"Let the prairie-dogs an'
Blackmouth
bark,"
Said our folks.
Said our folks.
George Lathrop - Dreams and Days
Thus the lover
With each new morn a new world may discover.
NIGHT IN NEW YORK
Haunted by unknown feet--
Ways of the midnight hour!
Strangely you murmur below me,
Strange is your half-silent power.
Places of life and of death,
Numbered and named as streets,
What, through your channels of stone,
Is the tide that unweariedly beats?
A whisper, a sigh-laden breath,
Is all that I hear of its flowing.
Footsteps of stranger and foe--
Footsteps of friends, could we meet--
Alike to me in my sorrow;
Alike to a life left alone.
Yet swift as my heart they throb,
They fall thick as tears on the stone:
My spirit perchance may borrow
New strength from their eager tone.
Still ever that slip and slide
Of the feet that shuffle or glide,
And linger or haste through the populous waste
Of the shadowy, dim-lit square!
And I know not, from the sound,
As I sit and ponder within,
The goal to which those steps are bound,--
On hest of mercy, or hest of sin,
Or joy's short-measured round;
Yet a meaning deep they bear
In their vaguely muffled din.
Roar of the multitude,
Chafe of the million-crowd,
To this you are all subdued
In the murmurous, sad night-air!
Yet whether you thunder aloud,
Or hush your tone to a prayer,
You chant amain through the modern maze
The only epic of our days.
Still as death are the places of life;
The city seems crumbled and gone,
Sunk 'mid invisible deeps--
The city so lately rife
With the stir of brain and brawn.
Haply it only sleeps;
But what if indeed it were dead,
And another earth should arise
To greet the gray of the dawn?
Faint then our epic would wail
To those who should come in our stead.
But what if that earth were ours?
What if, with holier eyes,
We should meet the new hope, and not fail?
Weary, the night grows pale:
With a blush as of opening flowers
Dimly the east shines red.
Can it be that the morn shall fulfil
My dream, and refashion our clay
As the poet may fashion his rhyme?
Hark to that mingled scream
Rising from workshop and mill--
Hailing some marvelous sight;
Mighty breath of the hours,
Poured through the trumpets of steam;
Awful tornado of time,
Blowing us whither it will!
God has breathed in the nostrils of night,
And behold, it is day!
THE SONG-SPARROW
Glimmers gray the leafless thicket
Close beside my garden gate,
Where, so light, from post to picket
Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate;
Who, with meekly folded wing,
Comes to sun himself and sing.
It was there, perhaps, last year,
That his little house he built;
For he seems to perk and peer,
And to twitter, too, and tilt
The bare branches in between,
With a fond, familiar mien.
Once, I know, there was a nest,
Held there by the sideward thrust
Of those twigs that touch his breast;
Though 'tis gone now. Some rude gust
Caught it, over-full of snow,--
Bent the bush,--and stole it so.
Thus our highest holds are lost,
In the ruthless winter's wind,
When, with swift-dismantling frost,
The green woods we dwelt in, thinn'd
Of their leafage, grow too cold
For frail hopes of summer's mold.
But if we, with spring-days mellow,
Wake to woeful wrecks of change,
And the sparrow's ritornello
Scaling still its old sweet range;
Can we do a better thing
Than, with him, still build and sing?
Oh, my sparrow, thou dost breed
Thought in me beyond all telling;
Shootest through me sunlight, seed,
And fruitful blessing, with that welling
Ripple of ecstatic rest
Gurgling ever from thy breast!
And thy breezy carol spurs
Vital motion in my blood,
Such as in the sap-wood stirs,
Swells and shapes the pointed bud
Of the lilac; and besets
The hollow thick with violets.
Yet I know not any charm
That can make the fleeting time
Of thy sylvan, faint alarm
Suit itself to human rhyme:
And my yearning rhythmic word
Does thee grievous wrong, blithe bird.
So, however thou hast wrought
This wild joy on heart and brain,
It is better left untaught.
Take thou up the song again:
There is nothing sad afloat
On the tide that swells thy throat!
I LOVED YOU, ONCE--
And did you think my heart
Could keep its love unchanging,
Fresh as the buds that start
In spring, nor know estranging?
Listen! The buds depart:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than ever.
'T is not the early love;
With day and night it alters,
And onward still must move
Like earth, that never falters
For storm or star above.
I loved you once; but now--
I love you more than ever.
With gifts in those glad days
How eagerly I sought you!
Youth, shining hope, and praise:
These were the gifts I brought you.
In this world little stays:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than ever.
A child with glorious eyes
Here in our arms half sleeping--
So passion wakeful lies;
Then grows to manhood, keeping
Its wistful, young surprise:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than ever.
When age's pinching air
Strips summer's rich possession,
And leaves the branches bare,
My secret in confession
Still thus with you I'll share:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than ever.
II
THE BRIDE OF WAR
(ARNOLD'S MARCH TO CANADA, 1775)
I
The trumpet, with a giant sound,
Its harsh war-summons wildly sings;
And, bursting forth like mountain-springs,
Poured from the hillside camping-ground,
Each swift battalion shouting flings
Its force in line; where you may see
The men, broad-shouldered, heavily
Sway to the swing of the march; their heads
Dark like the stones in river-beds.
Lightly the autumn breezes
Play with the shining dust-cloud
Rising to the sunset rays
From feet of the moving column.
Soft, as you listen, comes
The echo of iterant drums,
Brought by the breezes light
From the files that follow the road.
A moment their guns have glowed
Sun-smitten: then out of sight
They suddenly sink,
Like men who touch a new grave's brink!
II
So it was the march began,
The march of Morgan's riflemen,
Who like iron held the van
In unhappy Arnold's plan
To win Wolfe's daring fame again.
With them, by her husband's side,
Jemima Warner, nobly free,
Moved more fair than when, a bride,
One year since, she strove to hide
The blush it was a joy to see.
III
O distant, terrible forests of Maine,
With huge trees numberless as the rain
That falls on your lonely lakes!
(It falls and sings through the years, but wakes
No answering echo of joy or pain. )
Your tangled wilderness was tracked
With struggle and sorrow and vengeful act
'Gainst Puritan, pagan, and priest.
Where wolf and panther and serpent ceased,
Man added the horrors your dark maze lacked.
The land was scarred with deeds not good,
Like the fretting of worms on withered wood.
What if its venomous spell
Breathed into Arnold a prompting of Hell,
With slow empoisoning force indued?
IV
As through that dreary realm he went,
Followed a shape of dark portent:--
Pard-like, of furtive eye, with brain
To treason narrowing, Aaron Burr,
Moved loyal-seeming in the train,
Led by the arch-conspirator.
And craven Enos closed the rear,
Whose honor's flame died out in fear.
Not sooner does the dry bough burn
And into fruitless ashes turn,
Than he with whispered, false command
Drew back the hundreds in his hand;
Fled like a shade; and all forsook.
Wherever Arnold bent his look,
Danger and doubt around him hung;
And pale Disaster, shrouded, flung
Black omens in his track, as though
The fingers of a future woe
Already clutched his life, to wring
Some expiation for the thing
That he was yet to do. A chill
Struck helpless many a steadfast will
Within the ranks; the very air
Rang with a thunder-toned despair:
The hills seemed wandering to and fro,
Like lost guides blinded by the snow.
V
Yet faithful still 'mid woe and doubt
One woman's loyal heart--whose pain
Filled it with pure celestial light--
Shone starry-constant like the North,
Or that still radiance beaming forth
From sacred lights in some lone fane.
But he whose ring Jemima wore,
By want and weariness all unstrung,
Though strong and honest of heart and young,
Shrank at the blast that pierced so frore--
Like a huge, invisible bird of prey
Furious launched from Labrador
And the granite cliffs of Saguenay!
Along the bleak Dead River's banks
They forced amain their frozen way;
But ever from the thinning ranks
Shapes of ice would reel and fall,
Human shapes, whose dying prayer
Floated, a mute white mist, in air;
The crowding snow their pall.
Spectre-like Famine drew near;
Her doom-word hummed in his ear:
Ah, weak were woman's hands to reach
And save him from the hellish charms
And wizard motion of those arms!
Yet only noble womanhood
The wife her dauntless part could teach:
She shared with him the last dry food
And thronged with hopefulness her speech,
As when hard by her home the flood
Of rushing Conestoga fills
Its depth afresh from springtide rills!
All, all in vain!
For far behind the invading rout
These two were left alone;
And in the waste their wildest shout
Seemed but a smothered groan.
Like sheeted wanderers from the grave
They moved, and yet seemed not to stir,
As icy gorge and sere-leaf'd grove
Of withered oak and shrouded fir
Were passed, and onward still they strove;
While the loud wind's artillery clave
The air, and furious sleety rain
Swung like a sword above the plain!
VI
They crossed the hills; they came to where
Through an arid gloom the river Chaudiere
Fled like a Maenad with outstreaming hair;
And there the soldier sank, and died.
Death-dumb he fell; yet ere life sped,
Child-like on her knee he laid his head.
She strove to pray; but all words fled
Save those their love had sanctified.
And then her voice rose waveringly
To the notes of a mother's lullaby;
But her song was only "Ah, must thou die? "
And to her his eyes death-still replied.
VII
Dead leaves and stricken boughs
She heaped o'er the fallen form--
Wolf nor hawk nor lawless storm
Him from his rest should rouse;
But first, with solemn vows,
Took rifle, pouch, and horn,
And the belt that he had worn.
Then, onward pressing fast
Through the forest rude and vast,
Hunger-wasted, fever-parch'd,
Many bitter days she marched
With bleeding feet that spurned the flinty pain;
One thought always throbbing through her brain:
"They shall never say, 'He was afraid,'--
They shall never cry, 'The coward stayed! '"
VIII
Now the wilderness is passed;
Now the first hut reached, at last.
Ho, dwellers by the frontier trail,
Come forth and greet the bride of war!
From cabin and rough settlement
They come to speed her on her way--
Maidens, whose ruddy cheeks grow pale
With pity never felt before;
Children that cluster at the door;
Mothers, whose toil-worn hands are lent
To help, or bid her longer stay.
But through them all she passes on,
Strangely martial, fair and wan;
Nor waits to listen to their cheers
That sound so faintly in her ears.
For now all scenes around her shift,
Like those before a racer's eyes
When, foremost sped and madly swift,
Quick stretching toward the goal he flies,
Yet feels his strength wane with his breath,
And purpose fail 'mid fears of death,--
Till, like the flashing of a lamp,
Starts forth the sight of Arnold's camp,--
The bivouac flame, and sinuous gleam
Of steel,--where, crouched, the army waits,
Ere long, beyond the midnight stream,
To storm Quebec's ice-mounded gates.
IX
Then to the leader she was brought,
And spoke her simply loyal thought.
If, 'mid the shame of after-days,
The man who wronged his country's trust
(Yet now in worth outweighed all praise)
Remembered what this woman wrought,
It should have bowed him to the dust!
"Humbly my soldier-husband tried
To do his part. He served,--and died.
