The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
AMERICAN SONGS AND LYRICS
The Wild Honeysuckle.
Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouched thy honey’d blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches
greet;
No roving foot
shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke
a tear.
By Nature’s self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulgar
eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring
by;
Thus quietly thy
summer goes,—
Thy days declining
to repose.
Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future
doom;
They died—nor were those flowers
more gay—
The flowers that did in Eden
bloom;
Unpitying frosts
and Autumn’s power
Shall leave no
vestige of this flower.
From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being
came;
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the
same;
The space between
is but an hour,
The frail duration
of a flower.
P. FRENEAU.
Song.
Who has robbed the ocean cave,
To tinge thy lips with coral
hue?
Who from India’s distant wave
For thee those pearly treasures
drew?
Who from yonder
orient sky
Stole the morning
of thine eye?
Thousand charms, thy form to deck,
From sea, and earth, and air
are torn;
Roses bloom upon thy cheek,
On thy breath their fragrance
borne.
Guard thy bosom
from the day,
Lest thy snows
should melt away.
But one charm remains behind,
Which mute earth can ne’er
impart;
Nor in ocean wilt thou find,
Nor in the circling air, a
heart.
Fairest! wouldst
thou perfect be,
Take, oh, take
that heart from me.
J. SHAW.
“My Life is Like the Summer Rose.”
My life is like the summer rose
That opens to the morning
sky,
But ere the shades of evening close,
Is scattered on the ground—to
die!
Yet on the rose’s humble bed
The sweetest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept the waste to see,—
But none shall weep a tear for me!
My life is like the autumn leaf
That trembles in the moon’s
pale ray;
Its hold is frail,—its date
is brief,
Restless,—and soon
to pass away!
Yet ere that leaf shall fall and fade,
The parent tree will mourn its shade,
The winds bewail the leafless tree,—
But none shall breathe a sigh for me!
My life is like the prints which feet
Have left on Tampa’s
desert strand;
Soon as the rising tide shall beat,
All trace will vanish from
the sand;
Yet, as if grieving to efface
All vestige of the human race,
On that lone shore loud moans the sea,—
But none, alas! shall mourn for me!
R.H. WILDE.
“O Fairest of the Rural Maids!”
O Fairest of the rural maids!
Thy birth was in the forest shades;
Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky,
Were all that met thine infant eye.
Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child,
Were ever in the sylvan wild;
And all the beauty of the place
Is in thy heart and on thy face.
The twilight of the trees and rocks
Is in the light shade of thy locks;
Thy step is as the wind, that weaves
Its playful way among the leaves.
Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen;
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.
The forest depths, by foot unpressed,
Are not more sinless than thy breast;
The holy peace that fills the air
Of those calm solitudes is there.
W.C. BRYANT.
The Bucket.
How dear to this heart are the scenes
of my childhood,
When fond recollection presents them to
view!—
The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled
wild-wood,
And every loved spot which my infancy
knew!
The wide-spreading pond, and the mill
that stood by it;
The bridge, and the rock where the cataract
fell;
The cot of my father, the dairy-house
nigh it;
And e’en the rude bucket that hung
in the well,—
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket which hung in
the well.
That moss-covered vessel I hailed as a
treasure;
For often at noon, when returned from
the field,
I found it the source of an exquisite
pleasure,—
The purest and sweetest that nature can
yield.
How ardent I seized it, with hands that
were glowing,
And quick to the white-pebbled bottom
it fell!
Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing,
And dripping with coolness, it rose from
the well,
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket arose from the
well.
How sweet from the green, mossy brim to
receive it,
As, poised on the curb, it inclined to
my lips!
Not a full, blushing goblet could tempt
me to leave it,
The brightest that beauty or revelry sips.
And now, far removed from the loved habitation,
The tear of regret will intrusively swell,
As fancy reverts to my father’s
plantation,
And sighs for the bucket that hangs in
the well,—
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket that hangs in
the well.
S. WOODWORTH.
Annabel Lee.
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may
know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other
thought
Than to love and be loved
by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more
than love,
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of
heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me;
Yes, that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by
night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel
Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than
the love
Of those who were older than
we,
Of many far wiser than we;
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under
the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams, without bringing
me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the
bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down
by the side
Of my darling,—my darling,—my
life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by
the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding
sea.
E.A. POE.
A Health.
I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,—
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements
And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
’Tis less of earth than
heaven.
Her every tone is music’s own,
Like those of morning birds;
And something more than melody
Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burden’d bee
Forth issue from the rose.
Affections are as thoughts to her,
The measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy,
The freshness of young flowers;
And lovely passions, changing oft,
So fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns,—
The idol of past years!
Of her bright face one glance will trace
A picture on the brain;
And of her voice in echoing hearts
A sound must long remain,
But memory, such as mine of her,
So very much endears,
When death is nigh, my latest sigh
Will not be life’s,
but hers.
I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,—
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon.
Her health! and would on earth there stood
Some more of such a frame,
That life might be all poetry,
And weariness a name.
E.C. PINKNEY.
A Serenade.
Look out upon the stars, my love,
And shame them with thine
eyes,
On which, than on the lights above,
There hang more destinies.
Night’s beauty is the harmony
Of blending shades and light:
Then, lady, up,—look out, and
be
A sister to the night!
Sleep not!—thine image wakes
for aye
Within my watching breast;
Sleep not!—from her soft sleep
should fly,
Who robs all hearts of rest.
Nay, lady, from thy slumbers break,
And make this darkness gay,
With looks whose brightness well might
make
Of darker nights a day.
E.C. PINKNEY.
The City in the Sea.
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst
and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently,
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free:
Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls,
Up fanes, up Babylon-like walls,
Up shadowy, long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers,
Up many and many a marvellous shrine,
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye,—
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas,
Along that wilderness of glass;
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea;
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene!
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave—there is a movement
there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide;
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven!
The waves have now a redder glow,
The hours are breathing faint and low;
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
E.A. POE.
To The Past.
Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark
domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
Far in thy realm withdrawn,
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.
Childhood, with all its mirth,
Youth, Manhood, Age that draws us to the
ground,
And last, Man’s Life
on earth,
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.
Thou hast my better years;
Thou hast my earlier friends, the good,
the kind,
Yielded to thee with tears,—
The venerable form, the exalted mind.
My spirit yearns to bring
The lost ones back,—yearns
with desire intense,
And struggles hard to wring
Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives
thence.
In vain; thy gates deny
All passage save to those who hence depart;
Nor to the streaming eye
Thou giv’st them back,—nor
to the broken heart.
In thy abysses hide
Beauty and excellence unknown; to thee
Earth’s wonder and her
pride
Are gathered, as the waters to the sea;
Labors of good to man,
Unpublished charity, unbroken faith,
Love, that midst grief began,
And grew with years, and faltered not
in death.
Full many a mighty name
Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered;
With thee are silent fame,
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.
Thine for a space are they,—
Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up
at last!
Thy gates shall yet give way,
Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!
All that of good and fair
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time,
Shall then come forth, to
wear
The glory and the beauty of its prime.
They have not perished,—no!
Kind words, remembered voices once so
sweet,
Smiles, radiant long ago,
And features, the great soul’s apparent
seat;
All shall come back, each
tie
Of pure affection shall be knit again;
Alone shall Evil die,
And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.
And then shall I behold
Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung,
And her, who, still and cold,
Fills the next grave,—the beautiful
and young.
W.C. BRYANT.
Israfel.
And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings
are a lute, and who
has the sweetest voice of all God’s
creatures.
—Koran.
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
Whose heart-strings are a
lute;
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red
levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven)
Pauses in Heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli’s fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings,—
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a
duty,
Where Love’s a grown-up God,
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.
Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest:
Merrily live, and long!
The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures
suit:
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute:
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely—flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
E.A. POE.
Unseen Spirits.
The shadows lay along Broadway,—
’Twas near the twilight-tide,—
And slowly there a lady fair
Was walking in her pride.
Alone walked she; but, viewlessly,
Walked spirits at her side.
Peace charmed the street beneath her feet,
And Honor charmed the air;
And all astir looked kind on her,
And called her good as fair—
For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.
She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true,
For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo;
But honored well are charms to sell,
If priests the selling do.
Now walking there was one more fair,—
A slight girl, lily-pale;
And she had unseen company
To make the spirit quail,—
’Twixt Want and Scorn she walked
forlorn,
And nothing could avail.
No mercy now can clear her brow
For this world’s peace
to pray;
For, as love’s wild prayer dissolved
in air,
Her woman’s heart gave
way!
But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven
By man is cursed alway.
N.P. WILLIS.
The Haunted Palace.
In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared
its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion,
It stood there;
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and
flow
(This—all this—was
in the olden
Time long ago),
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows
saw
Spirits moving musically,
To a lute’s well-tuned
law,
Round about a throne where, sitting,
Porphyrogene,
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was
seen.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their
king.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s
high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
And travellers now within that valley
Through the red-litten windows
see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile
no more.
E.A. POE.
To a Waterfowl.
Whither,
midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps
of day,
Far, through their rosy depths dost thou
pursue
Thy
solitary way?
Vainly
the fowler’s eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee
wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy
figure floats along.
Seek’st
thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and
sink
On
the chafed ocean-side?
There
is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast—
The desert and illimitable air—
Lone
wandering, but not lost.
All
day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though
the dark night is near.
And
soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and
rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall
bend,
Soon,
o’er thy sheltered nest.
Thou’rt
gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my
heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast
given,
And
shall not soon depart:
He
who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain
flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will
lead my steps aright.
W.C. BRYANT.
To Helen.
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicaean barks of
yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer
bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic
face,
Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee
stand,
The agate lamp within thy
hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!
E.A. POE.
Sparkling and Bright.
Sparkling and bright in liquid light
Does the wine our goblets
gleam in,
With hue as red as the rosy bed
Which a bee would choose to
dream in.
Then fill to-night,
with hearts as light,
To
loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that
swim on the beaker’s brim,
And
break on the lips while meeting.
Oh! if Mirth might arrest the flight
Of Time through Life’s
dominions,
We here awhile would now beguile
The graybeard of his pinions,
To drink to-night,
with hearts as light,
To
loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that
swim on the beaker’s brim,
And
break on the lips while meeting.
But since Delight can’t tempt the
wight,
Nor fond Regret delay him,
Nor Love himself can hold the elf,
Nor sober Friendship stay
him,
We’ll drink
to-night, with hearts as light,
To
loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that
swim on the beaker’s brim,
And
break on the lips while meeting.
C.F. HOFFMAN.
To One in Paradise.
Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine:
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope, that didst
arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future
cries,
“On! on!”—but o’er
the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering
lies
Mute, motionless, aghast.
For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o’er!
No more—no more—no
more—
(Such language holds the solemn
sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted
tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar.
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy gray eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams,—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.
E.A. POE.
On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake.
Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
Tears fell when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep,
And long, where thou art lying,
Will tears the cold turf steep.
When hearts, whose truth was proven,
Like thine, are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven
To tell the world their worth;
And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine,
It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow,
But I’ve in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.
While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are
free,
The grief is fixed too deeply
That mourns a man like thee.
F.G. HALLECK.
The Valley of Unrest.
Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sunlight lazily lay.
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless,
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn to even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye,
Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave:—from out their fragrant
tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep:—from off their delicate
stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.
E.A. POE.
To the Fringed Gentian.
Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven’s own
blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night:
Thou comest not when violets lean
O’er wandering brooks and springs
unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o’er the ground-bird’s
hidden nest.
Thou waitest late and com’st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.
Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue—blue—as if
that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.
I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.
W.C. BRYANT.
The Crowded Street.
Let me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting
train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn
rain.
How fast the flitting figures come!
The mild, the fierce, the
stony face,—
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and
some
Where secret tears have left
their trace.
They pass—to toil, to strife,
to rest;
To halls in which the feast
is spread;
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the
dead.
And some to happy homes repair,
Where children, pressing cheek
to cheek,
With mute caresses shall declare
The tenderness they cannot
speak.
And some, who walk in calmness here,
Shall shudder as they reach
the door
Where one who made their dwelling dear,
Its flower, its light, is
seen no more.
Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame,
And dreams of greatness in
thine eye!
Go’st thou to build an early name,
Or early in the task to die?
Keen son of trade, with eager brow!
Who is now fluttering in thy
snare?
Thy golden fortunes, tower they now,
Or melt the glittering spires
in air?
Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
The dance till daylight gleam
again?
Who sorrow o’er the untimely dead?
Who writhe in throes of mortal
pain?
Some, famine-struck, shall think how long
The cold, dark hours, how
slow the light;
And some, who flaunt amid the throng,
Shall hide in dens of shame
to-night.
Each where his tasks or pleasures call,
They pass, and heed each other
not.
There is who heeds, who holds them all
In His large love and boundless
thought.
These struggling tides of life, that seem
In wayward, aimless course
to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed
end.
W.C. BRYANT.
The Raven.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping—rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door,—
Only this, and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore,—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,—
Nameless here forevermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door,
—Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is, and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping—tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you;”—here I opened wide the door:—
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore:”
Merely this, and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore,—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind, and nothing more.”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my
sad fancy into smiling
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance
it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,”
I said, “art sure
no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the
Nightly shore,—
Tell, me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s
Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore,
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore.’”
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o’er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser,
perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the
tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath
lent thee—by these angels He hath
sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy
memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget
this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore,—
Is there,—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign of parting,
bird or fiend!” I shrieked,
upstarting,—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s
Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy
soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the
bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form
from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted,—nevermore!
E.A. POE.
The Battle-field.
Once this soft turf, this rivulet’s
sands,
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,
And fiery hearts and armed hands
Encountered in the battle-cloud.
Ah! never shall the land forget
How gushed the life-blood
of her brave,—
Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet,
Upon the soil they fought
to save.
Now all is calm and fresh and still;
Alone the chirp of flitting
bird,
And talk of children on the hill,
And bell of wandering kine
are heard.
No solemn host goes trailing by
The black-mouthed gun and
staggering wain;
Men start not at the battle-cry;
Oh, be it never heard again!
Soon rested those who fought; but thou
Who minglest in the harder
strife
For truths which men receive not now,
Thy warfare only ends with
life.
A friendless warfare! lingering long
Through weary day and weary
year;
A wild and many-weaponed throng
Hang on thy front and flank
and rear.
Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,
And blench not at thy chosen
lot;
The timid good may stand aloof,
The sage may frown,—yet
faint thou not!
Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,
The foul and hissing bolt
of scorn,
For with thy side shall dwell, at last,
The victory of endurance born.
Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are
hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers.
Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
When they who helped thee
flee in fear,
Die full of hope and manly trust,
Like those who fell in battle
here.
Another hand thy sword shall wield,
Another hand the standard
wave,
Till from the trumpet’s mouth is
pealed
The blast of triumph o’er
thy grave.
W.C. BRYANT.
The Sleeper.
At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain-top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All beauty sleeps!—and lo!
where lies
Irene, with her destinies!
O lady bright! can it be right,
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs from the tree-top
Laughingly through the lattice drop;
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully, so fearfully,
Above the closed and fringed lid
The lady sleeps. Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by.
My love, she sleeps. Oh, may her
sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold:
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o’er the crested palls
Of her grand family funerals;
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone;
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne’er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin,
It was the dead who groaned within!
E.A. POE.
Nature.
As a fond mother, when the day is o’er,
Leads by the hand her little
child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant
to be led,
And leave his broken playthings on the
floor,
Still gazing at them through the open
door,
Nor wholly reassured and comforted
By promises of others in their
stead,
Which, though more splendid, may not please
him more,—
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one,
and by the hand
Leads us to rest
so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to
understand
How far the unknown
transcends the what we know.
H.W. LONGFELLOW.
Hebe.
I saw the twinkle of white
feet,
I saw the flash of robes descending;
Before her ran an influence
fleet,
That bowed my heart like barley bending.
As, in bare fields, the searching
bees
Pilot to blooms beyond our finding,
It led me on, by sweet degrees
Joy’s simple honey-cells unbinding.
Those Graces were that seemed
grim Fates;
With nearer love the sky leaned o’er
me;
The long-sought Secret’s
golden gates
On musical hinges swung before me.
I saw the brimmed bowl in
her grasp
Thrilling with godhood; like a lover
I sprang the proffered life
to clasp;—
The beaker fell; the luck was over.
The Earth has drunk the vintage
up;
What boots it patch the goblet’s
splinters?
Can Summer fill the icy cup,
Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter’s?
O spendthrift haste! await
the Gods;
Their nectar crowns the lips of Patience;
Haste scatters on unthankful
sods
The immortal gift in vain libations.
Coy Hebe flies from those
that woo,
And shuns the hands would seize upon her;
Follow thy life, and she will
sue
To pour for thee the cup of honor.
J.R. LOWELL.
The Day is Done.
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and
the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er
me
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the
rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt
lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of
day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life’s endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his
heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids
start;
Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest
the day
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
H.W. LONGFELLOW.
Ichabod.
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!
Revile him not,—the Tempter
hath
A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!
Oh, dumb be passion’s stormy rage,
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age,
Falls back in night.
Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark
A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven!
Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains,—
A fallen angel’s pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies.
The man is dead!
Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!
J.G. WHITTIER.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
Southward with fleet of ice
Sailed the corsair Death;
Wild and fast blew the blast,
And the east-wind was his
breath.
His lordly ships of ice
Glisten in the sun;
On each side, like pennons wide,
Flashing crystal streamlets
run.
His sails of white sea-mist
Dripped with silver rain;
But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o’er
the main.
Eastward from Campobello
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;
Three days or more seaward he bore,
Then, alas! the land-wind
failed.
Alas! the land-wind failed,
And ice-cold grew the night;
And nevermore, on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the
light.
He sat upon the deck,
The Book was in his hand;
“Do not fear! Heaven is as
near,”
He said, “by water as
by land!”
In the first watch of the night,
Without a signal’s sound,
Out of the sea, mysteriously,
The fleet of Death rose all
around.
