human
Can you write a poem for me in the style of Arnold Bennett?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem in the style of Arnold Bennett:
  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by
acknowledged. As a keen and sagacious critic of literature, as an
understanding on its part of her true views and character.
Life without and Life within.
Menzel's view of Goethe is that of a Philistine, in the least
Whoever looks into the history of his youth, will be struck by a
Even so in later years, had he been asked if he had not loved his
Goethe's religion in Mignon and Makana, all his wisdom in the
Western-Eastern Divan, we respect it, accept, all but love it.
Felt within us!
As nature,
Still shineth the sun
Over good and evil;
And on the sinner,
Smile as on the best,
Moon and stars.
Fate too, &c.
"There can none but man
He understandeth,
Chooseth, and judgeth;
He can impart to the
Moment duration.
"He alone may
The good reward,
The guilty punish,
Mend and deliver;
All the wayward, anomalous
Bind in the useful.
Them we reverence
As if they were men, and
Did, on a grand scale,
What the best man in little
Does, or fain would do.
"Let noble man
Be helpful and good;
Ever creating
Type of those loftier
Beings of whom the heart whispers."
And this office of a judge, who is of purer eyes than to behold
In another article on Goethe, I shall give some account of that
period, when a too determined action of the intellect limited and
indications of the progress of his genius here, of its wants and
"Nemo contra Deum nisi Deus ipse."
"Wer Grosses will muss sich zusammen raffen;
In der Beschrankung zeigt sich erst der Meister,
Und der Gesetz nur Kann uns Freikeit geben."
The first of these mottoes is that prefixed by Goethe to the last
Of Goethe, as of other natures, where the intellect is too much
Now, when I think of Goethe, I seem to see his soul, all the
unbelieving generation cannot controvert. Even then he is little
This was not exactly the problem Goethe tried to solve. To _do_
Werther, like his early essays now republished from the Frankfort
"The boy believed in nature, in the animate and inanimate the
"This existence which seemed to mingle with others, sometimes to
"The Daemonische is that which cannot be explained by reason or
understanding; it lies not in my nature, but I am subject to it.
Whoever is turned from his natural path may, if he will, gain in
"Ye cannot serve God and Mammon."
Yet never let him be confounded with those who sell all their
Faust, bent upon reaching the centre of the universe through the
Kannst du mich schmeichelnd je beluegen
Dass ich mir selbst gefallen mag,
Kannst du mich mit Genuss betruegen:
Das sey fuer mich der letzte Tag.
Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen:
Verweile doch! du bist so schoen!
Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,
Dann will ich gern zu Grunde gehen.
Canst thou by falsehood or by flattery
Make me one moment with myself at peace,
Cheat me into tranquillity? Come then
And welcome, life's last day.
Make me but to the moment say,
O fly not yet, thou art so fair,
Then let me perish, &c.
strongest contrast. The mainspring of action is no longer the
To be capable of all duties, limited by none, with an open eye, a
No doubt the attraction of the stage to young persons of a vulgar
seemed likely to offer such an agreeable studio in the greenroom.
But the ideal must be rooted in the real, else the poet's life
He now knows enough to enter on the Wanderjahre.
So in the Meister, these women hover around the narrative, each
Her picture is painted with many delicate traits, and a gradual
privilege to possess his own soul.
relations. He learns to practise moderation, and even painful
The following remarks are by the celebrated Rahel von Ense, whose
"Embrace one another, Cervantes and Goethe!
"Both, using their own clear eyes, vindicated human nature. They
saw the champions through their errors and follies, looking down
into the deepest soul, seeing there the true form. _Respectable_
knight, Goethe the culture of the entire man,--both their own
But there is a higher spiritual law always ready to supersede the
"The rank is but the guinea's stamp;
The man's the gowd for a' that."
maintained the worship of the Manly, the Permanent, the True!
alluring, then deepening into blind horror.
themselves.
expression.
There is an English translation (I know not how good) of Goethe's
Beneath your shade, living summits
Of this ancient, holy, thick-leaved grove,
As in the silent sanctuary of the Goddess,
Still I walk with those same shuddering feelings,
As when I trod these walks for the first time.
My spirit cannot accustom itself to these places;
Many years now has kept me here concealed
A higher will, to which I am submissive;
Yet ever am I, as at first, the stranger;
For ah! the sea divides me from my beloved ones,
And on the shore whole days I stand,
Seeking with my soul the land of the Greeks,
And to my sighs brings the rushing wave only
Its hollow tones in answer.
Woe to him who, far from parents, and brothers, and sisters,
Drags on a lonely life. Grief consumes
The nearest happiness away from his lips;
His thoughts crowd downwards--
Seeking the hall of his fathers, where the Sun
First opened heaven to him, and kindred-born
In their first plays knit daily firmer and firmer
The bond from heart to heart--I question not the Gods,
Only the lot of woman is one of sorrow;
In the house and in the war man rules,
Knows how to help himself in foreign lands,
Possessions gladden and victory crowns him,
And an honorable death stands ready to end his days.
Within what narrow limits is bounded the luck of woman!
To obey a rude husband even is duty and comfort; how sad
When, instead, a hostile fate drives her out of her sphere!
So holds me Thoas, indeed a noble man, fast
In solemn, sacred, but slavish bonds.
O, with shame I confess that with secret reluctance
I serve thee, Goddess, thee, my deliverer.
My life should freely have been dedicate to thee,
But I have always been hoping in thee, O Diana,
Who didst take in thy soft arms me, the rejected daughter
Of the greatest king! Yes, daughter of Zeus,
I thought if thou gavest such anguish to him, the high hero,
The godlike Agamemnon;
Since he brought his dearest, a victim, to thy altar,
That, when he should return, crowned with glory, from Ilium,
Me also, thou would'st restore to mine own,
Saving a second time me, whom from death thou didst save,
From this worse death,--the life of exile here.
Was it the same Tantalus,
Whom Jupiter called to his council and banquets,
In whose talk so deeply experienced, full of various learning,
The Gods delighted as in the speech of oracles?
It is the same, but the Gods should not
Converse with men, as with their equals.
The mortal race is much too weak
Not to turn giddy on unaccustomed heights.
He was not ignoble, neither a traitor,
But for a servant too great, and as a companion
Of the great Thunderer only a man. So was
His fault also that of a man, its penalty
Severe, and poets sing--Presumption
And faithlessness cast him down from the throne of Jove,
Into the anguish of ancient Tartarus;
Ah, and all his race bore their hate.
Bore it the blame of the ancestor, or its own?
Truly the vehement breast and powerful life of the Titan
Were the assured inheritance of son and grandchild;
But the Gods bound their brows with a brazen band,
Moderation, counsel, wisdom, and patience
Were hid from their wild, gloomy glance,
Each desire grew to fury,
And limitless ranged their passionate thoughts.
distinctly shown in few words.
And whatever he may undertake;
He is the arm of the youth in battle,
The light-giving eye of the aged man in the council.
For his soul is still; it preserves
The holy possession of Repose unexhausted,
And from its depths still reaches
Help and advice to those tossed to and fro.
Immortals, you who through your bright days
Live in bliss, throned on clouds ever renewed,
Only for this have you all these years
Kept me separate from men, and so near yourselves,
Be ever aspiring towards your abodes,
That only later and deeper I might feel
The anguish and horror that have darkened my house.
Speak to me of the unhappy one, tell me of Orestes.
O, might I speak of his death!
Vehement flew up from the reeking blood
His Mother's Soul!
And called to the ancient daughters of Night,
Let not the parricide escape;
Pursue that man of crime; he is yours!
They obey, their hollow eyes
Darting about with vulture eagerness;
They stir themselves in their black dens,
From corners their companions
Doubt and Remorse steal out to join them.
Before them roll the mists of Acheron;
In its cloudy volumes rolls
The eternal contemplation of the irrevocable
Permitted now in their love of ruin they tread
The beautiful fields of a God-planted earth,
From which they had long been banished by an early curse,
Their swift feet follow the fugitive,
They pause never except to gather more power to dismay.
Unhappy man, thou art in like manner tortured,
And feelest truly what he, the poor fugitive, suffers!
What sayest thou? what meanest by "like manner"?
Thee, too, the weight of a fratricide crushes to earth; the tale
I had from thy younger brother.
I cannot suffer that thou, great soul,
Shouldst be deceived by a false tale;
A web of lies let stranger weave for stranger
Subtle with many thoughts, accustomed to craft,
Guarding his feet against a trap.
But between us
I am Orestes,--and this guilty head
Bent downward to the grave seeks death;
In any shape were he welcome.
Whoever thou art, I wish thou mightst be saved,
Thou and my friend; for myself I wish it not.
Thou seem'st against thy will here to remain;
Invent a way to fly and leave me here.
Like all pure productions of genius, this may be injured by the
O Woe upon the lie! It frees not the breast,
Like the true-spoken word; it comforts not, but tortures
Him who devised it, and returns,
An arrow once let fly, God-repelled, back,
On the bosom of the Archer!"
O, must I then resign the silent hope
Which gave a beauty to my loneliness?
Must the curse dwell forever, and our race
Never be raised to life by a new blessing?
All things decay, the fairest bliss is transient,
The powers most full of life grow faint at last;
And shall a curse alone boast an incessant life?
