Oh, the swift wind, the
unrelenting
sea!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v24 - Sta to Tal
TO MY WIFE
AN INVITATION TO A JOURNEY
From the (Silvæ)
W**.
HY, what then ails my sweetest wife,
To sigh all night, and mope all day?
I know thee true to me, my life!
No wanton shaft hath found its way
To that pure heart, and shall not so;
I scorn thee, Nemesis, while I say't!
To war, to sea, had I to go,
For twenty years my love would wait,
And send a thousand suitors hence.
She ne'er would stoop her web to ravel,
But shut her doors without pretense,
And calmly bid the rascals travel!
Why then this grieved and lofty look,
Because the impulse cometh to me
To seek our childhood's pious nook
And lay my bones in ancient Cumæ?
Take heart! Thou ne'er wert one of those
Possessed by Circe, or a madness
For those accursed theatric shows;
But honor, peace, and sober gladness
Content thee well. And do but think
How light the voyage we take! Though truly
Thine is a soul which would not shrink
From the dark shores of western Thule,
The horrors of the icy North,
Or seven-mouthed Nile's mysterious sources,
If once the fiat had gone forth
That doomed me to such distant courses.
Venus be praised, my early love
Is mine as well, in life's decline!
The chains I wear, nor would remove,
But gladly sport, are thine, dear -thine!
Thine, when I won the Alban crown,
And Cæsar's blessèd gold was earning,
## p. 13851 (#29) ###########################################
STATIUS
13851
The wreathéd arms about me thrown,
The panting kiss, my own returning;
And thine, on Capitolian mount,-
Worsted with me, in contest fateful, -
Wrath on my slighted lyre's account
And keen reproach to Jove ungrateful;
The nights that wakeful thou hast lain
No stammering note of mine to miss;
And all the years of cheerful pain
Thou livedst with me, my Thebais!
Who else, when late the darksome grave
Had all but claimed me, and the roar
Was in my ears of Lethe's wave,
My foot upon the utmost shore,
Had stood, like thee, with eyes so sad
The imminent doom confronting? Lo,
Thy grief it was the end forbade:
The great gods dared not face thy woe.
And wilt thou then, who once with me
Such way hast trod, decline to share
A brief sail on a smiling sea ?
Why! where's thy far-famed courage? Where
Thy likeness to the dames of Greece
And Latium in heroic ages ?
Love's reckless. Had it chanced to please
The most astute of married sages
To set up housekeeping in Troy,
Penelope had gone there gayly!
Sure as desertion slew the joy
Of Melibæa, Ægiale.
Come then to fair Parthenope!
For when that nymph, - Apollo guiding, -
With Venus's team traversed the sea,
She found a place of sweet abiding.
And I, who after all, am not
Either a Lydian or a Thracian,
Will choose for thee some happy spot,
Some soft sea-lapped and sheltered station,
In summer cool, in winter mild;
Where days go by in easeful quiet,
And nights in slumber sweet beguiled.
No echo of the Forum's riot
Shall enter there, nor dismal strife
Of wrangling courts; but he's the victor
## p. 13852 (#30) ###########################################
13852
STATIUS
Who lives, unforced, the noblest life,
And keeps the peace without a lictor!
Who cares, I say, for all the splendor
That glads the eye in golden Rome?
Vistas of columns without end, or
Park, temple, portico and dome?
Seats in the theatre's shady half,
Or five-year Capitolian contest?
Menander's blend of Grecian chaff
With Roman feeling, fair and honest ?
Nor need we lack diversions here:
There's Baiæ, by her summer ocean;
The Sibyl's mystic mount is near,
Predestined goal of pious Trojan;
The slopes of Gaurus gush with wine,
While yonder, rival of the moon,
A Pharos flings across the brine,
For sailor's cheer, its radiant boon;
Long on Sorrento's lovely hills
Hath Pollius grown a vintage brave;
Dear are Ænaria's healing rills,
And Stabiæ risen from its grave.
But why our common country's charms
Retell? Enough, dear wife, to say
She bore me for thy tender arms,
To be thy comrade many a day.
And shall the mother of us both
Be slighted thus ? A truce to teasing !
Thou comest, love, and nothing loth;
I see thee so thy speed increasing,
Mayhap thou'lt e'en arrive before me!
Nay, without me, I almost deem
The stately Roman homes would bore thee,
And even Tiber's lordly stream!