But honor did not die. His name
And honor--bringing both, I came;
And this his rifle, here, to show,
While far away the tired heart sleeps,
To-day his faith with you he keeps! "
Proudly the war bride, ending so,
Sank breathless in the dumb white snow.
A RUNE OF THE RAIN
O many-toned rain!
O myriad sweet voices of the rain!
How welcome is its delicate overture
At evening, when the moist and glowing west
Seals all things with cool promise of night's rest.
At first it would allure
The earth to kinder mood,
With dainty flattering
Of soft, sweet pattering:
Faintly now you hear the tramp
Of the fine drops, falling damp
On the dry, sun-seasoned ground
And the thirsty leaves, resound.
But anon, imbued
With a sudden, bounding access
Of passion, it relaxes
All timider persuasion.
And, with nor pretext nor occasion,
Its wooing redoubles;
And pounds the ground, and bubbles
In sputtering spray,
Flinging itself in a fury
Of flashing white away;
Till the dusty road,
Dank-perfumed, is o'erflowed;
And the grass, and the wide-hung trees,
The vines, the flowers in their beds,--
The virid corn that to the breeze
Rustles along the garden-rows,--
Visibly lift their heads,
And, as the quick shower wilder grows,
Upleap with answering kisses to the rain.
Then, the slow and pleasant murmur
Of its subsiding,
As the pulse of the storm beats firmer,
And the steady rain
Drops into a cadenced chiding!
Deep-breathing rain,
The sad and ghostly noise
Wherewith thou dost complain---
Thy plaintive, spiritual voice,
Heard thus at close of day
Through vaults of twilight gray--
Vexes me with sweet pain;
And still my soul is fain
To know the secret of that yearning
Which in thine utterance I hear returning.
Hush, oh hush!
Break not the dreamy rush
Of the rain:
Touch not the marring doubt
Words bring to the certainty
Of its soft refrain;
But let the flying fringes flout
Their drops against the pane,
And the gurgling throat of the water-spout
Groan in the eaves amain.
The earth is wedded to the shower;
Darkness and awe gird round the bridal hour!
II
O many-toned rain!
It hath caught the strain
Of a wilder tune,
Ere the same night's noon,
When dreams and sleep forsake me,
And sudden dread doth wake me,
To hear the booming drums of heaven beat
The long roll to battle; when the knotted cloud,
With an echoing loud,
Bursts asunder
At the sudden resurrection of the thunder;
And the fountains of the air,
Unsealed again, sweep, ruining, everywhere,
To wrap the world in a watery winding-sheet.
III
O myriad sweet voices of the rain!
When the airy war doth wane,
And the storm to the east hath flown,
Cloaked close in the whirling wind,
There's a voice still left behind
In each heavy-hearted tree,
Charged with tearful memory
Of the vanished rain:
From their leafy lashes wet
Drip the dews of fresh regret
For the lover that's gone!
All else is still;
Yet the stars are listening,
And low o'er the wooded hill
Hangs, upon listless wing
Outspread, a shape of damp, blue cloud,
Watching, like a bird of evil
That knows nor mercy nor reprieval,
The slow and silent death of the pallid moon.
IV
But soon, returning duly,
Dawn whitens the wet hilltops bluely.
To her vision pure and cold
The night's wild tale is told
On the glistening leaf, in the mid-road pool,
The garden mold turned dark and cool,
And the meadows' trampled acres.
But hark, how fresh the song of the winged music-makers!
For now the moanings bitter,
Left by the rain, make harmony
With the swallow's matin-twitter,
And the robin's note, like the wind's in a tree.
The infant morning breathes sweet breath,
And with it is blent
The wistful, wild, moist scent
Of the grass in the marsh which the sea nourisheth:
And behold!
The last reluctant drop of the storm,
Wrung from the roof, is smitten warm
And turned to gold;
For in its veins doth run
The very blood of the bold, unsullied sun!
BREAKERS
Far out at sea there has been a storm,
And still, as they roll their liquid acres,
High-heaped the billows lower and glisten.
The air is laden, moist, and warm
With the dying tempest's breath;
And, as I walk the lonely strand
With sea-weed strewn, my forehead fanned
By wet salt-winds, I watch the breakers,
Furious sporting, tossed and tumbling,
Shatter here with a dreadful rumbling--
Watch, and muse, and vainly listen
To the inarticulate mumbling
Of the hoary-headed deep;
For who may tell me what it saith,
Muttering, moaning as in sleep?
Slowly and heavily
Comes in the sea,
With memories of storm o'erfreighted,
With heaving heart and breath abated,
Pregnant with some mysterious, endless sorrow,
And seamed with many a gaping, sighing furrow.
Slowly and heavily
Grows the green water-mound;
But drawing ever nigher,
Towering ever higher,
Swollen with an inward rage
Naught but ruin can assuage,
Swift, now, without sound,
Creeps stealthily
Up to the shore--
Creeps, creeps and undulates;
As one dissimulates
Till, swayed by hateful frenzy,
Through passion grown immense, he
Bursts forth hostilely;
And rising, a smooth billow--
Its swelling, sunlit dome
Thinned to a tumid ledge
With keen, curved edge
Like the scornful curl
Of lips that snarl--
O'ertops itself and breaks
Into a raving foam;
So springs upon the shore
With a hungry roar;
Its first fierce anger slakes
On the stony shallow;
And runs up on the land,
Licking the smooth, hard sand,
Relentless, cold, yet wroth;
And dies in savage froth.
Then with its backward swirl
The sands and the stones, how they whirl!
O, fiercely doth it draw
Them to its chasm'd maw,
And against it in vain
They linger and strain;
And as they slip away
Into the seething gray
Fill all the thunderous air
With the horror of their despair,
And their wild terror wreak
In one hoarse, wailing shriek.
But scarce is this done,
When another one
Falls like the bolt from a bellowing gun,
And sucks away the shore
As that did before:
And another shall smother it o'er.
Then there's a lull--a half-hush;
And forward the little waves rush,
Toppling and hurrying,
Each other worrying,
And in their haste
Run to waste.
Yet again is heard the trample
Of the surges high and ample:
Their dreadful meeting--
The wild and sudden breaking--
The dinting, and battering, and beating,
And swift forsaking.
And ever they burst and boom,
A numberless host;
Like heralds of doom
To the trembling coast;
And ever the tangled spray
Is tossed from the fierce affray,
And, as with spectral arms
That taunt and beckon and mock,
And scatter vague alarms,
Clasps and unclasps the rock;
Listlessly over it wanders;
Moodily, madly maunders,
And hissingly falls
From the glistening walls.
So all day along the shore
Shout the breakers, green and hoar,
Weaving out their weird tune;
Till at night the full moon
Weds the dark with that ring
Of gold that you see her fling
On the misty air.
Then homeward slow returning
To slumbers deep I fare,
Filled with an infinite yearning,
With thoughts that rise and fall
To the sound of the sea's hollow call,
Breathed now from white-lit waves that reach
Cold fingers o'er the damp, dark beach,
To scatter a spray on my dreams;
Till the slow and measured rote
Brings a drowsy ease
To my spirit, and seems
To set it soothingly afloat
On broad and buoyant seas
Of endless rest, lulled by the dirge
Of the melancholy surge.
BLACKMOUTH, OF COLORADO
"Who is Blackmouth? " Well, that's hard to say.
Mebbe he might ha' told you, 't other day,
If you'd been here. Now,--he's gone away.
Come to think on, 't wouldn't ha' been no use
If you'd called here earlier. His excuse
Always was, whenever folks would ask him
Where he hailed from, an' _would_ tease an' task him;--
What d' you s'pose? He just said, "I don' know. "
That was truth. He came here long ago;
But, before that, he'd been born somewhere:
The conundrum started first, right there.
Little shaver--afore he knew his name
Or the place from whereabouts he came--
On a wagon-train the Apaches caught him.
Killed the old folks! But this cus'--they brought him
Safe away from fire an' knife an' arrows.
So'thin' 'bout him must have touched their marrows:
They was merciful;--treated him real good;
Brought him up to man's age well's they could.
Now, d' you b'lieve me, that there likely lad,
For all they used him so, went to the bad:
Leastways left the red men, that he knew,
'N' come to look for folks like me an' you;--
Goldarned white folks that he never saw.
Queerest thing was--though he loved a squaw,
'T was on her account he planned escape;
Shook the Apaches, an' took up red tape
With the U. S. gov'ment arter a while;
Tho' they do say gov'ment may be vile,
Mean an' treacherous an' deceivin'. Well,
_I_ ain't sayin' our gov'ment is a sell.
Bocanegra--Spanish term--I've heard
Stands for "Blackmouth. " Now this curious bird,
Known as Bocanegra, gave his life
Most for others. First, he saved his wife;
Her I spoke of;--nothin' but a squaw.
You might wonder by what sort of law
He, a white man born, should come to love her.
But 't was somehow so: he _did_ discover
Beauty in her, of the holding kind.
Some men love the light, an' some the shade.
Round that little Indian girl there played
Soft an' shadowy tremblings, like the dark
Under trees; yet now an' then a spark,
Quick 's a firefly, flashing from her eyes,
Made you think of summer-midnight skies.
She was faithful, too, like midnight stars.
As for Blackmouth, if you'd seen the scars
Made by wounds he suffered for her sake,
You'd have called _him_ true, and no mistake.
Growin' up a man, he scarcely met
Other white folks; an' his heart was set
On this red girl. Yet he said: "We'll wait.
You must never be my wedded mate
Till we reach the white man's country. There,
Everything that's done is fair and square. "
Patiently they stayed, thro' trust or doubt,
Till tow'rds Colorado he could scout
Some safe track. He told her: "You go first.
All my joy goes with you:--that's the worst!
But _I_ wait, to guard or hide the trail. "
Indians caught him; an' they gave him--hail;
Cut an' tortured him, till he was bleeding;
Yet they found that still they weren't succeeding.
"Where's that squaw? " they asked. "We'll have her blood!
Either that, or grind you into mud;
Pick your eyes out, too, if you can't see
Where she's gone to. Which, now, shall it be?
Tell us where she's hid. "
"I'll show the way,"
Blackmouth says; an' leads toward dawn of day,
Till they come straight out beside the brink
Of a precipice that seems to sink
Into everlasting gulfs below.
"Loose me! " Blackmouth tells 'em. "But go slow. "
Then they loosed him; and, with one swift leap,
Blackmouth swooped right down into the deep;--
Jumped out into space beyond the edge,
While the Apaches cowered along the ledge.
Seven hundred feet, they say. That's guff!
Seventy foot, I tell you, 's 'bout enough.
Indians called him a dead antelope;
But they couldn't touch the bramble-slope
Where he, bruised and stabbed, crawled under brush.
_Their_ hand was beat hollow: _he_ held a flush.
Day and night he limped or crawled along:
Winds blew hot, yet sang to him a song
(So he told me, once) that gave him hope.
Every time he saw a shadow grope
Down the hillsides, from a flying cloud,
Something touched his heart that made him proud:
Seemed to him he saw her dusky face
Watching over him, from place to place.
Every time the dry leaves rustled near,
Seemed to him she whispered, "Have no fear! "
So at last he found her:--they were married.