Then have I idly hoped that here kept pure,
So strangely severed from my kindred's lot,
I was designed to come at the right moment,
And with pure hand and heart to expiate
The many sins that stain my native home.
To lie, to steal the sacred image!
Olympians, let not these vulture talons
Seize on the tender breast. O, save me,
And save your image in my soul!
Within my ears resounds the ancient lay,--
I had forgotten it, and would so gladly,--
The lay of the Parcae, which they awful sung;
As Tantalus fell from his golden seat
They suffered with the noble friend. Wrathful
Was their heart, and fearful was the song.
In our childhood the nurse was wont to sing it
To me, and my brother and sister. I marked it well.
Then follows the sublime song of the Parcae, well known through
translations.
If it be not possible to enhance the beauty with which such ideal
We are anxious to pour due libations to the departed; we need not
Hood has closed the most fatiguing career in the world--that of a
forever.
"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;"
The curse of Adam, the old curse of all,
Though I inherit in this feverish life
Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife,
And fruitless thought in care's eternal thrall,
Yet more sweet honey than of bitter gall
I taste through thee, my Eva, my sweet wife.
Then what was Man's lost Paradise? how rife
Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall!
Such as our own pure passion still might frame
Of this fair earth and its delightful bowers,
If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came
To trail its venom o'er the sweetest flowers;
But, O! as many and such tears are ours
As only should be shed for guilt and shame.
All things are touched with melancholy
Born of the secret soul's mistrust,
To feel her fair ethereal wings
Weighed down with vile, degraded dust.
Even the bright extremes of joy
Bring on conclusions of disgust,
Like the sweet blossoms of the May,
Whose fragrance ends in must.
O, give her, then, her tribute just,
Her sighs and tears and musings holy;
There is no music in the life
There's not a string attuned to mirth,
But has its chord in melancholy.
Hood never became corrupted into a hack writer. This shows great
"The last word had occurred so frequently on the organ of the
Schoolmistress, that it had acquired in her mind some important
significance.
"'Ruth, what is krank?'
"But alas! what would it have availed her poor dear papa in the
This is a very pleasing book, and if the "Essays of Summer Hours"
This book bears on its outside the title, "Life of Beethoven, by
delights, which awakens, which inspires, an infinite hope.
Then, if the other arts suffer a temporary paralysis, and
precision the one process follows up the other.
Moscheles did see him further, and learned a great deal from this
"My feelings with respect to Beethoven's music have undergone no
"All the initiated must be interested in the striking fact which
_effect_ of these two notes. Never could such be found again--so
striking--so important; no, not even if contemplated at the very
opinion."
proceedings!"
As a correspondent example of the manner in which true greatness
"Sir: Being of opinion that you endeavored to embroil me with
pursue in another book, and that I took you for a Hobbist. I beg
"I am your most humble and unfortunate servant,
It has been the custom to liken Brown to Godwin. But there was no
"My mind to me a kingdom is."
representation of those powers permitted to work in the same way
time--somewhere?
defiance, who might try whether the sting of Criticism was as
Were there such a champion, gifted with acumen to dissect, and a
And I'll caw thee;"
Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine--
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For, alas! alas! with me
The light of life is o'er!
No more--no more--no more
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams--
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.
"Amid the earnest woes
That crowd around my earthly path
(Drear path, alas! where grows
Not even one lonely rose.") * * *
"For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her eyes--
The life still there, upon her hair--the death upon her eyes."
"I stand beneath the mystic moon;
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out a golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley."
Why _universal_?--"resolve me that, Master Moth."
And farther on, "the lily _lolls_ upon the wave."
The poems written in youth, written, indeed, we understand, in
childhood, before the author was ten years old, are a great
"Sweet was their death--with them to die was rife
With the last ecstasy of satiate life."
These two publications have come to hand during the last month--a
And to those who cherish such expectations rational education,
It would be the worthiest occupation of mind to ascertain the
American literature.
As every ship brings us foreign teachers, a knowledge of living
contemporary tongues must in the course of fifty years become the
Meanwhile the English begins to vie with the German and French
literature in the number, though not in the goodness, of the
translations from other languages. The indefatigable Germans can
"My fourth and last passion, fortunately for me, showed itself by
O, painstaking friends! Shut your books, clear your minds from
artificial nonsense, and feel that only by spirit can spirit be
"When vigor failed the towering fantasy,
But yet the will rolled onward, like a wheel
In even motion by the love impelled
That moves the sun in heaven, and all the stars."
culture.
As we pass the old Brick Chapel our eye is sometimes arrested by
We can easily admit at once that the whole French drama was
anti-Christian, just as the political conduct of every nation of
problems will have to be worked out first.
We reject the exclusively moral no less than the exclusively
alliance" can ever close it again, and in its vast plans of civic
latitudes to live under new circumstances, and need a judicious
"The exercising the upper limbs is too much neglected; and it is
refinement among men. Dr. Warren seems to favor the practice of
"For a' that, and a' that,
And mickle mair for a' that."
The following extract presents a suitable answer to the hackneyed
diligently to please their overseers as the office-seekers in the
'I am going away to the Great House Farm!
The term Classical, used in its narrow sense, implies a servile
probably as unlike as possible to the former models.
We have selected his three masterpieces, though he, to himself an
In "Saul," a bright rainbow rises, by the aid of the Sun of
attempted a narrative poem.
We cannot too strongly express our approbation of the opinions
So! with the chivalry of Christendom
I wage my war,--no nation for my friend,
Yet in each nation having hosts of friends.
The bondsmen of the world, that to their lords
Are bound with chains of iron, unto me
Are knit by their affections. Be it so.
From kings and nobles will I seek no more
Aid, friendship, or alliance. With the poor
I make my treaty; and the heart of man
Sets the broad seal of its allegiance there,
And ratifies the compact. Vassals, serfs,
Ye that are bent with unrequited toil,
Ye that have whitened in the dungeon's darkness,
Through years that know not change of night nor day,
Tatterdemalions, lodgers in the hedge,
Lean beggars with raw backs, and rumbling maws,
Whose poverty was whipped for starving you,--
I hail you my auxiliars and allies,
The only potentates whose help I crave!
Richard of England, thou hast slain Jack Straw,
But thou hast left unquenched the vital spark
That set Jack Straw on fire.   The spirit lives;
And as when he of Canterbury fell,
His seat was filled by some no better clerk,
So shall John Ball, that slew him, be replaced.
understanding."
The want of correct knowledge, and a fair appreciation of the
"All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy,
But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
just-mown fields.
D'Israeli, except the sketches of Eton, and above all, the noble
"Sybil" is an attempt to do justice to the claims of the laboring
D'Israeli is another of those who give testimony in behalf of our
"Dashes at Life," by N. P. Willis. The life of Mr. Willis is too
"Have I not kept my vow?"
began a chain of thoughts whose golden links still bind the years
"... full of great dark meanings like the sea:"
"Read this, world. He who writes is dead to thee,
But still lives in these leaves. He spake inspired;
Night and day, thought came unhelped, undesired,
Like blood to his heart. The course of study he
Went through was of the soul-rack. The degree
He took was high; it was wise wretchedness.
He suffered perfectly, and gained no less
A prize than, in his own torn heart, to see
A few bright seeds; he sowed them, hoped them truth.
The autumn of that seed is in these pages."
circulation, rather than its extent, might be the guide both to
poverty--its vulgarity.
No more of him!--We leave him to his suicidal work.
contemporaries.
universe.
devotion which alone can win Truth from her cold well, careless
Newtonian incapability of deceiving himself or others.
circulation of the blood is now.
matter.
The somnambulist was in a very happy state. On her lips was the
satisfied smile, and her features expressed the gentle elevation
Not only the persons present, but the person advised also, had no
"The ills that Heaven decrees
The brave with courage bear."
"So much for our position in general."
We must think there is a deep root, in fact, for the late bitter
"In a tavern of Hungary are sitting together Three who have taken
character of Cromwell.
Mr. Carlyle's squires are all Heaven's justices of peace or war,
Speaking of Cromwell's course in Ireland:--
In previous instances where Mr. Carlyle has acted out his
predeterminations as to the study of a character, we have seen
In short, we can sympathize with the words of John Maidstone:--
But Mr. Carlyle goes on to gild the refined gold thus:--
"_To my loving Brother, Colonel Valentine Walton: These._
"DEAR SIR: It's our duty to sympathize in all mercies; and to
"Truly England and the church of God hath had a great favor from
the Lord, in this great victory given unto us, such as the like
never was since this war began. It had all the evidences of an
absolute victory obtained by the Lord's blessing upon the godly
party principally. We never charged but we routed the enemy. The
left wing, which I commanded, being our own horse, saving a few
Scots in our rear, beat all the prince's horse. God make them as
thousand left. Give glory, all the glory, to God.
"Sir, God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannon-shot. It
"Sir, you know my own trials this way; but the Lord supported
never to know sin or sorrow any more. He was a gallant young man,
not express it, 'it was so great above his pain.' This he said to
real and undoubted a truth. You may do all things by the strength
this public mercy to the church of God make you to forget your
private sorrow. The Lord be your strength; so prays
"Your truly faithful and loving brother,
And add this noble passage, in which Carlyle speaks of the morbid
heart-energy become _flame_, and brilliancy of heaven. Courage!"
metamorphosed into a dove. Was it so in this instance? Unlike Mr.
activity, his sin is great; he is false to God, and false to man.