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature) by Harriet Waters
Preston
## p. 13853 (#31) ###########################################
STATIUS
13853
TO SLEEP
From the Silvæ)
Hºw
ow have I sinned, and lost alone thy grace,
O young and very gentle god of Sleep?
Still are the trees, the fields, the woodland ways,
Drowsy the nodding tree-tops. Even the deep
Roar of the rushing river muffled seems,
While, shorn of all his violence, the sea
Leans on the land's broad bosom, sunk in dreams.
Yet now, seven times, the moon hath looked on me
Languishing; and the stars of eve and morn
Their lamps relit; while heedless of my pain
Aurora passes in half-pitying scorn,
Nor lays her cooling touch upon my brain.
Were I as Argus, and my thousand eyes
Alternate veiled, nor ever all awake,
'Twere well. But now the heart within me dies.
Is there not somewhere one ho, for the sake
Of girlish arms all night about him thrown,
Would fain repel thee, Sleep? Oh, leave him so
And visit me! Yet shed not all thy down
On these poor lids, which cannot hope to know
The dreamless rest of the untroubled clown;
But lean, and touch me with thy wand, and go!
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature) by Harriet Waters
Preston
SATURNALIA
From the (Silvæ)
H
ENCE, Pallas grave, and Sire Apollo!
And let the attendant Muses follow!
Your fêtes be holden far away,
Nor hither come ere New Year's day.
But aid me, Saturn, loose of gait,
December with new wine elate,
And saline jest, and laughter free,
To sing our Cæsar's jubilee,-
A day of sport, a night of revel!
Aurora scarce had cleared the level
Of the horizon, on a morn
Dewless and bright as e'er was born,
## p. 13854 (#32) ###########################################
13854
STATIUS
When canvas whitened all the plain,
And showers of dainties fell like rain:
Huge Pontic nuts, and noble spoil
Of wild Idumea's mountain soil;
The sun-baked figs of fiery Caunus
And damson plums descended on us,
With cakes and cheeses of the fairies,
And the sweet curd of Umbrian dairies,
And spicy loaves, bay-flavored, and
Plump dates dispensed with open hand!
Not Hyas's weeping sisterhood
E’er deluged earth with such a flood;
Nor such, when wintrier stars prevail,
The flurry of sun-smitten hail
To folk who view the Latin play.
But let the tempests have their way
If but this homely Jove of ours
Deny us not his toothsome showers!
Till now each busy booth and tent
Receives a fuller complement
Of stately folk in garments fine,
Who, mid the flow of watered wine,
Their costlier viands bring to light,
Their baskets full, and napery white,–
For gods who feast on Ida, meet.
If thou, whom all the nations greet
As harvest-giver, - nor alone
The toga'd race thy sceptre own, -
Annona, scorn our festival,
When I on hoary Eld will call
To answer if the golden prime
Excelled in aught this happy time;
If crops were ever more abundant
Than now, or vintage more redundant;
Or if, at any time, the classes
Were ever friendlier with the masses,
Churl, knight, and senator, man and woman
All gorging at a table common !
Nay,- if it be not too audacious
To name the thing,- our sovereign gracious
Himself hath found a sitting here,
Thrice welcome to the boundless cheer;
And many a pauper felt the pride
Of feasting once at Cæsar's side!
## p. 13855 (#33) ###########################################
STATIUS
13855
Curious, to stand aloof, and see
How works this novel luxury:
In fiery spurts of virile passion,
Or strifes, in Amazonian fashion,
As if by Tanais's banks engaged,
Or shores of savage Thasis waged.
But now the folk of puny stature,
All bossed and bowed, the sport of nature,
Enter in line, our gifts partake,
And then a mutual onslaught make
With fists of so diminutive size
That Mars and Valor in the skies
Explode with laughter; while the cranes
Who wait our festival's remains,
Awhile oblivious of their plunder,
Observe the fray in silent wonder.
As day declines, impulsive charges
Are made upon a lavish largess.
Light ladies enter on the scene,
With whoso walks the stage's queen,
For beauty or for art renowned.
The players' pompous lines are drowned
By cymbals beaten to the whirls
Of Syrian and Spanish girls,
While one there is outvies the dancer,-
To wit, that humble necromancer
Who changes, by mysterious passes,
Sulphur to gold, in shivered glasses.
Amid these various junketings,
A sudden fight of winged things
Obscures the firmament. Captives, they,
The rain-beset Numidian's prey,
Or snared beside the Euxine sea,
Or sacred Nile. Incontinently
The seats are cleared, the chase begins,
And soon the wealth of him who wins
His bulging sinus clear displays.