But, from those days on, he always carried
Marks of madness; actually--yes! --
Trusted the good faith of these U. S.
Indian hate an' deviltry he braved;
'N' scores an' scores of white men's lives he saved.
Just for that, his name should be engraved.
But it won't be! U. S. gov'ment dreads
Men who're taller 'n politicians' heads.
All the while, his wife--tho' half despised
By the frontier folks that civilized
An' converted her--served by his side,
Helping faithfully, until she died.
Left alone, he lay awake o' nights,
Thinkin' what they'd both done for the whites.
Then he thought of her, and Indian people;
Tryin' to measure, by the church's steeple,
Just how Christian our great nation's been
Toward those native tribes so full of sin.
When he counted all the wrongs we've done
To the wild men of the setting sun,
Seem'd to him the gov'ment wa'n't quite fair.
When its notes came due, it wa'n't right there.
U. S. gov'ment promised Indians lots,
But at last it closed accounts with shots.
Mouth was black, perhaps;--but _he_ was white.
Calling gov'ment black don't seem polite:
Yet I'll swear, its actions wouldn't show
'Longside Blackmouth's better 'n soot with snow.
Yes, sir! Blackmouth took the other side:
Honestly for years an' years he tried
Getting justice for the Indians. He,
Risking life an' limb for you an' me;--
He, the man who proved his good intent
By his deeds, an' plainly showed he meant
He would die for us,--turned round an' said:
"White men have been saved. Now, save the red! "
But it didn't pan out. No one would hark.
"Let the prairie-dogs an' Blackmouth bark,"
Said our folks. And--no, he wa'n't resigned,
But concluded he had missed his find.
"_Where_ is Blackmouth? " That I can't decide.
Red an' white men, both, he tried to serve;
But I guess, at last, he lost his nerve.
Kind o' tired out. See? He had his pride:
Gave his life for others, far 's he could,
Hoping it would do 'em some small good.
Didn't seem to be much use. An' so--
Well; you see that man, dropped in the snow,
Where the crowd is? Suicide, they say.
Looks as though he had quit work, to stay.
Bullet in the breast. --His _body_ 's there;
But poor Blackmouth's gone--I don't know where!
THE CHILD YEAR
I
"Dying of hunger and sorrow:
I die for my youth I fear! "
Murmured the midnight-haunting
Voice of the stricken Year.
There like a child it perished
In the stormy thoroughfare:
The snow with cruel whiteness
Had aged its flowing hair.
Ah, little Year so fruitful,
Ah, child that brought us bliss,
Must we so early lose you--
Our dear hopes end in this?
II
"Too young am I, too tender,
To bear earth's avalanche
Of wrong, that grinds down life-hope,
And makes my heart's-blood blanch.
"Tell him who soon shall follow
Where my tired feet have bled,
He must be older, shrewder,
Hard, cold, and selfish-bred--
"Or else like me be trampled
Under the harsh world's heel.
'Tis weakness to be youthful;
'Tis death to love and feel. "
III
Then saw I how the New Year
Came like a scheming man,
With icy eyes, his forehead
Wrinkled by care and plan
For trade and rule and profit.
To him the fading child
Looked up and cried, "Oh, brother! "
But died even while it smiled.
Down bent the harsh new-comer
To lift with loving arm
The wanderer mute and fallen;
And lo! his eyes were warm;
All changed he grew; the wrinkles
Vanished: he, too, looked young--
As if that lost child's spirit
Into his breast had sprung.
So are those lives not wasted,
Too frail to bear the fray.
So Years may die, yet leave us
Young hearts in a world grown gray.
CHRISTENING
To-day I saw a little, calm-eyed child,--
Where soft lights rippled and the shadows tarried
Within a church's shelter arched and aisled,--
Peacefully wondering, to the altar carried;
White-robed and sweet, in semblance of a flower;
White as the daisies that adorned the chancel;
Borne like a gift, the young wife's natural dower,
Offered to God as her most precious hansel.
Then ceased the music, and the little one
Was silent, with the multitude assembled
Hearkening; and when of Father and of Son
He spoke, the pastor's deep voice broke and trembled.
But she, the child, knew not the solemn words,
And suddenly yielded to a troublous wailing,
As helpless as the cry of frightened birds
Whose untried wings for flight are unavailing.
How much the same, I thought, with older folk!
The blessing falls: we call it tribulation,
And fancy that we wear a sorrow's yoke,
Even at the moment of our consecration.
Pure daisy-child! Whatever be the form
Of dream or doctrine,--or of unbelieving,--
A hand may touch our heads, amid the storm
Of grief and doubt, to bless beyond bereaving;
A voice may sound, in measured, holy rite
Of speech we know not, tho' its earnest meaning
Be clear as dew, and sure as starry light
Gathered from some far-off celestial gleaning.
Wise is the ancient sacrament that blends
This weakling cry of children in our churches
With strength of prayer or anthem that ascends
To Him who hearts of men and children searches;
Since we are like the babe, who, soothed again,
Within her mother's cradling arm lay nested,
Bright as a new bud, now, refreshed by rain:
And on her hair, it seemed, heaven's radiance rested.
THANKSGIVING TURKEY
Valleys lay in sunny vapor,
And a radiance mild was shed
From each tree that like a taper
At a feast stood. Then we said,
"Our feast, too, shall soon be spread,
Of good Thanksgiving turkey. "
And already still November
Drapes her snowy table here.
Fetch a log, then; coax the ember;
Fill your hearts with old-time cheer;
Heaven be thanked for one more year,
And our Thanksgiving turkey!
Welcome, brothers--all our party
Gathered in the homestead old!
Shake the snow off and with hearty
Hand-shakes drive away the cold;
Else your plate you'll hardly hold
Of good Thanksgiving turkey.
When the skies are sad and murky,
'Tis a cheerful thing to meet
Round this homely roast of turkey--
Pilgrims, pausing just to greet,
Then, with earnest grace, to eat
A new Thanksgiving turkey.
And the merry feast is freighted
With its meanings true and deep.
Those we've loved and those we've hated,
All, to-day, the rite will keep,
All, to-day, their dishes heap
With plump Thanksgiving turkey.
But how many hearts must tingle
Now with mournful memories!
In the festal wine shall mingle
Unseen tears, perhaps from eyes
That look beyond the board where lies
Our plain Thanksgiving turkey.
See around us, drawing nearer,
Those faint yearning shapes of air--
Friends than whom earth holds none dearer!
No--alas! they are not there:
Have they, then, forgot to share
Our good Thanksgiving turkey?
Some have gone away and tarried
Strangely long by some strange wave;
Some have turned to foes; we carried
Some unto the pine-girt grave:
They 'll come no more so joyous-brave
To take Thanksgiving turkey.
Nay, repine not. Let our laughter
Leap like firelight up again.
Soon we touch the wide Hereafter,
Snow-field yet untrod of men:
Shall we meet once more--and when? --
To eat Thanksgiving turkey.
BEFORE THE SNOW
Autumn is gone: through the blue woodlands bare
Shatters the rainy wind. A myriad leaves,
Like birds that fly the mournful Northern air.
Flutter away from the old forest's eaves.
Autumn is gone: as yonder silent rill,
Slow eddying o'er thick leaf-heaps lately shed,
My spirit, as I walk, moves awed and still,
By thronging fancies wild and wistful led.
Autumn is gone: alas, how long ago
The grapes were plucked, and garnered was the grain!
How soon death settles on us, and the snow
Wraps with its white alike our graves, our gain!
Yea, autumn's gone! Yet it robs not my mood
Of that which makes moods dear,--some shoot of spring
Still sweet within me; or thoughts of yonder wood
We walked in,--memory's rare environing.
And, though they die, the seasons only take
A ruined substance. All that's best remains
In the essential vision that can make
One light for life, love, death, their joys, their pains.
III
YOUTH TO THE POET
(TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES)
Strange spell of youth for age, and age for youth,
Affinity between two forms of truth! --
As if the dawn and sunset watched each other,
Like and unlike as children of one mother
And wondering at the likeness. Ardent eyes
Of young men see the prophecy arise
Of what their lives shall be when all is told;
And, in the far-off glow of years called old,
Those other eyes look back to catch a trace
Of what was once their own unshadowed grace.
But here in our dear poet both are blended--
Ripe age begun, yet golden youth not ended;--
Even as his song the willowy scent of spring
Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing,
And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun,
In strains that ever delicately run;
So musical and wise, page after page,
The sage a minstrel grows, the bard a sage.
The dew of youth fills yet his late-sprung flowers,
And day-break glory haunts his evening hours.
Ah, such a life prefigures its own moral:
That first "Last Leaf" is now a leaf of laurel,
Which--smiling not, but trembling at the touch--
Youth gives back to the hand that gave so much.
EVENING OF DECEMBER 3, 1879.
THE SWORD DHAM
"How shall we honor the man who creates? "
Asked the Bedouin chief, the poet Antar;--
"Who unto the truth flings open our gates,
Or fashions new thoughts from the light of a star;
Or forges with craft of his finger and brain
Some marvelous weapon we copy in vain;
Or chants to the winds a wild song that shall
wander forever undying?
"See! His reward is in envies and hates;
In lips that deny, or in stabs that may kill. "
"Nay," said the smith; "for there's one here who waits
Humbly to serve you with unmeasured skill,
Sure that no utmost devotion can fail,
Offered to _you_, nor unfriended assail
The heart of the hero and poet Antar, whose
fame is undying! "
"Speak," said the chief. Then the smith: "O Antar,
It is I who would serve you! I know, by the soul
Of the poet within you, no envy can bar
The stream of your gratitude,--once let it roll.
Listen. The lightning, your camel that slew,
_I_ caught, and wrought in this sword-blade for you;--
Sword that no foe shall encounter unhurt, or
depart from undying. "
Burst from the eyes of Antar a swift rain,--Gratitude's
glittering drops,--as he threw
One shining arm round the smith, like a chain.
Closer the man to his bosom he drew;
Thankful, caressing, with "Great is my debt. "
"Yea," said the smith, and his eyelids were wet:
"I knew the sword Dham would unite me with
you in an honor undying. "
"So? " asked the chief, as his thumb-point at will
Silently over the sword's edge played.
--"Ay! " said the smith, "but there's one thing, still:
Who is the smiter, shall smite with this blade? "
Jealous, their eyes met; and fury awoke.
"_I_ am the smiter! " Antar cried. One stroke
Rolled the smith's head from his neck, and gave
him remembrance undying.
"Seek now who may, no search will avail:
No man the mate of this weapon shall own! "
Yet, in his triumph, the chieftain made wail:
"Slain is the craftsman, the one friend alone
Able to honor the man who creates.
I slew him--_I_, who am poet! O fates,
Grant that the envious blade slaying artists shall
make them undying! "
"AT THE GOLDEN GATE"
Before the golden gate she stands,
With drooping head, with idle hands
Loose-clasped, and bent beneath the weight
Of unseen woe. Too late, too late!
Those carved and fretted,
Starred, resetted
Panels shall not open ever
To her who seeks the perfect mate.
