ifornia 3nal Ity LIBRARY RN1A g*N DlGO presented to the I.IRRAHY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIFGO by FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY MR. JOHN C. ROSE donor Canterbury poets. EDITED BY WILLIAM SHARP. EMERSON. % FOR FULL LIST OF THE VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES, SEE CATALOGUE AT END OF BOOK. p OEMS OF R. W. EMERSON. WITH PREFATORY NOTICE BY WALTERlLEWIN. LONDON : WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, 24 WARWICK LANE. CONTENTS. PREFATORY NOTICE Good-bye . Forerunners To Ellen at the South To Eva The Amulet Thine eyes still Shined Beauty Power Concord Hymn Dirge Threnody . The Rhodora The Humble Bee . PAGE ix 1 2 4 5 6 6 7 8 8 9 11 20 20 CONTENTS. PAGE Berrying . . 22 The Problem . 23 Fetters . 25 Wood-Notes . 26 The Snow-Storm , . 40 Suum Caique .41 The Sphinx . 41 Painting and Sculpture .45 Fate . . - . 46 . 47 Forbearance . -:... . 48 . 48 Tact . 49 Holidays . . 50 Saadi .51 To Rhea *'. . 56 The Three Dimensions . 59 Ode to Beauty . . 59 Blight . . . 63 The Visit . . 65 Each and All . . . 66 Uriel . 67 CONTENTS. v PAGE The World-Soul . 69 Alphonso of Castile 73 Mithridates . 75 To J. W. 76 Guy . 77 Hamatreya 79 Monadnoc . . . 81 Fable . - 9 * Ode 9 4 Astraea . 98 Etienne de la Boece 99 Compensation . 1^0 Sursum Corda ,100 Give All to Love . 101 Hermione Initial, Daemonic, and Celestial Love . . 105 The Apology - 118 Merlin . -118 Bacchus . - 122 Merops . 12 5 Xenophanes . .125 The Day's Ration . ... 126 vi CONTENTS. PAGE Musketaquid . 127 In Memoriam . . 130 Nature . . 133 Illusions . , 134 Compensation . , , , , . 135 Spiritual Laws . . 136 Unity . . . 136 Worship 137 Heroism . .138 Character , . . 138 Culture . . . . 138 Friendship . . . . 139 Experience . . . t . 140 Fate . . .140 Politics :-; . . 142 Wealth . . ' . . " . . .143 Providence . . ... . . lit Manners . . . . 144 Circles ... - 145 Art . . . . . . . 145 Hope . .146 Nominalist and Realist . . . .147 CONTENTS. PAGE Loss and Gain . 147 The House . . 148 May-Day , . 149 The Harp . . 164 Ode . 168 Boston .... . 170 The Adirondacs . 175 Brahma . 186 Two Rivers . 186 Waldeinsamkeit , . 187 The Romany Girl . . 189 Days . . . 190 The Chartist's Complaint . . 191 The Test .... . 192 The Titmouse . 195 Song of Nature . 198 Boston Hymn . . 201 Freedom .... . 205 Merlin's Song .205 Nemesis . . 207 Una .... . 208 Lover's Petition . 209 viii CONTENTS. Love and Thought . . 209 Voluntaries . 210 My Garden . . . . . . 214 Nature . 216 Sea-Shore . . 218 April . 220 Maiden Speech of the JEolian Harp 220 The Nun's Aspiration . 221 Rubies . . . 223 Hymn . . . 223 Cupido . 225 The Past , . 225 Terminus . . 226 Quatrains and Fragments , . 231 Translations . - . fc . . . 243 Jntrotwctors iRotice, 3ntroJwcton> flotice. EADERS familiar with previous editions of Mr. Emerson's Poetical Works will find in the present an entirely differ- ent arrangement. The time has arrived when these poems must be looked at, not only on their merits as poetical work, but in their relation to the life of the author. On this account it seemed best to place them in chronological order, and to the limited extent that this was possible, it has been done. Many of the pieces, however, belong to no particular date. Mr. Emerson was never in any hurry to x INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. publish his writings, and so long as they re- mained under his hand they were subjected to continual revision. Internal evidence has some- times served to determine the period to which the pieces should be assigned. In other cases I have obtained the necessary clue from the pages of several admirable books written about Mr. Emerson. Of these the works of Mr. Alexander Ireland (to whom, for personal assistance, I am also indebted), Mr. George Willis Oooke, and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and a volume by several authors, entitled Genius and Character oj Emerson, are the best. Mr. Emerson, like most people, began to write verses when he was very young, but unlike most, he does not appear to have published any for a good many years. In 1839, at the request of Rev. James Freeman Olarke, he sent a few for insertion in the Western Messenger, including a very early poem which has often been quoted, entitled " Good-bye." Herein he INTRO D UCTOR Y NO TICE. xi bade farewell, not, as has been supposed, to the world in general, but to the busy world of Boston, where his days were spent in teaching, and which he was glad to leave behind him when returning to his country home : " I am going to my own hearth-stone, Bosomed in yon green hills alone, A secret nook in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies planned." Many more of these early pieces appeared in the next following years (1840-44) in the short- lived but since famous Dial. These were collected and printed with others in a volume bearing the simple title " Poems " (1847). The Atlantic Monthly, started in 1860, under the editorship of James Russell Lowell, became the next important repository for Mr. Emerson's verses, and these in turn were gathered up in "May-Day and other Poems" (1867). The poem which gives its title to the volume has since undergone considerable modification ; the xii INTRODUCTOR Y NOTICE. order has been changed, and a lengthy passage has now been printed separately under the title, " The Harp." The " Selected Poems " (1876 , reproduced portions of each of the preceding volumes, and gave a few new verses. Dr. Holmes states that after 1867 Mr. Emerson " wrote no poems, but with some difficulty fitted the refrain to the poem ' Boston,' which had remained unfinished since the old anti-slavery days." Since Mr. Emerson's death, Mr. J. E. Cabot, his literary executor, has issued a volume containing various interesting fragments which had been left in manuscript, as well as many of the old poems. The following pages contain all the important complete poems, including several which have not appeared in other collections. Even the casual reader will not fail to notice the extreme irregularity of much of Mr. Emerson's verse. He was a master of prose style, but had great difficulty with his rhymes and metres. Mr. Joel Benton, the author of a little book INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. xiti called, Emerson as a Poet, indeed, views this point a little differently ; for, while admitting that Mr. Emerson does, at times, " pour forth . . . broken, irregular verses," and " employs, occasionally, astonishing rhymes," such as, "down" and "dimension," "bear" and "wood- pecker," he adds : " but he puts them together with a strange felicity, and the archaism be- comes a beauty rather than a blemish ; " a matter of taste in which I find myself obliged to differ from Mr. Benton. Only here and ' there do we find a complete piece, perfect in its form. Theodore Parker described Emerson as "a poet lacking the accomplishment of verse." Mr Cooke says, his " is the poetry of thought, and not of rhythm or colour," and Dr. Holmes has wisely discriminated between the Poet and the Singer : " Though a born Poet, he was not a born Singer." This is true, yet there is much in Mr. Emerson's verse which, notwithstanding defects of form, could not have been presented b xiv INTRODUCTOR Y NOTICE. so effectively in prose. In his introduction to " Parnassus," he himself says, " Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity." Mr. Emerson's prose style is noteworthy for its condensation. He never inserts a superfluous word. Yet where he has written in prose and in verse on one theme, he verifies the truth of his statement that " poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words." Read, for example, first the essay, and then the poem on " Experience," or " Compensation," or " Wealth." No man ever spoke less about himself in his books than Mr. Emerson. Even his letters to his friend Carlyle contain comparatively few personal references of this sort. To read those interesting volumes of "Correspondence," one would think Carlyle who never suffered from anything but dyspepsia, and who complained of that more than he felt was a confirmed invalid, and that Emerson, whose physical INTRODUCTOR Y NOTICE. xv constitution was always frail, had neyer been ill in his life. He does, indeed, onoe mention casually, by way of explaining a long silence, that he has had inflammation of the lungs ; but for the most part he prefers to condole with his friend than to complain about himself. He had a confirmed dislike to ill-health, and even believed that deep down, somewhere, it had its roots in moral defect. The grumbler was an abomination to him : " Here come the sentimentalists and the invalids. Here is Elsie who caught cold coming into the world, and has always increased it since." In his poems, how- ever, where he could be more impersonal, he allowed himself a little latitude, or perhaps these belong to him more nearly, and therefore express his inmost thought and feeling more fully than any of his other works. Certain it is that, not infrequently, we find references of a distinctly autobiographical character. " The key to many of his best poems can be found," xvi INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. as Mr. Cooke says, " only in his life, and in his intercourse with his intimate friends." Of course such pieces as the " Dirge " and " Threnody " are manifestly and avowedly personal expressions. The signification of "Good-bye" has been indicated. As "Good- bye" marks the beginning, so "Terminus" marks the end of that great career. The verses "To Ellen at the South," "To Eva," "Thine Eyes still shined," and "The Amulet," appear to have been addressed to Miss Ellen Louisa Tucker, the gifted lady whom he married in September 1829, and who died in February 1832. Some graceful verses from her pen were printed in the first volume of the Dial. Mr. Carlyle's complaint against Mr. Emerson was that his writings were not sufficiently "concrete." "I do again desiderate some con- cretion of these beautiful abstracta." Much of his verse might be described as pure thought without a concrete setting. The difference in INTRODUCTOR Y NO TICE. xvii this particular between the two men is clearly marked. Carlyle drew his lesson from the actual ; the " poor hobbling beetle " hurrying across his path suggested certain grave re- flections on human vanity. The moth which burned itself in his candle leads him to con- template his own fate " Poor moth ! thy fate my own resembles, Me too, a restless, asking mind, Hath sent on far and weary rambles, To seek the good I ne'er shall find." Nature is to Carlyle a strict monitor preaching to him repentance and a new behaviour; but Emerson said " The forest is my loyal friend, Like God it useth me. There the great Planter plants Of fruitful worlds the grain, And with a million spells enchants The souls that walk in pain." xviii INTRODUCTOR Y NOTICE. Nature called him away from action and mere endeavours to amend, to serene contem- plation and an attitude of willing reception of whatever Nature, "the representative of the universal mind," might give. It was not in having and doing, but in being and becom- ing, that Emerson found salvation : " The soul can be appeased not by a deed but by a tendency." The deficiency of the dramatic instinct in Mr. Emerson is of a piece with his inability to make ideas "concrete." It led him to ap- preciate even Shakespeare, because he was " inconceivably wise ; " and it is easy to believe he would gladly have dispensed with the form in which Shakespeare enshrined his wisdom. His favourite author was Montaigne. The narrative form is also wanting in his verses ; but while there is no evidence that he possessed any talent for the dramatic, two prose articles testify to his ability to handle facts INTRODUCTOR Y NOTICE. xix well. The "Historical Discourse" on the second centennial anniversary of the incor- poration of the town of Concord (1835) is a masterly piece of historical writing, and the "Address," commemorating the emancipation of the West Indian Slaves (1844) is of the same kind, and scarcely inferior. This subjective tendency of Mr. Emerson's mind is further indicated when we look over a list of his favourite poets in "Parnassus," or when we call to mind the character of the newly-arisen poets of his own time, whom he took in hand. The chief of these were Ellery Channing, Jones Yery, Helen Jackson, and, with less enthusiasm as regards poetry, Henry David Thoreau, his intimate friend. There is, however, no lack of descriptive power in his poems, notably in the " Snow. Storm," and in parts of "May-Day." "Wood- Notes" is cleverly imitative in its varying metres of the voices of the song-birds of the grove. xx INTRO D UCTOR Y NO TICK. "The Rhodora" seems to me, in tone, senti- ment, and rendering, one of the most character- istic of all his poems. Mr. Emerson's bright humour, which appears on every page of his Essays, is less frequent, yet far from absent in his verse. There are two very sprightly pieces " The Fable," in which a squirrel administers a rebuke to an ill-tempered mountain which, not without reason, has called him "Little Prig," and "Tact," which gives expression to some very worldly wisdom. " Poetry," said Carlyle, " we will call musical thought. The poet is he who thinks in that manner. At bottom it turns still on the power of the intellect; it is a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep enough, and you see musically ; the heart of nature being ever music if you can only reach it." It has been already said that Mr. Emerson, though not a born singer, was a born poet, and Carlyle furnishes a useful key when he says, INTROD UCTOR Y NO TICE. xxi "It is a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet," The record of Emer- son's life gives abundant proof of his sincerity and the depth of his vision. Puritan blood flowed in his veins, but the culture of many generations had removed all Puritan crudeness. The old sincerity remained, while the narrow mind which concentrated sincerity on the main- tenance of a creed had yielded to that broad sympathy "embracing all mankind," which gives depth of vision. Emerson's direct ancestors, ever since their settlement in America, had been clergymen, and always workers on the side of enlightenment and liberty. He was trained for the ministry, and for a few years presided over a congregation in Boston. But the pulpit had ceased to be the best standing place for such a teacher, and Mr. Emerson broke the family tradition, exchanged the pulpit for the platform and the press, and though he continued to be a teacher to the last, used these modern instru- xxii 1NTRODUCTOR Y NOTICE. ments. In the person of his only surviving son, the old divinity has given place to new science. The sincerity and depth of vision which had made the Emersons of earlier days spiritual pastors, led their successor to abandon the pro- fession. He saw through the ceremonies that had grown up in the church that the spirit was not within, and he could not countenance a sham. All through his life the same spirit waited on his deeds. In 1838 he startled the good people of New England by his address to the Divinity Students of Harvard University. That address was neither more nor less than a plea for sincerity a plea ill-understood, not because his critics were less sincere than he was, but because they had not so much of the other requisite of a poet, depth of vision. In like manner, because he combined the two qualities, he was at hand whenever he was needed for any good work, and was in advance of others in perceiving the need. His was the INTRODUCTOR Y NOTICE. xxiii first Boston church to open its doors to Aboli- tionist lectures. He and Thoreau and Wendell Phillips were the only men who spoke out at once in behalf of John Brown, when that hero was arrested for his attack at Harper's Ferry. When Webster sold his principles for the chance of the Presidential chair, it was Mr. Emer- son who, amid a hostile crowd, proclaimed him the base man he was. Yet Mr. Emerson was not an agitator or a zealot, carried beyond himself by the enthusiasm of the hour. He was only a great scholar, whose sincerity, com- bined with depth of vision, would not allow him to sit among his books when falsehood and wrong could be checked by any word of his. Naturally such a man as this was a born believer. He could be no Iconoclast or seeker after the falsehood in things. He saw beyond the false covering to the underlying truth. Apparent differences had, in his eye, funda- mental agreement. " Shun the negative side," xxiv INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. he said. He believed not less than others, but more. Nature and life were to him an everlasting miracle. " It is so wonderful to our neurologists," he said, " that a man can see without his eyesi that it does not occur to them that it is just as great a wonder that he should see with them ; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise ; the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual." Mr. Emerson was not tolerant merely, but broadly sympathetic : " I hail every new thought with delight, as showing the riches of my brother, my fellow soul, who can thus think and thus greatly feel. Zealots eagerly fasten their eyes on the differences between their creed and yours, but the charm of the study is in finding the agreements, the identities in all religions of men." The same, catholic spirit pervaded his social and his personal relations. He numbered among his friends and admirers men and women of every rank in society, and holding the most INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. xxv diverse ideas. Tyndall attributed to his influence whatever good work he had done- Father Taylor, the good Methodist preacher of Boston, could not guarantee the salvation of such a heretic, but he said, in his rough and ready fashion, " If Emerson goes to hell, the tide of emigration will set that way." Oonvers Francis described him as a "true, godful man." Mrs. Lowell said to Fredrika Bremer, "If he but mentions my name, I feel myself ennobled." Men and women so far apart in character and thought as Mr. Oarlyle, Mr. Bradlaugh, Walt Whitman, Harriet Martineau, Thoreau, Alcott, Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and Lowell, have borne similar testimony, and none regretted Mr. Emerson's death more deeply and sincerely than the poor of his own village. Mr. Whipple, in his "Recollections," remarks, that " it is impossible for those who only knew Emerson through his writings to understand the peculiar love and veneration felt for him by xxvi INTRODUCTOR Y NOTICE. those who knew him personally. Only by intercourse with him could the singular force, sweetness, elevation, originality, and compre- hensiveness of his nature be fully appreciated ; and the friend or acquaintance, however he might differ from him in opinion, felt the peculiar fascination of his character." Mr. Ireland, who met him first in 1833, confirms this when he says, "A refined and delicate courtesy, a kind of spiritual hospitality, so to speak, seemed to be a part of his very nature." All this points to his abounding sympathy, the fruitof insightintotheneedsand feelingsof others. The student of the following pages must determine for himself how far Mr. Emerson was a singer ; but if sincerity and depth of vision be, as Mr. Oarlyle says they are, the qualities which make a poet, assuredly this title cannot be denied to him. WALTER LEWIN. BKBINGTON, CHESHIRE, 8th Dec. 1885. THE POEMS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON. poems b 1R. TKH. GOOD-BYE.* (1823.) GOOD-BYE, proud world ! I'm going home : Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine. Long through thy weary crowds I roam ; A river-ark on the ocean brine, Long I've been tossed like the driven foam ; But now, proud world ! I'm going home. Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face ; To Grandeur with his wise grimace; To upstart Wealth's averted eye ; To supple Office, low and high : * Published about 1839. When sending the verses to Rev. James Freeman Clarke for that purpose, Mr. Emerson wrote " I send you a corrected copy, but I wonder so much at your wishing to print them that I think you must read them once again with your critical spectacles before they go further. They were written sixteen years ago, when I kept school in Boston, and lived in a corner of Boxbury called Canterbury. They have a slight misanthropy, a shade deeper than belongs to me." 201 FORERUNA'ERS. To crowded halls, to court and street ; To frozen hearts and hasting feet ; To those who go, and those who come ; Good-bye, proud world ! I'm going home. I am going to my own hearth-stone, Bosomed in yon green hills alone, A secret nook in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies planned ; Where arches green, the livelong day, Echo the blackbird's roundelay, And vulgar feet have never trod A spot that is sacred to thought and God. O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome ; And when I am stretched beneath the pines, Where the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, At the sophist schools and the learned clan ; For what are they all, in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet ? FORERUNNERS. LONG I followed happy guides, I could never reach their sides ; Their step is forth, and, ere the day Breaks up their leaguer, and away. Keen my sense, my heart was young, Right good-will my sinews strung, But no speed of mine avails To hunt upon their shining trails. FORERUNNERS. On and away, their hasting feet Make the morning proud and sweet ; Flowers they strew, I catch the scent j Or tone of silver instrument Leaves on the wind melodious trace ; Yet I could never see their face. On eastern hills I see their smokes, Mixed with mist by distant lochs. I met many travellers, Who the road had surely kept ; They saw not my fine revellers, These had crossed them while they slept. Some had heard their fair report, In the country or the court Fleetest couriers alive Never yet could once arrive, As they went or they returned, At the house where these sojourned. Sometimes their strong speed they slacken, Though they are not overtaken ; In sleep their jubilant troop is near I tuneful voices overhear ; It may be in wood or waste At unawares 't is come and past. Their near camp my spirit knows By signs gracious as rainbows. I thenceforward, and long after, Listen for their harp-like laughter, And carry in my heart, for days, Peace that hallows rudest ways. 4 TO ELLEN. TO ELLEN AT THE SOUTH.* (Dial, 1843.) THE green grass is bowing, The morning wind is in it ; 'Tis a tune worth thy knowing, Though it change every minute. 'Tis a tune of the Spring ; Every year plays it over To the robin on the wing, And to the pausing lover. O'er ten thousand, thousand acres, Goes light the nimble zephyr ; The Flowers tiny sect of Shakers Worship him ever. Hark to the winning sound ! They summon thee, dearest, Saying, " We have dressed for thee the ground, Nor yet thou appearest. " hasten ; 'tis our time, Ere yet the red Summer Scorch our delicate prime, Loved of bee, the tawny hummer. * This and the threa following poems were doubtless addressed by Mr. Emerson to Miss Ellen Louisa Tucker, whom he married in 1829, and who died in 1832. They were not printed until 1840 and after, but evidently date much earlier. Some beautiful verses written by this lady appeared in the Dial. TO EVA. 11 pride of thy race ! Sad, in sooth, it were to ours, If our brief tribe miss thy face, We poor New England flowers. " Fairest, choose the fairest members Of our lithe society ; June's glories and September's Show our love and piety. 11 Thou shalt command us all, April's cowslip, summer's clover, To the gentian in the fall, Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover. "0 come, then, quickly come ! We are budding, we are blowing ; And the wind that we perfume Sings a tune that's worth the knowing.' TO EVA, (Dial, 1840.) FAIR and stately maid, whose eye Was kindled in the upper sky At the same torch that lighted mine j For so I must interpret still Thy sweet dominion o'er my will, A sympathy divine. THINE EYES STILL SHINED. Ah ! let me blameless gaze upon Features that seem at heart my own^ Nor fear those watchful gentinels, Who charm the more their glance forbids, Chaste-glowing, underneath their lids, With fire that draws while it repels. THE AMULET. (Dial, 1842.) YOUR picture smiles as first it smiled ; The ring you gave is still the same ; Your letter tells, O changing child ! No tidings since it came. Give me an amulet That keeps intelligence with you, Red when you love, and rosier red, And when you love not, pale and blue. Alas ! that neither bonds nor vows Can certify possession ; Torments me still the fear that love Died in its last expression. THINE EYES STILL SHINED. THINE eyes still shined for me, though far I lonely roved the land or sea : As I behold yon evening star, Which yet beholds not me. BEAUTY. This morn I climbed the misty hill And roamed the pastures through ; How danced thy form before my path Amidst the deep-eyed dew ! When the red-bird spread his sable wing, And showed his side of flame ; When the rosebud ripened to the rose, In both I read thy name. BEAUTY. WAS never form and never face So sweet to Seyd as only grace Which did not slumber like a stone, But hovered gleaming and was gone. Beauty chased he everywhere, In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. He smote the lake to feed his eye With the beryl beam of the broken wave ; He flung in pebbles well to hear The moment's music which they gave. Oft peal'd for him a lofty tone From nodding pole and belting zone. He heard a voice none else could hear From centred and from errant sphere. The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. In dens of passion, and pits of woe, He saw strong Eros struggling through, To sun the dark and solve the curse, And beam to the bounds of the universe. While thus to love he gave his days In loyal worship, scorning praise, CONCORD HYMN. How spread their lures for him in vain Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain ! He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread. POWER. His tongue was framed to music, And his hand was armed with skill, His face was the mould of beauty, And his heart the throne of will. CONCORD HYMN : SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, APRIL 19, 1836. BY the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept ; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone ; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. DIRGE. Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee. DIRGE.* CONCORD, 1838. KNOWS he who tills this lonely field To reap its scanty corn, What mystic fruit his acres yield At midnight and at morn ! In the long sunny afternoon The plain was full of ghosts : I wandered up, I wandered down, Beset hy pensive hosts. The winding Concord gleamed below, Pouring as wide a flood As when my brothers, long ago, Came with me to the wood. But they are gone, the holy ones Who trod with me this lovely vale ; The strong, star-bright companions Are silent, low, and pale. My good, my noble, in their prime, Who made this world the feast it was, Who learned with me the lore of time, Who loved this dwelling-place 1 * In memory of Mr. Emerson's brothers, who died, Edward Bliss in 1884, and Charles Chauncy in 1836. DIRGE. They took this valley for their toy, They played with it in every mood ; A cell for prayer, a hall for joy, They treated nature as they would. They coloured the horizon round ; Stars flamed and faded as they bade, All echoes hearkened for their sound, They made the woodlands glad or mad. I touch this flower of silken leaf, Which once our childhood knew ; Its soft leaves wound me with a grief Whose balsam never grew. Hearken to yon pine-warbler Singing aloft in the tree ! Hearest thou, traveller, What he singe th to me ? Not unless God made sharp thine ear With sorrow such as mine, Out of that delicate lay couldst thou Its heavy tale divine. " Go, lonely man," it saith ; "They loved thee from their birth ; Their hands were pure, and pure their faith, - There are no such hearts on earth. " Ye drew one mother's milk, One chamber held ye all ; A very tender history Did in your childhood fall. THRENODY. 11 You cannot unlock your heart, The key is gone with them ; That silent organ loudest chants The master's requiem." THRENODY.* THE South -wind brings Life, sunshine, and desire, And on every mount and meadow Breathes aromatic fire ; But over the dead he has no power, The lost, the lost he cannot restore. And, looking over the hills, I mourn The darling who shall not return. I can see my empty house, I see my trees repair their houghs ; And he, the wondrous child, Whose silver warble wild Outvalued every pulsing sound Within the air's cerulean round, The hyacinthine boy, for whom Morn well might break and April bloom, The gracious boy, who did adorn The world whereinto he was born, And by his countenance repay The favour of the loving Day, Has disappeared from the Day's eye ; * Mr. Emerson's son Waldo died in 1842, aged about six years The first part of the " Threnody " was written immediately after, and the second part two years later. 12 THRENODY. Far and wide she cannot find him ; My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him. Returned this day, the south wind searches, And finds young pines and budding birches, But finds not the budding man ; Nature, who lost, cannot remake him ; Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him ; Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain. And whither now, my truant wise and sweet, 0, whither tend thy feet ? I had the right, few days ago, Thy steps to watch, thy place to know : How have I forfeited the right ? Hast thou forgot me in a new delight ? I hearken for thy household cheer, eloquent child ! Whose voice, an equal messenger, Conveyed thy meaning mild. What though the pains and joys Whereof it spoke were toys Fitting his age and ken, Yet fairest dames and bearded men, Who heard the sweet request, So gentle, wise, and grave, Bended with joy to his behest, And let the world's affairs go by, A while to share his cordial game, Or mend his wicker waggon-frame, Still plotting how their hungry ear That winsome voice again might hear ; For his lips could well pronounce Words that were persuasions. Gentlest guardians marked serene His early hope, his liberal mien j THRENODY. 