If New England may be regarded as a chief mental focus to the New
His books are received there with a more ready intelligence than
elsewhere, partly because his range of personal experience and
In the union of an even rustic plainness with lyric inspirations,
The Essays have also been obnoxious to many charges; to that of
partaker.
The other claim is derived from that part of his life, which, if
poems--somewhere.
pertinaciously, and in a thousand ways.
fellow-students of the divine will. O, had we but found such an
The new year dawns, and its appearance is hailed by a flutter of
"What hast thou done that's worth the doing?
And what pursued that's worth pursuing?
What sought thou knewest thou shouldst shun?
What done thou shouldst have left undone?"
How often is it that the rich man thinks even of that proposed by
For ourselves, the months have brought much, though, perhaps,
goodness--yet have we noted a spot of base indulgence, a fibre of
"Double, double,
Toil and trouble,"
if love do not fan the fire.
"The wiser mind
Mourns less for what Time takes away
Than what he leaves behind."
But for ourselves, we find there is kernel in the nut, though its
"We never see the stars
Till we can see nought else."
patients will be roused and ascertain their true condition.
conscience; Cassius Clay's paper expelled from Kentucky; that is
The guests had to go away without breakfast. They were a little
housemaid before she is worn and wearied to death!
wholesome, viands for their use.
theirs--that they live from and for themselves, acknowledging no
obligation and no duty to God or to man.
chained, and forge them strongest for millions yet unborn.
The Mexican makes his gloss on the page of American honor; the
different sort? Do they not work to other results?
analogies should enlarge patience and animate hope.
Angels shall free the feet from stain, to their own hue of snow,
If, undismayed, we reach the hills where the true olives grow.
The olive groves, which we must seek in cold and damp,
Alone can yield us oil for a perpetual lamp.
Then sound again the golden horn with promise ever new;
Yes! sound again the horn--of hope the golden horn!
Answer it, flutes and pipes, from valleys still and lorn;
Warders, from your high towers, with trumps of silver scorn,
And these are the people who, half a century ago, would have been
An old man sang comic songs in the style of various nations and
characters, with a dramatic expression that would have commanded
applause "on any stage."
intelligence. I saw enough of its power, impeded as it was by the
A companion, of that delicate nature by which a scar is felt as a
"to transmute, bereave
Of an ill influence, and a good receive."
We know no sign of the times more encouraging than the increasing
Much has been achieved in this country since the Declaration of
independence.
We want individuals to whom all eyes may turn as examples of the
practicability of virtue. We want shining examples. We want
unhandsome, base treatment of her captive, has never been enough
committed in the name of liberty. On this day they meet and vow
"To keep in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Falsehood, miserable train,"
"Turn that necessity to glorious gain,"
"Transmute them and subdue."
Loud peal of bells and beat of drums
Salute approaching dawn;
And the deep cannon's fearful bursts
Announce a nation's morn.
Imposing ranks of freemen stand
And claim their proud birthright;
Impostors, rather! thus to brand
A name they hold so bright.
Let the day see the pageant show;
Float, banners, to the breeze!
Shout Liberty's great name throughout
Columbia's lands and seas!
Give open sunlight to the free;
But for Truth's equal sake,
When night sinks down upon the land,
Proclaim dead Freedom's wake!
Beat, muffled drums!    Toll, funeral bell
Nail every flag half-mast;
For though we fought the battle well,
We're traitors at the last.
Let the whole nation join in one
Procession to appear;
We and our sons lead on the front,
Our slaves bring up the rear.
America is rocked within
Thy cradle, Liberty,
By Africa's poor, palsied hand--
Strange inconsistency!
We've dug one grave as deep as Death,
For Tyranny's black sin;
And dug another at its side
To thrust our brother in.
We challenge all the world aloud,--
"Lo, Tyranny's deep grave!"
And all the world points back and cries,
"Thou fool! Behold thy slave!"
Yes, rally, brave America,
Thy noble hearts and free
Around the Eagle, as he soars
Upward in majesty.
One half thy emblem is the bird,
Out-facing thus the day;
But wouldst thou make him wholly thine,--
_Give him a helpless prey!_
darkened so many minds with fears. Those fears can never again be
"Canst thou give thanks for aught that has been given
Except by making earth more worthy heaven?
Just stewardship the Master hoped from thee;
Harvests from time to bless eternity."
attention, should not be the chief objects of the day.
Yet how much nobler, more exhilarating, and purer would be the
"What hast thou done that's worth the doing,
And what pursued that's worth pursuing?
What sought thou knew'st that thou shouldst shun,
What done thou shouldst have left undone?"
But, if charity begin at home, it must not end there; and, while
A noble Catholic writer, in the true sense as well as by name a
While reading a notice of a successful attempt to have musical
prayers--then ALL shall soon be well.
dinners; Christmas and new year's days, to making presents and
heavenly truth, as intercessors to obtain for their votaries the
temporal gifts they craved.
impressive and touching accessories.
shop-windows, to share the joys of Christmas eve?
life,--pervaded the conduct of children there!
communicates his woes to his friends of the niche, and the Virgin
One time, when he had given away his coat to a poor child, he got
In earlier days, the little saints thought they best imitated the
We have hinted what sort of Christmas box we would wish for the
demanded of him such a career.
Some singular ways she had, which, when new, charmed, but, after
sometimes amusing, but so often provoking nonconformist.
From this Mariana rose an altered being. She made no reply to the
Mariana, born for love, now hated all the world.
The change, however, which these feelings made in her conduct and
repulsive; I felt myself scorned, and became very unhappy.
Meanwhile, a new revolution had taken place in the mind of the
expected to impart to any one."
Her return to her native climate seconded the effects of inward
wretched with him, but I cannot live without him.
"felt
The agonizing sense
Of seeing love from passion melt
Into indifference;
The fearful shame, that, day by day,
Burns onward, still to burn,
To have thrown her precious heart away,
And met this black return,"
character, she played her part ill there. The sort of talent and
"Whom men love not, but yet regret;"
Opens her sweet white arms, and whispers, Peace;
Come, say thy sorrows in this bosom! This
Will never close against thee, and my heart,
Though cold, cannot be colder much than man's."
"I wish I were where Helen lies."
A lover in the times of old,
Thus vents his grief in lonely sighs,
And hot tears from a bosom cold.
But, mourner for thy martyred love,
Couldst thou but know what hearts must feel.
Where no sweet recollections move,
Whose tears a desert fount reveal!
When "in thy arms bird Helen fell,"
She died, sad man, she died for thee;
Nor could the films of death dispel
Her loving eye's sweet radiancy.
Thou wert beloved, and she had loved,
Till death alone the whole could tell;
Death every shade of doubt removed,
And steeped the star in its cold well.
On some fond breast the parting soul
Relies--earth has no more to give;
Who wholly loves has known the whole;
The wholly loved doth truly live.
But some, sad outcasts from this prize,
Do wither to a lonely grave;
All hearts their hidden love despise,
And leave them to the whelming wave.
They heart to heart have never pressed,
Nor hands in holy pledge have given,
By father's love were ne'er caressed,
Nor in a mother's eye saw heaven.
A flowerless and fruitless tree,
A dried-up stream, a mateless bird,
They live, yet never living be,
They die, their music all unheard.
I wish I were where Helen lies,
For there I could not be alone;
But now, when this dull body dies,
The spirit still will make its moan.
Love passed me by, nor touched my brow;
Life would not yield one perfect boon;
And all too late it calls me now--
O, all too late, and all too soon.
If thou couldst the dark riddle read
Which leaves this dart within my breast,
Then might I think thou lov'st indeed,
Then were the whole to thee confest.
Father, they will not take me home;
To the poor child no heart is free;
In sleet and snow all night I roam;
Father, was this decreed by thee?
I will not try another door,
To seek what I have never found;
Now, till the very last is o'er,
Upon the earth I'll wander round.
I will not hear the treacherous call
That bids me stay and rest a while,
For I have found that, one and all,
They seek me for a prey and spoil.
They are not bad; I know it well;
I know they know not what they do;
They are the tools of the dread spell
Which the lost lover must pursue.
In temples sometimes she may rest,
In lonely groves, away from men,
There bend the head, by heats distressed,
Nor be by blows awoke again.
Nature is kind, and God is kind;
And, if she had not had a heart,
Only that great discerning mind,
She might have acted well her part.
But O this thirst, that nought can fill,
Save those unfounden waters free!
The angel of my life must still
And soothe me in eternity!
sufficiently great soul to prize them.
Van Artevelde's Elena, though in her individual nature unlike my
imperishable, the infinite, the nature of things. Were reason
"Faith conquers in no easy war;
By toil alone the prize is won;
The grape dissolves not in the cup--
Wine from the crushing press must run;
And would a spirit heavenward go,
A heart must break in death below."
goodness,--that is to say, in God,--the earthquake-defying,
"Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath
The house has in it scarcely any thing. It is a true Lazarus
This statement we make in appealing to the poor, though they are,
transferred them into a thoughtful, sympathetic, and beneficent
Cities of proud hotels,
Houses of rich and great,
A stack of smoking chimneys,
A roof of frozen slate!
