POEMS

A poem, Emerson wrote, is “the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing.” A poet is “the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty.”

As difficult as it may seem to a modern audience, Emerson was considered in his day to be one of the leading American poets, in the pantheon with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier. Although all three poets have been minimalized by the modernity of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, their contributions should not be so easily dismissed.

In 1823 Goethe told Johann Peter Eckermann: “The world is so great and rich, and life so full of variety, that you can never want occasions for poems. But they must all be occasional poems; that is to say, reality must give both impulse and material for their production. A particular case becomes universal and poetic by the very circumstance that it is treated by a poet.” Emerson never lost sight of the universalities inherent in the personal and occasional.

In the introduction to his poetry anthology, Parnassus, Emerson wrote:

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity. It requires that splendor of expression which carries with it the proof of great thoughts. Great thoughts insure musical expressions. Every word should be the right word. The poets are they who see that spiritual is greater than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. The great poets are judged by the frame of mind they induce; and to them, of all men, the severest criticism is due.

“I am,” Emerson wrote Lidian in 1842, “in all my theory, ethics, & politics a poet.”

—J.C.

THE SPHINX

THE Sphinx is drowsy,

Her wings are furled:

Her ear is heavy,

She broods on the world.

“Who’ll tell me my secret,

The ages have kept?—

I awaited the seer

While they slumbered and slept:—

“The fate of the man-child,

The meaning of man;

Known fruit of the unknown;

Dædalian plan;

Out of sleeping a waking,

Out of waking a sleep;

Life death overtaking;

Deep underneath deep?

“Erect as a sunbeam,

Upspringeth the palm;

The elephant browses,

Undaunted and calm;

In beautiful motion

The thrush plies his wings;

Kind leaves of his covert,

Your silence he sings.

“The waves, unashamèd,

In difference sweet,

Play glad with the breezes,

Old playfellows meet;

The journeying atoms,

Primordial wholes,

Firmly draw, firmly drive,

By their animate poles.

“Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,

Plant, quadruped, bird,

By one music enchanted,

One deity stirred,—

Each the other adorning,

Accompany still;

Night veileth the morning,

The vapor the hill.

“The babe by its mother

Lies bathèd in joy;

Glide its hours uncounted,—

The sun is its toy;

Shines the peace of all being,

Without cloud, in its eyes;

And the sum of the world

In soft miniature lies.

“But man crouches and blushes,

Absconds and conceals;

He creepeth and peepeth,

He palters and steals;

Infirm, melancholy,

Jealous glancing around,

An oaf, an accomplice,

He poisons the ground.

“Out spoke the great mother,

Beholding his fear;—

At the sound of her accents

Cold shuddered the sphere:—

‘Who has drugged my boy’s cup?

Who has mixed my boy’s bread?

Who, with sadness and madness,

Has turned my child’s head?’”

I heard a poet answer

Aloud and cheerfully,

‘Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges

Are pleasant songs to me.

Deep love lieth under

These pictures of time;

They fade in the light of

Their meaning sublime.

“The fiend that man harries

Is love of the Best;

Yawns the pit of the Dragon,

Lit by rays from the Blest.

The Lethe of Nature

Can’t trance him again,

Whose soul sees the perfect,

Which his eyes seek in vain.

“To vision profounder,

Man’s spirit must dive;

His aye-rolling orb

At no goal will arrive;

The heavens that now draw him

With sweetness untold,

Once found,—for new heavens

He spurneth the old.

“Pride ruined the angels,

Their shame them restores;

Lurks the joy that is sweetest

In stings of remorse.

Have I a lover

Who is noble and free?—

I would he were nobler

Than to love me.

“Eterne alternation

Now follows, now flies;

And under pain, pleasure,—

Under pleasure, pain lies.

Love works at the centre,

Heart-heaving alway;

Forth speed the strong pulses

To the borders of day.

“Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits;

Thy sight is growing blear;

Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Sphinx,

Her muddy eyes to clear!”

The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,—

Said, “Who taught thee me to name?

I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow;

Of thine eye I am eyebeam.

“Thou art the unanswered question;

Couldst see thy proper eye,

Alway it asketh, asketh;

And each answer is a lie.

So take thy quest through nature,

It through thousand natures ply;

Ask on, thou clothed eternity;

Time is the false reply.”

Uprose the merry Sphinx,

And crouched no more in stone;

She melted into purple cloud,

She silvered in the moon;

She spired into a yellow flame;

She flowered in blossoms red;

She flowed into a foaming wave:

She stood Monadnoc’s head.

Thorough a thousand voices

Spoke the universal dame;

“Who telleth one of my meanings

Is master of all I am.”

EACH AND ALL

LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown

Of thee from the hill-top looking down;

The heifer that lows in the upland farm,

Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;

The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,

Deems not that great Napoleon

Stops his horse, and lists with delight,

Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;

Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent.

All are needed by each one;

Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven,

Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home, in his nest, at even;

He sings the song, but it cheers not now,

For I did not bring home the river and sky;

He sang to my ear,—they sang to my eye.

The delicate shells lay on the shore;

The bubbles of the latest wave

Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,

And the bellowing of the savage sea

Greeted their safe escape to me.

I wiped away the weeds and foam,

I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things

Had left their beauty on the shore

With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

The lover watched his graceful maid,

As ’mid the virgin train she strayed,

Nor knew her beauty’s best attire

Was woven still by the snow-white choir.

At last she came to his hermitage,

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;—

The gay enchantment was undone,

A gentle wife, but fairy none.

Then I said, ‘I covet truth;

Beauty is unripe childhood’s cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth:’—

As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,

Running over the club-moss burrs;

I inhaled the violet’s breath;

Around me stood the oaks and firs;

Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;

Over me soared the eternal sky,

Full of light and of deity;

Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird;—

Beauty through my senses stole;

I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

THE PROBLEM

I LIKE a church; I like a cowl;

I love a prophet of the soul;

And on my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;

Yet not for all his faith can see

Would I that cowlèd churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure,

Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought

His awful Jove young Phidias brought;

Never from lips of cunning fell

The thrilling Delphic oracle;

Out from the heart of nature rolled

The burdens of the Bible old;

The litanies of nations came,

Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,

Up from the burning core below,—

The canticles of love and woe:

The hand that rounded Peter’s dome

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome

Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew;—

The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Know’st thou what wove you woodbird’s nest

Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?

Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,

Painting with morn each annual cell?

Or how the sacred pine-tree adds

To her old leaves new myriads?

Such and so grew these holy piles,

Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,

As the best gem upon her zone,

And Morning opes with haste her lids

To gaze upon the Pyramids;

O’er England’s abbeys bends the sky,

As on its friends, with kindred eye;

For out of Thought’s interior sphere

These wonders rose to upper air;

And Nature gladly gave them place,

Adopted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date

With Andes and with Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the grass;

Art might obey, but not surpass.

The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast soul that o’er him planned;

And the same power that reared the shrine

Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,

Trances the heart through chanting choirs,

And through the priest the mind inspires.

The word unto the prophet spoken

Was writ on tables yet unbroken;

The word by seers or sibyls told,

In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,

Still floats upon the morning wind,

Still whispers to the willing mind.

One accent of the Holy Ghost

The heedless world hath never lost.

I know what say the fathers wise,—

The Book itself before me lies,

Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,

And he who blent both in his line,

The younger Golden Lips or mines,

Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines.

His words are music in my ear,

And, though thy rede be church or state,

Frugal multiples of that.

Speeding Saturn cannot halt;

Linger,—thou shalt rue the fault:

If Love his moment overstay,

Hatred’s swift repulsions play.

URIEL

IT fell in the ancient periods

Which the brooding soul surveys,

Or ever the wild Time coined itself

Into calendar months and days.

This was the lapse of Uriel,

Which in Paradise befell.

Once, among the Pleiads walking,

Seyd overheard the young gods talking;

And the treason, too long pent,

To his ears was evident.

The young deities discussed

Laws of form, and metre just,

Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,

What subsisteth, and what seems.

One, with low tones that decide,

And doubt and reverend use defied,

With a look that solved the sphere,

And stirred the devils everywhere,

Gave his sentiment divine

Against the being of a line.

‘Line in nature is not found;

Unit and universe are round;

In vain produced, all rays return;

Evil will bless, and ice will burn.’

As Uriel spoke with piercing eye,

A shudder ran around the sky;

The stern old war-gods shook their heads,

The seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds;

Seemed to the holy festival

The rash word boded ill to all;

The balance-beam of Fate was bent;

The bounds of good and ill were rent;

Strong Hades could not keep his own,

But all slid to confusion.

A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell

On the beauty of Uriel;

In heaven once eminent, the god

Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud;

Whether doomed to long gyration

In the sea of generation,

Or by knowledge grown too bright

To hit the nerve of feebler sight.

Straightway, a forgetting wind

Stole over the celestial kind,

And their lips the secret kept,

If in ashes the fire-seed slept.

But now and then, truth-speaking things

Shamed the angels veiling wings;

And, shrilling from the solar course,

Or from fruit of chemic force,

Procession of a soul in matter,

Or the speeding change of water,

Or out of the good of evil born,

Came Uriel’s voice of cherub scorn,

And a blush tinged the upper sky,

And the gods shook, they knew not why.

MITHRIDATES

I CANNOT spare water or wine,

Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;

From the earth-poles to the Line,

All between that works or grows,

Every thing is kin of mine.

Give me agates for my meat;

Give me cantharids to eat;

From air and ocean bring me foods,

From all zones and altitudes;—

From all natures, sharp and slimy,

Salt and basalt, wild and tame:

Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion,

Bird, and reptile, be my game.

Ivy for my fillet band;

Blinding dog-wood in my hand;

Hemlock for my sherbet cull me,

And the prussic juice to lull me;

Swing me in the upas boughs,

Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse.

Too long shut in strait and few,

Thinly dieted on dew,

I will use the world, and sift it,

To a thousand humors shift it,

As you spin a cherry.

O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry!

O all you virtues, methods, mights,

Means, appliances, delights,

Reputed wrongs and braggart rights,

Smug routine, and things allowed,

Minorities, things under cloud!

Hither! take me, use me, fill me,

Vein and artery, though ye kill me!

HAMATREYA

BULKELEY, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,

Possessed the land which rendered to their toil

Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.

Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,

Saying, ‘’T is mine, my children’s and my name’s.

How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!

How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!

I fancy these pure waters and the flags

Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;

And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.’

Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:

And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.

Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys

Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;

Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet

Clear of the grave.

They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,

And sighed for all that bounded their domain;

‘This suits me for a pasture; that’s my park;

We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,

And misty lowland, where to go for peat.

The land is well,—lies fairly to the south.

’T is good, when you have crossed the sea and back,

To find the sitfast acres where you left them.’

Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds

Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.

Hear what the Earth says:—

EARTH-SONG

‘Mine and yours;

Mine, not yours.

Earth endures;

Stars abide—

Shine down in the old sea;

Old are the shores;

But where are old men?

I who have seen much,

Such have I never seen.

‘The lawyer’s deed

Ran sure,

In tail,

To them, and to their heirs

Who shall succeed,

Without fail,

Forevermore.

‘Here is the land,

Shaggy with wood,

With its old valley,

Mound and flood.

But the heritors?—

Fled like the flood’s foam.

The lawyer, and the laws,

And the kingdom,

Clean swept herefrom.

‘They called me theirs,

Who so controlled me;

Yet every one

Wished to stay, and is gone,

How am I theirs,

If they cannot hold me,

But I hold them?’

When I heard the Earth-song

I was no longer brave;

My avarice cooled

Like lust in the chill of the grave.

THE RHODORA:

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?

IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

The purple petals, fallen in the pool,

Made the black water with their beauty gay;

Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,

And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask, I never knew:

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose

The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

THE HUMBLE-BEE

BURLY, dozing humble-bee,

Where thou art is clime for me.

