Part 10

I am the Muse who sung alway By Jove, at dawn of the first day. Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought To fire the stagnant earth with thought: On spawning slime my song prevails, Wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales; Flushed in the sky the sweet May-morn, Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born. Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race, And Nile substructs her granite base,-- Tented Tartary, columned Nile,-- And, under vines, on rocky isle, Or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak, Forward stepped the perfect Greek: That wit and joy might find a tongue, And earth grow civil, HOMER sung.

Flown to Italy from Greece, I brooded long and held my peace, For I am wont to sing uncalled, And in days of evil plight Unlock doors of new delight; And sometimes mankind I appalled With a bitter horoscope, With spasms of terror for balm of hope. Then by better thought I lead Bards to speak what nations need; So I folded me in fears, And DANTE searched the triple spheres, Moulding Nature at his will, So shaped, so colored, swift or still, And, sculptor-like, his large design Etched on Alp and Apennine.

Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur, Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power, England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE'S wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.

Far in the North, where polar night Holds in check the frolic light, In trance upborne past mortal goal The Swede EMANUEL leads the soul. Through snows above, mines underground, The inks of Erebus he found; Rehearsed to men the damned wails On which the seraph music sails. In spirit-worlds he trod alone, But walked the earth unmarked, unknown, The near bystander caught no sound,-- Yet they who listened far aloof Heard rendings of the skyey roof, And felt, beneath, the quaking ground; And his air-sown, unheeded words, In the next age, are flaming swords.

In newer days of war and trade, Romance forgot, and faith decayed, When Science armed and guided war, And clerks the Janus-gates unbar, When France, where poet never grew, Halved and dealt the globe anew, GOETHE, raised o'er joy and strife, Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life And brought Olympian wisdom down To court and mart, to gown and town. Stooping, his finger wrote in clay The open secret of to-day.

So bloom the unfading petals five, And verses that all verse outlive.

HYMN

SUNG AT THE SECOND CHURCH, AT THE ORDINATION OF REV. CHANDLER ROBBINS

We love the venerable house Our fathers built to God;-- In heaven are kept their grateful vows, Their dust endears the sod.

Here holy thoughts a light have shed From many a radiant face, And prayers of humble virtue made The perfume of the place.

And anxious hearts have pondered here The mystery of life, And prayed the eternal Light to clear Their doubts, and aid their strife.

From humble tenements around Came up the pensive train, And in the church a blessing found That filled their homes again;

For faith and peace and mighty love That from the Godhead flow, Showed them the life of Heaven above Springs from the life below.

They live with God; their homes are dust; Yet here their children pray, And in this fleeting lifetime trust To find the narrow way.

On him who by the altar stands, On him thy blessing fall, Speak through his lips thy pure commands, Thou heart that lovest all.

NATURE I

Winters know Easily to shed the snow, And the untaught Spring is wise In cowslips and anemonies. Nature, hating art and pains, Baulks and baffles plotting brains; Casualty and Surprise Are the apples of her eyes; But she dearly loves the poor, And, by marvel of her own, Strikes the loud pretender down. For Nature listens in the rose And hearkens in the berry's bell To help her friends, to plague her foes, And like wise God she judges well. Yet doth much her love excel To the souls that never fell, To swains that live in happiness And do well because they please, Who walk in ways that are unfamed, And feats achieve before they're named.

NATURE II

She is gamesome and good, But of mutable mood,-- No dreary repeater now and again, She will be all things to all men. She who is old, but nowise feeble, Pours her power into the people, Merry and manifold without bar, Makes and moulds them what they are, And what they call their city way Is not their way, but hers, And what they say they made to-day, They learned of the oaks and firs. She spawneth men as mallows fresh, Hero and maiden, flesh of her flesh; She drugs her water and her wheat With the flavors she finds meet, And gives them what to drink and eat; And having thus their bread and growth, They do her bidding, nothing loath. What's most theirs is not their own, But borrowed in atoms from iron and stone, And in their vaunted works of Art The master-stroke is still her part.

THE ROMANY GIRL

The sun goes down, and with him takes The coarseness of my poor attire; The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher.

