Part 13

SPIRITS

Brother, sweeter is the Law Than all the grace Love ever saw; We are its suppliants. By it, we Draw the breath of Eternity; Serve thou it not for daily bread,-- Serve it for pain and fear and need. Love it, though it hide its light; By love behold the sun at night. If the Law should thee forget, More enamoured serve it yet; Though it hate thee, suffer long; Put the Spirit in the wrong; Brother, no decrepitude Chills the limbs of Time; As fleet his feet, his hands as good, His vision as sublime: On Nature's wheels there is no rust; Nor less on man's enchanted dust Beauty and Force alight.

FRAGMENTS ON THE POET AND THE POETIC GIFT

I

There are beggars in Iran and Araby, SAID was hungrier than all; Hafiz said he was a fly That came to every festival. He came a pilgrim to the Mosque On trail of camel and caravan, Knew every temple and kiosk Out from Mecca to Ispahan; Northward he went to the snowy hills, At court he sat in the grave Divan. His music was the south-wind's sigh, His lamp, the maiden's downcast eye, And ever the spell of beauty came And turned the drowsy world to flame. By lake and stream and gleaming hall And modest copse and the forest tall, Where'er he went, the magic guide Kept its place by the poet's side. Said melted the days like cups of pearl, Served high and low, the lord and the churl, Loved harebells nodding on a rock, A cabin hung with curling smoke, Ring of axe or hum of wheel Or gleam which use can paint on steel, And huts and tents; nor loved he less Stately lords in palaces, Princely women hard to please, Fenced by form and ceremony, Decked by courtly rites and dress And etiquette of gentilesse. But when the mate of the snow and wind, He left each civil scale behind: Him wood-gods fed with honey wild And of his memory beguiled. He loved to watch and wake When the wing of the south-wind whipt the lake And the glassy surface in ripples brake And fled in pretty frowns away Like the flitting boreal lights, Rippling roses in northern nights, Or like the thrill of Aeolian strings In which the sudden wind-god rings. In caves and hollow trees he crept And near the wolf and panther slept. He came to the green ocean's brim And saw the wheeling sea-birds skim, Summer and winter, o'er the wave, Like creatures of a skiey mould, Impassible to heat or cold. He stood before the tumbling main With joy too tense for sober brain; He shared the life of the element, The tie of blood and home was rent: As if in him the welkin walked, The winds took flesh, the mountains talked, And he the bard, a crystal soul Sphered and concentric with the whole.

II

The Dervish whined to Said, "Thou didst not tarry while I prayed. Beware the fire that Eblis burned," But Saadi coldly thus returned, "Once with manlike love and fear I gave thee for an hour my ear, I kept the sun and stars at bay, And love, for words thy tongue could say. I cannot sell my heaven again For all that rattles in thy brain."

III

Said Saadi, "When I stood before Hassan the camel-driver's door, I scorned the fame of Timour brave; Timour, to Hassan, was a slave. In every glance of Hassan's eye I read great years of victory, And I, who cower mean and small In the frequent interval When wisdom not with me resides, Worship Toil's wisdom that abides. I shunned his eyes, that faithful man's, I shunned the toiling Hassan's glance."

IV

The civil world will much forgive To bards who from its maxims live, But if, grown bold, the poet dare Bend his practice to his prayer And following his mighty heart Shame the times and live apart,-- _Vae solis!_ I found this, That of goods I could not miss If I fell within the line, Once a member, all was mine, Houses, banquets, gardens, fountains, Fortune's delectable mountains; But if I would walk alone, Was neither cloak nor crumb my own. And thus the high Muse treated me, Directly never greeted me, But when she spread her dearest spells, Feigned to speak to some one else. I was free to overhear, Or I might at will forbear; Yet mark me well, that idle word Thus at random overheard Was the symphony of spheres, And proverb of a thousand years, The light wherewith all planets shone, The livery all events put on, It fell in rain, it grew in grain, It put on flesh in friendly form, Frowned in my foe and growled in storm, It spoke in Tullius Cicero, In Milton and in Angelo: I travelled and found it at Rome; Eastward it filled all Heathendom And it lay on my hearth when I came home.