The moon and the evening star
Were hanging in the shrouds;
Every mast, as it passed,
Seemed to rake the passing
clouds.
They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!
As of a rock was the shock;
Heavily the ground-swell rolled.
Southward through day and dark,
They drift in close embrace,
With mist and rain, o’er the open
main;
Yet there seems no change
of place.
Southward, forever southward,
They drift through dark and
day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf Stream
Sinking, vanish all away.
H.W. LONGFELLOW.
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.
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.
R.W. EMERSON.
To America.
What, cringe to Europe! Band it all
in one,
Stilt its decrepit strength,
renew its age,
Wipe out its debts, contract
a loan to wage
Its venal battles,—and, by
yon bright sun,
Our God is false, and liberty undone,
If slaves have power to win
your heritage!
Look on your country, God’s
appointed stage,
Where man’s vast mind its boundless
course shall run:
For that it was your stormy coast He spread—
A fear in winter; girded you
about
With granite hills, and made you strong
and dread.
Let him who fears before the
foemen shout,
Or gives an inch before a vein has bled,
Turn on himself, and let the
traitor out!
G.H. BOKER.
Old Ironsides.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon’s
roar;—
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no
more.
Her deck, once red with heroes’
blood,
Where knelt the vanquished
foe,
When winds were hurrying o’er the
flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor’s
tread,
Or know the conquered knee;
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave!
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning, and the gale!
O.W. HOLMES.
To England.
Lear and Cordelia! ’twas an ancient
tale
Before thy Shakespeare gave
it deathless fame;
The times have changed, the
moral is the same.
So like an outcast, dowerless and pale,
Thy daughter went; and in a foreign gale
Spread her young banner, till
its sway became
A wonder to the nations.
Days of shame
Are close upon thee; prophets raise their
wail.
When the rude Cossack with an outstretched
hand
Points his long spear across
the narrow sea,—
“Lo! there is England!”
when thy destiny
Storms on thy straw-crowned head, and
thou dost stand
Weak, helpless, mad, a by-word in the
land,—
God grant thy daughter a Cordelia
be!
[1852.]
Stand, thou great bulwark of man’s
liberty!
Thou rock of shelter, rising
from the wave,
Sole refuge to the overwearied
brave
Who planned, arose, and battled to be
free,
Fell, undeterred, then sadly turned to
thee,
Saved the free spirit from their
country’s grave,
To rise again, and animate
the slave,
When God shall ripen all things.
Britons, ye
Who guard the sacred outpost, not in vain
Hold your proud peril!
Freemen undefiled,
Keep watch and ward!
Let battlements be piled
Around your cliffs; fleets marshalled,
till the main
Sink under them; and if your courage wane,
Through force or fraud, look
westward to your child!
[1853.]
G.H. BOKER.
The Wreck of the Hesperus.
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of
day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did
blow
The smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed to the Spanish
Main,
“I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.
“Last night, the moon had a golden
ring,
And to-night no moon we see!”
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his
pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed
he.
Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like
yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frightened
steed,
Then leaped her cable’s
length.
“Come hither! come hither! my little
daughter,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow.”
He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s
coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
“O father! I hear the church-bells
ring,
Oh, say, what may it be?”
“’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound
coast!”—
And he steered for the open
sea.
“O father! I hear the sound
of guns,
Oh, say, what may it be?”
“Some ship in distress, that cannot
live
In such an angry sea!”
“O father! I see a gleaming
light,
Oh, say, what may it be?”
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the
skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming
snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands and
prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled
the wave,
On the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and
drear,
Through the whistling sleet
and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow’rds the reef of
Norman’s Woe.
And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard
sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy
waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry
bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in
ice,
With the masts went by the
board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and
sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting
mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s
Woe!
H.W. LONGFELLOW.
Bedouin Song.
From the Desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire,
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,
And the midnight hears my
cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not
die
Till
the sun grows cold,
And
the stars are old,
And
the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
Look from thy window and see
My passion and my pain;
I lie on the sands below,
And I faint in thy disdain.
Let the night-winds touch thy brow
With the heat of my burning
sigh,
And melt thee to hear the vow
Of a love that shall not die
Till
the sun grows cold,
And
the stars are old,
And
the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
My steps are nightly driven,
By the fever in my breast,
To hear from thy lattice breathed
The word that shall give me
rest.
Open the door of thy heart,
And open thy chamber door,
And my kisses shall teach thy lips
The love that shall fade no
more
Till
the sun grows cold,
And
the stars are old,
And
the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
B. TAYLOR.
Skipper Ireson’s Ride.
Of all the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme,—
On Apuleius’s Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calendar’s horse of
brass,
Witch astride of a human back,
Islam’s prophet on Al-Borak,—
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson’s, out from Marblehead!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his
hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried
in a cart
By the women of
Marblehead!
Body of turkey, head of owl,
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,
Feathered and ruffled in every part,
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.
Scores of women, old and young,
Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue,
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain:
“Here’s Flud Oirson,
fur his horrd horrt,
Torr’d an’ futherr’d
an’ corr’d in a corrt
By the women o’
Morble’ead!”
Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
Bacchus round some antique vase,
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,
With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns’
twang,
Over and over the Maenads sang:
“Here’s Flud Oirson,
fur his horrd horrt,
Torr’d an’ futherr’d
an’ corr’d in a corrt
By the women o’
Morble’ead!”
Small pity for him!—He sailed
away
From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,—
Sailed away from a sinking wreck,
With his own town’s-people on her
deck!
“Lay by! lay by!” they called
to him.
Back he answered, “Sink or swim!
Brag of your catch of fish again!”
And off he sailed through the fog and
rain!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his
hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried
in a cart
By the women of
Marblehead!
Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur
That wreck shall lie forevermore.
Mother and sister, wife and maid,
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead
Over the moaning and rainy sea,—
Looked for the coming that might not be!
What did the winds and the sea-birds say
Of the cruel captain who sailed away?—
Old Floyd Ireson, for his
hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried
in a cart
By the women of
Marblehead!
Through the street, on either side,
Up flew windows, doors swung wide;
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,
Treble lent the fish-horn’s bray.
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
Hulks of old sailors run aground,
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,
And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain:
“Here’s Flud Oirson,
fur his horrd horrt,
Torr’d an’ futherr’d
an’ corr’d in a corrt
By the women o’
Morble’ead!”
Sweetly along the Salem road
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.
Little the wicked skipper knew
Of the fields so green and the sky so
blue.
Riding there in his sorry trim,
Like an Indian idol glum and grim,
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear
Of voices shouting, far and near:
“Here’s Flud Oirson,
fur his horrd horrt,
Torr’d an’ futherr’d
an’ corr’d in a corrt
By the women o’
Morble’ead!”
“Hear me, neighbors!” at last
he cried,—
“What to me is this noisy ride?
What is the shame that clothes the skin
To the nameless horror that lives within?
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,
And hear a cry from a reeling deck!
Hate me and curse me,—I only
dread
The hand of God and the face of the dead!”
Said old Floyd Ireson, for
his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried
in a cart
By the women of
Marblehead!
Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea
Said, “God has touched him!
Why should we?”
Said an old wife, mourning her only son:
“Cut the rogue’s tether and
let him run!”
So with soft relentings and rude excuse,
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,
And gave him a cloak to hide him in,
And left him alone with his shame and
sin.
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his
hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried
in a cart
By the women of
Marblehead!
J.G. WHITTIER.
The Village Blacksmith.
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he
can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.
And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s
voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother’s
voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done.
Has earned a night’s
repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
H.W. LONGFELLOW.
The Last Leaf.
I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o’er the ground
With his cane.
They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the crier on his round
Through the town.
But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are
gone.”
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has pressed
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
My grandmamma has said—
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago—
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.
But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!
And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old, forsaken bough
Where I cling.
O.W. HOLMES.
The Old Kentucky Home.
A NEGRO MELODY.
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky
Home;
’Tis summer, the darkies
are gay;
The corn-top’s ripe, and the meadow’s
in the bloom,
While the birds make music
all the day.
The young folks roll on the little cabin
floor,
All merry, all happy and bright;
By-’n’-by hard times comes
a-knocking at the door,—
Then my old Kentucky Home,
good-night!
Weep
no more, my lady,
Oh,
weep no more to-day!
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky
Home,
For
the old Kentucky Home, far away.
They hunt no more for the possum and the
coon,
On the meadow, the hill, and
the shore;
They sing no more by the glimmer of the
moon,
On the bench by the old cabin
door.
The day goes by like a shadow o’er
the heart,
With sorrow, where all was
delight;
The time has come when the darkies have
to part,—
Then my old Kentucky Home,
good-night!
The head must bow, and the back will have
to bend,
Wherever the darkey may go;
A few more days, and the trouble all will
end,
In the field where the sugar-canes
grow.
A few more days for to tote the weary
load,—
No matter, ’twill never
be light;
A few more days till we totter on the
road,—
Then my old Kentucky Home,
good-night!
Weep
no more, my lady,
Oh,
weep no more to-day!
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky
Home,
For
the old Kentucky Home, far away.
S.C. FOSTER.
The Black Regiment.
Port Hudson, May 27, 1863.
Dark as the clouds of even,
Ranked in the western heaven,
Waiting the breath that lifts
All the dread mass, and drifts
Tempest and falling brand
Over a ruined land;—
So still and orderly,
Arm to arm, knee to knee,
Waiting the great event,
Stands the black regiment.
Down the long, dusky line
Teeth gleam, and eyeballs shine;
And the bright bayonet,
Bristling and firmly set,
Flashed with a purpose grand,
Long ere the sharp command
Of the fierce rolling drum
Told them their time had come,
Told them what work was sent
For the black regiment.
“Now,” the flag-sergeant cried,
“Though death and hell betide,
Let the whole nation see
If we are fit to be
Free in this land; or bound
Down, like the whining hound,—
Bound with red stripes of pain
In our old chains again!”
Oh, what a shout there went
From the black regiment!
“Charge!” Trump and drum awoke,
Onward the bondmen broke;
Bayonet and sabre-stroke
Vainly opposed their rush.
Through the wild battle’s crush,
With but one thought aflush,
Driving their lords like chaff,
In the guns’ mouths they laugh;
Or at the slippery brands
Leaping with open hands,
Down they tear man and horse,
Down in their awful course;
Trampling with bloody heel
Over the crashing steel,
All their eyes forward bent,
Rushed the black regiment.
“Freedom!” their battle-cry,—
“Freedom! or leave to die!”
Ah! and they meant the word,
Not as with us ’tis heard,
Not a mere party shout;
They gave their spirits out,
Trusted the end to God,
And on the gory sod
Rolled in triumphant blood.
Glad to strike one free blow,
Whether for weal or woe;
Glad to breathe one free breath,
Though on the lips of death;
Praying—alas! in vain!—
That they might fall again,
So they could once more see
That burst to liberty!
This was what “freedom” lent
To the black regiment.
Hundreds on hundreds fell;
But they are resting well;
Scourges and shackles strong
Never shall do them wrong.
Oh, to the living few,
Soldiers, be just and true!
Hail them as comrades tried;
Fight with them side by side;
Never, in field or tent,
Scorn the black regiment.
G.H. BOKER.
Carolina.
The despot treads thy sacred sands,
Thy pines give shelter to his bands,
Thy sons stand by with idle hands,
Carolina!
He breathes at ease thy airs of balm,
He scorns the lances of thy palm;
Oh! who shall break thy craven calm,
Carolina!
Thy ancient fame is growing dim,
A spot is on thy garment’s rim;
Give to the winds thy battle-hymn,
Carolina!
Call on thy children of the hill,
Wake swamp and river, coast and rill,
Rouse all thy strength and all thy skill,
Carolina!
Cite wealth and science, trade and art,
Touch with thy fire the cautious mart,
And pour thee through the people’s heart,
Carolina!
Till even the coward spurns his fears,
And all thy fields, and fens, and meres
Shall bristle like thy palm with spears,
Carolina!
I hear a murmur as of waves
That grope their way through sunless caves,
Like bodies struggling in their graves,
Carolina!
And now it deepens; slow and grand
It swells, as, rolling to the land,
An ocean broke upon thy strand,
Carolina!
Shout! Let it reach the startled Huns!
And roar with all thy festal guns!
It is the answer of thy sons,
Carolina!
H. TIMROD.
Dirge for a Soldier.
Close his eyes; his work is done!
What to him is friend or foeman,
Rise of moon, or set of sun,
Hand of man, or kiss of woman?
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? He cannot know;
Lay him low!
As man may, he fought his fight,
Proved his truth by his endeavor;
Let him sleep in solemn night,
Sleep forever and forever.
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? He cannot know;
Lay him low!
Fold him in his country’s stars,
Roll the drum and fire the volley!
What to him are all our wars,
What but death bemocking folly?
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? He cannot know;
Lay him low!
Leave him to God’s watching
eye;
Trust him to the hand that made him.
Mortal love weeps idly by;
God alone has power to aid him.
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? He cannot know!
Lay him low!
G.H. BOKER.
Battle-hymn of the Republic.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fatal lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of
a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the
evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the
dim and flaring lamps:
His
day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished
rows of steel:
“As ye deal with My contemners,
so with you My grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the
serpent with His heel!
Since
God is marching on.”
He has sounded forth the trumpet that
shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before
His judgment seat;
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him!
be jubilant, my feet!
Our
God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was
born, across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures
you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die
to make men free,
While
God is marching on.
J.W. HOWE.
Farragut.
Farragut, Farragut,
Old Heart of Oak,
Daring Dave Farragut,
Thunderbolt stroke,
Watches the hoary mist
Lift from the bay,
Till his flag, glory-kissed,
Greets the young day.
Far, by gray Morgan’s walls,
Looms the black fleet.
Hark, deck to rampart calls
With the drums’ beat!
Buoy your chains overboard,
While the steam hums;
Men! to the battlement,
Farragut comes.
See, as the hurricane
Hurtles in wrath
Squadrons of clouds amain
Back from its path!
Back to the parapet,
To the guns’ lips,
Thunderbolt Farragut
Hurls the black ships.
Now through the battle’s roar
Clear the boy sings,
“By the mark fathoms four,”
While his lead swings.
Steady the wheelmen five
“Nor’ by east
keep her,”
“Steady,” but two alive:
How the shells sweep her!
Lashed to the mast that sways
Over red decks,
Over the flame that plays
Round the torn wrecks,
Over the dying lips
Framed for a cheer,
Farragut leads his ships,
Guides the line clear.
On by heights cannon-browed,
While the spars quiver;
Onward still flames the cloud
Where the hulks shiver.
See, yon fort’s star is set,
Storm and fire past.
Cheer him, lads,—Farragut,
Lashed to the mast!
Oh! while Atlantic’s breast
Bears a white sail,
While the Gulf’s towering crest
Tops a green vale;
Men thy bold deeds shall tell,
Old Heart of Oak,
Daring Dave Farragut,
Thunderbolt stroke!
W.T. MEREDITH.
My Maryland.
The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle-queen of yore,
Maryland,
my Maryland!
Hark to an exiled son’s appeal,
Maryland!
My Mother State, to thee I kneel,
Maryland!
For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland,
my Maryland!
Thou wilt not cower in the dust,
Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust,
Maryland!
Remember Carroll’s sacred trust,
Remember Howard’s warlike thrust,
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland,
my Maryland!
Come! ’tis the red dawn of the day,
Maryland!
Come with thy panoplied array,
Maryland!
With Ringgold’s spirit for the fray,
With Watson’s blood at Monterey,
With fearless Lowe and dashing May,
Maryland,
my Maryland!
Dear Mother, burst the tyrant’s
chain,
Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain,—
"Sic semper!" ’tis the proud
refrain
That baffles minions back amain,
Maryland!
Arise in majesty again,
Maryland,
my Maryland!
Come! for thy shield is bright and strong,
Maryland!
Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong,
Maryland!
Come to thine own heroic throng
Stalking with Liberty along,
And chant thy dauntless slogan-song,
Maryland,
my Maryland!
I see the blush upon thy cheek,
Maryland!
For thou wast ever bravely meek,
Maryland!
But lo! there surges forth a shriek,
From hill to hill, from creek to creek,
Potomac calls to Chesapeake,
Maryland,
my Maryland!
Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll,
Maryland!
Thou wilt not crook to his control,
Maryland!
Better the fire upon thee roll,
Better the shot, the blade, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Maryland,
my Maryland!
I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The old Line’s bugle, fife, and
drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb;
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! She burns! She’ll
come!
She’ll come!
Maryland,
my Maryland!
J.R. RANDALL.
After All.[1]
The apples are ripe in the orchard,
The work of the reaper is
done,
And the golden woodlands redden
In the blood of the dying
sun.
At the cottage door the grandsire
Sits, pale, in his easy-chair,
While a gentle wind of twilight
Plays with his silver hair.
A woman is kneeling beside him;
A fair young head is prest,
In the first wild passion of sorrow,
Against his aged breast.
And far from over the distance
The faltering echoes come,
Of the flying blast of trumpet,
And the rattling roll of drum.
And the grandsire speaks in a whisper:
“The end no man can see;
But we give him to his country,
And we give our prayers to Thee.”
* * * * *
The violets star the meadows,
The rose-buds fringe the door,
And over the grassy orchard
The pink-white blossoms pour.
But the grandsire’s chair is
empty,
The cottage is dark and still,
There’s a nameless grave in the battle-field,
And a new one under the hill.
And a pallid, tearless woman
By the cold hearth sits alone,
And the old clock in the corner
Ticks on with a steady drone.
WILLIAM WINTER.
[1] From “Wanderers,” copyright, 1892, by Macmillan and Co.
The Song of the Camp.
“Give us a song!” the soldiers
cried,
The outer trenches guarding,
When the heated guns of the camps allied
Grew weary of bombarding.
The dark Redan, in silent scoff,
Lay grim and threatening under;
And the tawny mound of the Malakoff
No longer belch’d its
thunder.
