth, this penance o er." Hoping, I say, Yes; but my hope s de spair. Decades have fled, and yet my prayers re main, Like some dull, hollow sphere, untenanted. 13 When I was young, bow oft I sang some catch, Some merry song, when I was left alone, Gay as the callow bird upon the bough; My innocent heart responding to the joy That broods o er all things, feince that aw ful hour, Doomed as the frozen stream, its ripples sunk To icy stillness. Hark! That foot again! T is Lisa s, at the door. I see her soft brown hair, Lighter than faintest glass spun at the flame. How waves it in the moonlight s deadly glow! And oh! her gentle eyes, they melt the gloom ; And her kind voice, "Eliot! my love, I come I never loved but you, no one as much. But I was one not framed to love, save one. 14 Not of the class of women whose shrunk hearts Feel but a single friend, and have no more Than one emotion ; and I thought that you Should still be mine. Oh! Eliot, oh! my love, Was jealousy more worth than all my love? And those poor letters, bathed in his last blood, A proof that I less loved you than of yore? I know the date s the same. I know I wrote That day to you and him. But my true love, Might you not spare his life? I hear the gun! I see the fearful flash I the ringing shot Is pressing through my heart! I cannot breathe! I go with Gordon to that other land ! But I will come to you. I will not leave You, dearest, in that lonely world; but come 15 Sometimes, at hollow midnight, when your ear, Attuned to finer silence, claims new sounds. TisI; tis Lisa! Eliot, do not fire!" What did I hear? Was it the oak-leaf falling in the frost? Was it the torrent whispering down the glen? Methought I heard a voice, like Lisa s voice. There! There! My God! that sound again! u Eliot, my love, The nearest to my heart of those I love, Would that this hand could take and lead you up In this still land, beyond that temporal day. I cannot, cannot; no, my child! No hour, No moment can my loving heart come near To stanch your wounds ; nor this frail form One touch of consolation to your days 16 Ever afford. Eliot, why was it I who died When Gordon fell, doomed by the fatal hand ? Because I loved him thus, you fondly deemed, Even as I loved yourself. Why look so faint Across those bloodstained scrolls? My heart is yours, Here in the hollow grave, all yours, the same." II. MORNING. IS almost sunrise; I had long to wait. 1 hear the early birds begin their songs; Would t were the last. Yet I believe arid feel That life grows weaker, and so it must end, Nor far away. How foolish in me still These shallow, hurried notes to scrawl. Here will they mold, with those, the let ters! And the faithful books that true remain, Silent though speaking, ranged upon the stones., Facing the long procession of the years, :Schiller andShakspere, Spenser, with their kin, And courtly Addison. Never they dreamed 18 That things they wrote should float thus far away, And in such places, here in these rank woods Nourish an outlaw s breast, haggard with crime, Save mine, far from all human eyes; For in your trade-mad town, on Como s street, Who lives who ever read them? Know I not. Would I could live and yet destroy no life; Yet neither roots nor nuts, nor berries scant, Will save me from destruction. These dim wilds In their game furnish a thin subsistence, And I have sworn to breathe till my last sigh Falls wretchedly to death. Live must I call it? Once did I live, and knew the morning break As the sweet herald of auspicious day, 19 Wherein my thoughts should bloom even as its blush. Like radiance o er the east my hopes shot forth. The world was all before me and its friends, Those polite liars, those true, faithful friends. On no man yet I ever turned my back. I was affectionate, or so I thought; I trusted all, and trustful, tried to please. They shook me from them like the poi soned snake Whose venom drops when none affects the cause. My warm affections, my soft sympathies, They rated oddity, named them brief whim, Caprices, and the wiser called me mad, The least reprieve they gave, to glance aside, Neglect me; cold contempt, indifference, Silent aversion, indolent remark, Their sole returns. 20 Was that a figure Moving among the trees, there, where the sun , Begins to gild their moss? Like Gordon s form, Just crossing through the glade from where I sit. Why, t is a deer, and bends this way to me. I ll get my gun, shut to my dungeon s door. And I can feel its soft and liquid eye Beam on this gloomy cell in friendly fear. I could not shoot if this viper at my heart Consumed its blood. Shoot, poor thing! Never till now, Driven by hunger was I weeping forced To slay one living creature, nor to harm. Nor should I now; tis part of this dread penance, And I live by murder. Could be that Gordon s soul Impressed itself upon that silly deer, To tempt a hunter s thought? Its liquid 21 Perhaps, prefigures happier days in store? No, no! the same, the gnawing at my heart, And carking care from anguish unappeased. AVhy do I keep those letters yet, so near? Near, ever in my eyes, and the twin por traits, Lisa s and his, ever, forever there! Was there no God with pity in his heart When I lay cradled on my mother s breasi? Or was this fiend who tears my life to shreds The One who made me, blasted and ob scured? I dreamed in calmer days of pleasing thoughts, Blest recollections, which like soothing lights O ershot my morbid glooms, and made a hope Of earth, lit up the dark, cold lakes with joy, And touched the freezing foliage till it laughed ; Honeyed remembrances of good deeds done, Like angel hymns soft fluting o er the mind, Banishing sin and binding up time s wounds. The unappeasable sky above me shuts Its iron lids gainst every cheerful thought; No day nor night, nor early morn nor eve, Nor shapes of things to come nor those all gone, Are neighbor to my cause. What moves yon bush? T is but the frost-work lightening in the sun, That gives it verge to move, to right its stems From the cold grasp of night. These things are loved. The glade that stoops across the long- drawn wood, Its unshorn grasses for the deer s supply, I sought again; a little sylvan temple, With sober front carved by the wood- god s taste, For Dryad meetings comfortably adorned. Around the graceful trees move sensible 23 To the sweet whisperings of the wind; the spring Where nightly come the wild inhabitants, To touch their lips, adorned with mossy stones, Might please some hermit s mind. Was I happy then? Was there an hour deep in the past when life Half kept some smiling dreams? My memory fails. I fancy, as I seek 1hat glade, my mind Might, if t were gracious, partly call again Some thing or day that smiled across my path, Eipe with humanity, before that blow At my own race had shadowed all my soul, And rooted out all trace of blest emotion. Why did I love? Had I no joy in that? I looked in Lisa s face; I saw her shape, Light and convenient beyond Nature s art, Made for our race; those hands that