V

Mask thy wisdom with delight, Toy with the bow, yet hit the white, As Jelaleddin old and gray; He seemed to bask, to dream and play Without remoter hope or fear Than still to entertain his ear And pass the burning summer-time In the palm-grove with a rhyme; Heedless that each cunning word Tribes and ages overheard: Those idle catches told the laws Holding Nature to her cause.

God only knew how Saadi dined; Roses he ate, and drank the wind; He freelier breathed beside the pine, In cities he was low and mean; The mountain waters washed him clean And by the sea-waves he was strong; He heard their medicinal song, Asked no physician but the wave, No palace but his sea-beat cave.

Saadi held the Muse in awe, She was his mistress and his law; A twelvemonth he could silence hold, Nor ran to speak till she him told; He felt the flame, the fanning wings, Nor offered words till they were things, Glad when the solid mountain swims In music and uplifting hymns.

Charmed from fagot and from steel, Harvests grew upon his tongue, Past and future must reveal All their heart when Saadi sung; Sun and moon must fall amain Like sower's seeds into his brain, There quickened to be born again.

The free winds told him what they knew, Discoursed of fortune as they blew; Omens and signs that filled the air To him authentic witness bare; The birds brought auguries on their wings, And carolled undeceiving things Him to beckon, him to warn; Well might then the poet scorn To learn of scribe or courier Things writ in vaster character; And on his mind at dawn of day Soft shadows of the evening lay.

* * *

Pale genius roves alone, No scout can track his way, None credits him till he have shown His diamonds to the day.

Not his the feaster's wine, Nor land, nor gold, nor power, By want and pain God screeneth him Till his elected hour.

Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals:-- The sower scatters broad his seed, The wheat thou strew'st be souls.

I grieve that better souls than mine Docile read my measured line: High destined youths and holy maids Hallow these my orchard shades; Environ me and me baptize With light that streams from gracious eyes. I dare not be beloved and known, I ungrateful, I alone.

Ever find me dim regards, Love of ladies, love of bards, Marked forbearance, compliments, Tokens of benevolence. What then, can I love myself? Fame is profitless as pelf, A good in Nature not allowed They love me, as I love a cloud Sailing falsely in the sphere, Hated mist if it come near.

For thought, and not praise; Thought is the wages For which I sell days, Will gladly sell ages And willing grow old Deaf, and dumb, and blind, and cold, Melting matter into dreams, Panoramas which I saw And whatever glows or seems Into substance, into Law.

For Fancy's gift Can mountains lift; The Muse can knit What is past, what is done, With the web that's just begun; Making free with time and size, Dwindles here, there magnifies, Swells a rain-drop to a tun; So to repeat No word or feat Crowds in a day the sum of ages, And blushing Love outwits the sages.

Try the might the Muse affords And the balm of thoughtful words; Bring music to the desolate; Hang roses on the stony fate.

But over all his crowning grace, Wherefor thanks God his daily praise, Is the purging of his eye To see the people of the sky: From blue mount and headland dim Friendly hands stretch forth to him, Him they beckon, him advise Of heavenlier prosperities And a more excelling grace And a truer bosom-glow Than the wine-fed feasters know. They turn his heart from lovely maids, And make the darlings of the earth Swainish, coarse and nothing worth: Teach him gladly to postpone Pleasures to another stage Beyond the scope of human age, Freely as task at eve undone Waits unblamed to-morrow's sun.

By thoughts I lead Bards to say what nations need; What imports, what irks and what behooves, Framed afar as Fates and Loves.

And as the light divides the dark Through with living swords, So shall thou pierce the distant age With adamantine words.

I framed his tongue to music, I armed his hand with skill, I moulded his face to beauty And his heart the throne of Will.

For every God Obeys the hymn, obeys the ode.

For art, for music over-thrilled, The wine-cup shakes, the wine is spilled.