There was a pause. A guardsman said:
“We storm the forts
to-morrow;
Sing while we may, another day
Will bring enough of sorrow.”
They lay along the battery’s side,
Below the smoking cannon:
Brave hearts from Severn and from Clyde,
And from the banks of Shannon.
They sang of love, and not of fame;
Forgot was Britain’s
glory:
Each heart recall’d a different
name,
But all sang “Annie
Laurie.”
Voice after voice caught up the song,
Until its tender passion
Rose like an anthem, rich and strong,—
Their battle-eve confession.
Dear girl, her name he dared not speak,
But as the song grew louder,
Something upon the soldier’s cheek
Washed off the stains of powder.
Beyond the darkening ocean burn’d
The bloody sunset’s
embers,
While the Crimean valleys learn’d
How English love remembers.
And once again a fire of hell
Rain’d on the Russian
quarters,
With scream of shot, and burst of shell,
And bellowing of the mortars!
And Irish Nora’s eyes are dim
For a singer dumb and gory;
And English Mary mourns for him
Who sang of “Annie Laurie.”
Sleep, soldiers! still in honor’d
rest
Your truth and valor wearing:
The bravest are the tenderest,—
The loving are the daring.
B. TAYLOR.
In the Hospital.
I lay me down to sleep,
With little thought or care
Whether my waking find
Me here or there.
A bowing, burdened head,
That only asks to rest,
Unquestioning, upon
A loving breast.
My good right hand forgets
Its cunning now.
To march the weary march
I know not how.
I am not eager, bold,
Nor strong—all that is past;
I am ready not to do
At last, at last.
My half day’s work is done,
And this is all my part;
I give a patient God
My patient heart,
And grasp His banner still,
Though all its blue be dim;
These stripes, no less than stars,
Lead after Him.
M.W. HOWLAND.
Under the Violets.
Her hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and
go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light;—
Fold the white vesture, snow
on snow,
And lay her where the violets
blow.
But not beneath a graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien
eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say, that here a maiden
lies
In peace beneath the peaceful
skies.
And gray old trees of hugest limb
Shall wheel their circling
shadows round
To make the scorching sunlight dim
That drinks the greenness
from the ground,
And drop their dead leaves
on her mound.
When o’er their boughs the squirrels
run,
And through their leaves the
robins call,
And, ripening in the autumn sun,
The acorns and the chestnuts
fall,
Doubt not that she will heed
them all.
For her the morning choir shall sing
Its matins from the branches
high,
And every minstrel voice of Spring,
That trills beneath the April
sky,
Shall greet her with its earliest
cry.
When, turning round their dial-track,
Eastward the lengthening shadows
pass,
Her little mourners, clad in black,
The crickets, sliding through
the grass,
Shall pipe for her an evening
mass.
At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where
she lies,
And bear the buried dust they seize
In leaves and blossoms to
the skies.
So may the soul that warmed
it rise!
If any, born of kindlier blood,
Should ask, What maiden lies
below?
Say only this: A tender bud,
That tried to blossom in the
snow,
Lies withered where the violets
blow.
O.W. HOLMES.
Days.
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.
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.
R.W. EMERSON.
Song.[2]
You know the old Hidalgo
(His box is next to ours),
Who threw the Prima Donna
The wreath of orange-flowers;
He owns the half of Aragon,
With mines beyond the main;
A very ancient nobleman,
And gentleman of Spain.
They swear that I must wed him,
In spite of yea or nay,
Though uglier than the Scaramouch,
The spectre in the play;
But I will sooner die a maid
Than wear a gilded chain,
For all the ancient noblemen
And gentlemen of Spain!
R.H. STODDARD.
[2] From “The Poems of R.H. Stoddard,” copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Aladdin.
When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin’s
lamp;
When I could not sleep for cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded, with roofs of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!
Since then I have toiled day and night,
I have money and power good
store,
But I’d give all my lamps of silver
bright,
For the one that is mine no
more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,—
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing ’twould pain me to
lose,
For I own no more castles
in Spain!
J.R. LOWELL.
The Flight of Youth.[3]
There are gains for all our losses,
There are balms for all our
pain;
But when youth, the dream, departs,
It takes something from our hearts,
And it never comes again.
We are stronger, and are better,
Under manhood’s sterner
reign;
Still, we feel that something sweet
Followed youth, with flying feet,
And will never come again.
Something beautiful is vanished,
And we sigh for it in vain;
We behold it everywhere,
On the earth, and in the air,
But it never comes again.
R.H. STODDARD.
[3] From “The Poems of R.H. Stoddard,” copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
My Playmate.
The pines were dark on Ramoth hill,
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.
The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the year.
For, more to me than birds or flowers,
My playmate left her home,
And took with her the laughing spring,
The music and the bloom.
She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine:
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father’s
kine?
She left us in the bloom of May:
The constant years told o’er
Their seasons with as sweet May morns,
But she came back no more.
I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
Of uneventful years;
Still o’er and o’er I sow
the spring
And reap the autumn ears.
She lives where all the golden year
Her summer roses blow;
The dusky children of the sun
Before her come and go.
There haply with her jewelled hands
She smooths her silken gown,—
No more the homespun lap wherein
I shook the walnuts down.
The wild grapes wait us by the brook,
The brown nuts on the hill,
And still the May-day flowers make sweet
The woods of Follymill.
The lilies blossom in the pond,
The bird builds in the tree,
The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill
The slow song of the sea.
I wonder if she thinks of them,
And how the old time seems,
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams.
I see her face, I hear her voice:
Does she remember mine?
And what to her is now the boy
Who fed her father’s
kine?
What cares she that the orioles build
For other eyes than ours,—
That other hands with nuts are filled,
And other laps with flowers?
O playmate in the golden time!
Our mossy seat is green,
Its fringing violets blossom yet,
The old trees o’er it
lean.
The winds so sweet with birch and fern
A sweeter memory blow;
And there in spring the veeries sing
The song of long ago.
And still the pines of Ramoth wood
Are moaning like the sea,—
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee!
J.G. WHITTIER.
The Fire of Driftwood.
DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD.
We sat within the farmhouse old,
Whose windows, looking o’er
the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold,
An easy entrance, night and
day.
Not far away we saw the port,
The strange, old-fashioned,
silent town,
The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
The wooden houses, quaint
and brown.
We sat and talked until the night,
Descending, filled the little
room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
Our voices only broke the
gloom.
We spake of many a vanished scene,
Of what we once had thought
and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed, and who
was dead;
And all that fills the hearts of friends,
When first they feel, with
secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate
ends,
And never can be one again;
The first slight swerving of the heart,
That words are powerless to
express,
And leave it still unsaid in part,
Or say it in too great excess.
The very tones in which we spake
Had something strange, I could
but mark;
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the
dark.
Oft died the words upon our lips,
As suddenly, from out the
fire
Built of the wreck of stranded ships,
The flames would leap and
then expire.
And, as their splendor flashed and failed,
We thought of wrecks upon
the main,
Of ships dismasted, that were hailed
And sent no answer back again.
The windows, rattling in their frames,
The ocean, roaring up the
beach,
The gusty blast, the bickering flames,
All mingled vaguely in our
speech;
Until they made themselves a part
Of fancies floating through
the brain,
The long-lost ventures of the heart,
That send no answers back
again.
O flames that glowed! O hearts that
yearned!
They were indeed too much
akin,
The driftwood fire without that burned,
The thoughts that burned and
glowed within.
H.W. LONGFELLOW.
A Death-bed.
Her suffering ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
And breathed the long, long night away
In statue-like repose.
But when the sun in all his state
Illumed the eastern skies,
She passed through Glory’s morning
gate
And walked in Paradise.
J. ALDRICH.
Telling the Bees.
Here is the place; right over the hill
Runs the path I took;
You can see the gap in the old wall still,
And the stepping-stones in
the shallow brook.
There is the house, with the gate red-barred,
And the poplars tall;
And the barn’s brown length, and
the cattle-yard,
And the white horns tossing
above the wall.
There are the beehives ranged in the sun;
And down by the brink
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o’errun,—
Pansy and daffodil, rose and
pink.
A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
Heavy and slow;
And the same rose blows, and the same
sun glows,
And the same brook sings of
a year ago.
There’s the same sweet clover-smell
in the breeze;
And the June sun warm
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as then, over Fernside
farm.
I mind me how with a lover’s care
From my Sunday coat
I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed
my hair,
And cooled at the brookside
my brow and throat.
Since we parted, a month had passed,—
To love, a year;
Down through the beeches I looked at last
On the little red gate and
the well-sweep near.
I can see it all now,—the slantwise
rain
Of light through the leaves,
The sundown’s blaze on her window-pane,
The bloom of her roses under
the eaves.
Just the same as a month before,—
The house and the trees,
The barn’s brown gable, the vine
by the door,—
Nothing changed but the hives
of bees.
Before them, under the garden wall,
Forward and back,
Went, drearily singing, the chore-girl
small,
Draping each hive with a shred of black.
Trembling, I listened; the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;
For I knew she was telling the bees of
one
Gone on the journey we all
must go!
Then I said to myself, “My Mary
weeps
For the dead to-day;
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps
The fret and the pain of his
age away.”
But her dog whined low; on the doorway
sill,
With his cane to his chin,
The old man sat; and the chore-girl still
Sung to the bees stealing
out and in.
And the song she was singing ever since
In my ear sounds on:
“Stay at home, pretty bees, fly
not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and
gone!”
J.G. WHITTIER.
Katie.
It may be through some foreign grace,
And unfamiliar charm of face;
It may be that across the foam
Which bore her from her childhood’s
home,
By some strange spell, my Katie brought
Along with English creeds and thought—
Entangled in her golden hair—
Some English sunshine, warmth, and air!
I cannot tell,—but here to-day,
A thousand billowy leagues away
From that green isle whose twilight skies
No darker are than Katie’s eyes,
She seems to me, go where she will,
An English girl in England still!
I meet her on the dusty street,
And daisies spring about her feet;
Or, touched to life beneath her tread,
An English cowslip lifts its head;
And, as to do her grace, rise up
The primrose and the buttercup!
I roam with her through fields of cane,
And seem to stroll an English lane,
Which, white with blossoms of the May,
Spreads its green carpet in her way!
As fancy wills, the path beneath
Is golden gorse, or purple heath;
And now we hear in woodlands dim
Their unarticulated hymn,
Now walk through rippling waves of wheat,
Now sink in mats of clover sweet,
Or see before us from the lawn
The lark go up to greet the dawn!
All birds that love the English sky
Throng round my path when she is by;
The blackbird from a neighboring thorn
With music brims the cup of morn,
And in a thick, melodious rain
The mavis pours her mellow strain!
But only when my Katie’s voice
Makes all the listening woods rejoice
I hear—with cheeks that flush
and pale—
The passion of the nightingale!
H. TIMROD.
My Love.
Not as all other women are
Is she that to my soul is dear;
Her glorious fancies come from far,
Beneath the silver evening-star,
And yet her heart is ever near.
Great feelings hath she of her own,
Which lesser souls may never know;
God giveth them to her alone,
And sweet they are as any tone
Wherewith the wind may choose to blow.
Yet in herself she dwelleth not,
Although no home were half so fair;
No simplest duty is forgot;
Life hath no dim and lowly spot
That doth not in her sunshine share.
She doeth little kindnesses,
Which most leave undone, or despise;
For naught that sets one heart at ease,
And giveth happiness or peace,
Is low-esteemed in her eyes.
She hath no scorn of common things,
And, though she seem of other birth,
Round us her heart intwines and clings,
And patiently she folds her wings
To tread the humble paths of earth.
Blessing she is; God made her so,
And deeds of week-day holiness
Fall from her noiseless as the snow,
Nor hath she ever chanced to know
That aught were easier than to bless.
She is most fair, and thereunto
Her life doth rightly harmonize;
Feeling or thought that was not true
Ne’er made less beautiful the blue
Unclouded heaven of her eyes.
She is a woman; one in whom
The spring-time of her childish years
Hath never lost its fresh perfume,
Though knowing well that life hath room
For many blights and many tears.
I love her with a love as still
As a broad river’s peaceful might,
Which, by high tower and lowly mill,
Goes wandering at its own will,
And yet doth ever flow aright.
And, on its full, deep breast serene,
Like quiet isles my duties lie;
It flows around them and between,
And makes them fresh, and fair, and green,
Sweet homes wherein to live and die.
J.R. LOWELL.
She Came and Went.
As a twig trembles, which a bird
Lights on to sing, then leaves
unbent,
So is my memory thrilled and stirred;—
I only know she came and went.
As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven,
The blue dome’s measureless
content,
So my soul held that moment’s heaven;—
I only know she came and went.
As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps
The orchards full of bloom
and scent,
So clove her May my wintry sleeps;—
I only know she came and went.
An angel stood and met my gaze,
Through the low doorway of
my tent;
The tent is struck, the vision stays;—
I only know she came and went.
Oh, when the room grows slowly dim,
And life’s last oil
is nearly spent,
One gush of light these eyes will brim,
Only to think she came and
went.
J.R. LOWELL.
Her Epitaph.
The handful here, that once was Mary’s
earth,
Held, while it breathed, so
beautiful a soul,
That, when she died, all recognized her
birth,
And had their sorrow in serene
control.
“Not here! not here!” to every
mourner’s heart
The wintry wind seemed whispering
round her bier;
And when the tomb-door opened, with a
start
We heard it echoed from within,—“Not
here!”
Shouldst thou, sad pilgrim, who mayst
hither pass,
Note in these flowers a delicater
hue,
Should spring come earlier to this hallowed
grass,
Or the bee later linger on
the dew,—
Know that her spirit to her body lent
Such sweetness, grace, as
only goodness can;
That even her dust, and this her monument,
Have yet a spell to stay one
lonely man,
Lonely through life, but looking for the
day
When what is mortal of himself
shall sleep,
When human passion shall have passed away,
And Love no longer be a thing
to weep.
T.W. PARSONS.
Apart.
At sea are tossing ships;
On shore are dreaming shells,
And the waiting heart and the loving lips,
Blossoms and bridal bells.
At sea are sails a-gleam;
On shore are longing eyes,
And the far horizon’s haunting dream
Of ships that sail the skies.
At sea are masts that rise
Like spectres from the deep;
On shore are the ghosts of drowning cries
That cross the waves of sleep.
At sea are wrecks a-strand;
On shore are shells that moan,
Old anchors buried in barren sand,
Sea-mist and dreams alone.
J.J. PIATT.
The Discoverer.
I have a little kinsman
Whose earthly summers are
but three,
And yet a voyager is he
Greater than Drake or Frobisher,
Than all their peers together!
He is a brave discoverer,
And, far beyond the tether
Of them who seek the frozen
Pole,
Has sailed where the noiseless surges
roll.
Ay, he has travelled whither
A winged pilot steered his
bark
Through the portals of the
dark,
Past hoary Mimir’s well
and tree,
Across
the unknown sea.
Suddenly, in his fair young
hour,
Came one who bore a flower,
And laid it in his dimpled
hand
With
this command:
“Henceforth thou art
a rover!
Thou must make a voyage far,
Sail beneath the evening star,
And a wondrous land discover.”
—With his sweet
smile innocent
Our
little kinsman went.
Since that time no word
From the absent has been heard.
Who
can tell
How he fares, or answer well
What the little one has found
Since he left us, outward
bound?
Would that he might return!
Then should we learn
From the pricking of his chart
How the skyey roadways part.
Hush! does not the baby this way bring,
To lay beside this severed
curl,
Some
starry offering
Of chrysolite or pearl?
Ah,
no! not so!
We may follow on his track,
But
he comes not back.
And
yet I dare aver
He is a brave discoverer
Of climes his elders do not
know.
He has more learning than
appears
On the scroll of twice three
thousand years,
More than in the groves is
taught,
Or from furthest Indies brought;
E.C. STEDMAN.
At Last.[4]
When first the bride and bridegroom wed,
They love their single selves
the best;
A sword is in the marriage bed,
Their separate slumbers are
not rest.
They quarrel, and make up again,
They give and suffer worlds of pain.
Both
right and wrong,
They
struggle long,
Till some good day, when they are old,
Some dark day, when the bells are tolled,
Death having taken their best of life,
They lose themselves, and
find each other;
They know that they are husband, wife,
For, weeping, they are Father,
Mother!
R.H. STODDARD.
[4] From “The Poems of R.H. Stoddard,” copyright 1880, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
“Thalatta.”
CRY OF THE TEN THOUSAND.
I stand upon the summit of my years.
Behind, the toil, the camp, the march,
the strife,
The wandering and the desert; vast, afar,
Beyond this weary way, behold! the Sea!
The sea o’erswept by clouds and
winds and wings,
By thoughts and wishes manifold, whose
breath
Is freshness and whose mighty pulse is
peace.
Palter no question of the dim Beyond;
Cut loose the bark; such voyage itself
is rest;
Majestic motion, unimpeded scope,
A widening heaven, a current without care.
Eternity!—Deliverance, Promise,
Course!
Time-tired souls salute thee from the
shore.
J.B. BROWN.
Gondolieds.
YESTERDAY.
Dear yesterday, glide not so fast;
Oh, let me cling
To thy white garments floating past;
Even to shadows which they cast
I cling, I cling.
Show me thy face
Just once, once more; a single night
Cannot have brought a loss, a blight
Upon its grace.
Nor are they dead whom thou dost bear,
Robed for the
grave.
See what a smile their red lips wear;
To lay them living wilt thou dare
Into a grave?
I know, I know,
I left thee first; now I repent;
I listen now; I never meant
To have thee go.
Just once, once more, tell me the word
Thou hadst for
me!
Alas! although my heart was stirred,
I never fully knew or heard
It was for me.
O yesterday,
My yesterday, thy sorest pain
Were joy couldst thou but come again,—
Sweet yesterday.
Venice, May 26.
TO-MORROW.
All red with joy the waiting west,
O little swallow,
Couldst thou tell me which road is best?
Cleaving high air with thy soft breast
For keel, O swallow,
Thou must o’erlook
My seas and know if I mistake;
I would not the same harbor make
Which yesterday
forsook.
