Seeing the life of humankind
Only as picture?
The events in line of battle go;
In vain for me their trumpets blow
As unto him that lieth low
In death's dark arches,
And through the sod hears throbbing slow
The muffled marches.
O Duty, am I dead to thee
In this my cloistered ecstasy,
In this lone shallop on the sea
That drifts tow'rd Silence?
And are those visioned shores I see But sirens' islands?
My Dante frowns with lip-locked mien, As who would say, "T is those, I ween, Whom lifelong armor-chafe makes lean
That win the laurel";
But where is Truth? What does it mean,
The world-old quarrel ?
Such questionings are idle air:
Leave what to do and what to spare
To the inspiring moment's care,
Nor ask for payment
Of fame or gold, but just to wear
Unspotted raiment.
WHO HAD SENT ME A SEVEN-POUND TROUT.
FIT for an Abbot of Theleme,
For the whole Cardinals' College, or The Pope himself to see in dream Before his lenten vision gleam,
He lies there, the sogdologer!
His precious flanks with stars besprent, Worthy to swim in Castaly!
The friend by whom such gifts are sent, For him shall bumpers full be spent,
His health! be Luck his fast ally!
I see him trace the wayward brook
Amid the forest mysteries, Where at their shades shy aspens look, Or where, with many a gurgling crook, It croons its woodland histories.
I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend
Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend,
(0, stew him, Ann, as 't were your friend,
With amorous solicitude!)
I see him step with caution due,
Soft as if shod with moccasins,
Grave as in church, for who plies you, Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew
From all our common stock o' sins.
As full of sunshine as a breeze,
Or spray tossed up by Summer seas That doubts if it be sea or sun! Days that flew swiftly like the band That played in Grecian games at strife, And passed from eager hand to hand The onward-dancing torch of life! Wing-footed! thou abid'st with him Who asks it not; but he who hath Watched o'er the waves thy waning path,
Shall nevermore behold returning Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning!
Thou first reveal'st to us thy face Turned o'er the shoulder's parting grace, A moment glimpsed, then seen no
Thou whose swift footsteps we can trace Away from every mortal door.
Nymph of the unreturning feet,
How may I win thee back? But no, I do thee wrong to call thee so; 'Tis I am changed, not thou art fleet : The man thy presence feels again, Not in the blood, but in the brain, Spirit, that lov'st the upper air Serene and passionless and rare,
Such as on mountain heights we find
And wide-viewed uplands of the
mind;
Or such as scorns to coil and sing
Round any but the eagle's wing
Of souls that with long upward beat
Have won an undisturbed retreat
Where, poised like winged victories,
They mirror in relentless eyes
The life broad-basking 'neath their feet,
Man ever with his Now at strife,
Pained with first gasps of earthly air, Then praying Death the last to spare, Still fearful of the ampler life.
Not unto them dost thou consent
Who, passionless, can lead at ease
A life of unalloyed content
A life like that of land-locked seas,
Who feel no elemental gush
Of tidal forces, no fierce rush
Of storm deep-grasping scarcely spent
"Twixt continent and continent.
Such quiet souls have never known
Thy truer inspiration, thou
Who lov'st to feel upon thy brow Spray from the plunging vessel thrown
Grazing the tusked lee shore, the cliff That o'er the abrupt gorge holds its breath,
Where the frail hair-breadth of an if Is all that sunders life and death: These, too, are cared-for, and round these Bends her mild crook thy sister Peace;
These in unvexed dependence lie, Each 'neath his strip of household sky; O'er these clouds wander, and the blue Hangs motionless the whole day through;
Stars rise for them, and moons grow
large
And lessen in such tranquil wise
As joys and sorrows do that rise
Within their nature's sheltered marge;
Their hours into each other flit
Like the leaf-shadows of the vine
And fig-tree under which they sit,
And their still lives to heaven incline
With an unconscious habitude,
Unhistoried as smokes that rise
From happy hearths and sight elude
In kindred blue of morning skies.
Wayward when once we feel thy lack,
"T is worse than vain to woo thee back!