It cannot conquer folly,
Time, and space, conquering steam,
And the light, outspeeding telegraph,
Bears nothing on its beam.
The politics are base,
The letters do not cheer,
And 'tis far in the deeps of history,
The voice that speaketh clear.
Trade and the streets insnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn,
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.
Yet there in the parlor sits
Some figure of noble guise,
Our angel in a stranger's form,
Or woman's pleading eyes.
Or only a flashing sunbeam
In at the window pane,
Or music pours on mortals
Its beautiful disdain.
"divinely-intending" itself to the task, or all will become worse
instance,--joins the commercial world.
He is now having one of those fine houses built, and, as in other
"A man's a MAN for a' that;"--
"Honor in the king the wisdom of his service,
Honor in the serf the fidelity of his service,"--
American aristocracy.
extempore dramas, arrangement of tableaux, little concerts or
refreshments well prepared, as indeed it was a matter of duty and
The foregoing sketch of the Rich Man, seems to require this
improvement, or of benefiting those they love or pity.
I have heard those possessed of rhetoric and imaginative tendency
"are but the guinea's stamp;
The man's the gold;"--
take his stand on his claims as a human being, made in God's own
advantages.
"Who sweeps a room, as for Thy sake
Makes that and th' action clean."
universal.
enlightened European can fail to prize the sort of beauty they do
The poet had retired from the social circle. Its mirth was to his
earth--intoxicating.
'... trees which are still
As the shades of trees below,
When they sleep on the lonely hill,
In the summer moonlight glow.'
"'What' said I, 'alone! alone in Eden?'
She vanished.
"Severe in youthful beauty."
dispute."
At this moment arose a hubbub, and such a clamor of "dangerous
"Life's best joys are nearest us,
Lie close about our feet."
benefits, but with an open eye and open heart, ready to cheer the
It was an occasion of peculiar interest, such as we have not had
defence, the world has laughed and scoffed at the act of a people
thankful--and we are so.
I was riding on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, musing on an old
blossoms. My wish had been expressed by another.
'O, that I were an orange tree,
That busy plant!
Then should I ever laden he,
And never want
Some fruit for him that dresseth me.'
"It is," I replied, "that I have at last, through privation, been
priestess, and bide thy time in the magnolia.'
We must confess this circumstance is to us quite destructive of
reverence and value for these buildings.
This discourse, though it discloses formal and external views of
augmenting ratio. Even in country places, where the population is
expensive for any but people of fortune, and from which their
Then he who looks at all at the working of the grand principle of
I gave the world the fruit of earlier hours:
O Solitude! reward me with some flowers;
Or if their odorous bloom thou dost deny,
Rain down some meteors from the winter sky!
_Poesy._--The expression of the sublime and beautiful, whether in
_The Crisis with Goethe._--I have thought much whether Goethe did
disappointment, and untoward outward circumstance.
"They are of no use."
The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend,
Freedom is but a means to gain an end.
Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine
Be consecrate to thought still more divine.
The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw
Is liberty to comprehend the law.
Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame,
Comprising means and end in Truth's great name.
The long-anticipated morning dawns,
Clear, hopeful, joyous-eyed, and pure of breath.
The dogstar is exhausted of its rage,
And copious showers have cooled the feverish air,
The mighty engine pants--away, away!
And, see! they come! a motley, smiling group--
The stately matron with her tempered grace,
Her earnest eye, and kind though meaning smile,
Her words of wisdom and her words of mirth.
Her counsel firm and generous sympathy;
The happy pair whose hearts so full, yet ever
Dilating to the scene, refuse that bliss
Which excludes the whole or blunts the sense of beauty.
Next two fair maidens in gradation meet,
The one of gentle mien and soft dove-eyes;
Like water she, that yielding and combining,
Yet most pure element in the social cup:
The other with bright glance and damask cheek,
You need not deem concealment there was preying
To mar the healthful promise of the spring.
Another dame was there, of graver look,
And heart of slower beat; yet in its depths
Not irresponsive to the soul of things,
Nor cold when charmed by those who knew its pass-word.
These ladies had a knight from foreign clime,
Who from the banks of the dark-rolling Danube,
Or somewhere thereabouts, had come, a pilgrim,
To worship at the shrine of Liberty,
And after, made his home in her loved realm,
Content to call it fatherland where'er
The streams bear freemen and the skies smile on them;
A courteous knight he was, of merry mood,
Expert to wing the lagging hour with jest,
Or tale of strange romance or comic song.
And there was one I must not call a page,
Although too young yet to have won his spurs;
Yet there was promise in his laughing eye,
That in due time he'd prove no carpet knight;
Now, bright companion on a summer sea,
With winged words of gay or tasteful thought,
He was fit clasp to this our social chain.
And now, the swift car loosened on its way,
O'er hill and dale we fly with rapid lightness,
While each tongue celebrates the power of steam;
O, how delightful 'tis to go so fast!
No time to muse, no chance to gaze on nature!
'Tis bliss indeed if "to think be to groan!"
The genius of the time soon shifts the scene:
No longer whirled over our kindred clods,
We, with as strong an impulse, cleave the waters.
Now doth our chain a while untwine its links,
And some rebound from a three hours' communion
To mingle with less favored fellow-men;
One careless turns the leaves of some new volume;
The leaves of Nature's book are too gigantic,
Too vast the characters for patient study,
Till sunset lures us with majestic power
To cast one look of love on that bright eye,
Which, for so many hours, has beamed on us.
The silver lamp is lit in the blue dome,
Nature begins her hymn of evening breezes,
And myriad sparks, thronging to kiss the wave,
Touch even the steamboat's clumsy hulk with beauty.
Then, once more drawn together, cheerful talk
Casts to the hours a store of gentle gifts,
Which memory receives from these bright minds
And careful garners them for duller days.
The morning greets us not with her late smile;
Now chilling damp falls heavy on our hopes,
And leaden hues tarnish each sighed-for scene.
Yet not on coloring, majestic Hudson,
Depends the genius of thy stream, whose wand
Has piled thy banks on high, and given them forms
Which have for taste an impulse yet unknown.
Though Beauty dwells here, she reigns not a queen,
An humble handmaid now to the Sublime.
The mind dilates to receive the idea of strength,
And tasks its elements for congenial forms
To create anew within those mighty piles,
Those "bulwarks of the world," which, time-defying
And thunder-mocking, lift their lofty brows.
Now at the river's bend we pause a while,
And sun and cloud combine their wealth to greet us.
Oft shall the fair scenes of West Point return
Upon the mind, in its still picture-hours,
Its cloud-capped mountains with their varying hues,
The soft seclusion of its wooded paths,
And the alluring hopefulness of view
Along the river from its crisis-point.
Unlike the currents of our human lives
When they approach their long-sought ocean-mother,--
This stream is noblest onward to its close,
More tame and grave when near its inland founts.
Now onward, onward, till the whole be known;
The heart, though swollen with these new sensations,
With no less vital throb beats on for more,
And rather we'd shake hands with disappointment
Than wait and lean on sober expectation.
The Highlands now are passed, and Hyde Park flies,--
Catskill salutes us--a far fairy-land.
O mountains, how do ye delude our hearts!
Let but the eye look down upon a valley,
We feel our limitations, and are calm;
But place blue mountains in the distant view,
And the soul labors with the Titan hope
To ascend the shrouded tops, and scale the heavens.
O, pause not in the murky, old Dutch city,
But, hasting onward with a renewed steam power,
Bestow your hours upon the beauteous Mohawk;
And here we grieve to lose our courteous knight,
Just at the opening of so rich a page.
How shall I praise thee, Mohawk? How portray
The love, the joyousness, felt in thy presence?
When each new step along the silvery tide
Added new gems of beauty to our thought,
And lapped the soul in an Elysium
Of verdure and of grace, fed by thy sweetness.
O, how gay Fancy smiled, and deemed it home!
This is, thought she, the river of my garden;
These are the graceful trees that form its bowers,
And these the meads where I have sighed to roam.
I now may fold my wearied wings in peace.
If this faint reflex from those days so bright
May aught of sympathy among you gain,
I shall not think these verses penned in vain;
Though they tell nothing of the fancies light,
The kindly deeds, rich thoughts, and various grace
With which you knew to make the hours so fair,
That neither grief nor sickness could efface
From memory's tablet what you printed there.
Could I have breathed your spirit through these lines,
They might have charms to win a critic's smile,
Or the cold worldling of a sigh beguile.
I could but from my being bring one tone;
May it arouse the sweetness of your own.
I saw ye first, arrayed in mist and cloud;
No cheerful lights softened your aspect bold;
A sullen gray, or green, more grave and cold,
The varied beauties of the scene enshroud.
Yet not the less, O Hudson! calm and proud,
Did I receive the impress of that hour
Which showed thee to me, emblem of that power
Of high resolve, to which even rocks have bowed;
Thou wouldst not deign thy course to turn aside,
And seek some smiling valley's welcome warm,
But through the mountain's very heart, thy pride
Has been, thy channel and thy banks to form.
Not even the "bulwarks of the world" could bar
The inland fount from joining ocean's war!