did her thought Before my clumsy brain presumed her act ; 24 That step so sure and sweet ; that modest eye, Ever self-humbling, ever soothing me. I loved her all. Was not there, then, a joy? Then, but how far off now ! I am no more Of life ; all s fled, all s lost. Again, her form ! As I was sitting in the glade, herself Passed at the further end and near the spring. Watching for deer I sat. for food is scarce. My eyes were on the earth, my heart was faint, And then I heard a voice. I raised my eyes. Was it the oak-leaf falling in the frost ? Was it the torrent whispering down the glen ? She speaks, soft as the child who prays at night His mother s blessing : " Eliot ! thou thread st alone The shadowy vale, save that my memory Its penance bears along thy weary road. Child to my heart all dear, I loved thee ever! Nay, thou knew st not that all my soul was thine. Frenzied with jealousy, that maddening draught, The aloes of the heart, and now rusted With solitude, that by its acid eats Away the truth ; thought s vitriol, chasing The fine conceit to ashes, rubbing out The burnished silver of the social glass, Eeducing every pleasure to a mask ; A filmy skeleton, through which the breath Of an unformed despair glides ghostly up, As midnight s sigh in the cathedral s vault Where overhead the falling ruins soar." Methought I knew that voice. Was that his form ? This hunger at my heart and this fatigue ! I surely saw a figure cross the glen, As I glanced back, its hands upon its heart. Gordon, no ! no ! It was not murder, no! 26 At twenty paces, killed was he killed by me? Oh , mockery ! I am frenzied with this life. Hunger and cold and weariness steal all sense, An everlasting faintness in my frame, And in my mind the fatal consequence, Brings forth its ghosts and dreams and fearful thoughts. Were I not here alone in these wild woods, Exiled from all which social life holds dear, Locked in that burial vault, a diseased mind, Malady naught can cure, might no*t one heart, One human heart with a brief tender ness, E en for me, say one half word of com fort, - Breathe just one sigh, and with a faltering mind Touch for an instant to my bleeding soul, A hope of mercy ! My God ! I ask for pardon. 27 But thou art just I Justice was made for me, This miserable doom becomes me well. A weaker nature might have sought its life; But I, whose fibres, like the shattered oak s, Wedged to the core with lightning, wreathe Their pale, white phantoms to the angry sky. And roots entwined in earth s unmeasured halls Claim property their own ; thus I, all scarred And blasted, rained on, spat upon by hail, And winter s silent moons, and still her voice, Loud as the earthquake s trump, her still small voice : " Eliot, my child, believe me to the end." I know I saw the sun rise; I believe That somewhere in that distance was a world, t 28 And once the woods lay green at summer s breath, And soft the toying winds that danced in May. There must have been a world, and human life. I think I might remember childish forms, Their soft, wan hair ; their little, lovely words ; Questions that break a grown man s heart with joy, To think that God lets Innocence appear, And in the weary, worn-out stage of life, Paint her sweet dreams, the bliss of igno rance. I had a sister once, cold as yon snow- crowned peak; A friend, than Judas baser, who did worse, Than sin, inexpiable crime, who blun dered. Thoughts had I once, anterior to that hour; Once I had hopes, before all hopes were dead. 29 I half remember these things! I must away! Heavens! how faint I feel. The deer range far; Slippery the frost shines gleaming down the trail. That thought was rough, that I need kill these things, So sacred in these haunts. I dare not keep a hound ; I cannot meet the glances of their eyes, More than all human. When they lick my hand They shudder at the touch; there s blood upon it, Which naught can wash away. No misery and no wrongs, Nor day nor night, nor the unutterable voice That yet forever asks me to repent, Nor any strength that ever I possessed, Nor these wild forms that glance across my path, Can take the stains and clear them from my soul. 30 A deer! Hush! My rifle jarred! If it should fail (I did not fail that day), then should I die A hunter s death, die, and the deer should live. Twere better so; they never kill their friends. III. -NIGHT AGAIN. WRESTLED with the hight. Then on the rocky, upland ridge iound food. Perhaps another week my breath may spend. But my limbs falter ; me thinks they are swollen. I heard my mother say death lay not far When that began. Death! All men fear to die! To change, to be crushed out into the darkness, Or sheeted off the scaffolding that swings Across the deep, unfathomable gulf, Where all we love and all we hate are dashed, No, no, not all! save to themselves, not all, To such as dream. 32 Her blood stains all my soul! I did not pause; of her I never thought. T was all myself, accursed self; her frail And delicate life I disregarded then. Soothing, I did not heal her tender fears, Caress her yielding smile, born of delight; But rudely swept her faithful heart away. You tell me Gordon struck me ; said I flung The dice foully, the cards were marked, he si ruck; And what was that ? One midnight of this life Would clean wash out centuries of insult, Baffled by secret foes, nailed to the Cross, Far happier than this slowly dropping rust Curdling about my unprotected thoughts. Oft, ere I sought these ebon shades,! went In villages as twilight took their streets, And saw the laborer halting to his home, His long day s toil misfigured in the glebe, And heard his children cry their father s name. 33 Might I not, too, have had a home, a life, My children s love? Yes! ere these viler fiends Than all hell s lowest pit supplies, despoiled My home, murdered my wife, kidnapped my darlings, Children, all, flung into one common grave; And rto weep and see them till I die! That sound again! Was it the breath of moonlit air ? " Eliot! it might have been," I list it still; " But might is not, in some men s deca logue. Mark how the noon of night silvers yon spray, That tears the crashing cataract in twain, Then mid the dim ravines crushed to wild flakes, And ever writhing, hurled on heaven again ! See, in the vale beneath, the placid pool Wherein the tall trees muse and view themselves, 34 Narcissus like, built in supremer grace E en than their own, Nature s prevailing portraits, The which she draws to emulate her skill. Eliot! they never change. The whirlpool roars ; The tender, silent rivulet pursues The even tenor of its noiseless way; Down, down forever smites the tortured fall, Its broken agony on life s last beat! But mark, the stroke of twelve. Dear love, farewell! " Her voice? Was it a voice? How my heart beats! I thought I heard a voice! My veins are chill. Twelve did it say? Who knows the hour of twelve Here in this solitude, where never fell The solemn music of the churchyard tower; Here in this fiendish cave, the