Only the tearless enter there:
Only the soul that, like a prayer,
No bolt can stay, no wall may bar,
Shall dream the dreams grief cannot mar.
No door of cedar,
Alas, shall lead her
Unto the stream that shows forever
Love's face like some reflected star!
They say that golden barrier hides
A realm where deathless spring abides;
Where flowers shall fade not, and there floats
Thro' moon-rays mild or sunlit motes--
'Mid dewy alleys
That gird the palace,
And fountain'd spray's unceasing quiver--
A dulcet rain of song-birds' notes.
The sultan lord knew not her name;
But to the door that fair shape came:
The hour had struck, the way was right,
Traced by her lamp's pale, flickering light.
But ah, whose error
Has brought this terror?
Whose fault has foiled her fond endeavor?
The gate swings to: her hope takes flight.
The harp, the song, the nightingales
She hears, beyond. The night-wind wails
Without, to sound of feast within,
While here she stands, shut out by sin.
And be that revel
Of angel or devil,
She longs to sit beside the giver,
That she at last her prize may win.
Her lamp has fallen; her eyes are wet;
Frozen she stands, she lingers yet;
But through the garden's gladness steals
A whisper that each heart congeals--
A moan of grieving
Beyond relieving,
Which makes the proudest of them shiver.
And suddenly the sultan kneels!
The lamp was quenched; he found her dead,
When dawn had turned the threshold red.
Her face was calm and sad as fate:
His sin, not hers, made her too late.
Some think, unbidden
She brought him, hidden,
A truer bliss that came back never
To him, unblest, who closed the gate.
CHARITY
I
Unarmed she goeth; yet her hands
Strike deeper awe than steel-caparison'd bands.
No fatal hurt of foe she fears,--
Veiled, as with mail, in mist of gentle tears.
II
'Gainst her thou canst not bar the door:
Like air she enters, where none dared before.
Even to the rich she can forgive
Their regal selfishness,--and let them live!
HELEN AT THE LOOM
Helen, in her silent room,
Weaves upon the upright loom;
Weaves a mantle rich and dark,
Purpled over, deep. But mark
How she scatters o'er the wool
Woven shapes, till it is full
Of men that struggle close, complex;
Short-clipp'd steeds with wrinkled necks
Arching high; spear, shield, and all
The panoply that doth recall
Mighty war; such war as e'en
For Helen's sake is waged, I ween.
Purple is the groundwork: good!
All the field is stained with blood--
Blood poured out for Helen's sake;
(Thread, run on; and shuttle, shake! )
But the shapes of men that pass
Are as ghosts within a glass,
Woven with whiteness of the swan,
Pale, sad memories, gleaming wan
From the garment's purple fold
Where Troy's tale is twined and told.
Well may Helen, as with tender
Touch of rosy fingers slender
She doth knit the story in
Of Troy's sorrow and her sin,
Feel sharp filaments of pain
Reeled off with the well-spun skein,
And faint blood-stains on her hands
From the shifting, sanguine strands.
Gently, sweetly she doth sorrow:
What has been must be to-morrow;
Meekly to her fate she bows.
Heavenly beauties still will rouse
Strife and savagery in men:
Shall the lucid heavens, then,
Lose their high serenity,
Sorrowing over what must be?
If she taketh to her shame,
Lo, they give her not the blame,--
Priam's wisest counselors,
Aged men, not loving wars.
When she goes forth, clad in white,
Day-cloud touched by first moonlight,
With her fair hair, amber-hued
As vapor by the moon imbued
With burning brown, that round her clings,
See, she sudden silence brings
On the gloomy whisperers
Who would make the wrong all hers.
So, Helen, in thy silent room,
Labor at the storied loom;
(Thread, run on; and shuttle, shake! )
Let thy aching sorrow make
Something strangely beautiful
Of this fabric; since the wool
Comes so tinted from the Fates,
Dyed with loves, hopes, fears, and hates.
Thou shalt work with subtle force
All thy deep shade of remorse
In the texture of the weft,
That no stain on thee be left;--
Ay, false queen, shalt fashion grief,
Grief and wrong, to soft relief.
Speed the garment! It may chance,
Long hereafter, meet the glance,
Of Oenone; when her lord,
Now thy Paris, shall go tow'rd
Ida, at his last sad end,
Seeking her, his early friend,
Who alone can cure his ill,
Of all who love him, if she will.
It were fitting she should see
In that hour thine artistry,
And her husband's speechless corse
In the garment of remorse!
But take heed that in thy work
Naught unbeautiful may lurk.
Ah, how little signifies
Unto thee what fortunes rise,
What others fall! Thou still shall rule,
Still shalt twirl the colored spool.
Though thy yearning woman's eyes
Burn with glorious agonies,
Pitying the waste and woe,
And the heroes falling low
In the war around thee, here,
Yet the least, quick-trembling tear
'Twixt thy lids shall dearer be
Than life, to friend or enemy.
There are people on the earth
Doomed with doom of too great worth.
Look on Helen not with hate,
Therefore, but compassionate.
If she suffer not too much,
Seldom does she feel the touch
Of that fresh, auroral joy
Lighter spirits may decoy
To their pure and sunny lives.
Heavy honey 'tis she hives.
To her sweet but burdened soul
All that here she may control--
What of bitter memories,
What of coming fate's surmise,
Paris' passion, distant din
Of the war now drifting in
To her quiet--idle seems;
Idle as the lazy gleams
Of some stilly water's reach,
Seen from where broad vine-leaves pleach
A heavy arch; and, looking through,
Far away the doubtful blue
Glimmers, on a drowsy day,
Crowded with the sun's rich gray;--
As she stands within her room,
Weaving, weaving at the loom.
THE CASKET OF OPALS
I
Deep, smoldering colors of the land and sea
Burn in these stones, that, by some mystery,
Wrap fire in sleep and never are consumed.
Scarlet of daybreak, sunset gleams half spent
In thick white cloud; pale moons that may have lent
Light to love's grieving; rose-illumined snows,
And veins of gold no mine depth ever gloomed;
All these, and green of thin-edged waves, are there.
I think a tide of feeling through them flows
With blush and pallor, as if some being of air,--
Some soul once human,--wandering, in the snare
Of passion had been caught, and henceforth doomed
In misty crystal here to lie entombed.
And so it is, indeed. Here prisoned sleep
The ardors and the moods and all the pain
That once within a man's heart throbbed. He gave
These opals to the woman whom he loved;
And now, like glinting sunbeams through the rain,
The rays of thought that through his spirit moved
Leap out from these mysterious forms again.
The colors of the jewels laugh and weep
As with his very voice. In them the wave
Of sorrow and joy that, with a changing sweep,
Bore him to misery or else made him blest
Still surges in melodious, wild unrest.
So when each gem in place I touch and take,
It murmurs what he thought or what he spake.
FIRST OPAL
My heart is like an opal
Made to lie upon your breast
In dreams of ardor, clouded o'er
By endless joy's unrest.
And forever it shall haunt you
With its mystic, changing ray:
Its light shall live when we lie dead,
With hearts at the heart of day!
SECOND OPAL
If, from a careless hold,
One gem of these should fall,
No power of art or gold
Its wholeness could recall:
The lustrous wonder dies
In gleams of irised rain,
As light fades out from the eyes
When a soul is crushed by pain.
Take heed that from your hold
My love you do not cast:
Dim, shattered, vapor-cold--
That day would be its last.
II
THIRD OPAL
_He won her love; and so this opal sings
With all its tints in maze, that seem to quake
And leap in light, as if its heart would break:_
Gleam of the sea,
Translucent air,
Where every leaf alive with glee
Glows in the sun without shadow of grief--
You speak of spring,
When earth takes wing
And sunlight, sunlight is everywhere!
Radiant life,
Face so fair--
Crowned with the gracious glory of wife--
Your glance lights all this happy day,
Your tender glow
And murmurs low
Make miracle, miracle, everywhere.
Earth takes wing
With birds--do I care
Whether of sorrow or joy they sing?
No; for they make not my life nor destroy!
My soul awakes
At a smile that breaks
In sun; and sunlight is everywhere!
III
_Then dawned a mood of musing thoughtfulness;
As if he doubted whether he could bless
Her wayward spirit, through each fickle hour,
With love's serenity of flawless power,
Or she remain a vision, as when first
She came to soothe his fancy all athirst. _
FOURTH OPAL
We were alone: the perfumed night,
Moonlighted, like a flower
Grew round us and exhaled delight
To bless that one sweet hour.
You stood where, 'mid the white and gold,
The rose-fire through the gloom
Touched hair and cheek and garment's fold
With soft, ethereal bloom.
And when the vision seemed to swerve,
'T was but the flickering shine
That gave new grace, a lovelier curve,
To every dream-like line.
O perfect vision! Form and face
Of womanhood complete!
O rare ideal to embrace
And hold, from head to feet!
Could I so hold you ever--could
Your eye still catch the glow
Of mine--it were an endless good:
Together we should grow
One perfect picture of our love! . . .
Alas, the embers old
Fell, and the moonlight fell, above--
Dim, shattered, vapor-cold.
IV
_What ill befell these lovers? Shall I say?
What tragedy of petty care and sorrow?
Ye all know, who have lived and loved: if nay,
Then those will know who live and love tomorrow.
But here at least is what this opal said,
The fifth in number: and the next two bore
My fancy toward that dim world of the dead,
Where waiting spirits muse the past life o'er_:
FIFTH OPAL
I dreamed my kisses on your hair
Turned into roses. Circling bloom
Crowned the loose-lifted tresses there.
"O Love," I cried, "forever
Dwell wreathed, and perfume-haunted
By my heart's deep honey-breath! "
But even as I bending looked, I saw
The roses were not; and, instead, there lay
Pale, feathered flakes and scentless
Ashes upon your hair!
SIXTH OPAL
The love I gave, the love I gave,
Wherewith I sought to win you--
Ah, long and close to you it clave
With life and soul and sinew!
My gentleness with scorn you cursed:
You knew not what I gave.
The strongest man may die of thirst:
My love is in its grave!
SEVENTH OPAL
You say these jewels were accurst--
With evil omen fraught.
You should have known it from the first!
This was the truth they taught:
No treasured thing in heaven or earth
Holds potency more weird
Than our hearts hold, that throb from birth
With wavering flames insphered.
And when from me the gems you took,
On that strange April day,
My nature, too, I gave, that shook
With passion's fateful play.
The mingled fate my love should give
In these mute emblems shone,
That more intensely burn and live--
While I am turned to stone.
V
_Listen now to what is said
By the eighth opal, flashing red
And pale, by turns, with every breath--
The voice of the lover after death. _
EIGHTH OPAL
I did not know before
That we dead could rise and walk;
That our voices, as of yore,
Would blend in gentle talk.
I did not know her eyes
Would so haunt mine after death,
Or that she could hear my sighs,
Low as the harp-string's breath.
But, ah, last night we met!
From our stilly trance we rose,
Thrilled with all the old regret--
The grieving that God knows.
She asked: "Am I forgiven? "--
"And dost thou forgive? " I said,
Ah! how long for joy we'd striven!
But now our hearts were dead.