Let them sail for Porto Rique,

Far-off heats through seas to seek;

I will follow thee alone,

Thou animated torrid-zone!

Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,

Let me chase thy waving lines;

Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,

Singing over shrubs and vines.

Insect lover of the sun,

Joy of thy dominion!

Sailor of the atmosphere;

Swimmer through the waves of air;

Voyager of light and noon;

Epicurean of June;

Wait, I prithee, till I come

Within earshot of thy hum,—

All without is martyrdom.

When the south wind, in May days,

With a net of shining haze

Silvers the horizon wall,

And with softness touching all,

Tints the human countenance

With a color of romance,

And infusing subtle heats,

Turns the sod to violets,

Thou, in sunny solitudes,

Rover of the underwoods,

The green silence dost displace

With thy mellow, breezy bass.

Hot midsummer’s petted crone,

Sweet to me thy drowsy tone

Tells of countless sunny hours,

Long days, and solid banks of flowers;

Of gulfs of sweetness without bound

In Indian wildernesses found;

Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,

Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.

Aught unsavory or unclean

Hath my insect never seen;

But violets and bilberry bells,

Maple-sap and daffodels,

Grass with green flag half-mast high,

Succory to match the sky,

Columbine with horn of honey,

Scented fern, and agrimony,

Clover, catchfly, adder’s-tongue

And brier-roses, dwelt among;

All beside was unknown waste,

All was picture as he passed.

Wiser far than human seer,

Yellow-breeched philosopher!

Seeing only what is fair,

Sipping only what is sweet,

Thou dost mock at fate and care,

Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.

When the fierce northwestern blast

Cools sea and land so far and fast,

Thou already slumberest deep;

Woe and want thou canst outsleep;

Want and woe, which torture us,

Thy sleep makes ridiculous.

THE SNOW-STORM

ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind’s masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he

For number or proportion. Mockingly,

On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,

Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and at the gate

A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.

WOODNOTES (I)

WHEN the pine tosses its cones

To the song of its waterfall tones,

Who speeds to the woodland walks?

To birds and trees who talks?

Cæsar of his leafy Rome,

There the poet is at home.

He goes to the river-side,—

Not hook nor line hath he;

He stands in the meadows wide,—

Nor gun nor scythe to see.

Sure some god his eye enchants:

What he knows nobody wants.

In the wood he travels glad,

Without better fortune had,

Melancholy without bad.

Knowledge this man prizes best

Seems fantastic to the rest:

Pondering shadows, colors, clouds,

Grass-buds and caterpillar-shrouds,

Boughs on which the wild bees settle,

Tints that spot the violet’s petal,

Why Nature loves the number five,

And why the star-form she repeats:

Lover of all things alive,

Wonderer at all he meets,

Wonderer chiefly at himself,

Who can tell him what he is?

Or how meet in human elf

Coming and past eternities?

And such I knew, a forest seer,

A minstrel of the natural year,

Foreteller of the vernal ides,

Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,

A lover true, who knew by heart

Each joy the mountain dales impart;

It seemed that Nature could not raise

A plant in any secret place,

In quaking bog, on snowy hill,

Beneath the grass that shades the rill,

Under the snow, between the rocks,

In damp fields known to bird and fox.

But he would come in the very hour

It opened in its virgin bower,

As if a sunbeam showed the place,

And tell its long-descended race.

It seemed as if the breezes brought him,

It seemed as if the sparrows taught him;

As if by secret sight he knew

Where, in far fields, the orchis grew.

Many haps fall in the field

Seldom seen by wishful eyes,

But all her shows did Nature yield,

To please and win this pilgrim wise.

He saw the partridge drum in the woods;

He heard the woodcock’s evening hymn;

He found the tawny thrushes’ broods;

And the shy hawk did wait for him;

What others did at distance hear,

And guessed within the thicket’s gloom,

Was shown to this philosopher,

And at his bidding seemed to come.

In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers’ gang

Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang;

He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon

The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone;

Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,

And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.

He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,

The slight Linnæa hang its twin-born heads,

And blessed the monument of the man of flowers,

Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers.

He heard, when in the grove, at intervals,

With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls,—

One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,

Declares the close of its green century.

Low lies the plant to whose creation went

Sweet influence from every element;

Whose living towers the years conspired to build,

Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.

Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed,

He roamed, content alike with man and beast.

Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;

There the red morning touched him with its light.

Three moons his great heart him a hermit made,

So long he roved at will the boundless shade.

The timid it concerns to ask their way,

And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray,

To make no step until the event is known,

And ills to come as evils past bemoan.

Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps

To spy what danger on his pathway creeps;

Go where he will, the wise man is at home,

His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;

Where his clear spirit leads him, there’s his road

By God’s own light illumined and foreshowed.

’T was one of the charmèd days

When the genius of God doth flow;

The wind may alter twenty ways,

A tempest cannot blow;

It may blow north, it still is warm;

Or south, it still is clear;

Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;

Or west, no thunder fear.

The musing peasant, lowly great,

Beside the forest water sate;

The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grown

Composed the network of his throne;

The wide lake, edged with sand and grass,

Was burnished to a floor of glass,

Painted with shadows green and proud

Of the tree and of the cloud.

He was the heart of all the scene;

On him the sun looked more serene;

To hill and cloud his face was known,—

It seemed the likeness of their own;

They knew by secret sympathy

The public child of earth and sky.

‘You ask,’ he said, ‘what guide

Me through trackless thickets led,

Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide.

I found the water’s bed.

The watercourses were my guide;

I travelled grateful by their side,

Or through their channel dry;

They led me through the thicket damp,

Through brake and fern, the beavers’ camp,

Through beds of granite cut my road,

And their resistless friendship showed.

The falling waters led me,

The foodful waters fed me,

And brought me to the lowest land,

Unerring to the ocean sand.

The moss upon the forest bark

Was pole-star when the night was dark;

The purple berries in the wood

Supplied me necessary food;

For Nature ever faithful is

To such as trust her faithfulness.