I hear the swift blades dip and plash
Of unseen rowers;
On unknown land the waters dash;
Who knows how it be wise or rash
To meet the rowers!
Premi! Premi!
Venetia’s boatmen lean and cry;
With voiceless lips I drift and lie
Upon the twilight
sea.
The swallow sleeps. Her last low
call
Had sound of warning.
Sweet little one, whate’er befall,
Thou wilt not know that it was all
In vain thy warning.
I may not borrow
A hope, a help. I close my eyes;
Cold wind blows from the Bridge of Sighs;
Kneeling I wait
to-morrow.
Venice, May 30.
H.H. JACKSON.
In the Twilight.
Men say the sullen instrument
That, from the Master’s
bow,
With pangs of joy or woe,
Feels music’s soul through every
fibre sent,
Whispers the ravished strings
More than he knew or meant;
Old summers in its memory
glow;
The secrets of the wind it
sings;
It hears the April-loosened
springs;
And mixes with
its mood
All it dreamed
when it stood
In the murmurous
pine-wood
Long
ago!
The magical moonlight then
Steeped every bough and cone;
The roar of the brook in the glen
Came dim from the distance
blown;
The wind through its glooms sang low,
And it swayed to and fro
With delight as
it stood,
In the wonderful
wood,
Long
ago!
O my life, have we not had seasons
That only said, “Live
and rejoice?”
That asked not for causes and reasons,
But made us all feeling and
voice?
When we went with the winds in their blowing,
When Nature and we were peers,
And we seemed to share in the flowing
Of the inexhaustible years?
Have we not from the earth
drawn juices
Too fine for earth’s
sordid uses?
Have I heard,
have I seen
All
I feel and I know?
Doth my heart
overween?
Or could it have
been
Long
ago?
Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendor that came and
went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere,
Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music heard once by an
ear
That cannot forget
or reclaim it,
A something so
shy, it would shame it
To
make it a show,
And yet, could I live it over,
This life that stirs in my
brain,
Could I be both maiden and lover,
Moon and tide, bee and clover,
As I seem to have been, once
again,
Could I but speak and show it,
This pleasure more sharp than
pain,
That baffles and lures me
so,
The world should not lack a poet,
Such as it had
In the ages glad,
Long
ago!
J.R. LOWELL.
The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls.
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide
falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea in the darkness calls and
calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white
hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide
falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their
stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide
falls.
H.W. LONGFELLOW.
The Fall of the Leaf.
The evening of the year draws on,
The fields a later aspect
wear;
Since Summer’s garishness is gone,
Some grains of night tincture
the noontide air.
Behold! the shadows of the trees
Now circle wider ’bout
their stem,
Like sentries that by slow degrees
Perform their rounds, gently
protecting them.
And as the year doth decline,
The sun allows a scantier
light;
Behind each needle of the pine
There lurks a small auxiliar
to the night.
I hear the cricket’s slumbrous lay
Around, beneath me, and on
high;
It rocks the night, it soothes the day,
And everywhere is Nature’s
lullaby.
But most he chirps beneath the sod,
When he has made his winter
bed;
His creak grown fainter but more broad,
A film of Autumn o’er
the Summer spread.
Small birds, in fleets migrating by,
Now beat across some meadow’s
bay,
And as they tack and veer on high,
With faint and hurried click
beguile the way.
Far in the woods, these golden days,
Some leaf obeys its Maker’s
call;
And through their hollow aisles it plays
With delicate touch the prelude
of the Fall.
Gently withdrawing from its stem,
It lightly lays itself along
Where the same hand hath pillowed them,
Resigned to sleep upon the
old year’s throng.
The loneliest birch is brown and sere,
The furthest pool is strewn
with leaves,
Which float upon their watery bier,
Where is no eye that sees,
no heart that grieves.
The jay screams through the chestnut wood;
The crisped and yellow leaves
around
Are hue and texture of my mood,—
And these rough burrs my heirlooms
on the ground.
The threadbare trees, so poor and thin,—
They are no wealthier than
I;
But with as brave a core within
They rear their boughs to
the October sky.
Poor knights they are which bravely wait
The charge of Winter’s
cavalry,
Keeping a simple Roman state,
Discumbered of their Persian
luxury.
H.D. THOREAU.
The Rhodora.
ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?
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, O 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.
R.W. EMERSON.
Nature.
O nature! I do not aspire
To be the highest in thy quire,—
To be a meteor in the sky,
Or comet that may range on high;
Only a zephyr that may blow
Among the reeds by the river low;
Give me thy most privy place
Where to run my airy race.
In some withdrawn, unpublic mead
Let me sigh upon a reed,
Or in the woods, with leafy din,
Whisper the still evening in.
Some still work give me to do,—
Only—be it near to you!
For I’d rather be thy child
And pupil, in the forest wild,
Than be the king of men elsewhere,
And most sovereign slave of care.
H.D. THOREAU.
My Strawberry.
O marvel, fruit of fruits, I pause
To reckon thee. I ask what cause
Set free so much of red from heats
At core of earth, and mixed such sweets
With sour and spice: what was that
strength
Which out of darkness, length by length,
Spun all thy shining thread of vine,
Netting the fields in bond as thine.
I see thy tendrils drink by sips
From grass and clover’s smiling
lips;
I hear thy roots dig down for wells,
Tapping the meadow’s hidden cells;
Whole generations of
green things,
Descended from long lines of springs,
I see make room for thee to bide
A quiet comrade by their side;
I see the creeping peoples go
Mysterious journeys to and fro,
H.H. JACKSON.
The Humble-bee.
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 torrid-zone!
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 color of romance,
And infusing subtle heats,
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 of sweetness without bound
In Indian wildernesses found;
Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,
Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.
Aught unsavory 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 northwestern 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.
R.W. EMERSON.
The Summer Rain.
My books I’d fain cast off, I cannot
read.
’Twixt every page my
thoughts go stray at large
Down in the meadow, where is richer feed,
And will not mind to hit their
proper targe.
Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too,
Our Shakespeare’s life
were rich to live again,
What Plutarch read, that was not good
nor true,
Nor Shakespeare’s books,
unless his books were men.
Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough,
What care I for the Greeks
or for Troy town,
If juster battles are enacted now
Between the ants upon this
hummock’s crown?
Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn,
If red or black the gods will
favor most,
Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn,
Struggling to heave some rock
against the host.
Tell Shakespeare to attend some leisure
hour,
For now I’ve business
with this drop of dew,
And see you not, the clouds prepare a
shower,—
I’ll meet him shortly
when the sky is blue.
This bed of herdsgrass and wild oats was
spread
Last year with nicer skill
than monarchs use;
A clover tuft is pillow for my head,
And violets quite overtop
my shoes.
And now the cordial clouds have shut all
in,
And gently swells the wind
to say all’s well;
The scattered drops are falling fast and
thin,
Some in the pool, some in
the flower-bell.
I am well drenched upon my bed of oats;
But see that globe come rolling
down its stem,
Now like a lonely planet there it floats,
And now it sinks into my garment’s
hem.
Drip, drip the trees for all the country
round,
And richness rare distills
from every bough;
The wind alone it is makes every sound,
Shaking down crystals on the
leaves below.
For shame the sun will never show himself,
Who could not with his beams
e’er melt me so;
My dripping locks,—they would
become an elf,
Who in a beaded coat does
gayly go.
H.D. THOREAU.
To the Dandelion.
Dear common flower, that grow’st
beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless
gold,
First pledge of
blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride,
uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed
that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth’s ample
round
May match in wealth, thou
art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms
may be.
Gold such as thine ne’er
drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the
lean brow
Of age, to rob the lover’s heart
of ease;
’Tis the Spring’s
largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God’s
value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded
eye.
Thou art my tropics and mine
Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou
givest me
Are in the heart, and heed not space or
time:
Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed
bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment
In the white lily’s breezy tent,
His fragrant Sybaris, than
I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow
circles burst.
Then think I of deep shadows
on the grass,
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the
breezes pass,
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,
Of leaves that slumber in
a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue
That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap, and of
a sky above,
Where one white cloud like
a stray lamb doth move.
My childhood’s earliest
thoughts are linked with thee;
The sight of thee calls back the robin’s
song,
Who, from the
dark old tree
Beside the door, sang clearly all day
long,
And I, secure in childish
piety,
Listened as if I heard an angel sing
With news from heaven, which he could
bring
Fresh every day to my untainted
ears
When birds and flowers and
I were happy peers.
How like a prodigal doth Nature
seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common
art!
Thou teachest
me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy
its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret
show,
Did we but pay the love we owe,
And with a child’s undoubting
wisdom look
On all these living pages
of God’s book.
J.R. LOWELL.
The Chambered Nautilus.
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets
feign,
Sails the
unshadowed main,—
The venturous
bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral
reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their
streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked
is the ship of pearl!
And every
chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to
dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing
shell,
Before thee
lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt
unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread
his lustrous coil;
Still, as
the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling
for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway
through,
Built up its idle
door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and
knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought
by thee,
Child of the wandering
sea,
Cast from her
lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine
ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear
a voice that sings:
Build thee more stately mansions, O my
soul,
As the swift seasons
roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted
past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more
vast,
Till thou at length
art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s
unresting sea!
O.W. HOLMES.
Thought.
O messenger, art thou the king, or I?
Thou dalliest
outside the palace gate
Till on thine
idle armor lie the late
And heavy dews. The morn’s
bright scornful eye
Reminds thee; then, in subtle mockery,
Thou smilest at
the window where I wait,
Who bade thee
ride for life. In empty state
My days go on, while false hours prophesy
Thy quick return; at last, in sad despair,
I cease to bid thee, leave thee free as
air;
When lo, thou
stand’st before me glad and fleet,
And lay’st
undreamed-of treasures at my feet.
Ah! messenger, thy royal blood to buy
I am too poor. Thou art the king,
not I.
H.H. JACKSON.
Stanzas.
Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.
We are spirits clad in veils:
Man by man was never seen;
All our deep communing fails
To remove the shadowy screen.
Heart to heart was never known;
Mind with mind did never meet;
We are columns left alone
Of a temple once complete.
Like the stars that gem the sky,
Far apart, though seeming
near,
In our light we scattered lie;
All is thus but starlight
here.
What is social company
But a babbling summer stream?
What our wise philosophy
But the glancing of a dream?
Only when the sun of love
Melts the scattered stars
of thought;
Only when we live above
What the dim-eyed world hath
taught;
Only when our souls are fed
By the Fount which gave them
birth,
And by inspiration led,
Which they never drew from
earth,
We, like parted drops of rain
Swelling till they meet and
run,
Shall be all absorbed again,
Melting, flowing into one.
C.P. CRANCH.
Coronation.
At the king’s gate the subtle noon
Wove filmy yellow nets of
sun;
Into the drowsy snare too soon
The guards fell one by one.
Through the king’s gate, unquestioned
then,
A beggar went, and laughed,
“This brings
Me chance, at last, to see if men
Fare better, being kings.”
The king sat bowed beneath his crown,
Propping his face with listless
hand;
Watching the hour-glass sifting down
Too slow its shining sand.
“Poor man, what wouldst thou have
of me?”
The beggar turned, and, pitying,
Replied, like one in dream, “Of
thee,
Nothing. I want the king.”
Uprose the king, and from his head
Shook off the crown and threw
it by.
“O man, thou must have known,”
he said,
“A greater king than
I.”
Through all the gates, unquestioned then,
Went king and beggar hand
in hand.
Whispered the king, “Shall I know
when
Before his throne I
stand?”
The beggar laughed. Free winds in
haste
Were wiping from the king’s
hot brow
The crimson lines the crown had traced.
“This is his presence
now.”
At the king’s gate the crafty noon
Unwove its yellow nets of
sun;
Out of their sleep in terror soon
The guards waked one by one.
“Ho here! Ho there! Has
no man seen
The king?” The cry ran
to and fro;
Beggar and king, they laughed, I ween,
The laugh that free men know.
On the king’s gate the moss grew
gray;
The king came not. They
called him dead;
And made his eldest son one day
Slave in his father’s
stead.
H.H. JACKSON.
On a Bust of Dante.
See, from this counterfeit of him
Whom Arno shall remember long,
How stern of lineament, how grim,
The father was of Tuscan song:
There but the burning sense of wrong,
Perpetual care and scorn,
abide;
Small friendship for the lordly throng;
Distrust of all the world
beside.
Faithful if this wan image be,
No dream his life was,—but
a fight;
Could any Beatrice see
A lover in that anchorite?
To that cold Ghibelline’s gloomy
sight
Who could have guessed the
visions came
Of Beauty, veiled with heavenly light,
In circles of eternal flame?
The lips as Cumae’s cavern close,
The cheeks with fast and sorrow
thin,
The rigid front, almost morose,
But for the patient hope within,
Declare a life whose course hath been
Unsullied still, though still
severe;
Which, through the wavering days of sin,
Kept itself icy-chaste and
clear.
Not wholly such his haggard look
When wandering once, forlorn,
he strayed,
With no companion save his book,
To Corvo’s hushed monastic
shade;
Where, as the Benedictine laid
His palm upon the convent’s
guest,
The single boon for which he prayed
Was peace, that pilgrim’s
one request.
Peace dwells not here,—this
rugged face
Betrays no spirit of repose;
The sullen warrior sole we trace,
The marble man of many woes.
Such was his mien when first arose
The thought of that strange
tale divine,
When hell he peopled with his foes,
The scourge of many a guilty
line.
War to the last he waged with all
The tyrant canker-worms of
earth;
Baron and duke, in hold and hall,
Cursed the dark hour that
gave him birth;
He used Rome’s harlot for his mirth;
Plucked bare hypocrisy and
crime;
But valiant souls of knightly worth
Transmitted to the rolls of
Time.
O Time! whose verdicts mock our own,
The only righteous judge art
thou;
That poor old exile, sad and lone,
Is Latium’s other Virgil
now:
Before his name the nations bow;
His words are parcel of mankind,
Deep in whose hearts, as on his brow,
The marks have sunk of Dante’s
mind.
T.W. PARSONS.
Pan in Wall Street.
A.D. 1867.
Just where the Treasury’s marble
front
Looks over Wall Street’s
mingled nations;
Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont
To throng for trade and last
quotations;
Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold
Outrival, in the ears of people,
The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled
From Trinity’s undaunted
steeple,—
Even there I heard a strange, wild strain
Sound high above the modern
clamor,
Above the cries of greed and gain,
The curbstone war, the auction’s
hammer;
And swift, on Music’s misty ways,
It led, from all this strife
for millions,
To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days
Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.
And as it stilled the multitude,
And yet more joyous rose,
and shriller,
I saw the minstrel, where he stood
At ease against a Doric pillar:
One hand a droning organ played,
The other held a Pan’s-pipe
(fashioned
Like those of old) to lips that made
The reeds give out that strain
impassioned.
’Twas Pan himself had wandered here
A-strolling through this sordid
city,
And piping to the civic ear
The prelude of some pastoral
ditty!
The demigod had crossed the seas,—
From haunts of shepherd, nymph,
and satyr,
And Syracusan times,—to these
Far shores and twenty centuries
later.
A ragged cap was on his head;
But—hidden thus—there
was no doubting
That, all with crispy locks o’erspread,
His gnarled horns were somewhere
sprouting;
His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes,
Were crossed, as on some frieze
you see them,
And trousers, patched of divers hues,
Concealed his crooked shanks
beneath them.
He filled the quivering reeds with sound,
And o’er his mouth their
changes shifted,
And with his goat’s-eyes looked
around
Where’er the passing
current drifted;
And soon, as on Trinacrian hills
The nymphs and herdsmen ran
to hear him,
Even now the tradesmen from their tills,
With clerks and porters, crowded
near him.
The bulls and bears together drew
From Jauncey Court and New
Street Alley,
As erst, if pastorals be true,
Came beasts from every wooded
valley;
The random passers stayed to list,—
A boxer AEgon, rough and merry,
A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst
With Nais at the Brooklyn
Ferry.
A one-eyed Cyclops halted long
In tattered cloak of army
pattern,
And Galatea joined the throng,—
A blowsy, apple-vending slattern;
While old Silenus staggered out
From some new-fangled lunch-house
handy,
And bade the piper, with a shout,
To strike up Yankee Doodle
Dandy!
A newsboy and a peanut-girl
Like little Fauns began to
caper:
His hair was all in tangled curl,
Her tawny legs were bare and
taper;
And still the gathering larger grew,
And gave its pence and crowded
nigher,
While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew
His pipe, and struck the gamut
higher.
O heart of Nature, beating still
With throbs her vernal passion
taught her,—
Even here, as on the vine-clad hill,
Or by the Arethusan water!
New forms may fold the speech, new lands
Arise within these ocean-portals,
But Music waves eternal wands,—
Enchantress of the souls of
mortals!
So thought I,—but among us
trod
A man in blue, with legal
baton,
And scoffed the vagrant demigod,
And pushed him from the step
I sat on.
Doubting, I mused upon the cry,
“Great Pan is dead!”—and
all the people
Went on their ways:—and clear
and high
The quarter sounded from the
steeple.
E.C. STEDMAN.
Auspex.
My heart, I cannot still it,
Nest that had song-birds in it;
And when the last shall go,
The dreary days, to fill it,
Instead of lark or linnet,
Shall whirl dead leaves and snow.
Had they been swallows only,
Without the passion stronger
That skyward longs and sings,—
Woe’s me, I shall be lonely
When I can feel no longer
The impatience of their wings!
A moment, sweet delusion,
Like birds the brown leaves hover;
But it will not be long
Before their wild confusion
Fall wavering down to cover
The poet and his song.
J.R. LOWELL.
Birds.[5]
Birds are singing round my window,
Tunes the sweetest ever heard,
And I hang my cage there daily,
But I never catch a bird.
So with thoughts my brain is peopled,
And they sing there all day
long:
But they will not fold their pinions
In the little cage of Song.
R.H. STODDARD.
[5] From “The Poems of R.H. Stoddard,” copyright, 1880, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Toujours Amour.