13 Took counsel from his guiding eyes To make this wisdom earthly wise. Ah, vainly do these eyes recall The school-march, each day's festival, When every morn my bosom glowed To watch the convoy on the road ; The babe in willow waggon closed, With rolling eyes and face composed, With children forward and behind, Like Cupids studiously inclined ; And he the chieftain paced beside, The centre of the troop allied, With sunny face of sweet repose, To guard the babe from fancied foes. The little captain innocent Took the eye with him as he went : Each village senior paused to scan And speak the lovely caravan. From the window I look out To mark thy beautiful parade, Stately marching in cap and coat To some tune by fairies played : A music heard by thee alone To works as noble led thee on. Now Love and Pride, alas ! in vain, Up and down their glances strain. The painted sled stands where it stood ; The kennel by the corded wood : His gathered sticks to stanch the wall Of the snow-tower when snow should fall ; * The ominous hole he dug in the sand, And childhood's castles built or planned ; His daily haunts I well discern. The poultry-yard, the shed, the barn, 14 THRENODY. And every inch of garden ground, Paced by the blessed feet around, From the roadside to the brook Whereinto he loved to look Step the meek fowls where erst they ranged \ The wintery garden lies unchanged ; The brook into the stream runs on ; But the deep-eyed boy is gone. On that shaded day, Dark with more clouds than tempests are, When thou didst yield thy innocent breath In birdlike heavings unto death, Night came, and Nature had not thee ; I said, "We are mates in misery." The morrow dawned with needless glow ; Each snowbird chirped, each fowl must crow : Each tramper started ; but the feet Of the most beautiful and sweet Of human youth had left the hill The garden, they are bound and still. There's not a sparrow or a wren, There's not a blade of autumn grain, Which the four seasons do not tend, And tide of life and increase lend ; And every chick of every bird, And weed and rock-moss is preferred. ostrich-like forgetfulness ! O loss of larger in the less ! Was there no star that could be sent, No watcher in the firmament, No angel from the countless host That loiters round the crystal coast, Could stop to heal that only child, Nature's sweet marvel undefiled, THRENODY. And keep the blossom of the earth, "Which all her harvests were not worth ? Not mine, I never called thee mine, But Nature's heir, if I repine, And seeing rashly torn and moved Not what I made, but what I loved, Grow early old with grief that thou Must to the wastes of Nature go, 'Tis because a general hope Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope. For flattering planets seemed to say This child should ills of ages stay, By wonderous tongue, and guided pen, Bring the flown Muses back to men. Perchance not he but Nature ailed, The world and not the infant failed. It was not ripe yet to sustain A genius of so fine a strain, Who gazed upon the sun and moon As if he came unto his own, And, pregnant with his grander thought, Brought the old order into dcubt. His beauty once their beauty tried ; They could not feed him, so he died, And wandered backward as in scorn, To wait an seon to be born. Ill day which made this beauty waste, Plight broken, this high face defaced ! Some went and came about the dead ; And some in books of solace read ; Some to their friends the tidings say ; Some went to write, some went to pray : One tarried here, there hurried one ; But their heart abode with none. 16 THRENODY. Covetous death bereaved us all, To aggrandise one funeral. The eager fate which carried thee Took the largest part of me : For this losing is true dying ; This is lordly man's down-lying, This his slow but sure reclining, Star by star his world resigning. child of paradise, Boy who made dear his father's home, In whose deep eyes Men read the welfare of the time to come, 1 am too much bereft. The world dishonoured thou hast left. O truth's and nature's costly lie ! O trusted broken prophecy ! O rich fortune sourly crossed ! Born for the future, to the future lost I The deep Heart answered, " Weepest thou ? Worthier cause for passion wild If I had not taken the cnild. And deemest thou as those who pore, With aged eyes, short way before, Think'st Beauty vanished from the coast Of matter, and thy darling lost ? Taught he not thee the man of eld, Whose eyes within his eyes beheld Heaven's numerous hierarchy span The mystic gulf from God to man ? To be alone wilt thou begin When worlds of lovers hem thee in ? THRENODY. 17 To-morrow, when the masks shall fall That dizen Nature's carnival, The pure shall see by their own will, Which overflowing Love shall fill, 'Tis not within the force of fate The fate conjoined to separate. But thou, my votary, weepest thou ? I gave thee sight where is it now ? I taught thy heart beyond the reach Of ritual, bible, or of speech ; Wrote in thy mind's transparent table As far as the incommunicable ; Taught thee each private sign to raise Lit by the supersolar blaze. Past utterance, and past belief, And past the blasphemy of grief, The mysteries of Nature's heart ; And though no muse can these impart, Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west. 11 1 came to thee as to a friend ; Dearest, to thee I did not send Tutors, but a joyful eye, Innocence that matched the sky, Lovely locks, a form of wonder, Laughter rich as woodland thunder, That thou might'st entertain apart The richest flowering of all art : And, as the great all-loving Day Through smallest chambers takes its way, That thou might' st break thy daily bread With prophet, saviour, and. head ; That thou might'st cherish for thine own The riches of sweet Mary's Son, 202 1 8 THRENODY. Boy-Rabbi, Israel's paragon. And thoughtest thou such guest "Would in thy hall take up his rest ? Would rushing life forget her laws, Fate's glowing revolution pause ? High omens ask diviner guess ; Not to be conned to tediousness. And know my higher gifts unbind The soul that girds the incarnate mind. When the scanty shores are full With Thought's perilous, whirling pool ; When frail Nature can no more, Then the Spirit strikes the hour : My servant Death, with solving rite, Pours finite into infinite. Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow, Whose streams through Nature circling go ? Nail the wild star to its track On the half-climbed zodiac ? Light is light which radiates, Blood is blood which circulates, Life is life which generates, And many-seeming life is one, Wilt thou transfix and make it none ? Its onward force too starkly pent In figure, bone, and lineament ? Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate, Talker ! the unreplying Fate ? Nor see the genius of the whole Ascendant in the private soul, Beckon it when to go and come, Self-announced its hour of doom t Fair the soul's recess and shrine, Magic-built to last a season ; Masterpiece of love benign, THRENODY. 19 Fairer that expansive reason Whose omen 'tis, and sign. Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know What rainbows teach, and sunsets show ? Verdict which accumulates From lengthening scroll of human fates, Voice of earth to earth returned, Prayers of saints that inly burned, Saying, Wliat is excellent, As God lives, is permanent ; Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain ; Heart's love will meet thee again. Revere the Maker ; fetch thine eye Up to his style, and manners of the sky. Not of adamant and gold Built he heaven stark and cold ; No, but a nest of bending reeds, Flowering grass and scented weeds ; Or like a traveller's fleeing tent, Or bow above the tempest bent ; Built of tears and sacred flames, And virtue reaching to its aims ; Built of furtherance and pursuing, Not of spent deeds, but of doing. Silent rushes the swift Lord Through ruined systems still restored, Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless, Plants with worlds the wilderness ; Waters with tears of ancient sorrow Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow. House and tenant go to ground, Lost in God, in Godhead found." THE HUMBLE-BEE. THE RHODORA : ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER? (Published 1839.) IN May, when sea- winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay ; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being : Why thou wert there, rival of the rose ! I never thought to ask, I never knew : But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you, THE HUMBLE-BEE. (Published 1839.) BURLY, dozing humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Let them sail for Porto Rique, Far-off heats through seas to seek ; I will follow thee alone, Thou animated tor rid- zone 1 THE HUMBLE-BEE. Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, Let me chase thy waving lines ; Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, Singing over shrubs and vines. Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thy dominion ! Sailor of the atmosphere ; Swimmer through the waves of air ; Voyager of light and noon, Epicurean of June ; Wait, I prithee, till I come Within earshot of thy hum, All without is martyrdom. When the south wind, in May days, With a net of shining haze Silvers the horizon wall, And with softness touching all, Tints the human countenance With a colour of romance, And infusing subtle heata, Turns the sod to violets, Thou, in sunny solitudes, Rover of the underwoods, The green silence dost displace With thy mellow, breezy bass. Hot midsummer's petted crone, Sweet to me thy drowsy tone Tells of countless sunny hours, Long days, and solid banks of flowers ; Of gulfs and sweetness without bound In Indian wildernesses found ; Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, Firmest cheer and bird-like pleasure. BERRYING. Aught unsavoury or unclean Hath my insect never seen ; But violets and bilberry bells, Maple-sap and daffodels, Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern, and agrimony, Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue, And brier-roses, dwelt among ; All beside was unknown waste, All was picture as he passed. Wiser far than human seer, Yellow-breeched philosopher ! Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care, Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. When the fierce north-western blast Cools sea and land so far and fast, Thou already slumberest deep ; Woe and want thou canst outsleep ; Want and woe, which torture us, Thy sleep makes ridiculous-. BERRYING. " MAY be true what I had heard, Earth's a hollow wilderness, Truculent with fraud and force," Said I, strolling through the pastures, And along the river-side. Caught among the blackberry vines, THE PROBLEM. 23 Feeding on the Ethiops sweet, Pleasant fancies overtake me. I said, " What influence me preferred, Elect, to dreams thus beautiful ? " The vines replied, " And didst thou deem rep i in No wisdom from our berries went I " THE PROBLEM.* (The Dial, 1840.) I LIKE a church ; I like a cowl ; I like a prophet of the soul ; And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles : Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure ? Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought 5 Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle ; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old ; The litanies of nature came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, The canticles of love and woe : The hand that rounded Peter's dome * Some of the poems published hi the Dial were probably of much earlier date ; Emerson was seldom in a hurry to print either hia prose or his verse. 24 THE PROBLEM. And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity ; Himself from God he could not free ; He builded better than ho knew ; The conscious stone to beauty grew. Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest Of leaves, and feathers from her breast ? Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with morn each annual cell ? Or how the sacred pine-tree adds To her old leaves new myriads ? Such and so grew these holy piles, Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. Each proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone, And Morning opes with haste her lids To gaze upon the Pyramids ; O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, As on its friends, with kindred eye ; For out of Thought's interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air ; And Nature gladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and with Ararat. These temples grew as grows the grass ; Art might obey, but not surpass. The passive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned ; And the same power that reared the shrine Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. Ever the fiery Pentecost Girds with one flame the countless host, LETTERS. 25 Trances the heart through chanting choirs, And through the priest the mind inspires. The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken ; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost. I know what say the fathers wise, The Book itself before me lies, Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, And he who blent both in his line, The younger Golden Lips or mines, Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines. His words are music in my ear, I see his cowled portrait dear ; And yet, for all his faith could see, I would not the good bishop be. LETTERS. EVERY day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word ; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear. 26 WOOD-NOTES. WOOD-NOTES. (Dial, 1840. ) 1. WHEN the pine tosses its cones To the song of its waterfall tones, Who speeds to the woodland walks ? To birds and trees who talks ? Caesar of his leafy Rome, There the poet is at home. He goes to the river-side, Not hook nor line hath he ; He stands in the meadows wide, Nor gun nor scythe to see. Sure some God his eye enchants : What he knows nobody wants. In the wood he travels glad, Without better fortune had, Melancholy without bad. Knowledge this man prizes best Seems fantastic to the rest : Pondering shadows, colours, clouds, Grass-buds and caterpillar-shrouds, Boughs on which the wild bees settle, Tints that spot the violet's petal, Why Nature loves the number five, And why the star-form she repeats : Lover of all things alive, Wonderer at all he meets, Wonderer chiefly at himself, Who can tell him what he is ? * Afterwards revised by Mr. Emerson. WOOD-NOTES. 27 Or how meet in human elf Coming and past eternities ? 2. And such I knew, a forest seer, A minstrel of the natural year, Foreteller of the vernal ides, Wise harbinger of spheres and tides, A lover true, who knew by heart Each joy the mountain dales impart ; It seemed that Nature could not raise A plant in any secret place, In quaking bog, on snowy hill, Beneath the grass that shades the rill, Under the snow, between the rocks, In damp fields known to bird and fox, But he would come in the very hour It opened in its virgin bower, As if a sunbeam showed the place, And tell its long-descended race. It seemed as if the breezes brought him ; It seemed as if the sparrows taught him ; As if by secret sight he knew Where, in far fields, the orchis grew. Many haps fall in the field Seldom seen by wishful eyes ; But all her shows did Nature yield, To please and win this pilgrim wise. He saw the partridge drum in the woods ; He heard the woodcock's evening hymn ; He found the tawny thrushes' broods ; And the shy hawk did wait for him ; What others did at distance hear, And guessed within the thicket's gloom, WOOD-NOTES. Was shown to this philosopher, And at his bidding seemed to come. 3. In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang ; He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone : Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds, The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads, And blessed the monument of the man of flowers, Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. He heard when in the grove, at intervals, With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls, One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree, Declares the close of its green century. Low lies the plant to whose creation went Sweet influence from every element ; Whose living towers the years conspired to build, Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild. Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed, He roamed, content alike with man and beast. Where darkness found him he lay glad at night ; There the red morning touched him with its light. Three moons his great heart him a hermit made, So long he roved at will the boundless shade. The timid it concerns to ask their way, And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray, To make no step until the event is known, And ills to come as evils past bemoan. Not so the wise ; no coward watch he keeps To spy what danger on his pathway creeps ; WOOD-NOTES. 29 Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome ; Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road, By God's own light illumined aud foreshowed. Twas one of the charmed days When the genius of God doth flow, The wind may alter twenty ways, A tempest cannot blow ; It may blow north, it still is warm ; Or south, it still is clear ; Or east, it smells like a clover-farm ; Or west, no thunder fear. The musing peasant lowly great Beside the forest water sate ; The rope-like pine roots crosswise grown Composed the network of his throne ; The wide lake, edged with sand and grass, Was burnished to a floor of glass, Painted with shadows green and proud Of the tree and of the cloud. He was the heart of all the scene ; On him the sun looked more serene ; To hill and cloud his face was known, It seemed the likeness of their own ; They knew by secret sympathy The public child of earth and sky. " You ask," he said, " what guide Me through trackless thickets led [wide. Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and I found the water's bed, The watercourses were my guide ; I travelled grateful by their side, Or through their channel dry ; 30 WOOD-NOTES. They led me through the thicket damp, Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp, Through beds of granite cut my road, And their resistless friendship showed : The falling waters led me, The foodful waters fed me, And brought me to the lowest land, Unerring to the ocean sand. The moss upon the forest bark Was pole-star when the night was dark ; The purple berries in the wood Supplied me necessary food ; For Nature ever faithful is To such as trast her faithfulness. When the forest shall mislead me, When the night and morning lie, When sea and land refuse to feed me, 'Twill be time enough to die ; Then will yet my mother yield A pillow in her greenest field, Nor the June flowers scorn to cover The clay of their departed lover." WOOD-XOTES. ii. (Dial, 1841.) As sunbeams stream flvrough liberal space And nothing jostle or displace, So waved the pine-tree through my thought, And fanned the dreams it never brought. " Whether is better, the gift or the donor ? Come to me," WOOD-NOTES. 31 Quoth the pine-tree, " I am the giver of honour. My garden is the cloven rock, And my manure the snow ; And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock, In summer's scorching glow. He is great who can live by me. The rough and bearded forester Is better than the lord ; God fills the scrip and canister, Sin piles the loaded board. The lord is the peasant that was, The peasant the lord that shall be ; The lord is hay, the peasant grass, One dry, and one the living tree. Who liveth by the ragged pine Foundeth a heroic line ; Who liveth in the palace hall Waneth fast and spendeth all. He goes to my savage haunts, With his chariot and his care ; My twilight realm he disenchants, And finds his prison there. "What prizes the town and the tower ? Only what the pine-tree yields ; Sinew that subdued the fields ; The wild-eyed boy, who in the woods Chants his hymn to hills and floods, Whom the city's poisoning spleen Made not pale, or fat, or lean ; Whom the rain and the wind purgeth, Whom the dawn and the day-star urgeth, In whose cheek the rose-leaf blusheth, In whose feet the lion rusheth, 32 WOOD-NOTES. Iron arms, and iron mould, That know not fear, fatigue, or cold, I give my rafters to his boat, My billets to his boiler's throat, And I will swim the ancient sea To float my child to victory, And grant to dwellers with the pine Dominion o'er the palm and vine. Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend, Unnerves his strength, invites his end. Cut a bough from my parent stem, And dip it in thy porcelain vase ; A little while each russet gem Will swell and rise with wonted grace j But when it seeks enlarged supplies, The orphan of the forest dies. Whoso walks in solitude And inhabiteth the wood, Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird, Before the money-loving herd, Into that forester shall pass, From these companions, power and grace. Clean shall he be, without, within, From the old adhering sin, All ill dissolving in the light Of his triumphant piercing sight : Not vain, sour, nor frivolous ; Not mad, athirst, nor garrulous ; Grave, chaste, contented, though retired; And of all other men desired. On him the light of star and moon Shall fall with purer radiance down j All constellations of the sky Shed their virtue through his eye. Him Nature giveth for defence WOOD-NOTES. 33 His formidable iimocence ; The mountain sap, the shells, the sea, All spheres, all stones, his helpers be ; He shall meet the speeding year, Without wailing, without fear; He shall be happy in his love, Like to like shall joyful prove ; He shall be happy whilst he woos, Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse. But if with gold she bind her hair, And deck her breast with diamond, Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear, Though thou lie alone on the ground. ' Heed the old oracles, Ponder my spells ; Song wakes in my pinnacles When the wind swells. Soundeth the prophetic wind, The shadows shake on the rock behind, And the countless leaves of the pine are strings Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings. Hearken 1 Hearken ! If thou wouldst know the mystic song Chanted when the sphere was young. Aloft, abroad, the psean swells ; O wise man ! hear'st thou half it tells ? O wise man ! hear'st thou the least part V 'Tis the chronicle of art. To the open air it sings Sweet the genesis of things, Of tendency through endless ages, Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages, Of rounded worlds, of space and time, Of the old flood's subsiding slime, 34 WOOD-NOTES. Of chemic matter, force and form, Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm : The rushing metamorphosis Dissolving all that fixture is, Melts things that be to things that seem, And solid nature to a dream. 0, listen to the undersong, The ever old, the ever young ; And, far within those cadent pauses, The chorus of the ancient Causes ! Delights the dreadful Destiny To fling his voice into the tree, And shock thy weak ear with a note Breathed from the everlasting throat. In music he repeats the pang Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang. O, mortal ! thy ears are stones ; These echoes are laden with tones Which only the pure can hear ; Thou canst not catch what they recite Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right, Of man to come, of human life, Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife." Once again the pine-tree sung : "Speak not thy speech my boughs among: Put off thy years, wash in the breeze ; My hours are peaceful centuries. Talk no more with feeble tongue ; No more the fool of space and time, Come weave with mine a nobler rhyme. Only thy Americans Can read thy line, can meet thy glance, But the runes that I rehearse Understands the universe ; WOOD-NOTES. 35 The last breath my boughs which tossed Brings again the Pentecost ; To every soul resounding clear In a voice of solemn cheer, "Am I not thine ? Are not these thine ? " And they reply, " Forever mine ! " My branches speak Italian, English, German, Basque, Castilian, Mountain speech to Highlanders, Ocean tongues to islanders, To Fin and Lap and swart Malay, To each his bosom-secret say. Come learn with me the fatal song Which knits the world in music strong, Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes, Of things with things, of times with times, Primal chimes of sun and shade, Of sound and echo, man and maid, The land reflected in the flood, Body with shadow still pursued. For Nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. The wood is wiser far than thou ; The wood and wave each other know Not unrelated, unaflied, But to each thought and thing allied, Is perfect Nature s every part, Rooted in the mighty Heart. 36 WOOD-NOTES. But thou, poor child ! unbound, unrhymed, Whence earnest thou, misplaced, mistimed, Whence, thou orphan and defrauded ? Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded ? Who thee divorced, deceived, and left ? Thee of thy faith who hath bereft, And torn the ensigns from thy brow, And sunk the immortal eye so low ? Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender, Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender For royal man ; they thee confess An exile from the wilderness, The hills where health with health agrees, And the wise soul expels disease. Hark ! in thy ear I will tell the sign By which thy hurt thou may'st divine. When thou shalt climb the mountain cliff, Or see the wide shore from thy skiff, To thee the horizon shall express But emptiness on emptiness ; There lives no man of Nature's worth In the circle of the earth ; And to thine eye the vast skies fall, Dire and satirical, On clucking hens and prating fools, On thieves, on drudges, and on dolls. And thou shalt say to the Most High, " Godhead ! all this astronomy, And fate and practice and invention, Strong art and beautiful pretension, This radiant pomp of sun and star, Throes that were, and worlds that are. Behold ! were in vain and in vain ; It cannot be, I will look again. Surely now will the curtain rise, WOOD-NOTES. 37 And earth's fit tenant me surprise ; But the curtain doth not rise, And Nature has miscarried wholly Into failure, into folly." " Alas ! thine is the bankruptcy, Blessed Nature so to see. Come, lay thee in my soothing shade, And heal the hurts which sin has made. 1 see thee in the crowd alone ; I will be thy companion. Quit thy friends as the dead in doom, And build to them a final tomb ; Let the starred shade that nightly falls Still celebrate their funerals, And the bell of beetle and of bee Knell their melodious memory. Behind thee leave thy merchandise ; Thy churches and thy charities ; And leave thy peacock wit behind ; Enough for thee the primal mind That flows in streams, that breathes in wind ; Leave all thy pedant lore apart ; God hid the whole world in thy heart. Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns, Gives all to them who all renounce. The rain comes when the wind calls ; The river knows the way to the sea ; Without a pilot it runs and falls, Blessing all lands with its charity ; The sea tosses and foams to find Its way up to the cloud and wind ; The shadow sits close to the flying ball ; The date fails not on the palm-tree tall ; And thou, go burn thy wormy pages, 38 WOOD-NOTES. Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages. Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain To find what bird had piped the strain ; Seek not, and the little eremite Flies gayly forth and sings in sight. " Hearken once more ! I will tell thee mundane lore. Older am I than thy numbers wot, Change I may, but I pass not. Hitherto all things fast abide, And anchored in the tempest ride. Trenchant time behoves to hurry All to yean and all to bury : All the forms are fugitive, But the substances survive. Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God proceeds, A single will, a million deeds. Once slept the world an egg of stone, And pulse, and sound, and light was none ; And God said, "Throb!" and there was motion, And the vast mass became vast ocean, Onward and on, the eternal Pan, Who layeth the world's incessant plan, Halteth never in one shape, But forever doth escape, Like wave or flame, into new forms Of gem, and air, of plants, and worms. I, that to-day am a pine, Yesterday was a bundle of grass. He is free and libertine, Pouring of his power the wine WOOD-NOTES. 39 To every age, to every race ; Unto every race and age He emptieth the beverage ; Unto each, and unto all, Maker and original. The world is the ring of his spells, And the play of his miracles. As he giveth to all to drink, Thus or thus they are and think. With one drop sheds form and feature ; With the next a special nature ; The third adds heat's indulgent spark ; The fourth gives light which eats the dark j Into the fifth himself he flings, And conscious Law is King of kings. As the bee through the garden ranges, From world to world the godhead changes ; As the sheep go feeding in the waste, From form to form he maketh haste ; This vault which glows immense with light Is the inn where he lodges for a night. What recks such Traveller if the bowers Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers A bunch of fragrant lilies be, Or the stars of eternity ? Alike to him the better, the worse, The glowing angel, the outcast corse, Thou metest him by centuries, And lo ! he passes like the breeze ; Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy, He hides in pure transparency ; Thou askest in fountains and in fires, He is the essence that inquires. He is the axis of the star ; He is the sparkle of the spar ; 40 THE SNOW-STORM. He is the heart of every creature ; He is the meaning of each feature ; And his mind is the sky. Than all it holds more deep, more high." THE SNOW-STORM. (Dial, 1841.) ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight : the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come see the north-wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild 1 work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths ; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn ; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs ; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, THE SPHINX. 41 Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow. SUUM CUIQUK (Dial, 1841.) THE rain has spoiled the farmer's day ; Shall sorrow put my books away ? Thereby are two days lost. Nature shall mind her own affairs, I will attend my proper cares, In rain, or sun, or frost. THE SPHINX. (Dial, 1841.) THE Sphinx is drowsy, Her wings are furled : Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world. 