O
restless
Fancy, whither wouldst thou fare?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v01 - A to Apu
It is a cosmic parable.
The planet is a wanderer (planes), and the individual planet.
ary destiny can be accomplished only through flight from its
source. After all its prodigality it shall sicken and return.
Attributing to the Earth, thus apparently separated from the
Sun, some macrocosmic sentience, what must have been her won-
dering dream, finding herself at once thrust away and securely
held, poised between her flight and her bond, and so swinging
into a regular orbit about the Sun, while at the same time, in
her rotation, turning to him and away from him into the light,
and into the darkness, forever denying and confessing her lord!
Her emotion must have been one of delight, however mingled
with a feeling of timorous awe, since her desire could not have
been other than one with her destination. Despite the distance
and the growing coolness she could feel the kinship still; her
pulse, though modulated, was still in rhythm with that of the
solar heart, and in her bosom were hidden consubstantial fires.
But it was the sense of otherness, of her own distinct individua-
tion, that was mainly being nourished, this sense, moreover,
being proper to her destiny; therefore, the signs of her likeness
to the Sun were more and more being buried from her view;
her fires were veiled by a hardening crust, and her opaqueness
stood out against his light. She had no regret for all she was
surrendering, thinking only of her gain, of being clothed upon
with a garment showing ever some new fold of surprising beauty
and wonder. If she had remained in the Father's house
like the elder brother in the Parable — then would all that He
had have been hers, in nebulous simplicity. But now, holding
her revels apart, she seems to sing her own song, and to dream
her own beautiful dream, wandering, with a motion wholly her
own, among the gardens of cosmic order and loveliness. She
glories in her many veils, which, though they hide from her both
her source and her very self, are the media through which the
invisible light is broken into multiform illusions that enrich her
dream. She beholds the Sun as a far-off, insphered being existing
for her, her ministrant bridegroom; and when her face is turned
away from him into the night, she beholds innumerable suns, a
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HENRY M. ALDEN
311
myriad of archangels, all witnesses of some infinitely remote and
central flame — the Spirit of all life. Yet, in the midst of these
visible images, she is absorbed in her individual dream, wherein
she appears to herself to be the mother of all living. It is proper
to her destiny that she should be thus enwrapped in her own
distinct action and passion, and refer to herself the appearances
of a universe. While all that is not she is what she really is,-
necessary, that is, to her full definition,-she, on the other hand,
from herself interprets all else. This is the inevitable terrestrial
idealism, peculiar to every individuation in time — the individual
thus balancing the universe.
-
III
In reality, the Earth has never left the Sun; apart from him
she has no life, any more than has the branch severed from the
vine. More truly it may be said that the Sun has never left the
Earth.
No prodigal can really leave the Father's house, any more than
he can leave himself; coming to himself, he feels the Father's
arms about him — they have always been there — he is newly
-
appareled, and wears the signet ring of native prestige; he hears
the sound of familiar music and dancing, and it may be that the
young and beautiful forms mingling with him in this festival are
the riotous youths and maidens of his far-country revels, also
come to themselves and home, of whom also the Father saith:
These were dead and are alive again, they were lost and are
found. The starvation and sense of exile had been parts of a
troubled dream a dream which had also had its ecstasy, but
had come into a consuming fever, with delirious imaginings of
fresh fountains, of shapes drawn from the memory of childhood,
and of the cool touch of kindred hands upon the brow. So near
is exile to home, misery to divine commiseration — so near are
pain and death, desolation and divestiture, to "a new creature,”
and to the kinship involved in all creation and re-creation.
Distance in the cosmic order is a standing-apart, which is only
another expression of the expansion and abundance of creative
life; but at every remove its reflex is nearness, a bond of at-
traction, insphering and curving, making orb and orbit. While
in
space this attraction is diminished — being inversely as the
square of the distance - and so there is maintained and empha-
sized the appearance of suspension and isolation, yet in time it
»
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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
gains preponderance, contracting sphere and orbit, aging planets
and suns, and accumulating destruction, which at the point of
annihilation becomes a new creation. This Grand Cycle, which is
but a pulsation or breath of the Eternal life, illustrates a truth
which is repeated in its least and most minutely divided mo-
ment — that birth lies next to death, as water crystallizes at the
freezing-point, and the plant blossoms at points most remote from
the source of nutrition.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
(1836--)
-
So.
POET in verse often becomes a poet in prose also, in com-
posing novels; although the novelist may not, and in gen-
eral does not, possess the faculty of writing poems. The
poet-novelist is apt to put into his prose a good deal of the same
charm and the same picturesque choice of phrase and image that
characterize his verse; while it does not follow that the novelist who
at times writes verse — like George Eliot, for example — succeeds in
giving a distinctly poetic quality to prose, or even wishes to do
Among authors who have displayed
peculiar power and won fame in the dual
capacity of poet and of prose romancer or
novelist, Sir Walter Scott and Victor Hugo
no doubt stand pre-eminent; and in Amer-
ican literature, Edgar Allan Poe and Oliver
Wendell Holmes very strikingly combine
these two functions. Another American
author who has gained a distinguished
position both as a poet and as a writer of
prose fiction and essays is Thomas Bailey
Aldrich.