Alas, for the lips I kissed
And the sweet hope, long ago!
With each new morn a new world may discover.
NIGHT IN NEW YORK
Haunted by unknown feet--
Ways of the midnight hour!
Strangely you murmur below me,
Strange is your half-silent power.
Places of life and of death,
Numbered and named as streets,
What, through your channels of stone,
Is the tide that unweariedly beats?
A whisper, a sigh-laden breath,
Is all that I hear of its flowing.
Footsteps of stranger and foe--
Footsteps of friends, could we meet--
Alike to me in my sorrow;
Alike to a life left alone.
Yet swift as my heart they throb,
They fall thick as tears on the stone:
My spirit perchance may borrow
New strength from their eager tone.
Still ever that slip and slide
Of the feet that shuffle or glide,
And linger or haste through the populous waste
Of the shadowy, dim-lit square!
And I know not, from the sound,
As I sit and ponder within,
The goal to which those steps are bound,--
On hest of mercy, or hest of sin,
Or joy's short-measured round;
Yet a meaning deep they bear
In their vaguely muffled din.
Roar of the multitude,
Chafe of the million-crowd,
To this you are all subdued
In the murmurous, sad night-air!
Yet whether you thunder aloud,
Or hush your tone to a prayer,
You chant amain through the modern maze
The only epic of our days.
Still as death are the places of life;
The city seems crumbled and gone,
Sunk 'mid invisible deeps--
The city so lately rife
With the stir of brain and brawn.
Haply it only sleeps;
But what if indeed it were dead,
And another earth should arise
To greet the gray of the dawn?
Faint then our epic would wail
To those who should come in our stead.
But what if that earth were ours?
What if, with holier eyes,
We should meet the new hope, and not fail?
Weary, the night grows pale:
With a blush as of opening flowers
Dimly the east shines red.
Can it be that the morn shall fulfil
My dream, and refashion our clay
As the poet may fashion his rhyme?
Hark to that mingled scream
Rising from workshop and mill--
Hailing some marvelous sight;
Mighty breath of the hours,
Poured through the trumpets of steam;
Awful tornado of time,
Blowing us whither it will!
God has breathed in the nostrils of night,
And behold, it is day!
THE SONG-SPARROW
Glimmers gray the leafless thicket
Close beside my garden gate,
Where, so light, from post to picket
Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate;
Who, with meekly folded wing,
Comes to sun himself and sing.
It was there, perhaps, last year,
That his little house he built;
For he seems to perk and peer,
And to twitter, too, and tilt
The bare branches in between,
With a fond, familiar mien.
Once, I know, there was a nest,
Held there by the sideward thrust
Of those twigs that touch his breast;
Though 'tis gone now. Some rude gust
Caught it, over-full of snow,--
Bent the bush,--and stole it so.
Thus our highest holds are lost,
In the ruthless winter's wind,
When, with swift-dismantling frost,
The green woods we dwelt in, thinn'd
Of their leafage, grow too cold
For frail hopes of summer's mold.
But if we, with spring-days mellow,
Wake to woeful wrecks of change,
And the sparrow's ritornello
Scaling still its old sweet range;
Can we do a better thing
Than, with him, still build and sing?
Oh, my sparrow, thou dost breed
Thought in me beyond all telling;
Shootest through me sunlight, seed,
And fruitful blessing, with that welling
Ripple of ecstatic rest
Gurgling ever from thy breast!
And thy breezy carol spurs
Vital motion in my blood,
Such as in the sap-wood stirs,
Swells and shapes the pointed bud
Of the lilac; and besets
The hollow thick with violets.
Yet I know not any charm
That can make the fleeting time
Of thy sylvan, faint alarm
Suit itself to human rhyme:
And my yearning rhythmic word
Does thee grievous wrong, blithe bird.
So, however thou hast wrought
This wild joy on heart and brain,
It is better left untaught.
Take thou up the song again:
There is nothing sad afloat
On the tide that swells thy throat!
I LOVED YOU, ONCE--
And did you think my heart
Could keep its love unchanging,
Fresh as the buds that start
In spring, nor know estranging?
Listen! The buds depart:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than ever.
'T is not the early love;
With day and night it alters,
And onward still must move
Like earth, that never falters
For storm or star above.
I loved you once; but now--
I love you more than ever.
With gifts in those glad days
How eagerly I sought you!
Youth, shining hope, and praise:
These were the gifts I brought you.
In this world little stays:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than ever.
A child with glorious eyes
Here in our arms half sleeping--
So passion wakeful lies;
Then grows to manhood, keeping
Its wistful, young surprise:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than ever.
When age's pinching air
Strips summer's rich possession,
And leaves the branches bare,
My secret in confession
Still thus with you I'll share:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than ever.
II
THE BRIDE OF WAR
(ARNOLD'S MARCH TO CANADA, 1775)
I
The trumpet, with a giant sound,
Its harsh war-summons wildly sings;
And, bursting forth like mountain-springs,
Poured from the hillside camping-ground,
Each swift battalion shouting flings
Its force in line; where you may see
The men, broad-shouldered, heavily
Sway to the swing of the march; their heads
Dark like the stones in river-beds.
Lightly the autumn breezes
Play with the shining dust-cloud
Rising to the sunset rays
From feet of the moving column.
Soft, as you listen, comes
The echo of iterant drums,
Brought by the breezes light
From the files that follow the road.
A moment their guns have glowed
Sun-smitten: then out of sight
They suddenly sink,
Like men who touch a new grave's brink!
II
So it was the march began,
The march of Morgan's riflemen,
Who like iron held the van
In unhappy Arnold's plan
To win Wolfe's daring fame again.
With them, by her husband's side,
Jemima Warner, nobly free,
Moved more fair than when, a bride,
One year since, she strove to hide
The blush it was a joy to see.
III
O distant, terrible forests of Maine,
With huge trees numberless as the rain
That falls on your lonely lakes!
(It falls and sings through the years, but wakes
No answering echo of joy or pain. )
Your tangled wilderness was tracked
With struggle and sorrow and vengeful act
'Gainst Puritan, pagan, and priest.
Where wolf and panther and serpent ceased,
Man added the horrors your dark maze lacked.
The land was scarred with deeds not good,
Like the fretting of worms on withered wood.
What if its venomous spell
Breathed into Arnold a prompting of Hell,
With slow empoisoning force indued?
IV
As through that dreary realm he went,
Followed a shape of dark portent:--
Pard-like, of furtive eye, with brain
To treason narrowing, Aaron Burr,
Moved loyal-seeming in the train,
Led by the arch-conspirator.
And craven Enos closed the rear,
Whose honor's flame died out in fear.
Not sooner does the dry bough burn
And into fruitless ashes turn,
Than he with whispered, false command
Drew back the hundreds in his hand;
Fled like a shade; and all forsook.
Wherever Arnold bent his look,
Danger and doubt around him hung;
And pale Disaster, shrouded, flung
Black omens in his track, as though
The fingers of a future woe
Already clutched his life, to wring
Some expiation for the thing
That he was yet to do. A chill
Struck helpless many a steadfast will
Within the ranks; the very air
Rang with a thunder-toned despair:
The hills seemed wandering to and fro,
Like lost guides blinded by the snow.
V
Yet faithful still 'mid woe and doubt
One woman's loyal heart--whose pain
Filled it with pure celestial light--
Shone starry-constant like the North,
Or that still radiance beaming forth
From sacred lights in some lone fane.
But he whose ring Jemima wore,
By want and weariness all unstrung,
Though strong and honest of heart and young,
Shrank at the blast that pierced so frore--
Like a huge, invisible bird of prey
Furious launched from Labrador
And the granite cliffs of Saguenay!
Along the bleak Dead River's banks
They forced amain their frozen way;
But ever from the thinning ranks
Shapes of ice would reel and fall,
Human shapes, whose dying prayer
Floated, a mute white mist, in air;
The crowding snow their pall.
Spectre-like Famine drew near;
Her doom-word hummed in his ear:
Ah, weak were woman's hands to reach
And save him from the hellish charms
And wizard motion of those arms!
Yet only noble womanhood
The wife her dauntless part could teach:
She shared with him the last dry food
And thronged with hopefulness her speech,
As when hard by her home the flood
Of rushing Conestoga fills
Its depth afresh from springtide rills!
All, all in vain!
For far behind the invading rout
These two were left alone;
And in the waste their wildest shout
Seemed but a smothered groan.
Like sheeted wanderers from the grave
They moved, and yet seemed not to stir,
As icy gorge and sere-leaf'd grove
Of withered oak and shrouded fir
Were passed, and onward still they strove;
While the loud wind's artillery clave
The air, and furious sleety rain
Swung like a sword above the plain!
VI
They crossed the hills; they came to where
Through an arid gloom the river Chaudiere
Fled like a Maenad with outstreaming hair;
And there the soldier sank, and died.
Death-dumb he fell; yet ere life sped,
Child-like on her knee he laid his head.
She strove to pray; but all words fled
Save those their love had sanctified.
And then her voice rose waveringly
To the notes of a mother's lullaby;
But her song was only "Ah, must thou die? "
And to her his eyes death-still replied.
VII
Dead leaves and stricken boughs
She heaped o'er the fallen form--
Wolf nor hawk nor lawless storm
Him from his rest should rouse;
But first, with solemn vows,
Took rifle, pouch, and horn,
And the belt that he had worn.
Then, onward pressing fast
Through the forest rude and vast,
Hunger-wasted, fever-parch'd,
Many bitter days she marched
With bleeding feet that spurned the flinty pain;
One thought always throbbing through her brain:
"They shall never say, 'He was afraid,'--
They shall never cry, 'The coward stayed! '"
VIII
Now the wilderness is passed;
Now the first hut reached, at last.
Ho, dwellers by the frontier trail,
Come forth and greet the bride of war!
From cabin and rough settlement
They come to speed her on her way--
Maidens, whose ruddy cheeks grow pale
With pity never felt before;
Children that cluster at the door;
Mothers, whose toil-worn hands are lent
To help, or bid her longer stay.
But through them all she passes on,
Strangely martial, fair and wan;
Nor waits to listen to their cheers
That sound so faintly in her ears.
For now all scenes around her shift,
Like those before a racer's eyes
When, foremost sped and madly swift,
Quick stretching toward the goal he flies,
Yet feels his strength wane with his breath,
And purpose fail 'mid fears of death,--
Till, like the flashing of a lamp,
Starts forth the sight of Arnold's camp,--
The bivouac flame, and sinuous gleam
Of steel,--where, crouched, the army waits,
Ere long, beyond the midnight stream,
To storm Quebec's ice-mounded gates.
IX
Then to the leader she was brought,
And spoke her simply loyal thought.
If, 'mid the shame of after-days,
The man who wronged his country's trust
(Yet now in worth outweighed all praise)
Remembered what this woman wrought,
It should have bowed him to the dust!
"Humbly my soldier-husband tried
To do his part. He served,--and died.
But honor did not die. His name
And honor--bringing both, I came;
And this his rifle, here, to show,
While far away the tired heart sleeps,
To-day his faith with you he keeps! "
Proudly the war bride, ending so,
Sank breathless in the dumb white snow.