When the forest shall mislead me,

When the night and morning lie,

When sea and land refuse to feed me,

’T will be time enough to die;

Then will yet my mother yield

A pillow in her greenest field,

Nor the June flowers scorn to cover

The clay of their departed lover.’

ODE

INSCRIBED TO W. H. CHANNING

THOUGH loath to grieve

The evil time’s sole patriot,

I cannot leave

My honied thought

For the priest’s cant,

Or statesman’s rant.

If I refuse

My study for their politique,

Which at the best is trick,

The angry Muse

Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates

Of the culture of mankind,

Of better arts and life?

Go, blindworm, go,

Behold the famous States

Harrying Mexico

With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent bolder,

Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer?

I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!

And in thy valleys, Agiochook!

The jackals of the negro-holder.

The God who made New Hampshire

Taunted the lofty land

With little men;—

Small bat and wren

House in the oak:—

If earth-fire cleave

The upheaved land, and bury the folk,

The southern crocodile would grieve.

Virtue palters; Right is hence;

Freedom praised, but hid;

Funeral eloquence

Rattles the coffin-lid.

What boots thy zeal,

O glowing friend,

That would indignant rend

The northland from the south?

Wherefore? to what good end?

Boston Bay and Bunker Hill

Would serve things still;—

Things are of the snake.

The horseman serves the horse,

The neatherd serves the neat,

The merchant serves the purse,

The eater serves his meat;

’T is the day of the chattel,

Web to weave, and corn to grind;

Things are in the saddle,

And ride mankind.

There are two laws discrete,

Not reconciled,—

Law for man, and law for thing;

The last builds town and fleet,

But it runs wild,

And doth the man unking.

’T is fit the forest fall,

The steep be graded,

The mountain tunnelled,

The sand shaded,

The orchard planted,

The glebe tilled,

The prairie granted,

The steamer built.

Let man serve law for man;

Live for friendship, live for love,

For truth’s and harmony’s behoof;

The state may follow how it can,

As Olympus follows Jove.

Yet do not I implore

The wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods,

Nor bid the unwilling senator

Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes.

Every one to his chosen work;—

Foolish hands may mix and mar;

Wise and sure the issues are.

Round they roll till dark is light,

Sex to sex, and even to odd;—

The over-god

Who marries Right to Might,

Who peoples, unpeoples,—

He who exterminates

Races by stronger races,

Black by white faces,—

Knows to bring honey

Out of the lion;

Grafts gentlest scion

On pirate and Turk.

The Cossack eats Poland,

Like stolen fruit;

Her last noble is ruined,

Her last poet mute:

Straight, into double band

The victors divide;

Half for freedom strike and stand;—

The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side.

GIVE ALL TO LOVE

GIVE all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

Estate, good-fame,

Plans, credit and the Muse,—

Nothing refuse.

’T is a brave master;

Let it have scope:

Follow it utterly,

Hope beyond hope:

High and more high

It dives into noon,

With wing unspent,

Untold intent;

But it is a god,

Knows its own path

And the outlets of the sky.

It was never for the mean;

It requireth courage stout.

Souls above doubt,

Valor unbending,

It will reward,—

They shall return

More than they were,

And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;

Yet, hear me, yet,

One word more thy heart behoved,

One pulse more of firm endeavor,—

Keep thee to-day,

To-morrow, forever,

Free as an Arab

Of thy beloved.

Cling with life to the maid;

But when the surprise,

First vague shadow of surmise

Flits across her bosom young,

Of a joy apart from thee,

Free be she, fancy-free;

Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem,

Nor the palest rose she flung

From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,

As a self of purer clay,

Though her parting dims the day,

Stealing grace from all alive;

Heartily know,

When half-gods go,

The gods arrive.

MERLIN

THY trivial harp will never please

Or fill my craving ear;

Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,

Free, peremptory, clear.

No jingling serenader’s art,

Nor tinkle of piano strings,

Can make the wild blood start

In its mystic springs.

The kingly bard

Must smite the chords rudely and hard,

As with hammer or with mace;

That they may render back

Artful thunder, which conveys

Secrets of the solar track,

Sparks of the supersolar blaze.

Merlin’s blows are strokes of fate,

Chiming with the forest tone,

When boughs buffet boughs in the wood;

Chiming with the gasp and moan

Of the ice-imprisoned flood;

With the pulse of manly hearts;

With the voice of orators;

With the din of city arts;

With the cannonade of wars;

With the marches of the brave;

And prayers of might from martyrs’ cave.

Great is the art,

Great be the manners, of the bard.

He shall not his brain encumber

With the coil of rhythm and number;

But, leaving rule and pale forethought,

He shall aye climb

For his rhyme.

‘Pass in, pass in,’ the angels say,

‘In to the upper doors,

Nor count compartments of the floors,

But mount to paradise

By the stairway of surprise.’

Blameless master of the games,

King of sport that never shames,

He shall daily joy dispense

Hid in song’s sweet influence.

Forms more cheerly live and go,

What time the subtle mind

Sings aloud the tune whereto

Their pulses beat,

And march their feet,

And their members are combined.

By Sybarites beguiled,

He shall no task decline;

Merlin’s mighty line

Extremes of nature reconciled,—

Bereaved a tyrant of his will,

And made the lion mild.

Songs can the tempest still,

Scattered on the stormy air,

Mould the year to fair increase,

And bring in poetic peace.

He shall not seek to weave,

In weak, unhappy times,

Efficacious rhymes;

Wait his returning strength.

Bird that from the nadir’s floor

To the zenith’s top can soar,—

The soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey’s length.

Nor profane affect to hit

Or compass that, by meddling wit,

Which only the propitious mind

Publishes when ’t is inclined.

There are open hours

When the God’s will sallies free,

And the dull idiot might see

The flowing fortunes of a thousand years;—

Sudden, at unawares,

Self-moved, fly-to the doors,

Nor sword of angels could reveal

What they conceal.

THE rhyme of the poet

Modulates the king’s affairs;

Balance-loving Nature

Made all things in pairs.

To every foot its antipode;

Each color with its counter glowed;

To every tone beat answering tones,

Higher or graver;

Flavor gladly blends with flavor;

Leaf answers leaf upon the bough;

And match the paired cotyledons.