Prithee tell me, Dimple-Chin,
At what age does Love begin?
Your blue eyes have scarcely seen
Summers three, my fairy queen,
But a miracle of sweets,
Soft approaches, sly retreats,
Show the little archer there,
Hidden in your pretty hair;
When didst learn a heart to win?
Prithee tell me, Dimple-Chin!
“Oh!”
the rosy lips reply,
“I can’t
tell you if I try.
’Tis so
long I can’t remember:
Ask some younger
lass than I!”
Tell, oh, tell me, Grizzled-Face,
Do your heart and head keep pace?
When does hoary Love expire,
When do frosts put out the fire?
Can its embers burn below
All that chill December snow?
Care you still soft hands to press,
Bonny heads to smooth and bless?
When does Love give up the chase?
Tell, oh, tell me, Grizzled-Face!
“Ah!”
the wise old lips reply,
“Youth may
pass and strength may die;
But of Love I
can’t foretoken:
Ask some older
sage than I!”
E.C. STEDMAN.
A Sigh.
It was nothing but a rose I gave her,—
Nothing but a
rose
Any wind might rob of half its savor,
Any wind that
blows.
When she took it from my trembling fingers
With a hand as
chill,—
Ah, the flying touch upon them lingers,
Stays, and thrills
them still!
Withered, faded, pressed between the pages,
Crumpled fold
on fold,—
Once it lay upon her breast, and ages
Cannot make it
old!
H.P. SPOFFORD.
No More.
This is the Burden of the Heart,
The Burden that it always
bore:
We live to love; we meet to part;
And part to meet on earth
No More:
We clasp each other to the heart,
And part to meet on earth
No More.
There is a time for tears to start,—
For dews to fall and larks
to soar:
The Time for Tears, is when we part
To meet upon the earth No
More:
The Time for Tears, is when we part
To meet on this wide earth—No
More.
B.F. WILLSON.
To a Young Girl Dying.
WITH A GIFT OF FRESH PALM-LEAVES.
This is Palm Sunday: mindful of the day, I bring palm branches, found upon my way: But these will wither; thine shall never die,— The sacred palms thou bearest to the sky! Dear little saint, though but a child in years, Older in wisdom than my gray compeers! We doubt and tremble,—we, with bated breath, Talk of this mystery of life and death: Thou, strong in faith, art gifted to conceive Beyond thy years, and teach us to believe!
Then take my palms, triumphal, to thy
home,
Gentle white palmer, never more to roam!
Only, sweet sister, give me, ere thou
go’st,
Thy benediction,—for my love
thou know’st!
We, too, are pilgrims, travelling towards
the shrine:
Pray that our pilgrimage may end like
thine!
T.W. PARSONS.
The Port of Ships.[6]
Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless
seas.
The good mate said: “Now must
we pray,
For lo! the very stars are
gone.
Brave Adm’ral speak,—what
shall I say?”
“Why, say, ‘Sail
on! Sail on! and on!’”
“My men grow mutinous day by day;
My men grow ghastly, wan and
weak.”
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy
cheek.
“What shall I say, brave Adm’ral,
say,
If we sight naught but seas
at dawn?”
“Why, you shall say, at break of
day,
‘Sail on! Sail
on! Sail on! and on!’”
They sailed, and sailed, as winds might
blow,
Until at last the blanched
mate said:
“Why, now not even God would know
Should I and all my men fall
dead.
These very winds forget their way,
For God from these dread seas
is gone.
Now speak, brave Adm’ral; speak,
and say—”
He said: “Sail
on! Sail on! and on!”
They sailed! They sailed! Then
spake the mate:
“This mad sea shows
its teeth to-night;
He curls his lip, he lies in wait
With lifted teeth, as if to
bite!
Brave Adm’ral, say but one good
word,—
What shall we do when hope
is gone?”
The words leaped as a leaping sword:
“Sail on! Sail
on! Sail on! and on!”
C.H. MILLER.
[6] From The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller.
Paradisi Gloria.
There is a city, builded by no hand,
And unapproachable by sea
or shore,
And unassailable by any band
Of storming soldiery for evermore.
There we no longer shall divide our time
By acts or pleasures,—doing
petty things
Of work or warfare, merchandise or rhyme;
But we shall sit beside the
silver springs
That flow from God’s own footstool,
and behold
Sages and martyrs, and those
blessed few
Who loved us once and were beloved of
old,
To dwell with them and walk
with them anew,
In alternations of sublime repose,
Musical motion, the perpetual
play
Of every faculty that Heaven bestows
Through the bright, busy,
and eternal day.
T.W. PARSONS.
Ballad.
In the summer even,
While yet the dew was hoar,
I went plucking purple pansies,
Till my love should come to
shore.
The fishing-lights their dances
Were keeping out at sea,
And come, I sung, my true love!
Come hasten home to me!
But the sea, it fell a-moaning,
And the white gulls rocked
thereon;
And the young moon dropped from heaven,
And the lights hid one by
one.
All silently their glances
Slipped down the cruel sea,
And wait! cried the night and wind and
storm,—
Wait, till I come to thee!
H.P. SPOFFORD.
The Fool’s Prayer.
The royal feast was done; the King
Sought some new sport to banish
care,
And to his jester cried: “Sir
Fool,
Kneel now, and make for us
a prayer!”
The jester doffed his cap and bells,
And stood the mocking court
before;
They could not see the bitter smile
Behind the painted grin he
wore.
He bowed his head, and bent his knee
Upon the monarch’s silken
stool;
His pleading voice arose: “O
Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!
“No pity, Lord, could change the
heart
From red with wrong to white
as wool;
The rod must heal the sin: but, Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!
“’Tis not by guilt the onward
sweep
Of truth and right, O Lord,
we stay;
’Tis by our follies that so long
We hold the earth from heaven
away.
“These clumsy feet, still in the
mire,
Go crushing blossoms without
end;
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heart-strings of
a friend.
“The ill-timed truth we might have
kept—
Who knows how sharp it pierced
and stung?
The word we had not sense to say—
Who knows how grandly it had
rung?
“Our faults no tenderness should
ask,
The chastening stripes must
cleanse them all;
But for our blunders—oh, in
shame
Before the eyes of heaven
we fall.
“Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;
Men crown the knave, and scourge
the tool
That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!”
The room was hushed; in silence rose
The King, and sought his gardens
cool,
And walked apart, and murmured low,
“Be merciful to me,
a fool!”
E.R. SILL.
On The Life-mask Of Abraham Lincoln.
This bronze doth keep the very form and
mold
Of our great martyr’s
face. Yes, this is he:
That brow all wisdom, all
benignity;
That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks
that hold
Like some harsh landscape all the summer’s
gold;
That spirit fit for sorrow,
as the sea
For storms to beat on; the
lone agony
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.
Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men
As might some prophet of the
elder day,—
Brooding above the tempest
and the fray
With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal
ken.
A power was his beyond the
touch of art
Or armed strength: his
pure and mighty heart.
R.W. GILDER.
Song.
Years have flown since I knew thee first,
And I know thee as water is known of thirst:
Yet I knew thee of old at the first sweet
sight,
And thou art strange to me, Love, to-night.
R.W. GILDER.
To A Dead Woman.[7]
Not a kiss in life; but one kiss, at life’s
end,
I have set on the face
of Death in trust for thee.
Through long years keep it fresh on thy
lips, O friend!
At the gate of Silence give
it back to me.
H.C. BUNNER.
[7] From “The Poems of H.C. Bunner,” copyright, 1884, 1892, 1896, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Destiny.
Three roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed
down
Each with its loveliness as with a crown,
Drooped in a florist’s window in
a town.
The first a lover bought. It lay
at rest,
Like flower on flower, that night, on
Beauty’s breast.
The second rose, as virginal and fair,
Shrunk in the tangles of a harlot’s
hair.
The third, a widow, with new grief made
wild,
Shut in the icy palm of her dead child.
T.B. ALDRICH.
The Kings.
A man said unto his angel:
“My spirits are fallen thro’,
And I cannot carry this battle;
O brother! what shall I do?
“The terrible Kings are on me,
With spears that are deadly bright,
Against me so from the cradle
Do fate and my fathers fight.”
Then said to the man his angel:
“Thou wavering, foolish soul,
Back to the ranks! What matter
To win or to lose the whole,
“As judged by the little judges
Who hearken not well, nor see?
Not thus, by the outer issue,
The Wise shall interpret thee.
“Thy will is the very, the only,
The solemn event of things;
The weakest of hearts defying
Is stronger than all these Kings.
“Tho’ out of the past they
gather,
Mind’s Doubt and bodily Pain,
And pallid Thirst of the Spirit
That is kin to the other twain,
“And Grief, in a cloud of banners,
And ringletted Vain Desires,
And Vice with the spoils upon him
Of thee and thy beaten sires,
“While Kings of eternal evil
Yet darken the hills about,
Thy part is with broken sabre
To rise on the last redoubt;
“To fear not sensible failure,
Nor covet the game at all,
But fighting, fighting, fighting,
Die, driven against the wall!”
L.I. GUINEY.
Triumph.[8]
The dawn came in through the bars of the
blind,—
And the winter’s dawn
is gray,—
And said, “However you cheat your
mind,
The hours are flying away.”
A ghost of a dawn, and pale, and weak,—
“Has the sun a heart,”
I said,
“To throw a morning flush on the
cheek
Whence a fairer flush has
fled?”
As a gray rose-leaf that is fading white
Was the cheek where I set
my kiss;
And on that side of the bed all night
Death had watched, and I on
this.
I kissed her lips, they were half apart,
Yet they made no answering
sign;
Death’s hand was on her failing
heart,
And his eyes said, “She
is mine.”
I set my lips on the blue-veined lid,
Half-veiled by her death-damp
hair;
And oh, for the violet depths it hid
And the light I longed for
there!
Faint day and the fainter life awoke,
And the night was overpast;
And I said, “Though never in life
you spoke
Oh, speak with a look at last!”
For the space of a heart-beat fluttered
her breath,
As a bird’s wing spread
to flee;
She turned her weary arms to Death,
And the light of her eyes
to me.
H.C. BUNNER.
[8] From “The Poems of H.C. Bunner,” copyright, 1884, 1892, 1896, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Evening Song.[9]
Look off, dear Love, across the sallow
sands,
And mark yon meeting of the
sun and sea,
How long they kiss in sight of all the
lands.
Ah! longer, longer, we.
Now in the sea’s red vintage melts
the sun,
As Egypt’s pearl dissolved
in rosy wine,
And Cleopatra night drinks all. ’Tis
done,
Love, lay thine hand in mine.
Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven’s
heart;
Glimmer, ye waves, round else
unlighted sands.
O night! divorce our sun and sky apart,
Never our lips, our hands.
S. LANIER.
[9] From “Poems of Sidney Lanier,” copyright, 1884, 1891, by Mary D. Lanier, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
“The Woods That Bring the Sunset Near.”
The wind from out the west is blowing,
The homeward-wandering cows are lowing,
Dark grow the pine-woods, dark and drear,—
The woods that bring the sunset near.
When o’er wide seas the sun declines,
Far off its fading glory shines,
Far off, sublime, and full of fear,—
The pine-woods bring the sunset near.
This house that looks to east, to west,
This, dear one, is our home, our rest;
Yonder the stormy sea, and here
The woods that bring the sunset near.
R.W. GILDER.
At Night.
The sky is dark, and dark the bay below
Save where the midnight city’s pallid
glow
Lies
like a lily white
On
the black pool of night.
O rushing steamer, hurry on thy way
Across the swirling Kills and gusty bay,
To
where the eddying tide
Strikes
hard the city’s side!
For there, between the river and the sea,
Beneath that glow,—the lily’s
heart to me,—
A
sleeping mother mild,
And
by her breast a child.
R.W. GILDER.
“Still in Thy Love I Trust.”
Still in thy love I trust,
Supreme o’er death, since deathless
is thy essence;
For, putting off the dust,
Thou hast but blest me with a nearer presence.
And so, for this, for all,
I breathe no selfish plaint, no faithless
chiding;
On me the snowflakes fall,
But thou hast gained a summer all-abiding.
Striking a plaintive string,
Like some poor harper at a palace portal,
I wait without and sing,
While those I love glide in and dwell
immortal.
A.A. FIELDS.
The Future.
What may we take into the vast Forever?
That marble door
Admits no fruit of all our long endeavor,
No fame-wreathed
crown we wore,
No garnered lore.
What can we bear beyond the unknown portal?
No gold, no gains
Of all our toiling: in the life immortal
No hoarded wealth
remains,
Nor gilds, nor
stains.
Naked from out that far abyss behind us
We entered here:
No word came with our coming, to remind
us
What wondrous
world was near,
No hope, no fear.
Into the silent, starless Night before
us,
Naked we glide:
No hand has mapped the constellations
o’er us,
No comrade at
our side,
No chart, no guide.
Yet fearless toward that midnight, black
and hollow,
Our footsteps
fare:
The beckoning of a Father’s hand
we follow—
His love alone
is there,
No curse, no care.
E.R. SILL.
Prescience.
The new moon hung in the sky,
The sun was low in the west,
And my betrothed and I
In the churchyard paused to
rest—
Happy maiden and
lover,
Dreaming the old
dream over:
The light winds wandered by,
And robins chirped from the
nest.
And lo! in the meadow-sweet
Was the grave of a little
child,
With a crumbling stone at the feet,
And the ivy running wild—
Tangled ivy and
clover
Folding it over
and over:
Close to my sweetheart’s feet
Was the little mound up-piled.
Stricken with nameless fears,
She shrank and clung to me,
And her eyes were filled with tears
For a sorrow I did not see:
Lightly the winds
were blowing,
Softly her tears
were flowing—
Tears for the unknown years
And a sorrow that was to be!
T.B. ALDRICH.
In August.
All the long August afternoon,
The little drowsy stream
Whispers a melancholy tune,
As if it dreamed of June
And whispered in its dream.
The thistles show beyond the brook
Dust on their down and bloom,
And out of many a weed-grown nook
The aster-flowers look
With eyes of tender gloom.
The silent orchard aisles are sweet
With smell of ripening fruit.
Through the sere grass, in shy retreat,
Flutter, at coming feet,
The robins strange and mute.
There is no wind to stir the leaves,
The harsh leaves overhead;
Only the querulous cricket grieves,
And shrilling locust weaves
A song of Summer dead.
W.D. HOWELLS.
That Day You Came.
Such special sweetness was about
That day God sent you here,
I knew the lavender was out,
And it was mid of year.
Their common way the great winds blew,
The ships sailed out to sea;
Yet ere that day was spent I knew
Mine own had come to me.
As after song some snatch of tune
Lurks still in grass or bough,
So, somewhat of the end o’ June
Lurks in each weather now.
The young year sets the buds astir,
The old year strips the trees;
But ever in my lavender
I hear the brawling bees.
L.W. REESE.
Negro Lullaby.
Bedtimes’ come fu’ little
boys,
Po’ little
lamb.
Too tiahed out to make a noise,
Po’ little
lamb.
You gwine t’ have to-morrer sho’?
Yes, you tole me dat, befo’,
Don’t you fool me, chile, no mo’,
Po’ little
lamb.
You been bad de livelong day,
Po’ little
lamb.
Th’owin’ stones an’
runnin’ ’way,
Po’ little
lamb.
My, but you’s a-runnin’ wild,
Look jes’ lak some po’ folks’
chile;
Mam’ gwine whup you atter while,
Po’ little
lamb.
Come hyeah! you mos’ tiahed to def,
Po’ little
lamb.
Played yo’se’f clean out o’
bref,
Po’ little
lamb.
See dem han’s now,—sich
a sight!
Would you ever b’lieve dey’s
white!
Stan’ still ’twell I wash
dem right,
Po’ little
lamb.
Jes’ caint hol’ yo’
haid up straight,
Po’ little
lamb.
Hadn’t oughter played so late,
Po’ little
lamb.
Mammy do’ know whut she’d
do,
Ef de chillun’s all lak you;
You’s a caution now fu’ true,
Po’ little
lamb.
Lay yo’ haid down in my lap,
Po’ little
lamb.
Y’ought to have a right good slap,
Po’ little
lamb.
You been runnin’ roun’ a heap.
Shet dem eyes an’ don’t you
peep,
Dah now, dah now, go to sleep,
Po’ little
lamb.
P.L. DUNBAR.
A Woman’s Thought.
I am a woman—therefore I may
not
Call to him, cry to him,
Fly to him,
Bid him delay not!
And when he comes to me, I must sit quiet:
Still as a stone—
All silent and cold.
If my heart riot—
Crush and defy it!
Should I grow bold—
Say one dear thing to him,
All my life fling to him,
Cling to him—
What to atone
Is enough for my sinning!
This were the cost to me,
This were my winning—
That he were lost to me.
Not as a lover
At last if he part from me,
Tearing my heart from me—
Hurt beyond cure,—
Calm and demure
Then must I hold me—
In myself fold me—
Lest he discover;
Showing no sign to him
By look of mine to him
What he has been to me—
How my heart turns to him,
Follows him, yearns to him,
Prays him to love me.
Pity me, lean to me,
Thou God above me!
R.W. GILDER.
The Flight.
Upon a cloud among the stars we stood.
The angel raised his hand
and looked and said,
“Which world, of all
yon starry myriad
Shall we make wing to?” The still
solitude
Became a harp whereon his voice and mood
Made spheral music round his
haloed head.
I spake—for then
I had not long been dead—
“Let me look round upon the vasts,
and brood
A moment on these orbs ere I decide ...
What is yon lower star that
beauteous shines
And with soft splendor now
incarnadines
Our wings?—There would
I go and there abide.”
He smiled as one who some
child’s thought divines:
“That is the world where
yesternight you died.”
L. MIFFLIN.
Childhood.
Old Sorrow I shall meet again,
And Joy, perchance—but
never, never,
Happy Childhood, shall we twain
See each other’s face
forever!
And yet I would not call thee back,
Dear Childhood, lest the sight
of me,
Thine old companion, on the rack
Of Age, should sadden even
thee.