wild man s lair, 35 The maniac s cell? Why, I could rend my heart From out my breast, and crush it neath my feet ! But I am doomed to live, my own revenge, And Gordon s death must feast upon my blood. That voice again! Eliza s? I did dream! Yet in these dreams of life I meet with death. I live when I am dead, when life is gone; And when I wake, I die! My limbs are cold; I feel the frost, t is stealing near my heart. More wood upon the fire; but no! Who s here, Here in my seat? And on the table, What? " All false cards, marked, you say, and loaded dice? Well, well, tis much for you to say to me, Eliot, that never bent to mortal man." 36 " Yes, loaded all, false, cheating; tis your trade. Take that." A blow, a blow! Why, what is this? T is the cold firelight mocking at the stones; They did not hear. My limbs are freezing now, I 11 build the fire. " Rifles, to-morrow, At twenty paces! Eliza will be there." Tis Gordon s voice, or yet one oiher dream. I cannot love such nights; never I may. Their spirit is a poison to my sense, And most of them, I fear the moonlight s spell. What does it comfort? Not my breaking heart. No shrub or flower profits its palsied glare. Silence and gliding phantoms fill the woods, And the dim forest glimmers with af fright, - 37 Less like the human life I thought to live Than all things else, arid more like him I hate. Myself I mean, most hated of my race! I must endure it; but when I was young Then moodish patience was to me a charm. He who is patient lacks no more; he s passed The precipice; aloft he does not hang Over the dizzy, threatening gulf, but glides In peaceful currents down the greensward vale. The night wears on. The fire has sought my limbs; Would it could burn this heart, beyond all warmth That mortal lips can blow into a flame. I 11 seek my bed again. I loved but once, He who loves twice has never loved that once; Like coldly torpid hearts that slowly drag (A long paralysis from birth to death), 38 Their small expedient selves. All else to them, Save their own earnest cant, is rotten ness, Feeling some whim; sorrow a lie, so wise And temperate their cherished self-esteem ; And they succeed in all, and blazon forth Most godlike, in the senate halls, in law, In camps, in literature prevailing. I was not of them; yet I sought the seats Where eloquence should rule, and might have played, Had I not fallen, myself the canting knave. Was it not better thus to fall and fade To all things human, than to live and lie? I know not. What an endless night! Sleep, sleep Deserts me ! Once I loved to muse and think, Live o er the happy hours of past delight; Think of that creature folded in my heart, As I in hers; and mark the long night build Its Spaniard s castle on a dreamer s brain. 39 Why, twas a kind of rarer sleep; and when The glorious morning broke my waking dream, I did not feel the want, but flung abroad As light as any bird. Tis strangely wronged ; Confusion follows swift these sleepless nights, When^nothing goes to cheat me of the loss That drains my waking hours, nothing to part, No veil, no dark concealment from those shapes. Oh, I would die within some happy dream; I cannot wish to pass and feel the steel Stirring in my cold heart with its last beat. But I shall die, as I do live, alone ; This solitude detains no human guests; No reverend father, with his beads in hand, Or prayer from trembling lips, or mother s tears, Or the soft heads of children o er their siie, 40 All s dark and dumb and chilled. Daylight ! So dnrk ? The notes of early birds ! I must have dreamed. Have then the sands of night dashed off the hours In a swift torrent, night that is my prayer? For then I part forget my outlaw s waieh; Or, if remembered, there hangs o er the veil, ^ That gauzy, thin oblivion men name sleep, A breathless falsehood, intermixed among That which we are, yet are not. Never yet Since I first faced these woods has the mid night Found me consoled by this false opiate; Kever the morning light has blotted out, From off this crime- worn soul, its weight of woe. Let fate be thanked, t is not Eliza s soul ! She died, she went to peace; she sleeps the sleep That should forever soothe her contrite thought. 41 Bless Heaven ! it is not hers the frenzy eats, The solitude devours, its sweetest prey Some human heart ! Why should I save those letters ? A moment in that blaze, safely consumed ; And the rude scribbling of this traitorous pen, Were it not handsomer, with them to the dust, As I shall fall myself? What interest, What word of good have they for mortal ear? But these red stains, these will not let me burn them. Between their life and mine there stands a wall, Fatality, that says : u Live ! These shall live, Even as you shall live, cursed, ever cursed, Fate s brand across your deeds." IV. IN THE PAST. |OT always this. My words are frenzy; none can feel them here; This corse a prey to the green mold, to dust. Here may the wild-cat crouch and suck my veins, And the slow snake, the Massasauga, coil About my throat, or drag his rattles o er My harmless bones. I never injured him, Nor touched his race, no more than if his form Had been my clannish totem ; yet me- thinks, So wild is Nature, or so self-sustained, She shows no difference to the cruel est boor 43 And him who tends her creatures like his own. At times I seem to swim along the past, Yet without pleasure; grief s too near. Could I But plunge beneath that golden dream, and sleep Upon the pillow of forgotten days! I seem to see the city by the shore, Sullen and tame, where laps the Atlantic wave ; Her gloating palaces, her scornful mites Hating the poor, but loving much the rich. Was there a breath of judgment in this world , That senseless wrack of misers and buf foons Flung to the simmering billows, served far more As driftwood to the naked islander, Crushed in his wrecker s cabin, than tis now, A prison of the soul, where genius dies, Love withers, and all s damned. 44 I do but dream I Methinks I see the hill-tops round me swell, And meadow vales that kiss their tawny brooks, And fawn the glittering sands that hug the grass; Old valleys shorn by farmers numerous years, Some mossy orchards murmuring with per fume, And our red farm-house, what a wreck that was! Its rotten shingles peeling neath the winds, When roaring March fell in the offshore breeze; Its kitchen with the salt box full of eggs, And Taylor s " Holy Living " on the lid; And clammy cellar, redolent of rats, Had not Grimalkin bought his ticket there, Braced on lean vermin like a banker s clerk. 