Pale Northern girls! you scorn our race; You captives of your air-tight halls, Wear out indoors your sickly days, But leave us the horizon walls.

And if I take you, dames, to task, And say it frankly without guile, Then you are Gypsies in a mask, And I the lady all the while.

If on the heath, below the moon, I court and play with paler blood, Me false to mine dare whisper none,-- One sallow horseman knows me good.

Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain, For teeth and hair with shopmen deal; My swarthy tint is in the grain, The rocks and forest know it real.

The wild air bloweth in our lungs, The keen stars twinkle in our eyes, The birds gave us our wily tongues, The panther in our dances flies.

You doubt we read the stars on high, Nathless we read your fortunes true; The stars may hide in the upper sky, But without glass we fathom you.

DAYS

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

MY GARDEN

If I could put my woods in song And tell what's there enjoyed, All men would to my gardens throng, And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow,-- Snow-loving pines and oaks instead; And rank the savage maples grow From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge Which older forests bound; The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, Then plunge to depths profound.

Here once the Deluge ploughed, Laid the terraces, one by one; Ebbing later whence it flowed, They bleach and dry in the sun.

The sowers made haste to depart,-- The wind and the birds which sowed it; Not for fame, nor by rules of art, Planted these, and tempests flowed it.

Waters that wash my garden-side Play not in Nature's lawful web, They heed not moon or solar tide,-- Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove, And every god,--none did refuse; And be sure at last came Love, And after Love, the Muse.

Keen ears can catch a syllable, As if one spake to another, In the hemlocks tall, untamable, And what the whispering grasses smother.

Aeolian harps in the pine Ring with the song of the Fates; Infant Bacchus in the vine,-- Far distant yet his chorus waits.

Canst thou copy in verse one chime Of the wood-bell's peal and cry, Write in a book the morning's prime, Or match with words that tender sky?

Wonderful verse of the gods, Of one import, of varied tone; They chant the bliss of their abodes To man imprisoned in his own.

Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man's ear Seldom in this low life's round Are unsealed that he may hear.

Wandering voices in the air And murmurs in the wold Speak what I cannot declare, Yet cannot all withhold.

When the shadow fell on the lake, The whirlwind in ripples wrote Air-bells of fortune that shine and break, And omens above thought.

But the meanings cleave to the lake, Cannot be carried in book or urn; Go thy ways now, come later back, On waves and hedges still they burn.

These the fates of men forecast, Of better men than live to-day; If who can read them comes at last He will spell in the sculpture, 'Stay.'

THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT

Day! hast thou two faces, Making one place two places? One, by humble farmer seen, Chill and wet, unlighted, mean, Useful only, triste and damp, Serving for a laborer's lamp? Have the same mists another side, To be the appanage of pride, Gracing the rich man's wood and lake, His park where amber mornings break, And treacherously bright to show His planted isle where roses glow? O Day! and is your mightiness A sycophant to smug success? Will the sweet sky and ocean broad Be fine accomplices to fraud? O Sun! I curse thy cruel ray: Back, back to chaos, harlot Day!

THE TITMOUSE

You shall not be overbold When you deal with arctic cold, As late I found my lukewarm blood Chilled wading in the snow-choked wood. How should I fight? my foeman fine Has million arms to one of mine: East, west, for aid I looked in vain, East, west, north, south, are his domain. Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home; Must borrow his winds who there would come. Up and away for life! be fleet!-- The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,-- The punctual stars will vigil keep,-- Embalmed by purifying cold; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.

Softly,--but this way fate was pointing, 'T was coming fast to such anointing, When piped a tiny voice hard by, Gay and polite, a cheerful cry, _Chic-chic-a-dee-de!_ saucy note Out of sound heart and merry throat, As if it said, 'Good day, good sir! Fine afternoon, old passenger! Happy to meet you in these places, Where January brings few faces.'

This poet, though he live apart, Moved by his hospitable heart, Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, To do the honors of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land; Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to the spray.

Here was this atom in full breath, Hurling defiance at vast death; This scrap of valor just for play Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, As if to shame my weak behavior; I greeted loud my little savior, 'You pet! what dost here? and what for? In these woods, thy small Labrador, At this pinch, wee San Salvador! What fire burns in that little chest So frolic, stout and self-possest? Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine; Ashes and jet all hues outshine. Why are not diamonds black and gray, To ape thy dare-devil array? And I affirm, the spacious North Exists to draw thy virtue forth. I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension.'

'T is good will makes intelligence, And I began to catch the sense Of my bird's song: 'Live out of doors In the great woods, on prairie floors. I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea, I too have a hole in a hollow tree; And I like less when Summer beats With stifling beams on these retreats, Than noontide twilights which snow makes With tempest of the blinding flakes. For well the soul, if stout within, Can arm impregnably the skin; And polar frost my frame defied, Made of the air that blows outside.'

With glad remembrance of my debt, I homeward turn; farewell, my pet! When here again thy pilgrim comes, He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs. Doubt not, so long as earth has bread, Thou first and foremost shalt be fed; The Providence that is most large Takes hearts like thine in special charge, Helps who for their own need are strong, And the sky doats on cheerful song. Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant O'er all that mass and minster vaunt; For men mis-hear thy call in Spring, As 't would accost some frivolous wing, Crying out of the hazel copse, _Phe-be!_ And, in winter, _Chic-a-dee-dee!_ I think old Caesar must have heard In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in some frosty wold, Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. And I will write our annals new, And thank thee for a better clew, I, who dreamed not when I came here To find the antidote of fear, Now hear thee say in Roman key, _Paean! Veni, vidi, vici._

THE HARP

One musician is sure, His wisdom will not fail, He has not tasted wine impure, Nor bent to passion frail. Age cannot cloud his memory, Nor grief untune his voice, Ranging down the ruled scale From tone of joy to inward wail, Tempering the pitch of all In his windy cave. He all the fables knows, And in their causes tells,-- Knows Nature's rarest moods, Ever on her secret broods. The Muse of men is coy, Oft courted will not come; In palaces and market squares Entreated, she is dumb; But my minstrel knows and tells The counsel of the gods, Knows of Holy Book the spells, Knows the law of Night and Day, And the heart of girl and boy, The tragic and the gay, And what is writ on Table Round Of Arthur and his peers; What sea and land discoursing say In sidereal years. He renders all his lore In numbers wild as dreams, Modulating all extremes,-- What the spangled meadow saith To the children who have faith; Only to children children sing, Only to youth will spring be spring.

Who is the Bard thus magnified? When did he sing? and where abide?

Chief of song where poets feast Is the wind-harp which thou seest In the casement at my side.

Aeolian harp, How strangely wise thy strain! Gay for youth, gay for youth, (Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,) In the hall at summer eve Fate and Beauty skilled to weave. From the eager opening strings Rung loud and bold the song. Who but loved the wind-harp's note? How should not the poet doat On its mystic tongue, With its primeval memory, Reporting what old minstrels told Of Merlin locked the harp within,-- Merlin paying the pain of sin, Pent in a dungeon made of air,-- And some attain his voice to hear, Words of pain and cries of fear, But pillowed all on melody, As fits the griefs of bards to be. And what if that all-echoing shell, Which thus the buried Past can tell, Should rive the Future, and reveal What his dread folds would fain conceal? It shares the secret of the earth, And of the kinds that owe her birth. Speaks not of self that mystic tone, But of the Overgods alone: It trembles to the cosmic breath,-- As it heareth, so it saith; Obeying meek the primal Cause, It is the tongue of mundane laws. And this, at least, I dare affirm, Since genius too has bound and term, There is no bard in all the choir, Not Homer's self, the poet sire, Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure, Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure, Nor Collins' verse of tender pain, Nor Byron's clarion of disdain, Scott, the delight of generous boys, Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,-- Not one of all can put in verse, Or to this presence could rehearse The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The rattle of the kingfisher; Saw bonfires of the harlot flies In the lowland, when day dies; Or marked, benighted and forlorn, The first far signal-fire of morn. These syllables that Nature spoke, And the thoughts that in him woke, Can adequately utter none Save to his ear the wind-harp lone. Therein I hear the Parcae reel The threads of man at their humming wheel, The threads of life and power and pain, So sweet and mournful falls the strain. And best can teach its Delphian chord How Nature to the soul is moored, If once again that silent string, As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.

Not long ago at eventide, It seemed, so listening, at my side A window rose, and, to say sooth, I looked forth on the fields of youth: I saw fair boys bestriding steeds, I knew their forms in fancy weeds, Long, long concealed by sundering fates, Mates of my youth,--yet not my mates, Stronger and bolder far than I, With grace, with genius, well attired, And then as now from far admired, Followed with love They knew not of, With passion cold and shy. O joy, for what recoveries rare! Renewed, I breathe Elysian air, See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,-- Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb! Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil Of life resurgent from the soil Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil.

SEASHORE

I heard or seemed to hear the chiding Sea Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come? Am I not always here, thy summer home? Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve? My breath thy healthful climate in the heats, My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath? Was ever building like my terraces? Was ever couch magnificent as mine? Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn A little hut suffices like a town. I make your sculptured architecture vain, Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home, And carve the coastwise mountain into caves. Lo! here is Rome and Nineveh and Thebes, Karnak and Pyramid and Giant's Stairs Half piled or prostrate; and my newest slab Older than all thy race.

Behold the Sea, The opaline, the plentiful and strong, Yet beautiful as is the rose in June, Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July; Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds, Purger of earth, and medicine of men; Creating a sweet climate by my breath, Washing out harms and griefs from memory, And, in my mathematic ebb and flow, Giving a hint of that which changes not. Rich are the sea-gods:--who gives gifts but they? They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls: They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise. For every wave is wealth to Daedalus, Wealth to the cunning artist who can work This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves! A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift?

I with my hammer pounding evermore The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust, Strewing my bed, and, in another age, Rebuild a continent of better men. Then I unbar the doors: my paths lead out The exodus of nations: I disperse Men to all shores that front the hoary main.

I too have arts and sorceries; Illusion dwells forever with the wave. I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal With credulous and imaginative man; For, though he scoop my water in his palm, A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds. Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore, I make some coast alluring, some lone isle, To distant men, who must go there, or die.

SONG OF NATURE

Mine are the night and morning, The pits of air, the gulf of space, The sportive sun, the gibbous moon, The innumerable days.

I hide in the solar glory, I am dumb in the pealing song, I rest on the pitch of the torrent, In slumber I am strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies, No tribes my house can fill, I sit by the shining Fount of Life And pour the deluge still;

And ever by delicate powers Gathering along the centuries From race on race the rarest flowers, My wreath shall nothing miss.

And many a thousand summers My gardens ripened well, And light from meliorating stars With firmer glory fell.

I wrote the past in characters Of rock and fire the scroll, The building in the coral sea, The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings And broken stars I drew, And out of spent and aged things I formed the world anew;

What time the gods kept carnival, Tricked out in star and flower, And in cramp elf and saurian forms They swathed their too much power.

Time and Thought were my surveyors, They laid their courses well, They boiled the sea, and piled the layers Of granite, marl and shell.

But he, the man-child glorious,-- Where tarries he the while? The rainbow shines his harbinger, The sunset gleams his smile.

My boreal lights leap upward, Forthright my planets roll, And still the man-child is not born, The summit of the whole.

Must time and tide forever run? Will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun And satellites have rest?

Too much of donning and doffing, Too slow the rainbow fades, I weary of my robe of snow, My leaves and my cascades;

I tire of globes and races, Too long the game is played; What without him is summer's pomp, Or winter's frozen shade?

I travail in pain for him, My creatures travail and wait; His couriers come by squadrons, He comes not to the gate.

Twice I have moulded an image, And thrice outstretched my hand, Made one of day and one of night And one of the salt sea-sand.

One in a Judaean manger, And one by Avon stream, One over against the mouths of Nile, And one in the Academe.

I moulded kings and saviors, And bards o'er kings to rule;-- But fell the starry influence short, The cup was never full.

Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more, And mix the bowl again; Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements, Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.

Let war and trade and creeds and song Blend, ripen race on race, The sunburnt world a man shall breed Of all the zones and countless days.

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, My oldest force is good as new, And the fresh rose on yonder thorn Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

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.