11 Who'll tell me my secret, The ages have kept ? I awaited the seer While they slumbered and slept : " The fate of the man-child, The meaning of man ; Known fruit of the unknown j Daedalian plan ; 42 THE SPHINX. Out of sleeping a waking, Out of waking a sleep ; Life death overtaking ; Deep underneath deep ? " Erect as a sunbeam, Upspringeth the palm ; The elephant browses, Undaunted and calm ; In beautiful motion The thrush plies his winga j Kind leaves of his covert, Your silence he sings. "The waves, unashamed, In difference sweet, Play glad with the breezes, Old playfellows meet ; The journeying atoms, Primordial wholes, Firmly draw, firmly drive, By their animate poles. " Sea, earth, air, sound, silence, Plant, quadruped, bird, By one music enchanted, One deity stirred, Each the other adorning, Accompany still ; Night veileth the morning, The vapour the hill. "The babe by its mother Lies bathed in joy ; Glide its hours uncounted, The sun is its toy ; THE SPHINX. 43 Shines the peace of all being, Without cloud, in its eyes ; And the sum of the world In soft miniature lies. " But man crouches and blushes, Absconds and conceals ; He creepeth and peepeth, He palters and steals ; Infirm, melancholy, Jealous glancing around, An oaf, an accomplice, He poisons the ground. " Out spoke the great mother, Beholding his fear ; At the sound of her accents Cold shuddered the' sphere : ' Who has drugged my boy's cup ? Who has mixed my boy's bread ? Who, with sadness and madness, Has turned my child's head ? ' " I heard a poet answer Aloud and cheerfully, " Say on, sweet Sphinx ! thy dirges Are pleasant songs to me. Deep love lieth under These pictures of time ; They fade in the light of Their meaning sublime. " The fiend that man harries Is love of the Best ; Yawns the pit of the Dragon, Lit by rays from the Blest. 44 THE SPHINX. The Lethe of Nature Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the perfect, Which his eyes seek in vain. "To vision pro founder, Man's spirit must dive ; His aye-rolling orb At no goal will arrive ; The heavens that now draw him With sweetness untold, Once found, for new heavens He spurneth the old. 1 ' Pride ruined the angels, Their shame them restores ; Lurks the joy that is sweetest In stings of remorse. Have I a lover Who is noble and free? I would he were nobler Than to love me. " Eterne alternation Now follows, now flies ; And under pain, pleasure, Under pleasure, pain lies. Love works at the centre, Heart-heaving alway ; Forth speed the strong pulses To the borders of day. " Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits ; Thy sight is growing blear : Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx, Her muddy eyes to clear ! " PAINTING AND SCULPTURE. 45 The old Sphinx bit her thick lip, Said, " Who taught thee me to name ? I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow, Of thine eye I am eyebeain. " Thou art the unanswered question ; Could'st see thy proper eye, Alway it asketh, asketh ; And each answer is a lie. So take thy quest through nature, It through thousand natures ply : Ask on, thou clothed eternity ; Time is the false reply." Uprose the merry Sphinx, And crouched no more in stono ; She melted into purple cloud, She silvered in the moon ; She spired into a yellow flame ; She flowered in blossoms red ; She flowed into a foaming wave j She stood Monadnoc's head. Thorough a thousand voices Spoke the universal dame ; II Who telleth one of my meanings, Is master of all I am." PAINTING AND SCULPTURE. (Dial, 1841.) THE sinful painter drapes his goddess warm, Because she still is naked being drest : The godlike sculptor will not so deform Beauty which limbs and flesh enough invest. 46 FA TE. FATE. (Dial, 1841.) THAT you are fair or wise is vain, Or strong, or rich, or generous ; You must add the untaught strain That sheds beauty on the rose. There's a melody born of melody, Which melts the world into a sea. Toil could never compass it ; Art its height could never hit ; It came never out of wit ; But a music music-born Well may Jove and Juno scorn. Thy beauty, if it lack the fire Which drives me mad with sweet desire, What boots it ? What the soldier's mail, Unless he conquer and prevail ? What all the goods thy pride which lift, If thou pine for another s gift 1 Alas ! that one is born in blight, Victim of perpetual slight : When thou lookest on his face, Thy heart saith, " Brother, go thy ways ! None shall ask thee what thou doest, Or care a rush for what thou knowest, Or listen when thou repliest, Or remember where thou liest, Or how thy supper is sodden ; " And another is born To make the sun forgotten. Surely he carries a talisman Under his tongue ; Broad his shoulders are and strong ; THE PARK. 47 And his eye is scornful, Threatening and young. I hold it of little matter Whether your jewel be of pure water, A rose diamond or a white, But whether it dazzle me with light. I care not how you are dressed, In coarsest weeds or in the best ; Nor whether your name is base or brave ; Nor for the fashion of your behaviour ; But whether you charm me, Bid my bread feed and my fire warm me, And dress up Nature in your favour. One thing is forever good ; That one thing is Success, Dear to the Eumenides, And to all the heavenly brood. Who bides at home, nor looks abroad, Carries the eagles, and masters the sword. THE PARK. (Dial, 1842.) THE prosperous and beautiful To me seem not to wear The yoke of conscience masterful, Which galls me everywhere. I cannot shake off the god ; On my neck he makes his seat ; I look at my face in the glass, My eyes his eyeballs meet. 48 GRACE. Enchanters ! enchantresses ! Your gold makes you seem wise ; The morning mist within your grounds More proudly rolls, more softly lies. Yet spake yon purple mountain, Yet said yon ancient wood, That Night or Day, that Love or Crime, Leads all souls to the Good. FORBEARANCE. (Dial, 1842.) HAST thou named all the birds without a gun ? Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk ? At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse ? Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust ? And loved so well a high behaviour, In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained. Nobility more nobly to repay ? O, be my friend, and teach mo to be thine ! GRACE. (Dial, 1842.) How much, preventing God ! how much I owe To the defences thou hast round me set : Example, custom, fear, occasion slow, These scorned bondmen were my parapet TACT. 49 I dare not peep over this parapet To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below, The depths of sin to which I had descended, Had not these me against myself defended. TACT (Dial, 1842.) WHAT boots it thy virtue ? What profit thy parts ? The one thing thou lackest Is the art of all arts. The only credentials, Passport to success, Opens castles and parlours, Address, man, Address. The maiden in danger Was saved by the swain : "His stout arm restored her To her palace again. The maid would reward him, Gay company come, They laugh, she laughs with them, He is moonstruck and dumb. This clenches the bargain ; Sails out of the bay ; Gets the vote in the senate Spite of Webster and Clay ; 204 50 HOLIDA VS. Has for genius no mercy, For speeches no heed ; It lurks in the eyebeam, It leaps to its deed ; It governs the planet, Church and State it will sway ; It has no to-morrow, It ends with to-day. HOLIDAYS. (Dial, 1842.) FROM fall to spring, the russet acorn. Fruit beloved of maid and boy, Lent itself beneath the forest, To be the children's toy. Pluck it now ! In vain, thou canst not, Its root has pierced yon shady mound ; Toy no longer it has duties ; It is anchored in the ground. Year by year the rose-lipped maiden, Playfellow of young and old, Was frolic sunshine, dear to all men, More dear to one than mines of gold. Whither went the lovely hoyden ? Disappeared in blessed wife ; Servant to a wooden cradle, Living in a baby's life. SAADL 51 Still thou playest ; short vacation Fate grants each to stand aside ; Now must thou be man and artist, 'Tis the turning of the tide. SAADL (Dial, 1842.) TREES in groves, Kine in droves, In ocean sport the scaly herds, Wedge-like cleave the air the birds, To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks, Browse the mountain sheep in flocks, Men consort in camp and town, But the poet dwells alone. God, who gave to him the lyre, Of all mortals the desire, For all breathing men's behoof, Straitly charged him, " Sit aloof ; " Annexed a warning, poets say, To the bright premium, Ever, when twain together play, Shall the heart be dumb. Many may come, But one shall sing ; Two touch the string, The heart is dumb. Though there come a million, Wise Saadi dwells alone. 52 SAADI. Yet Saadi loved the race of men, No churl, immured in cave or den ; In bower and hall He wants them all, Nor can dispense With Persia for his audience ; They must give ear, Grow red with joy and white with fear ; But he has no companion ; Come ten, or come a million, Good Saadi dwells alone. Be thou ware where Saadi dwells ; Wisdom of the gods is he, Entertain it reverently. Gladly round that golden lamp Sylvan deities encamp, Aud simple maidens and noble youth Are welcome to the man of truth. Most welcome they who need him most, They feed the spring which they exhaust ; For greater need Draws better deed : But, critic, spare thy vanity, Nor show thy pompous parts, To vex with odious subtlety The cheerer of men's hearts. Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly say Endless dirges to decay, Never in the blaze of light Lose the shudder of midnight ; Pale at overflowing noon Hear wolves barking at the moon ; SAADL 53 In the bower of dalliance sweet Hear the far Avenger's feet : And shake before those awful Powers, Who in their pride forgive not ours. Thus the sad-eyed Fakirs preach : 1 ' Bard, when thee would Allah teach, And lift thee to his holy mount, He sends thee from his bitter fount Wormwood, saying, ' Go thy ways, Drink not the Malaga of praise, But do the deed thy fellows hate, And compromise thy peaceful state ; Smite the white breasts which thee fed, Stuff sharp thorns beneath the head Of them thou shouldst have comforted j For out of woe and out of crime Draws the heart a lore sublime.' " And yet it seemeth not to me That the high gods love tragedy ; For Saadi sat in the sun, And thanks was his contrition ; For haircloth and for bloody whips, Had active hands and smiling lips ; And yet his runes he rightly read, And to his folk his message sped. Sunshine in his heart transferred Lighted each transparent word, And well could honouring Persia learn What Saadi wished to say ; For Saadi's nightly stars did burn Brighter than Dschami's day. Whispered the Muse in Saadi's cot ; " gentle Saadi, listen not, 54 SAADL Tempted by thy praise of wit, Or by thirst and appetite For the talents not thine own, To sons of contradiction. Never, sou of eastern morning, Follow falsehood, follow scorning. Denounce who will, who will deny, And pile the hills to scale the sky j Let theist, atheist, pantheist, Define and wrangle how they list, Fierce conserver, fierce destroyer, But thou, joy-giver and enjoyer, Unknowing war, unknowing crime, Gentle Saadi, mind thy rhyme ; Heed not what the brawlers say, Heed thou only Saadi's lay. "Let the great world bustle on With war and trade, with camp and town ; A thousand men shall dig and eat ; At forge and furnace thousands sweat ; And thousands sail the purple sea, And give or take the stroke of war, Or crowd the market and bazaar ; Oft shall war end, and peace return, And cities rise where cities burn, Ere one man my hill shall climb, Who can turn the golden rhyme. Let them manage how they may, Heed thou only Saadi's lay. Seek the living among the dead, Man in man is imprisoned ; Barefooted Dervish is not poor, If fate unlock his bosom's door, So that what his eye hath seen SAADI. 55 His tongue can paint as bright, as keen ; And what his tender heart hath felt With equal fire thy heart shalt melt. For, whom the Muses smile upon, And touch with soft persuasion, His words like a storm-wind can bring Terror and beauty on their wing ; In his every syllable Lurketh nature veritable ; And though he speak in midnight dark, In heaven no star, on earth no spark, Yet before the listener's eye Swims the world in ecstasy. The forest waves, the morning breaks, The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes, Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be, And life pulsates in rock or tree. Saadi, so far thy words shall reach : Suns rise and set in Saadi's speech ! " And thus to Saadi said the Muse : ' ' Eat thou the bread which men refuse ; Flee from the goods which from thee flee : Seek nothing, Fortune seeketh thee. Nor mount, nor dive ; all good things keep The midway of the eternal deep. Wish not to fill the isles with eyes To fetch thee birds of paradise : On thine orchard's edge belong All the brags of plume and song ; Wise All's sunbright sayings pass For proverbs in the market-place : Through mountains bored by regal art, Toil whistles as he drives his cart. Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind, 56 TO RHEA. A poet or a friend to find ; Behold, he watches at the door ! Behold his shadow on the floor ! Open innumerable doors The heaven where unveiled Allah pours The flood of truth, the flood of good, The Seraph's and the Cherub's food. Those doors are men : the Pariah hind Admits thee to the perfect Mind. Seek not beyond thy cottage wall Redeemers that can yield thee all : While thou sittest at thy door On the desert's yellow floor, Listening to the grey-haired crones, Foolish gossips, ancient drones, Saadi, see ! they rise in stature To the height of mighty Nature, And the secret stands revealed Fraudulent Time in vain concealed, That blessed gods in servile masks Plied for thee thy household tasks." TO RHEA. (Dial, 1843.) THEE, dear friend, a brother soothes, Not with flatteries, but truths, Which tarnish not, but purify To light which dims the morning's eye. I have come from the spring- woods, From the fragrant solitudes ; Listen what the poplar-tree And murmuring waters counselled me. TO RHEA. 57 If with love thy heart has burned : If thy love is tmreturned ; Hide thy grief within thy breast, Though it tear thee unexpressed ; For when love has once departed And one by one has torn off quite The bandages of purple light ; Though thou wert the loveliest Form the soul had ever dressed, Thou shalt seem, in each reply, A vixen to his altered eye ; Thy softest pleadings seem too bold, Thy praying lute will seem to scold ; Though thou kept the straightest road, Yet thou errest far and broad. But thou shalt do as do the gods In their cloudless periods ; For of this lore be thou sure, Though thou forget, the gods, secure, Forget never their command, But make the statute of this land. As they lead, so follow all, Ever have done, ever shall Warning to the blind and deaf, 'Tis written on the iron leaf, Who drinks of Cupid? s nectar cup Loveth downward, and not up ; He who loves, of gods or men, Shall not by the same be loved again ; His sweetheart's idolatry Falls, in turn, a new degree. When a god is once beguiled By beauty of a mortal child 58 TO RHEA. And by her radiant youth delighted, He is not fooled, but warily knoweth His love shall never be requited. And thus the wise Immortal doeth, 'Tis his study and delight To bless that creature day and night ; From all evils to defend her ; In her lap to pour all splendour ; To ransack earth for riches rare, And fetch her stars to deck her hair : He mixes music with her thoughts, And saddens her with heavenly doubts : All grace, all good his great heart knows, Profuse in love, the king bestows, Saying, "Hearken! Earth, Sea, Air! This monument of my despair Build I to the All-Good, All-Fair. Not for a private good, But I, from my beatitude, Albeit scorned as none was scorned, Adorn her as was none adorned. I make this maiden an ensample To Nature, through her kingdoms ample, Whereby to model newer races, Statelier forms and fairer faces , To carry man to new degrees Of power and of comeliness. These presents be the hostages Which I pawn for my release, See to thyself, Universe ! Thou art better, and not worse." And the god, having given all, Is freed forever from his thralL ODE TO BEAUTY. 59 THE THREE DIMENSIONS. (Dial, 1843.) " ROOM for the spheres ! "then first they sinned, And dived into the ample sky ; " Room ! room f " cried the new mankind, And took the oath of liberty. Room ! room ! willed the opening mind, And found it in variety. ODE TO BEAUTY. (Dial, 1843.) WHO gave thee, Beauty, The keys of this breast, Too credulous lover Of -blest and unblest? Say, when in lapsed ages Thee knew I of old ? Or what was the service For which I was sold ? When first my eyes saw thoe, I found me thy thrall, By magical drawings, Sweet tyrant of all ! I drank at thy fountain False waters of thirst ; Thou intimate stranger, Thou latest and first ! Thy dangerous glances Make women of men ; 60 ODE TO BEAUTY. New-born, we are melting Into nature again. Lavish, lavish promisor, Nigh persuading gods to err ! Guest of million painted forms, Which in turn thy glory warms 1 The frailest leaf, the mossy bark, The acorn's cup, the raindrop's arc, The swinging spider's silver line, The ruby of the drop of wine, The shining pebble of the pond, Thou inscribest with a bond, In thy momentary play, Would bankrupt nature to repay. Ah, what avails it To hide or to shun Whom the Infinite One Hath granted his throne ? The heaven high over Is the deep's lover ; The sun and sea, Informed by Thee, Before me run And draw me on, Yet fly me still, As Fate refuses To me the heart Fate for me chooses. Is it that my opulent soul Was mingled from the generous whole j Sea-valleys and the deep of skies Furnished several supplies ; And the sands whereof I'm mado Draw me to them, self-betrayed ? ODE TO BE A UTY. 61 I turn the proud portfolio Which holds the grand designs Of Salvator, of Guercino, And Piranesi's lines. I hear the lofty paeans Of the masters of the shell, Who heard the starry music And recount the numbers well ; Olympian bards who sung Divine Ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so. Oft, in streets or humblest places, I detect far-wandered graces, Which, from Eden wide astray, In lowly homes have lost their way. The gliding through the sea of form, Like the lightning through the storm, Somewhat not to be possessed, Somewhat not to be caressed, No feet so fleet could ever find, No perfect form could ever bind. Thou eternal fugitive, Hovering over all that live, Quick and skilful to inspire Sweet extravagant desire, Starry space and lily-bell Filling with thy roseate smell, Wilt not give the lips to taste Of the nectar which thou hast. All that's good and great with Thee Works in close conspiracy ; 62 EROS. Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely To report thy features only, And the cold and purple morning Itself with thoughts of thee adorning ] The leafy dell, the city mart, Equal trophies of thine art ; E'en the flowing azure air Thou hast touched for my despair ; And, if I languish into dreams, Again I meet the ardent beams. Queen of things ! I dare not die In Being's deeps past ear and eye ; Lest there I find the same deceiver, And be the sport of Fate forever. Dread Power, but dear ! if God thou be, Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me ! EROS. (Dial, 1844.) THE sense of the world is short, Long and various the report, To love and be beloved ; Men and Gods have not outlearned it ; And, how oft soe'er they've turned it. Not to be improved. BLIGHT. 63 BLIGHT.* (Dial, 1844.) GIVE me truths ; For I am weary of the surfaces, And die of inanition. If I knew Only the herbs and simples of the wood, Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain, and agrimony, Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras, Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sundew, And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods Draw untold juices from the common earth, Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply By sweet affinities to human flesh, Driving the foe and stablishing the friend, 0, that were much, and I could be a part Of the round day, related to the sun And planted world, and full executor Of their imperfect functions. But these young scholars, who invade our hills, Bold as the engineer who fells the wood, And travelling often in the cut he makes, Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names. The old men studied magic in the flowers, And human fortunes in astronomy, And an omnipotence in chemistry, Preferring things to names, for these were men, Were Unitarians of the united world, * Entitled in the Dial. "Ihe Times, a Fragment." 64 BLIGHT. And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell, They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars, And strangers to the mystic beast and bird, And strangers to the plant and to the mine. The injured elements say, " Not in us ; " And night and day, ocean and continent, Fire, plant, and mineral say, " Not in us ; " And haughtily return us stare for stare. For we invade them impiously for gain ; We devastate them unreligiously, And coldly ask their pottage, not their love. Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us Only what to our griping toil is due ; But the sweet affluence of love and song, The rich results of the divine consents Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover, The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld ; And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves And pirates of the universe, shut out Daily to a more thin and outward rind, Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes. The stunted trees look sick, the summer short, Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay, And nothing thrives to reach its natural term ; And life, shorn of its venerable length, Even at its greatest space is a defeat, And dies in anger that it was a dupe ; And, in its highest noon and wantonness, Is early frugal, like a beggar's child ; Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims And prizes of ambition, checks its hand, Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped, Chilled with a miserly comparison Of the toy's purchase with the length of life. THE VISIT. 65 THE VISIT. (Dial, 1844.) ASKEST, " How long thou shalt stay t " Devastator of the day ! Know, each substance and relation, Thorough nature's operation, Hath its unit, bound, and metre ; And every new compound Is some product and repeater, Product of the earlier found. But the unit of the visit, The encounter of the wise, Say, what other metre is it Than the meeting of the eyes ? Nature poureth into nature Through the channels of that feature, Riding 6n the ray of sight, Fleeter far than whirlwinds go, Or for service, or delight, Hearts to hearts their meaning show, Sum their long experience, And import intelligence. Single look has drained the breast ; Single moment years confessed. The duration of a glance Is the term of convenance, And, though thy rede be church or state, Frugal multiples of that. Speeding Saturn cannot halt ; Linger, thou shalt rue the fault: If Love his moment overstay, Hatred's swift repulsions play, 205 66 EACH AND ALL. EACH AND ALL. LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down ; The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far -heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, "Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height ; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbour's creed has lent. All are needed by each one ; Nothing is fair or good alone. I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough ; I brought him home, in his nest, at even ; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky ; He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore ; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And tne bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me. I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home ; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. The lover watched his graceful maid, As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white choir. URIEL. 67 At last she came to his hermitage, Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage ; The gay enchantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none. Then I said, " I covet truth ; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat ; I leave it behind with the games of youth : " As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club-moss burrs ; I inhaled the violet's breath ; Around me stood the oaks and firs ; Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground ; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity : Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird ; Beauty through my senses stole ; I yielded myself to the perfect whole. URIEL. IT fell in the ancient periods Which the brooding soul surveys, Or ever the wild Time coined itself Into calendar months and days. This was the lapse of Uriel, Which in Paradise befell Once, among the Pleiads walking, Seyd overheard the young gods talking ; And the treason, too long pent, To his ears was evident. 68 URIEL. The young deities discussed Laws of form, and metre just, . Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams, What subsisteth, and what seems. One, with low tones that decide, And doubt and reverend use defied, With a look that solved the sphere, And stirred the devils everywhere, Gave his sentiment divine Against the being of a line. " Line in nature is not found ; Unit and universe are round ; In vain produced, all rays return ; Evil will bless, and ice will burn." As Uriel spoke with piercing eye, A shudder ran around the sky ; The stern old war-gods shook their heads ; The seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds ; Seemed to the holy festival The rash word boded ill to all ; The balance-beam of Fate was bent ; The bounds of good and ill were rent ; Strong Hades could not keep his own, But all slid to confusion. A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell On the beauty of Uriel ; In heaven once eminent, the god Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud ; Whether doomed to long gyration In the sea of generation, Or by knowledge grown too bright To hit the nerve of feebler sight Straightway, a forgetting wind Stole over the celestial kind, THE WORLD-SOUL. 69 And their lips the secret kept, If in ashes the fire-seed slept. But now and then, truth-speaking things Shamed the angels' veiling wings ; And, shrilling from the solar course, Or from fruit of chemic force, Procession of a soul in matter, Or the speeding change of water, Or out of the good of evil born , Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn, And a blush tinged the upper sky, And the gods shook, they knew not why. THE WORLD-SOUL. THANKS to the morning light, Thanks to the foaming sea, To the uplands of New Hampshire, To the green-haired forest free ; Thanks to each man of courage, To the maids of holy mind, To the boy with his games undaunted Who never looks behind. Cities of proud hotels, Houses of rich and great, Vice nestles in your chambers, Beneath your roofs of slate. It cannot conquer folly, Time-and-space-conquering steam, And the light-outspeeding telegraph. Bears nothing on its beam. THE WORLD-SOUL. The politics are base ; The letters do not cheer ; And 'tis far in the deeps of history, The voice that speaketh clear. Trade and the streets ensnare us, Our bodies are weak and worn ; We plot and corrupt each other, And we despoil the unborn. Yet there in the parlour sits Some figure of noble guise, Our angel, in a stranger's form, Or woman's pleading eyes ; Or only a flashing sunbeam In at the window-pane ; Or Music pours on mortals Its beautiful disdain. The inevitable morning Finds them who in cellars be ; And be sure the all-loving Nature Will smile in a factory. Yon ridge of purple landscape, Yon sky between the walls, Hold all the hidden wonders In scanty intervals. " Alas ! the Sprite that haunts us Deceives our rash desire ; It whispers of the glorious gods, And leaves us in the mire. We cannot learn the cipher That's writ upon our cell ; Stars taunt us by a mystery Which we could never spell. THE WORLD-SOUL. 71 If but one hero knew it, The world would blush in flame ; The sage, till he hit the secret, Would hang his head for shame. Our brothers have not read it, Not one has found the key ; And henceforth we are comforted, We are but such as they. Still, still the secret presses ; The nearing clouds draw down ; The crimson morning flames into The fopperies of the town. Within, without the idle earth, Stars weave eternal rings ; The sun himself shines heartily, And shares the joy he brings. And what if Trade sow cities Like shells along the shore, And thatch with towns the prairie broad With railways ironed o'er ? They are but sailing foam-bells Along Thought's causing stream, And take their shape and sun-colour From him that sends the dream. For Destiny never swerves Nor yields to men the helm ; He shoots his thought, by hidden nerves, Throughout the solid realm. The patient Daemon sits, With roses and a shroud ; He has his way, and deals his gifts, But ours is not allowed. 72 THE WORLD-SOUL. He is no churl nor trifler, And his viceroy is none, Love-without- weakness, Of Genius sire and son. And his will is not thwarted ; The seeds of land and sea Are the atoms of his body bright, And his behest obey. He serveth the servant, The brave he loves amain , He kills the cripple and the sick, And straight begins again ; For gods delight in gods, And thrust the weak aside ; To him who scorns their charities Their arms fly open wide. When the old world is sterile And the ages are effete, He will from wrecks and sediment The fairer world complete. He forbids to despair ; His cheeks mantle with mirth ; And the unimagined good of men Is yeaning at the birth. Spring still makes spring in the mind When sixty years are told ; Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, And we are never old. Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow, And, through the wild-piled snowdrift, The warm rosebuds below. ALPHONSO OF CASTILE. 