45 Our parlor kept its buffet, rarely oped. Much did I wonder at yon glassy doors, And stacks of crockery sublimely piled, Hills of blue plates, and teapots sere with age, And spoons, old silver, tiniest of that breed. It was a sacred place, and save I whisked Sometimes a raisin or a seed-cake thence, With furtive glance I scanned the curious spot. The curtains to the windows kept all dark, Green paper was the compound. And the floor, Well scrubbed, showed its vacuities, content With modest subterfuge of mats, the work Of some brave aunt, industrious as a fly, And interwove of rags, yet things to me I hardly dared intrude on them my shoe. Such fictions of that past, to-day seem naught; And there prefigured lay the ruthless crimes 46 That later years have summed up in my count, Made me the outlaw of these thick-set woods, And bribed the solitude to craze my brain. Within, within; for things without are void. I can remember, on my path to school, There was upon the road a ledge of rocks, And on its side red stains. I thought thorn blood, And shuddered when I passed, and some times ran, Ploughed in my conscience by a glittering pang. Yet then I was unhappy, my thoughts sad; My heart was soft, I was not loved enough; I felt all tender impulse; but without, I found dull answers or averted looks, The pale, the selfish, and the worldly crowd Who block the paths of life, and drop their slime Along the doorways, and bar hope away. 47 My heart was made to love. I loved the trees; The livelong fields, slow slumbering neath the sun; The barberry thickets, where the cat-bird builds; And the green privet s shade, the robin s house. I loved the long, low beach that kept the shore ; The eternal billow, turning in its dream; The sparkling kelp, slow-moving thro the spray, And the small beach-birds, piping their faint hymn Amid the cannon of the o erhanging brine. I loved the tall white clouds that the blue hills Around my birthplace took to Heaven with them, And sailed away upon that azure vault Till hours made centuries. And fain I loved The victories of the mind, that fervent pens 48 Secured in verse or rhyme; idols to some, Butts for the jest or jeer; the students tale, Read crouching o er the fire in still mid night, And poring o er their books to give the race Dominion, not themselves. And art be came A passion to my soul; and they who taught In lands Italian or in Grecian fanes, Discoverers to cold Nature of herself; Wheel within wheel, fresh beauty still evolved, As from the rushing sea sprang Venus forth, And smiled, till the blue bays grew golden, And shrines melodious gave soft music forth. But how chill my race to my emotions! For such as I encountered most each day, Low-bent and shrunk, their narrow fore heads carved 49 Deep by their avarice, scanning each word, Ringing their twopence on the grocer s weight, Always the leading quest, a What will you do?" And " How much can you make?" I spake of verse, I praised the master-minds, I praised their works. Were not great poets something, artists naught? Dante s dark dream, and flowing Shak- spere s light, And sweet Correggio swooning in his saint, And Newton gazing like the stars he told! "Fool ! " was the word; " fool, go read the almanac, Teach you to multiply and foo t your sums, Learning is rank confusion. Science swims Upon the floating gulf- weed, and its dream Flies at the tempest which devours its strand." There lived a few who laid a claim to me, Who cried: "This world is vain; here conscience fails To meanness. Set down your priest, your advocate, With carp and venison plump his greedy skin, On couches soft rear his luxurious sleep, And bring congestion from voluptuous wines, That is what science means; to us not that. Time hath a higher meaning to our hearts. You can foot a rhyme; chant the right thing, the Good, Sins friendship, praise the scholar s life, the poet s." Thus did they brag, and then showed me their gums. Accursed rot their treacherous, craven breed! Worshippers of success, idols to them selves, Bound in conventions, who keep up the church, 51 And cut each sour malignant whr> prefers His unwashed cant to their soaped litur gies. Such fancy that the law is in the state, And do not reck of Him who put it there, Who made the law and made the state to fit. If there be one thing in these pathless woods, One gleam of sunshine o er their flying streams, T is that they are not here, the human vipers, Warmed in my breast till dawned the hour to sting, And turn the innocent blood to madness That had sustained their life, and painted soft Along and sunny day of true attachment; Like the Samaritan binding up my veins, Then stabbing to the heart. And if I showed aught to the crowd, They laughed to scorn, or with indifference, 52 Strangled my offspring. What s the search of fame? Why should man care for the applause of man, Knowing the painted pageant that he is? Is that the moonlight gleaming on the lid That shuts the letters? There it falls across In a long, narrow line of icy light. That hand, white and sepulchral, is ta hand, Fringed with its shroud, that lifts the dust- strown lid ? " Eliot ! scourge not the past ; your heart was locked; You thought friends loved you not. Not so ; t was you That did not love them, for your heart was chilled By its inherent coldness. You were vain; Yourself you loved. You thought your verse was well, Now mark this letter; tis this hand that wrote. 53 You do not read my letters now; let me: 4 There is an hour when justice seeks her own ; There is a day when love shall find its love. Thou shalt not pace the shores of life alone, See the stars shining from that Heaven above ! 4 Eliot! the child of that relentless fate, It must relent. There is a better land, Smile on thy wounds, and be not desolate; And find an anchor on time s lonely strand. " Her voice ! The moonlight sinks ! The hand is gone 1 A cloud s across the sky! A flash, the lightning breaks above the cave, And strikes the vision like the shot that kills. Her voice again, an echo to the flash : 54 Thou shalt not wait me long ; there is a place To which thy steps are bent, and I go there, I wait for thee : not many mornings more Thy palsied eyes life s blackened sun shall read." V. COMO-THE SETTLEMENT. IEY know me wcll,- My long, lank, ebon locks, and still, set face. (And think me proud, alas!) Once twas not so. Como! they call their place. Strange names they take, As some might deem, for spots along the prairie. And yet the lake shows fair, and sweet the view, Broad in its graceful swells and rolling green, The deep seclusion of the inland world. On the hare outskirts of this Kansas life They prize the leaven in the sea-shore news; 56 As the neat shop-boy deals his costly silks, Christened at Paris in fantastic French, Soiled with the Hoosier s patois. I must come, Twice in the long twelve months, to pur chase lead And powder for my guns, and trade away, Poor spoil, the lovely furs I robbed in sooth From our poor cousins of the ambushed wood. And oh! how slow did twenty winters fall, And twenty summers deck the grove with green, Since constant to the Precinct, shadow dim Of man s civilities, I needs resort; See the log-cabins fading off the streets, See the old settlers sloping toward the west, Mark the new stations, view the flying train Glide o er the dangerous slough, where erst the crane Stretched his white neck and turned his wary head, 57 (A hundred rods,) split on my rifle s