How fair at distance shone yon silvery blue,
O stately mountain-tops, charming the mind
To dream of pleasures which she there may find,
Where from the eagle's height she earth can view!
Nor are those disappointments which ensue;
For though, while eyeing what beneath us lay,
Almost we shunned to think of yesterday,
As wonderingly our looks its course pursue.
Dwarfed to a point the joys of many hours,
The river on whose bosom we were borne
Seems but a thread, of pride and beauty shorn;
Its banks, its shadowy groves, like beds of flowers,
Wave their diminished heads;--yet would we sigh,
Since all this loss shows us more near the sky?
Could I my words with gentlest grace imbue,
Which the flute's breath, or harp's clear tones, can bless,
I then might hope the feelings to express,
And with new life the happy day endue,
Thou gav'st, O vale, than Tempe's self more fair!
With thy romantic stream and emerald isles,
Touched by an April mood of tears and smiles
Which stole on matron August unaware;
The meads with all the spring's first freshness green,
The trees with summer's thickest garlands crowned,
And each so elegant, that fairy queen
All day might wander ere she chose her round;
No blemish on the sense of beauty broke,
But the whole scene one ecstasy awoke.
The sun, impatient, o'er the lofty trees
Struggles to illume as fair a sight as lies
Beneath the light of his joy-loving eyes,
Which all the forms of energy must please;
A solemn shadow falls in pillared form,
Made by yon ledge, which noontide scarcely shows,
Upon the amber radiance, soft and warm,
Where through the cleft the eager torrent flows.
Would you the genius of the place enjoy,
In all the charms contrast and color give?
Your eye and taste you now may best employ,
For this the hour when minor beauties live;
Scan ye the details as the sun rides high,
For with the morn these sparkling glories fly.
A calmer grace o'er these still hours presides;
Now is the time to see the might of form;
The heavy masses of the buttressed sides,
The stately steps o'er which the waters storm;
Where, 'neath the mill, the stream so gently glides,
You feel the deep seclusion of the scene,
And now begin to comprehend what mean
The beauty and the power this chasm hides.
From the green forest's depths the portent springs,
But from those quiet shades bounding away,
Lays bare its being to the light of day,
Though on the rock's cold breast its love it flings.
Yet can all sympathy such courage miss?
Answer, ye trees! who bend the waves to kiss.
I deemed the inmost sense my soul had blessed
Which in the poem of thy being dwells,
And gives such store for thought's most sacred cells;
And yet a higher joy was now confessed.
With what a holiness did night invest
The eager impulse of impetuous life,
And hymn-like meanings clothed the waters' strife!
With what a solemn peace the moon did rest
Upon the white crest of the waterfall;
The haughty guardian banks, by the deep shade,
In almost double height are now displayed.
Depth, height, speak things which awe, but not appall.
From elemental powers this voice has come,
And God's love answers from the azure dome.
In times of old, as we are told,
When men more child-like at the feet
Of Jesus sat, than now,
A chivalry was known more bold
Than ours, and yet of stricter vow,
Of worship more complete.
Knights of the Rosy Cross, they bore
Its weight within the heart, but wore
Without, devotion's sign in glistening ruby bright;
The gall and vinegar they drank alone,
But to the world at large would only own
The wine of faith, sparkling with rosy light.
They knew the secret of the sacred oil
Which, poured upon the prophet's head,
Could keep him wise and pure for aye.
Apart from all that might distract or soil,
With this their lamps they fed.
Which burn in their sepulchral shrines unfading night and day.
The pass-word now is lost,
To that initiation full and free;
Daily we pay the cost
Of our slow schooling for divine degree.
We know no means to feed an undying lamp;
Our lights go out in every wind or damp.
We wear the cross of ebony and gold,
Upon a dark background a form of light,
A heavenly hope upon a bosom cold,
A starry promise in a frequent night;
The dying lamp must often trim again,
For we are conscious, thoughtful, striving men.
Yet be we faithful to this present trust,
Clasp to a heart resigned the fatal must;
Though deepest dark our efforts should enfold,
Unwearied mine to find the vein of gold;
Forget not oft to lift the hope on high;
The rosy dawn again shall fill the sky.
And by that lovely light, all truth-revealed,
The cherished forms which sad distrust concealed,
Transfigured, yet the same, will round us stand,
The kindred angels of a faithful band;
Ruby and ebon cross both cast aside,
No lamp is needed, for the night has died.
Happy be those who seek that distant day,
With feet that from the appointed way
Could never stray;
Yet happy too be those who more and more,
As gleams the beacon of that only shore,
Strive at the laboring oar.
Be to the best thou knowest ever true,
Is all the creed;
Then, be thy talisman of rosy hue,
Or fenced with thorns that wearing thou must bleed,
Or gentle pledge of Love's prophetic view,
The faithful steps it will securely lead.
Happy are all who reach that shore,
And bathe in heavenly day,
Happiest are those who high the banner bore,
To marshal others on the way;
Or waited for them, fainting and way-worn,
By burdens overborne.
In a fair garden of a distant land,
Where autumn skies the softest blue outspread,
A lovely crimson dahlia reared her head,
To drink the lustre of the season's prime;
And drink she did, until her cup o'erflowed
With ruby redder than the sunset cloud.
Near to her root she saw the fairest rose
That ever oped her soul to sun and wind.
And still the more her sweets she did disclose,
The more her queenly heart of sweets did find,
Not only for her worshipper the wind,
But for bee, nightingale, and butterfly,
Who would with ceaseless wing about her ply,
Nor ever cease to seek what found they still would find.
Upon the other side, nearer the ground,
A paler floweret on a slender stem,
That cast so exquisite a fragrance round,
As seemed the minute blossom to contemn,
Seeking an ampler urn to hold its sweetness,
And in a statelier shape to find completeness.
Who could refuse to hear that keenest voice,
Although it did not bid the heart rejoice,
And though the nightingale had just begun
His hymn; the evening breeze begun to woo,
When through the charming of the evening dew,
The floweret did its secret soul disclose?
By that revealing touched, the queenly rose
Forgot them both, a deeper joy to hope
And heed the love-note of the heliotrope.
Beloved friends! Earth hath known brighter days
Than ours; we vainly strive to hide this truth;
Would history be silent in their praise,
The very stones tell of man's glorious youth,
In heavenly forms on which we crowd to gaze;
But that high-favored race hath sunk in night;
The day is ours--the living still have sight.
Friends of my youth! In happier climes than ours,
As some far-wandering countrymen declare,
The air is perfume; at each step spring flowers.
Nature has not been bounteous to our prayer;
But art dwells here, with her creative powers,
Laurel and myrtle shun our winter snows,
But with the cheerful vine we wreathe our brows.
Though of more pomp and wealth the Briton boast,
Who holds four worlds in tribute to his pride,--
Although from farthest India's glowing coast
Come gems of gold to burden Thames' dull tide,
And _bring_ each luxury that Heaven denied,--
Not in the torrent, but the still, calm brook,
Delights Apollo at himself to look.
More nobly lodged than we in northern halls,
At Angelo's gate the Roman beggar dwells;
Girt by the Eternal City's honored walls,
Each column some soul-stiring story tells;
While on the earth a second heaven dwells,
Where Michael's spirit to St. Peter calls;
Yet all this splendor only decks a tomb;
For us fresh flowers from every green hour bloom
And while we live obscure, may others' names
Through Rumor's trump be given to the wind;
New forms of ancient glories, ancient shames,
For nothing new the searching sun can find,
As pass the motley groups of human kind;
All other living things grow old and die--
Fancy alone has immortality.
Come, breath of dawn! and o'er my temples play;
Rouse to the draught of life the wearied sense;
Fly, sleep! with thy sad phantoms, far away;
Let the glad light scare those pale troublous shadows hence!
I rise, and leaning from my casement high,
Feel from the morning twilight a delight;
Once more youth's portion, hope, lights up my eye,
And for a moment I forget the sorrows of the night.
O glorious morn! how great is yet thy power!
Yet how unlike to that which once I knew,
When, plumed with glittering thoughts, my soul would soar,
And pleasures visited my heart like daily dew!
Gone is life's primal freshness all too soon;
For me the dream is vanished ere my time;
I feel the heat and weariness of noon,
And long in night's cool shadows to recline.
We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,
Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,
And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought
Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone--
A higher charm than modern culture won,
With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,
Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore.
A many-colored light flows from our sun;
Art, 'neath its beams, a motley thread has spun;
The prison modifies the perfect day;
But thou hast known such mediums to shun,
And cast once more on life a pure white ray.
Absorbed in the creations of thy mind,
Forgetting daily self, my truest self I find.
Hark! the church-going bell! But through the air
The feathery missiles of old Winter hurled,
Offend the brow of mild-approaching Spring;
She shuts her soft blue eyes, and turns away.
Sweet is the time passed in the house of prayer,
When, met with many of this fire-fraught clay,
We, on this day,--the tribe of ills forgot,
Wherewith, ungentle, we afflict each other,--
Assemble in the temple of our God,
And use our breath to worship Him who gave it.
What though no gorgeous relics of old days,
The gifts of humbled kings and suppliant warriors,
Deck the fair shrine, or cluster round the pillars;
No stately windows decked with various hues,
No blazon of dead saints repel the sun;
Though no cloud-courting dome or sculptured frieze
Excite the fancy and allure the taste,
No fragrant censor steep the sense in luxury,
No lofty chant swell on the vanquished soul.