Hands to hands, and feet to feet,

In one body grooms and brides;

Eldest rite, two married sides

In every mortal meet.

Light’s far furnace shines,

Smelting balls and bars,

Forging double stars,

Glittering twins and trines.

The animals are sick with love,

Lovesick with rhyme;

Each with all propitious Time

Into chorus wove.

Like the dancers’ ordered band,

Thoughts come also hand in hand;

In equal couples mated,

Or else alternated;

Adding by their mutual gage,

One to other, health and age.

Solitary fancies go

Short-lived wandering to and fro,

Most like to bachelors,

Or an ungiven maid,

Not ancestors,

With no posterity to make the lie afraid,

Or keep truth undecayed.

Perfect-paired as eagle’s wings,

Justice is the rhyme of things;

Trade and counting use

The self-same tuneful muse;

And Nemesis,

Who with even matches odd,

Who athwart space redresses

The partial wrong,

Fills the just period,

And finishes the song.

Subtle rhymes, with ruin rife,

Murmur in the house of life,

Sung by the Sisters as they spin;

In perfect time and measure they

Build and unbuild our echoing clay.

As the two twilights of the day

Fold us music-drunken in.

BACCHUS

BRING me wine, but wine which never grew

In the belly of the grape,

Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through,

Under the Andes to the Cape,

Suffer no savor of the earth to scape.

Let its grapes the morn salute

From a nocturnal root,

Which feels the acrid juice

Of Styx and Erebus;

And turns the woe of Night,

By its own craft, to a more rich delight.

We buy ashes for bread;

We buy diluted wine;

Give me of the true,—

Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled

Among the silver hills of heaven

Draw everlasting dew;

Wine of wine,

Blood of the world,

Form of forms, and mould of statures,

That I intoxicated,

And by the draught assimilated,

May float at pleasure through all natures;

The bird-language rightly spell,

And that which roses say so well.

Wine that is shed

Like the torrents of the sun

Up the horizon walls,

Or like the Atlantic streams, which run

When the South Sea calls.

Water and bread,

Food which needs no transmuting,

Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting,

Wine which is already man,

Food which teach and reason can.

Wine which Music is,—

Music and wine are one,—

That I, drinking this,

Shall hear far Chaos talk with me;

Kings unborn shall walk with me;

And the poor grass shall plot and plan

What it will do when it is man.

Quickened so, will I unlock

Every crypt of every rock.

I thank the joyful juice

For all I know;—

Winds of remembering

Of the ancient being blow,

And seeming-solid walls of use

Open and flow.

Pour, Bacchus! the remembering wine;

Retrieve the loss of me and mine!

Vine for vine be antidote,

And the grape requite the lote!

Haste to cure the old despair,—

Reason in Nature’s lotus drenched,

The memory of ages quenched;

Give them again to shine;

Let wine repair what this undid;

And where the infection slid,

A dazzling memory revive;

Refresh the faded tints,

Recut the aged prints,

And write my old adventures with the pen

Which on the first day drew,

Upon the tablets blue,

The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.

THRENODY

THE South-wind brings

Life, sunshine and desire,

And on every mount and meadow

Breathes aromatic fire;

But over the dead he has no power,

The lost, the lost, he cannot restore;

And, looking over the hills, I mourn

The darling who shall not return.

I see my empty house,

I see my trees repair their boughs;

And he, the wondrous child,

Whose silver warble wild

Outvalued every pulsing sound

Within the air’s cerulean round,—

The hyacinthine boy, for whom

Morn well might break and April bloom,

The gracious boy, who did adorn

The world whereinto he was born,

And by his countenance repay

The favor of the loving Day,—

Has disappeared from the Day’s eye;

Far and wide she cannot find him;

My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.

Returned this day, the South-wind searches,

And finds young pines and budding birches;

But finds not the budding man;

Nature, who lost, cannot remake him;

Fate let him fall, Fate can’t retake him;

Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain.

And whither now, my truant wise and sweet,

O, whither tend thy feet?

I had the right, few days ago,

Thy steps to watch, thy place to know:

How have I forfeited the right?

Hast thou forgot me in a new delight?

I hearken for thy household cheer,

O eloquent child!

Whose voice, an equal messenger,

Conveyed thy meaning mild.

What though the pains and joys

Whereof it spoke were toys

Fitting his age and ken,

Yet fairest dames and bearded men,

Who heard the sweet request,

So gentle, wise and grave,

Bended with joy to his behest

And let the world’s affairs go by,

A while to share his cordial game,

Or mend his wicker wagon-frame,

Still plotting how their hungry ear

That winsome voice again might hear;

For his lips could well pronounce

Words that were persuasions.

Gentlest guardians marked serene

His early hope, his liberal mien;

Took counsel from his guiding eyes

To make this wisdom earthly wise.

Ah, vainly do these eyes recall

The school-march, each day’s festival,

When every morn my bosom glowed

To watch the convoy on the road;

The babe in willow wagon closed,

With rolling eyes and face composed;

With children forward and behind,

Like Cupids studiously inclined;

And he the chieftain paced beside,

The centre of the troop allied,

With sunny face of sweet repose,

To guard the babe from fancied foes.

The little captain innocent

Took the eye with him as he went;

Each village senior paused to scan

And speak the lovely caravan.

From the window I look out

To mark thy beautiful parade,

Stately marching in cap and coat

To some tune by fairies played;—

A music heard by thee alone

To works as noble led thee on.

Now Love and Pride, alas! in vain,

Up and down their glances strain.

The painted sled stands where it stood;

The kennel by the corded wood;

His gathered sticks to stanch the wall

Of the snow-tower, when snow should fall;

The ominous hole he dug in the sand,

And childhood’s castles built or planned;

His daily haunts I well discern,—

The poultry-yard, the shed, the barn,—

And every inch of garden ground

Paced by the blessed feet around,

From the roadside to the brook

Whereinto he loved to look.