Then what a shout in Cæsar's praise –
Lord of these Saturnalia glorious -
Ascends from countless throats uproarious !
Forbidden the tribute, still they cheer,
Until the darkening atmosphere
Hath taken eve's cerulean hue;
When blazes on the startled view
## p. 13856 (#34) ###########################################
13856
STATIUS
A flaming orb the arena over,
And all the shadows fly to cover.
The heavers, from pole to pole, are lit,
The Gnosian * stars with pallor smit,
The privacy of night hath vanished,
And quiet flies, and sleep is banished
To drowsy cities, far remote.
Our further pranks, who will may note!
Recount our tireless banqueting,
Our large potations fitly sing!
For now, at last, o'er even me
A soft Lyaan lethargy
Prevails. I prophesy however
The day I've sung will live forever;
The memory of its hero last,
While stand the Latian mountains fast,
While Tiber flows, till Rome shall fall
And the regenerate Capitol.
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature) by Harriet Waters
Preston
* Cretan: the constellation of «Ariadne's Crown. ”
## p. 13857 (#35) ###########################################
13857
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
(1833-)
HE subtle alchemy of Time, which by imperceptible degrees
transmutes youth into age, takes us often unawares, and
Get startles us by the completion of the process which we
deemed had hardly been begun. Only a few years ago, one thought
of our American poets as forming two groups: that of the old men,
with Whittier and Holmes as leaders of the chorus, and that of the
young singers, with Mr. Stoddard, Mr. Stedman, and Mr. Aldrich in
the foremost rank. Now the old poets are no more, and we realize
with a sort of surprise that the young sing-
ers have in their turn become the elders.
If England must now look upon Mr. Swin-
burne as an undoubted veteran, America
has a still stronger reason for viewing Mr.
Stedman in the same light; for he is nearly
four years the senior of his English con-
temporary
Edmund Clarence Stedman was born in
Hartford, Connecticut, on the 8th of Octo-
ber, 1833. He entered Yale in 1849, but
did not remain with his class to the end.
In 1852 he took up the profession of jour-
nalism, and followed it with varying for- E. C. STEDMAN
tunes, first in the country, afterwards in
New York, for twelve years. During the first period of the Civil
War, he acted as a newspaper correspondent from Washington and
the Army of the Potomac. In 1864 he obtained a seat in the New
York Stock Exchange, and has since that time doubled the pursuit of
literature with the life of a man of active affairs. His home was in
the city of New York until 1896, when he removed his household
gods to the quiet suburb of Bronxville, where he now resides.
Mr. Stedman's first published volume was the "Poems, Lyric, and
Idyllic of 1860. This was followed by Alice of Monmouth and Other
Poems) (1864), “The Blameless Prince and Other Poems (1869), and
(Hawthorne and Other Poems) (1877). The contents of these four
volumes were brought together in a Household Edition,' published
in 1884 in a single volume. Meanwhile, he had been devoting a
XXIV—867
## p. 13858 (#36) ###########################################
13858
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
growing amount of attention to critical work, which bore fruit in two
important volumes,—'The Victorian Poets) (1875), and “The Poets of
America' (1886). In 1892, a third volume was added to this section
of his works in the shape of the course of lectures on (The Nature
and Elements of Poetry) with which he had, in the year preceding,
inaugurated the Percy Turnbull memorial lectureship at the Johns
Hopkins University. In the present year (1897) he has published as
(Poems Now First Collected the verse that has accumulated since
the appearance of the Household Edition. ' A few words about his
activity as an editor and commentator will complete this account of
his more important work, although a number of minor publications
have been left unmentioned. From 1888 to 1890 he was engaged, in
collaboration with Miss Ellen M. Hutchinson, in preparing A Library
of American Literature in eleven volumes; a work so thoroughly and
so conscientiously done, it may be said in passing, that it is not
likely to have a rival. In 1895 he brought out, in connection with
Professor G. E. Woodberry, the much-needed complete edition of Poe,
supplying careful notes and extensive critical essays. In that year
also he published his judiciously chosen Victorian Anthology,' which
will be followed before long by an American Anthology' upon a
similat plan.