Ours is the faith of Reason; to the earth
We leave the senses who interpret her;
The heaven-born only should commune with Heaven,
The immaterial with the infinite.
Calmly we wait in solemn expectation.
He rises in the desk--that earnest man;
No priestly terrors flashing from his eye,
No mitre towers above the throne of thought,
No pomp and circumstance wait on his breath.
He speaks--we hear; and man to man we judge.
Has he the spell to touch the founts of feeling,
To kindle in the mind a pure ambition,
Or soothe the aching heart with heavenly balm,
To guide the timid and refresh the weary,
Appall the wicked and abash the proud?
He is the man of God. Our hearts confess him.
He needs no homage paid in servile forms,
No worldly state, to give him dignity:
To his own heart the blessing will return,
And all his days blossom with love divine.
There is a blessing in the Sabbath woods,
There is a holiness in the blue skies;
The summer-murmurs to those calm blue skies
Preach ceaselessly. The universe is love--
And this disjointed fragment of a world
Must, by its spirit, man, be harmonized,
Tuned to concordance with the spheral strain,
Till thought be like those skies, deeds like those breezes,
As clear, as bright, as pure, as musical,
And all things have one text of truth and beauty.
There is a blessing in a day like this,
When sky and earth are talking busily;
The clouds give back the riches they received,
And for their graceful shapes return they fulness;
While in the inmost shrine, the life of life,
The soul within the soul, the consciousness
Whom I can only _name_, counting her wealth,
Still makes it more, still fills the golden bowl
Which never shall be broken, strengthens still
The silver cord which binds the whole to Heaven.
O that such hours must pass away! yet oft
Such will recur, and memories of this
Come to enhance their sweetness. And again
I say, great is the blessing of that hour
When the soul, turning from without, begins
To register her treasures, the bright thoughts,
The lovely hopes, the ethereal desires,
Which she has garnered in past Sabbath hours.
Within her halls the preacher's voice still sounds,
Though he be dead or distant far. The band
Of friends who with us listened to his word,
With throngs around of linked associations,
Are there; the little stream, long left behind,
Is murmuring still; the woods as musical;
The skies how blue, the whole how eloquent
With "life of life and life's most secret joy"!
Remembrancer of joys long passed away,
Relic from which, as yet, I cannot part,
O, hast thou power to lengthen love's short day?
Stronger thy chain than that which bound the heart?
Lili, I fly--yet still thy fetters press me
In distant valley, or far lonely wood;
Still will a struggling sigh of pain confess thee
The mistress of my soul in every mood.
The bird may burst the silken chain which bound him,
Flying to the green home, which fits him best;
But, O, he bears the prisoner's badge around him,
Still by the piece about his neck distressed.
He ne'er can breathe his free, wild notes again;
They're stifled by the pressure of his chain.
These pallid blossoms thou wilt not disdain,
The harbingers of thy approach to me,
Which grew and bloomed despite the cold and rain,
To tell of summer and futurity.
It was not given them to tell the soul,
And lure the nightingale by fragrant breath:
These slender stems and roots brook no control,
And in the garden life would find but death.
The rock which is their cradle and their home
Must also be their monument and tomb;
Yet has my floweret's life a charm more rare
Than those admiring crowds esteem so fair,
Self-nurtured, self-sustaining, self-approved:
Not even by the forest trees beloved,
As are her sisters of the Spring, she dies,--
Nor to the guardian stars lifts up her eyes,
But droops her graceful head upon her breast,
Nor asks the wild bird's requiem for her rest,
By her own heart upheld, by her own soul possessed.
Learn of the clematis domestic love,
Religious beauty in the lily see;
Learn from the rose how rapture's pulses move,
Learn from the heliotrope fidelity.
From autumn flowers let hope and faith be known;
Learn from the columbine to live alone,
To deck whatever spot the Fates provide
With graces worthy of the garden's pride,
And to deserve each gift that is denied.
These are the shades of the departed flowers,
My lines faint shadows of some beauteous hours,
Whereto the soul the highest thoughts have spoken,
And brightest hopes from frequent twilight broken.
Preserve them for my sake. In other years,
When life has answered to your hopes or fears,
When the web is well woven, and you try
Your wings, whether as moth or butterfly,
If, as I pray, the fairest lot be thine,
Yet value still the faded columbine.
But look not on her if thy earnest eye,
Be filled by works of art or poesy;
Bring not the hermit where, in long array,
Triumphs of genius gild the purple day;
Let her not hear the lyre's proud voice arise,
To tell, "still lives the song though Regnor dies;"
Let her not hear the lute's soft-rising swell
Declare she never lived who lived so well;
But from the anvil's clang, and joiner's screw,
The busy streets where men dull crafts pursue,
From weary cares and from tumultuous joys,
From aimless bustle and from voiceless noise,
If there thy plans should be, turn here thine eye,--
Open the casket of thy memory;
Give to thy friend the gentlest, holiest sigh.
"Composed as I stood sentinel on the banks of the Elbe."
Fatherland! Thou call'st the singer
In the blissful glow of day;
He no more can musing linger,
While thou dost mourn a tyrant's sway.
Love and poesy forsaking,
From friendship's magic circle breaking,
The keenest pangs he could endure
Thy peace to insure.
Yet sometimes tears must dim his eyes,
As, on the melodious bridge of song,
The shadows of past joys arise,
And in mild beauty round him throng.
In vain, o'er life, that early beam
Such radiance shed;--the impetuous stream
Of strife has seized him, onward borne,
While left behind his loved ones mourn.
Here in the crowd must he complain,
Nor find a fit employ?
Give him poetic place again,
Or the quick throb of warlike joy.
The wonted inspiration give;
Thus languidly he cannot live;
Love's accents are no longer near;
Let him the trumpet hear.
Where is the cannon's thunder?
The clashing cymbals, where?
While foreign foes our cities plunder,
Can we not hasten there?
I can no longer watch this stream;
_In prose_ I die! O source of flame!
O poesy! for which I glow,--
A nobler death thou shouldst bestow!
Mercury has cast aside
The signs of intellectual pride,
Freely offers thee the soul:
Art thou noble to receive?
Canst thou give or take the whole,
Nobly promise, and believe?
Then thou wholly human art,
A spotless, radiant, ruby heart,
And the golden chain of love
Has bound thee to the realm above.
If there be one small, mean doubt,
One serpent thought that fled not out,
Take instead the serpent-rod;
Thou art neither man nor God.
Guard thee from the powers of evil;
Who cannot trust, vows to the devil.
Walk thy slow and spell-bound way;
Keep on thy mask, or shun the day--
Let go my hand upon the way.
"Why wilt thou not thy griefs forget?
Why must thine eyes with tears be wet?
When all things round thee sweetly smile,
Canst thou not, too, be glad a while?"
"Hither I come to weep alone;
The grief I feel is all mine own;
Dearer than smiles these tears to me;
Smile you--I ask no sympathy!"
"Repel not thus affection's voice!
While thou art sad, can we rejoice?
To friendly hearts impart thy woe;
Perhaps we may some healing know."
"Too gay your hearts to feel like mine,
Or such a sorrow to divine;
Nought have I lost I e'er possessed;
I mourn that I cannot be blessed."
"What idle, morbid feelings these!
Can you not win what prize you please?
Youth, with a genius rich as yours,
All bliss the world can give insures."
"Ah, too high-placed is my desire!
The star to which my hopes aspire
Shines all too far--I sigh in vain,
Yet cannot stoop to earth again."
"Waste not so foolishly thy prime;
If to the stars thou canst not climb,
Their gentle beams thy loving eye
Every clear night will gratify."
"Do I not know it? Even now
I wait the sun's departing glow,
That I may watch them. Meanwhile ye
Enjoy the day--'tis nought to me!"
Though many at my feet have bowed,
And asked my love through pain and pleasure,
Fate never yet the youth has showed
Meet to receive so great a treasure.
Although sometimes my heart, deceived,
Would love because it sighed _to feel_,
Yet soon I changed, and sometimes grieved
Because my fancied wound would heal.
The clouds are marshalling across the sky,
Leaving their deepest tints upon yon range
Of soul-alluring hills. The breeze comes softly,
Laden with tribute that a hundred orchards
Now in their fullest blossom send, in thanks
For this refreshing shower. The birds pour forth
In heightened melody the notes of praise
They had suspended while God's voice was speaking,
And his eye flashing down upon his world.
I sigh, half-charmed, half-pained. My sense is living,
And, taking in this freshened beauty, tells
Its pleasure to the mind. The mind replies,
And strives to wake the heart in turn, repeating
Poetic sentiments from many a record
Which other souls have left, when stirred and satisfied
By scenes as fair, as fragrant. But the heart
Sends back a hollow echo to the call
Of outward things,--and its once bright companion,
Who erst would have been answered by a stream
Of life-fraught treasures, thankful to be summoned,--
Can now rouse nothing better than this echo;
Unmeaning voice, which mocks their softened accents.
Content thee, beautiful world! and hush, still busy mind!