Hold of the Maker, not the Made; Sit with the Cause, or grim or glad.

That book is good Which puts me in a working mood. Unless to Thought is added Will, Apollo is an imbecile. What parts, what gems, what colors shine,-- Ah, but I miss the grand design.

Like vaulters in a circus round Who leap from horse to horse, but never touch the ground.

For Genius made his cabin wide, And Love led Gods therein to bide.

The atom displaces all atoms beside, And Genius unspheres all souls that abide.

To transmute crime to wisdom, so to stem The vice of Japhet by the thought of Shem.

He could condense cerulean ether Into the very best sole-leather.

Forbore the ant-hill, shunned to tread, In mercy, on one little head.

I have no brothers and no peers, And the dearest interferes: When I would spend a lonely day, Sun and moon are in my way.

The brook sings on, but sings in vain Wanting the echo in my brain.

He planted where the deluge ploughed. His hired hands were wind and cloud; His eyes detect the Gods concealed In the hummock of the field.

For what need I of book or priest, Or sibyl from the mummied East, When every star is Bethlehem star? I count as many as there are Cinquefoils or violets in the grass, So many saints and saviors, So many high behaviors Salute the bard who is alive And only sees what he doth give.

Coin the day-dawn into lines In which its proper splendor shines; Coin the moonlight into verse Which all its marvel shall rehearse, Chasing with words fast-flowing things; nor try To plant thy shrivelled pedantry On the shoulders of the sky.

Ah, not to me those dreams belong! A better voice peals through my song.

The Muse's hill by Fear is guarded, A bolder foot is still rewarded.

His instant thought a poet spoke, And filled the age his fame; An inch of ground the lightning strook But lit the sky with flame.

If bright the sun, he tarries, All day his song is heard; And when he goes he carries No more baggage than a bird.

The Asmodean feat is mine, To spin my sand-heap into twine.

Slighted Minerva's learnèd tongue, But leaped with joy when on the wind The shell of Clio rung.

FRAGMENTS ON NATURE AND LIFE

NATURE

The patient Pan, Drunken with nectar, Sleeps or feigns slumber, Drowsily humming Music to the march of time. This poor tooting, creaking cricket, Pan, half asleep, rolling over His great body in the grass, Tooting, creaking, Feigns to sleep, sleeping never; 'T is his manner, Well he knows his own affair, Piling mountain chains of phlegm On the nervous brain of man, As he holds down central fires Under Alps and Andes cold; Haply else we could not live, Life would be too wild an ode.

Come search the wood for flowers,-- Wild tea and wild pea, Grapevine and succory, Coreopsis And liatris, Flaunting in their bowers; Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern and agrimony; Forest full of essences Fit for fairy presences, Peppermint and sassafras, Sweet fern, mint and vernal grass, Panax, black birch, sugar maple, Sweet and scent for Dian's table, Elder-blow, sarsaparilla, Wild rose, lily, dry vanilla,-- Spices in the plants that run To bring their first fruits to the sun. Earliest heats that follow frore Nervèd leaf of hellebore, Sweet willow, checkerberry red, With its savory leaf for bread. Silver birch and black With the selfsame spice Found in polygala root and rind, Sassafras, fern, benzöine, Mouse-ear, cowslip, wintergreen, Which by aroma may compel The frost to spare, what scents so well.

Where the fungus broad and red Lifts its head, Like poisoned loaf of elfin bread, Where the aster grew With the social goldenrod, In a chapel, which the dew Made beautiful for God:-- O what would Nature say? She spared no speech to-day: The fungus and the bulrush spoke, Answered the pine-tree and the oak, The wizard South blew down the glen, Filled the straits and filled the wide, Each maple leaf turned up its silver side. All things shine in his smoky ray, And all we see are pictures high; Many a high hillside, While oaks of pride Climb to their tops, And boys run out upon their leafy ropes. The maple street In the houseless wood, Voices followed after, Every shrub and grape leaf Rang with fairy laughter. I have heard them fall Like the strain of all King Oberon's minstrelsy. Would hear the everlasting And know the only strong? You must worship fasting, You must listen long. Words of the air Which birds of the air Carry aloft, below, around, To the isles of the deep, To the snow-capped steep, To the thundercloud.