Yet there is one who seems to be
Thine elder sister, in whose eyes
A faint far northern light will rise
Sometimes, and bring a dream of thee;
She is not that for which youth hoped,
But she hath blessings all her own,
Thoughts pure as lilies newly oped,
And faith to sorrow given alone :
Almost I deem that it is thou
Come back with graver matron brow,
With deepened eyes and bated breath,
Like one that somewhere hath met
Death,
But "No," she answers, "I am she
Whom the gods love, Tranquillity:
That other whom you seek forlorn
Half earthly was; but I am born
Of the immortals, and our race
Wears still some sadness on its face :
He wins me late, but keeps me long,
Who, dowered with every gift of passion,
In that fierce flame can forge and
fashion
Of sin and self the anchor strong;
Can thence compel the driving force
Of daily life's mechanic course,
Nor less the nobler energies
Of needful toil and culture wise;
Whose soul is worth the tempter's lure
Who can renounce, and yet endure,
To him I come, not lightly wooed,
But won by silent fortitude.'
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever.
The Bonapartes, we know their bees
That wade in honey red to the knees;
Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep
sound
In dreamless garners underground:
We know false glory's spendthrift race
Pawning nations for feathers and lace;
It may be short, it may be long,
"T is reckoning-day !" sneers unpaid
Wrong.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever.
The Cock that wears the Eagle's skin
Can promise what he ne'er could win ;
Slavery reaped for fine words sown,
System for all, and rights for none,
Despots atop, a wild clan below,
Such is the Gaul from long ago;
Wash the black from the Ethiop's face,
Wash the past out of man or race!
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever.
'Neath Gregory's throne a spider swings,
And snares the people for the kings;
"Luther is dead; old quarrels pass;
The stake's black scars are healed with
grass";
So dreamers prate; did man ere live
Saw priest or woman yet forgive?
But Luther's broom is left, and eyes
Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever.
Smooth sails the ship of either realm,
Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm;
We look down the depths, and mark
Silent workers in the dark
Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs,
Old instincts hardening to new beliefs;
Patience a little; learn to wait;
Hours are long on the clock of Fate.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever!
Darkness is strong, and so is Sin,
But surely God endures forever!
Down mid the tangled roots of things
That coil about the central fire,
I seek for that which giveth wings
To stoop, not soar, to my desire.
Then o'er my senses came a change; My book seemed all traditions, Old legends of profoundest range, Diablery, and stories strange
Of goblins, elves, magicians.
He paused upon the threshold worn:
With coin I cannot pay you;
Yet would I fain make some return;
The gift for cheapness do not spurn.
Accept this hen, I pray you.
"Plain feathers wears my Hemera,
And has from ages olden;
She makes her nest in common hay,
And yet, of all the birds that lay,
Her eggs alone are golden."
He turned, and could no more be seen;
Old Baucis stared a moment,
Then tossed poor Partlet on the green,
And with a tone, half jest, half spleen,
Thus made her housewife's com
ment:
"Some eighteen score of such do I
Raise every year, her sisters;
Go, in the woods your fortunes try,
All day for one poor earthworm pry,
And scratch your toes to blisters!"
Philemon found the rede was good,
And, turning on the poor hen,
He clapt his hands, and stamped, and
shooed,
Hunting the exile tow'rd the wood,
To house with snipe and moor-hen.
A poet saw and cried: "Hold! hold!
What are you doing, madman?
Spurn you more wealth than can be
told,
The fowl that lays the eggs of gold,
Because she's plainly clad, man?"
To him Philemon: "I'll not balk
Thy will with any shackle;
Wilt add a burden to thy walk?
There! take her without further talk;
You're both but fit to cackle!"
But scarce the poet touched the bird,
It swelled to stature regal;
And when her cloud-wide wings she
stirred,
A whisper as of doom was heard,
'T was Jove's bolt-bearing eagle.
As when from far-off cloud-bergs springs
A crag, and, hurtling under,
From cliff to cliff the rumor flings,
So she from flight-foreboding wings
Shook out a murmurous thunder.
She gripped the poet to her breast,
And ever, upward soaring,
Earth seemed a new moon in the west,
And then one light among the rest
Where squadrons lie at mooring.
How tell to what heaven-hallowed seat
The eagle bent his courses?
The waves that on its bases beat,
The gales that round it weave and fleet,
Are life's creative forces.