As a poet, Mr. Stedman occupies a very high place in our liter-
ature. His earlier work had suggestions of the things he most loved,
- of the Tennysonian idyl, the Landorian cameo, the delicate trilling
and the occasional” felicity of Holmes or Mr. Dobson; but it soon
became evident that his essential utterance was to be his own, and
the expression of a strong alert individuality. Some of his poems
such as “How Old Brown Took Harper's Ferry,) (Pan in Wall Street,'
and "Wanted - A Man'- are among the most familiar productions of
American authorship. During the dark days of the war he devoted
many a well-remembered and fervently patriotic strain to the cause
of the Union. And since then, upon many a celebration of civic or
social interest, he has expressed the dominant ideas and emotions of
the occasion in rarely felicitous numbers. His voice has been raised
in behalf of many a noble cause; and we find him thirty years ago
pleading for both Crete and Cuba, then as now struggling to be free.
The quality of his genius is mainly lyrical, and his poetical utter-
ance that of an eager clear-sighted spirit, responsive to both natural
impressions and the appeal of culture, and finely attuned to all the
complex life of the modern world. As a critic, he is in the highest
degree suggestive and helpful. His sense of the beautiful in liter-
ature is almost unerring, and he stimulates the reader to share in his
own raptures. His three volumes of criticism constitute the most
important body of opinion that has yet been produced by any one
## p. 13859 (#37) ###########################################
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
13859
man
on the subject of modern English poetry. Other critics have
given us purple patches of such discussion; Mr. Stedman alone has
woven a continuous web. And his critical writing combines, in nice
adjustment, the two elements that are usually represented by differ-
ent men. It is at once academic in its deference to the recognized
æsthetic standards, and subjective in its revelation of the play of
poetry upon a receptive and sympathetic mind, - thus escaping form-
alism upon the one hand, and inconclusiveness upon the other. It
need hardly be added that the mind thus trained in both the com-
position and the criticism of literature brings almost ideal qualifica-
tions to the tasks of editor and anthologist, and that Mr. Stedman's
work in these fields is no unimportant part of his great services to
literature.
A more indirect service to the same cause may be made the sub-
ject of this closing word. The younger generation of American writ-
ers owe Mr. Stedman a debt that is not wholly accounted for by the
enumeration of his books. Busy as the exigencies of his twofold life
have kept him, he has never been too busy to extend sympathy and
the helping hand of personal criticism and counsel to those who have
come to him for aid. He has thus given of himself so freely and so
generously that it must have proved in the aggregate a heavy tax
upon his energies. But he has the reward of knowing that the trib-
ute paid him as poet and critic by his readers is, to an exceptional
degree, mingled with the tribute of the personal gratitude that they
feel for him as counselor and friend.
(All the following poems are copyrighted, and are printed here by permission
of the author, and of Houghton, Miffin & Co. , publishers. ]
THE HAND OF LINCOLN
LOOK
OOK on this cast, and know the hand
That bore a nation in its hold;
From this mute witness understand
What Lincoln was, — how large of mold;
The man who sped the woodman's team,
And deepest sunk the plowman's share,
And pushed the laden raft astream,
Of fate before him unaware.
This was the hand that knew to swing
The axe,- since thus would Freedom train
## p. 13860 (#38) ###########################################
13860
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
Her son, – and made the forest ring,
And drove the wedge, and toiled amain.
Firm hand, that loftier office took,
A conscious leader's will obeyed,
And when men sought his word and look,
With steadfast might the gathering swayed.
No courtier's, toying with a sword,
Nor minstrel's, laid across a lute;
A chief's, uplifted to the Lord
When all the kings of earth were mute!
The hand of Anak, sinewed strong,
The fingers that on greatness clutch;
Yet, lo! the marks their lines along
Of one who strove and suffered much.
For here in knotted cord and vein
I trace the varying chart of years;
I know the troubled heart, the strain,
The weight of Atlas — and the tears.
Again I see the patient brow
That palm erewhile was wont to press;
And now 'tis furrowed deep, and now
Made smooth with hope and tenderness.
For something of a formless grace
This molded outline plays about;
A pitying flame, beyond our trace,
Breathes like a spirit, in and out, -
The love that cast an aureole
Round one who, longer to endure,
Called mirth to ease his ceaseless dole,
Yet kept his nobler purpose sure.
Lo, as I gaze, the statured man,
Built up from yon large hand, appears;
A type that Nature wills to plan
But once in all a people's years.
What better than this voiceless cast
To tell of such a one as he,
Since through its living semblance passed
The thought that bade a race be free!
## p. 13861 (#39) ###########################################
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
13861
PROVENÇAL LOVERS – AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE
W"
THIN the garden of Beaucaire
He met her by a secret stair, —
The night was centuries ago.
