382 NEW YEAR'S EVE. 1850.- FOR AN AUTOGRAPH. Snap, chord of manhood's tenser To-day I will be a boy again; The cat-bird croons in the lilac-bush! Through the dim arbor, himself more dim, Silently hops the hermit-thrush, There, as of yore, The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup The sun in his own wine to pledge; O unestranged birds and bees! O face of nature always true! O never-unsympathizing trees! O never-rejecting roof of blue, Whose rash disherison never falls On us unthinking prodigals, Yet who convictest all our ill, So grand and unappeasable! Methinks my heart from each of these Plucks part of childhood back again, Long there imprisoned, as the breeze Doth every hidden odor seize Of wood and water, hill and plain. Once more am I admitted peer In the upper house of Nature here, And feel through all my pulses run The royal blood of breeze and sun. Upon these elm-arched solitudes No hum of neighbor toil intrudes; The only hammer that I hear Is wielded by the woodpecker, The single noisy calling his In all our leaf-hid Sybaris; The good old time, close-hidden here, Persists, a loyal cavalier, While Roundheads prim, with point of fox, Probe wainscot-chink and empty box; A willing convert of the trees. How chanced it that so long I tost A cable's length from this rich coast, With foolish anchors hugging close The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze, Nor had the wit to wreck before On this enchanted island's shore, Whither the current of the sea, With wiser drift, persuaded me? O, might we but of such rare days Build up the spirit's dwelling-place! A temple of so Parian stone Would brook a marble god alone, The statue of a perfect life, Far-shrined from earth's bestaining strife, Alas! though such felicity In our vext world here may not be, And lure some nunlike thoughts to take 384 WITHOUT AND WITHIN. — GODMINster chimes. Out clanged the Ave Mary bells, To make it possible that thou Thoughts that great hearts once broke for, we Breathe cheaply in the common air; The dust we trample heedlessly Throbbed once in saints and heroes rare, Who perished, opening for their race New pathways to the commonplace. Henceforth, when rings the health to those Who live in story and in song, Flattening his nose against the pane, He envies me my brilliant lot, Breathes on his aching fists in vain, And dooms me to a place more hot. He sees me in to supper go, A silken wonder by my side, Bare arms, bare shoulders, and a row Of flounces, for the door too wide. He thinks how happy is my arm 'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled load; And wishes me some dreadful harm, Hearing the merry corks explode. Meanwhile I inly curse the bore Of hunting still the same old coon, And envy him, outside the door, In golden quiets of the moon. The winter wind is not so cold As the bright smile he sees me win, Nor the host's oldest wine so old As our poor gabble sour and thin. I envy him the ungyved prance By which his freezing feet he warms, And drag my lady's-chains and dance The galley-slave of dreary forms. O, could he have my share of din, And I his quiet! past a doubt 'T would still be one man bored within, And just another bored without. GODMINSTER CHIMES. WRITTEN IN AID OF A CHIME OF BELLS And builds of half-remembered things Through aisles of long-drawn centuries Which God's own pity wrought: That throbs with praise and prayer. And all the way from Calvary down crown And safe in God repose; The saints of many a warring creed Who now in heaven have learned That all paths to the Father lead Where Self the feet have spurned. And, as the mystic aisles I pace, By aureoled workmen built, Lives ending at the Cross I trace Alike through grace and guilt; One Mary bathes the blessed feet With ointment from her eyes, With spikenard one, and both are sweet, For both are sacrifice. Moravian hymn and Roman chant To speak the soul's eternal want One choked with sinner's tears, Whilst thus I dream, the bells clash out Each seems a hostile faith to shout, O chime of sweet Saint Charity, I felt Youth's hand grow slack and cold in mine, As if to be withdrawn, and I replied: "O, leave the hot wild heart within my breast! Duty comes soon enough, too soon comes Death; This slippery globe of life whirls of itself, Hasting our youth away into the dark; These senses, quivering with electric heats, Too soon will show, like nests on wintry boughs 'Obtrusive emptiness, too palpable wreck, Which whistling northwinds line with downy snow Sometimes, or fringe with foliaged rime, in vain, Thither the singing birds no more return." |