My heart hath sealed its fountains. To the things
Of Time they shall be oped no more. Too long,
Too often were they poured forth: part have sunk
Into the desert; part profaned and swollen
By bitter waters, mixed by those who feigned
They asked them for refreshment, which, turned back,
Have broken and o'erflowed their former urns.
So when ye talk of _pleasure_, lonely world,
And busy mind, ye ne'er again shall move me
To answer ye, though still your calls have power
To jar me through, and cause dull aching _here_.
Not so the voice which hailed me from the depths
Of yon dark-bosomed cloud, now vanishing
Before the sun ye greet. It touched my centre,
The voice of the Eternal, calling me
To feel his other worlds; to feel that if
I could deserve a home, I still might find it
In other spheres,--and bade me not despair,
Though "want of harmony" and "aching void"
Are terms invented by the men of this,
Which I may not forget.
In former times
I loved to see the lightnings flash athwart
The stooping heavens; I loved to hear the thunder
Call to the seas and mountains; for I thought
'Tis thus man's flashing fancy doth enkindle
The firmament of mind; 'tis thus his eloquence
Calls unto the soul's depths and heights; and still
I deified the creature, nor remembered
The Creator in his works.
Ah now how different!
The proud delight of that keen sympathy
Is gone; no longer riding on the wave,
But whelmed beneath it: my own plans and works,
Or, as the Scriptures phrase it, my "_inventions_"
No longer interpose 'twixt me and Heaven.
To-day, for the first time, I felt the Deity,
And uttered prayer on hearing thunder. This
Must be thy will,--for finer, higher spirits
Have gone through this same process,--yet I think
There was religion in that strong delight,
Those sounds, those thoughts of power imparted. True,
I did not say, "He is the Lord thy God,"
But I had feeling of his essence. But
"'Twas pride by which the angels fell." So be it!
But O, might I but see a little onward!
Father, I cannot be a spirit of power;
May I be active as a spirit of love,
Since thou hast ta'en me from that path which Nature
Seemed to appoint, O, deign to ope another,
Where I may walk with thought and hope assured;
"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!"
Had I but faith like that which fired Novalis,
I too could bear that the heart "fall in ashes,"
While the freed spirit rises from beneath them,
With heavenward-look, and Phoenix-plumes upsoaring!
Poet of Nature, gentlest of the wise,
Most airy of the fanciful, most keen
Of satirists, thy thoughts, like butterflies,
Still near the sweetest scented flowers have been:
With Titian's colors, thou canst sunset paint;
With Raphael's dignity, celestial love;
With Hogarth's pencil, each deceit and feint
Of meanness and hypocrisy reprove;
Canst to Devotion's highest flight sublime
Exalt the mind; by tenderest pathos' art
Dissolve in purifying tears the heart,
Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime;
The fond illusions of the youth and maid,
At which so many world-formed sages sneer,
When by thy altar-lighted torch displayed,
Our natural religion must appear.
All things in thee tend to one polar star;
Magnetic all thy influences are;
A labyrinth; a flowery wilderness.
Some in thy "slip-boxes" and honeymoons
Complain of--want of order, I confess,
But not of system in its highest sense.
Who asks a guiding clew through this wide mind,
In love of nature such will surely find,
In tropic climes, live like the tropic bird,
Whene'er a spice-fraught grove may tempt thy stray;
Nor be by cares of colder climes disturbed:
No frost the summer's bloom shall drive away;
Nature's wide temple and the azure dome
Have plan enough for the free spirit's home.
With equal sweetness the commissioned hours
Shed light and dew upon both weeds and flowers.
The weeds unthankful raise their vile heads high,
Flaunting back insult to the gracious sky;
While the dear flowers, with fond humility,
Uplift the eyelids of a starry eye
In speechless homage, and, from grateful hearts,
Perfume that homage all around imparts.
When leaves were falling thickly in the pale November day,
A bird dropped here this feather upon her pensive way.
Another bird has found it in the snow-chilled April day;
It brings to him the music of all her summer's lay.
Thus sweet birds, though unmated, do never sing in vain;
The lonely notes they utter to free them from their pain,
Caught up by the echoes, ring through the blue dome,
And by good spirits guided pierce to some gentle home.
The pencil moved prophetic: together now men read
In the fair book of nature, and find the hope they need.
The wreath woven by the river is by the seaside worn,
And one of fate's best arrows to its due mark is borne.
Thy other book to fill, more than eight years
Have paid chance tribute of their smiles and tears;
Many bright strokes portray the varied scene--
Wild sports, sweet ties the days of toil between;
And those related both in mind and blood,
The wise, the true, the lovely, and the good,
Have left their impress here; nor such alone,
But those chance toys that lively feelings own
Weave their gay flourishes 'mid lines sincere,
As 'mid the shadowy thickets bound the deer
Accept a volume where the coming time
Will join, I hope, much reason with the rhyme,
And that the stair his steady feet ascend
May prove a Jacob's ladder to my friend,
Peopled with angel-shapes of promise bright,
And ending only in the realms of light.
May purity be stamped upon his brow,
Yet leave the manly footsteps free as now;
May generous love glow in his inmost heart,
Truth to its utterance lend the only art;
While more a man, may he be more the child;
More thoughtful be, but the more sweet and mild;
May growing wisdom, mixed with sprightly cheer,
Bless his own breast and those which hold him dear;
Each act be worthy of his worthiest aim,
And love of goodness keep him free from blame,
Without a need straight rules for life to frame.
Good Spirit, teach him what he ought to be,
Best to fulfil his proper destiny,
To serve himself, his fellow-men, and thee.
These pages then will show how Nature wild
Accepts her Master, cherishes her child;
And many flowers, ere eight years more are done,
Shall bless and blossom in the western sun.
A new-fledged eaglet spread his wings
To seek for prey;
Then flew the huntsman's dart and cut
The right wing's sinewy strength away.
Headlong he falls into a myrtle grove;
There three days long devoured his grief,
And writhed in pain
Three long, long nights, three days as weary.
At length he feels
The all-healing power
Of Nature's balsam.
Forth from the shady bush he creeps,
And tries his wing; but, ah!
The power to soar is gone!
He scarce can lift himself
Along the ground
In search of food to keep mere life awake;
Then rests, deep mourning,
On a low rock by the brook;
He looks up to the oak tree's top,
Far up to heaven,
And a tear glistens in his haughty eye.
Just then come by a pair of fondling doves,
Playfully rustling through the grove.
Cooing and toying, they go tripping
Over golden sand and brook;
And, turning here and there,
Their rose-tinged eyes descry
The inly-mourning bird.
The dove, with friendly curiosity,
Flutters to the next bush, and looks
With tender sweetness on the wounded king.
"Ah, why so sad?" he cooes;
"Be of good cheer, my friend!
Hast thou not all the means of tranquil bliss
Around thee here?
Canst thou not meet with swelling breast
The last rays of the setting sun
On the brook's mossy brink?
Canst wander 'mid the dewy flowers,
And, from the superfluous wealth
Of the wood-bushes, pluck at will
Wholesome and delicate food,
And at the silvery fountain quench thy thirst?
O friend! the spirit of content
Gives all that we can know of bliss;
And this sweet spirit of content
Finds every where its food."
"O, wise one!" said the eagle, deeper still
Into himself retiring;
"O wisdom, thou speakest as a dove!"
Content in purple lustre clad,
Kingly serene, and golden glad;
No demi hues of sad contrition,
No pallors of enforced submission;
Give me such content as this,
And keep a while the rosy bliss.
Foreseen, forespoken not foredone,--
Ere the race be well begun,
The prescient soul is at the goal,
One little moment binds the whole;
Happy they themselves who call
To risk much, and to conquer all;
Happy are they who many losses,
Sore defeat or frequent crosses,
Though these may the heart dismay,
Cannot the sure faith betray;
Who in beauty bless the Giver;
Seek ocean on the loveliest river;
Or on desert island tossed,
Seeing Heaven, think nought lost.
May thy genius bring to thee
Of this life experience free,
And the earth vine's mysterious cup,
Sweet and bitter yield thee up.
But should the now sparkling bowl
Chance to slip from thy control,
And much of the enchanted wine
Be spilt in sand, as 'twas with mine,
Let blessings lost being consecration,
Change the pledge to a libation.
For the Power to whom we bow
Has given his pledge, that, if not now,
They of pure and steadfast mind,
By faith exalted, truth refined,
Shall hear all music, loud and clear,
Whose first notes they ventured here.
Then fear not thou to wind the horn
Though elf and gnome thy courage scorn;
Ask for the castle's king and queen,
Though rabble rout may come between,
Beat thee, senseless, to the ground,
In the dark beset thee round;
Persist to ask, and they will come.
Seek not for rest a humbler home,
And thou wilt see what few have seen,
The palace home of king and queen.
There are who separate the eternal light
In forms of man and woman, day and night;
They cannot bear that God be essence quite.
Existence is as deep a verity:
Without the dual, where is unity?
And the "I am" cannot forbear to be;
But from its primal nature forced to frame
Mysteries, destinies of various name,
Is forced to give what it has taught to claim.
Thus love must answer to its own unrest;
The bad commands us to expect the best,
And hope of its own prospects is the test.
And dost thou seek to find the one in two?
Only upon the old can build the new;
The symbol which you seek is found in you.
The heart and mind, the wisdom and the will,
The man and woman, must be severed still,
And Christ must reconcile the good and ill.