J.B. TABB.
Little Boy Blue.[10]
The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with
rust,
And his musket moulds in his
hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new
And the soldier was passing
fair,
And that was the time when our Little
Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.
“Now, don’t you go till I
come,” he said,
“And don’t you
make any noise!”
So toddling off to his trundle-bed
He dreampt of the pretty toys.
And as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue,—
Oh, the years are many, the years are
long,
But the little toy friends
are true.
Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place,
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face.
And they wonder, as waiting these long
years through,
In the dust of that little
chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue
Since he kissed them and put
them there.
E. FIELD.
[10] From “A Little Book of Western Verse,” copyright, 1889, by Eugene Field, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Strong as Death.[11]
O death, when thou shalt come to me
From out thy dark, where she
is now,
Come not with graveyard smell on thee,
Or withered roses on thy brow.
Come not, O Death, with hollow tone,
And soundless step, and clammy
hand—
Lo, I am now no less alone
Than in thy desolate, doubtful
land;
But with that sweet and subtle scent
That ever clung about her
(such
As with all things she brushed was blent);
And with her quick and tender
touch.
With the dim gold that lit her hair,
Crown thyself, Death; let
fall thy tread
So light that I may dream her there,
And turn upon my dying bed.
And through my chilling veins shall flame
My love, as though beneath
her breath;
And in her voice but call my name,
And I will follow thee, O
Death.
H.C. BUNNER.
[11] From “The Poems of H.C. Bunner,” copyright, 1884, 1892, 1896 by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
The White Jessamine.
I knew she lay above me,
Where the casement all the
night
Shone, softened with a phosphor glow
Of sympathetic light,
And that her fledgling spirit pure
Was pluming fast for flight.
Each tendril throbbed and quickened
As I nightly climbed apace,
And could scarce restrain the blossoms
When, anear the destined place,
Her gentle whisper thrilled me
Ere I gazed upon her face.
I waited, darkling, till the dawn
Should touch me into bloom,
While all my being panted
To outpour its first perfume,
When, lo! a paler flower than mine
Had blossomed in the gloom!
J.B. TABB.
The House of Death.
Not a hand has lifted the latchet
Since she went out of the
door—
No footstep shall cross the threshold,
Since she can come in no more.
There is rust upon locks and hinges,
And mold and blight on the
walls,
And silence faints in the chambers,
And darkness waits in the
halls—
Waits as all things have waited
Since she went, that day of
spring,
Borne in her pallid splendor
To dwell in the Court of the
King:
With lilies on brow and bosom,
With robes of silken sheen,
And her wonderful, frozen beauty,
The lilies and silk between.
Red roses she left behind her,
But they died long, long ago
’Twas the odorous ghost of a blossom
That seemed through the dusk
to glow.
The garments she left mock the shadows
With hints of womanly grace,
And her image swims in the mirror
That was so used to her face.
The birds make insolent music
Where the sunshine riots outside,
And the winds are merry and wanton
With the summer’s pomp
and pride.
But into this desolate mansion,
Where Love has closed the
door,
Nor sunshine nor summer shall enter,
Since she can come in no more.
L.C. MOULTON.
A Tropical Morning at Sea.
Sky in its lucent splendor lifted
Higher than cloud can be;
Air with no breath of earth to stain it,
Pure on the perfect sea.
Crests that touch and tilt each other,
Jostling as they comb;
Delicate crash of tinkling water,
Broken in pearling foam.
Plashings—or is it the pinewood’s
whispers,
Babble of brooks unseen,
Laughter of winds when they find the blossoms,
Brushing aside the green?
Waves that dip, and dash, and sparkle;
Foam-wreaths slipping by,
Soft as a snow of broken roses
Afloat over mirrored sky.
Off to the east the steady sun-track
Golden meshes fill
Webs of fire, that lace and tangle,
Never a moment still.
Liquid palms but clap together,
Fountains, flower-like, grow—
Limpid bells on stems of silver—
Out of a slope of snow.
Sea-depths, blue as the blue of violets—
Blue as a summer sky,
When you blink at its arch sprung over
Where in the grass you lie.
Dimly an orange bit of rainbow
Burns where the low west clears,
Broken in air, like a passionate promise
Born of a moment’s tears.
Thinned to amber, rimmed with silver,
Clouds in the distance dwell,
Clouds that are cool, for all their color,
Pure as a rose-lipped shell.
Fleets of wool in the upper heavens
Gossamer wings unfurl;
Sailing so high they seem but sleeping
Over yon bar of pearl.
What would the great world lose, I wonder—
Would it be missed or no—
If we stayed in the opal morning,
Floating forever so?
Swung to sleep by the swaying water,
Only to dream all day—
Blow, salt wind from the north upstarting,
Scatter such dreams away!
E.R. SILL.
Memory.
My mind lets go a thousand things,
Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,
And yet recalls the very hour—
’Twas noon by yonder village tower,
And on the last blue noon in May—
The wind came briskly up this way,
Crisping the brook beside the road;
Then, pausing here, set down its load
Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly
Two petals from that wild-rose tree.
T.B. ALDRICH.
A Mood.
A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has
crept upon my gladness—
Some vague, remote ancestral touch of
sorrow, or of madness;
A fear that is not fear, a pain that has
not pain’s insistence;
A tense of longing, or of loss, in some
foregone existence;
A subtle hurt that never pen has writ
nor tongue has spoken—
Such hurt perchance as Nature feels when
a blossomed bough is broken.
T.B. ALDRICH.
The Way to Arcady.[12]
Oh, what’s the way to Arcady,
To Arcady, to Arcady;
Oh, what’s the way to Arcady,
Where all the leaves are
merry?
Oh, what’s the way to Arcady?
The spring is rustling in the tree—
The tree the wind is blowing through—
It sets the blossoms flickering
white.
I knew not skies could burn so blue
Nor any breezes blow so light.
They blow an old-time way for me,
Across the world to Arcady.
Oh, what’s the way to Arcady?
Sir Poet, with the rusty coat,
Quit mocking of the song-bird’s
note.
How have you heart for any tune,
You with the wayworn russet shoon?
Your scrip, a-swinging by your side,
Gapes with a gaunt mouth hungry-wide.
I’ll brim it well with pieces red,
If you will tell the way to tread.
Oh, I am bound for Arcady,
And if you but keep pace with me
You tread the way to Arcady.
And where away lies Arcady,
And how long yet may the journey be?
Ah, that (quoth he) I do not
know—
Across the clover and the snow—
Across the frost, across the flowers—
Through summer seconds and winter hours.
I’ve trod the way my whole life
long,
And know not now where
it may be;
My guide is but the stir to song.
That tells me I can not go wrong,
Or clear or dark the pathway
be
Upon the road to Arcady.
But how shall I do who cannot sing?
I was wont to sing, once on
a time—
There is never an echo now to ring
Remembrance back to the trick
of rhyme.
’Tis strange you cannot sing
(quoth he),
The folk all sing in Arcady.
But how may he find Arcady
Who hath not youth nor melody?
What, know you not, old man (quoth
he)—
Your hair is white, your
face is wise—
That Love must kiss that
Mortal’s eyes
Who hopes to see fair Arcady?
No gold can buy you entrance there;
But beggared Love may go all bare—
No wisdom won with weariness;
But Love goes in with Folly’s
dress—
No fame that wit could ever win;
But only Love may lead Love in
To Arcady, to Arcady.
Ah, woe is me, through all my days
Wisdom and wealth I both have
got,
And fame and name, and great men’s
praise;
But Love, ah, Love! I
have it not.
There was a time, when life was new—
But far away, and half forgot—
I only know her eyes were blue;
But Love—I fear
I knew it not.
We did not wed, for lack of gold,
And she is dead, and I am old.
All things have come since then to me,
Save Love, ah, Love! and Arcady.
Ah, then I fear we part (quoth
he),
My way’s for Love and Arcady.
But you, you fare alone, like me;
The gray is likewise in your
hair.
What love have you to lead
you there,
To Arcady, to Arcady?
Ah, no, not lonely do I fare;
My true companion’s
Memory.
With Love he fills the Spring-time
air;
With Love he clothes the
Winter tree.
Oh, past this poor horizon’s
Page 57
bound
My song goes straight to
one who stands—
Her face all gladdening at the sound—
To lead me to the Spring-green
lands,
To wander with enlacing
hands.
The songs within my breast that stir
Are all of her, are all of her.
My maid is dead long years (quoth
he),
She waits for me in Arcady.
Oh, yon’s the way to Arcady,
To Arcady, to Arcady;
Oh, yon’s the way to Arcady,
Where all the leaves are
merry.
H.C. BUNNER.
[12] From “The Poems of H.C. Bunner,” copyright, 1884, 1892, 1896, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Eve’s Daughter.
I waited in the little sunny room:
The cool breeze waved the
window-lace, at play,
The white rose on the porch was all in
bloom,
And out upon the bay
I watched the wheeling sea-birds go and
come.
“Such an old friend,—she
would not make me stay
While she bound up her hair.”
I turned, and lo,
Danae in her shower! and fit to slay
All a man’s hoarded
prudence at a blow:
Gold hair, that streamed away
As round some nymph a sunlit
fountain’s flow.
“She would not make
me wait!”—but well I know
She took a good half-hour to loose and
lay
Those locks in dazzling disarrangement
so!
E.R. SILL.
On An Intaglio Head Of Minerva.
Beneath the warrior’s helm, behold
The flowing tresses of the
woman!
Minerva, Pallas, what you will—
A winsome creature, Greek
or Roman.
Minerva? No! ’tis some sly
minx
In cousin’s helmet masquerading;
If not—then Wisdom was a dame
For sonnets and for serenading!
I thought the goddess cold, austere,
Not made for love’s
despairs and blisses:
Did Pallas wear her hair like that?
Was Wisdom’s mouth so
shaped for kisses?
The Nightingale should be her bird,
And not the Owl, big-eyed
and solemn:
How very fresh she looks, and yet
She’s older far than
Trajan’s Column!
The magic hand that carved this face,
And set this vine-work round
it running,
Perhaps ere mighty Phidias wrought
Had lost its subtle skill
and cunning.
Who was he? Was he glad or sad,
Who knew to carve in such
a fashion?
Perchance he graved the dainty head
For some brown girl that scorned
his passion.
Perchance, in some still garden-place,
Where neither fount nor tree
to-day is,
He flung the jewel at the feet
Of Phryne, or perhaps ’twas
Lais.
But he is dust; we may not know
His happy or unhappy story:
Nameless, and dead these centuries,
His work outlives him—there’s
his glory!
Both man and jewel lay in earth
Beneath a lava-buried city;
The countless summers came and went
With neither haste, nor hate,
nor pity.
Years blotted out the man, but left
The jewel fresh as any blossom,
Till some Visconti dug it up—
To rise and fall on Mabel’s
bosom!
O nameless brother! see how Time
Your gracious handiwork has
guarded:
See how your loving, patient art
Has come, at last, to be rewarded.
Who would not suffer slights of men,
And pangs of hopeless passion
also,
To have his carven agate-stone
On such a bosom rise and fall
so!
T.B. ALDRICH.
Hunting-song.
Oh, who would stay indoor, indoor,
When the horn is on the hill? (Bugle:
Tarantara!)
With the crisp air stinging, and the huntsmen
singing,
And a ten-tined buck to kill!
Before the sun goes down, goes down,
We shall slay the buck of ten; (Bugle:
Tarantara!)
And the priest shall say benison, and
we shall ha’e venison,
When we come home again.
Let him that loves his ease, his ease,
Keep close and house him fair; (Bugle:
Tarantara!)
He’ll still be a stranger to the
merry thrill of danger
And the joy of the open air.
But he that loves the hills, the hills,
Let him come out to-day! (Bugle:
Tarantara!)
For the horses are neighing, and the hounds
are baying,
And the hunt’s up, and away!
R. HOVEY.
Parting.
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
E. DICKINSON.
When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan.
When the Sultan Shah-Zaman Goes to the city Ispahan, Even before he gets so far As the place where the clustered palm-trees are, At the last of the thirty palace-gates, The flower of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom, Orders a feast in his favorite room— Glittering squares of colored ice, Sweetened with syrop, tinctured with spice, Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates, Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces, Limes, and citrons, and apricots, And wines that are known to Eastern princes; And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots Of spiced meats and costliest fish And all that the curious palate could wish, Pass in and out of the cedarn doors; Scattered over mosaic floors Are anemones, myrtles, and violets, And a musical fountain throws its jets Of a hundred colors into the air. The dusk Sultana loosens her hair, And stains with the henna-plant the tips Of her pointed nails, and bites her lips Till they bloom again; but, alas, that rose Not for the Sultan buds and blows! Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman When he goes to the city Ispahan.
Then at a wave of her sunny hand
The dancing-girls of Samarcand
Now, when I see an extra light, Flaming, flickering on the night From my neighbor’s casement opposite, I know as well as I know to pray, I know as well as a tongue can say, That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman Has gone to the city Isfahan.
T.B. ALDRICH.
Night.
Chaos, of old, was God’s dominion;
’Twas His beloved child,
His own first-born;
And He was aged ere the thought
of morn
Shook the sheer steeps of black Oblivion.
Then all the works of darkness being done
Through countless aeons hopelessly
forlorn,
Out to the very utmost verge
and bourn,
God at the last, reluctant, made the sun.
He loved His darkness still, for it was
old:
He grieved to see His eldest
child take flight;
And when His Fiat lux
the death-knell tolled,
As the doomed Darkness backward by Him
rolled,
He snatched a remnant flying
into light
And strewed it with the stars,
and called it Night.
L. MIFFLIN.
He Made the Stars Also.
Vast hollow voids, beyond the utmost reach
Of suns, their legions withering
at His nod,
Died into day hearing the
voice of God;
And seas new made, immense and furious,
each
Plunged and rolled forward, feeling for
a beach;
He walked the waters with
effulgence shod.
This being made, He yearned
for worlds to make
From other chaos out beyond our night—
For to create is still God’s prime
delight.
The large moon, all alone,
sailed her dark lake,
And the first tides were moving
to her might;
Then Darkness trembled, and began to quake
Big with the birth of stars,
and when He spake
A million worlds leapt into
radiant light!
L. MIFFLIN.
The Sour Winds.
Wind of the North,
Wind of the Norland snows,
Wind of the winnowed skies and sharp,
clear stars—
Blow cold and keen across the naked hills,
And crisp the lowland pools with crystal
films,
And blur the casement-squares with glittering
ice,
But go not near my love.
Wind of the West,
Wind of the few, far clouds,
Wind of the gold and crimson sunset lands—
Blow fresh and pure across the peaks and
plains,
And broaden the blue spaces of the heavens,
And sway the grasses and the mountain
pines,
But let my dear one rest.
Wind of the East,
Wind of the sunrise seas,
Wind of the clinging mists and gray, harsh
rains—
Blow moist and chill across the wastes
of brine,
And shut the sun out, and the moon and
stars,
And lash the boughs against the dripping
eaves,
Yet keep thou from my love.
But thou, sweet wind!
Wind of the fragrant South,
Wind from the bowers of jasmine and of
rose—
Over magnolia glooms and lilied lakes
And flowering forests come with dewy wings,
And stir the petals at her feet, and kiss
The low mound where she lies.
C.H. LUeDERS.
The Return.
Now at last I am at home—
Wind abeam and flooding tide,
And the offing white with foam,
And an old friend by my side
Glad the long, green waves
to ride.
Strange how we’ve been wandering
Through the crowded towns
for gain,
You and I who loved the sting
Of the salt spray and the
rain
And the gale across the main!
What world honors could avail
Loss of this—the
slanted mast,
And the roaring round the rail,
And the sheeted spray we cast
Round us as we seaward passed?
As the sad land sinks apace,
With it sinks each thought
of care;
Think not now of aging face;
Question not the whitening
hair:
Youth still beckons everywhere.
And the light we thought had fled
From the sky-line glows there
now;
Bends the same blue overhead;
And the waves we used to plow
Part in beryl at the bow.
Hours like this we two have known
In the old days, when we sailed
Seaward ere the night had flown,
Or the morning star had paled
Like the shy eyes love has
veiled.
Round our bow the ripples purled,
As the swift tide outward
streamed
Through a hushed and ghostly world,
Where our harbor reaches seemed
Like a river that we dreamed.
Then we saw the black hills sway
In the waters’ crinkled
glass,
And the village wan and gray,
And the startled cattle pass
Through the tangled meadow-grass.
Through the glooming we have run
Straight into the gates of
day,
Seen the crimson-edged sun
Burn the sea’s gray
bound away—
Leap to universal sway.
Little cared we where we drove
So the wind was strong and
keen.
Oh, what sun-crowned waves we clove!
What cool shadows lurked between
Those long combers pale and
green!
Graybeard pleasures are but toys;
Sorrow shatters them at last:
For this brief hour we are boys;
Trim the sheet and face the
blast;
Sail into the happy past!
L.F. TOOKER.
Bereaved.
Let me come in where you sit weeping,—aye,
Let me, who have
not any child to die,
Weep with you for the little one whose
love
I have known nothing
of.
The little arms that slowly, slowly loosed
Their pressure round your neck; the hands
you used
To kiss.—Such arms—such
hands I never knew.
May I not weep
with you?
Fain would I be of service—say
some thing,
Between the tears, that would be comforting,—
But ah! so sadder than yourselves am I,
Who have no child
to die.
J.W. RILEY.
The Chariot.
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain.
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then ’tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.
E. DICKINSON.
Indian Summer.
These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.
These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June,—
A blue and gold mistake.
Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief,
Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf!
Oh, sacrament of summer days,
Oh, last communion in the haze,
Permit a child to join,
Thy sacred emblems to partake,
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!
E. DICKINSON.
Confided.
Another lamb, O Lamb of God, behold,
Within this quiet fold,
Among Thy Father’s sheep
I lay to sleep!
A heart that never for a night did rest
Beyond its mother’s breast.
Lord, keep it close to Thee,
Lest waking it should bleat and pine for
me!
J.B. TABB.
In Absence.