For Nature, true and like in every place, Will hint her secret in a garden patch, Or in lone corners of a doleful heath, As in the Andes watched by fleets at sea, Or the sky-piercing horns of Himmaleh; And, when I would recall the scenes I dreamed On Adirondac steeps, I know Small need have I of Turner or Daguerre, Assured to find the token once again In silver lakes that unexhausted gleam And peaceful woods beside my cottage door.

What all the books of ages paint, I have. What prayers and dreams of youthful genius feign, I daily dwell in, and am not so blind But I can see the elastic tent of day Belike has wider hospitality Than my few needs exhaust, and bids me read The quaint devices on its mornings gay. Yet Nature will not be in full possessed, And they who truliest love her, heralds are And harbingers of a majestic race, Who, having more absorbed, more largely yield, And walk on earth as the sun walks in the sphere.

But never yet the man was found Who could the mystery expound, Though Adam, born when oaks were young, Endured, the Bible says, as long; But when at last the patriarch died The Gordian noose was still untied. He left, though goodly centuries old, Meek Nature's secret still untold.

Atom from atom yawns as far As moon from earth, or star from star.

When all their blooms the meadows flaunt To deck the morning of the year, Why tinge thy lustres jubilant With forecast or with fear?

Teach me your mood, O patient stars! Who climb each night the ancient sky, Leaving on space no shade, no scars, No trace of age, no fear to die.

The sun athwart the cloud thought it no sin To use my land to put his rainbows in.

For joy and beauty planted it, With faerie gardens cheered, And boding Fancy haunted it With men and women weird.

What central flowing forces, say, Make up thy splendor, matchless day?

Day by day for her darlings to her much she added more; In her hundred-gated Thebes every chamber was a door, A door to something grander,--loftier walls, and vaster floor.

She paints with white and red the moors To draw the nations out of doors.

A score of airy miles will smooth Rough Monadnoc to a gem.

THE EARTH

Our eyeless bark sails free Though with boom and spar Andes, Alp or Himmalee, Strikes never moon or star.

THE HEAVENS

Wisp and meteor nightly falling, But the Stars of God remain.

TRANSITION

See yonder leafless trees against the sky, How they diffuse themselves into the air, And, ever subdividing, separate Limbs into branches, branches into twigs. As if they loved the element, and hasted To dissipate their being into it.

Parks and ponds are good by day; I do not delight In black acres of the night, Nor my unseasoned step disturbs The sleeps of trees or dreams of herbs.

In Walden wood the chickadee Runs round the pine and maple tree Intent on insect slaughter: O tufted entomologist! Devour as many as you list, Then drink in Walden water.

The low December vault in June be lifted high, And largest clouds be flakes of down in that enormous sky.

THE GARDEN

Many things the garden shows, And pleased I stray From tree to tree Watching the white pear-bloom, Bee-infested quince or plum. I could walk days, years, away Till the slow ripening, secular tree Had reached its fruiting-time, Nor think it long.

Solar insect on the wing In the garden murmuring, Soothing with thy summer horn Swains by winter pinched and worn.

BIRDS

Darlings of children and of bard, Perfect kinds by vice unmarred, All of worth and beauty set Gems in Nature's cabinet; These the fables she esteems Reality most like to dreams. Welcome back, you little nations, Far-travelled in the south plantations; Bring your music and rhythmic flight, Your colors for our eyes' delight: Freely nestle in our roof, Weave your chamber weatherproof; And your enchanting manners bring And your autumnal gathering. Exchange in conclave general Greetings kind to each and all, Conscious each of duty done And unstainèd as the sun.

WATER

The water understands Civilization well; It wets my foot, but prettily It chills my life, but wittily, It is not disconcerted, It is not broken-hearted: Well used, it decketh joy, Adorneth, doubleth joy: Ill used, it will destroy, In perfect time and measure With a face of golden pleasure Elegantly destroy.