Said Aucassin, “My love, my pet,
These old confessors vex me so!
They threaten all the pains of hell
Unless I give you up, ma belle,” –
Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
“Now, who should there in heaven be
To fill your place, ma très-douce mie ?
To reach that spot I little care!
There all the droning priests are met;
All the old cripples, too, are there
That unto shrines and altars cling
To filch the Peter-pence we bring,”-
Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
(There are the barefoot monks and friars
With gowns well tattered by the briars,
The saints who lift their eyes and whine:
I like them not- :- a starveling set!
Who'd care with folk like these to dine ?
The other road 'twere just as well
That you and I should take, ma belle! ” –
Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
«To Purgatory I would go
With pleasant comrades whom we know:
Fair scholars, minstrels, lusty knights
Whose deeds the land will not forget,
The captains of a hundred fights,
The men of valor and degree,-
We'll join that gallant company,
Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
>>
There, too, are jousts and joyance rare,
And beauteous ladies debonair,
The pretty dames, the merry brides,
Who with their wedded lords coquette
And have a friend or two besides, -
And all in gold and trappings gay,
With furs, and crests in vair and gray," —
Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
## p. 13862 (#40) ###########################################
13862
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
"Sweet players on the cithern strings,
And they who roam the world like kings,
Are gathered there, so blithe and free!
Pardie! I'd join them now, my pet,
If you went also, ma douce mie!
The joys of heaven I'd forego
To have you with me there below," —
Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
ARIEL
IN MEMORY OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: BORN ON THE FOURTH OF
AUGUST, A. D. 1792
ERT thou -day,
WERT
W***How wouldst thou, in the starlight of thine eld.
The likeness of that morntide look upon
Which men beheld ?
How might it move thee, imaged in time's glass,
As when the tomb has kept
Unchanged the face of one who slept
Too soon, yet molders not, though seasons come and pass ?
Has Death a wont to stay the soul no less ?
And art thou still what SHELLEY was erewhile ? -
A feeling born of music's restlessness-
A child's swift smile
Between its sobs — a wandering mist that rose
At dawn a cloud that hung
The Euganean hills among;
Thy voice, a wind-harp's strain in some enchanted close ?
Thyself the wild west wind, O boy divine,
Thou fain wouldst be - the spirit which in its breath
Wooes yet the seaward ilex and the pine
That wept thy death?
Or art thou still the incarnate child of song
Who gazed, as if astray
From some uncharted stellar way,
With eyes of wonder at our world of grief and wrong ?
Yet thou wast Nature's prodigal; the last
Unto whose lips her beauteous mouth she bent
An instant, ere thy kinsmen, fading fast,
Their lorn way went.
## p. 13863 (#41) ###########################################
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
13863
What though the faun and oread had fled ?
A tenantry thine own,
Peopling their leafy coverts lone,
With thee still dwelt as when sweet Fancy was not dead;
Not dead as now, when we the visionless,
In Nature's alchemy more woeful wise,
Say that no thought of us her depths possess, -
No love, her skies.
Not ours to parley with the whispering June,
The genii of the wood,
The shapes that lurk in solitude,
The cloud, the mounting lark, the wan and waning moon.
For thee the last time Hellas tipped her hills
With beauty; India breathed her midnight moan,
Her sigh, her ecstasy of passion's thrills,
To thee alone.
Such rapture thine, and the supremer gift
Which can the minstrel raise
Above the myrtle and the bays,
To watch the sea of pain whereon our galleys drift.
Therefrom arose with thee that lyric cry,
Sad cadence of the disillusioned soul
That asks of heaven and earth its destiny,-
Or joy or dole.
Wild requiem of the heart whose vibratings,
With laughter fraught, and tears,
Beat through the century's dying years, [wings.
While for one more dark round the old Earth plumes her
No answer came to thee; from ether fell
No voice, no radiant beam: and in thy youth
How were it else, when still the oracle
Withholds its truth?
We sit in judgment; we above thy page
Judge thee and such as thee, -
Pale heralds, sped too soon to see
The marvels of our late yet unanointed age!
The slaves of air and light obeyed afar
Thy summons, Ariel; their elf-horns wound
Strange notes which all uncapturable are
Of broken sound.
## p. 13864 (#42) ###########################################
13864
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
That music thou alone couldst rightly hear
(O rare impressionist! )
And mimic. Therefore still we list
To its ethereal fall in this thy cyclic year.