Step the meek fowls where erst they ranged;

The wintry garden lies unchanged;

The brook into the stream runs on;

But the deep-eyed boy is gone.

On that shaded day,

Dark with more clouds than tempests are,

When thou didst yield thy innocent breath

In birdlike heavings unto death,

Night came, and Nature had not thee;

I said, ‘We are mates in misery.’

The morrow dawned with needless glow;

Each snowbird chirped, each fowl must crow;

Each tramper started; but the feet

Of the most beautiful and sweet

Of human youth had left the hill

And garden,—they were bound and still.

There’s not a sparrow or a wren,

There’s not a blade of autumn grain,

Which the four seasons do not tend

And tides of life and increase lend;

And every chick of every bird,

And weed and rock-moss is preferred.

O ostrich-like forgetfulness!

O loss of larger in the less!

Was there no star that could be sent,

No watcher in the firmament,

No angel from the countless host

That loiters round the crystal coast,

Could stoop to heal that only child,

Nature’s sweet marvel undefiled,

And keep the blossom of the earth,

Which all her harvests were not worth?

Not mine,—I never called thee mine,

But Nature’s heir,—if I repine,

And seeing rashly torn and moved

Not what I made, but what I loved,

Grow early old with grief that thou

Must to the wastes of Nature go,—

’T is because a general hope

Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope.

For flattering planets seemed to say

This child should ills of ages stay,

By wondrous tongue, and guided pen,

Bring the flown Muses back to men.

Perchance not he but Nature ailed,

The world and not the infant failed.

It was not ripe yet to sustain

A genius of so fine a strain,

Who gazed upon the sun and moon

As if he came unto his own,

And, pregnant with his grander thought,

Brought the old order into doubt.

His beauty once their beauty tried;

They could not feed him, and he died,

And wandered backward as in scorn,

To wait an æon to be born.

Ill day which made this beauty waste,

Plight broken, this high face defaced!

Some went and came about the dead;

And some in books of solace read;

Some to their friends the tidings say;

Some went to write, some went to pray;

One tarried here, there hurried one;

But their heart abode with none.

Covetous death bereaved us all,

To aggrandize one funeral.

The eager fate which carried thee

Took the largest part of me:

For this losing is true dying;

This is lordly man’s down-lying,

This his slow but sure reclining,

Star by star his world resigning.

O child of paradise,

Boy who made dear his father’s home,

In whose deep eyes

Men read the welfare of the times to come,

I am too much bereft.

The world dishonored thou hast left.

O truth’s and nature’s costly lie!

O trusted broken prophecy!

O richest fortune sourly crossed!

Born for the future, to the future lost!

The deep Heart answered, ‘Weepest thou?

Worthier cause for passion wild

If I had not taken the child.

And deemest thou as those who pore,

With aged eyes, short way before,—

Think’st Beauty vanished from the coast

Of matter, and thy darling lost?

Taught he not thee—the man of eld,

Whose eyes within his eyes beheld

Heaven’s numerous hierarchy span

The mystic gulf from God to man?

To be alone wilt thou begin

When worlds of lovers hem thee in?

To-morrow, when the masks shall fall

That dizen Nature’s carnival,

The pure shall see by their own will,

Which overflowing Love shall fill,

’T is not within the force of fate

The fate-conjoined to separate.

But thou, my votary, weepest thou?

I gave thee sight—where is it now?

I taught thy heart beyond the reach

Of ritual, bible, or of speech;

Wrote in thy mind’s transparent table,

As far as the incommunicable;

Taught thee each private sign to raise

Lit by the supersolar blaze.

Past utterance, and past belief,

And past the blasphemy of grief,

The mysteries of Nature’s heart;

And though no Muse can these impart,

Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast,

And all is clear from east to west.

‘I came to thee as to a friend;

Dearest, to thee I did not send

Tutors, but a joyful eye,

Innocence that matched the sky,

Lovely locks, a form of wonder,

Laughter rich as woodland thunder,

That thou might’st entertain apart

The richest flowering of all art:

And, as the great all-loving Day

Through smallest chambers takes its way,

That thou might’st break thy daily bread

With prophet, savior and head;

That thou might’st cherish for thine own

The riches of sweet Mary’s Son,

Boy-Rabbi, Israel’s paragon.

And thoughtest thou such guest

Would in thy hall take up his rest?

Would rushing life forget her laws,

Fate’s glowing revolution pause?

High omens ask diviner guess;

Not to be conned to tediousness

And know my higher gifts unbind

The zone that girds the incarnate mind.

When the scanty shores are full

With Thought’s perilous, whirling pool;

When frail Nature can no more,

Then the Spirit strikes the hour:

My servant Death, with solving rite,

Pours finite into infinite.

Wilt thou freeze love’s tidal flow,

Whose streams through Nature circling go?

Nail the wild star to its track

On the half-climbed zodiac?

Light is light which radiates,

Blood is blood which circulates,

Life is life which generates,

And many-seeming life is one,—

Wilt thou transfix and make it none?

Its onward force too starkly pent

In figure, bone and lineament?

Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate,

Talker! the unreplying Fate?

Nor see the genius of the whole

Ascendant in the private soul,

Beckon it when to go and come,

Self-announced its hour of doom?

Fair the soul’s recess and shrine,

Magic-built to last a season;

Masterpiece of love benign,

Fairer that expansive reason

Whose omen ’t is, and sign.

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know

What rainbows teach, and sunsets show?

Verdict which accumulates

From lengthening scroll of human fates,

Voice of earth to earth returned,

Prayers of saints that inly burned,—

Saying, What is excellent,

As God lives, is permanent;

Hearts are dust, hearts’ loves remain;

Heart’s love will meet thee again.

Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye

Up to his style, and manners of the sky.

Not of adamant and gold.

Built he heaven stark and cold;

No, but a nest of bending reeds,

Flowering grass and scented weeds;

Or like a traveller’s fleeing tent,

Or bow above the tempest bent;

Built of tears and sacred flames,

And virtue reaching to its aims;

Built of furtherance and pursuing,

Not of spent deeds, but of doing.