A RUNE OF THE RAIN
O many-toned rain!
O myriad sweet voices of the rain!
How welcome is its delicate overture
At evening, when the moist and glowing west
Seals all things with cool promise of night's rest.
At first it would allure
The earth to kinder mood,
With dainty flattering
Of soft, sweet pattering:
Faintly now you hear the tramp
Of the fine drops, falling damp
On the dry, sun-seasoned ground
And the thirsty leaves, resound.
But anon, imbued
With a sudden, bounding access
Of passion, it relaxes
All timider persuasion.
And, with nor pretext nor occasion,
Its wooing redoubles;
And pounds the ground, and bubbles
In sputtering spray,
Flinging itself in a fury
Of flashing white away;
Till the dusty road,
Dank-perfumed, is o'erflowed;
And the grass, and the wide-hung trees,
The vines, the flowers in their beds,--
The virid corn that to the breeze
Rustles along the garden-rows,--
Visibly lift their heads,
And, as the quick shower wilder grows,
Upleap with answering kisses to the rain.
Then, the slow and pleasant murmur
Of its subsiding,
As the pulse of the storm beats firmer,
And the steady rain
Drops into a cadenced chiding!
Deep-breathing rain,
The sad and ghostly noise
Wherewith thou dost complain---
Thy plaintive, spiritual voice,
Heard thus at close of day
Through vaults of twilight gray--
Vexes me with sweet pain;
And still my soul is fain
To know the secret of that yearning
Which in thine utterance I hear returning.
Hush, oh hush!
Break not the dreamy rush
Of the rain:
Touch not the marring doubt
Words bring to the certainty
Of its soft refrain;
But let the flying fringes flout
Their drops against the pane,
And the gurgling throat of the water-spout
Groan in the eaves amain.
The earth is wedded to the shower;
Darkness and awe gird round the bridal hour!
II
O many-toned rain!
It hath caught the strain
Of a wilder tune,
Ere the same night's noon,
When dreams and sleep forsake me,
And sudden dread doth wake me,
To hear the booming drums of heaven beat
The long roll to battle; when the knotted cloud,
With an echoing loud,
Bursts asunder
At the sudden resurrection of the thunder;
And the fountains of the air,
Unsealed again, sweep, ruining, everywhere,
To wrap the world in a watery winding-sheet.
III
O myriad sweet voices of the rain!
When the airy war doth wane,
And the storm to the east hath flown,
Cloaked close in the whirling wind,
There's a voice still left behind
In each heavy-hearted tree,
Charged with tearful memory
Of the vanished rain:
From their leafy lashes wet
Drip the dews of fresh regret
For the lover that's gone!
All else is still;
Yet the stars are listening,
And low o'er the wooded hill
Hangs, upon listless wing
Outspread, a shape of damp, blue cloud,
Watching, like a bird of evil
That knows nor mercy nor reprieval,
The slow and silent death of the pallid moon.
IV
But soon, returning duly,
Dawn whitens the wet hilltops bluely.
To her vision pure and cold
The night's wild tale is told
On the glistening leaf, in the mid-road pool,
The garden mold turned dark and cool,
And the meadows' trampled acres.
But hark, how fresh the song of the winged music-makers!
For now the moanings bitter,
Left by the rain, make harmony
With the swallow's matin-twitter,
And the robin's note, like the wind's in a tree.
The infant morning breathes sweet breath,
And with it is blent
The wistful, wild, moist scent
Of the grass in the marsh which the sea nourisheth:
And behold!
The last reluctant drop of the storm,
Wrung from the roof, is smitten warm
And turned to gold;
For in its veins doth run
The very blood of the bold, unsullied sun!
BREAKERS
Far out at sea there has been a storm,
And still, as they roll their liquid acres,
High-heaped the billows lower and glisten.
The air is laden, moist, and warm
With the dying tempest's breath;
And, as I walk the lonely strand
With sea-weed strewn, my forehead fanned
By wet salt-winds, I watch the breakers,
Furious sporting, tossed and tumbling,
Shatter here with a dreadful rumbling--
Watch, and muse, and vainly listen
To the inarticulate mumbling
Of the hoary-headed deep;
For who may tell me what it saith,
Muttering, moaning as in sleep?
Slowly and heavily
Comes in the sea,
With memories of storm o'erfreighted,
With heaving heart and breath abated,
Pregnant with some mysterious, endless sorrow,
And seamed with many a gaping, sighing furrow.
Slowly and heavily
Grows the green water-mound;
But drawing ever nigher,
Towering ever higher,
Swollen with an inward rage
Naught but ruin can assuage,
Swift, now, without sound,
Creeps stealthily
Up to the shore--
Creeps, creeps and undulates;
As one dissimulates
Till, swayed by hateful frenzy,
Through passion grown immense, he
Bursts forth hostilely;
And rising, a smooth billow--
Its swelling, sunlit dome
Thinned to a tumid ledge
With keen, curved edge
Like the scornful curl
Of lips that snarl--
O'ertops itself and breaks
Into a raving foam;
So springs upon the shore
With a hungry roar;
Its first fierce anger slakes
On the stony shallow;
And runs up on the land,
Licking the smooth, hard sand,
Relentless, cold, yet wroth;
And dies in savage froth.
Then with its backward swirl
The sands and the stones, how they whirl!
O, fiercely doth it draw
Them to its chasm'd maw,
And against it in vain
They linger and strain;
And as they slip away
Into the seething gray
Fill all the thunderous air
With the horror of their despair,
And their wild terror wreak
In one hoarse, wailing shriek.
But scarce is this done,
When another one
Falls like the bolt from a bellowing gun,
And sucks away the shore
As that did before:
And another shall smother it o'er.
Then there's a lull--a half-hush;
And forward the little waves rush,
Toppling and hurrying,
Each other worrying,
And in their haste
Run to waste.
Yet again is heard the trample
Of the surges high and ample:
Their dreadful meeting--
The wild and sudden breaking--
The dinting, and battering, and beating,
And swift forsaking.
And ever they burst and boom,
A numberless host;
Like heralds of doom
To the trembling coast;
And ever the tangled spray
Is tossed from the fierce affray,
And, as with spectral arms
That taunt and beckon and mock,
And scatter vague alarms,
Clasps and unclasps the rock;
Listlessly over it wanders;
Moodily, madly maunders,
And hissingly falls
From the glistening walls.
So all day along the shore
Shout the breakers, green and hoar,
Weaving out their weird tune;
Till at night the full moon
Weds the dark with that ring
Of gold that you see her fling
On the misty air.
Then homeward slow returning
To slumbers deep I fare,
Filled with an infinite yearning,
With thoughts that rise and fall
To the sound of the sea's hollow call,
Breathed now from white-lit waves that reach
Cold fingers o'er the damp, dark beach,
To scatter a spray on my dreams;
Till the slow and measured rote
Brings a drowsy ease
To my spirit, and seems
To set it soothingly afloat
On broad and buoyant seas
Of endless rest, lulled by the dirge
Of the melancholy surge.
BLACKMOUTH, OF COLORADO
"Who is Blackmouth? " Well, that's hard to say.
Mebbe he might ha' told you, 't other day,
If you'd been here. Now,--he's gone away.
Come to think on, 't wouldn't ha' been no use
If you'd called here earlier. His excuse
Always was, whenever folks would ask him
Where he hailed from, an' _would_ tease an' task him;--
What d' you s'pose? He just said, "I don' know. "
That was truth. He came here long ago;
But, before that, he'd been born somewhere:
The conundrum started first, right there.
Little shaver--afore he knew his name
Or the place from whereabouts he came--
On a wagon-train the Apaches caught him.
Killed the old folks! But this cus'--they brought him
Safe away from fire an' knife an' arrows.
So'thin' 'bout him must have touched their marrows:
They was merciful;--treated him real good;
Brought him up to man's age well's they could.
Now, d' you b'lieve me, that there likely lad,
For all they used him so, went to the bad:
Leastways left the red men, that he knew,
'N' come to look for folks like me an' you;--
Goldarned white folks that he never saw.
Queerest thing was--though he loved a squaw,
'T was on her account he planned escape;
Shook the Apaches, an' took up red tape
With the U. S. gov'ment arter a while;
Tho' they do say gov'ment may be vile,
Mean an' treacherous an' deceivin'. Well,
_I_ ain't sayin' our gov'ment is a sell.
Bocanegra--Spanish term--I've heard
Stands for "Blackmouth. " Now this curious bird,
Known as Bocanegra, gave his life
Most for others. First, he saved his wife;
Her I spoke of;--nothin' but a squaw.
You might wonder by what sort of law
He, a white man born, should come to love her.
But 't was somehow so: he _did_ discover
Beauty in her, of the holding kind.
Some men love the light, an' some the shade.
Round that little Indian girl there played
Soft an' shadowy tremblings, like the dark
Under trees; yet now an' then a spark,
Quick 's a firefly, flashing from her eyes,
Made you think of summer-midnight skies.
She was faithful, too, like midnight stars.
As for Blackmouth, if you'd seen the scars
Made by wounds he suffered for her sake,
You'd have called _him_ true, and no mistake.
Growin' up a man, he scarcely met
Other white folks; an' his heart was set
On this red girl. Yet he said: "We'll wait.
You must never be my wedded mate
Till we reach the white man's country. There,
Everything that's done is fair and square. "
Patiently they stayed, thro' trust or doubt,
Till tow'rds Colorado he could scout
Some safe track. He told her: "You go first.
All my joy goes with you:--that's the worst!
But _I_ wait, to guard or hide the trail. "
Indians caught him; an' they gave him--hail;
Cut an' tortured him, till he was bleeding;
Yet they found that still they weren't succeeding.
"Where's that squaw? " they asked. "We'll have her blood!
Either that, or grind you into mud;
Pick your eyes out, too, if you can't see
Where she's gone to. Which, now, shall it be?
Tell us where she's hid. "
"I'll show the way,"
Blackmouth says; an' leads toward dawn of day,
Till they come straight out beside the brink
Of a precipice that seems to sink
Into everlasting gulfs below.
"Loose me! " Blackmouth tells 'em. "But go slow. "
Then they loosed him; and, with one swift leap,
Blackmouth swooped right down into the deep;--
Jumped out into space beyond the edge,
While the Apaches cowered along the ledge.
Seven hundred feet, they say. That's guff!
Seventy foot, I tell you, 's 'bout enough.
Indians called him a dead antelope;
But they couldn't touch the bramble-slope
Where he, bruised and stabbed, crawled under brush.
_Their_ hand was beat hollow: _he_ held a flush.
Day and night he limped or crawled along:
Winds blew hot, yet sang to him a song
(So he told me, once) that gave him hope.
Every time he saw a shadow grope
Down the hillsides, from a flying cloud,
Something touched his heart that made him proud:
Seemed to him he saw her dusky face
Watching over him, from place to place.
Every time the dry leaves rustled near,
Seemed to him she whispered, "Have no fear! "
So at last he found her:--they were married.
But, from those days on, he always carried
Marks of madness; actually--yes! --
Trusted the good faith of these U. S.