Be then the poet's poet still! for none
Of them whose minstrelsy the stars have blessed
Has from expression's wonderland so won
The unexpressed, -
So wrought the charm of its elusive note
On us, who yearn in vain
To mock the pean and the plain
Of tides that rise and fall with sweet mysterious rote.
Was it not well that the prophetic few,
So long inheritors of that high verse,
Dwelt in the mount alone, and haply knew
What stars rehearse ?
But now with foolish cry the multitude
Awards at last the throne,
And claims thy cloudland for its own
With voices all untuned to thy melodious mood.
What joy it was to haunt some antique shade
Lone as thine echo, and to wreak my youth
Upon thy song, — to feel the throbs which made
Thy bliss, thy ruth, -
And thrill I knew not why, and dare to feel
Myself an heir unknown
To lands the poet treads alone
Ere to his soul the gods their presence quite reveal!
Even then, like thee, I vowed to dedicate
My powers to beauty; ay, but thou didst keep
The vow, whilst I knew not the afterweight
That poets weep,
The burthen under which one needs must bow,
The rude years envying
My voice the notes it fain would sing
For men belike to hear, as still they hear thee now.
Oh, the swift wind, the unrelenting sea!
They loved thee, yet they lured thee unaware
To be their spoil, lest alien skies to thee
Should seem more fair;
## p. 13865 (#43) ###########################################
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
13865
They had their will of thee, yet aye forlorn
Mourned the lithe soul's escape,
And gave the strand thy mortal shape
To be resolved in flame whereof its life was born.
Afloat on tropic waves, I yield once more
In age that heart of youth unto thy spell.
The century wanes, - thy voice thrills as of yore
When first it fell.
Would that I too, so had I sung a lay
The least upborne of thine,
Had shared thy pain! Not so divine
Our light, as faith to chant the far auroral day.
MORS BENEFICA
G
IVE me to die unwitting of the day,
And stricken in Life's brave heat, with senses clear:
Not swathed and couched until the lines appear
Of Death's wan mask upon this withering clay,
But as that Old Man Eloquent made way
From Earth, a nation's conclave hushed anear;
Or as the chief whose fates, that he may hear
The victory, one glorious moment stay.
Or, if not thus, then with no cry in vain,
No ministrant beside to ward and weep,
Hand upon helm I would my quittance gain
In some wild turmoil of the waters deep,
And sink content into a dreamless sleep
(Spared grave and shroud) below the ancient main.
TOUJOURS AMOUR
PT
RITHEE tell me, Dimple-Chin,
At what age does love gin?
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!
## p. 13866 (#44) ###########################################
13866
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
“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! )
PAN IN WALL STREET
Jº
Ust 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:
## p. 13867 (#45) ###########################################
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
13867
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 gnarlèd 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 Ægon, rough and merry,
A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst
With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry.
A one-eyed Cyciops 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,
## p. 13868 (#46) ###########################################
13868
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
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.
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 traveled whither
A winged pilot steered his bark
Through the portals of the dark,
## p. 13869 (#47) ###########################################
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
13869
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;
He knows, perchance, how spirits fare,
What shapes the angels wear,
What is their guise and speech
In those lands beyond our reach;
And his eyes behold
Things that shall never, never be to mortal hearers told.
## p. 13870 (#48) ###########################################
13870
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
CAVALRY SONG
OR
UR good steeds snuff the evening air,
Our pulses with their purpose tingle:
The foeman's fires are twinkling there;
He leaps to hear our sabres jingle!
HALT!
Each carbine sends its whizzing ball:
Now, cling! clang! forward all,
Into the fight!
Dash on beneath the smoking dome,
Through level lightnings gallop nearer!
One look to Heaven! No thoughts of home:
The guidons that we bear are dearer.
CHARGE!
Cling! clang! forward all!
Heaven help those whose horses fall!
Cut left and right!
They fee before our fierce attack!
They fall, they spread in broken surges !
Now, comrades, bear our wounded back,
And leave the foeman to his dirges.
WHEEL!
The bugles sound the swift recall:
Cling! clang! backward all!
Home, and good-night!
THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN POETRY
From 'Poets of America. )
Copyrighted 1885, by Edmund Clarence Stedman
This
HERE are questions that come home to one who would aid in
speeding the return of “the Muse, disgusted at the “age
and clime. ” Can I, he asks, be reckoned with the promot-
ers of her new reign? Yes, it will be answered, if your effort is
in earnest, and if you are in truth a poet. To doubt of this
is almost the doubt's own confirmation. The writer to whom
rhythmic phrases come as the natural utterance of his extremest
hope, regret, devotion, is a poet of some degree. At the rarest
crises he finds that, without and even beyond his will, life and
death and all things dear and sacred are made auxiliary to the
compulsive purpose of his art; just as in the passion for science,
as if to verify the terrible irony of Balzac and Wordsworth, the
## p. 13871 (#49) ###########################################
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
13871
1
alchemist will analyze his wife's tears, the Linnæan will botanize
upon his mother's grave:-
“Alas, and hast thou then so soon forgot
The bond that with thy gift of song did go-
Severe as fate, fixed and unchangeable ?
Dost thou not know this is the poet's lot! ”
-
If when his brain is in working humor, its chambers filled
with imaged pageantry, the same form of utterance becomes his
ready servant, then he is a poet indeed. But if he has a dexter-
ous metrical faculty, and hunts for theme and motive,- or if his
verse does not say what otherwise cannot be said at all, — then
he is a mere artisan in words, and less than those whose thought
and feeling are too deep for speech. The true poet is haunted
by his gift, even in hours of drudgery and enforced prosaic life.
He cannot escape it. After spells of dejection and weariness,
when it has seemed to leave for ever, it always, always returns
again,- perishable only with himself.
Again he will ask, What are my opportunities ? What is the
final appraisement of the time and situation ? We have noted
those latter-day conditions that vex the poet's mind. Yet art is
the precious outcome of all conditions: there are none that may
not be transmuted in its crucible. Science, whose iconoclasm had
to be considered, first of all, in our study of the Victorian period,
has forced us to adjust ourselves to its dispensation. A scientific
conflict with tradition always has been in progress, though never
so determinedly as now. But the poet and artist keep pace with
it, even forestall it, so that each new wonder leads to greater
things, and the so-called doom of art is a victorious transition:-
“If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea. ”
As to material conditions, we find that the practical eagerness
of the age, and of our own people before all, has so nearly satis-
fied its motive as to beget the intellectual and æsthetic needs to
which beauty is the purveyor. As heretofore in Venice and other
commonwealths, first nationality, then riches, then the rise of
poetry and the arts. After materialism and the scientific stress,
the demands of journalism have been the chief counter-sway to
poetic activity. But our journals are now the adjuvants of imagi-
native effort in prose and verse: the best of them are conducted
by writers who have the literary spirit, and who make room for
ideal literature, even if it does not swell their lists so rapidly as
## p. 13872 (#50) ###########################################
13872
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
-
that of another kind. The poet can get a hearing; our Chatter-
tons need not starve in their garrets: there never was a better
market for the wares of Apollo; their tuneful venders need not
hope for wealth, but if one cannot make his genius something
more than its own exceeding great reward, it is because he mis-
takes the period, or scorns to address himself fitly to his readers.
Finally, criticism is at once more catholic and more discriminat-
ing than of old. Can it make a poet, or teach him his mission ?
Hardly; but it can spur him to his best, and point out the
heresies from which he must free himself or address the oracle
in vain.
Such being our opportunities, we have seen that the personal
requirements are coequal, and their summing-up may well be the
conclusion of the whole matter. Warmth, action, genuine human
interest, must vivify the minstrel's art: the world will receive
him if he in truth comes into his own. Taste and adroitness can
no longer win by novelty. Natural emotion is the soul of poetry,
as melody is of music: the same faults are engendered by over-
study of either art; there is a lack of sincerity, of irresistible
impulse, in both the poet and the composer. The decorative
vogue has reached its lowest grade, - that of assumption for bur-
lesque and persiflage; just as Pre-Raphaelitism, at first a reform
in art, extended to poetry, to architecture, to wall decoration, to
stage-setting, finally to the dress of moonstruck blue-stockings
and literary dandies. What has been gained in new design will
survive. But henceforth the sense of beauty must have something
“far more deeply interfused,” — the ideal, which, though not made
with hands of artificers, is eternal on the earth as in the heavens,
because it is inherent in the soul. There is also one prerequisite,
upon which stress was laid by Dr. Storrs, in his application to
modern art of Goethe's reservation as to the worth of certain
engravings: "Still something is wanting in all these pictures, -
the Manly.
The pictures lack a certain urgent power,”
etc. Culture, I have said, will make a poet draw ahead of his un-
studious fellows; but the resolve born of conviction is needed
to sustain the advance. The lecturer rightly declared that only
courageous work will suit America, whose race is essentially
courageous and stoical.
Our keynote assuredly should be that
of freshness and joy; the sadness of declining races only, has the
beauty of natural pathos. There is no cause for morbidly intro-
spective verse - no need, I hope, for dilettanteism - in this brave
country of ours for centuries to come.
.
((
## p. 13873 (#51) ###########################################
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
13873
I think, too, we may claim that there is no better ideal of
manhood than the American ideal, derived from an aggregation
of characteristic types. Our future verse should be more native
than that of the past, in having a flavor more plainly distinct
from the motherland. Not that our former contingent misrep-
resented the America of its time. Even Longfellow's work,
.
,
with so much of imported theme and treatment, conveyed a sen-
timent that came, say what we will, from no foreign source.
The reason that a decidedly autochthonous kind was not then
proffered, unless by Whitman, was that a distinction between the
conditions of England and America was not more strongly estab-
lished. Since the War our novitiate has ended. We welcome
home productions; our servility of foreign judgment has lessened,
and we apply with considerable self-poise our own standards of
criticism to things abroad. We have outlived the greed of child-
hood that depends on sustenance furnished by its elders; and are
far indeed from the senile atrophy which also must borrow to
recruit its wasting powers. Our debt to acute foreign critics is
none the less memorable. They, in truth, were the first to coun-
sel us that we should lean upon ourselves; to insist that we
ought at least to escape Old World limitations,—the first to rec-
ognize so heartily anything purely American, even our sectional
humor, as to bring about our discovery that it was not neces-
sarily "a poor thing,” although our own. ”
It is agreed that sectional types, which thus have lent their
raciness to various productions, are subsidiary to the formation
of one that shall be national. A character formed of mingling
components must undergo the phases of defective hybridity; our
own is just beginning to assume a coherence that is the promise
of a similar adjustment in art. As local types disappear there
may be special losses, yet a general gain. The lifting of the
Japanese embargo was harmful to the purity of the insular art,
but added something to the arts of the world at large. Even
now our English cousins, seeking for what they term American-
ism in our literature, begin to find its flavor stealthily added to
their own.
Our people have blundered from isolation: confront them with
the models of older lands and they quickly learn to choose the
fit and beautiful; and the time is now reached when the finest
models are widely attainable. Secondly, our inheritance is a lan-
guage that is relatively the greatest treasure-house of the world's
XXIV-868
## p. 13874 (#52) ###########################################
13874
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
literature: at once the most laconic and the most copious of
tongues, the sturdiest in its foundations of emotion and utility,
the most varied by appropriation of synonyms from all languages,
new and old; the youngest and most occidental of the great
modes of speech, steadily diffusing itself about the globe, with no
possible supplanter or successor except itself at further stages
of maturity; finally, elastic and copious most of all in the land
which adds to it new idioms, of cisatlantic growth, or assimilated
from the dialects of many races that here contribute their diction
to its own: a language whose glory is that even corruptions
serve to speed its growth, and whose fine achievement long has
been to make the neologism, even the solecism, of one genera-
tion the classicism of the next. This is the potent and sonorous
instrument which our poet has at his command; and the genius
of his country, like Ariel, bids him
« — take
This slave of music, for my sake. ”
The twilight of the poets, succeeding to the brightness of
their first diurnal course, is a favorable interval at which to
review the careers of those whose work therewith is ended.
Although at such a time public interest may set in other direc-
tions, I have adhered to a task so arduous, yet so fascinating to
the critical and poetic student. When the lustre of a still more
auspicious day shall yield in its turn to the recurring dusk, a new
chronicler will have the range of noble imaginations to consider,
heightened in significance by comparison with the field of these
prior excursions. But if I have not wholly erred in respect to
the lessons derivable from the past, he will not go far beyond
them. The canons are not subject to change; he, in turn, will
deduce the same elements appertaining to the chief of arts, and
test his poets and their bequests by the same unswerving laws.
And concerning the dawn which may soon break upon us un-
awares, as we make conjecture of the future of American song,
it is difficult to keep the level of restraint — to avoid “rising on
the wings of prophecy. ” Who can doubt that it will correspond
to the future of the land itself, — of America now wholly free and
interblending, with not one but a score of civic capitals, each an
emulative centre of taste and invention, a focus of energetic life,
ceaseless in action, radiant with the glow of beauty and creative
power?
## p. 13874 (#53) ###########################################
1
## p. 13874 (#54) ###########################################
Cecroll
RICHARD STEELE.
## p. 13874 (#55) ###########################################
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