flash. Why, all doth change, all goes, all flits but me. Their faultless curiosity ne er cools. As when the first day I stalked o er the plain, The children stared me, and the drowsy curs, A red-eyed swarm, peevish with idleness, Snarled in my track, scenting the game I lugged, To-day the same. u Who ft he? " " W T hy, do you know, He lives within the forest, miles afar, Alone, a hunter. He can spoil a deer At eighty rod." "What! alone there in the bush? He looks it. What a face, and eyes so deep Sunk in his head. I should not care to meet Him in the shadows of his forest lair, A nd in a cave ! " "It takes all soi ts of men To make a world." " For the last time!" 58 Strangely that thrilled me. T was a show man s puff. At once the presage to myself I linked; And some one cried amid the gaping crowd : " He 11 never come this road again " (a clown, The favorite of the circus, for his wit And shining heel, potential). I once thought These callow omens mattered most little. Such as the blood-red circle at the west I saw last eve, when tardy sunset slid, That seemed 10 carve some gory creature there. Questions are native here. If so, my mind Is tasked why they ne er ask me of myself: They never question me! Has destiny Scarred on my form, u This being s be yond life, And all that draws to life, its interest "? Ask of the desert sands why lone they bask, Dreary and bleaching in the lidless sun; Ask of the surf that s combing o er the beach 59 When the tall breakers lift their awful forms ; Ask the tornado, as it cuts the trees, The whirling windrow of the prairie wood, Like a long swath of hay, to answer ques tions, Or of me, why I live and suffer still, Who am I, or what? I would I knew them, If they need me not. Simply a vagrant To their laws, I come, at these far inter vals, Tossed like the winter goldfinch on a breeze In ricochets, against their household gods, And they are barred from me. I am not bought, As they are, day by day, nor sold. I learn The lessons taught in Nature s school, her creeds ; My code is but the stream that shuts the glen; My market is the herb-field, or the trunk W^here the industrious bee lodges his sweets ; GO The lights of my saloon are mournful stars, That shine and say, "We would, we cannot come, To warm your pale complexion by our fires. 1 My living suits not them, nor with me theirs, Fenced off and barricaded from my race; And yet would I could please them. I could take Not merely of their kindness. If my heart Would open, it might warm as a new sun. Their help I ne er shall seek again. Rest there, Ye implements of hunger, fit for such As I. Death will come sweet ; hunter no more. I shall not weep to slay the timorous deer; Nor clutch her turquoise and her sapphires forth, Nature s wet gems, from her cold emerald streams. a Eliot," I read my name upon a sign, 61 After I heard the warning, " for the last time." I am not stooped in form, or shuffling yet ; My hair unbleached, my gaze unerring flies. Is misery, then, a styptic for Time s wounds ? Does sorrow, like Arabian gums, o er- spread, Infix these poisoned images, and mask A clear transparency that shows all light, When there s within a Upas sure to slay V Perchance there s wisdom in that outward life, In the red circle on the sunset sky ; And, as I neared my cell, the owlet s cry Shook through the pines that weep the tor rent s roar, That weird, unearthly knell. They say, in sooth, That men have heard that sob brief ere their deaths, Yea, as they died ! My life is foul and poor, And hunger-bitten, where my sorry bones 62 Peer through the tightened flesh. And yet this frame Seems strong, and I might keep another century, If t were not for the plague-spot at my breast. I could embrace the sunshine as it falls, And list the pleasant song of matin birds, As if the joys of children tugged my heart, Children ! those human birds, with trills of love. And when the gems of eve silver the fields With their soft shower of starlight barely guessed, And lay aside the loud and dissonant day, Which like a noisy school-boy whistled long His brawling catch, the old devotion dawns In figures born of faith. That I might fly,- There is no flight for him whose memory Burns like a meteor through all times and And as a nerve of everlasting pain, Eats on the rusting shroud he hates him self ! How light I made of omens, called them cheap, Foolish dreams ; in happier days laughed them to scorn. I once could mock at them. Sorrow doth teach Such lessons as our gayer hours forget. I see events prefigured in each mote, It floats across my passage, shapes from dark And awful regions. I am now become A sailor on the invisible sea of fate, That the mist covers. With man my peace is sealed; Again I shall not visit Como s shore, Not in my living form ; but they will find My bones after some days, and put them there, In sad November, when the heart is slow, Under the prairie, " Eliot, a stranger, 57 marked 64 Upon the place. T is right that men out lay Their compliments on things, to them which are No more than the thin purple grass that flaunts, Across the graveyard s swale ; for t is so human ! It floats upon the current of my thought, When in such places, one of Eliza s rhymes : " Fear not the end, the quickening hour draws near; Rise upward, hope, dispel this earthly fear; The shepherd waits his flock to gather in; A truce to worldliness, good-bye to sin. 1 Little of me could find the villagers, As mutely on their narrow gaze I dawned, Denizen of the forest ; lean my scrip, Nothing my business to the eager race. I trafficked with them, followed up the trail Across the rolling prairie, struck the ridge, 65 Took the Oak-barrens, and beneath the woods Sank, with the deer I hunted. T is near night; The journey s long; the day hangs heavy on me; My toil is mostly o er. Far to the north, Vibrate the waving lights, that o er their ice Alarm the Eskimo, and furnish forth Their freezing calendars. To me they look Repugnant; there s no warmth, no heart to them, Brilliant and bending as the polished friends, Who most me wounded. Hark! the owl s low sobs Quiver from out the grove! What world lies yon, To whose depths I pass? Do spirits look therefrom On such as I, and touch their fading hours With the brief, borrowed moonlight of the grave? VI. LISA. flILD of some happier fate, for love s lost hours! Treasure of household good, of golden days! The sunshine of all hearts! Torn on the thorns Wherewith my path was strewn, she sank to death! Lisa! upon thy grave some violet s breath Shall softly sigh; and there be set a crown, As a perpetual token of thy grace, Rustling upon the banners of our life, Fiomthe gross weight of custom shaken forth. You see her portrait and her letters there. I never dare to take them in my hand, Till now my time s most spent; and I should look 67 Through the blank, palsied vacuum of the past, And then be crushed to silence, by the will Of ruthless fate. And tis the same sweet face? With, half a touch of sadness at the mouth