Indian hate an' deviltry he braved;
'N' scores an' scores of white men's lives he saved.
Just for that, his name should be engraved.
But it won't be! U. S. gov'ment dreads
Men who're taller 'n politicians' heads.
All the while, his wife--tho' half despised
By the frontier folks that civilized
An' converted her--served by his side,
Helping faithfully, until she died.
Left alone, he lay awake o' nights,
Thinkin' what they'd both done for the whites.
Then he thought of her, and Indian people;
Tryin' to measure, by the church's steeple,
Just how Christian our great nation's been
Toward those native tribes so full of sin.
When he counted all the wrongs we've done
To the wild men of the setting sun,
Seem'd to him the gov'ment wa'n't quite fair.
When its notes came due, it wa'n't right there.
U. S. gov'ment promised Indians lots,
But at last it closed accounts with shots.
Mouth was black, perhaps;--but _he_ was white.
Calling gov'ment black don't seem polite:
Yet I'll swear, its actions wouldn't show
'Longside Blackmouth's better 'n soot with snow.
Yes, sir! Blackmouth took the other side:
Honestly for years an' years he tried
Getting justice for the Indians. He,
Risking life an' limb for you an' me;--
He, the man who proved his good intent
By his deeds, an' plainly showed he meant
He would die for us,--turned round an' said:
"White men have been saved. Now, save the red! "
But it didn't pan out. No one would hark.
"Let the prairie-dogs an' Blackmouth bark,"
Said our folks. And--no, he wa'n't resigned,
But concluded he had missed his find.
"_Where_ is Blackmouth? " That I can't decide.
Red an' white men, both, he tried to serve;
But I guess, at last, he lost his nerve.
Kind o' tired out. See? He had his pride:
Gave his life for others, far 's he could,
Hoping it would do 'em some small good.
Didn't seem to be much use. An' so--
Well; you see that man, dropped in the snow,
Where the crowd is? Suicide, they say.
Looks as though he had quit work, to stay.
Bullet in the breast. --His _body_ 's there;
But poor Blackmouth's gone--I don't know where!
THE CHILD YEAR
I
"Dying of hunger and sorrow:
I die for my youth I fear! "
Murmured the midnight-haunting
Voice of the stricken Year.
There like a child it perished
In the stormy thoroughfare:
The snow with cruel whiteness
Had aged its flowing hair.
Ah, little Year so fruitful,
Ah, child that brought us bliss,
Must we so early lose you--
Our dear hopes end in this?
II
"Too young am I, too tender,
To bear earth's avalanche
Of wrong, that grinds down life-hope,
And makes my heart's-blood blanch.
"Tell him who soon shall follow
Where my tired feet have bled,
He must be older, shrewder,
Hard, cold, and selfish-bred--
"Or else like me be trampled
Under the harsh world's heel.
'Tis weakness to be youthful;
'Tis death to love and feel. "
III
Then saw I how the New Year
Came like a scheming man,
With icy eyes, his forehead
Wrinkled by care and plan
For trade and rule and profit.
To him the fading child
Looked up and cried, "Oh, brother! "
But died even while it smiled.
Down bent the harsh new-comer
To lift with loving arm
The wanderer mute and fallen;
And lo! his eyes were warm;
All changed he grew; the wrinkles
Vanished: he, too, looked young--
As if that lost child's spirit
Into his breast had sprung.
So are those lives not wasted,
Too frail to bear the fray.
So Years may die, yet leave us
Young hearts in a world grown gray.
CHRISTENING
To-day I saw a little, calm-eyed child,--
Where soft lights rippled and the shadows tarried
Within a church's shelter arched and aisled,--
Peacefully wondering, to the altar carried;
White-robed and sweet, in semblance of a flower;
White as the daisies that adorned the chancel;
Borne like a gift, the young wife's natural dower,
Offered to God as her most precious hansel.
Then ceased the music, and the little one
Was silent, with the multitude assembled
Hearkening; and when of Father and of Son
He spoke, the pastor's deep voice broke and trembled.
But she, the child, knew not the solemn words,
And suddenly yielded to a troublous wailing,
As helpless as the cry of frightened birds
Whose untried wings for flight are unavailing.
How much the same, I thought, with older folk!
The blessing falls: we call it tribulation,
And fancy that we wear a sorrow's yoke,
Even at the moment of our consecration.
Pure daisy-child! Whatever be the form
Of dream or doctrine,--or of unbelieving,--
A hand may touch our heads, amid the storm
Of grief and doubt, to bless beyond bereaving;
A voice may sound, in measured, holy rite
Of speech we know not, tho' its earnest meaning
Be clear as dew, and sure as starry light
Gathered from some far-off celestial gleaning.
Wise is the ancient sacrament that blends
This weakling cry of children in our churches
With strength of prayer or anthem that ascends
To Him who hearts of men and children searches;
Since we are like the babe, who, soothed again,
Within her mother's cradling arm lay nested,
Bright as a new bud, now, refreshed by rain:
And on her hair, it seemed, heaven's radiance rested.
THANKSGIVING TURKEY
Valleys lay in sunny vapor,
And a radiance mild was shed
From each tree that like a taper
At a feast stood. Then we said,
"Our feast, too, shall soon be spread,
Of good Thanksgiving turkey. "
And already still November
Drapes her snowy table here.
Fetch a log, then; coax the ember;
Fill your hearts with old-time cheer;
Heaven be thanked for one more year,
And our Thanksgiving turkey!
Welcome, brothers--all our party
Gathered in the homestead old!
Shake the snow off and with hearty
Hand-shakes drive away the cold;
Else your plate you'll hardly hold
Of good Thanksgiving turkey.
When the skies are sad and murky,
'Tis a cheerful thing to meet
Round this homely roast of turkey--
Pilgrims, pausing just to greet,
Then, with earnest grace, to eat
A new Thanksgiving turkey.
And the merry feast is freighted
With its meanings true and deep.
Those we've loved and those we've hated,
All, to-day, the rite will keep,
All, to-day, their dishes heap
With plump Thanksgiving turkey.
But how many hearts must tingle
Now with mournful memories!
In the festal wine shall mingle
Unseen tears, perhaps from eyes
That look beyond the board where lies
Our plain Thanksgiving turkey.
See around us, drawing nearer,
Those faint yearning shapes of air--
Friends than whom earth holds none dearer!
No--alas! they are not there:
Have they, then, forgot to share
Our good Thanksgiving turkey?
Some have gone away and tarried
Strangely long by some strange wave;
Some have turned to foes; we carried
Some unto the pine-girt grave:
They 'll come no more so joyous-brave
To take Thanksgiving turkey.
Nay, repine not. Let our laughter
Leap like firelight up again.
Soon we touch the wide Hereafter,
Snow-field yet untrod of men:
Shall we meet once more--and when? --
To eat Thanksgiving turkey.
BEFORE THE SNOW
Autumn is gone: through the blue woodlands bare
Shatters the rainy wind. A myriad leaves,
Like birds that fly the mournful Northern air.
Flutter away from the old forest's eaves.
Autumn is gone: as yonder silent rill,
Slow eddying o'er thick leaf-heaps lately shed,
My spirit, as I walk, moves awed and still,
By thronging fancies wild and wistful led.
Autumn is gone: alas, how long ago
The grapes were plucked, and garnered was the grain!
How soon death settles on us, and the snow
Wraps with its white alike our graves, our gain!
Yea, autumn's gone! Yet it robs not my mood
Of that which makes moods dear,--some shoot of spring
Still sweet within me; or thoughts of yonder wood
We walked in,--memory's rare environing.
And, though they die, the seasons only take
A ruined substance. All that's best remains
In the essential vision that can make
One light for life, love, death, their joys, their pains.
III
YOUTH TO THE POET
(TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES)
Strange spell of youth for age, and age for youth,
Affinity between two forms of truth! --
As if the dawn and sunset watched each other,
Like and unlike as children of one mother
And wondering at the likeness. Ardent eyes
Of young men see the prophecy arise
Of what their lives shall be when all is told;
And, in the far-off glow of years called old,
Those other eyes look back to catch a trace
Of what was once their own unshadowed grace.
But here in our dear poet both are blended--
Ripe age begun, yet golden youth not ended;--
Even as his song the willowy scent of spring
Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing,
And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun,
In strains that ever delicately run;
So musical and wise, page after page,
The sage a minstrel grows, the bard a sage.
The dew of youth fills yet his late-sprung flowers,
And day-break glory haunts his evening hours.
Ah, such a life prefigures its own moral:
That first "Last Leaf" is now a leaf of laurel,
Which--smiling not, but trembling at the touch--
Youth gives back to the hand that gave so much.
EVENING OF DECEMBER 3, 1879.
THE SWORD DHAM
"How shall we honor the man who creates? "
Asked the Bedouin chief, the poet Antar;--
"Who unto the truth flings open our gates,
Or fashions new thoughts from the light of a star;
Or forges with craft of his finger and brain
Some marvelous weapon we copy in vain;
Or chants to the winds a wild song that shall
wander forever undying?
"See! His reward is in envies and hates;
In lips that deny, or in stabs that may kill. "
"Nay," said the smith; "for there's one here who waits
Humbly to serve you with unmeasured skill,
Sure that no utmost devotion can fail,
Offered to _you_, nor unfriended assail
The heart of the hero and poet Antar, whose
fame is undying! "
"Speak," said the chief. Then the smith: "O Antar,
It is I who would serve you! I know, by the soul
Of the poet within you, no envy can bar
The stream of your gratitude,--once let it roll.
Listen. The lightning, your camel that slew,
_I_ caught, and wrought in this sword-blade for you;--
Sword that no foe shall encounter unhurt, or
depart from undying. "
Burst from the eyes of Antar a swift rain,--Gratitude's
glittering drops,--as he threw
One shining arm round the smith, like a chain.
Closer the man to his bosom he drew;
Thankful, caressing, with "Great is my debt. "
"Yea," said the smith, and his eyelids were wet:
"I knew the sword Dham would unite me with
you in an honor undying. "
"So? " asked the chief, as his thumb-point at will
Silently over the sword's edge played.
--"Ay! " said the smith, "but there's one thing, still:
Who is the smiter, shall smite with this blade? "
Jealous, their eyes met; and fury awoke.
"_I_ am the smiter! " Antar cried. One stroke
Rolled the smith's head from his neck, and gave
him remembrance undying.
"Seek now who may, no search will avail:
No man the mate of this weapon shall own! "
Yet, in his triumph, the chieftain made wail:
"Slain is the craftsman, the one friend alone
Able to honor the man who creates.
I slew him--_I_, who am poet! O fates,
Grant that the envious blade slaying artists shall
make them undying! "
"AT THE GOLDEN GATE"
Before the golden gate she stands,
With drooping head, with idle hands
Loose-clasped, and bent beneath the weight
Of unseen woe. Too late, too late!
Those carved and fretted,
Starred, resetted
Panels shall not open ever
To her who seeks the perfect mate.
Only the tearless enter there:
Only the soul that, like a prayer,
No bolt can stay, no wall may bar,
Shall dream the dreams grief cannot mar.