THOMAS B. ALDRICH
It is upon his work in the form of
verse, perhaps, that Aldrich's chief renown
is based; but some of his short stories in especial have contributed
much to his popularity, no less than to his repute as a delicate and
polished artificer in words. A New Englander, he has infused into
some of his poems the true atmosphere of New England, and has
given the same light and color of home to his prose, while impart-
ing to his productions in both kinds a delightful tinge of the foreign
and remote. In addition to his capacities as a poet and a romancer,
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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
313
he is a wit and humorist of sparkling quality. In reading his books
one seems also to inhale the perfumes of Arabia and the farther
East, blended with the salt sea-breeze and the pine-scented air of
his native State, New Hampshire.
He was born in the old seaside town of Portsmouth, New Hamp-
shire, November 11th, 1836; but moved to New York City in 1854, at
the age of seventeen. There he remained until 1866; beginning his
work quite early; forming his literary character by reading and ob-
servation, by the writing of poems, and by practice and experience
of writing prose sketches and articles for journals and periodicals.
During this period he entered into associations with the poets Sted-
man, Stoddard, and Bayard Taylor, and was more or less in touch
with the group that included Walt Whitman, Fitz-James O'Brien,
and William Winter. Removing to Boston in January, 1866, he be-
came the editor of Every Saturday, and remained in that post until
1874, when he resigned. In 1875 he made a long tour in Europe,
plucking the first fruits of foreign travel, which were succeeded by
many rich and dainty gatherings from the same source in later
years. In the intervals of these wanderings he lived in Boston and
Cambridge; occupying for a time James Russell Lowell's historic
house of Elmwood, in the semi-rural university city; and then estab-
lished a pretty country house at Ponkapog, a few miles west of
Boston. This last suggested the title for a charming book of travel
papers, (From Ponkapog to Pesth. In 1881 he was appointed editor of
the Atlantic Monthly, and continued to direct that famous magazine
for nine years, frequently making short trips to Europe, extending
his tours as far as the heart of Russia, and gathering fresh materials
for essay or song. Much of his time since giving up the Atlantic
editorship has been passed in voyaging, and in 1894-5 he made a
journey around the world.
From the beginning he struck with quiet certainty the vein that
was his by nature in poetry; and this has broadened almost contin-
ually, yielding richer results, which have been worked out with an
increasing refinement of skill. His predilection is for the picturesque;
for romance combined with simplicity, purity, and tenderness of
feeling, touched by fancy and by occasional lights of humor so
reserved and dainty that they never disturb the pictorial harmony.
The capacity for unaffected utterance of feeling on matters common
to humanity reached a climax in the poem of Baby Bell,' which
by its sympathetic and delicate description of a child's advent and
death gave the author a claim to the affections of a wide circle; and
this remained for a long time probably the best known among his
poems. 'Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book) is another of the earlier
favorites. (Spring in New England' has since come to hold high
(
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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
rank both for its vivid and graceful description of the season, for its
tender fervor of patriotism, and for its sentiment of reconciliation
between North and South. The lines on Piscataqua River) remain
one of the best illustrations of boyhood memories, and have some-
thing of Whittier's homely truth. In his longer narrative pieces,
(Judith” and “Wyndham Towers,' cast in the mold of blank-verse
idyls, Mr. Aldrich does not seem so much himself as in many of his
briefer flights. An instinctive dramatic tendency finds outlet in
(Pauline Paulovna' and (Mercedes '-- the latter of which, a two-act
piece in prose, has found representation in the theatre; yet in these,
also, he is less eminently successful than in his lyrics and society
verse.
No American poet has wrought his stanzas with greater faithful-
ness to an exacting standard of craftsmanship than Mr. Aldrich, or
has known better when to leave a line loosely cast, and when to rein-
force it with correction or with a syllable that might seem, to an ear
less true, redundant. This gives to his most carefully chiseled pro-
ductions an air of spontaneous ease, and has made him eminent as a
sonneteer. His sonnet on “Sleep' is one of the finest in the lan-
guage. The conciseness and concentrated aptness of his expression
also- together with a faculty of bringing into conjunction subtly
contrasted thoughts, images, or feelings — has issued happily in short,
concentrated pieces like An Untimely Thought, Destiny,' and
(Identity,' and in a number of pointed and effective quatrains. With-
out overmastering purpose outside of art itself, his is the poetry of
luxury rather than of deep passion or conviction; yet, with the fresh-
ness of bud and tint in springtime, it still always relates itself effect-
ively to human experience. The author's specially American quality,
also, though not dominant, comes out clearly in Unguarded Gates,'
and with a differing tone in the plaintive Indian legend of Mianto-
wona. '
If we perceive in his verse a kinship with the dainty ideals of
Théophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset, this does not obscure his
originality or his individual charm; and the same thing may be said
with regard to his prose. The first of his short fictions that made a
decided mark was Marjorie Daw. The fame which it gained, in
its separate field, was as swift and widespread as that of Hawthorne's
(The Gentle Boy' or Bret Harte's 'Luck of Roaring Camp. It is a
bright and half-pathetic little parody on human life and affection; or
perhaps we should call it a parable symbolizing the power which
imagination wields over real life, even in supposedly unimaginative
people. The covert smile which it involves, at the importance of
human emotions, may be traced to a certain extent in some of Mr.