Gathered, as if the angel smiling there Might say: u Children of time, bard is our lot; Yet am I yours. I will not leave you lonely. But I will come to you, and smile on you. For I m a soul, the cause of pleasure still! With my devotions, smiles and tears are blent. Both joys and sorrows keen kindle my lovers. With me shall sing the unmelodious air, Sparkle with foam the cold and boundless sea, And swiftly-fleeting clouds arrest their march, Till the soft raiiance of my pulses thrill Their mutely-folded sunshine. I must cull The odor of the rose, bloom of the peach, And wave across the forehead in a tress. I will claim beauty I Take, oh, take, the rest, You clumsy man ! the war, the weariness. If you but look at me, in that one look, A glance, a touch, one pressure of my hand, Shall all your manhood fall within myself, Yet not to dissonance. And wonder on! For to myself 1 am a mystery still. That I attract is true, the secret s kept. You come to kneel, you worship. Love has lent Me to the office. I could not refuse; Though, sometimes, I have thought, i If I had scope For a few selfish hours, with Love s con sent! Why is a woman s dawn thus toned in spells Of music that dissolve, in age, to noise? Beauty is youth! For youth forgets her- self! " 69 She looks as if she spoke. When her pale portrait left the artist s hand. And oft I saw that joyous look of life Upon her face at the faint glow of twilight. When the dim wood fire lit her pure feat ures, As in a fairy vision, she would smile. The past and future were one happy dream ; The present like the laughter of a child. Elizi! tis the hour! And I must ope the casket ere I sleep! I may unloose the thread. This lock of hair, Dabbled in gore, Gordon s, I know the stain, I saw you cut it from his head, the morn, In the cold sunshine of December s scorn. He did not move, nor life those loving eyes! Why do I prate of this? What s here? A flower! A withered rose, a soft, pale rose, your hands 70 Had placed upon his breast! Be merciful! That was a sad revenge I took on you! I loved but thee! Ever within my heart The murmur ran: Lisa, my darling child! The idol of my heart! my heart of hearts! No drop of blood steals ever through my veins That does not throb with thine! No nerve obeys A sweet emotion, save of thee it comes. I saw Time s gorgeous pageant drape the west, When the low summer sunshine bent the lakes To fiery gold, and thought, " Were Lisa here! " ]STight crystalled on her zenith ! Stars blazed high ! Myriads of orbs rolling their myriad rounds ! I said : u Does Lisa see them ? " Was it song, Picture or statue, grove or shrine, one hope 71 Beat its soft love-march in my faithful breast. Did with mo Lisa look, that day was bliss. I dare no more ! What words are these? What sounds ? T is nigh the midnight hour ! This with ered scroll, My hand and spots upon it, Gordon s name, Yes 1 yes ! the challenge ! I recall it now ! And here is hers to him and hers to me, That morning, both one date. And then, how sweet And thoughtful of her kind, considerate heart : " Gordon, our life is brief ! We are to prove A blessing or an evil to our friends. God, in his mercy, gently lays upon Our path, the opportunity to good. O Gordon, take it up! Oh, clasp the right! Think of my heart, and pardon. Be my friend. 72 I know the lawless blood, the frontier feud, But there s a better way. >T is Love s pure law, - Never can bloodshed right a human And but a line The least faint line, the smallest hair divides A life of anguish from a life of joy. And there s no power to keep a human soul From passing it. The wolves across the slough I I fear their thrilling yell. It chills my veins, And forces out a gasp. Why do they howl? An echo to my heart, poor hungry knaves! I humor the least sound. Tis in myself The answers must be given. If heard not there, No gold can taste, no justice purchase them. 73 There is a star, by which we pledged our faith ; I see it shining through yon glittering sky. That lamp of promise guides my tearful heart To calmer regions of unvanquished bliss. It falls; the cloud is rife. This further page : " Never despair! for laboring storm-clouds fly, Softly the west is bathed in Heaven s pure light, There is a place, beyond Time s sullen sky, With stars of mercy filled, and ever bright. Thou gentle heart 1 Surely thy love was born To meet return, and find its equal sphere. The ship glides into port, the streamers torn ; And yet her voyage made good, her rec ord clear, 74 So thine ! The mist is fading off the hills; Sunshine and verdure light the wintry tree, Love! in my heart confide thy store of ills; My faith shall firmly lift thy destiny ! " I read no more ! I must abroad, and soothe me with the air I The mist is dallying o er the cataract s tomb ; This hour tastes chill. There is a world within That outward show the vulgar miscall life. Why should we then, year after year, submit To Time s ingratitude? One touch, and all Was done and ended. We must go one day. What maddening thoughts! Lisa! I see thy star ! Fondly it climbs that sky s lone zenith far? The watery clouds tend its pale, soothing light ! Lisa I my heart ! Thou idol of my love ! If in the planet s soul thine own is set, If tis thy figure I see floating there, Upon a wretched outlaw in these woods, Look down in mercy from thy spheral throne. Oh, to be leagued with me, a vagrant s bride ! Cast out, spurned off, detested by his kin; His children worse than dead, his heart a den Wherein the furies writhe ! Where am I strayed ? So near the edge of the black precipice, - The slippery rock, the dread, uncertain height. And there, sleeping in peace, the silvery gulf Whereto the whirlpool reels, maddened at the rush. Away! away! It tempts me to its plunge! Away! VII. LIGHT AND SHADOW. LOAD of weariness ! And shall 1 drasr it hence? I loathe O the thought. Must I destroy a life in order to save mine? I m almost at the cave (not home) at last. There breathes no home to me o er life s lone wave. The door half open ; so there s some within. And she comes forth, a female, verily. Now I can scan her, wondrously antique, Stooping and scant of weight, and with a staff Attuning her frail postures. I 11 touch her quietly, And then conduct her in the den again. Her voice : 77 " I am your debtor. T is your home; I tried your deerskin couch. Surely, I found Sweet visions there of sleep. Early the morn I loitered out, plucking strong roots and herbs Spiced for decoction and for sovereign cures, Things that amuse these woods, and white- oak bark, That, is a powerful remedy. I tottered on, Till overhead the vagrant, laughing sun Had spilled his aureate license o er the ^ vault, (In age the sun-god smites my wrinkled brow,) And far I lingered still. I dearly love The woods, and sometimes tell them at the Farm That I could nothing better ask of life, Than, as a wanderer, down the woods to roam. The spicy odors would appease my sense, 78 And by their keen promotion fill my thoughts With a more sinewy