NAHANT

All day the waves assailed the rock, I heard no church-bell chime, The sea-beat scorns the minster clock And breaks the glass of Time.

SUNRISE

Would you know what joy is hid In our green Musketaquid, And for travelled eyes what charms Draw us to these meadow farms, Come and I will show you all Makes each day a festival. Stand upon this pasture hill, Face the eastern star until The slow eye of heaven shall show The world above, the world below.

Behold the miracle! Thou saw'st but now the twilight sad And stood beneath the firmament, A watchman in a dark gray tent, Waiting till God create the earth,-- Behold the new majestic birth! The mottled clouds, like scraps of wool, Steeped in the light are beautiful. What majestic stillness broods Over these colored solitudes. Sleeps the vast East in pleasèd peace, Up the far mountain walls the streams increase Inundating the heaven With spouting streams and waves of light Which round the floating isles unite:-- See the world below Baptized with the pure element, A clear and glorious firmament Touched with life by every beam. I share the good with every flower, I drink the nectar of the hour:-- This is not the ancient earth Whereof old chronicles relate The tragic tales of crime and fate; But rather, like its beads of dew And dew-bent violets, fresh and new, An exhalation of the time.

* * *

NIGHT IN JUNE

I left my dreary page and sallied forth, Received the fair inscriptions of the night; The moon was making amber of the world, Glittered with silver every cottage pane, The trees were rich, yet ominous with gloom. The meadows broad From ferns and grapes and from the folded flowers Sent a nocturnal fragrance; harlot flies Flashed their small fires in air, or held their court In fairy groves of herds-grass.

He lives not who can refuse me; All my force saith, Come and use me: A gleam of sun, a summer rain, And all the zone is green again.

Seems, though the soft sheen all enchants, Cheers the rough crag and mournful dell, As if on such stern forms and haunts A wintry storm more fitly fell.

Put in, drive home the sightless wedges And split to flakes the crystal ledges.

MAIA

Illusion works impenetrable, Weaving webs innumerable, Her gay pictures never fail, Crowds each on other, veil on veil, Charmer who will be believed By man who thirsts to be deceived.

Illusions like the tints of pearl, Or changing colors of the sky, Or ribbons of a dancing girl That mend her beauty to the eye.

The cold gray down upon the quinces lieth And the poor spinners weave their webs thereon To share the sunshine that so spicy is.

Samson stark, at Dagon's knee, Gropes for columns strong as he; When his ringlets grew and curled, Groped for axle of the world.

But Nature whistled with all her winds, Did as she pleased and went her way.

LIFE

A train of gay and clouded days Dappled with joy and grief and praise, Beauty to fire us, saints to save, Escort us to a little grave.

No fate, save by the victim's fault, is low, For God hath writ all dooms magnificent, So guilt not traverses his tender will.

Around the man who seeks a noble end, Not angels but divinities attend.

From high to higher forces The scale of power uprears, The heroes on their horses, The gods upon their spheres.

This shining moment is an edifice Which the Omnipotent cannot rebuild.

Roomy Eternity Casts her schemes rarely, And an aeon allows For each quality and part Of the multitudinous And many-chambered heart.

The beggar begs by God's command, And gifts awake when givers sleep, Swords cannot cut the giving hand Nor stab the love that orphans keep.

In the chamber, on the stairs, Lurking dumb, Go and come Lemurs and Lars.

Such another peerless queen Only could her mirror show.

Easy to match what others do, Perform the feat as well as they; Hard to out-do the brave, the true, And find a loftier way: The school decays, the learning spoils Because of the sons of wine; How snatch the stripling from their toils?-- Yet can one ray of truth divine The blaze of revellers' feasts outshine.

Of all wit's uses the main one Is to live well with who has none.

The tongue is prone to lose the way, Not so the pen, for in a letter We have not better things to say, But surely say them better.

She walked in flowers around my field As June herself around the sphere.

Friends to me are frozen wine; I wait the sun on them should shine.