Aldrich's longer and more serious works of fiction: his three novels,
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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
315
(Prudence Paltrey,' 'The Queen of Sheba,' and 'The Stillwater
Tragedy. ' "The Story of a Bad Boy, frankly but quietly humorous
in its record of the pranks and vicissitudes of a healthy average lad
(with the scene of the story localized at old Portsmouth, under the
name of Rivermouth), a less ambitious work, still holds a secure
place in the affections of many mature as well as younger readers.
Besides these books, Mr. Aldrich has published a collection of short
descriptive, reminiscent, and half-historic papers on Portsmouth,–
(An Old Town by the Sea'; with a second volume of short stories
entitled “Two Bites at a Cherry. The character-drawing in his
fiction is clear-cut and effective, often sympathetic, and nearly always
suffused with an agreeable coloring of humor. There are notes of
pathos, too, in some of his tales; and it is the blending of these
qualities, through the medium of a lucid and delightful style, that
defines his pleasing quality in prose.
[The following selections are copyrighted, and are reprinted by permission of
the author, and Houghton, Miffin & Co. , publishers. )
DESTINY
TH
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.
IDENTITY
SOM
OMEWHERE — in desolate wind-swept space -
In Twilight-land - in No-man's land -
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,
And bade each other stand.
«And who are you? ” cried one, agape,
Shuddering in the gloaming light.
“I know not,” said the second Shape,
“I only died last night! »
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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
PRESCIENCE
HE 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.
T"
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!
ALEC YEATON'S SON
GLOUCESTER, AUGUST, 1720
TE
He wind it wailed, the wind it moaned,
And the white caps flecked the sea;
«An' I would to God,” the skipper groaned,
“I had not my boy with me! ”
Snug in the stern-sheets, little John
Laughed as the scud swept by;
But the skipper's sunburnt cheek grew wan
As he watched the wicked sky.
“Would he were at his mother's side! »
And the skipper's eyes were dim.
“Good Lord in heaven, if ill betide,
What would become of him!
“For me — my muscles are as steel,
For me let hap what may;
I might make shift upon the keel
Until the break o’day.
“But he, he is so weak and small,
So young, scarce learned to stand
O pitying Father of us all,
I trust him in thy hand!
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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
317
.
«For thou who markest from on high
A sparrow's fall — each one! -
Surely, O Lord, thou'lt have an eye
On Alec Yeaton's son! »
Then, helm hard-port; right straight he sailed
Towards the headland light:
The wind it moaned, the wind it wailed,
And black, black fell the night.
Then burst a storm to make one quail,
Though housed from winds and waves —
They who could tell about that gale
Must rise from watery graves!
Sudden it came, as sudden went;
Ere half the night was sped,
The winds were hushed, the waves were spent,
And the stars shone overhead.
Now, as the morning mist grew thin,
The folk on Gloucester shore
Saw a little figure floating in
Secure, on a broken oar!
Up rose the cry,
«A wreck! a wreck!
Pull mates, and waste no breath! )
They knew it, though 'twas but a speck
· Upon the edge of death!
Long did they marvel in the town
At God his strange decree,
That let the stalwart skipper drown
And the little child go free!
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.
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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
TENNYSON (1890)
I
S"
HAKESPEARE and Milton - what third blazoned name
Shall lips of after ages link to these ?
His who, beside the wild encircling seas,
Was England's voice, her voice with one acclaim,
For threescore years; whose word of praise was fame,
Whose scorn gave pause to man's iniquities.
II
What strain was his in that Crimean war?
A bugle-call in battle; a low breath,
Plaintive and sweet, above the fields of death!
So year by year the music rolled afar,
From Euxine wastes to flowery Kandahar,
Bearing the laurel or the cypress wreath.
III
Others shall have their little space of time,
Their proper niche and bust, then fade away
Into the darkness, poets of a day;
But thou, O builder of enduring rhyme,
Thou shalt not pass! Thy fame in every clime
On earth shall live where Saxon speech has sway.
IV
Waft me this verse across the winter sea,
Through light and dark, through mist and blinding
sleet,
O winter winds, and lay it at his feet;
Though the poor gift betray my poverty,
At his feet lay it; it may chance that he
Will find no gift, where reverence is, unmeet.
SWEETHEART, SIGH NO MORE
T was with doubt and trembling
I whispered in her ear.
Go, take her answer, bird-on-bough,
That all the world may hear -
Sweetheart, sigh no more!
Sing it, sing it, tawny throat,
Upon the wayside tree,
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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
319
How fair she is, how true she is,
How dear she is to me
Sweetheart, sigh no more!
Sing it, sing it, and through the summer long
The winds among the clover-tops,
And brooks, for all their silvery stops,
Shall envy you the song -
Sweetheart, sigh no more!
I
BROKEN MUSIC
“A note
All out of tune in this world's instrument. ”
Amy Levy.
KNOW not in what fashion she was made,
Nor what her voice was, when she used to speak,
Nor if the silken lashes threw a shade
On wan or rosy cheek.
I picture her with sorrowful vague eyes,
Illumed with such strange gleams of inner light
As linger in the drift of London skies
Ere twilight turns to night.
I know not; I conjecture. 'Twas a girl
That with her own most gentle desperate hand
From out God's mystic setting plucked life's pearl —
'Tis hard to understand.
So precious life is! Even to the old
The hours are as a miser's coins, and she -
Within her hands lay youth's unminted gold
And all felicity.
The winged impetuous spirit, the white flame
That was her soul once, whither has it flown?
Above her brow gray lichens blot her name
Upon the carven stone.
This is her Book of Verses — wren-like notes,
Shy franknesses, blind gropings, haunting fears;
At times across the chords abruptly floats
A mist of passionate tears.
A fragile lyre too tensely keyed and strung,
A broken music, weirdly incomplete:
Here a proud mind, self-baffled and self-stung,
Lies coiled in dark defeat.
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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
ELMWOOD
In Memory of James. Russell Lowell
H
ERE, in the twilight, at the well-known gate
I linger, with no heart to enter more.
Among the elm-tops the autumnal air
Murmurs, and spectral in the fading light
A solitary heron wings its way
Southward -- save this no sound or touch of life.
Dark is the window where the scholar's lamp
Was used to catch a pallor from the dawn.
Yet I must needs a little linger here.
Each shrub and tree is eloquent of him,
For tongueless things and silence have their speech.
This is the path familiar to his foot
From infancy to manhood and old age;
For in a chamber of that ancient house
His eyes first opened on the mystery
Of life, and all the splendor of the world.
Here, as a child, in loving, curious way,
He watched the bluebird's coming; learned the date
Of hyacinth and goldenrod, and made
Friends of those little redmen of the elms,
And slyly added to their winter store
Of hazel-nuts: no harmless thing that breathed,
Footed or winged, but knew him for a friend.
The gilded butterfly was not afraid
To trust its gold to that so gentle hand,
The bluebird fled not from the pendent spray.
Ah, happy childhood, ringed with fortunate stars!
What dreams were his in this enchanted sphere,
What intuitions of high destiny!
The honey-bees of Hybla touched his lips
In that old New-World garden, unawares.
So in her arms did Mother Nature fold
Her poet, whispering what of wild and sweet
Into his ear — - the state-affairs of birds,
The lore of dawn and sunset, what the wind
Said in the tree-tops — fine, unfathomed things
Henceforth to turn to music in his brain :
A various music, now like notes of flutes,
And now like blasts of trumpets blown in wars.
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321
Later he paced this leafy academe
A student, drinking from Greek chalices
The ripened vintage of the antique world.
And here to him came love, and love's dear loss;
Here honors came, the deep applause of men
Touched to the heart by some swift-winged word
That from his own full heart took eager flight -
Some strain of piercing sweetness or rebuke,
For underneath his gentle nature flamed
A noble scorn for all ignoble deed,
Himself a bondman till all men were free.
Thus passed his manhood; then to other lands
He strayed, a stainless figure among courts
Beside the Manzanares and the Thames.
Whence, after too long exile, he returned
With fresher laurel, but sedater step
And eye more serious, fain to breathe the air
Where through the Cambridge marshes the blue Charles
Uncoils its length and stretches to the sea :
Stream dear to him, at every curve a shrine
For pilgrim Memory. Again he watched
His loved syringa whitening by the door,
And knew the catbird's welcome; in his walks
Smiled on his tawny kinsmen of the elms
Stealing his nuts; and in the ruined year
Sat at his widowed hearthside with bent brows
Leonine, frosty with the breath of time,
And listened to the crooning of the wind
In the wide Elmwood chimneys, as of old.
And then -- and then
The after-glow has faded from the elms,
And in the denser darkness of the boughs
From time to time the firefly's tiny lamp
Sparkles. How often in still summer dusks
He paused to note that transient phantom spark
Flash on the air -- a light that outlasts him!
The night grows chill, as if it felt a breath
Blown from that frozen city where he lies.
All things turn strange. The leaf that rustles here
Has more than autumn's mournfulness. The place
Is heavy with his absence.
Like fixed eyes
Whence the dear light of sense and thought has Aled,
1-21
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The vacant windows stare across the lawn.
The wise sweet spirit that informed it all
Is otherwhere. The house itself is dead.
O autumn wind among the sombre pines,
Breathe you his dirge, but be it sweet and low.
With deep refrains and murmurs of the sea,
Like to his verse - the art is yours alone.
His once
you taught him.
Now no voice but yours!
Tender and low, O wind among the pines.
I would, were mine a lyre of richer strings,
In soft Sicilian accents wrap his name.
SEA LONGINGS
Th
He first world-sound that fell upon my ear
Was that of the great winds along the coast
Crushing the deep-sea beryl on the rocks -
The distant breakers' sullen cannonade.
Against the spires and gables of the town
The white fog drifted, catching here and there
At overleaning cornice or peaked roof,
And hung - weird gonfalons. The garden walks
Were choked with leaves, and on their ragged biers
Lay dead the sweets of summer
damask rose,
Clove-pink, old-fashioned, loved New England flowers
Only keen salt-sea odors filled the air.
Sea-sounds, sea-odors — these were all my world.
Hence is it that life languishes with me
Inland; the valleys stifle me with gloom
And pent-up prospect; in their narrow bound
Imagination flutters futile wings.
Vainly I seek the sloping pearl-white sand
And the mirage's phantom citadels
Miraculous, a moment seen, then gone.
Among the mountains I am ill at ease,
Missing the stretched horizon's level line
And the illimitable restless blue.
The crag-torn sky is not the sky I love,
But one unbroken sapphire spanning all;
And nobler than the branches of a pine
Aslant upon a precipice's edge
Are the strained spars of some great battle-ship
Plowing across the sunset. No bird's lilt
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323
So takes me as the whistling of the gale
Among the shrouds. My cradle-song was this,
Strange inarticulate sorrows of the sea,
Blithe rhythms upgathered from the Sirens' caves.
Perchance of earthly voices the last voice
That shall an instant my freed spirit stay
On this world's verge, will be some message blown
Over the dim salt lands that fringe the coast
At dusk, or when the trancèd midnight droops
With weight of stars, or haply just as dawn,
Illumining the sullen purple wave,
Turns the gray pools and willow-stems to gold.
A SHADOW OF THE NIGHT
C
LOSE on the edge of a midsummer dawn
In troubled dreams I went from land to land,
Each seven-colored like the rainbow's arc,
Regions where never fancy's foot had trod
Till then; yet all the strangeness seemed not strange,
At which I wondered, reasoning in my dream
With twofold sense, well knowing that I slept.
At last I came to this our cloud-hung earth,
And somewhere by the seashore was a grave,
A woman's grave, new-made, and heaped with flowers;
And near it stood an ancient holy man
That fain would comfort me, who sorrowed not
For this unknown dead woman at my feet.
But I, because his sacred office held
My reverence, listened; and 'twas thus he spake:-
“When next thou comest thou shalt find her still
In all the rare perfection that she was.
Thou shalt have gentle greeting of thy love!
Her eyelids will have turned to violets,
Her bosom to white lilies, and her breath
To roses. What is lovely never dies,
But passes into other loveliness,
Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower, or winged air.
If this befalls our poor unworthy flesh,
Think thee what destiny awaits the soul!
What glorious vesture it shall wear at last! »
While yet he spoke, seashore and grave and priest
Vanished, and faintly from a neighboring spire
Fell five slow solemn strokes upon my ear.
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Then I awoke with a keen pain at heart,
A sense of swift unutterable loss,
And through the darkness reached my hand to touch
Her cheek, soft-pillowed on one restful palm –
To be quite sure!
OUTWARD BOUND
I
LEAVE behind me the elm-shadowed square
And carven portals of the silent street,
And wander on with listless, vagrant feet
Through seaward-leading alleys, till the air
Smells of the sea, and straightway then the care
Slips from my heart, and life once more is sweet.
At the lane's ending lie the white-winged fleet.
O restless Fancy, whither wouldst thou fare?
Here are brave pinions that shall take thee far –
Gaunt hulks of Norway: ships of red Ceylon;
Slim-masted lovers of the blue Azores!
'Tis but an instant hence to Zanzibar,
Or to the regions of the Midnight Sun:
Ionian isles are thine, and all the fairy shores!
REMINISCENCE
T"
"HOUGH I am native to this frozen zone
That half the twelvemonth torpid lies, or dead;
Though the cold azure arching overhead
And the Atlantic's never-ending moan
Are mine by heritage, I must have known
Life otherwhere in epochs long since fled;
For in my veins some Orient blood is red,
And through my thought are lotus blossoms blownı.
I do remember
it was just at dusk,
Near a walled garden at the river's turn,
(A thousand summers seem but yesterday! )
A Nubian girl, more sweet than Khoorja musk,
Came to the water-tank to fill her urn,
And with the urn she bore my heart away!
.
## p. 325 (#355) ############################################
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
325
PÈRE ANTOINE'S DATE-PALM
N "
EAR the Levée, and not far from the old French Cathedral in
the Place d'Armes, at New Orleans, stands a fine date-
palm, thirty feet in height, spreading its broad leaves in
the alien air as hardily as if its sinuous roots were sucking
strength from their native earth.
Sir Charles Lyell, in his Second Visit to the United States,
mentions this exotic:- "The tree is seventy or eighty years old;
for Père Antoine, a Roman Catholic priest, who died about
twenty years ago, told Mr. Bringier that he planted it himself,
when he was young.
In his will he provided that they who suc-
ceeded to this lot of ground should forfeit it if they cut down
the palm. ”
Wishing to learn something of Père Antoine's history, Sir
Charles Lyell made inquiries among the ancient creole inhabitants
of the faubourg. That the old priest, in his last days, became
very much emaciated, that he walked about the streets like a
mummy, that he gradually dried up, and finally blew away, was
the meagre and unsatisfactory result of the tourist's investiga-
tions. This is all that is generally told of Père Antoine.
In the summer of 1861, while New Orleans was yet occupied
by the Confederate forces, I met at Alexandria, in Virginia, a
lady from Louisiana – Miss Blondeau by name - who gave me
the substance of the following legend touching Père Antoine and
his wonderful date-palm. If it should appear tame to the reader,
it will be because I am not habited in a black ribbed-silk dress,
with a strip of point-lace around my throat, like Miss Blondeau;
it will be because I lack her eyes and lips and Southern music
to tell it with.
When Père Antoine was a very young man, he had a friend
whom he loved as he loved his life. Émile Jardin returned his
passion, and the two, on account of their friendship, became the
marvel of the city where they dwelt. One was never seen with-
out the other; for they studied, walked, ate, and slept together.
Thus began Miss Blondeau, with the air of Fiammetta telling
her prettiest story to the Florentines in the garden of Boccaccio.
Antoine and Émile were preparing to enter the Church; in-
deed, they had taken the preliminary steps, when a circumstance
occurred which changed the color of their lives. A foreign
## p. 326 (#356) ############################################
326
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
lady, from some nameless island in the Pacific, had a few
months before moved into their neighborhood. The lady died
suddenly, leaving a girl of sixteen or seventeen, entirely friend-
less and unprovided for. The young men had been kind to the
woman during her illness, and at her death — melting with pity
at the forlorn situation of Anglice, the daughter-swore between
themselves to love and watch over her as if she were their sister.
Now Anglice had a wild, strange beauty that made other
women seem tame beside her; and in the course of time the
young men found themselves regarding their ward not so much
like brothers as at first. In brief, they found themselves in
love with her.
They struggled with their hopeless passion month after month,
neither betraying his secret to the other; for the austere orders
which they were about to assume precluded the idea of love and
marriage. Until then they had dwelt in the calm air of religious
meditations, unmoved except by that pious fervor which in other
ages taught men to brave the tortures of the rack and to smile
amid the flames. But a blonde girl, with great eyes and a voice
like the soft notes of a vesper hymn, had come in between them
and their ascetic dreams of heaven. The ties that had bound
the young men together snapped silently one by one. At last
each read in the pale face of the other the story of his own
despair.
And she ? If Anglice shared their trouble, her face told no
story. It was like the face of a saint on a cathedral window.
Once, however, as she came suddenly upon the two men and
overheard words that seemed to burn like fire on the lip of the
speaker, her eyes grew luminous for an instant. Then she passed
on, her face as immobile as before in its setting of wavy gold
hair.
“Entre or et roux Dieu fit ses longs cheveux. ”
It was
One night Émile and Anglice were missing. They had flown
- but whither, nobody knew, and nobody save Antoine cared.
a heavy blow to Antoine — for he had himself half re-
solved to confess his love to Anglice and urge her to fly with him.
A strip of paper slipped from a volume on Antoine's prie-
dieu, and fluttered to his feet.
“Do not be angry,” said the bit of paper, piteously; forgive
us, for we love. ” (“Pardonnez-nous, car nous aimons. ”)
## p. 327 (#357) ############################################
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
327
Three years went by wearily enough. Antoine had entered
the Church, and was already looked upon as a rising man; but
his face was pale and his heart leaden, for there was no sweet-
ness in life for him.
Four years had elapsed, when a letter, covered with out-
landish postmarks, was brought to the young priest -a letter
from Anglice. She was dying; — would he forgive her? Émile, ,
the year previous, had fallen a victim to the fever that raged on
the island; and their child, Anglice, was likely to follow him.
In pitiful terms she begged Antoine to take charge of the child
until she was old enough to enter the convent of the Sacré-
Cour. The epistle was finished hastily by another hand, inform-
ing Antoine of Madame Jardin's death; it also told him that
Anglice had been placed on board a vessel shortly to leave the
island for some Western port.
The letter, delayed by storm and shipwreck, was hardly read
and wept over when little Anglice arrived.
On beholding her, Antoine uttered a cry of joy and surprise
- she was so like the woman he had worshiped.
The passion that had been crowded down in his heart broke
out and lavished its richness on this child, who was to him
not only the Anglice of years ago, but his friend Émile Jardin
also.
Anglice possessed the wild, strange beauty of her mother-
the bending, willowy form, the rich tint of skin, the large trop-
ical eyes, that had almost made Antoine's sacred robes a mockery
to him.
For a month or two Anglice was wildly unhappy in her new
home. She talked continually of the bright country where she
was born, the fruits and flowers and blue skies, the tall, fan-like
trees, and the streams that went murmuring through them to
Antoine could not pacify her.
By and by she ceased to weep, and went about the cottage in
a weary, disconsolate way that cut Antoine to the heart.
long-tailed paroquet, which she had brought with her in the ship,
walked solemnly behind her from room to room, mutely pining,
it seemed, for those heavy orient airs that used to ruffle its brill-
iant plumage.
Before the year ended, he noticed that the ruddy tinge had
faded from her cheek, that her eyes had grown languid, and her
slight figure more willowy than ever.
the sea.
A
## p. 328 (#358) ############################################
328
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
now.
(C
I am
A physician was consulted. He could discover nothing wrong
with the child, except this fading and drooping. He failed to
account for that. It was some vague disease of the mind, he
said, beyond his skill.
So Anglice faded day after day. She seldom left the room
At last Antoine could not shut out the fact that the child
was passing away. He had learned to love her so!
“Dear heart,” he said once, “What is 't ails thee ? ”
"Nothing, mon père,” for so she called him.
The winter passed, the balmy spring had come with its mag-
nolia blooms and orange blossoms, and Anglice seemed to revive.
In her small bamboo chair, on the porch, she swayed to and fro
in the fragrant breeze, with a peculiar undulating motion, like a
graceful tree.
At times something seemed to weigh upon her mind. Antoine
observed it, and waited. Finally she spoke.
"Near our house,” said little Anglice — "near our house, on
the island, the palm-trees are waving under the blue sky. Oh,
how beautiful! I seem to lie beneath them all day long.
very, very happy. I yearned for them so much that I grew ill
- don't you think it was so, mon père ? "
"Hélas, yes! ” exclaimed Antoine, suddenly. « Let us hasten
to those pleasant islands where the palms are waving. ”
Anglice smiled. "I am going there, mon père. ”
A week from that evening the wax candles burned at her
feet and forehead, lighting her on the journey.
All was over. Now was Antoine's heart empty. Death, like
another Émile, had stolen his new Anglice. He had nothing to
do but to lay the blighted flower away.
Père Antoine made a shallow grave in his garden, and heaped
the fresh brown mold over his idol.
In the tranquil spring evenings, the priest was seen sitting
by the mound, his finger closed in the unread breviary.
The summer broke on that sunny land; and in the cool morn-
ing twilight, and after nightfall, Antoine lingered by the grave.
He could never be with it enough.
One morning he observed a delicate stem, with two curiously
shaped emerald leaves, springing up from the centre of the
mound. At first he merely noticed it casually; but presently
the plant grew so tall, and was so strangely unlike anything he
had ever seen before, that he examined it with care.
>
## p. 329 (#359) ############################################
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
329
How straight and graceful and exquisite it was! When it
swung to and fro with the summer wind, in the twilight, it
seemed to Antoine as if little Anglice were standing there in the
garden.
The days stole by, and Antoine tended the fragile shoot,
wondering what manner of blossom it would unfold, white, or
scarlet, or golden. One Sunday, a stranger, with a bronzed,
weather-beaten face like a sailor's, leaned over the garden rail, and
said to him, “What a fine young date-palm you have there, sir! ”
« Mon Dieu! ” cried Père Antoine starting, “and is it a palm ? ”
“Yes, indeed,” returned the man. “I didn't reckon the tree
would flourish in this latitude. ”
“Ah, mon Dieu! ” was all the priest could say aloud; but he
murmured to himself, Bon Dieu, vous m'avez donné cela ! »
If Père Antoine loved the tree before, he worshiped it now.
He watered it, and nurtured it, and could have clasped it in his
arms. Here were Émile and Anglice and the child, all in one!
The years glided away, and the date-palm and the priest
grew together — only one became vigorous and the other feeble.
Père Antoine had long passed the meridian of life. The tree
was in its youth. It no longer stood in an isolated garden; for
pretentious brick and stucco houses had clustered about Antoine's
cottage. They looked down scowling on the humble thatched
roof. The city was edging up, trying to crowd him off his land.
But he clung to it like lichen and refused to sell.
Speculators piled gold on his doorsteps, and he laughed at
them. Sometimes he was hungry, and cold, and thinly clad; but
he laughed none the less.
“Get thee behind me, Satan! ” said the old priest's smile.
Père Antoine was very old now, scarcely able to walk; but
he could sit under the pliant, caressing leaves of his palm, lov-
ing it like an Arab; and there he sat till the grimmest of specu-
lators came to him.
But even
in death Père Antoine
faithful to his trust: the owner of that land loses it if he harm
the date-tree.
And there it stands in the narrow, dingy street, a beautiful,
dreamy stranger, an exquisite foreign lady whose grace is a joy
to the eye, the incense of whose breath makes the air enamored.
May the hand wither that touches her ungently!
"Because it grew from the heart of little Anglice,” said Miss
Blondeau tenderly.
(C
was
## p. 330 (#360) ############################################
330
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
MISS MEHETABEL'S SON
I
THE OLD TAVERN AT BAYLEY'S FOUR-CORNERS
Yºu
was
gers to dine.
ou will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners as it is
more usually designated, on any map of New England that
I know of. It is not a town; it is not even a village: it is
merely an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place called
Greenton is at the intersection of four roads, in the heart of New
Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest settlement of note, and
ten miles from any railway station. A good location for a hotel,
you will say. Precisely; but there has always been a hotel
there, and for the last dozen years it has been pretty well
patronized — by one boarder. Not to trifle with an intelligent
public, I will state at once that, in the early part of this century,
Greenton a point at which the mail-coach on the Great
Northern Route stopped to change horses and allow the passen-
People in the county, wishing to take the early
mail Portsmouth-ward, put up over night at the old tavern,
famous for its irreproachable larder and soft feather-beds. The
tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bayley, who rivaled
his wallet in growing corpulent, and in due time passed away.
At his death the establishment, which included a farm, fell into
the hands of a son-in-law. Now, though Bayley left his son-in-
law a hotel- - which sounds handsome — he left him no guests;
for at about the period of the old man's death the old stage-
coach died also. Apoplexy carried off one, and steam the other.
Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide of progress, the tavern at
the Corners found itself high and dry, like a wreck on a sand-
bank. Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously,
there was some attempt to build a town at Greenton; but it
apparently failed, if eleven cellars choked up with débris and
overgrown with burdocks are any indication of failure.
The
farm, however, was a good farm, as things go in New Hamp-
shire, and Tobias Sewell, the son-in-law, could afford to snap
his fingers at the traveling public if they came near enough
which they never did.