aspect. Light my feet Then danced along the bed of time-strewn leaves, The forest loom twines in perennial carpet. I might seem young those days. The crafty air Would hazard with my bones, and risk his suit On the persuasion of my new-laid youth. Friend, I surmise that here you dwell too blest, Glad mid the soft seclusion of the trees. And you maintain traditional respect, Coined for high places and for whirling streams, The death-shroud of the rainbow, where he paints Devices o er his tombstone manifold. At early sunrise you must love to kneel And lift the prayer : c Oh, God of love ! of life ! But what a fount of loveliness is this, 79 Each morn surrendered to uncounted bliss; Record of perfect tones that thrill the air ^ With their warm, flashing cymbal-dance of hope. Chasten this heart. I kneel. Take, take my life, And bathe it in thy peace, the silent sun So softly pours across yon mountain s breast, Acd, like a lawn of pure diaphanous good, Embalm it with thy mercy I " A hermit here, Or fasting penitent, might fitly dwell, ^ And greet the heavenly carols in the sigh Of the soft-falling echo from the brook, That murmurs moisture to the grateful trees. Our thoughts are sweet in solitude, And most at eve. There is a twilight faith Would steal the foulest wrong, and bear it cleansed Into the Invisible Presence ; stanch the curse, 80 And with the floating glow that stills the west In its euphonious cradle of the spheres, Touched in the love of all things, purge the soul Of every dark emotion. Life brings care. We love, we are deceived, most in our selves. Our plans deceive us, they were too ill laid. The dread omniscient wand that opes the tomb, Touches her forehead, and the loved one falls. (Heaven was not heaven before.) I think that pain Bears, like a vase of beauty carved with skill In high-born figures of Palladian art, A homely storax that embalms our stars. Com,e weal or woe, come fame or ignominy, Weaving our colors, dark or bright the thread, There is abase within us, something given, 81 More than all things without, may sear or stain. If this be not called Heaven, I deem it called By its inferior title, as it rates The low inhabitant of sin and shame, With true Olympian wealth, banishes care, Makes desolation friendly, knits the skein Of our all-ravelled hangings, smooth and soft, I must away! I scent the evening air! " What, gone? Such words of life fled oif her liquid tongue, I could nor speak nor think. I 11 note her trace. T was there she meant to go. I see her not. No one! I heard a voice! What s here? this veil, She left a veil upon the stones, of gauze, And now it floats, and on the hem letters: "Ely, youth, fly!" Now the firelight touches it, 82 It brightens fast. A speechless form arises, My mother! Then t was she who raised my dream. Mother, long lost, forgive thy erring son! If in that awful realm the spirit hold Communion with the past, or mortal thought, Feel for thy son, thy wretched, homeless son, Doomed to unsated penance for his sins. Feel with the mercy which thou hadst on earth For all his failings! Raise him to thyself! She fades, the spirit s risen, the veil is air, ; <Fly, youth, fly!" The same as Meis- ter s warning. O It is too late for flight; the wind is loud, I hear the forest creaking in its shroud. The shadow of the torrent drowns the glen! And, then, that fisherman? Could he have been a spy shot from the town 83 To watch my movements? For he asked me thrice As to my privilege in the idle woods, And how I dragged the leaden hours along. He spake of Nature, said there was to him, Bating humanity, a hollow there. I felt his thought, I marvel at his words, - The same old things I said this many a year. I judge he was the shadow of myself, Fretted to space on weary monologue. I kept his words: "Here, in this sylvan shade, Alone, always alone, dim as my thoughts, Wondering at that which chiefly went before, Wondering at that which mostly is to come, I find myself attempting at the bud The inner life of Nature, what men call By that insidious title. Without man, Or human life to cheer me in the dark, 84 That thing caller! Nature (if it be a thing) Shrinks into faint. All is so shallow there, These bankrupt days of time, loose as a fly; Rather than beg my dole from Nature s dish, Procrastinated on her solitudes, Pray let me die a thousand deaths of pain. How credulous was my youth, when feel ing danced Elastic in rny veins, and I prepared To hymn the deep oblivion of the groves, Of Nature, whatever its name, the somewhat there, The promise and design I cannot steal. Struck in confusion from the light of sense, I call myself a man, and am the puppet Of a cheating show." My brain is turning! My reason lowers! That spectre of the stream, And those poor children s voices that I hear, 85 And that pale girl, with her soft, flossy hair, A soft, pink blush across her waxen cheeks, Who spoke for them: " Father! We love you still! Oh! do not curse us, your poor children still, Though in the forest, in an outlaw s cave, You dimly dwell, and nevermore our eyes Shall see your mournful form, drenched in your tears, And"nevermore our tender hands shall part Your griefs away, and bring your joys to view. Father! though we are parted for this life, And only in the grave can ever meet, We love you still! Our hearts are quite the same, Still yours, and all that makes our hearts is yours. And she, our mother, resolute and pure, Ne er ceased to cherish you, nor ceased to love. 86 And we shall come to you once more in life, Once ere you go from hence. Once more to hear Our childish voices, as you used before These days of parting fell upon our love." Was that a song? Or the light, infant lisping of the year, Rocked in the leafy garniture of spring? There seems a searching inquest at the heart Of this sad panorama. At the door He lingers still, that fisherman I mean. He speaks again: "Come! Come and fly with me! This mausoleum of the mind is death. Come! let us fly and touch the dreams of France, "Where gay Garonne pours forth her lively dance, And dare the meadows that destroy old Rome, Admire the Stone-pines leaning o er her hills; 87 And bright Cycladean suns, all wine and figs, Shall steep our noontide fancies for their hour. Such closeness in this cave I cannot breathe, All spectres haunting here, and- this most dull, And gray predicament of thought." Then % ceased. I voyaged once, he must have tracked my road. I read or dreamed that sometimes ere men die, There comes a figure like themselves, and blabs Of things they did, or suffered, in their lives, To that intent the shadow speaks. That sigh, The owl again is humming from his tower, Ancient and dark upon the tall pine s dome, 88 His gossip since some months; and this last sprite; And that cold Hecuba who twitched the herb; There are strange things in life. I never guessed I should become the property of ghosts, Chime with the scanty brethren of the tomb , And take moralities from their weak eyes. How loud the rapid