73 ALPHONSO OF CASTILE. I, ALPHONSO, live and learn, Seeing Nature go astern, Things deteriorate in kind ; Lemons run to leaves and rind ; Meagre crop of figs and limes ; Shorter days and harder times. Flowering April cools and dies In the insufficient skies. Imps, at high midsummer, blot Half the sun's disk with a spot : 'Twill not now avail to tan Orange cheek or skin of man. Roses bleach, the goats are dry, Lisbon quakes, the people cry, Yon pale, scrawny fisher fools, Gaunt as bitterns in the pools, Are no brothers of my blood ; They discredit Adamhood. Eyes of gods ! ye must have seen, O'er your ramparts as ye lean, The general debility ; Of genius the sterility ; Mighty projects countermanded ; Rash ambition, broken-handed ; Puny man and scentless rose Tormenting Pan to double the dose. Rebuild or ruin : either fill Of vital force the wasted rill, Or tumble all again in heap To weltering Chaos and to sleep. Say, Seigniors, are the old Niles dry, Which fed the veins of earth and sky, 74 ALP HO N SO OF CASTILE. That mortals miss the loyal heats, Which drove them erst to social feats ; Now, to a savage selfness grown, Think nature barely serves for one ; With science poorly mask their hurt, And vex the gods with question pert, Immensely curious whether you Still are rulers, or mildew ? Masters, I'm in pain with you ; Masters, I'll be plain with you ; In my palace of Castile, I, a king, for kings can feeL There my thoughts the matter roll, And solve and oft resolve the whole. And, for I'm styled Alphonse the Wise, Ye shall not fail for sound advice. Before ye want a drop of rain, Hear the sentiment of Spain. You have tried famine : no more try it ; Ply us now with a full diet ; Teach your pupils now with plenty, For one sun supply us twenty. I have thought it thoroughly over, State of hermit, state of lover ; We must have society, We cannot spare variety. Hear you, then, celestial fellows 1 Fits not to be over-zealous ; Steads not to work on the clean jump, Nor wine nor brains perpetual pump. Men and gods are too extense ; Could you slacken and condense ? MITHRIDATES. 75 Your rank overgrowths reduce Till your kinds abound with juice ! Earth, crowded, cries, "Too many men ! ' My counsel is, kill nine in ten, And bestow the shares of all On the remnant decimal. Add their nine lives to this cat ; Stuff their nine brains in one hat ; Make his frame and forces square With the labours he must dare ; Thatch his flesh, and even his years With the marble which he rears. There, growing slowly old at ease, No faster than his planted trees, He may, by warrant of his age, In schemes of broader scope engage. So shall ye have a man of the sphere Fit to grace the solar year. MITHRIDATES. I CANNOT spare water or wine, Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose ; From the earth-poles to the line, All between that works or grows, Every thing is kin of mine. Give me agates for my meat ; Give me cantharids to eat ; From air and ocean bring me foods, From all zones and altitudes ; From all natures, sharp and slimy, Salt and basalt, wild and tame*: 76 TO J. IV. Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion, Bird, and reptile, be my game. Ivy for my fillet band ; Blinding dog-wood in my hand ; HemlocK for my sherbet cull me, And the prussic juice to lull me ; Swing me in the upas boughs, Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse. Too long shut in strait and few, Thinly dieted on dew, I will use the world, and sift it, To a thousand humours shift it, As you spin a cherry. O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry 1 all you virtues, methods, mights, Means, appliances, delights, Reputed wrongs and braggart rights, Smug routine, and things allowed, Minorities, things under cloud ! Hither ! take me, use me, fill me, Vein and artery, though ye kill me ! TO J. W. SET not thy foot on graves ! Hear what wine and roses say ; The mountain chase, the summer waves, The crowded town, thy feet may well delay. Set not thy foot on graves ; Nor seek to unwind the shroud GUY. 77 Which charitable Time And Nature have allowed To wrap the errors of a sage sublime. Set not thy foot on graves ; Care not to strip the dead Of his sad ornament, His myrrh, and wine, and rings, His sheet of lead, And trophies buried : Go, get them where he earned them when alive ; As resolutely dig or dive. Life is too short to waste In critic peep or cynic bark, Quarrel or reprimand : 'Twill soon be dark ; Up ! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark ! GUY. MORTAL mixed of middle clay, Attempered to the night and day, Interchangeable with things, Needs no amulets nor rings. Guy possessed the talisman That all things from him began ; And as, of old, Polycrates Chained the sunshine and the breeze. 78 GUY. So did Guy betimes discover Fortune was his guard and lover ; In strange junctures, felt, with awe, His own symmetry with law ; That no mixture could withstand The virtue of his lucky hand, lie gold or jewel could not lose, Nor not receive his ample dues. Fearless Guy had never foes, He did their weapons decompose. Aimed at him, the blushing blade Healed as fast the wounds it made. If on the foeman fell his gaze, Him it would straightway blind or craze. In the street, if he turned round, His eye the eye 'twas seeking found. It seemed his Genius discreet Worked on the Maker's own receipt, And made each tide and element Stewards of stipend and of rent ; So that the common waters fell As costly wine into his well. He had so sped his wise affairs That he caught Nature in his snares. Early or late, the falling rain Arrived in time to swell His grain ; Stream could not so perversely wind But corn of Guy's was there to grind : The siroc found it on its way, To speed his sails, to dry his hay ; And the world's sun seemed to rise To drudge all day for Guy the wise. In his rich nurseries, timely skill Strong crab with nobler blood did fill ; The zephyr in his garden rolled HAMATREYA. 79 From plum-trees vegetable gold ; And all the hours of the year With their own harvest honoured were. There was no frost but welcome came, Nor freshet, nor midsummer flame. Belonged to wind and world the toil And venture, and to Guy the oil HAMATREYA. BTJLKELEY, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint, Possessed the land which rendered to their toil Ha)', corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood. Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm, Saying, "'Tis mine, my children's, and my name's. How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees ! How graceful climb those shadows on my hill ! I fancy these pure waters and the flags Know me, as does my dog : we sympathise ; And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil." Where are these men ? Asleep beneath their grounds : And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough. Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs ; Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave. They added ridge to valley, brook to pond, And sighed for all that bounded their domain ; "This suits me for a pasture ; that's my park ; We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge, And misty lowland, where to go for peat. 8o HAMATREYA. The land is well, lies fairly to the south. Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back To find the sitfast acres where you left them." Ah ! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds Him to his land, a lump of mould the more. Hear what the Earth says ; EARTH-SONG. " Mine and yours ; Mine, not yours. Earth endures ; Stars abide Shine down in the old sea ; Old are the shores ; But where are old men ? I who have seen much, Such have I never seen. " The lawyer's deed Ran sure, In tail, To them, and to their heirs Who shall succeed, Without fail, Forevermore. 1 ' Here is the land, Shaggy with wood, With its old valley, Mound, and flood. But the heritors ? Fled like the flood's foam. The lawyer, and the laws. And the kingdom, Clean swept herefrom. MONADNOC. 8 1 11 They called me theirs, Who so controlled me ; Yet every one Wished to stay, and is gone. How am I theirs, If they cannot hold me, But I hold them ? " When I heard the Earth-song, I was no longer brave ; My avarice cooled Like lust in the chill of the grave. MONADNOC. THOUSAND minstrels woke within me, " Our music's in the hills ; " Gayest pictures rose to win me, Leopard-coloured rills. 11 Up ! If thou knew'st who calls To twilight parks of beech and pine, High over the river intervals, Above the ploughman's highest line, Over the owner's farthest walls 1 Up ! where the airy citadel O'erlooks the surging landscape's swell 1 Let not unto the stones the Day Her lily and rose, her sea and land display. Read the celestial sign ! Lo ! the south answers to the north ; Bookworm, break this sloth urbane ; A greater spirit bids thee forth Than the grey dreams which thee detain. 206 82 MONADNOC. Mark how the climbing Oreads Beckon thee to their arcades ; Youth, for a moment free as they, Teach thy feet to feel the ground. Ere yet arrives the wintry day When Time thy feet has bound. Take the bounty of thy birth, Taste the lordship of the earth." I heard, and I obeyed, Assured that he who made the claim, Well known, but loving not a name, Was not to be gainsaid. Ere yet the summoning voice was still, I turned to Cheshire's haughty hill. From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed Like ample banner flung abroad To all the dwellers in the plains Round about, a hundred miles, With salutation to the sea and to the bordering isles. In his own loom's garment dressed, By his proper bounty blessed, Fast abides this constant giver, Pouring many a cheerful river ; To far eyes, an aerial isle* Unploughed, which finer spirits pile, Which morn and crimson evening paiut For bard, for lover, and for saint ; An eyemark and the country's core, luspirer, prophet evermore ; Pillar which God aloft had set So that men might it not forget ; It should be their life's ornament, And mix itself with each event 5 MONADNOC. 83 Gauge and calendar and dial, Weather-glass and cheuiic phial, Garden of berries, perch of birds, Pasture of pool-haunting herds, Graced by each change of sum untold, Earth-baking heat, stone-cleaving cold. The Titan heeds his sky-affairs, Rich rents and wide alliance shares 3 Mysteries of colour daily laid By morn and eve in light and shade ; And sweet varieties of chance, And the mystic seasons' dance ; And thief-like step of liberal hours Thawing snow-drift into flowers. 0, wondrous craft of plant and stone, By eldest science wrought and shown ! 11 Happy," I said, " whose home is here 1 Fair fortunes to the mountaineer ! Boon Nature to his poorest shed His royal pleasure-grounds outspread." Intent, I searched the region round, And in low hut the dweller found : Woe is me for my hope's downfall I Is yonder squalid peasant all That this proud nursery could breed For God's vieegerency and stead ? Time out of mind, this forge of ores ; Quarry of spars in mountain pores ; Old cradle, hunting-ground and bier Of wolf and otter, bear and deer ; Well-built abode of many a race ; Tower of observance searching space ; 84 MONADNOC. Factory of river and of rain ; Link in the alps' globe-girding chain ; By million changes skilled to tell What in the Eternal standeth well, And what obedient Nature can ; Is this colossal talisman Kindly to plant and blood and kind, But speechless to the master's mind ! I thought to find the patriots In whom the stock of freedom roots ; To myself I oft recount Tales of many a famous mount, Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells ; Bards, Roys, Scanderbegs, and Tells ; And think how Nature in these towers Uplifted shall condense her powers, And lifting man to the blue deep "VVhere stars their perfect courses keep, Like wise preceptor, lure his eye To sound the science of the sky, And carry learning to its height Of untried power and sane delight : The Indian cheer, the frosty skies, Rear purer wits, inventive eyes, Eyes that frame cities where none be, And hands that stablish what these see : And by the moral of his place Hint summits of heroic grace ; Man in these crags a fastness find To fight pollution of the mind ; In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong, Adhere like this foundation strong, The insanity of towns to stem With simpleness for stratagem. But if the brave old mould is broke, MONADNOC. 85 And end in churls the mountain folk In tavern cheer and tavern joke, Sink, mountain, in the swamp ! Hide in thy skies, sovereign lamp ! Perish like leaves, the highland breed, No sire survive, no son succeed ! Soft ! let not the offended muse Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse. Many hamlets sought I then, Many farms of mountain men. Rallying round a parish steeple Nestle warm the highland people, Coarse and boisterous, yet mild, Strong as giant, slow as child. Sweat and season are their arts, Their talismans are ploughs and carts ; And well the youngest can command Honey from the frozen land ; With cloverheads the swamp adorn, Change the running sand to corn ; For wolf and fox, bring lowing herds, And for cold mosses, cream and curds : Weave wood to canisters and mats ; Drain sweet maple juice in vats No bird is safe that cuts the air From their rifle or their snare ; No fish, in river or in lake, But their long hands it thence will take ; Whilst the country's flinty face, Like wax, their fashioning skill I To fill the hollows, sink the hills, Bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills, And fit the bleak and howling waste For homes of virtue, sense, and taste. MONADNOC. The World-soul knows his own affair, Forelooking, when he would prepare For the next ages, men of mould Well embodied, well ensouled, He cools the present's fiery glow, Sets the life-pulse strong but slow : Bitter winds and fasts austere His quarantines and grottoes, where He slowly cures decrepit flesh, And brings it infantile and fresh. Toil and tempest are the toys And games to breathe his stalwart boys : They bide their time, and well can prove, If need were, their line from Jove ; Of the same stuff, and so allayed, As that whereof the sun is made, And of the fibre, quick and strong, Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song Now in sordid weeds they sleep, In dulness now their secret keep ; Yet, will you learn our ancient speech, These the masters who can teach. Fourscore or a hundred words All their vocal muse affords ; But they turn them in a fashion Past clerks' or statesmen's art or passion. I can spare the college bell, And the learned lecture, well ; Spare the clergy and libraries, Institutes and dictionaries, For that hardy English root Thrives here, unvalued, underfoot. Rude poets of the tavern hearth, Squandering your unquoted mirth, MONADNOC. g/ Which keeps the ground and never soars, While Jake retorts and Reuben roars ; Scoff of yeoman strong and stark, Goes like bullet to its mark ; While the solid curse and jeer Never balk the waiting ear. On the summit as I stood, O'er the floor of plain and flood Seemed to me, the towering hill Was not altogether still, But a quiet sense conveyed : If I err not, thus it said : " Many feet in summer seek, Oft, my far-appearing peak ; In the dreaded winter time, None save dappling shadows climb, Under clouds, my lonely head, Old as the sun, old almost as the shade ; And comest thou To see strange forests and new snow, And tread uplifted land ? And lea vest thou thy lowland race, Here amid clouds to stand ? And wouldst be my companion Where I gaze, and still shall gaze, Through tempering nights and flashing days, When forests fall, and man is gone, Over tribes and over times, At the burning lyre, Near ing me, With its stars of Northern fire, In many a thousand years ? 88 MONADNOC. 11 Gentle pilgrim, if thou know The gamut old of Pan, And how the hills began, The frank blessings of the hill Fall on thee, as fall they will. "Let him heed who can and will : Enchantment fixed me here To stand the hurts of time, until In mightier chant I disappear, If thou trowest How the chemic eddies play, Pole to pole, and what they say ; And that these grey crags Not on crags are hung, But beads are of a rosary On prayer and music strung ; And, credulous, through the granite seeming Seest the smile of Reason beaming ; Can thy style-discerning eye The hidden-working Builder spy, "Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din, With hammer soft as snowflake's flight ; Knowest thou this ? O pilgrim, wandering not amiss ! Already my rocks lie light, And soon my cone will spin. 11 For the world was built in order, And the atoms march in tune ; Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, The sun obeys them and the moon. Orb and atom forth they prance, When they hear from far the rune ; None so backward in the troop, MONADNOC. When the music and the dance Reach his place and circumstance, But knows the sun-creating sound, And, though a pyramid, will bound. " Monadnoc is a mountain strong, Tall and good my kind among ; But well I know, no mountain can, Zion or Meru, measure with man. For it is on zodiacs writ, Adamant is soft to wit : And when the greater comes again With my secret in his brain, I shall pass, as glides my shadow Daily over hill and meadow. " Through all time, in light, in gloom, Well I hear the approaching feet On the flinty pathway beat Of him that cometh, and shall come ; Of him who shall as lightly bear My daily load of woods and streams, As doth this round sky-cleaving boat, Which never strains its rocky beams ; Whose timbers, as they silent float, Alps and Caucasus uprear, And the long Alleghanies here, And all town-sprinkled lands that be, Sailing through stars with all their history. " Every morn I lift my head, See New England undei spread, South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound, From Katskill east to the sea-bound. 90 MONADNOC. Anchored fast for many an age, I await the bard and sage, Who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed, Shall string Monadnoc like a bead. Comes that cheerful troubadour, This mound shall throb his face before. As when, with inward fires and pain, It rose a bubble from the plain. When he cometh, I shall shed, From this well-spring in my head, Fountain -drop of spicier worth Than all vintage of the earth. There's fruit upon thy barren soil Costlier far than wine or oil. There's a berry blue and gold, Autumn-ripe, its juices hold Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart, Asia's rancour, Athens' art, Slow-sure Britain's secular might, And the German's inward sight. I will give my son to eat Best of Pan's immortal meat, Bread to eat, and juice to drain ; So the coinage of his brain Shall not be forms of stars, but stars, Nor pictures pale, but JQVC and Mars. He comes, but not of that race bred Who daily climb my specular head. Oft as morning wreathes my scarf, Fled the last plumule of the Dark, Pants up hither the spruce clerk From South Cove and City ^ Wharf, I take him up my rugged sides, Half-repentant, scant of breath, Bead-eyes my granite chaos show ; MONADNOC. 91 And my midsummer snow ; Open the daunting map beneath, All his county, sea, and land, Dwarfed to measure of his hand ; His day's ride is a furlong space, His city tops a glimmering haze. I plant his ej 7 es on the sky-hoop bounding ; " See there the grim grey rounding Of the bullet of the earth Whereon ye sail, Tumbling steep In the uncontinented deep." He looks on that, and he turns pale. 'Tis even so, this treacherous kite Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere, Thoughtless of its anxious freight, Plunges eyeless on forever ; And he, poor parasite, Cooped in a ship he cannot steer, "Who is the captain he knows not, Port or pilot trows not, Risk or ruin he must share. I scowl on him with my cloud, With my north wind chill his blood ; I lame him, clattering down the rocks : And to live he is in fear. Then, at last, I let him down Once more into his dapper town, To chatter, frightened, to his clan And forget me if he can." As in the old poetic fame The gods are blind and lame, And the simular despite Betrays the more abounding might, 92 MONADNOC. So call not waste that barren cone Above the floral zone, Where forests starve : It is pure use ; What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse ? Ages are thy days, Thou grand afliriner of the present tense, And type of permanence ! Firm ensign of the fatal Being, Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief, That will not bide the seeing ! Hither we bring Our insect miseries to thy rocks ; And the whole flight, with folded wing, Vanish, and end their murmuring, Vanish beside these dedicated blocks, Which who can tell what mason laid ? Spoils of a front none need restore, Replacing frieze and architrave ; Where flowers each stone rosette and metope brave ; Still is the haughty pile erect Of the old building Intellect Complement of human kind, Holding us at vantage still, Our sumptuous indigence, barren mound, thy plenties fill ! We fool and prate ; MONADNOC. 93 Thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense The constant mountain doth dispense ; Shedding on all its snows and leaves, One joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, O watchman tall, Our towns and races grow and fall, And imagest the stable good For which we all our lifetime grope, In shifting form the formless mind, And though the substance us elude, We in thee the shadow find. Thou, in our astronomy An opaker star, Seen haply from afar, Above the horizon's hoop, A moment, by the railway troop, As o'er some bolder height they speed, By circumspect ambition, By errant gain, By feasters and the frivolous, Recallest us, And makest sane. Mute orator 1 well skilled to plead, And send conviction without phrase, Thou dost succour and remede The shortness of our days, And promise, on thy Founder's truth, Long morrow to this mortal youth. 94 FABLE. FABLE. THE mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter, "Little Prig; Bun replied, " You are doubtless very big ; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel tract ; Talents differ ; all is well and wisely put ; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut" ODE. INSCRIBED TO W. H. S RA TION. Deceive us, seeming to be many things, And are but one. Beheld far off, they part As God and devil ; bring them to the mind, They dull its edge with their monotony. To know one element, explore another, And in the second reappears the first The specious panorama of a year But multiplies the image of a day, A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame ; And universal Nature, through her vast And crowded whole, an infinite paroquet, Repeats one note. THE DAY'S RATION. WHEN I was born, From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice, Saying, "This be thy portion, child ; this chalice, Less than a lily's, thou shalt daily draw From my great arteries, nor less, nor more." All substances the cunning chemist Time Melts down into that liquor of my life, Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty, and disgust. And whether I am angry or content, Indebted or insulted, loved o hurt, All he distils into sidereal wine, And brims my little cup ; heedless, alas I Of all he sheds how little it will hold, How much runs over on the desert sands. If a new Muse draw me with splendid ray, And I uplift myself into its heaven, The needs of the first sight absorb my blood, And all the following hours of the day Drag a ridiculous age. MUSKETAQUfD. 127 To-day, wlien friends approach, and every hour Brings book, or star-bright scroll of genius, The little cup will hold not a bead more, And all the costly liquor runs to waste ; Nor gives the jealous lord one diamond drop So to be husbanded for poorer days. Why need I volumes, if one word suffice ? Why need I galleries, when a pupil's draught After the master's sketch fills and o'erfills My apprehension ? Why seek Italy, Who cannot circumnavigate the sea Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn The nearest matters for a thousand days ? MTJSKETAQUID. BECAUSE I was content with these poor fields, Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, And found a home in haunts which others scorned, The partial wood-gods overpaid my love, And granted me the freedom of their state, And in their secret senate have prevailed With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life, Made moon and planets parties to their bond, And through my rock-like, solitary wont Shot million rays of thought and tenderness. For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the Spring Visits the valley ; break away the clouds, I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air. And loiter willing by yon loitering stream. Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird, Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree, Courageous sing a delicate overture To lead the tardy concert of the year. 128 MUSKETAOUID. Onward and nearer rides the sun of May ; And wide around, the marriage of the plants Is sweetly solemnised. Then flows amain The surge of summer's beauty ; dell and crag, Hollow and lake, hill-side and pine arcade, Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged cliff Has thousand faces in a thousand hours. Beneath low hills, in the broad interval Through which at will our Indian rivulet Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw, Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies, Here in pine houses built of new-fallen trees, Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell. Traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious road, Or, it may be, a picture ; to these men, The landscape in an armoury of powers, Which, one by one, they know to draw and use. They harness beast, bird, insect, to their work ; They prove the virtues of each bed of rock, And, like the chemist mid his loaded jars, Draw from each stratum its adapted use To drug their crops or weapon their arts withal. They turn the frost upon their chemic heap, They set the wind to winnow pulse and grain, They thank the spring-flood for its fertile slime, And, on cheap summit-levels of the snow, Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods O'er meadows bottomless. So, year by year, They fight the elements with elements, (That one would say, meadow and forest walked, Transmuted in these men to rule their like,) And by the order in the field disclose The order regnant in the yeoman's brain. MUSKETAQUID. 129 What these strong masters wrote at large in miles, I followed in small copy in my acre ; For there's no rood has not a star above it ; The cordial quality of pear or plum Ascends as gladly in a single tree As in broad orchards resonant with bees ; And every atom poises for itself, And for the whole. The gentle deities Showed me the lore of colours and of sounds, The innumerable tenements of beauty, The miracle of generative force, Far-reaching concords of astronomy Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds ; Better, the linked purpose of the whole, And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty In the glad home plain-dealing Nature gave. The polite found me impolite ; the great Would mortify me, but in vain ; for still I am a willow of the wilderness, Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk, A quest of river grapes, a mocking thrush, A wild-rose, a rock-loving columbine, Salve my worst wounds. For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear : II Dost love our manners ? Canst thou silent lie ? Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like Nature pass Into the winter night's extinguished mood ? Canst thou shine now, then darkle, And being latent, feel thyself no less ? As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye, The river, hill, stems, foliage are obscure, Yet envies none, none are unenviable." 209 130 IN MEMORTAM. IN MEMORIAM. EDWARD BLISS EMERSON.* I MOURN upon this battle-field, But not for those who perished here. Behold the river-bank Whither the angry farmers came, In sloven dress and broken rank, Nor thought of fame. Their deed of blood All mankind praise ; Even the serene Reason says, It was well done. The wise and simple have one glance To greet yon stern head-stone, Which more of pride than pity gave To mark the Briton's friendless grave. Yet it is a stately tomb ; The grand return Of eve and morn, The year's fresh bloom, The silver cloud, Might grace the dust that ia most proud. Yet not of these I musi - In this ancestral place, But of a kindred face That never joy or hope shall here diffuse. Ah, brother of the brief but blazing star ! What hast thou to do with these, Haunting this bank's historic trees ? Thou born for noblest life, Died at Porto Rico, 1834. IN MEMORIAM. 131 For action's field, for victor's car, Thou living champion of the right 1 To these their penalty belonged : I grudge not these their bed of death, But thine to thee, who never wronged The poorest that drew breath. All inborn power that could Consist with homage to the good Flamed from his martial eye ; He who seemed a soldier born, He should have the helmet worn All friends to fend, all foes defy, Fronting foes of God and man, Frowning down the evil-doer, Battling for the weak and poor, His from youth the leader's look Gave the law which others took, And never poor beseeching glance Shamed that sculptured countenance. There is no record left on earth, Save in tablets of the heart, Of the rich inherent worth, Of the grace that on him shone, Of eloquent lips, of joyful wit : He could not frame a word unfit, An act unworthy to be done ; Honour prompted every glance, Honour came and sat beside him, In lowly cot or painful road, And evermore the cruel god Cried, " Onward 1" and the palm-crown showed. Born for success he seemed, With grace to win, with heart to hold, I 3 2 IN MEMORIAM. With shining gifts that took all eyes, With budding power in college-halls, As pledged in coming days to forge Weapons to guard the State, or scourge Tyrants despite their guards or walls, On his young promise Beauty smiled, Drew his free homage unbeguiled, And prosperous Age held out his hand, And richly his large future planned, And troops of friends enjoyed the tide All, all was given, and only health denied, I see him with superior smile Hunted by Sorrow's grisly train In lands remote, in toil and pain, With angel patience labour on, With the high port he wore erewhile, When, foremost of the youthful band, The prizes in all lists he won ; Nor bate one jot of heart or hope, And, least of all, the loyal tie Which holds to home 'neath every sky, The joy and pride the pilgrim feels In hearts which round the hearth at home Keep pulse for pulse with those who roam. What generous beliefs console The brave whom Fate denies the goal ! If others reach it, is content ; To Heaven's high will his will is bent. Firm on his heart relied. What lot soe'er betide, Work of his hand He nor repents nor grieves, Pleads for itself the fact, NATURE. 133 As unrepenting Nature leaves Her every act. Fell the bolt on the branching oak ; The rainbow of his hope was broke ; No craven cry, no secret tear He told no pang, he knew no fear ; Its peace sublime his aspect kept, His purpose woke, his features slept ; And yet between the spasms of pain His genius beamed with joy again. O'er thy rich dust the endless smile Of Nature in thy Spanish isle Hints never loss or cruel break And sacrifice for love's dear sake, Nor mourn the unalterable Days That Genius goes and Folly stays. What matters how, or from what ground, The freed soul its Creator found ? Alike thy memory embalms That orange-grove, that isle of palms, And these loved banks, whose oak-boughs bold Root in the blood of heroes old. NATURE.