The hotel remains to-day pretty much the same
as when
Jonathan Bayley handed in his accounts in 1840, except that
## p. 331 (#361) ############################################
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
331
Sewell has from time to time sold the furniture of some of the
upper chambers to bridal couples in the neighborhood. The bar
is still open, and the parlor door says Parlour in tall black
letters. Now and then a passing drover looks in at that lonely
bar-room, where a high-shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum
ogles with a peculiarly knowing air a shriveled lemon on a
shelf; now and then a farmer rides across country to talk crops
and stock and take a friendly glass with Tobias; and now and
then a circus caravan with speckled ponies, or a menagerie with
a soggy elephant, halts under the swinging sign, on which there
is a dim mail-coach with four phantomish horses driven by a
portly gentleman whose head has been washed off by the rain.
Other customers there are none, except that one regular boarder
whom I have mentioned.
If misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows,
it is equally certain that the profession of surveyor and civil
engineer often takes one into undreamed-of localities. I had
never heard of Greenton until my duties sent me there, and kept
me there two weeks in the dreariest season of the year. I do
not think I would, of my own volition, have selected Greenton
for a fortnight's sojourn at any time; but now the business is
over, I shall never regret the circumstances that made me the
guest of Tobias Sewell, and brought me into intimate relations
with Miss Mehetabel's Son.
It was a black October night in the year of grace 1872, that
discovered me standing in front of the old tavern at the Corners.
Though the ten miles' ride from K— had been depressing,
especially the last five miles, on account of the cold autumnal
rain that had set in, I felt a pang of regret on hearing the
rickety open wagon turn round in the road and roll off in the
darkness. There were no lights visible anywhere, and only for
the big, shapeless mass of something in front of me, which the
driver had said was the hotel, I should have fancied that I had
been set down by the roadside. I was wet to the skin and in
no amiable humor; and not being able to find bell-pull or
knocker, or even a door, I belabored the side of the house with
my heavy walking-stick. In a minute or two I saw a light
flickering somewhere aloft, then I heard the sound of a window
opening, followed by an exclamation of disgust as a blast of
a
wind extinguished the candle which had given me an instant-
aneous picture en silhouette of a man leaning out of a casement.
## p. 332 (#362) ############################################
332
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"I say, what do you want, down there ? ” inquired an unpre-
possessing voice.
“I want to come in; I want a supper, and a bed, and num-
berless things. ”
“This isn't no time of night to go rousing honest folks out
of their sleep. Who are you, anyway? ”
The question, superficially considered, was a very simple one,
and I, of all people in the world, ought to have been able to
answer it off-hand, but it staggered me. Strangely enough, there
came drifting across my memory the lettering on the back of a
metaphysical work which I had seen years before on a shelf in
the Astor Library. Owing to an unpremeditatedly funny collo-
cation of title and author, the lettering read as follows:-“Who
am I? Jones.
”
Evidently it had puzzled Jones to know who
he was, or he wouldn't have written a book about it, and come
to so lame and impotent a conclusion. It certainly puzzled me
at that instant to define my identity. « Thirty years ago,
I
reflected, "I was nothing; fifty years hence I shall be nothing
again, humanly speaking. In the mean time, who am I, sure
enough ? ” It had never before occurred to me what an indefinite
article I was. I wish it had not occurred to me then. Standing
there in the rain and darkness, I wrestled vainly with the prob-
lem, and was constrained to fall back upon a Yankee expedient.
“Isn't this a hotel ? ” I asked finally.
“Well, it is a sort of hotel,” said the voice, doubtfully. My
hesitation and prevarication had apparently not inspired my inter-
locutor with confidence in me.
« Then let me in. I have 'just driven over from K- in
this infernal rain. I am wet through and through. ”
“But what do you want here, at the Corners ?
business? People don't come here, leastways in the middle of
the night. ”
“It isn't in the middle of the night," I returned, incensed.
"I come
on business connected with the new road. I'm the
superintendent of the works. ”
“Oh! ”
"And if you don't open the door at once, I'll raise the whole
neighborhood -- and then go to the other hotel. ”
When I said that, I supposed Greenton was a village with a
population of at least three or four thousand, and was wonder-
ing vaguely at the absence of lights and other signs of human
What's your
## p. 333 (#363) ############################################
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
333
habitation. Surely, I thought, all the people cannot be abed and
asleep at half past ten o'clock: perhaps I am in the business
section of the town, among the shops.
"You jest wait,” said the voice above.
This request was not devoid of a certain accent of menace,
and I braced myself for a sortie on the part of the besieged, if
he had any such hostile intent. Presently a door opened at the
very place where I least expected a door, at the farther end of
the building, in fact, and a man in his shirt-sleeves, shielding a
candle with his left hand, appeared on the threshold. I passed
quickly into the house, with Mr. Tobias Sewell (for this was
Mr. Sewell) at my heels, and found myself in a long, low-
studded bar-room.
There were two chairs drawn up before the hearth, on which
a huge hemlock back-log was still smoldering, and on the un-
painted deal counter contiguous stood two cloudy glasses with
bits of lemon-peel in the bottom, hinting at recent libations.
Against the discolored wall over the bar hung a yellowed hand-
bill, in a warped frame, announcing that “the Next Annual
N.