Here was the bird's primeval nest,
High on a promontory
Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest
To brood new æons 'neath her breast,
The future's unfledged glory.
I know not how, but I was there
All feeling, hearing, seeing;
It was not wind that stirred my hair
But living breath, the essence rare
Of unembodied being.
And in the nest an egg of gold
Lay soft in self-made lustre, Gazing whereon, what depths untold Within, what marvels manifold, Seemed silently to muster!
Daily such splendors to confront
Is still to me and you sent? It glowed as when Saint Peter's front, Illumed, forgets its stony wont,
And seems to throb translucent.
One saw therein the life of man,
(Or so the poet found it,)
The yolk and white, conceive who can,
Were the glad earth, that, floating, span
In the glad heaven around it.
I knew this as one knows in dream,
Where no effects to causes
Are chained as in our work-day scheme,
And then was wakened by a scream
That seemed to come from Baucis.
"Bless Zeus!" she cried, "I'm safe below!"
First pale, then red as coral; And I, still drowsy, pondered slow, And seemed to find, but hardly know, Something like this for moral.
Each day the world is born anew
For him who takes it rightly;
Not fresher that which Adam knew,
Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew
Entranced Arcadia nightly.
Rightly? That 's simply: 't is to see
Some substance casts these shadows
Which we call Life and History,
That aimless seem to chase and flee
Like wind-gleams over meadows.
Simply? That's nobly: 't is to know
That God may still be met with,
Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow
These senses fine, this brain aglow,
To grovel and forget with.
Beauty, Herr Doctor, trust in me,
No chemistry will win you;
Charis still rises from the sea:
If you can't find her, might it be
Because you seek within you?
A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND.
ALIKE I hate to be your debtor,
Or write a mere perfunctory letter;
For letters, so it seems to me,
Our careless quintessence should be,
Our real nature's truant play
When Consciousness looks t' other way
Not drop by drop, with watchful skill,
Gathered in Art's deliberate still,
But life's insensible completeness
Got as the ripe grape gets its sweetness,
As if it had a way to fuse
The golden sunlight into juice.
Hopeless my mental pump I try;
The boxes hiss, the tube is dry;
As those petroleum wells that spout
Awhile like M. C.'s, then give out,
My spring, once full as Arethusa,
Is a mere bore as dry 's Creusa;
And yet you ask me why I'm glum,
And why my graver Muse is dumb.
Ah me! I've reasons manifold
Condensed in one, I'm getting old!
When life, once past its fortieth year,
Wheels up its evening hemisphere,
The mind's own shadow, which the boy
Saw onward point to hope and joy,
Shifts round, irrevocably set
Tow'rd morning's loss and vain regret,
And, argue with it as we will,
The clock is unconverted still.
"But count the gains," I hear you say, "Which far the seeming loss outweigh; Friendships built firm 'gainst flood and wind
On rock-foundations of the mind;
Knowledge instead of scheming hope;
For wild adventure, settled scope;
Talents, from surface-ore profuse,
Tempered and edged to tools for use;
Judgment, for passion's headlong whirls;
Old sorrows crystalled into pearls;
Losses by patience turned to gains,
Possessions now, that once were pains;
Joy's blossom gone, as go it must,
To ripen seeds of faith and trust;
Why heed a snow-flake on the roof
If fire within keep Age aloof
Though blundering north-winds push
With palms benumbed against the pane?"
My dear old Friend, you 're very wise;
We always are with others' eyes,
And see so clear! (our neighbor's deck
on)
What reef the idiot 's sure to wreck on; Folks when they learn how life has quizzed 'em
Are fain to make a shift with Wisdom,
And, finding she nor breaks nor bends,
Give her a letter to their friends.
Draw passion's torrent whoso will
Through sluices smooth to turn a mill,
And, taking solid toll of grist,
Forget the rainbow in the mist,
The exulting leap, the aimless haste
Scattered in iridescent waste;
Prefer who likes the sure esteem
To cheated youth's midsummer dream,
When every friend was more than
Damon,
Each quicksand safe to build a fame on;
Believe that prudence snug excels
Youth's gross of verdant spectacles,
Through which earth's withered stubble
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