All that thou art not, makes not up the
sum
Of what thou art, beloved,
unto me:
All other voices, wanting thine, are dumb;
All vision, in thine absence,
vacancy.
J.B. TABB.
Song of the Chattahoochee.[13]
Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapids and leap the fall
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover’s pain to attain the
plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.
All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of
Hall,
The rushes cried Abide, abide,
The wilful waterweeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said
Stay,
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed Abide,
abide
Here in the hills of Habersham
Here in the valleys of
Hall.
High o’er the hills
of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold,
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the
pine,
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and
sign,
Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold
Deep shades of the hills
of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys
of Hall.
And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of
Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth
brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl,
And many a luminous jewel lone
—Crystals clear or acloud with
mist,
Ruby, garnet and amethyst—
Made lures with the lights of streaming
stone
In the clefts of the hills
of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys
of Hall.
But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of
Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the
plain.
Downward the voices of Duty call—
Downward to toil and be mixed with the
main.
The dry fields burn, and the mills are
to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o’er the hills
of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys
of Hall.
S. LANIER.
[13] From “Poems of Sidney Lanier,” copyright, 1884, 1891, by Mary D. Lanier, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
The Sea’s Voice.
Around the rocky headlands, far and near,
The wakened ocean murmured
with dull tongue
Till all the coast’s
mysterious caverns rung
With the waves’ voice, barbaric,
hoarse, and drear.
Within this distant valley, with rapt
ear,
I listened, thrilled, as though
a spirit sung,
Or some gray god, as when
the world was young,
Moaned to his fellow, mad with rage or
fear.
Thus in the dark, ere the first dawn,
methought
The sea’s deep roar
and sullen surge and shock
Broke the long
silence of eternity,
And echoed from the summits where God
wrought,
Building the world, and ploughing
the steep rock
With ploughs of
ice-hills harnessed to the sea.
The sea is never quiet: east and
west
The nations hear it, like
the voice of fate;
Within vast shores its strife
makes desolate,
Still murmuring mid storms that to its
breast
Return, as eagles screaming to their nest.
Is it the voice of worlds
and isles that wait
While old earth crumbles to eternal rest,
Or some hoar monster calling
to his mate?
O ye, that hear it moan about the shore,
Be still and listen! that
loud voice hath sung
Where mountains
rise, where desert sands are blown;
And when man’s voice is dumb, forevermore
’Twill murmur on its
craggy shores among,
Singing of gods
and nations overthrown.
W.P. FOSTER.
At Gibraltar.
England, I stand on thy imperial ground,
Not all a stranger; as thy
bugles blow,
I feel within my blood old
battles flow,—
The blood whose ancient founts in thee
are found.
Still surging dark against the Christian
bound
Wide Islam presses; well its
peoples know
Thy heights that watch them
wandering below;
I think how Lucknow heard their gathering
sound.
I turn and meet the cruel turbaned face;
England, ’tis sweet
to be so much thy son!
I feel the conqueror in my blood and race;
Last night Trafalgar awed
me, and to-day
Gibraltar wakened; hark, thy evening gun
Startles the desert over Africa!
Thou art the rock of empire, set mid-seas
Between the East and West,
that God has built;
Advance thy Roman borders
where thou wilt,
While run thy armies true with His decrees.
Law, justice, liberty,—great
gifts are these;
Watch that they spread where
English blood is spilt,
Lest, mixt and sullied with
his country’s guilt,
The soldier’s life-stream flow and
Heaven displease.
Two swords there are: one naked,
apt to smite,
Thy blade of war; and, battled-storied,
one
Rejoices in the sheath and hides from
light
American I am; would wars
were done!
Now westward look, my country bids Good-night,—
Peace to the world from ports
without a gun!
G.E. WOODBERRY.
Jerry an’ Me.
No matter how the chances are,
Nor when the winds may blow,
My Jerry there has left the sea
With all its luck an’
woe:
For who would try the sea at all,
Must try it luck or no.
They told him—Lor’, men
take no care
How words they speak may fall—
They told him blunt, he was too old,
Too slow with oar an’
trawl,
An’ this is how he left the sea
An’ luck an’ woe
an’ all.
Take any man on sea or land
Out of his beaten way,
If he is young ’twill do, but then,
If he is old an’ gray,
A month will be a year to him,
Be all to him you may.
He sits by me, but most he walks
The door-yard for a deck,
An’ scans the boat a-goin’
out
Till she becomes a speck,
Then turns away, his face as wet
As if she were a wreck.
I cannot bring him back again,
The days when we were wed.
But he shall never know—my
man—
The lack o’ love or
bread,
While I can cast a stitch or fill
A needleful o’ thread.
God pity me, I’d most forgot
How many yet there be,
Whose goodmen full as old as mine
Are somewhere on the sea,
Who hear the breakin’ bar an’
think
O’ Jerry home an’—me.
H. RICH.
The Gravedigger.
Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old,
And well his work is done;
With an equal grave for lord and knave,
He buries them every one.
Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,
He makes for the nearest shore;
And God, who sent him a thousand ship,
Will send him a thousand more;
But some he’ll save for a bleaching
grave,
And shoulder them in to shore,—
Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,
Shoulder them in to shore.
Oh, the ships of Greece and the ships
of Tyre
Went out, and where are they?
In the port they made, they are delayed
With the ships of yesterday.
He followed the ships of England far
As the ships of long ago;
And the ships of France they led him a
dance,
But he laid them all arow.
Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him
Is the sexton of the town;
For sure and swift, with a guiding lift,
He shovels the dead men down.
But though he delves so fierce and grim,
His honest graves are wide,
As well they know who sleep below
The dredge of the deepest tide.
Oh, he works with a rollicking stave at
lip,
And loud is the chorus skirled;
With the burly note of his rumbling throat
He batters it down the world.
He learned it once in his father’s
house
Where the ballads of eld were sung;
And merry enough is the burden rough,
But no man knows the tongue.
Oh, fair, they say, was his bride to see,
And wilful she must have been,
That she could bide at his gruesome side
When the first red dawn came in.
And sweet, they say, is her kiss to those
She greets to his border home;
And softer than sleep her hand’s
first sweep
That beckons, and they come.
Oh, crooked is he, but strong enough
To handle the tallest mast;
From the royal barque to the slaver dark,
He buries them all at last.
Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,
He makes for the nearest shore;
And God, who sent him a thousand ship,
Will send him a thousand more;
But some he’ll save for a bleaching
grave,
And shoulder them in to shore,—
Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,
Shoulder them in to shore.
B. CARMAN.
The Absence of Little Wesley.
HOOSIER DIALECT.
Sence little Wesley went, the place seems
all so strange and still—
W’y, I miss his yell o’ “Gran’pap!”
as I’d miss the whipperwill!
And to think I ust to scold him
fer his everlastin’ noise,
When I on’y rickollect him as the
best o’ little boys!
I wisht a hunderd times a day ‘at
he’d come trompin’ in,
And all the noise he ever made was twic’t
as loud ag’in!—
It ’u’d seem like some soft
music played on some fine insturment,
‘Longside o’ this loud lonesomeness,
sence little Wesley went!
Of course the clock don’t tick no
louder than it ust to do—
Yit now they’s times it ’pears
like it ’u’d bu’st itse’f in
two!
And let a rooster, suddent-like, crow
som’er’s clos’t around,
And seems’s ef, mighty nigh it,
it ’u’d lift me off the ground!
And same with all the cattle when they
bawl around the bars,
In the red o’ airly mornin’,
er the dusk and dew and stars,
When the neighbers’ boys ‘at
passes never stop, but jes’ go on,
A-whistlin’ kind o’ to theirse’v’s—sence
little Wesley’s gone!
And then, o’ nights, when Mother’s
settin’ up oncommon late,
A-bilin’ pears er somepin’,
and I set and smoke and wait,
Tel the moon out through the winder don’t
look bigger’n a dime,
And things keeps gittin’ stiller—stiller—stiller
all the time,—
I’ve ketched myse’f a-wishin’
like—as I dumb on the cheer
To wind the clock, as I hev done fer mor’n
fifty year,—
A-wishin’ ’at the time bed
come fer us to go to bed,
With our last prayers, and our last tears,
sence little Wesley’s dead!
J.W. RILEY.
Be Thou a Bird, My Soul.
Be thou a bird, my soul, and mount and
soar
Out
of thy wilderness,
Till
earth grows less and less,
Heaven,
more and more.
Be thou a bird, and mount, and soar, and
sing,
Till
all the earth shall be
Vibrant
with ecstasy
Beneath
thy wing.
Be thou a bird, and trust, the autumn
come,
That
through the pathless air
Thou
shalt find otherwhere
Unerring,
home.
Opportunity.
This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:—
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and
swords
Shocked upon swords and shields.
A prince’s banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed
by foes.
A craven hung along the battle’s
edge,
And thought, “Had I a sword of keener
steel—
That blue blade that the king’s
son bears,—but this
Blunt thing!”—he snapt
and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.
Then came the king’s son, wounded,
sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.
E.R. SILL.
Dutch Lullaby.[14]
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,—
Sailed on a river of misty light
Into a sea of dew.
“Where are you going, and what do
you wish?”
The old moon asked the three.
“We have come to fish for the herring-fish
That live in this beautiful
sea;
Nets of silver and gold have
we,”
Said
Wynken,
Blynken,
And
Nod.
The old moon laughed and sung a song,
As they rocked in the wooden
shoe;
And the wind that sped them all night
long
Ruffled the waves of dew;
The little stars were the herring-fish
That lived in the beautiful
sea.
“Now cast your nets wherever you
wish,
But never afeard are we!”
So cried the stars to the
fishermen three,
Wynken,
Blynken,
And
Nod.
All night long their nets they threw
For the fish in the twinkling
foam,
Then down from the sky came the wooden
shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home;
’Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
As if it could not be;
And some folk thought ’twas a dream
they’d dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful
sea;
But I shall name you the fishermen
three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And
Nod.
Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is a wee one’s trundle-bed;
So shut your eyes while Mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful
things
As you rock on the misty sea
Where the old shoe rocked
the fishermen three,—
Wynken,
Blynken,
And
Nod.
E. FIELD.
[14] From “A Little Book of Western Verse,” copyright, 1889, by Eugene Field, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
The Maryland Yellow-throat.[15]
While May bedecks the naked trees
With tassels and embroideries,
And many blue-eyed violets beam
Along the edges of the stream,
I hear a voice that seems to say,
Now near at hand, now far away,
“Witchery—witchery—witchery.”
An incantation so serene,
So innocent, befits the scene:
There’s magic in that small bird’s
note—
See, there he flits—the yellow-throat:
A living sunbeam, tipped with wings,
A spark of light that shines and sings
“Witchery—witchery—witchery.”
You prophet with a pleasant name,
If out of Mary-land you came,
You know the way that thither goes
Where Mary’s lovely garden grows:
Fly swiftly back to her, I pray,
And try, to call her down this way,
“Witchery—witchery—witchery!”
Tell her to leave her cockleshells,
And all her little silver bells
That blossom into melody,
And all her maids less fair than she.
She does not need these pretty things,
For everywhere she comes, she brings
“Witchery—witchery—witchery!”
The woods are greening overhead,
And flowers adorn each mossy bed;
The waters babble as they run—
One thing is lacking, only one:
If Mary were but here to-day,
I would believe your charming lay,
“Witchery—witchery—witchery!”
Along the shady road I look—
Who’s coming now across the brook?
A woodland maid, all robed in white—
The leaves dance round her with delight,
The stream laughs out beneath her feet—
Sing, merry bird, the charm’s complete,
“Witchery—witchery—witchery!”
H. VAN DYKE.
[15] From “The Builders and Other Poems,” copyright, 1897, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
The Silence of Love.
Oh, inexpressible as sweet,
Love takes my voice
away;
I cannot tell thee, when we meet,
What most I long to
say.
But hadst thou hearing in thy heart
To know what beats in
mine,
Then shouldst thou walk, where’er
thou art,
In melodies divine.
So warbling birds lift higher notes
Than to our ears belong;
The music fills their throbbing throats,
But silence steals the
song.
G.E. WOODBERRY.
The Secret.
Nightingales warble about it,
All night under blossom
and star;
The wild swan is dying without it,
And the eagle cryeth
afar;
The sun he doth mount but to find it,
Searching the green
earth o’er;
But more doth a man’s heart mind
it,
Oh, more, more, more!
Over the gray leagues of ocean
The infinite yearneth
alone;
The forests with wandering emotion
The thing they know
not intone;
Creation arose but to see it,
A million lamps in the
blue;
But a lover he shall be it
If one sweet maid is
true.
G.E. WOODBERRY.
The Whip-poor-will.[16]
Do you remember, father,—
It seems so long ago,—
The day we fished together
Along the Pocono?
At dusk I waited for you,
Beside the lumber-mill,
And there I heard a hidden bird
That chanted, “whip-poor-will,”
“Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!”
Sad and shrill,—“whippoorwill!”
The place was all deserted;
The mill-wheel hung at rest;
The lonely star of evening
Was quivering in the west;
The veil of night was falling;
The winds were folded still;
And everywhere the trembling air
Re-echoed “whip-poor-will!”
“Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!”
Sad and shrill,—“whippoorwill!”
You seemed so long in coming,
I felt so much alone;
The wide, dark world was round me,
And life was all unknown;
The hand of sorrow touched me,
And made my senses thrill
With all the pain that haunts the strain
Of mournful whip-poor-will.
“Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!”
Sad and shrill,—“whippoorwill!”
What did I know of trouble?
An idle little lad;
I had not learned the lessons
That make men wise and sad,
I dreamed of grief and parting,
And something seemed to fill
My heart with tears, while in my ears
Resounded “whip-poor-will.”
“Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!”
Sad and shrill,—“whippoorwill!”
’Twas but a shadowy sadness,
That lightly passed away;
But I have known the substance
Of sorrow, since that day.
For nevermore at twilight,
Beside the silent mill,
I’ll wait for you, in the falling
dew,
And hear the whip-poor-will.
“Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!”
Sad and shrill,—“whippoorwill!”
But if you still remember,
In that fair land of light,
The pains and fears that touch us
Along this edge of night,
I think all earthly grieving,
And all our mortal ill,
To you must seem like a boy’s sad
dream,
Who hears the whip-poor-will.
“Whippoorwill! whippoorwill!”
A passing thrill—“whippoorwill!”
H. VAN DYKE.
[16] From “The Builders, and Other Poems,” copyright, 1897, Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Fertility.
Spirit that moves the sap in spring,
When lusty male birds fight and sing,
Inform my words, and make my lines
As sweet as flowers, as strong as vines,
Let mine be the freshening power
Of rain on grass, of dew on flower;
The fertilizing song be mine,
Nut-flavored, racy, keen as wine.
Let some procreant truth exhale
From me, before my forces fail;
Or ere the ecstatic impulse go,
Let all my buds to blossoms blow.
If quick, sound seed be wanting where
The virgin soil feels sun and air,
And longs to fill a higher state,
There let my meanings germinate.
Let not my strength be spilled for naught,
But, in some fresher vessel caught,
Be blended into sweeter forms,
And fraught with purer aims and charms.
Let bloom-dust of my life be blown
To quicken hearts that flower alone;
Around my knees let scions rise
With heavenward-pointed destinies.
And when I fall, like some old tree,
And subtile change makes mould of me,
There let earth show a fertile line
Whence perfect wild-flowers leap and shine!
M. THOMPSON.
The Veery.[17]
The moonbeams over Arno’s vale in
silver flood were pouring,
When first I heard the nightingale a long-lost
love deploring.
So passionate, so full of pain, it sounded
strange and eerie,
I longed to hear a simpler strain,—the
wood notes of the veery.
The laverock sings a bonny lay above the
Scottish heather;
It sprinkles down from far away like light
and love together;
He drops the golden notes to greet his
brooding mate, his dearie;
I only know one song more sweet,—the
vespers of the veery.
In English gardens, green and bright and
full of fruity treasure,
I heard the blackbird with delight repeat
his merry measure:
The ballad was a pleasant one, the tune
was loud and cheery,
And yet, with every setting sun, I listened
for the veery.
But far away, and far away, the tawny
thrush is singing;
New England woods, at close of day, with
that clear chant are ringing:
And when my light of life is low, and
heart and flesh are weary,
I fain would hear, before I go, the wood
notes of the veery.
H. VAN DYKE.
[17] From “The Builders, and Other Poems,” copyright, 1897, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
The Eavesdropper.
In a still room at hush of dawn,
My Love and I lay side by
side
And heard the roaming forest wind
Stir in the paling autumn-tide.
I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad
Because the round day was
so fair;
While memories of reluctant night
Lurked in the blue dusk of
her hair.
Outside, a yellow maple-tree,
Shifting upon the silvery
blue
With small innumerable sound,
Rustled to let the sunlight
through.
The livelong day the elvish leaves
Danced with their shadows
on the floor;
And the lost children of the wind
Went straying homeward by
our door.
And all the swarthy afternoon
We watched the great deliberate
sun
Walk through the crimsoned hazy world,
Counting his hilltops one
by one.
Then as the purple twilight came
And touched the vines along
our eaves,
Another Shadow stood without
And gloomed the dancing of
the leaves.
The silence fell on my Love’s lips;
Her great brown eyes were
veiled and sad
With pondering some maze of dream,
Though all the splendid year
was glad.
Restless and vague as a gray wind
Her heart had grown, she knew
not why.
But hurrying to the open door,
Against the verge of western
sky
I saw retreating on the hills,
Looming and sinister and black,
The stealthy figure swift and huge
Of One who strode and looked
not back.
B. CARMAN.
Sesostris.
Sole Lord of Lords and very King of Kings,
He sits within the desert,
carved in stone;
Inscrutable, colossal, and
alone,
And ancienter than memory of things.
Graved on his front the sacred beetle
clings;
Disdain sits on his lips;
and in a frown
Scorn lives upon his forehead
for a crown.
The affrighted ostrich dare not dust her
wings
Anear this Presence. The long caravan’s
Dazed camels stop, and mute
the Bedouins stare.