* THE rounded world is fair to see, Nine times folded in mystery : Though baffled seers cannot impart The secret of its labouring heart, * This and several of toe following pieces first appeared as mottoes to essays. 134 ILLUSIONS. Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west. Spirit that lurks each form within Beckons to spirit of its kin ; Self-kindled every atom glows, And hints the future which it owes. ILLUSIONS. FLOW, flow the waves hated, Accursed, adored, The waves of mutation : No anchorage is. Sleep is not, death is not ; Who seem to die live. House you were born in, Friends of your spring-time, Old man and young maid, Day's toil and its guerdon, They are all vanishing, Fleeing to fables, Cannot be moored. See the stars through them, Through treacherous marbles. Know the stars yonder, The stars everlasting, Are fugitive also, And emulate, vaulted, The lambent heat-lightning, And fire-fly's flight. When thou dost return On the wave's circulation, Beholding the shimmer, The wild dissipation, COMPENSATION. 135 And, out of endeavour To change and to flow, The gas becomes solid, And phantoms and nothings Return to be things, And endless imbroglio Is law and the world, Then first shalt thou know, That in the wild turmoil, Horsed on the Proteus, Thou ridest to power, And to endurance. COMPENSATION. THE wings of Time are black and white, Pied with morning and with night. Mountain tall and ocean deep Trembling balance duly keep. In changing moon and tidal wave Glows the feud of Want and Have. Gauge of more and less through space, Electric star or pencil plays, The lonely Earth amid the balls That hurry through the eternal halls, A makeweight flying to the void, Supplemental asteroid, Or compensatory spark, Shoots across the neutral Dark. Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine ; Staunch and strong the tendrils twine ; 136 UNITY. Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, None from its stock that vine can reave. Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm ; Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, And power to him who power exerts. Hast not thy share ? On winged feet, Lo ! it rushes thee to meet ; And all that Nature made thy own, Floating in air or pent in stone, Will rive the hiUs and swim the sea, And, like thy shadow, follow thee. SPIRITUAL LAWS. THE living Heaven thy prayers respect, House at once and architect, Quarrying man's rejected hours, Builds therewith eternal towers ; Sole and self-commanded works, Fears not undermining days, Grows by decays, And, by the famous might that lurks In reaction and recoil, Makes flame to freeze and tee* to boil ; Forging, through swart arms of Offence, The silver seat of Innocence. UNITY. SPACE is ample, east and west, But two cannot go abreast, Cannot travel in it two : Yonder masterful cuckoo WORSHIP. 137 Crowds every egg out of the nest, Quick or dead, except its own ; A spell is laid on sod and stone, Night and Day were tampered with, Every quality and pith Surcharged and sultry with a power That works its will on age and hour. WORSHIP. THIS is he, who, felled by foes, Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows : He to captivity was sold, But him no prison-bars would hold ; Though they sealed him in a rock, Mountain chains he can unlock : Thrown to lions for their meat, The crouching lion kissed his feet ; Bound to the stake, no flames appalled, But arched o'er him an honouring vault. This is he men miscall Fate, Threading dark ways, arriving late, But ever coming in time to crown The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down. He is the oldest, and best known, More near than aught thou call'st thy own, Yet, greeted in another's eyes, Disconcerts with glad surprise. This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers, Floods with blessings unawares. Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine. 138 CULTURE. HEROISM. RUBY wine is drunk by knaves, Sugar spends to fatten slaves, Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons ; Thunder-clouds are Jove's festoons, Drooping oft in wreaths of dread, Lightning-knotted round his head ; The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats ; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails. CHARACTER. THE sun set, but set not his hope : Stars rose ; his faith was earlier up : Fixed on the enormous galaxy, Deeper and older seemed his eye ; And matched his sufferance sublime The taciturnity of time. He spoke, and words more soft than rain Brought the Age of Gold again : His action won such reverence sweet As hid all measure of the feat. CULTURE. CAN rules or teachers educate The semigod whom we await I He must be musical, Tremulous, impressional, FRIENDSHIP. 139 Alive to gentle influence Of landscape and of sky, And tender to the spirit-touch Of man's or maiden's eye : But, to his native centre fast, Shall into Future fuse the Past, And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast. FRIENDSHIP. A RUDDY drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes ; The lover rooted stays. I fancied he was fled, And, after many a year, Glowed unexhausted kindliness, Like daily sunrise there. My careful heart was free again, O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through theo the rose is red ; All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair ; The fountains of my bidden life Are through thy friendship fair. FATE. EXPERIENCE. THE lords of life, the lords of life, I saw them pass In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim, Use and Surprise, Surprise and Dream, Succession swift and spectral Wrong, Temperament without a tongue, And the inventor of the game Omnipresent without name ; Some to see, some to be guessed, They marched from east to west : Little man, least of all, Among the legs of his guardians tall, Walked about with puzzled look. Him by the hand dear Nature took, Dearest Nature, strong and kind, Whispered, "Darling, nevermind! To-morrow they will wear another face, The founder thou ; these are thy race 1 " FATE.* DEEP in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes mean or great : Unknown to Cromwell as to me Was Cromwell's measure or degree, * Compare the nest following piece, which formed the motto to the essay on "Fate." FATE. 141 Unknown to him as to his horse, If he than his groom be better or worse. He works, plots, fights, in rude affairs, With squires, lords, kings, his craft compares, Till late he learned, through doubt and fear, Broad England harboured not his peer : Obeying Time, the last to own The Genius of its cloudy throne. For the prevision is allied Until the thing so signified ; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates. FATE. DELICATE omens traced in air, To the lone bard true witness bare ; Birds with auguries on their wings Chanted undeceiving things Him to beckon, him to warn ; Well might then the poet scorn To learn of scribe or courier Hints writ in vaster character ; And on his mind, at dawn of day, Soft shadows of the evening lay, For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified ; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates. 142 POLITICS. POLITICS. GOLD and iron are good To buy iron and gold : All earth's fleece and food For their like are sold. Boded Merlin wise, Proved Napoleon great, Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above its rate. Fear, Craft and Avarice Cannot rear a State. Out of dust to build "What is more than dust, Walls Amphion piled Phoebus stablish must. When the Muses nine With the Virtues meet, Find to their design An Atlantic seat, By green orchard boughs Fended from the heat, Where the statesman ploughs Furrow for the wheat, When the Church is social worth, When the state-house is the hearth, Then the perfect State is come, The republican at home. WEALTH. 143 WEALTH. WHO shall tell what did befall Far away in time when once, Over the lifeless ball, Hung idle stars and suns ? When God the element obeyed ? Wings of what wind the lichen bore, Wafting the puny seeds of power, Which, lodged in rock, the rock upbrade ? And well the primal pioneer Knew the strong task to it assigned, Patient through Heaven's enormous year To build in matter home for mind. From air the creeping centuries drew The matted thicket low and wide, This must the leaves of ages strew The granite slap to clothe and hide, Ere wheat can wave its golden pride. What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled (In dizzy aeons dim and mute The reeling brain can ill compute) Copper and iron, lead and gold ? What oldest star the fame can save Of races perishing to pave The planet with a floor of lime ? Dust is their pyramid and mole : Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed Under the tumbling mountain's breast, In the safe herbal of the coal ? But when the quarried means were piled, All is waste and worthless, till Arrives the wise selecting will, And, out of slime and chaos, Wit 144 MANNERS. Draws the threads of fair and fit. Then temples rose, and towns, and marts, The shop of toil, the hall of arts ; Then flew the sail across the seas To feed the north from tropic trees ; The storm-wind wove, the torrent span, Where they were bid the rivers ran ; New slaves fulfilled the poet's dream, Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam. Then docks were built, and crops were stored, And ingots added to the hoard. But, though light-headed man forget, Remembering Matter pays her debt : Still, though her motes and masses draw Electric thrills and ties of Law, Which bind the strengths of Nature wild To the conscience of a child. PROVIDENCE. THEME no part gladly sung, Fair to old and foul to yonng, Scorn not thou the love of parts, And the articles of arts. Grandeur of the perfect spliere Thanks the atoms that cohere. MANNERS. GRACE, Beauty, and Caprice Build this golden portal ; Graceful women, chosen men, Dazzle every mortal. ART. 145 Their sweet and lofty countenance His enchanted food ; He need not go to them, their forms Beset his solitude. He lookest seldom in their face, His eyes explore the ground, The green grass is a looking-glass Whereon their traits are found. Little and less he says to them, So dances his heart in his breast ; Their tranquil mien bereaveth him Of wit, of words, of rest. Too weak to win, too fond to shun The tyrants of his doom, The much deceived Endymion Slips behind a tomb. CIRCLES. NATURE centres into balls, And her proud ephemerals, Fast to surface and outside, Scan the profile of the sphere ; Knew they what that signified, A new genesis was here. ART. GIVE to barrows, trays, and pans Grace and glimmer of romance ; Bring the moonlight into noon Hid in gleaming piles of stone ; 210 146 HOPE. On the city's paved street Plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet ; Let spouting fountains cool the air, Singing in the sun-baked square ; Let statue, picture, park, and hall, Ballad, flag, and festival, The past restore, the day adorn, And make to-morrow a new morn. So shall the drudge in dusty frock Spy behind the city clock Retinues of airy kings, Skirts of angels, starry wings, His fathers shining in bright fables. His children fed at heavenly tables. 'Tis the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Han on earth to acclimate, And bend the exile to his fate, And, moulded of one element With the days and firmament, Teach him on these as stairs to climb, And live on even terms with Time ; Whilst upper life the slender rill Of human sense doth overfill. HOPE. ' ' IN the suburb, in the town, On the railway, in the square, Came a beam of goodness down Doubling daylight everywhere : Peace now each for malice takea, Beauty for his sinful weeds ; For the angel Hope aye makes Him an aagel whom she leads, LOSS AND GAIN. 147 NOMINALIST AND REALIST. IN countless upward-striving waves The moon-drawn tide-wave strives : In thousand far transplanted grafts The parent fruit survives ; So, in the new-born millions The perfect Adam lives. Not less are summer mornings dear To every child they wake, And each with novel life his sphere Fills for his proper sake. LOSS AND GAIN. VIRTUE runs before the muse, And defies her skill, She is rapt, and doth refuse To wait a painter's will. Star-adoring, occupied, Virtue cannot bend her, Just to please a poet's pride, To parade her splendour. The bard must be with good intent No more his but hers, Throw away his pen and paint, Kneel with worshippers. Then perchance a sunny ray From the heaven of fire, His lost tools may overpay, And better his desira. 148 THE HOUSE. THE HOUSE. THERB is no architect Can build as the muse can ; She is skilful to elect Materials for her plan ; Slow and warily to choose Rafters of immortal pine, Or cedar incorruptible Worthy her design. She threads dark Alpine forests, Or valleys by the sea. In many lands with painful steps, Ere she can find a tree. She ransacks mines and ledges, And quarries every rock, To hew the famous adamant For each eternal block. She lays her beams in music, In music every one, To the cadence of the whirling world Which dances round the sun. That so they shall not be displaced By lapses or by wars, But for the love of happy souls Outlive the newest stars. MA Y-DA Y. 149 MAY DAY.* DAUGHTER of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing, Teaching barren moors to smile, Painting pictures mile on mile, Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths, Whence a smokeless incense breathes, The air is full of whistlings bland ; What was that I heard Out of the hazy land ? Harp of the wind, or song of bird, Or vagrant booming of the air, Voice of a meteor lost in day ? Such tidings of the starry sphere Can this elastic air convey. Or haply 'twas the cannonade Of the pent and darkened lake, Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade, Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break, Afflicted moan, and latest hold Even into May the iceberg cold. Was it a squirrel's pettish bark, Or clarionet of jay ? or hark Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads, Steering north with raucous cry Through tracts and provinces of sky, Every night alighting down In new landscapes of romance, Where darkling feeds the clamorous clans By lonely lakes to men unknown. Come the tumult whence it will, * Considerably altered after its first appearance in 1867. This is the revised version. ISO MAY-DAY. Voice of sport, or rush of wings, It is a sound, it is a token That the marble sleep is broken, And a change has passed on things. When late I walked, in earlier days, All was stiff and stark ; Knee-deep snows choked all the ways, In the sky no spark ; Firm-braced I sought my ancient woods, Struggling through the drifted roads ; The whited desert knew me not, Snow-ridges masked each darling spot ; The summer dells, by genius haunted, One arctic moon had disenchanted. All the sweet secrets therein hid By Fancy, ghastly spells undid. Eldest mason, Frost, had piled Swift cathedrals in the wild ; The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts In the star-lit minster aisled. I found no joy : the icy wind Might rule the forest to his mind. Who would freeze on frozen lakes ? Back to books and sheltered, home, And wood-fire flickering on the walls, To hear, when, 'mid our talk and games, Without the baffled north-wind calls. But soft ! a sultry morning breaks ; The ground-pines wash their rusty green, The maple- tops their crimson tint, On the soft path each track is seen, The girl's foot leaves its neater print. The pebble loosened from the frost Asks of the urchin to be tost MAY-DAY. 151 In flint and marble beats a heart, The kind Earth takes her children's part, The green lane is the school-boy's friend, Low leaves his quarrel apprehend, The fresh ground loves his top and ball, The air rings jocund to his call, The brimming brook invites a leap, He dives the hollow, climbs the steep. The caged linnet in the spring Hearkens for the choral glee, When his fellows on the wing Migrate from the Southern Sea ; When trellised grapes their flowers unmask, And the new-born tendrils twine, The old wine darkling in the cask Feels the bloom on the living vine, And bursts the hoops at hint of spring : And so, perchance, in Adam's race, Of Eden's bower some dream-like trace Survived the Flight and swam the Flood, And wakes the wish in youngest blood To tread the forfeit Paradise, And feed once more the exile's eyes ; And ever when the happy child In May beholds the blooming wild, And hears in heaven the bluebird sing, "Onward," he cries, " your baskets bring, In the next field is air more mild, Aud o'er yon hazy crest is Eden's balmier spring," Not for a regiment's parade, Nor evil laws or rulers made, Blue Walden rolls its cannonade, 152 MAY-DAY. But for a lofty sign Which the Zodiac threw, That the bondage-days are told, And waters free as winds shall flow. Lo ! how all the tribes combine To rout the flying foe. See, every patriot oak-leaf throws His elfin length upon the snows, Not idle, since the leaf all day Draws to the spot the solar ray, Ere sunset quarrying inches down, And half-way to the mosses brown ; While the grass beneath the rime Has hints of the propitious time, And upward pries and perforates Through the cold slab a thousand gates, Till green lances peering through Bend happy in the welkin blue. As we thaw frozen flesh with snow, So Spring will not her time forerun, Mix polar night with tropic glow, Nor cloy us with unshaded sun, Nor wanton skip with bacchic dance, But she has the temperance Of the gods, whereof she is one, Masks her treasury of heat Under east- winds crossed with sleet. Plants, and birds, and humble creatures Well accept her ride austere ; Titan- born, to hardy natures Cold is genial and dear. As Southern wrath to Northern right Is but straw to anthracite ; As in the day of sacrifice, MAY-DAY. 153 When heroes piled the pyre, The dismal Massachusetts ice Burned more than others' fire, So Spring guards with surface cold The garnered heat of ages old. Hers to sow the seed of bread, That man and all the kinds be fed ; And, when the sunlight fills the hours, Dissolves the crust, displays the flowers. Beneath the calm, within the light, A hid unruly appetite Of swifter life, a surer hope, Strains every sense to larger scope, Impatient to anticipate The halting steps of aged Fate. Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl : When Nature falters, fain would zeal Grasp the felloes of her wheel, And grasping give the orbs another whirl. Turn swiftlier round, tardy ball ! And sun this frozen side, Bring hither back the robin's call, Bring back the tulip's pride. Why chidest thou the tardy Spring : The hardy bunting does not chide ; The blackbirds make the maples ring With social cheer and jubilee ; The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee, The robins know the melting snow ; The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed, Her nest beside the snow-drift weaveSj Secure the osier yet will hide j 5 4 MAY-DAY. Her callow brood in mantling leaves, And thou, by science all undone, Why only must thy reason fail To see the southing of the sun ? The world rolls round, mistrust it not,- Befalls again what once befell ; All things return, both sphere and mote, And I shall hear my bluebird's note, And dream the dream of Auburn dell. April cold with dropping rain Willows and lilacs brings again, The whistle of returning birds, And trumpet-lowing of the herds. The scarlet maple-keys betray What potent blood hath modest May, What fiery force the earth renews, The wealth of forms, the flush of hues ; What joy in rosy waves outpoured Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord. Hither rolls the storm of heat ; I feel its finer billows beat Like a sea which me infolds ; Heat with viewless fingers moulds, Swells, and mellows, and matures, Paints, and flavours, and allures, Bird and brier inly warms, Still enriches and transforms, Gives the reed and lily length, Adds to oak and oxen strength, Transforming what it doth infold, Life out of death, new out of old, MAY-DAY. 155 Painting fawns' and leopards' fells, Seethes the gulf-encrimsoning shells ; Fires gardens with a joyful blaze Of tulips, in the morning's rays. The dead log touched bursts into leaf, The wheat-blade whispers of the sheaf. What god is this imperial Heat, Earth's prime secret, sculpture's seat ? Doth it bear hidden in its heart Water-line patterns of all art ? Is it Daedalus ? is it Love ? Or walks in mask almighty Jove, And drops from Power's redundant horn All seeds of beauty to be born ? Where shall we keep the holiday, And duly greet the entering May ? Too strait and low our cottage doors, And all unmeet our carpet floors ; Nor spacious court, nor monarch's hall, Suffice to hold the festival. Up and a\ray ! where haughty woods Front the liberated floods : We will climb the broad-backed hills, Hear the uproar of their joy ; We will mark the leaps and gleams Of the new-delivered streams, And the murmuring rivers of sap Mount in the pipes of the trees, Giddy with day, to the topmost spire, Which for a sp'ike of tender green Bartered its powdery cap ; And the colours of joy in the bird, And the love in its carol heard, 156 MAY-DAY. Frog and lizard in holiday coats, And turtle brave in his golden spots ; While cheerful cries of crag and plain Reply to the thunder of river and main. As poured the blood of the ancient sea Spilling over mountain chains, Bending forests as bends the sedge, Faster flowing o'er the plains A world-wide wave with a foaming edge That rims the running silver sheet So pours the deluge of the heat Broad northward o'er the land, Painting artless paradises, Drugging herbs with Syrian spices, Fanning secret fires which glow In columbine and clover-blow, Climbing the northern zones, Where a thousand pallid towns Lie like cockles by the main, Or tented armies on a plain. The million-handed sculptor moulds Quaintest bud and blossom folds, The million-handed painter pours Opal hues and purple dye.;. Azaleas flush the island floors, And the tints of heaven reply. Wreathes for the May ! for happy Spring To-day shall all her dowry bring, The love of kind, the joy, the grace, Hymen of element and race, Knowing well to celebrate With song, and hue, and star, and state, MAY-DAY. 157 With tender light and yonthful cheer, The spousals of the new-born year. Spring is strong and virtuous, Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous, Quickening underneath the mould Grains beyond the price of gold. So deep and large her bounties are, That one broad, long midsummer day Shall to the planet overpay The ravage of a year of war. Drug the cup, thou butler sweet, And send the nectar round ; The feet that slid so long on sleet Are glad to feel the ground. Fill and saturate each kind With good according to its mind, Fill each kind and saturate With good agreeing with its fate, And soft perfection of its plan Willow and violet, maiden and man. The bitter-sweet, the haunting air Creepeth, bloweth everywhere ; It preys on all, all prey on it, Blooms in bsauty, thinks in wit, Stings the strong with enterprise, Makes travellers long for Indian skies, And where it comes this courier fleet Fans in all hearts expectance sweet, As if to-morrow should redeem The vanished rose of evening's dream. By houses lies a fresher green, 158 MAY- DAY. On men and maids a ruddier mien. As if time brought a new relay Of shining virgins every May, And Summer came to ripen maids To a beauty that not fades. I saw the bud- crowned Spring go forth, Stepping daily onward north To greet staid ancient cavaliers Filing single in stately train. And who, and who are tha travellers ? They were Night and Day, and Day and Night, Pilgrims wight with step forthright I saw the Days deformed and low, Short and bent by cold and snow : The merry Spring threw wreaths on them, Flower-wreaths gay with bud and bell : Many a flower and many a gem, They were refreshed by the smell, They shook the snow from hats and shoon, They put their April raiment on ; And those eternal forms, Unhurt by a thousand storms, Shot up to the height of the sky again, And danced as merrily as'young men. I saw them mask their awful glance Sidewise meek in gossamer lids ; And to speak my thought if none forbids, It was as if the eternal gods, Tired of their starry periods, Hid their majesty in cloth Woven of tulips and painted moth. On carpets green the maskers march Below May's well-appointed arch, MA Y-DA Y. 159 Each star, each god, each grace amain, Every joy and virtue speed, Marching duly in her train, And fainting Nature at her need Is made whole again. 'Twas the vintage-day of field and wood, When magic wine for bards is brewed ; Every tree, and stem, and chink Gushed with syrup to the brink. The air stole into streets of towns, Refreshed the wise, reformed the clowns. And betrayed the fund of joy To the high-school and medalled boy : On from hall to chamber ran, From youth to maid, from boy to man, To babes, and to old eyes as well. " Once more," the old man cried, "ye clouds, Airy turrets purple-piled, Which once my infancy beguiled, Beguile me with the wonted spelt I know ye skilful to convoy The total freight of hope and joy Into rude and homely nooks, Shed mocking lustres on shelf of books, On farmer's byre, on pasture rude, And stony pathway to the wood. I care not if the pomps you show Be what they soothfast appear, Or if yon realms in sunset glow Be bubbles of the atmosphere. And if it be to you allowed To fool me with a shining cloud, So only new griefs are consoled By new delights, as old by old, 160 MA Y-DA Y. Frankly I will be your guest, Count your change and cheer the best. The world hath overmuch of pain, If Nature give me joy again, Of such deceit I'll not complain." Ah ! well I mind the calendar, Faithful through a thousand yearsj Of the painted race of flowers, Exact to days, exact to hours, Counted on the spacious dial Yon broidered zodiac girds. I know the trusty almanac Of the punctual coming-back, On their due days, of the birds. I marked them yestermora, A flock of finches darting Beneath the crystal arch, Piping, as they flew, a march, Belike the one they used in parting Last year from you oak or larch ; Dusky sparrows in a crowd, Diving, darting northward free, Suddenly betook them all, Every one to his hole in the wall, Or to his niche in the ajjple-tree. I greet with joy the choral trains Fresh from palms and Cuba's canes. Best gems of Nature's cabinet, With dews of tropic morning wet, Beloved of children, bards, and Spring, O birds, your perfect virtues bring. Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight, Your manners for the heart's delight. Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof, MA Y-DA Y. 161 Here weave your chamber weather-proof, Forgive our harms, and condescend To man, as to a lubber friend, And, generous, teach his awkward race Courage, and probity, and grace ! Poets praise that hidden wine Hid in milk we drew At the barrier of Time, When our life was new. We had eaten fairy fruit, We are quick from head to foot, All the forms we looked on shone As with diamond dews thereon. What cared we for costly joys, The Museum's far-fetched toys ? Gleam of sunshine on the wall Poured a deeper cheer than all The revels of the Carnival. We a pine-grove did prefer To a marble theatre, Could with gods on mallows dine, Nor cared for spices or for wine. Wreaths of mist and rainbow spanned. Arch on arch, the grimmest land ; Whistle of a woodland bird Made the pulses dance, Note of horn in valleys heard Filled the region with romance. None can tell how sweet, How virtuous, the morning air j Every accent vibrates well ; Not alone the wood-bird's call, Or shouting boys that chase their ball, 162 MA Y-DA Y. Pass the height of minstrel skill, But the ploughman's thoughtless cry, Lowing oxen, sheep that bleat, And the joiner's hammer-beat, Softened are above their will, Take tones from groves they wandered through Or flutes wlach passing angels blew. All grating discords melt, No dissonant note is dealt, And though thy voice be shrill Like rasping file on steel, Such is the temper of the air. Echo waits with art and care, And will the faults of song repair. So by remote Superior Lake, And by resounding Mackinac, When northern storms the forest shako, And billows on the long beach break, The artful Air will separate Note by note all sounds that grate, Smothering in her ample breast All but godlike words, Reporting to the happy ear Only purified accords. Strangely wrought from barking waves, Soft music daunts the Indian braves, Convent-chanting which the child Hears pealing from the panther's cave And the impenetrable wild. Soft on the south-wind sleeps the haze : So on thy broad mystic van Lie the opal-coloured days, And waft the miracle to man. MA Y-DA Y. 163 Soothsayer of the eldest gods, Repairer of what harms betide, Revealer of the inmost powers Prometheus proffered, Jove denied ; Disclosing treasures more than true, Or in what far to-morrow dne ; Speaking by the tongues of flowers, By the ten-tongned laurel speaking, Singing by the oriole song?;, Heart of bird the man's heart seeking ; Whispering hints of treasure hid Under Morn's unlifted lid, Islands looming just beyond The dim horizon's utmost bound ; "Who can, like thee, our rags upbraid, Or taunt us with our hope decayed ? Or who like thee persuade, Making the splendour of the air, The morn and sparkling dew, a snare 1 Or who resent Thy genius, wiles, and blandishment ? There is no orator prevails To beckon or persuade Like thee the youth or maid : Thy birds, thy songs, thy brooks, thy gates, Thy blooms, thy kinds, Thy echoes in the wilderness, Soothe pain, and age, and love's distress, Fire fainting will, and build heroic minds. For thou, Spring ! canst renovate All that high God did first create. Be still his arm and architect. 164 THE HARP. Rebuild the ruin, mend defect ; Chemist to vamp old worlds with new, Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue, New tint the plumage of the birds, And slough decay from grazing herds, Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain, Cleanse the torrent at the fountain, Purge alpine air by towns defiled, Bring to fair mother fairer child, Not less renew the heart and brain, Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain, Make the aged eye sun-clear, To parting soul bring grandeur near. Under gentle types, my Spring Masks the might of Nature's king, An energy that searches thorough From Chaos to the dawning morrow ; Into all our human plight, The soul's pilgrimage and flight ; In city or in solitude, Step by step, lifts bad to good, Without halting, without rest, Lifting Better up to Best ; Planting seeds of knowledge pure, Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure. THE HARP.