roars; the wind has veered, Raised off the generous sea; the salt-fed breeze Loans its luxuriance to our bankrupt main. I see the bay softly with islands rimmed, The dark old fort, the wave with vessels white; That wind is but the shadow of my thoughts! u VIII. THE TESTAMENT. ER hill, o er dale; the careless Binds up the wounds of night and makes all sweet. New flowers flow forth and wander o er the ground, Like paradise encumbered by its wealth, As the ancestral twain delighted roamed." A boy s fond verses, when my days were ^ich In happiness. Careless I threw away A long life s joy, in one emotion blest, Not reckoning on the future creeping in, Stooped and forlorn, a beggar with his scrip. And later thus: " In youth, we feel so rich, 90 We draw uncounted sums, we fling about The revenues of a king, we live and spend As if unfathomable mines of ore Gleamed on our bidding. Fame steps smiling in, Her bonnet on her head, her silken scarfs, Her laces point device! Sweet fame, good fame ! We do not feel the goblin in the shade, The pale indifference that leers at hope. Youth is the glass of fortune, blithe in form. I follow where you lead, the bridge I cross That leads to Llela s depths, where Bal- dred went; And still hope cheats. Alas! our feet too slow Go trailing helpless as the future flies. Success so hovers past the shores of life, Half seems to light, half touches the cold wave ; We view his bright reflections in the ooze, Where the slow stream crawls sadly through her weeds, 91 With newts and sodden tortoises of eld, Or stagnant mosses. The small light that shot Across our painted youth, and showed her curls, Was a faint, flickering moonbeam, was the end. And then comes moldering age, prudent and lame, A skeptic manifold." And was it I Yv T ho shaped this hollow revery? Couid this be mine? The page is with her letters, in my hand, fcuch days were joy, when I had thoughts like those, When I had thoughts at all; for now I shrink, And strive to clam the flow of sentiment, And leave the turbid pool to clear itself. There is a grave that opens while we live, There is a life that ends ere we are dead." I m passing hence; I shall not live the week. But on this tattered scroll I would express, 92 Like the brave surgeon who at life s last beat Held at his pulse his hand, and dying said : u It fails, it ceases," then indeed he died. Another verse: " Spirit of the wood, Who build your bowers amid the forests tall, And paint the banks of water-courses green With delicate ferns, or feathery grass, that sways Like cobwebs at the sighing of the stream, And the high clouds that gaze below, at peace, Far by ethereal culture raised from care!" In those my early days, amid the trees, I thought to raise an altar to the Muse, And with these lines to consecrate its front, The Muse that haunts these bowers and bends their lives. 93 Time rubs away the outward, leaves within, Merely the cerements that once owned life. And, when my numbers failed me, I essayed To dwell as might some anchorite austere; O er the cold stones to drag the nights with prayer, And mortifying arts the convent knew. Questions I may not answer, may not ask In this vain world, track my slow flight to death. I can but make my will, what things to leave, And to whom, to be left. Who are my heirs? Beating upon the sphere no human heart Claims the least hope in mine; all stone alike, Corroded by their unbelief in me. I see them joyous o er their cottage fire, Encased in peace, fretted in comfort s robes; Bright shines the ruby blaze upon the group, - Domestic, cheerful, see the children go, Playing their evening games, the dance, the jest, Who spoke forme, their father, cast away, A fettered outlaw, to the forest drear. To them shall aught be left? To them my couch, Yon pile of deerskins that have warmed my limbs, In the extremity that winter dares; And my poor books, sallow with damp and years. What! could they read the poets, with such hearts, (Pimping with hollow lies for selfish greed,) Shakspere and Spenser. And my gun, whose sight, Baffled by naught, would be a hunter s pride. Give these, to hearts like theirs? I w r ake once more. Since those last words a dizziness came up 95 And took possession of my soul. I went From out this region of old woods, afar; I fled this dreary day, this drearier night; Thought for to-morrow s food, the hunter s wat ch , The lurking foe, the chill mistrust of time, All these were buried in that swooning fear, That came upon me as a sudden night Falls on the face of Nature, when the sun By interruption dies. I wake so long I dreamed I ne er should sleep. Farewell! thou world! Unpaid I owe thee naught, no grateful ness, No debts of love, no balance of delight. Thou didst not smile on me, nor crook thy brows To the contemptuous mockery which poor fools Adore, and great men name Success! not mine The Halls of Fame, nor sons nor maids, who prize 96 Their father s life. Only within the grave One faithful thing, Eliza s sunny heart. Wealth never fawned on me, and men for bore To press their knees to flatness before him, Who could not coin such suppliance. Not a friend, I ever had upon the fields of time, Who was not false to me, but him I killed. And oh! was not that fearful act from God? Could I, this crouching shadow, in the dust, With the chill avalanche of fate to bear, Of my own purpose, shatter Gordon s form? It might have been. I should have bent Had I been different; but in this life Men take upon the wild and boundless pulse That floats our frontier world, there is a calm, And it will bear through all things, till it bends, 97 And then the blow; the shot, fierce as re morse, Flashed in a second to infinity. I shall not see this night. The dying eve Will take me to itself and be my shroud; And there upon my skins I will compose My form as if for slumber, to be found By whom I know not, hunters in a storm, Or some foot-weary traveller in the bush, Who not infrequent tempt the iron door. All is in order, all that Lisa had, All that she ever gave me. Be it so; I could not die should I destroy her gifts. What is repentance? Can it outwear sin? Vengeance is Thine, and on the worms of earth It blighting falls, and blinding all things else. We are made by Thee, predestined from the womb; jSTor shrine of peaceful monk, nor convent- bell Tolled up the Alpine passes of the soul, 98 To lead the blinded traveller through the snows, Can keep one sob of anguish from his heart Who s doomed to suffering! Days shall go and come, And seasons fade and fall, and life renew More intermittently its palsied beats; Still woe survives to wring the dying thought, And on the Cross of Doom the sufferer nail! THE END. THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK^ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCf^A^Yd-TO-eENTS ON TH? FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE^ NO - - iNF JLAAMTU AiHTPfi ft^CEiPT SEP 2 \ 1966 - v . OEC \ 1 196? 960438 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRA