Where a palm-tree, in lone silence, Yearning for its mate afar, Droops above a silver runnel, Slender as a scimitar, postern "There thou 'lt find the humble Slept again the aspen silence, Donned she now the pilgrim scallop, Took the pilgrim staff in hand; Like a cloud-shade, flitting eastward, Wandered she o'er sea and land; And her footsteps in the desert Fell like cool rain on the sand. Soon, beneath the palm-tree's shadow, There she saw no surly warder With an eye like bolt and bar; Through her soul a sense of music Throbbed, and, like a guardian Lar, On the threshold stood an angel, Fairest seemed he of God's seraphs, Then she heard a voice come onward Singing with a rapture new, As Eve heard the songs in Eden, Dropping earthward with the dew; Well she knew the happy singer, Well the happy song she knew. Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned, The soul once of some tremulous inland river, Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever! While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine, Holds up its leaves in happy, happy silence, Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands, And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence. Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, Dripping about thy slim white stem, whose shadow Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet, Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Dryad. Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience, And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping. Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences; Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses, And Nature gives me all her summer confidences. Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble, Thou sympathizest still; wild and unquiet, I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river, Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and by it My heart is floated down into the land of quiet. AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH. I SAT one evening in my room, In that sweet hour of twilight When blended thoughts, half light, half gloom, Throng through the spirit's skylight; The flames by fits curled round the bars, Or up the chimney crinkled, While embers dropped like falling stars, And in the ashes tinkled. I sat and mused; the fire burned low, The heads of ancient wise men) My antique high-backed Spanish chair It came out in that famous bark For, as that saved of bird and beast So has the seed of these increased Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats: Of ice the northern voyager meets Is more or less than human. I offer to all bores this perch, See golden ages rising, Salt of the earth! in what queer Guys Thou 'rt fond of crystallizing! My wonder, then, was not unmixed I saw its trembling arms enclose Now even such men as Nature forms A Who knows, thought I, but he has come, About that garb outlandish - "I come from Plymouth, deadly bored They understand us Pilgrims ! they, Smooth men with rosy faces, Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away, And varnish in their places! "We had some toughness in our grain, "He had stiff knees, the Puritan, He thought was worth defending; He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, His country's shame forgotten, Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er, When all within was rotten. "These loud ancestral boasts of yours, How can they else than vex us? Where were your dinner orators When slavery grasped at Texas? "Good sir," I said, stirred; "6 you seem much The sacred compromises "Now God confound the dastard word! My gall thereat arises: Northward it hath this sense alone, That you, your conscience blinding, Shall bow your fool's nose to the stone, When slavery feels like grinding. ""Tis shame to see such painted sticks "We forefathers to such a rout! - Half rose the ghost, and half drew out The hem of thy white vesture. The streaks of first forewarning, I hear great steps, that through the shade I looked, no form mine eyes could find, A dismal tune was blowing; ON THE CAPTURE OF CERTAIN FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON. Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can, The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man; Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these! I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest; YE who, passing graves by night, Cold and white, to freeze your eyes, See ye not that woman pale? |