* ONE musician is sure, His wisdom will not fail, He has not tasted wine impure, Nor bent to passion frail. * This formed part of the poem " May-Day," as it first appeared. THE HARP. 165 Age cannot cloud his memory, Nor grief untune his voice, Ranging down the ruled scale From tone of joy to inward wail, Tempering the pitch of all In his windy cave. He all the fables knows, And in their causes tells, Knows Nature's rarest moods, Ever on her secret broods. The Muse of men is coy, Oft courted will not come ; In palaces and market squares Entreated, she is dumb ; But by minstrel knows and tells The counsel of the gods, Knows of Holy Book the spells, Knows the law of Night and Day, And the heart of girl and boy, The tragic and the gay, And what is writ on Table Round Of Arthur and his peers ; What sea and land discoursing say In sidereal years. His renders all his lore In numbers wild as dreams, Modulating all extremes, What the spangled meadow saith To the children who have faith ; Only to children children sing, Only to youth will spring be spring. Who is the Bard thus magnified ? When did he sing ? and where abide I 166 THE HARP. Chief of song where poets feast Is the wind-harp which thou seest In the casement at my side. Moli&u harp, How strangely wise thy strain ! Gay for youth, gay for youth (Sweet is art, but sweeter truth), In the hall at summer eve Fate and Beauty skilled to weave. From the eager opening strings Rung loud and bold the song. " Who but loved the wind-harp's note ? How should not the poet doat On its mystic tongue, With its primeval memory, Reporting what old minstrels told Of Merlin locked the harp within, Merlin paying the pain of sin, Pent in a dungeon made of air, And some attain his voice to hear, Words of pain and cries of fear, But pillowed all on melody, As fits the griefs of bards to be. And what if that all-echoing shell, Which thus the buried Past can tell, Should rive the Future, and reveal What his dread folds would fain conceal ? It shares the secret of the earth, And of the kinds that owe her birth Speaks not of self that mystic tone, But of the Overgods alone : It trembles to the cosmic breath, As it heareth, so it saith ; Obeying meek the primal Cause, THE HARP. 167 It is the tongue of mundane laws. And this, at least, I dare affirm, Since genius too has bound and term, There is no bard in all the choir, Not Homer's self, the poet sire, Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure, Or Shakespeare, whom no mind can measure, Nor Collins' verse of tender pain, Nor Byron's clarion of disdain, Scott, the delight of generous boys, Or Wordsworth, Pan s recording voice, Not one of all can put in verse, Or to this presence could rehearse The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The rattle of the kingfisher ; Saw bonfires of the harlot flies In the lowland, when day dies ; Or marked, benighted and forlorn, The first far signal-fire of morn. These syllables that Nature spoke, And the thoughts that in him woke, Can adequately utter none Save to his ear the wind-harp lone. Therein I hear the Parcse reel The threads of man at their humming wheel, The threads of life and power and pain, So sweet and mournful falls the strain. And best can teach its Delphian chord How Nature to the soul is moored, If once again that silent string, As erst it wont, would thrill and ring. 168 Not long ago at eventide, It seemed, so listening, at my side A window rose, and, to say sooth, I looked forth on the fields of youth : I saw fair boys bestriding steeds, I knew their forms in fancy weeds, Long, long concealed by sundering fates, Mates of my youth, yet not my mates, Stronger and bolder far than I, With grace, with genius, well attired, And then as now from far admired, Followed with love They knew not of, With passion cold and shy. O joy, for what recoveries rare ! Renewed, I breathe Elysian air, See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom, - Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb ! Or teach thou, Spring ! the grand recoil Of life resurgent from the soil Wherein was dropped the mortal spoiL ODE. SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL, OONOOED, JULY 4, 185/. O TENDERLY the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire ; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire. The cannon booms from town to town, Our pulses beat not less, ODE. 169 The joy-bells chime their tidings down, Which children's voices bless. For He that flung the broad blue fold O'ermantling land and sea, One third part of the sky unrolled For the banner of the free. The men are ripe of Saxon kind To build an equal state, To take the statute from the mind, And make of duty fate. United States 1 the ages plead, Present and Past in under-song, Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue. For sea and land don't understand, Nor skies without a frown See rights for which the one hand fights By the other cloven down. Be just at home ; then write your scroll Of honour o'er the sea, And bid the broad Atlantic roll, A ferry of the free. And henceforth there shall be no chain, Save underneath the sea The wires shall murmur through the main Sweet songs of liberty. The conscious stars accord above, The waters wild below, 170 BOSTON. And under, through the cable wove, Her fiery errands go. For He that worketh high and wise, Nor pauses in his plan, Will take the sun out of the skies Ere freedom out of man. BOSTON.* SICUT PATRIBUS, SIT DEUS NOB1S. (Atlantic Monthly, 1876.) THE rocky nook with hill-tops three Looked eastward from the farms, And twice each day the flowing sea Took Boston in its arms ; The men of yore were stout and poor, And sailed for bread to every shore. And where they went on trade intent They did what freemen can, Their dauntless ways did all men praise, The merchant was a man. The world was made for honest trade, To plant and eat be none afraid. The waves that rocked them on the deep To them their secret told ; Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep, " Let us be free and bold ! " * Begun before 1860, revised in 1873, and read in FaneuU Hall, Boston, on December 16, 1873, the Centennial Anniversary of the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbour. BOSTON. 171 The honest waves refused to slaves The empire of the ocean caves. Old Europe groans with palaces, Has lords enough and more ; We plant and build by foaming seas A city of the poor ; For day by day could Boston Bay Their honest labour overpay. "We grant no dukedoms to the few, We hold like rights, and shall ; Equal on Sunday in the pew, On Monday in the mall, For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail ? The noble craftsman we promote, Disown the knave and fool ; Each honest man shall have his vote, Each child shall have his school. A union then of honest men, Or union never more again. The wild rose and the barberry thorn Hung out their summer pride, Where now on heated pavements worn The feet of millions stride. Fair rose the planted hills behind Tho good town on the bay, And where the western hills declined The prairie stretched away. 172 BOSTON. What care though rival cities soar Along the stormy coast, Penn's town, New York, and Baltimore, If Boston knew the most ! They laughed to know the world so wide The mountains said, " Good-day ! We greet you well, you Saxon men, Up with your towns and stay ! " The world was made for honest trade, To plant and eat be none afraid. ** For you," they said, "no barriers be, For you no sluggard rest ; Each street leads downward to the sea, Or landward to the west" happy town beside the sea, Whose roads lead everywhere to all ; Than thine no deeper moat can be, No stouter fence, no steeper wall ! Bad news from George on the English throne j " You are thriving well," said he ; " Now by these presents be it known You shall pay us a tax on tea ; 'Tia very small, no load at all, Honour enough that we send the calL " " Not so," said Boston, " good my lord, We pay your governors here Abundant for their bed and board, Six thousand pounds a-year. BOSTON. 173 (Your Highness knows our homely word,) Millions for self-government, But for tribute never a cent" The cargo came 1 and who could blame If Indians seized the tea, And, chest by chest, let down the same, Into the laughing sea ? For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail ? The townsmen braved the English king, Found friendship in the French, And honour joined the patriot ring Low on their wooden bench. bounteous seas that never fail ! day remembered yet ! happy port that spied the sail Which wafted Lafayette ! Pole-star of light in Europe's night, That never faltered from the right Kings shook with fear, old empires crave The secret force to find Which fired the little State to save The rights of all mankind. But right is might through all the world ; Province to province faithful clung, Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled, Till Freedom cheered and joy-bells rung. 174 BOSTON. The sea returning day by day Restores the world-wide mart ; So let each dweller on the Bay Fold Boston in his heart, Till these echoes be choked with sno\vs, Or over the town blue ocean flows. Let the blood of her hundred thousands Throb in each manly vein ; And the wits of all her wisest, Make sunshine in her brain. For you can teach the lightning speech, And round the globe your voices reach. And each shall care for other, And each to each shall bend, To the poor a noble brother, To the good an equal friend. A blessing through the ages thus Shield all thy roofs and towers ! GOD WITH THE FATHERS, SO WITH US, Thou darling town of ours ! THE ADIRONDACS. 17$ THE ADIRONDACS. A JOURNAL. Dedicated to my fellow-travellers in August 1858. Wise and polite, and if I drew Their several portraits, you would own Chaucer had no such worthy crew, Nor Boccace in Docameron. WE crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends, Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach The Adirondac lakes. At Martin's Beach We chose our boats ; each man a boat and guide, Ten men, ten guides, our company all told. Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac, With skies of benediction, to Round Lake, Where all the sacred mountains drew around us, Tahdwus, Seaward, Maclntyre, Baldhead, And other Titans without muse or name. Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on, Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills. We made our distance wider, boat from boat, As each would hear the oracle alone. By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets, Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower, Through scented banks of lilies white and gold, Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day, On through the Upper Saranac, and up Pre Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass \Vinding through grassy shallows in and out, 176 THE ADIRONDACS. Two creeping miles of rushes, pads and sponge, To Follansbee Water and the Lake of Loons. Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed, Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore. A pause and council : then, where near the head Due east a bay makes inward to the land Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank, And in the twilight of the forest noon Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard. We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts, Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof, Then struck a light and kindled the camp-fire. The wood was sovran with centennial trees, Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir, Linden and spruce. In strict society Three conifers, white, pitch, and Norway pine, Five-leaved, three-leaved, and two-leaved, gre\v thereby. Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth, The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower. "Welcome 1 " the wood-god murmured through the leaves, 'Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me. " Evening drew on ; stars peeped through maple-boughs, Which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire. Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks, Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor. Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed, THE ADIRONDACS. 177 Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux, And greet unanimous the joyful change. So fast will Nature acclimate her sons, Though late returning to her pristine ways. Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold ; And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned, Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds. Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air That circled freshly in their forest dress Made them to boys again. Happier that they Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind, At the first mounting of the giant stairs. No placard on these rocks warned to the polls, No door-bell heralded a visitor, No courier waits, no letter came or went, Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold ; The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop, The falling rain will spoil no holiday. We were made freemen of the forest laws, All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends, Essaying nothing she cannot perform. In Adirondac lakes, At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded : Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make His brief toilette : at night, or in the rain, He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn : A paddle in the right hand, or an oar, And in the left, a gun, his needful arms. By turns we praised the stature of our guides, Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp, To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down ; i;8 THE ADIRONDACS. Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount, And wit to trap or take him in his lair. Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent, In winter, lumberers ; in summer, guides ; Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve, Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen 1 No city airs or arts pass current here. Your rank is all reversed ; let men of cloth Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls : They are the doctors of the wilderness, And we the low-prized laymen. In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test Which few can put on with impunity. What make you, master, fumbling at the oar ? Will you catch crabs ? Truth tries pretension here. The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb ; The oar, the guide's. Dare you accept the tasks He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foies, Tell the sun s time, determine the true north, Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods To thread by night the nearest way to camp 1 Ask you, how went the hours ? All day we swept the lake, searched every cove, North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay, Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer, Or whipping its rough surface for a trout ; Or, bathers, diving from the rock at noon ; Challenging Echo by our guns and cries ; Or listening to the laughter of the loon ; Or, in the evening twilight's latest red, Beholding the procession of the pines ; THE ADIRONDACS. 179 Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack, In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist. Hark to that muffled roar ! a tree in the woods Is fallen : but hush ! it has not scared the buck Who stands astonished at the meteor light, Then turns to bound away, is it too late ? Our heroes tried their rifles at a mark, Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five ; Sometimes their wits at sally and retort, With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle ; Or parties scaled the near acclivities Competing seekers of a rumoured lake, Whose unauthenticated waves we named Lake Probability, our carbuncle, Long sought, not found. Two Doctors in the camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain, Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow, and moth ; Insatiate skill in water or in air Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss ; The while, one leaden pot of alcohol Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Orchis and gentian, fern and long whip-scirpus, Rosy polygonum, lake-margin's pride, Hypnuniand hydnum, mushroom, sponge, and moss, Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls. Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed, i8o THE ADIRONDACK. The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp. As water poured through hollows of the hills To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets, So Nature shed all beauty lavishly From her redundant horn. Lords of this realm, Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day Rounded by hours where each outdid the last In miracles of pomp, we must be proud, As if associates of the sylvan gods. We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac, So pure the Alpine element we breathed, So light, so lofty pictures came and went. We trode on air, contemned the distant town, Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge, And how we should come hither with our sons, Hereafter, willing they, and more adroit. Hard fare, hard bed, and comic misery, The midge, the blue-fly, and the mosquito Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands But, on the second day, we heed them not, Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries, Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names. For who defends our leafy tabernacle From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd, Who but the midge, mosquito, and the fly, Which past endurance sting the tender cit, But which we learn to scatter with a smudge, Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn ? THE ADIRONDACS. 181 Our foaming ale we drank from hunters' pans, Ale, and a sup of wine, Our steward gave Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread ; All ate like abbots, and, if any missed Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss With hunters' appetite and peals of mirth. And Stillman, our guides' guide, and Commodore, Crusoe, Crusader, Pius JEneas, said aloud, " Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating Food indigestible : " then murmured some, Others applauded him who spoke the truth. Nor doubt but visi tings of graver thought Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday 'Mid all the hints and glories of the home. For who can tell what sudden privacies Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry Of scholars furloughed from their tasks and let Into this Oreads' fended Paradise, As chapels in the city's thoroughfares, Whither gaunt Labour slips to wipe his brow And meditate a moment on Heaven's rest Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke To each apart, lifting her lovely shows To spiritual lessons pointed home, And as through dreams in watches of the night, So through all creatures in their form and ways Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant, Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense Inviting to new knowledge, one with old. Hark to that petulant chirp ! what ails the warbler? Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye. Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird, Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light, Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky ? 182 THE ADIRONDACS. And presently the sky is changed ; world ! What pictures and what harmonies are thine ! The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene, So like the soul of me, what if 'twere me ? A melancholy better than all mirth, Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect, Or at the foresight of obscurer years ? Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory, Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty Superior to all its gaudy skirts. And, that no day of life may lack romance, The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down A private beam into each several heart. Daily the bending skies solicit man, The seasons chariot him from this exile, The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair, The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along, Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home. With a vermilion pencil mark the day When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront Two of her mates returning with swift oars. One held a printed journal waving high Caught from a late-arriving traveller, Big with great news, and shouted the report For which the world had waited, now firm fact, Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea, And landed on our coast, and pulsating With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries From boat to boat, and to the echoes round, Greet the glad miracle. Thought's new-found path Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways, THE ADIRONDACS. 183 Match God's equator with a zone of art, And lift man's public action to a height Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses, When linked hemispheres attest his deed. We have few moments in the longest life Of such delight and wonder as there grew, Nor yet unsuited to that solitude : A burst of joy, as if we told the fact To ears intelligent : as if grey rock, And cedar grove, and cliff, and lake should know This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind ; As if we men were talking in a vein Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs, And a prime end of the most subtle element Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves ! Bend nearer, faint day-moon ! Yon thundertops, Let them hear well ! 'tis theirs as much as ours. A spasm throbbing through the pedestals Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent, Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill To be a brain, or serve the brain of man. The lightning has run masterless too long ; He must to school and learn his verb and noun, And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage, Spelling with guided tongue man's messages Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea. And yet I marked, even in the manly joy Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat (Perchance I erred), a shade of discontent j Or was it for mankind a generous shame, As of a luck not quite legitimate, Since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part ? Was it a college pique of town and gown, As one within whose memory it burned 184 THE ADIRONDACS. That not academicians, but some lout, Found ten years since the Californian gold ? And now, again, a hungry company Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade, Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools Of science, not from the philosophers, Had won the brightest laurel of all time. Twas always thus, and will be ; hand and head Are ever rivals : but, though this be swift, The other slow, this the Prometheus, And that the Jove, yet, howsoever hid, It was from Jove the other stole his fire, And, without Jove, the good had never been. It is not Iroquois or cannibals, But ever the free race with front sublime, And these instructed by their wisest too, Who do the feat, and lift humanity. Let not him mourn who best entitled was, Nay, mourn not one : let him exult, Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant, And water it with wine, nor watch askance Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit : Enough that mankind eat and are refreshed. We flee away from cities, but we bring The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers, Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of expert. We praise the guide, we praise the forest life ; But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore Of books and arts and trained experiment, Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz ? no, not we ! Witness the shout that shook Wild Tupper Lake ; witness the mute all-hail The joyful traveller gives, when on the verge Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears THE ADJRONDACS. 185 From a log-cabin stream Beethoven's notes On the piano, played with master's hand. " Well done ! " he cries ; " the bear is kept at bay, The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire ; All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold, This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall, This wild plantation will suffice to chase. Now speed the gay celerities of art, What in the desert was impossible Within four walls is possible again, Culture of libraries, mysteries of skill, Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife Of keen competing youths, joined or alone To outdo each other and extort applause. Mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep. Twirl the old wheels ! Time takes fresh start again, On for a thousand years of genius more." The holidays were fruitful, but must end ; One August evening had a cooler breath ; Into each mind intruding duties crept ; Under the cinders burned the fires of home ; Nay, letters found us in our paradise : So in the gladness of the new event We struck our camp and left the happy hills. The fortunate star that rose on us sank not ; The prodigal sunshine rested on the land, The rivers gambolled onward to the sea, And Nature, the inscrutable and mute, Permitted on her infinite repose Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons, As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed. 186 TWO RIVERS. BRAHMA. (Atlantic Monthly, 1858.) IF the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain. They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near ; Shadow and sunlight are the same j The vanished gods to me appear ; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out ; When me they fly, I am the wings ; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven j But thou, meek lover of the good ! Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. TWO RIVERS. (Atlantic Monthly, 1858.) THY summer voice, Musketaquit,* Repeats the music of the rain ; But sweeter rivers pulsing flit Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain. * Musketaquit, the Indian name for the river Concord WALDEINSAMKEIT. 187 Thou in thy narrow banks are pent : The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood, and sea, and firmament ; Through light, through life, it forward flows. I see the inundation sweet, I hear the spending of the stream Through years, through men, through Nature fleet, Through love and thought, through power and dream. Musketaquit, a goblin strong, Of shard and flint makes jewels gay ; They lose their grief who hear his song, And where he winds is the day of day. So forth and brighter fares my stream, Who drink it shall not thirst again ; No darkness stains its equal gleam, And ages drop in it like rain. WALDEINSAMKEIT. (Atlantic Monthly, 1858.) I DO not count the hours I spend In wandering by the sea ; The forest is my loyal friend, Like God it useth me. In plains that room for shadows make Of skirting hills to lie, 1 88 WALDEINSAMKE1T. Bound in by streams which give and take Their colours from the sky ; Or on the mountain-crest sublime, Or down the oaken glade, what have I to do with time ? For this the day was made. Cities of mortals woe-begone Fantastic care derides, But in the serious landscape lone Stern benefit abides. Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy, And merry is only a mask of sad, But, sober on a fund of joy, The woods at heart are glad. There the great Planter plants Of fruitful worlds the grain. And with a million spells enchants The souls that walk in pain. Still on the seeds of all he made The rose of beauty burns ; Through times that wear and forms that fade, Immortal youth returns. The black ducks mounting from the lake, The pigeon in the pines, The bittern's boom, a desert make Which no false art refines. THE ROMANY GIRL. Down in yon watery nook, Where bearded mists divide, The grey old gods whom Chaos knew, The sires of Nature, hide. Aloft, in secret veins of air, Blows the sweet breath of song, O, few to scale those uplands dare, Though they to all belong ! See thou bring not to field or stone The fancies found in books ; Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own, To brave the landscape's looks. Oblivion here thy wisdom is, Thy thrift, the sleep of cares ; For a proud idleness like this Crowns all thy mean affairs. THE ROMANY GIRL. (Atlantic Monthly, 1858.) THE sun goes down, and with him takes The coarseness of my poor attire ; The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher. Pale Northern girls ! you scorn our race ; You captives of your air-tight halls, Wear out in-doors your sickly days, But leave us the horizon walls. 190 DAYS. And if I take yon, dames, to task, And say it frankly without guile, Then you are Gypsies in a mask, And I the lady all the while. If on the heath, below the moon, I court and play with paler blood, Me false to mine dare whisper none, One sallow horseman knows me good. Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain, For teeth and hair with shopmen deal j My swarthy tint is in the grain, The rocks and forest know it real. The wild air bloweth in our lungs, The keen stars twinkle in our eyes, The birds gave us our wily tongues, The panther in our dances flies. You doubt we read the stars on high, Nathless we read your fortunes true ; The stars may hide in the upper sky, But without glass we fathom you. DAYS. (Atlantic Monthly, 1858.) DAUGHTERS of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. THE CHARTISTS COMPLAINT. 191 To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT. (Atlantic Monthly, 1858.) DAY ! hast thou two faces, Making one place two places t One, by humble farmer seen, Chill and wet, unlighted, mean, Useful only, triste and damp, Serving for a labourer's lamp ? Have the same mists another side, To be the appanage of pride, Gracing the rich man's wood and lake, His park, where amber mornings break; And treacherously bright to show His planted isle where roses glow ? O Day ! and is your mightiness A sycophant to smug success ? Will the sweet sky and ocean broad Be fine accomplices to fraud ? O Sun ! I curse thy cruel ray : Back, back to chaos, harlot Day ! 