This symbol of past power
more than man’s
Presages doom. Kings look—and
Kings despair:
Their sceptres tremble in their jewelled
hands
And dark thrones totter in
the baleful air!
L. MIFFLIN.
American poetry before Bryant was considerable in amount, but, with few exceptions, it must be looked for by the curious student in the graveyard of old anthologies. Who now reads “The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America,” “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America,” “The Day of Doom,” “M’Fingal,” or “The Columbiad?” Skipping a generation from Barlow’s death, who reads with much seriousness any one of the group of poets of which Bryant in his earliest period was the centre: Halleck, Pierpont, Sprague, Drake, Dana, Percival, Allston, Brainard, Mrs. Osgood, and Miss Brooks? A few of them, to be sure, are remembered by an occasional lyric,—Halleck by “Marco Bozzaris,” a spirited ode in the manner of Campbell; Pierpont by his ringing lines, “Warren’s Address to the American Soldiers;” Drake by “The American Flag,” conventional but not commonplace, and marked by one very imaginative line; and Allston by two rather excellent lyrics, “Rosalie” and “America to Great Britain.” The first poet to accomplish work of high sustained excellence was Bryant. His poetry, though never impassioned, is uniformly elegant. It is often as chaste as Landor at his best. But it never surprises; it is not emotional, personal, suggestively imaginative. In fact, Bryant’s muse is not lyrical. With the exception of Pinkney and Hoffman, whose “Sparkling and Bright,” if technically defective, is a true song, we must wait for our lyric poet till we reach Edgar Allan Poe, the greatest—one inclines to say the only—master of musical quality in verse whom America has produced.
The Wild Honeysuckle.—Philip Freneau, born in 1752, was a soldier in the American Revolution. Though never rising quite into the highest class of poets, he is our first genuine singer. “The Indian Burying-ground” and “To a Honey-bee” are only less successful than the graceful lines quoted.
A Health.—Poe was an enthusiastic admirer of this poem. He pronounced it, in his essay entitled “The Poetic Principle,” “full of brilliancy and spirit,” and added: “It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkney to have been born too far south. Had he been a New Englander, it is probable that he would have been ranked as the first of American lyrists by that magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of American Letters, in conducting the thing called The North American Review.” This passage, very characteristic of Poe’s criticisms, illustrates both his championship of favorites, and unmerciful scourging of foes.
Unseen Spirits.—The earnest sincerity, evident in every line of this poem, removes it at once from the company of those gay society verses sparkling with conceits which won for Willis the satiric comment of Lowell in “A Fable for Critics:”
“There is Willis, all natty, and
jaunty, and gay,
Who says his best things in so foppish
a way,
With conceits and pet phrases so thickly
o’erlaying ’em,
That one hardly knows whether to thank
him for saying ’em;
Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose,—
Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in
her nose!”
Had Willis written more such lyrics as “Unseen Spirits,” his fame could hardly have proved so ephemeral. Poe considered this poem Willis’s best, and I see no ground for calling the critic’s judgment in question.
To Helen.—This brief lyric, written in the poet’s youth, is not only among the most exquisite from his pen, but it furnishes one of the most famous among current quotations:
“The glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.”
On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake.—These manly lines have yielded another phrase to the world’s memory. Hardly any quotation is more hackneyed than the last two verses of the first stanza. Drake was a young poet, the intimate friend and literary co-laborer of Halleck, who died September, 1820, in his twenty-fifth year.
To the Fringed Gentian.—This lyric well illustrates what Mr. Stedman has aptly termed Bryant’s “Doric simplicity.” Nothing of Wordsworth’s is freer from ornament or from the least trace of affectation.
The Raven.—Though not belonging to the highest order of poetry, “The Raven” still maintains its position at the head of its class. No more astonishing tour de force can be found in English literature.
Nature.—Generally regarded, I think, the finest of Longfellow’s, if not of American, sonnets.
Ichabod.—Occasioned by the defection and fall of Daniel Webster. It is worthy a place by the side of Browning’s “Lost Leader.” In later years, Whittier wrote a poem on the theme, which, while not a retraction of his former position, is penned in a tenderer, more tolerant mood, “The Lost Occasion” is its title, and it is only just to the poet to read this second lyric, hardly less successful, in connection with the first.
Old Ironsides.—“Old Ironsides” was the popular name for the frigate Constitution. Dr. Holmes’s poem appeared in the Boston Advertiser “at the time when it was proposed to break up the old ship as unfit for service.”
Bedouin Song.—One of the most spirited, most genuinely lyrical of American poems.
Skipper Ireson’s Ride.—These lines have an easy, swinging quality that is quite inimitable. One inclines to agree with Mr. Stedman: “Of all our poets he (Whittier) is the most natural balladist.”
The Village Blacksmith.—The directness and homely strength of “The Village Blacksmith” have made it deservedly popular. One questions whether the last stanza might not have been omitted with advantage both to the unity and force of the poem.
The Last Leaf.—This masterpiece of mingled humor and pathos was a favorite poem of Abraham Lincoln.
The Old Kentucky Home.—The sincere and tender sentiment of this song, no less than its popular melody, has made it for many years a favorite. Even better known is Foster’s “Old Folks at Home,” which is said to have had a larger sale than any other American song.
Carolina.—The concluding lines of this lyric have an imaginative vigor rare in American poetry. Four stanzas are omitted.
Dirge for a Soldier.—Boker’s Dirge was written in memory of General Philip Kearney.
Battle-hymn of the Republic.—Written in December, 1861, while Mrs. Howe was on a visit to Washington. Soon after the writer’s return to Boston the lines were accepted for publication in the Atlantic Monthly by James T. Fields, who suggested the title of the poem. The song did not at first receive much notice, but before the Civil War was over had become very popular.
My Maryland.—A poem of great strength and beauty, though of uneven merit. It is unfortunately marred by a few rather intemperate expressions. The sincerity of feeling is everywhere so evident, however, that these must be forgiven. The lines were written by a native of Baltimore, Prof. James Randall, and were first published in April, 1861. The author of the famous song was teaching in a Louisiana college when he read in a New Orleans paper the news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore. This newspaper account inspired the verses.
In the Hospital.—This poem, which has enjoyed at best a newspaper immortality, deserves to be more widely known. Its simplicity, directness, and truth of feeling are quite beyond praise. According to a story which one dislikes to believe apocryphal, these lines were found under the pillow of a wounded soldier near Port Royal, South Carolina, in 1864.
Days.—Regarded from the point of view of artistic form, perhaps nothing of Emerson’s is quite so flawless as “Days,” a poem which for conciseness and polish is worthy to be called classic.
A Death-bed.—This is a worthy companion-piece to that other miniature classic, Thomas Hood’s song, beginning, “We watched her breathing through the night.”
Telling the Bees.—“A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. The ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home.” This poem of Whittier’s is almost his highest achievement. Lowell said, in writing of the Quaker poet (Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, VI.): “Many of his poems (such for example as ’Telling the Bees’), in which description and sentiment mutually inspire each other, are as fine as any in the language.” I often think, however, that Whittier will live longest by his hymns and poems of purely religious devotion. I know of nothing similar in English that surpasses “The Eternal Goodness,” and perhaps half a dozen other poems.
Katie.—About one-third of Timrod’s graceful poem which bears this title. This is one of the few cases where I have ventured to make omissions.
Thalatta.—Regarding this poem, Thomas Wentworth Higginson says, in “The New World and the New Book:” “Who knows but that, when all else of American literature has vanished in forgetfulness, some single little masterpiece like this may remain to show the high-water mark, not merely of a single poet, but of a nation and a generation?” The author of “Thalatta” was a Dartmouth graduate, a teacher, and a disciple of Emerson.
The Fall of the Leaf.—Thoreau’s prose is known universally; his verse has not won as yet the recognition it deserves. It has little lyrical quality, but for unconventionality, charming turns of phrase, and the intimate knowledge of Nature it reveals, it is almost alone in American poetry.
The Rhodora.—“The Rhodora” has a conciseness and unity too rare in Emerson’s poetry, which, beautiful in details, is strangely uneven. We sigh as we think what an unrivalled lyric poet Emerson would have been had he been sustained at the heights he was capable of reaching. No one surpasses Emerson at his best; he is almost a great poet.
The Chambered Nautilus.—Many think this Holmes’s finest poem. It is taken from “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” 1858.
Thought.—Helen Jackson is, perhaps, the most gifted of American women poets. Emily Dickinson is more imaginative, but her utter scorn of form in composition makes her work, unique as it is, less satisfying. Mrs. Jackson was a favorite with Emerson, and he is said to have liked best among her poems this sonnet, “Thought.”
On a Bust of Dante.—Parsons, one of the best of American poets, is one of the most neglected. Stedman is inclined to think “On a Bust of Dante” the finest of American lyrics (see “The Nature of Poetry,” 254).
The Port of Skips.—In a recent review of American Literature in the London Athaeneum occurs this sentence: “In point of power, workmanship, and feeling, among all poems written by Americans, we are inclined to give first place to the ‘Port of Ships,’ of Joaquin Miller.”
Evening Song.—No poem of Lanier is more free from his characteristic faults. One regrets that so much of his work, highly imaginative as it is, is marred by over-elaboration and artificiality.
A Woman’s Thought.—The striking reality and directness of this lyric, its immense emotional undercurrent, and its abrupt, almost gasping metre, admirably suited to the impassioned mood of the speaker,—these are a few of the qualities that combine to make “A Woman’s Thought” one of the most remarkable poems in the book.
The White Jessamine.—One of the most charming of Father Tabb’s lyrics. The verse of this poet is uneven in merit. He is too prone to merely fanciful conceits. But at his best Tabb is imaginative, as, for example, in the lines where he says of Angelo that he—
“From the sterile womb of stone,
Raised children unto God.”
Always artistic, Tabb’s verse usually suggests workmanship; it is more thoughtful than spontaneous. His religious poetry presents, in the main, a rather striking similarity to the work of George Herbert.
The Battle-field.—Miss Dickinson has much of the witchcraft and subtlety of William Blake. Many verses of the shy recluse, whom Mr. Higginson so happily has introduced to the world, are not only daring and unconventional, but recklessly defiant of form. But, as her editor has well said, “When a thought takes one’s breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.” Emily Dickinson had more than a message, more than the charm of unexpectedness, more than the gift of phrase,—she had (and of how many Americans can this be said?) an intense imagination.
Fertility.—This selection appears in the collected poems of Maurice Thompson (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1892), under the title of “A Prelude.”
Sesostris.—Of this poem Mr. Stoddard has the high praise that in imaginative quality it is unequalled in nineteenth century literature, unless by Leigh Hunt’s sonnet on the Nile. The same critic does not scruple to declare of Mr. Mifflin that he has a “glorious imagination,” and to prophesy for him a distinguished future. Seldom indeed has a first book of verse won such instant and universal appreciation as Mr. Mifflin’s volume of sonnets, just issued as the “American Treasury” goes to press.
A blight, a gloom, I know not what; 242
All that thou art not, makes not up the sum; 267
All the long August afternoon; 223
A man said unto his angel; 211
Another lamb, O Lamb of God, behold; 266
Around the rocky headlands, far and near; 271
As a fond mother, when the day is o’er; 63
As a twig trembles, which a bird; 145
At midnight, in the month of June; 57
At sea are tossing ships; 149
At the king’s gate the subtle noon; 183
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down; 76
Because I could not stop for Death; 264
Bedtime’s come fu’ little boys; 225
Behind him lay the gray Azores; 199
Beneath the warrior’s helm, behold; 248
Birds are singing round my window; 193
Burly, dozing bumble-bee; 169
By the rude bridge that arched the flood; 74
Close his eyes; his work is done; 106
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days; 126
Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way; 175
Dear yesterday, glide not so fast; 155
Do you remember, father; 291
Fair flower that dost so comely grow; 1
Farragut, Farragut; 110
From the Desert I come to thee; 85
Green be the turf above thee; 36
Her hands are cold; her face is white; 124
Here is the place; right over the hill; 137
Her suffering ended with the day; 136
How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood; 8
I fill this cup to one made up; 12
I have a little kinsman; 150
I knew she lay above me; 235
I lay me down to sleep; 122
I saw him once before; 95
I saw the twinkle of white feet; 64
I stand upon the summit of my years; 154
I waited in the little sunny room; 247
In a still room at hush of dawn; 298
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell; 21
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes; 165
In the greenest of our valleys; 26
In the summer even; 202
It may be through some foreign grace; 140
It was many and many a year ago; 10
It was nothing but a rose I gave her; 196
It was the schooner Hesperus; 80
Lear and Cordelia! ’twas an ancient tale; 78
Let me come in where you sit weeping,—aye; 263
Let me move slowly through the street; 42
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne; 15
Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands; 215
Look out upon the stars, my love; 14
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; 108
My books I’d fain cast off, I cannot read; 172
My heart, I cannot still it; 192
My life closed twice before its close; 252
My life is like the summer rose; 4
My mind lets go a thousand things; 241
No matter how the chances are; 275
Not a hand has lifted the latchet; 236
Not a kiss in life; but one kiss, at life’s end; 209
Not as all other women are; 142
Now at last I am at home; 260
O fairest of the rural maids; 6
O marvel, fruit of fruits, I pause; 167
O messenger, art thou the king, or I; 180
O Nature! I do not aspire; 166
Of all the rides since the birth of time; 87
Oh, inexpressible as sweet; 289
Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old; 277
Oh, who would stay indoor, indoor; 251
Oh, what’s the way to Arcady; 243
Old Sorrow I shall meet again; 230
Once it smiled a silent dell; 38
Once this soft turf, this rivulet’s sands; 54
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary; 45
Out of the hills of Habersham; 268
See, from this counterfeit of him; 185
Sence little Wesley went, the place seems all so strange and still; 280
Sky in its lucent splendor lifted; 238
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn; 69
Sole Lord of Lords and very King of Kings; 300
Southward with fleet of ice; 71
Sparkling and bright in liquid light; 32
Spirit that moves the sap in spring; 294
Still in thy love I trust; 218
Such special sweetness was about; 224
The dawn came in through the bars of the blind; 213
The day is done, and the darkness; 66
The despot treads thy sacred sands; 104
The despot’s heel is on thy shore; 113
The evening of the year draws on; 162
The handful here, that once was Mary’s earth; 147
The little toy dog is covered with dust; 231
The moonbeams over Arno’s vale in silver flood were pouring; 296
The new moon hung in the sky; 221
The pines were dark on Ramoth hill; 130
The royal feast was done; the King; 205
The shadows lay along Broadway; 24
The sky is dark, and dark the bay below; 217
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky Home; 98
The tide rises, the tide falls; 161
The wind from out the west is blowing; 216
There are gains for all our losses; 129
There is a city, builded by no hand; 201
These are the days when birds come back; 265
This bronze doth keep the very form and mold; 207
This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream; 283
This is Palm Sunday; mindful of the day; 198
This is the Burden of the Heart; 197
This is the ship of pearl, which poets feign; 178
Thou blossom bright with autumn dew; 40
Thou unrelenting Past; 18
Thou wast all that to me, love; 34
Thought is deeper than all speech; 181
Three roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down; 210
Upon a cloud among the stars we stood; 229
We sat within the farmhouse old; 133
What, cringe to Europe! Band it all in one; 75
What may we take into the vast Forever?; 219
When first the bride and bridegroom wed; 153
When I was a beggarly boy; 128
When the Sultan Shah-Zaman; 253
While May bedecks the naked trees; 287
Whither, midst falling dew; 29
Who has robbed the ocean cave; 3
Wind of the North; 258
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night; 284
You know the old Hidalgo; 127
James Aldrich, 1810-1856, 136
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1836-; 210, 221, 241, 242, 248, 253
Joseph Brownlee Brown, 1824-1888; 154
William Cullen Bryant, 1794-1878; 6, 18, 29, 40, 42, 54
Henry Cuyler Bunner, 1855-1896; 209, 213, 233, 243
Christopher Pearse Cranch, 1813-1892; 181
Paul Lawrence Dunbar, 1872-; 225
Eugene Field, 1850-1896; 231, 284
Annie Adams Fields, 1834-; 218
Stephen Collins Foster, 1826-1864; 98
William Prescott Foster, 18-; 271
Philip Freneau, 1752-1832; 1
Louise Imogen Guiney, 1861-; 211
Charles Fenno Hoffman, 1806-1884; 32
Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-1894; 76, 95, 124, 178
Richard Hovey, 1864-; 251
Julia Ward Howe, 1819-; 108
William Dean Howells, 1837-; 223
Mary Woolsey Howland, 1832-1864; 122
Sidney Lanier, 1842-1881; 215, 268
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882; 63, 66, 71, 80, 92, 133, 161
James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891; 64, 128, 142, 145, 158, 175, 192
Charles Henry Lueders, 1858-1891; 258
Lloyd Mifflin, 18-; 229, 256, 257, 300
Cincinnatus Hiner (Joaquin) Miller, 1841-; 199
Louise Chandler Moulton, 1835-; 236
John James Piatt, 1835-; 149
Edward Coate Pinkney, 1802-1828; 12, 14
Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849; 10, 15, 21, 26, 31, 34, 38, 45, 57
Lizette Woodworth Reese, 1860-; 224
Hiram Rich, 1832-; 275
James Whitcomb Riley, 1853-; 263, 280
Edward Rowland Sill, 1841-1887; 205, 219, 238, 247, 283
Harriet Prescott Spofford, 1835-; 196, 202
Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1833-; 150, 188, 194
Richard Henry Stoddard, 1825-; 127, 129, 153, 193
Bayard Taylor, 1825-1878; 85, 119
Maurice Thompson, 1844-; 294
Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862; 162, 166, 172
Henry Timrod, 1829-1867; 104, 140
L. Frank Tooker, 18-; 260
John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807-1892; 69, 87, 130, 137
Richard Henry Wilde, 1789-1847; 4
Nathaniel Parker Willis, 1806-1867; 24
Byron Forceythe Willson, 1837-1867; 197
William Winter, 1836-; 117
George Edward Woodberry, 1855-; 273, 289, 290
Samuel Woodworth, 1785-1842; 8