Silent rushes the swift Lord

Through ruined systems still restored,

Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,

Plants with worlds the wilderness;

Waters with tears of ancient sorrow

Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.

House and tenant go to ground,

Lost in God, in Godhead found.’

CONCORD HYMN

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, JULY 4, 1837

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set to-day a votive stone;

That memory may their deed redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children free,

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

THE ADIRONDACS

A JOURNAL DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858

Wise and polite,—and if I drew

Their several portraits, you would own

Chaucer had no such worthy crew,

Nor Boccace in Decameron.

WE crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends,

Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks

Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach

The Adirondac lakes. At Martin’s Beach

We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide,—

Ten men, ten guides, our company all told.

Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac,

With skies of benediction, to Round Lake,

Where all the sacred mountains drew around us,

Tahawus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead,

And other Titans without muse or name.

Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on,

Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills.

We made our distance wider, boat from boat,

As each would hear the oracle alone.

By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid

Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets,

Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower,

Through scented banks of lilies white and gold,

Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day,

On through the Upper Saranac, and up

Père Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass

Winding through grassy shallows in and out,

Two creeping miles of rushes, pads and sponge,

To Follansbee Water and the Lake of Loons.

Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed,

Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge

Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore.

A pause and council: then, where near the head

Due east a bay makes inward to the land

Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank,

And in the twilight of the forest noon

Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard.

We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts,

Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof,

Then struck a light and kindled the camp-fire.

The wood was sovran with centennial trees,—

Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir,

Linden and spruce. In strict society

Three conifers, white, pitch and Norway pine,

Five-leaved, three-leaved and two-leaved, grew thereby.

Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth,

The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower.

‘Welcome!’ the wood-god murmured through the leaves,—

‘Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.’

Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple-boughs,

Which o’erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire.

Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks,

Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor.

Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft

In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed,

Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux,

And greet unanimous the joyful change.

So fast will Nature acclimate her sons,

Though late returning to her pristine ways.

Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold;

And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned,

Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds.

Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air

That circled freshly in their forest dress

Made them to boys again. Happier that they

Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind,

At the first mounting of the giant stairs.

No placard on these rocks warned to the polls,

No door-bell heralded a visitor,

No courier waits, no letter came or went,

Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold;

The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop,

The falling rain will spoil no holiday.

We were made freemen of the forest laws,

All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends,

Essaying nothing she cannot perform.

In Adirondac lakes,

At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded:

Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make

His brief toilette: at night, or in the rain,

He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn:

A paddle in the right hand, or an oar,

And in the left, a gun, his needful arms.

By turns we praised the stature of our guides,

Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill

To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp,

To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs

Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down:

Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount,

And wit to trap or take him in his lair.

Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent,

In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides;

Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired

Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve.

Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!

No city airs or arts pass current here.

Your rank is all reversed; let men of cloth

Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls:

They are the doctors of the wilderness,

And we the low-prized laymen.

In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test

Which few can put on with impunity.

What make you, master, fumbling at the oar?

Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here.

The sallow knows the basket-maker’s thumb;

The oar, the guide’s. Dare you accept the tasks

He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes,

Tell the sun’s time, determine the true north,

Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods

To thread by night the nearest way to camp?

Ask you, how went the hours?

All day we swept the lake, searched every cove,

North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay,

Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer,

Or whipping its rough surface for a trout;

Or, bathers, diving from the rock at noon;

Challenging Echo by our guns and cries;

Or listening to the laughter of the loon;

Or, in the evening twilight’s latest red,

Beholding the procession of the pines;

Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack,

In the boat’s bows, a silent night-hunter

Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds

Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist.

Hark to that muffled roar! a tree in the woods

Is fallen: but hush! it has not scared the buck

Who stands astonished at the meteor light,

Then turns to bound away,—is it too late?

Our heroes tried their rifles at a mark,

Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five;

Sometimes their wits at sally and retort,

With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle;

Or parties scaled the near acclivities

Competing seekers of a rumored lake,

Whose unauthenticated waves we named

Lake Probability,—our carbuncle,

Long sought, not found.

Two Doctors in the camp

Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout’s brain,

Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew,

Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow and moth;

Insatiate skill in water or in air

Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss;

The while, one leaden pot of alcohol

Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds.

Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants,

Orchis and gentian, fern and long whip-scirpus,

Rosy polygonum, lake-margin’s pride,

Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge and moss,

Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls.

Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed,

The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker

Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp.

As water poured through hollows of the hills

To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets,

So Nature shed all beauty lavishly

From her redundant horn.

Lords of this realm,

Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day

Rounded by hours where each outdid the last

In miracles of pomp, we must be proud,

As if associates of the sylvan gods.

We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac,

So pure the Alpine element we breathed,

So light, so lofty pictures came and went.

We trode on air, contemned the distant town,

Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned

That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge

And how we should come hither with our sons,

Hereafter,—willing they, and more adroit.

Hard fare, hard bed and comic misery,—

The midge, the blue-fly and the mosquito

Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands:

But, on the second day, we heed them not,

Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries,

Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names.

For who defends our leafy tabernacle

From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,—

Who but the midge, mosquito and the fly,

Which past endurance sting the tender cit,

But which we learn to scatter with a smudge,

Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn?

Our foaming ale we drank from hunters’ pans,

Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave

Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread;

All ate like abbots, and, if any missed

Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss

With hunters’ appetite and peals of mirth.

And Stillman, our guides’ guide, and Commodore,

Crusoe, Crusader, Pius Æneas, said aloud,

“Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating

Food indigestible”:—then murmured some,

Others applauded him who spoke the truth.

Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought

Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday

’Mid all the hints and glories of the home.

For who can tell what sudden privacies

Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry

Of scholars furloughed from their tasks and let

Into this Oreads’ fended Paradise,

As chapels in the city’s thoroughfares,

Whither gaunt Labor slips to wipe his brow

And meditate a moment on Heaven’s rest.

Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke

To each apart, lifting her lovely shows

To spiritual lessons pointed home,

And as through dreams in watches of the night,

So through all creatures in their form and ways

Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant,

Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense

Inviting to new knowledge, one with old.

Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler?

Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye.

Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird,

Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light,

Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky?

And presently the sky is changed; O world!

What pictures and what harmonies are thine!

The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene,

So like the soul of me, what if ’t were me?

A melancholy better than all mirth.

Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect,

Or at the foresight of obscurer years?

Like you slow-sailing cloudy promontory

Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty

Superior to all its gaudy skirts.

And, that no day of life may lack romance,

The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down

A private beam into each several heart.

Daily the bending skies solicit man,

The seasons chariot him from this exile,

The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair,

The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,

Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights

Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.

With a vermilion pencil mark the day

When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs

Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls

Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront

Two of our mates returning with swift oars.

One held a printed journal waving high

Caught from a late-arriving traveller,

Big with great news, and shouted the report

For which the world had waited, now firm fact,

Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea,

And landed on our coast, and pulsating

With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries

From boat to boat, and to the echoes round,

Greet the glad miracle. Thought’s new-found path

Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways,

Match God’s equator with a zone of art,

And lift man’s public action to a height.

Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses,

When linkèd hemispheres attest his deed.

We have few moments in the longest life

Of such delight and wonder as there grew,—

Nor yet unsuited to that solitude:

A burst of joy, as if we told the fact

To ears intelligent; as if gray rock

And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know

This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind;

As if we men were talking in a vein

Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs,

And a prime end of the most subtle element

Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves!

Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops,

Let them hear well! ’t is theirs as much as ours.

A spasm throbbing through the pedestals

Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent,

Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill

To be a brain, or serve the brain of man.

The lightning has run masterless too long;

He must to school and learn his verb and noun

And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage,

Spelling with guided tongue man’s messages

Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea.

And yet I marked, even in the manly joy

Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat

(Perchance I erred), a shade of discontent;

Or was it for mankind a generous shame,

As of a luck not quite legitimate,

Since fortune snatched from wit the lion’s part?

Was it a college pique of town and gown,

As one within whose memory it burned

That not academicians, but some lout,

Found ten years since the Californian gold?

And now, again, a hungry company

Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade,

Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools

Of science, not from the philosophers,

Had won the brightest laurel of all time.

’T was always thus, and will be; hand and head

Are ever rivals: but, though this be swift,

The other slow,—this the Prometheus,

And that the Jove,—yet, howsoever hid,

It was from Jove the other stole his fire,

And, without Jove, the good had never been.

It is not Iroquois or cannibals,

But ever the free race with front sublime,

And these instructed by their wisest too,

Who do the feat, and lift humanity.

Let not him mourn who best entitled was,

Nay, mourn not one: let him exult,

Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant,

And water it with wine, nor watch askance

Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit:

Enough that mankind eat and are refreshed.

We flee away from cities, but we bring

The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers,

Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts.

We praise the guide, we praise the forest life:

But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore

Of books and arts and trained experiment,

Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz?

O no, not we! Witness the shout that shook

Wild Tupper Lake; witness the mute all-hail

The joyful traveller gives, when on the verge

Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears

From a log cabin stream Beethoven’s notes

On the piano, played with master’s hand.

‘Well done!’ he cries; ‘the bear is kept at bay,

The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire;

All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold,

This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall,

This wild plantation will suffice to chase.

Now speed the gay celerities of art,

What in the desert was impossible

Within four walls is possible again,—

Culture and libraries, mysteries of skill,

Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife

Of keen competing youths, joined or alone

To outdo each other and extort applause.

Mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep.

Twirl the old wheels! Time takes fresh start again,

On for a thousand years of genius more.’

The holidays were fruitful, but must end;

One August evening had a cooler breath;

Into each mind intruding duties crept;

Under the cinders burned the fires of home;

Nay, letters found us in our paradise:

So in the gladness of the new event

We struck our camp and left the happy hills.

The fortunate star that rose on us sank not;

The prodigal sunshine rested on the land,

The rivers gambolled onward to the sea,

And Nature, the inscrutable and mute,

Permitted on her infinite repose

Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons,

As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed.

BRAHMA

IF the red slayer think he slays,

Or if the slain think he is slain,

They know not well the subtle ways

I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;

Shadow and sunlight are the same;

The vanished gods to me appear;

And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly, I am the wings;

I am the doubter and the doubt,

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,

And pine in vain the sacred Seven;

But thou, meek lover of the good!

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

TWO RIVERS

THY summer voice, Musketaquit,

Repeats the music of the rain;

But sweeter rivers pulsing flit

Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain.

Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:

The stream I love unbounded goes

Through flood and sea and firmament;

Through light, through life, it forward flows.

I see the inundation sweet,

I hear the spending of the stream

Through years, through men, through Nature fleet,

Through love and thought, through power and dream.

Musketaquit, a goblin strong,

Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;

They lose their grief who hear his song,

And where he winds is the day of day.

So forth and brighter fares my stream,—

Who drink it shall not thirst again;

No darkness stains its equal gleam,

And ages drop in it like rain.

TERMINUS

IT is time to be old,

To take in sail:—

The god of bounds,

Who sets to seas a shore,

Came to me in his fatal rounds,

And said: ‘No more!

No farther shoot

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.

Fancy departs: no more invent;

Contract thy firmament

To compass of a tent.

There’s not enough for this and that,

Make thy option which of two;

Economize the failing river,

Not the less revere the Giver,

Leave the many and hold the few.

Timely wise accept the terms,

Soften the fall with wary foot;

A little while

Still plan and smile,

And,—fault of novel germs,—

Mature the unfallen fruit.

Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,

Bad husbands of their fires,

Who, when they gave thee breath,

Failed to bequeath

The needful sinew stark as once,

The Baresark marrow to thy bones,

But left a legacy of ebbing veins,

Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,—

Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,

Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.’

As the bird trims her to the gale,

I trim myself to the storm of time,

I man the rudder, reef the sail,

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:

‘Lowly faithful, banish fear,

Right onward drive unharmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near,

And every wave is charmed.’