192 THE TEST. THE TEST. (Atlantic Monthly, 1861.) (Musa loquitur.) I HUNG my verses in the wind, Time and tide their faults may find, All were winnowed through and through, Five lines lasted sound and true ; Five were smelted in a pot Than the South more fierce and hot ; These the siroc could not melt, Fire their fiercer flaming felt, And the meaning was more white Than July's meridian light. Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know. Have you eyes to find the five Which five hundred did survive ? I AM the Muse who sung alway By Jove, at dawn of the first day. Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought To fire the stagnant earth with thought : On spawning slime my song prevails, Wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales ; Flushed in the sky the sweet May-morn, Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born. Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race, And Nile substructs her granite base, Tented Tartary, columned Nile, And, under vines, on rocky isle, THE TEST. 193 Or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak, Forward stepped the perfect Greek : That wit and joy might find a tongue, And earth grow civil, HOMER sung. Flown to Italy from Greece, I brooded long and held my peace, For I am wont to sing uncalled, And in days of evil plight Unlock doors of new delight ; And sometimes mankind I appalled With a bitter horoscope, With spasms of terror for balm of hope. Then by better thought I lead Bards to speak what nations need ; So I folded me in fears, And DANTE searched the triple spheres, Moulding Nature at his will, So shaped, so coloured, swift or still, And, sculptor-like, his large design Etched on Alp and Apennine. Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur, Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power, England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before : Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKESPEARE'S wit The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame. Far in the North, where polar night Holds in check the frolic light, 213 I 9 4 THE TEST. In trance npborn past mortal goal The Swede EMANUEL leads the soul. Through snows above, mines underground, The inks of Erebus he found ; Rehearsed to men the damned wails On which the seraph music sails. In spirit-worlds he trod alone, But walked the earth unmarked, unknown. The near by-stander caught no sound, Yet they who listened far aloof Heard rendings of the skyey roof, And felt, beneath, the quaking ground ; And his air-sown, unheeded words, In the next age, are flaming swords. In newer days of war and trade, Romance forgot, and faith decayed, When Science armed and guided war, And clerks the Janus-gates unbar, When France, where poet never grew, Halved and dealt the globe anew, GOETHE, raised o'er joy and strife, Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life, And brought Olympian wisdom down To court and mart, to gown and town ; Stooping, his finger wrote in clay The open secret of to-day. So bloom the unfading petals five, And verses that all verse outlive. THE TITMOUSE. 195 THE TITMOUSE. (Atlantic Monthly, 1862.) You shall not be overbold When you deal with arctic cold, As late I found my lukewarm blood Chilled wading in the snow-choked wood. How should I fight? my foeman fine Has million arms to one of mine : East, west, for aid I looked in vain, East, west, north, south, are his domain. Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home ; Must borrow his winds who there would come. Up and away for life ! be fleet ! The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well in this broad bed lie and sleep, The punctual stars will vigil keep, Embalmed by purifying cold ; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud. Softly, but this way fate was pointing, 'Twas coming fast to such anointing, When piped a tiny voice hard by, Gay and polite, a cheerful rry, Chic-chicadeedee ! saucy note Out of sound heart and merry throat, As if it said, " Good day, good sir ! Fine afternoon, old passenger ! 196 THE TITMOUSE. Happy to meet you in these places, Where January brings few faces." This poet, though he lived apart, Moved by his hospitable heart, Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, To do the honours of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land ; Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, Hopped on the bough then, darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to the spray. Here was this atom in full breath, Hurling defiance at vast death ; This scrap of valour just for play Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat grey, As if to shame my weak behaviour ; I greeted loud my little saviour, You pet ! what dost here ? and what for ? In these woods, thy small Labrador, At this pinch wee San Salvador ! What fire burns in that little chest So frolic, stout, and self-possest ? Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine ; Ashes and jet all hues outshine. Why are not diamonds black and grey> To ape thy dare-devil array ? And I affirm, the spacious North Exists to draw thy virtue forth. I think no virtue goes with size ; THE TITMOUSE. 197 The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension." 'Tis good-will makes intelligence, And I began to catch the sense Of my bird's song : "Live out of doors In the great woods, on prairie floors. I dine in the sun ; when he sinks in the sea, I too have a hole in a hollow tree ; And I like less when Summer beats With stifling beams on these retreats, Than noontide twilights which snow makes With tempest of the blinding flakes. For well the soul, if stout within, Can arm impregnably the skin ; And polar frost my frame defied, Made of the air that blows outside. " With glad remembrance of my debt, I homeward turn ; farewell, my pet ! When here again thy pilgrim comes, He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs. Doubt not, so long as earth has bread, Thou first and foremost shalt be fed ; The Providence that is most large Takes hearts like thine in special charge, Helps who for their own need are strong, And the sky doats on cheerful song. Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant O'er all that mass and minster vaunt ; For men mis-hear thy call in Spring, As 'twould accost some frivolous wing, 198 SONG OF NA TURE. Crying out of the hazel copse, Phe-be ! And, in winter, Chic-a-dee-dee I I think old Caesar must have heard In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in some frosty wold, Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. And I will write our annals new, And thank thee for a better clew, I, who dreamed not when I came here To find the antidote of fear, Now hear thee say in Roman key, Pcean ! Peni, vidi, vici. SONG OF NATURE. (Atlantic Monthly, 1860.) MINK are the night and morning, The pits of air, the gulf of space, The sportive sun, the gibbous moon, The innumerable days. I hide in the solar glory, I am dumb in the pealing song, I rest on the pitch of the torrent, In slumber I am strong. No numbers have counted my tallies, No tribes my house can fill, I sit by the shining Fount of Life, And pour the deluge still. SONG OF NATURE. 199 And ever by delicate powers Gathering along the centuries From race on race the rarest flowers My wreath shall nothing miss. And many a thousand summers My gardens ripened well, And light from meliorating stars With firmer glory fell. I wrote the past in characters Of rock and fire the scroll, The building in the coral sea, The planting of the coal. And thefts from satellites and rings And broken stars I drew, And out of spent and aged things I formed the world anew ; What time the gods kept carnival, Tricked out in star and flower, And in cramp elf and saurian forms They swathed their too much power. Time and Thought were my surveyors, They laid their courses well, They boiled the sea, and piled the layers Of granite, marl, and shell. But he, the man-child glorious, Where tarries he the while ? The rainbow shines his harbinger, The sunset gleams his smile. SONG OF NA TURK. My boreal lights leap upward, Forthright my planets roll, And still the man-child is not born, The summit of the whole. Must time and tide forever run ? Will never my winds go sleep in the west ! Will never my wheels which whirl the sun And satellites have rest ? Too much of donning and doffing, Too slow the rainbow fades, I weary of my robe of snow, My leaves and my cascades ; I tire of globes and races, Too long the game is played ; What without him is summer's pomp. Or winter's frozen shade ? I travail in pain for him, My creatures travail and wait ; His couriers come by squadrons, He comes not to the gate. Twice I have moulded an image, And thrice outstretched my hand, Made one of day and one of night And one of the salt sea-sand. One in a Judaean manger, And one by Avon stream, One over against the mouths of Nile, And one in the Academe. BOSTON HYMN. I moulded kings and saviours, And bards o'er kings to rule ; But fell the starry influence short, The cup was never full. Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more, And mix the bowl again ; Seethe, Fate ! the ancient elements, Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain. Let war, and trade, and creeds, and song, Blend, ripen race on race, The sunburnt world a man shall breed Of all the zones and countless days. No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, My oldest force is good as new, And the fresh rose on yonder thorn Gives back the bending heavens in dew. BOSTON HYMN. READ IN MUSIC HALL, JANUAEY 1, 1863. (Atlantic Monthly, 1863.) THE word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came, As they sat by the seaside, And filled their hearts with flame. BOSTON HYMN. God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more ; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor. Think ye I made this ball A field of havoc and war, Where tyrants great and tyrants small Might harry the weak and poor ? My angel, his name is Freedom, Choose him to be your king ; He shall cut pathways east and west, And fend you with his wing. Lo ! I uncover the land Which I hid of old time in the West, As the sculptor uncovers the statue When he has wrought his best ; I show Columbia, of the rocks Which dip their foot in the seas, And soar to the air-borne flocks Of clouds and the boreal fleece. I will divide my goods ; Call in the wretch and slave : None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have. I will have never a noble, No lineage counted great ; Fishers, and choppers, and ploughmen Shall constitute a state. BOS TON HYMN. 203 Go, cut down trees in the forest, And trim the straightest boughs ; Cut down trees in the forest, And build me a wooden house. Call the people together, The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest field, Hireling and him that hires ; And here in a pine state-house They shall choose men to rule In every needful faculty, In church, and state, and school Lo, now ! if these poor men Can govern the land and sea And make just laws below the sun, As planets faithful be. And ye shall succour men ; 'Tis nobleness to serve ; Help them who cannot help again : Beware from right to swerve. I break your bonds and masterships, And I unchain the slave : Free to his heart and hand henceforth As wind and wandering wave. I cause from every creature His proper good to flow : As much as he is and doeth, So much he shall bestow. 204 BOSTON HYMN. But, laying hands on another To coin his labour and sweat, He goes in pawn to his victim For eternal years in debt To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound ; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound ! Pay ransom to the owner, And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner ? The slave is owner, And ever was. Pay him. North ! give him beauty for rags, And honour, South ! for his shame ; Nevada ! coin thy golden crags With Freedom's image and name. Up ! and the dusky race That sat in darkness long, Be swift their feet as antelopes, And as behemoth strong. Come, East, and West, and North, By races, as snow-flakes, And carry my purpose forth, Which neither halts nor shakes. My will fulfilled shall be, For, in daylight or in dark, My thunderbolt has eyes to see His way home to the mark. MERLIN'S SONG. 205 FREEDOM. ONCE I wished I might rehearse Freedom's paean in my verse, That the slave who caught the strain Should throb until he snapped his chain. But the Spirit said, " Not so ; Speak it not, or speak it low ; Name not lightly to be said, Gift too precious to be prayed, Passion not to be expressed But by heaving of the breast : Yet, wouldst thou the mountain find Where this deity is shrined, Who gives to seas and sunset skies Their unspent beauty of surprise, And, when it lists him, waken can Brute or savage into man ; Or, if in thy heart he shine, Blends the starry fates with thine, Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee, And' makes thy thoughts archangels be ; Freedom's secret wilt thou know ? Counsel not with flesh and blood ; Loiter not for cloak or food ; Right thou feelest, rush to do." MERLIN'S SONG, i. OF Merlin wise I learned a song, Sing it low or sing it loud, It is mightier than the strong, And punishes the proud. I sing it to the surging crowd, 206 MERLIWS SONG. Good men it will calm and cheer ; Bad men it will chain and cage. In the heart of the music peals a strain Which only angels hear ; Whether it waken joy or rage Hushed myriads hark in vain, Yet they who hear it shed their age, And take their youth again. Hear what British Merlin sung, Of keenest eye and truest tongue. Say not, the chiefs who first arrive Usurp the seats for which they strive ; The forefathers this land who found, Failed to plant the vantage ground ; Ever from one who comes to-morrow, Men wait their good and truth to borrow. But wilt thou measure all thy road, See thou lift the lightest load. Who has little, to him who has less can spare, And thou, Cyndyllan's son ! beware Ponderous gold and stuffs to bear, To falter ere thou thy task fulfil, Only the light-armed climb the hill. The richest of all lords is Use, And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse. Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air's salubrity ! Where the star Canope shines in May, Shepherds are thankful and nations gay. The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech : Mask thy wisdom with delight, NEMESIS. 207 Toy with the bow, yet hit the white. Of all wit's uses, the main one Is to live well with who has none. Cleave to thine acre ; the round year Will fetch all fruits and virtues here : Fool and foe may harmless roam, Loved and lovers bide at home. A day for toil, an hour for sport, But for a friend is life too short. NEMESIS. ALREADY blushes in thy cheek The bosom thought which thou must speak ; The bird, how far it haply roam By cloud or isle, is flying home ; The maiden fears, and fearing runs Into the charmed snare she shuns ; And every man, in love or pride, Of his fate is never wide. Will a woman's fan the ocean smooth ? Or prayers the stony Parcse soothe Or coax the thunder from its mark I Or tapers light the chaos dark ? In spite of Virtue and the Muse, Nemesis will have her dues, And all our struggles and our toils Tighter wind the giant coils. 2o8 LOVER* S PETITION. UNA. ROVINQ, roving as it seems, Una lights my clouded dreams ; Still for journeys she is dressed, We wander far by east and west. In the homestead, homely thought ; At my work I ramble not ; If from home chance draw me wide, Half-seen Una sits beside. In my house and garden plot, Though beloved, I miss her not ; But one I seek in foreign places, One face explore in foreign faces. LOVER'S PETITION. GOOD HEAKT that ownest all ! I ask a modest boon and small : Not of lands and towns the gift, Too large a load for me to lilt, But for one proper creature, Which geographic eye, Sweeping the map of western earth, Or the Atlantic coast, from Maine To Powhatan's domain, Could not descry. Is't much to ask in all thy huge creation, So trivial a part, A solitary heart ? LOVE AND THOUGHT. 209 Yet count me not of spirit mean, Or mine a mean demand, For 'tis the concentration And worth of all the land, The sister of the sea, The daughter of the strand, Composed of air and light, And of the swart earth-might. So little to thy poet's prayer Thy large bounty well can spare. And yet I think if she were gone, The world were better left alone. LOVE AND THOUGHT, Two well-assorted travellers use The highway, Eros and the Muse. From the twins is nothing hidden, To the pair is nought forbidden ; Hand in hand the comrades go Every nook of nature through : Each for other they were born, Each can other best adorn ; They know one only mortal grief Past all balsam or relief, When, by false companions crossed, The pilgrims have each other lost. 214 VOLUNTARIES. VOLUNTARIES. (Atlantic Monthly, 1863.) Low and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me ; Tones of penitence and pain, Meanings of the tropic sea ; Low and tender in the cell Where a captive sits in chains, Crooning ditties treasured well From his Afric's torrid plains. Sole estate his sire bequeathed, Hapless sire to hapless son, "Was the wailing song he breathed, And his chain when life was done. What his fault, or what his crime ? Or what ill planet crossed his prime ? Heart too soft and will too weak To front the fate that crouches near, Dove beneath the vulture's beak ; Will song dissuade the thirsty spear t Dragged from his mother's arms and breast, Displaced, disfurnished here, His wistful toil to do his best Chilled by a ribald jeer. Great men in the Senate sate, Sage and hero, side by side, Building for their sons the State, Which they shall rule with pride. They forbore to break the chain VOLUNTARIES. Which bound the dusky tribe, Checked by the owners' fierce disdain, Lured by "Union " as the bribe. Destiny sat by, and said, " Pang for pang your seed shall pay, Hide in false peace your coward head, I bring round the harvest day." FREEDOM all winged expands, Nor perches in a narrow place ; Her broad van seeks unplanted lands ; She loves a poor and virtuous race. Clinging to a colder zone Whose dark sky sheds the snow-flake down, The snow-flake is her banner's star, Her stripes the boreal streamers are. Long she loved the Northman well ; Now the iron age is done, She will not refuse to dwell With the offspring of the Sun ; Foundling of the desert far, Where palms plume, siroccos blaze, He roves unhurt the burning ways In climates of the summer star. He has avenues to God Hid from men of Northern brain, Far beholding, without cloud, What these with slowest steps attain. If once the generous chief arrive To lead him willing to be led, For freedom he will strike and strive, And drain his heart till he be dead. VOLUNTARIES. IN an age of fops and toys, Wanting wisdom, void of right, Who shall nerve heroic boys To hazard all in Freedom's fight, Break sharply off their jolly games, Forsake their comrades gay, And quit proud homes and youthful dames For famine, toil, and fray ? Yet on the nimble air benign Speed nimbler messages, That waft the breath ot grace divine To hearts in sloth and ease. So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, lean. O, WELL for the fortunate soul Which Music's wings infold, Stealing away the memory Of sorrows new and old 1 Yet happier he whose inward sight, Stayed on his subtile thought, Shuts his sense on toys of time, To vacant bosoms brought But best befriended of the God He who, in evil times, Warned by an inward voice, Heeds not the darkness and the dread, Biding by his rule and choice, Feeling only the fiery thread VOLUNTARIES. 213 Leading over heroic ground, Walled with mortal terror round, To the aim which him allures, And the sweet heaven his deed secures ; Peril around, all else appalling, Cannon in front and leaden rain, Him duty through the clarion calling To the van called not in vain. Stainless soldier, on the walls, Knowing this, and knows no more, Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore, Justice after as before, And he who battles on her side, God, though he were ten times slain, Crowns him victor glorified, Victor over death and pain. BLOOMS the laurel which belongs To the valiant chief who fights : I see the wreath, I hear the songs Lauding the Eternal Rights, Victors over daily wrongs : Awful victors, they misguide Whom they will destroy, And their coming triumph hide In our downfall, or our joy : They reach no term, they never sleep, In equal strength through space abide ; Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep, The strong they slay, the swift outstride : 214 MY GARDEN. Fate's grass grows rank in valley clods, And rankly on the castled steep, Speak it firmly, these are gods, All are ghosts beside. MY GARDEN. (Atlantic Monthly, 1866.) IF I could put my woods in song And tell what's there enjoyed, All men would to my gardens throng, And leave the cities void. In my plot no tulips blow, Snow-loving pines and oaks instead ; And rank the savage maples grow From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red. My garden is a forest ledge Which older forests bound ; The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, Then plunge to depths profound. Here once the Deluge ploughed, Laid the terraces one by one ; Ebbing later whence it flowed, They bleach and dry in the sun. The sowers made haste to depart, The wind and the birds which sowed it ; Not for fame, nor by rules of art, Planted these, and tempests flowed it MY GARDEN. 215 Waters that wash iny garden side Play not in Nature's lawful web, They heed not moon or solar tide, Five years elapse from flood to ebb. Hither hasted, in old time, Jove, And every god, none did refuse ; And be sure at last came Love, And after Love, the Muse. Keen ears can catch a syllable, As if one spake to another, In the hemlocks tall, untamable, And what the whispering grasses smother. JEolian harps in the pine Ring with the song of the Fates ; Infant Bacchus in the vine, Far distant yet his chorus waits. Canst thou copy in verse one chime Of the wood-bell's peal and cry, Write in a book the morning's prime, Or match with words that tender sky ? Wonderful verse of the gods, Of one import, of varied tone ; They chant the bliss of their abodes To man imprisoned in his own. Ever the words of the gods resound ; But the porches of man's ear Seldom in this low life's round Are unsealed, that he may hear. 216 NATURE. Wandering voices in the air And murmurs in the wold Speak what I cannot declare, Yet cannot all withhold. When the shadow fell on the lake, The whirlwind in ripples wrote Air-bells of fortune that shine and break, And omens above thought. But the meanings cleave to the lake, Cannot be carried in book or urn ; Go thy ways now, come later back, On waves and hedges still they burn. These the fates of men forecast, Of better men than live to-day ; If who can read them comes at last He will spell in the sculpture, "Stay," NATURE. I. WINTERS know Easily to shed the snow, And the untaught Spring is wise In cowslips and anemonies. Nature, hating art and pains, Baulks and baffles plotting brains J Casualty and Surprise Are the apples of her eyes ; But she dearly loves the poor, NATURE. 217 And, by marvel of her own, Strikes the loud pretender down. For Nature listens in the rose And hearkens in the berry's bell To help her friends, to plague her foes, And like wise God she judges well. Yet doth much her love excel To the souls that never fell, To swains that live in happiness And do well because they please, "Who walk in ways that are unfamed, And feats achieve before they're named. SHE is gamesome and good, But of mutable mood, No dreary repeater now and again, She will be all things to all men. She who is old, but nowise feeble, Pours her power into the people, Merry and manifold without bar, Makes and moulds them what they are, And what they call their city way Is not their way, but hers, And what they say they made to-day, They learned of the oaks and firs. She spawneth men as mallows fresh, Hero and maiden, flesh of her flesh ; She drugs her water and her wheat With the flavours she finds meet, And gives them what to drink and eat ; And having thus their bread and growth, They do her bidding, nothing loath. 2i 8 SEA-SHORE. What's most theirs is not their own, But borrowed in atoms from iron and stone, And in their vaunted works of Art The master-stroke is still her part. SEA-SHORE. I HEARD or seemed to hear the chiding Sea Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to coine ? Am I not always here, thy summer home ? Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve ? My breath thy healthful climate in the heats, My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath ? Was ever building like my terraces ? Was ever couch magnificent as mine ? Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn A little hut suffices like a town. I make your sculptured architecture vain, Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home, And carve the coastwise mountain into caves. Lo ! here is Rome and Nineveh and Thebes, Karnak and Pyramid and Giant's Stairs Half piled or prostrate ; and my newest slab Older than all thy race. Behold the Sea, The opaline, the plentiful and strong, Yet beautiful as is the rose in June, Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July ; Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds, Purger of earth, and medicine of men ; Creating a sweet climate by my breath, Washing out harms and griefs from memory, SEA-SHORE. 219 And, in my matbematic ebb and flow, Giving a hint of that which changes not. Rich arc the sea-gods : who gives gifts but they ? They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls : They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise. For every wave is wealth to Daedalus, Wealth to the cunning artist who can work This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves ! A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift ? I with my hammer pounding evermore The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust, Strewing my bed, and, in another age, Rebuild a continent of better men. Then I unbar the doors : my paths lead out The exodus of nations : I disperse Men to all shores that front the hoary main. I too have arts and sorceries ; Illusion dwells forever with the wave. I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal With credulous and imaginative man ; For, though he scoop my water in his palm, A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds. Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore, I make some coast alluring, some lone isle, To distant men, who must go there, or die. THE AEOLIAN HARP, APRIL. THE April winds are magical And thrill our tuneful frames ; The garden walls are passional To bachelors and dames. The hedge is gemmed with diamonds, The air with Cupids full, The cobweb clues of Rosamond Guide lovers to the pool. Each dimple in the water, Each leaf that shades the rock Can cozen, pique, and flatter, Can parley and provoke. Goodfellow, Puck, and goblins, Know more than any book. Down with your doleful problems, And court the sunny brook. The south-winds are quick-witted, The schools are sad and slow, The masters quite omitted The lore we care to know. MAIDEN SPEECH OF THE ^OLIAN HARP. SOFT and softlier hold me, friends 1 Thanks if your genial care Unbind and give me to the air. Keep your lips or finger-tips For flute or spinet's dancing chips j I await a tenderer touch, I ask more or not so much : THE NUN'S ASPIRATION. 221 Give me to the atmosphere, Where is the wind, my brother, where ? Lift the sash, lay me within, Lend me your ears, and I begin. For gentle harp to gentle hearts The secret of the world imparts ; And not to-day and not to-morrow Can drain its wealth of hope and sorrow ; But day by day, to loving ear Unlocks new sense and loftier cheer. I've come to live with you, sweet friends, This home my minstrel-journeyings ends. Many and subtle are my lays, The latest better than the first, For I can mend the happiest days And charm the anguish of the worst. THE NUN'S ASPIRATION.* THE yesterday doth never smile, The day goes drudging through the while, Yet, in the name of Godhead, I The morrow front, and can defy ; Though I am weak s yet God, when prayed, Cannot withhold his conquering aid. Ah me ! it was my childhood's thought, If He should make my web a blot On life's fair picture of delight, My heart's content would find it right * Originally called " Amita ; " said by Mr. Cabot to be a rendering into verse of a passage in the diary of Mr. Emerson's aunt, Miss Mary Moody Emerson. THE NUN'S ASPIRATION. But 0, these waves and leaves, When happy stoic Nature grieves, No human speech so beautiful As their murmurs mine to lulL On this altar God hath built I lay my vanity and guilt ; Nor me can Hope or Passion urge Hearing as now the lofty dirge Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn, Nature's funeral high and dim, Sable pageantry of clouds, Mourning summer laid in shrouds. Many a day shall dawn and die, Many an angel wander by, And passing, light my sunken turf Moist perhaps by ocean surf, Forgotten amid splendid tombs, Yet wreathed and hid by summer blooms. On earth I dream ; I die to be : Time, shake not thy bald head at me. I challenge thee to hurry past Or for my turn to fly too fast. Think me not numbed or halt with age, Or cares that earth to earth ; engage, Caught with love's cord of twisted beams, Or mired by climate's gross extremes, I tire of shams, I rush to be : I pass with yonder comet free, Pass with the comet into space Which mocks thy seons to embrace ; JEons which tardily unfold Realm beyond realm, extent untold ; No early morn, no evening late, Realms self-upheld, disdaining Fate, Whose shining sons, too great for fame, HYMN. 223 Never heard thy weary name ; Nor lives the tragic bard to say How drear the part I held in one, How lame the other limped away. RUBIES. THEY brought me rubies from the mine, And held them to the sun ; I said, they are drops of frozen wine From Eden's vats that run. I looked again, I thought them hearts Of friends to friends unknown ; Tides that should warm each neighbouring life Are locked in sparkling stone. But fire to thaw that ruddy snow, To break enchanted ice, And give love's scarlet tides to flow, When shall that sun arise I HYMN. SUNG AT THE SECOND CHURCH, BOSTON, AT THE ORDINATION OF REV. CHANDLER ROBBINS. WE love the venerable house Our fathers built to God ; In heaven are kept their grateful vows, Their dust endears the sod. 224 HYMN. Here holy thoughts a light have shed From many a radiant face, And prayers of humble virtue made The perfume of the place. And anxious hearts have pondered here The mystery of life, And prayed the eternal Light to clear Their doubts, and aid their strife. From humble tenements around Came up the pensive train, And in the church a blessing found That filled their homes again ; For faith, and peace, and mighty love That from the Godhead flow, Showed them the life of Heaven above Springs from the life below. They live with God ; their homes are dust -; Yet here their children pray, And in this fleeting lifetime trust To find the narrow way. On him who by the altar stands, On him Thy blessing fall, Speak through his lips Thy pure commands, Thou heart that lovest all THE PAST. 22$ CUPIDO. THE solid, solid universe Is pervious to Love ; With bandaged eyes he never errs, Around, below, above. His blinding light He flingeth white On God's and Satan's brood, And reconciles By mystic wiles The evil and the good. THE PAST. THE debt is paid, The verdict said, The Furies laid, The plague is stayed, All fortunes made ; Turn the key and bolt the door, Sweet is death forevermore. Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin, Nor murdering hate, can enter in. All is now secure and fast ; Not the gods can shake the Past ; Flies-to the adamantine door Bolted down forevermore. None can re-enter there, No thief so politic, No Satan with a royal trick Steal in by window, chink, or hole, 2X5 226 TERMINUS. To bind or unbind, add what lacked, Insert a leaf, or forge a name, New-face or finish what is packed, Alter or mend eternal Fact. TERMINUS.* (Atlantic Monthly, 1867.) IT is time to be old, To take in sail : The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said " No more 1 No farther shoot Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. Fancy departs : no more invent ; Contract thy firmament To compass of a tent. There's not enough for this and that, Make thy option which of two ; Economise the failing rfVter, Not the less revere the Giver, Leave the many and hold the few. Timely wise accept the terms, Soften the fall with wary foot ; * Dr. Holmes says that in 1866, having left home on one of his last lecturing trips, he met his son, Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, at Breevort House, in New York. Then and in that place he read to his son the above poem. " This was the first time that Dr. Emerson recognised the fact that his father felt himself growing old." Mr. Emerson was 03 years of age. TERMINUS. 227 A little while Still plan and smile, And, fault of novel germs, Mature the unfallen fruit. Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, "Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to- bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins, Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the gladiators, halt and numb." As the bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime : <{ Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed ; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And every wave is charmed." (SUmtrafns anfc fragments. QUATRAINS AND FRAGMENTS. HIGH was her heart, and yet was well inclined, Her manners made of bounty well refined ; Far capitals and marble courts, her eye still seemed Minstrels, and kings, and high-born dames, and of the best that be. "SUTTM CUIQUE." WILT thou seal up the avenues of ill ? Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill HUSH! EVERT thought is public, Every nook is wide ; Thy gossips spread each whisper, And the gods from side to side. 232 QUATRAINS AND FRAGMENTS. HE who has no hands Perforce must use his tongue j Foxes are so cunning Because they are not strong. QUIT the hut, frequent the palace, Reck not what the people say ; For still, where'er the trees grow biggest, Huntsmen find the easiest way. EVER the Poet from the land Steers hi3 bark and trims his sail ; Right out to sea his courses stand, New worlds to find in pinnace frail. To clothe the fiery thought In simple words succeeds, For still the craft of genius is To mask a king in weeds. QUATRAINS AND FRAGMENTS. 233 Go thou to thy learned task, I stay with the flowers of spring : Do thou of the ages ask What me the hours will bring. TRUE Brahmin, in the morning meadows wet, Expound the Vedas of the violet, Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop, See the plum redden, and the beurre stoop. HE took the colour of his vest From rabbit's coat or grouse's breast ; For, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide, So walks the woodman, unespied. THE gale that wrecked you on the sand, It helped my rowers to row ; The storm is my best galley hand And drives me where I go. 234 QUATRAINS AND FRAGMENTS. EXCELSIOR. OVER his head were the maple buds, And over the tree was the moon, And over the moon were the starry studs That drop from the angels' shoon. S. H. (1856.) WITH beams December planets dart His cold eye truth and conduct scanned, July was in his sunny heart, October in his liberal hand. BORROWING. FROM THE FRENCH. SOME of your hurts you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you endured From evils which never arrived 1 I AM the owner of the Sphere, Of the seven stars and solar year, Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's brain. * Samuel Hoar, died 1856. QUATRAINS AND FRAGMENTS. 235 FROM ALCUIN. THE sea is the road of the bold, Frontier of the wheat-sown plains, The pit wherein the streams are rolled And fountain of the rains. BOON Nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold, And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old : But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why, Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die. HER planted eye to-day controls, Is in the morrow most at home, And sternly calls to being souls That curse her when they come. HOROSCOPE. ERE he was born, the stars of fate Plotted to make him rich and great : When from the womb the babe was loosed, The gate of gifts behind him closed. 236 QUATRAINS AND FRAGMENTS. CLIMACTERIC, I AM not wiser for my age, Nor skilful by my grief ; Life loiters at the book's first page, Ah ! could we turn the leaf. HERI, CRAS, HODIB. SHINES the last age, the next with hope is seen, To-day slinks poorly off unmarked between : Future or Past no richer secret folds, friendless Present ! than thy bosom holds. NIGHT-DREAMS trace on Memory's wall Shadows of the thoughts of day, And thy fortunes, as th^y fall, The bias of the will betray. LOVE on his errand bound to go Can swim the flood and wade through snow, Where way is none, 'twill creep and wind And eat through Alps its home to find. QUATRAINS AND FRAGMENTS. 237 THOUGH love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, " 'Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die." WELL and wisely said the Greek, Be thou faithful, but not fond ; To the altar's foot thy fellow seek, The Furies wait beyond. TEST of the poet is knowledge of love, For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove j Never was poet, of late or of yore, Who was not tremulous with love-lore. SHAKESPEARE. I SEE all human wits Are measured but a few \ Unmeasured still my Shakespeare sits, Lone as the blessed Jew. 238 QUATRAINS AND FRAGMENTS. HER passions the shy violet From Hafiz never hides ; Love-longings of the raptured bird The bird to him confides. NATURE IN LEASTS. As sings the pine-tree in the wind, So sings in the wind a sprig of the pine ; Her strength and soul has laughing France Shed in each drop of wine. GIFTS of one who loved me, 'Twas high time they came ; When he ceased to love me Time they stopped for shame. THERE is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all ; And where it cometh, all tilings are ; And it cometh everywhere. QUATRAINS AND FRAGMENTS. 239 A MOODY child and wildly wise Pursued the game with joyful eyes, Which chose, like meteors, their way, And rived the dark with private ray : They overleapt the horizon's edge, Searched with Apollo's privilege ; Through man and woman and sea and star, Saw the dance of nature forward far ; Through worlds and races and terms and times Saw musical order and pairing rhymes. {Translations* 16 TRANSLATIONS. FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ.* BUTLER, fetch the ruby wine Which with sudden greatness fills us ; Pour for me, who in my spirit Fail in courage and performance, Bring the philosophic stone, Karun's treasure, Noah's life ; Haste, that by thy means I open All the doors of luck and life. Bring me, boy, the fire-water Zoroaster sought in dust : * " The poems of Hafiz are held by the Persians to be allegori- cal and mystical. His German editor, Von Hammer, remarks on the following poem that, ' though in appearance anacreon- tic, it may be regarded as one of the best of those compositions which earned for Hafiz the honourable title of ' Tongue of the Secret.' "MR. EMBBSON'S Note. 244 TRANSLA TIONS. To Hafiz, revelling, 'tis allowed To pray to Matter and to Fire. Bring the wine of Jamschid's glass, Which shone, ere time was, in the Neaut ; Give it me that through its virtue I, as Jamschid, see through worlds. Wisely said the Kaisar Jamschid, " Thia world's not worth a barleycorn j n Bring me, boy, the nectar cnp, Since it leads to Paradise. Flute and lyre lordly speak, Lees of wine outvalue crowns. Hither bring the veiled beauty Who in ill-famed houses sits : Lead her forth : my honest name Freely barter I for wine. Bring me, boy, the fire-water, Drinks the lion the woods burn. Give it me that I storm heaven, Tear the net from the arch-wolf, Wine, wherewith the Houris teach Angels the way to Paradise. On the glowing coals I'll set it, And therewith my brain perfume. Bring me wine, through whose effulgence Jam and Chosroes yielded light : Wine, that to the flute I sing Where is Jam, and where is Kanss, TRANSLATIONS. 245 Bring the blessing of old times ; Bless the old departed Shahs ; Bring it me, the Shah of hearts. Bring me wine to wash me clean, Of the weather-stains of care, See the countenance of luck. "While I dwell in spirit-gardens, Wherefore sit I shackled here ? Lo, this mirror shows me all. Drunk, I speak of purity, Beggar, I of lordship speak. When Hafiz in his revels sings, Shouteth Johra in her sphere. Fear the changes of a day : Bring wine which increases life, Since the world is all untrue, Let the trumpets thee remind How the crown of Kobad vanished, Be not certain of the world ; 'Twill not spare to shed thy blood. Desperate of the world's affair, Came I running to the wine-house. Give me wine which maketh glad, That I may my steed bestride, Through the course career with Rusteny Gallop to my heart's content Give me, boy, the ruby cup Which unlocks the heart with wino, 246 TRANSLATIONS. That I reason quite renounce, And plant banners on the worlds. Let us make our glasses kiss, Let us quench the sorrow-cinders : To-day let us drink together. Whoso has a banquet dressed, Is with glad mind satisfied, Scaping from the snares of Dews. Alas for youth ! 'tis gone in wind, Happy he who spent it well. Give me wine, that I o'erleap Both worlds at a single spring. Stole, at dawn, from glowing spheres Call of Houris to mine ear : "0 happy bird ! delicious soul ! Spread thy pinion, break the cage ; Sit on the roof of the seven domes, Where the spirit takes repose." In the time of Bisurdschimihr, Menutscheher's beauty shined, On the beaker of Nushirvan, Wrote they once in elder times, 1 ' Hear the Counsel, learn of us Sample of the course of things j Earth it is a place of sorrow, Scanty joys are here below, Who has nothing has no sorrow. " TRANSLATIONS. 247 Where is Jam and where his cup ? Solomon and his mirror, where ? Which of the wise masters knows What time Kauss and Jam existed ? When those heroes left this world, Left they nothing but their names. Bind thy heart not to the earth, When thou goest come not back. Fools squander on the world their hearts. League with it is feud with heaven ; Never gives it what thou wishest. A cup of wine imparts the sight Of the five heaven-domes with nine steps : Who so can himself renounce, Without support shall walk thereon. Who discreet is, is not wise. Give me, boy, the kaiser cup, Which rejoices heart and soul ; Under type of wine and cup Signify we purest love. Youth like lightning disappears, Life goes by us as the wind : Leave the dwelling with six doors, And the serpent with nine heads ; Life and silver spend thou freely, If thou honourest the soul 248 TRANSLATIONS. Haste into the other life ; All is nought save God alone. Give me, boy, this toy of daemons : "When the cup of Jam was lost, Him availed the world no more. Fetch the wine-glass made of ice, "Wake the torpid heart with wine. Every Uod of loam below us Is a skull of Alexander ; Oceans are the blood of princes ; Desert sands the dust of beauties. More than one Darius was there Who the whole world overcame, But since these gave up the ghost, Thinkest thou they never were ? Boy, go from me to the Shah, Say to him, Shah, crowned as Jam, Win thou first the poor man's heart, Then the glass ; so know the world. Empty sorrows from the earth Canst thou drive away with wine. Now in thy throne's recent beauty, In the flowing tide of power, Moon of fortune, mighty king, Whose tiara sheddeth lustre, Peace secure to fish and fowl, Heart and eye -sparkle to saints ; Shoreless is the sea of praise, TRANSLATIONS. 249 I content me with a prayer. From Nisami's poet-works, Highest ornament of speech, Here a verse will I recite, Verse as beautiful as pearls : " More kingdoms wait thy diadem Than are known to thee by name ; Thee may sovereign destiny Grant a victory every morn." FROM THE SAME, OF Paradise, hermit wise, Let us renounce the thought. Of old therein our names of sin Allah recorded not. Who dear to God on earthly sod No corn-grain plants, The same is glad that life is had, Though corn he wants. Thy mind the mosque and cool kiosk, Spare fast, and orisons ; Mine me allows the drinking house. And sweet chase of the nuns. 250 TRANSLATIONS. O just fakeer, with brow austere, Forbid me not the vine ; On the first day, poor Hafiz' clay Was kneaded up with wine. He is no dervise, Heaven slights his service, "Who shall refuse There in the banquet to pawn his blanket For Schiraz' juice. Who his friend's skirt or hem of his shirt, Shall spare to pledge, To him Eden's bliss and Angel's kiss Shall want their edge. Up ! Hafiz, grace from high God's face Beams on thee pure ; Shy thou not hell, and trust thou well, Heaven is secure. SONNET OF MICHAEL ANGELO BFONAROTTL NEVER did sculptor's dream unfold A form which marble doth not hold In its white block ; yet it therein shall find Only the hand secure and bold Which still obeys the mind. So hid in thee, thou heavenly dame, The ill I shun, the good I claim ; TRANSLATIONS. 25 r I alas ! not well alive, Miss the aim whereto I strive. Not love, nor beauty's pride, Nor Fortune, nor thy coldness, can I chide, If, whilst within thy heart abide Both death and pity, my unequal skill Fails of the life, but draws the death and ill. THE EXILE. PROM THE PERSIAN OF HERMAN!. IN Farsistan the violet spreads Its leaves to the rival sky ; I ask how far is the Tigris flood, And the vine that grows thereby ? Except the amber morning wind, Not one salutes me here ; There is no lover in all Bagdat To offer the exile cheer. I know that thou, O morning wind ! O'er Kernan's meadow blowest, And thou, heart -warming nightingale I My father's orchard knowest. 252 TRANSLA TIONS. The merchant hath stuffs of price, And gems from the sea- washed strand, And princes offer me grace To stay in the Syrian land ! But what is gold for, but for gifts ? And dark, without love, is the day ; And all that I see in Bagdat Is the Tigris to float me away. FROM HAFIZ. I SAID to heaven that glowed above, hide yon sun-filled zone, Hide all the stars you boast ; For, in the world of love And estimation true, The heaped-up harvest of the moon Is worth one barley-corn at most, The Pleiads' sheaf but two. IF my darling should depart, And search the skies for prouder friends, God forbid my angry heart In other love should seek amends. TRANSLATIONS. 353 When the blue horizon's hoop Me a little pinches here, Instant to my grave I stoop, And go find thee in the sphere. BETHINK, poor heart, what bitter kind of jest Mad Destiny this tender stripling played ; For a warm breast of maiden to his breast, She laid a slab of marble on his head. THEY say, through patience, chalk Becomes a ruby stone ; Ah, yes ! but by the true heart's blood The chalk is crimson grown. FRIENDSHIP. THOU foolish Hafiz ! Say, do churls Know the worth of Oman's pearls ? Give the gem which dims the moon To the noblest, or to none. 254 TRANS LA TIONS. DEABEST, where thy shadow falls, Beauty sits and Music calls ; Where thy form and favour come, All good creatures have their home. ON prince or bride no diamond stone Half so gracious ever shone, As the light of enterprise Beaming from a young man's eyes. FKOM OMAR KHAY YAM. EACH spot where tulips prank their state Has drunk the life-blood of the great ; The violets yon field which stain Are moles of beauties Time hath slain. HE who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere. TRANSLATIONS. 255 ON two days it steads not to run from thy grave, The appointed, and the unappointed day ; On the first, neither balm or physician can save, Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay. FROM IBN JEMIN. Two things thou shalt not long for, if thou love a mind serene ; A woman to thy wife, though she were a crowned queen ; And the second, borrowed money, though the smiling lender say That he will not demand the debt until the Judgment Day. TO THE SHAH. FROM HAFIZ. THY foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down, Poises Arcturus aloft morning and evening his spear. TO THE SHAH. FROM ENWERI. NOT in their houses stand the stars, Put o'er the pinnacles of thine ! 256 TRANSLATIONS. TO THE SHAH. PROM ENWERT. FROM thy worth and weight the stars gravitate, And the equipoise of heaven is thy house's equipoise. THE FLUTE. FROM HILALI. HARK what, now loud, now low, the pining flute com- plains, Without tongue, yellow-cheeked, full of winds that wail and sigh ; Saying, Sweetheart ! the old mystery remains, If I am I ; thou, thou ; or thou art I \ SONO OF 8EYD NIMETOLLAH OF KUHISTAN. [Among the religious customs of the dervishes is an astro- nomical dance, in which the dervish imitates the movements of the heavenly bodies, by spinning on his own axis, whilst at the same time he revolves round the Sheikh in the centre, repre- senting the sun ; and, as he spins, he sings the song of Seyd Nimetollah of Kuhistan.] SPIN the hall ! I reel, I burn, Nor head from foot can I discern, Nor my heart from love of mine, Nor the wine- cup from the wine. TRANSLATIONS. 257 All my doing, all my leaving, Reaches not to my perceiving ; Lost in whirling spheres I rove, And know only that I love. I am seeker of the stone, Living gem of Solomon ; From the shore of souls arrived, In the sea of sense I dived ; But what is land, or what is wave, To me who only jewels crave? Love is the air-fed fire intense, And my heart the frankincense ; As the rich aloes flames, I glow, Yet the censer cannot know. I'm all-knowing, yet unknowing ; Stand not, pause not, in my going. Ask not me, as Muftis can, To recite the Alcoran ; Well I love the meaning sweet, I tread the book beneath my feet. Lo ! the God's love blazes higher, Till all difference expire. What are Moslems ? what are Giaours ? All are Love's, and all are ours. 217 258 TRA NSLA TIONS. I embrace the true believers, But I reck not of deceivers. Firm to Heaven my bosom clings, Heedless of inferior things ; Down on earth there, underfoot, What men chatter know I not CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE CHIEF EVENTS CONNECTED WITH MR. EMERSON'S LIFE. 1800. John Brown born. 1802. George Ripley born. 1803. Born at Boston, 25th May. 1805. William Lloyd Garrison born. 1807. J. G. Whittier born. 1807. H. W. Longfellow born. x810. Margaret Fuller born. 1810. William Henry Channing born. 1810. Theodore Barker born 1810. Charles Brocken Brown died. 1811. Father died. 1811. Entered Public Grammar School 1813. Jones Yery born. 1817. Entered Harvard College. 260 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 1817. Henry D. Thoreau born. 1818. William Ellery Charming (poet), born. 1819. Walt Whitman born. 1823. Began to study Theology. 1826. "Approbated" to preach. 1826-7. Spent winter in the south, on account of ill health. 1829. Installed minister of Unitarian Church in Boston, 1829. Married Ellen Louisa Tucker. 1830. Preached at Ordination of H. B. Goodwin, Concord. Discourse afterwards printed. 1831. Anti-Slavery lecture given in his church, 1832. Mrs. Emerson died of consumption. 1832. Resigned his pulpit. 1833. Visited Europe saw the Carlyles, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. 1834. Removed to the old Manse, Concord. 1834. Alcott's " Temple School" opened. 1834. Brother, Edward Bliss Emerson, died at Porto Rico. 1835. First met Harriet Martinearu 1835. Began to lecture, February. 1835. Historical address on the Second Centennial Anniversary of Incorporation of Concord, 12th September. 1835. Married Miss Lydia Jackson, September, and settled at the house he occupied till his death. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 261 1836. Read Poem at completion of Concord Monument. 1836. Brother, Charles Chauncy Emerson, died. 1836. Eldest son, Waldo, born. 1836. First met Alcott 1836. First met Margaret Fuller. 1836. Essay, "Nature," published anonymously. (It took twelve years to sell 500 copies.) 1836. Edited Sartor Resartus. The sale yielded 150 for Carlyle. 1836. Transcendental Club founded. 1837. Addressed the Phi-Beta Kappa Society on " The American Scholar." 1837. Brownson's Quarterly Review commenced. 1838. Edited Carlyle's Essays, 3 vols. 1838. Took action in behalf of the Cherokee Indians. 1838. Gave his "Address" to the Harvard Divinity Class. 1838. Lectured at Dartmouth on " Literary Ethics." 1839. Daughter, Ellen, born February. 1840. The Dial commenced July. 1840. " Essays " (first series) published. 1841. Brook Farm Community organised. During this and following years many communities on Fourier's principles and otherwise were started and failed. That at Brook Farm adopted Fourier's principles in 1844. 262 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 1841. Lecture on " Man the Reformer," "The Times," "The Conservative," and "The Method of Nature." 1842. Edited the Dial. 1842. Son, Waldo, died. (See "Threnody.") 1S42. Dr. William Ellery Channing died (born 1780). 1843. Edited Carlyle's Past and Present, 1844. Address at Concord on West India Emancipation. 1844. " Essays " (second series) published. 1844. The Dial discontinued. 1844. Lectures on "New England Reformers" and " The Young American." 1847. Poems published. 1847. Visited England. Delivered lectures in various places, including those on "Representative Men." Saw, among others, Macaulay, Leigh Hunt, Arthur Helps, Dr. Carpenter, Mrs. Somerville, Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Hallam, and A. H. Clough. 1847. Massachusetts Quarterly Review commenced. Emerson one of the editors, but only nominally. 1849. First met Frederika Bremer. 1849. Miscellanies published. 1850. Representative Men published. 1850. Margaret Fuller drowned, with her husband and child, 16th July. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 263 1852. "Welcomed Kossuth. 1852. Memoirs of Margaret Fulkr, by Emerson, W. H. Charming, and J. F. Clarke, published. 1852. Theodore Parker dedicated his Ten Hermans on Eeligion to Emerson. 1853. Mother died. 1854. Lectured at New York on the Fugitive Slave Law. 1855. Kead Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," and con- gratulated the author. 1855. Delivered an Anti-Slavery Lecture at Boston. 1856. English Traits published. 1856. Addressed Women's Rights Convention. 1856. Charles Sumner struck down, 22nd May. Spoke at Indignation Meeting, 26th May. 1856. Spoke at Kansas Relief Meeting, 10th September. 1858. Addressed Middlesex County Fair on "Farming. ' 1859. Addressed meeting at Burns's Celebration, Boston. 1859. Spoke on behalf of John Brown, 18th November, 2nd December. 1859. John Brown executed, 2nd December. 1860. Conduct of Life published. 2500 copies sold in two days. 1860. Theodore Parker died. 1861. Secession War broke out. 264 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 1861. Spoke at Anti-Slavery Meeting, amid uproar, January. 1862. Lectured at Washington on " American Civilisa- tion." Lincoln and members of his Cabinet were present. Afterwards Lad a conferpnre with Lincoln on Slavery. 1862. H. D. Thoreau died. 1863. Slaves emancipated. 1864. Contributed preface to an edition of Saadi's Gulestan. 1865. Lee surrendered to Grant. 1865. Lincoln assassinated. Addressed meeting on the subject. 1865. Edited Thoreau's works. 1867. Addressed meeting for dedication of the Soldiers' Monument, Concord, 19th April. 1867. Addressed Inauguration Meeting of the Free Religious Association. 1867. Appointed Overseer of Harvard University, and received honorary degree of LL. D. 1867. Addressed Phi Beta Kappa Society on the " Pro- gress of Culture." 1867. " May-Day, and other Poems " published. 1867. Mrs. Ripley died. 1870. Contributed preface to Plutarch's Morals. 1870. Society and Solitude published. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 265 1871. Visited California, May and June, 1871. Addressed Massachusetts Historical Society at the Scott Centennial, 15th August. 1872. House burned down, 24th July. 1872, Attended welcome to J. A. Froude, 15th October. 1S72. Visited Europe and Egypt, accompanied by his daughter Ellen, October. 1873. Publicly welcomed on his return to Concord, and found his house had been rebuilt precisely in the old form. 1873. Delivered Addresses at Dedication of the Free Library, 1st October. 1873. Read poem "Boston "at Centennial celebration, 16th December. 1874. Reception given to him by Radical Club, 31st December. 1874. Nominated for Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University. Received 500 votes. Disraeli elected. 1874. Parnassus published. 1875. Delivered address at Centennial of the Concord fight, 19th April. 1875. Letters and Social Aims published. 1876. Select Poems published. 1878. Fortune of the Republic published. 1878. William Cullen Bryant died (born 1794). 266 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 1879. Lectured on "Memory" before the Concord School of Philosophy, and on "Eloquence" at Cambridge, and on "The Preacher" before the Harvard Divinity School 1879. William Lloyd Garrison died. 1879. Contributed General Introduction to The Hundred Greatest Men. 1880. Lectured on " Life and Letters in New England," before the Concord Lyceum. (His hundredth lecture before this body.) 1880. Lecture on "Natural Aristocracy" before the Concord School of Philosophy. 1880. Jones Very died. 1881. Carlyle died. Read a paper on Carlyle before the Massachusetts Historical Society. 1882. Longfellow died. 1882. Died at Concord, 27th April. NOTE. The following list gives the contents of the volumes published under Mr. Emerson's sanction. Those marked a appeared in the "Select Poems" (1876). POEMS (1847). aThe Sphinx aFate aEach and All aGuy aThe Problem Tact To Rhea j aHamatreya aThe Visit Good- Bye aUriel aThe Rhodora aThe World -Soul j aThe Humble-Bee aAlphonso of Castile Berrying wMithridates aThe Snow-Storm To J. W. aWood-notes, Part I. 268 NOTE. a Wood-notes, Part II. aMonadnoc aFable Ode Inscribed to W. H. Channing aAstraea aEtienne do la Boece "Suum Cuique" Compensation aForbearanco The Park aThe Forerunners a" Sursum Corda" aOde to Beauty aGive All to Love To Ellen aTo Eva Thine Eyes Still Shined aThe Amulet Eros aHermione alnitial Love aThe Daemonic and Celestial Love The Apology aMerlin, Part I. Merlin, Part II. aBacchus Loss and Gain Merops The House aSaadi Holidays Painting and Sculpture From the Persian of Hafiz From the Persian of Hafiz aXeflophanes aTha Day's Ration Blight aMusketaquid aDirge aThrenody aConcord Monument NOTE. 269 May-Day The Adirondacs MAY-DAY AND OTHER PIECES (1867). NATURE AND LIFE Nature aThe Romany Girl OCCASIONAL AND MISCEL- LANEOUS PIECES aBrahma Fate Freedom aOde, Concord, July 4, 1857 aBoston Hymn aVoluntaries Love and Thought Lover's Petition Una aLetters Rubies Merlin's Song ELEMENTS The Test ^Experience Solution Compensation aDays The Chartist's Com- plaint aMy Garden aThe Titmouse aSea-Shore aSoiig of Nature aTwo Rivers aWaldeinsamkeit aTerminus The Past The Last Farewell [by E. B. Emerson] In Memoriam 270 NOTE. Polities ! aArt Heroism Spiritual Laws Character unity Culture ^Friendship aWorship aBeauty Quatrains ^Manners Translations The following additional pieces appeared in " Select Poems " : Boston April Hymn, ' ' We love the Maiden Speech of the venerable house ' jEolian Harp The Harp Cupido The Nun's Aspiration Wealth ***** THE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, KEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE- AUTHORISED VERSION. Ctmon 8vo, Cloth, Price 6s. PEER GYNT: A Dramatic Poem. BY HENRIK IBSEN. Translated by WILLIAM AND CHARLES ARCHER. This Translation^ though unrhymed, preserves through- cut the various rhythms of the original. " To English readers this will not merely be a new work of the Norwegian poet, dramatist, and satirist, but it will also be a new Ibsen. . . . Here is the imaginative Ibsen, indeed, the Ibsen of such a boisterous, irresistible fertility of fancy that one breathes with difficulty as one follows him on his headlong course. . . ' Peer Gynt ' is a fantastical satirical drama of enormous interest, and the present translation of it is a masterpiece of. fluent, powerful, graceful, and literal rendering." The Daily Chronicle. London : WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, 24 Warwick Lane. IBSEN'S PROSE DRAMAS EDITED BY WILLIAM ARCHER. IN FIVE VOLUMES. Crown 8v0, Clolh^ Price 35-. 6J. Per Volume. VOL. I. "A DOLL'S HOUSE," "THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH," and "THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY." VOL. II. "GHOSTS," "AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE," and "THE WILD DUCK." VOL III. "LADY INGER OF OSTR&T," "THE VIKINGS AT HELGELAND," "THE PRETENDERS." VOL IV.' ' EMPEROR AND GALILEAN." With an Introductory Note by WILLIAM ARCHER. VOL. V. "ROSMERSHOLM"; "THE LADY FROM THE SEA"; "HEDDA GABLER." Translated by WILLIAM ARCHER. London : WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. THE CANTERBURY POETS. EDITED BY WILLIAM SHARP. I/- VOLS., SQUARE 8vo. PHOTOGRAVURE EDITION, 2/-. Christian Year. Milton's Paradise Lost. Coleridge. Jacobite Ballads. Longfellow. 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