No door of cedar,
Alas, shall lead her
Unto the stream that shows forever
Love's face like some reflected star!
They say that golden barrier hides
A realm where deathless spring abides;
Where flowers shall fade not, and there floats
Thro' moon-rays mild or sunlit motes--
'Mid dewy alleys
That gird the palace,
And fountain'd spray's unceasing quiver--
A dulcet rain of song-birds' notes.
The sultan lord knew not her name;
But to the door that fair shape came:
The hour had struck, the way was right,
Traced by her lamp's pale, flickering light.
But ah, whose error
Has brought this terror?
Whose fault has foiled her fond endeavor?
The gate swings to: her hope takes flight.
The harp, the song, the nightingales
She hears, beyond. The night-wind wails
Without, to sound of feast within,
While here she stands, shut out by sin.
And be that revel
Of angel or devil,
She longs to sit beside the giver,
That she at last her prize may win.
Her lamp has fallen; her eyes are wet;
Frozen she stands, she lingers yet;
But through the garden's gladness steals
A whisper that each heart congeals--
A moan of grieving
Beyond relieving,
Which makes the proudest of them shiver.
And suddenly the sultan kneels!
The lamp was quenched; he found her dead,
When dawn had turned the threshold red.
Her face was calm and sad as fate:
His sin, not hers, made her too late.
Some think, unbidden
She brought him, hidden,
A truer bliss that came back never
To him, unblest, who closed the gate.
CHARITY
I
Unarmed she goeth; yet her hands
Strike deeper awe than steel-caparison'd bands.
No fatal hurt of foe she fears,--
Veiled, as with mail, in mist of gentle tears.
II
'Gainst her thou canst not bar the door:
Like air she enters, where none dared before.
Even to the rich she can forgive
Their regal selfishness,--and let them live!
HELEN AT THE LOOM
Helen, in her silent room,
Weaves upon the upright loom;
Weaves a mantle rich and dark,
Purpled over, deep. But mark
How she scatters o'er the wool
Woven shapes, till it is full
Of men that struggle close, complex;
Short-clipp'd steeds with wrinkled necks
Arching high; spear, shield, and all
The panoply that doth recall
Mighty war; such war as e'en
For Helen's sake is waged, I ween.
Purple is the groundwork: good!
All the field is stained with blood--
Blood poured out for Helen's sake;
(Thread, run on; and shuttle, shake! )
But the shapes of men that pass
Are as ghosts within a glass,
Woven with whiteness of the swan,
Pale, sad memories, gleaming wan
From the garment's purple fold
Where Troy's tale is twined and told.
Well may Helen, as with tender
Touch of rosy fingers slender
She doth knit the story in
Of Troy's sorrow and her sin,
Feel sharp filaments of pain
Reeled off with the well-spun skein,
And faint blood-stains on her hands
From the shifting, sanguine strands.
Gently, sweetly she doth sorrow:
What has been must be to-morrow;
Meekly to her fate she bows.
Heavenly beauties still will rouse
Strife and savagery in men:
Shall the lucid heavens, then,
Lose their high serenity,
Sorrowing over what must be?
If she taketh to her shame,
Lo, they give her not the blame,--
Priam's wisest counselors,
Aged men, not loving wars.
When she goes forth, clad in white,
Day-cloud touched by first moonlight,
With her fair hair, amber-hued
As vapor by the moon imbued
With burning brown, that round her clings,
See, she sudden silence brings
On the gloomy whisperers
Who would make the wrong all hers.
So, Helen, in thy silent room,
Labor at the storied loom;
(Thread, run on; and shuttle, shake! )
Let thy aching sorrow make
Something strangely beautiful
Of this fabric; since the wool
Comes so tinted from the Fates,
Dyed with loves, hopes, fears, and hates.
Thou shalt work with subtle force
All thy deep shade of remorse
In the texture of the weft,
That no stain on thee be left;--
Ay, false queen, shalt fashion grief,
Grief and wrong, to soft relief.
Speed the garment! It may chance,
Long hereafter, meet the glance,
Of Oenone; when her lord,
Now thy Paris, shall go tow'rd
Ida, at his last sad end,
Seeking her, his early friend,
Who alone can cure his ill,
Of all who love him, if she will.
It were fitting she should see
In that hour thine artistry,
And her husband's speechless corse
In the garment of remorse!
But take heed that in thy work
Naught unbeautiful may lurk.
Ah, how little signifies
Unto thee what fortunes rise,
What others fall! Thou still shall rule,
Still shalt twirl the colored spool.
Though thy yearning woman's eyes
Burn with glorious agonies,
Pitying the waste and woe,
And the heroes falling low
In the war around thee, here,
Yet the least, quick-trembling tear
'Twixt thy lids shall dearer be
Than life, to friend or enemy.
There are people on the earth
Doomed with doom of too great worth.
Look on Helen not with hate,
Therefore, but compassionate.
If she suffer not too much,
Seldom does she feel the touch
Of that fresh, auroral joy
Lighter spirits may decoy
To their pure and sunny lives.
Heavy honey 'tis she hives.
To her sweet but burdened soul
All that here she may control--
What of bitter memories,
What of coming fate's surmise,
Paris' passion, distant din
Of the war now drifting in
To her quiet--idle seems;
Idle as the lazy gleams
Of some stilly water's reach,
Seen from where broad vine-leaves pleach
A heavy arch; and, looking through,
Far away the doubtful blue
Glimmers, on a drowsy day,
Crowded with the sun's rich gray;--
As she stands within her room,
Weaving, weaving at the loom.
THE CASKET OF OPALS
I
Deep, smoldering colors of the land and sea
Burn in these stones, that, by some mystery,
Wrap fire in sleep and never are consumed.
Scarlet of daybreak, sunset gleams half spent
In thick white cloud; pale moons that may have lent
Light to love's grieving; rose-illumined snows,
And veins of gold no mine depth ever gloomed;
All these, and green of thin-edged waves, are there.
I think a tide of feeling through them flows
With blush and pallor, as if some being of air,--
Some soul once human,--wandering, in the snare
Of passion had been caught, and henceforth doomed
In misty crystal here to lie entombed.
And so it is, indeed. Here prisoned sleep
The ardors and the moods and all the pain
That once within a man's heart throbbed. He gave
These opals to the woman whom he loved;
And now, like glinting sunbeams through the rain,
The rays of thought that through his spirit moved
Leap out from these mysterious forms again.
The colors of the jewels laugh and weep
As with his very voice. In them the wave
Of sorrow and joy that, with a changing sweep,
Bore him to misery or else made him blest
Still surges in melodious, wild unrest.
So when each gem in place I touch and take,
It murmurs what he thought or what he spake.
FIRST OPAL
My heart is like an opal
Made to lie upon your breast
In dreams of ardor, clouded o'er
By endless joy's unrest.
And forever it shall haunt you
With its mystic, changing ray:
Its light shall live when we lie dead,
With hearts at the heart of day!
SECOND OPAL
If, from a careless hold,
One gem of these should fall,
No power of art or gold
Its wholeness could recall:
The lustrous wonder dies
In gleams of irised rain,
As light fades out from the eyes
When a soul is crushed by pain.
Take heed that from your hold
My love you do not cast:
Dim, shattered, vapor-cold--
That day would be its last.
II
THIRD OPAL
_He won her love; and so this opal sings
With all its tints in maze, that seem to quake
And leap in light, as if its heart would break:_
Gleam of the sea,
Translucent air,
Where every leaf alive with glee
Glows in the sun without shadow of grief--
You speak of spring,
When earth takes wing
And sunlight, sunlight is everywhere!
Radiant life,
Face so fair--
Crowned with the gracious glory of wife--
Your glance lights all this happy day,
Your tender glow
And murmurs low
Make miracle, miracle, everywhere.
Earth takes wing
With birds--do I care
Whether of sorrow or joy they sing?
No; for they make not my life nor destroy!
My soul awakes
At a smile that breaks
In sun; and sunlight is everywhere!
III
_Then dawned a mood of musing thoughtfulness;
As if he doubted whether he could bless
Her wayward spirit, through each fickle hour,
With love's serenity of flawless power,
Or she remain a vision, as when first
She came to soothe his fancy all athirst. _
FOURTH OPAL
We were alone: the perfumed night,
Moonlighted, like a flower
Grew round us and exhaled delight
To bless that one sweet hour.
You stood where, 'mid the white and gold,
The rose-fire through the gloom
Touched hair and cheek and garment's fold
With soft, ethereal bloom.
And when the vision seemed to swerve,
'T was but the flickering shine
That gave new grace, a lovelier curve,
To every dream-like line.
O perfect vision! Form and face
Of womanhood complete!
O rare ideal to embrace
And hold, from head to feet!
Could I so hold you ever--could
Your eye still catch the glow
Of mine--it were an endless good:
Together we should grow
One perfect picture of our love! . . .
Alas, the embers old
Fell, and the moonlight fell, above--
Dim, shattered, vapor-cold.
IV
_What ill befell these lovers? Shall I say?
What tragedy of petty care and sorrow?
Ye all know, who have lived and loved: if nay,
Then those will know who live and love tomorrow.
But here at least is what this opal said,
The fifth in number: and the next two bore
My fancy toward that dim world of the dead,
Where waiting spirits muse the past life o'er_:
FIFTH OPAL
I dreamed my kisses on your hair
Turned into roses. Circling bloom
Crowned the loose-lifted tresses there.
"O Love," I cried, "forever
Dwell wreathed, and perfume-haunted
By my heart's deep honey-breath! "
But even as I bending looked, I saw
The roses were not; and, instead, there lay
Pale, feathered flakes and scentless
Ashes upon your hair!
SIXTH OPAL
The love I gave, the love I gave,
Wherewith I sought to win you--
Ah, long and close to you it clave
With life and soul and sinew!
My gentleness with scorn you cursed:
You knew not what I gave.
The strongest man may die of thirst:
My love is in its grave!
SEVENTH OPAL
You say these jewels were accurst--
With evil omen fraught.
You should have known it from the first!
This was the truth they taught:
No treasured thing in heaven or earth
Holds potency more weird
Than our hearts hold, that throb from birth
With wavering flames insphered.
And when from me the gems you took,
On that strange April day,
My nature, too, I gave, that shook
With passion's fateful play.
The mingled fate my love should give
In these mute emblems shone,
That more intensely burn and live--
While I am turned to stone.
V
_Listen now to what is said
By the eighth opal, flashing red
And pale, by turns, with every breath--
The voice of the lover after death. _
EIGHTH OPAL
I did not know before
That we dead could rise and walk;
That our voices, as of yore,
Would blend in gentle talk.
I did not know her eyes
Would so haunt mine after death,
Or that she could hear my sighs,
Low as the harp-string's breath.
But, ah, last night we met!
From our stilly trance we rose,
Thrilled with all the old regret--
The grieving that God knows.
She asked: "Am I forgiven? "--
"And dost thou forgive? " I said,
Ah! how long for joy we'd striven!
But now our hearts were dead.
Alas, for the lips I kissed
And the sweet hope, long ago!