There are to whom each symbol is a mask;
The life of love is a mysterious task;
They want no answer, for they would not ask.
A single thought transfuses every form;
The sunny day is changed into the storm,
For light is dark, hard soft, and cold is warm.
One presence fills and floods the whole serene;
Nothing can be, nothing has ever been,
Except the one truth that creates the scene.
Does the heart beat,--that is a seeming only;
You cannot be alone, though you are lonely;
The All is neutralized in the One only.
You ask _a_ faith,--they are content with faith;
You ask to have,--but they reply, "IT hath."
There is no end, and there need be no path.
The day wears heavily,--why, then, ignore it;
Peace is the soul's desire,--such thoughts restore it;
The truth thou art,--it needs not to implore it.
_The Presence_ all thy fancies supersedes,
All that is done which thou wouldst seek in deeds,
_The_ wealth obliterates all seeming needs.
Both these are true, and if they are at strife,
The mystery bears the one name of _Life_,
That, slowly spelled, will yet compose the strife.
The men of old say, "Live twelve thousand years,
And see the end of all that here appears,
And Moxen shall absorb thy smiles and tears."
These later men say, "Live this little day.
Believe that human nature is the way,
And know both Son and Father while you pray;
And one in two, in three, and none alone,
Letting you know even as you are known,
Shall make the you and me eternal parts of one."
To me, our destinies seem flower and fruit
Born of an ever-generating root;
The other statement I cannot dispute.
But say that Love and Life eternal seem,
And if eternal ties be but a dream,
What is the meaning of that self-same _seem_?
Your nature craves Eternity for Truth;
Eternity of Love is prayer of youth;
How, without love, would have gone forth your truth?
I do not think we are deceived to grow,
But that the crudest fancy, slightest show,
Covers some separate truth that we may know.
In the one Truth, each separate fact is true;
Eternally in one I many view,
And destinies through destiny pursue.
This is _my_ tendency; but can I say
That this my thought leads the true, only way?
I only know it constant leads, and I obey.
I only know one prayer--"Give me the truth,
Give me that colored whiteness, ancient youth,
Complex and simple, seen in joy and ruth.
Let me not by vain wishes bar my claim,
Nor soothe my hunger by an empty name,
Nor crucify the Son of man by hasty blame.
But in the earth and fire, water and air,
Live earnestly by turns without despair,
Nor seek a home till home be every where!"
Thoughts which come at a call
Are no better than if they came not at all;
Neither flower nor fruit,
Yielding no root
For plant, shrub, or tree.
Thus I have not for thee
One good word to say,
Except that I prize thy gentle heart,
Free from ambition, falsehood, or art,
And thy good mind,
Daily refined,
By pure desire
To fan the heaven-seeking fire:
May it rise higher and higher;
Till in thee
Gentleness finds its dignity,
Life flowing tranquil, pure and free,
A mild, unbroken harmony.
If the same star our fates together bind,
Why are we thus divided, mind from mind?
If the same law one grief to both impart,
How couldst thou grieve a trusting mother's heart?
Our aspiration seeks a common aim;
Why were we tempered of such differing frame?
But 'tis too late to turn this wrong to right;
Too cold, too damp, too deep, has fallen the night.
And yet, the angel of my life replies,
Upon that night a morning star shall rise,
Fairer than that which ruled thy temporal birth,
Undimmed by vapors of the dreamy earth.
It says, that, where a heart thy claim denies,
Genius shall read its secret ere it flies;
The earthly form may vanish from thy side,
Pure love will make thee still the spirit's bride.
And thou, ungentle, yet much loving child,
Whose heart still shows the "untamed haggard wild,"
A heart which justly makes the highest claim,
Too easily is checked by transient blame.
Ere such an orb can ascertain its sphere,
The ordeal must be various and severe;
My prayer attend thee, though the feet may fly;
I hear thy music in the silent sky.
The man of heart and words sincere,
Who truth and justice follows still,
Pursues his way with conscience clear,
Unharmed by earthly care and ill.
His promises he never breaks,
But sacredly to each adheres;
Honor's straight path he ne'er forsakes,
Though danger in the way appears.
He never boasts, will ne'er deceive,
For vanity nor yet for gain;
All that he says you may believe;
For worlds he would not conscience stain.
If he desires what others do,
And they deserve it more than he,
He gives to them what is their due,
Happy in his humility.
Not to his friends alone he's kind,
But his foes too with candor sees;
Not to their good intentions blind,
Though hopeless their dislike t' appease.
His eyes are clear, his hands are pure,
To God it is his constant prayer
That, be he rich or be he poor,
He never may wrong actions dare.
If rich, he to the suffering gives
All he can spare, and thinks it just,
That, since he by God's bounty lives,
He should as steward hold his trust.
If poor, he envies not; he knows
How covetousness corrupts the heart,
Whatever a just God bestows
Receiving as his proper part.
O Father, such a man I'd be;
Like him would act, like him would pray:
Lead me in truth and purity
To win thy peace and see thy day.
Virgin Mother, Mary mild!
It was thine to see the child,
Gift of the Messiah dove,
Pure blossom of ideal love,
Break, upon the "guilty cross,"
The seeming promise of his life;
Of faith, of hope, of love, a loss,
Deepened all thy, bosom's strife,
Brow down-bent, and heart-strings torn,
Fainting, by frail arms upborne.
All those startled figures show,
That they did not apprehend
The thought of Him who there lies low,
On whom those sorrowing eyes they bend.
They do not feel this holiest hour;
Their hearts soar not to read the power,
Which this deepest of distress
Alone could give to save and bless.
Soul of that fair, now ruined form,
Thou who hadst force to bide the storm,
Must again descend to tell
Of thy life the hidden spell;
Though their hearts within them burned,
The flame rose not till he returned.
Just so all our dead ones lie;
Just so call our thoughts on high;
Thus we linger on the earth,
And dully miss death's heavenly birth.
On the boundless plain careering,
By an unseen compass steering,
Wildly flying, reappearing,--
With untamed fire their broad eyes glowing,
In every step a grand pride showing,
Of no servile moment knowing,--
Happy as the trees and flowers,
In their instinct cradled hours,
Happier in fuller powers,--
See the wild herd nobly ranging,
Nature varying, not changing,
Lawful in their lawless ranging.
But hark! what boding crouches near?
On the horizon now appear
Centaur-forms of force and fear.
On their enslaved brethren borne,
With bit and whip of tyrant scorn,
To make new captives, as forlorn.
Wildly snort the astonished throng,
Stamp, and wheel, and fly along,
Those centaur-powers they know are strong.
But the lasso, skilful cast,
Holds one only captive fast,
Youngest, weakest--left the last.
How thou trembledst then, Konick!
Thy full breath came short and thick,
Thy heart to bursting beat so quick;
Thy strange brethren peering round,
By those tyrants held and bound,
Tyrants fell,--whom falls confound!
With rage and pity fill thy heart;
Death shall be thy chosen part,
Ere such slavery tame thy heart.
But strange, unexpected joy!
They seem to mean thee no annoy--
Gallop off both man and boy.
Let the wild horse freely go!
Almost he shames it should be so;
So lightly prized himself to know.
All deception 'tis, O steed!
Ne'er again upon the mead
Shalt thou a free wild horse feed.
The mark of man doth blot thy side,
The fear of man doth dull thy pride,
Thy master soon shall on thee ride.
Thy brethren of the free plain,
Joyful speeding back again,
With proud career and flowing mane,
Find thee branded, left alone,
And their hearts are turned to stone--
They keep thee in their midst alone.
Cruel the intervening years,
Seeming freedom stained by fears,
Till the captor reappears;
Finds thee with thy broken pride.
Amid thy peers still left aside,
Unbeloved and unallied;
Finds thee ready for thy fate;
For joy and hope 'tis all too late--
Thou'rt wedded to thy sad estate.
Wouldst have the princely spirit bowed?
Whisper only, speak not loud,
Mark and leave him in the crowd.
Thou need'st not spies nor jailers have;
The free will serve thee like the slave,
Coward shrinking from the brave.
And thy cohorts, when they come
To take the weary captive home,
Need only beat the retreating drum.
No Essex here!--unblest--they give no sign.
And shall such live, while earth's best nobleness
Departs and leaves her barren? Now too late
Weakness and cunning both are exorcised.
How could I trust thee whom I knew so well?
Am I not like the fool of fable? He
Who in his bosom warmed the frozen viper,
And fancied man might hope for gratitude
From the betrayer's seed? Away! begone!
No breath, no sound shall here insult my anguish.
No human presence shall control my mood.
Begone, I say! The queen would be alone!
Alone and still! This day the cup of woe
Is full; and while I drain its bitter dregs,
Calm, queenlike, stern, I would review the past.
Well it becomes the favorite of fortune,
The royal arbitress of others' weal,
The world's desire, and England's deity,
Self-poised, self-governed, clear and firm to gaze
Where others close their aching eyes, to _dream_.
Who feels imperial courage glow within
Fears not the mines which lie beneath his throne;
Bold he ascends, though knowing well his peril--
Majestical and fearless holds the sceptre.
The golden circlet of enormous weight
He wears with brow serene and smiling air,
As though a myrtle chaplet graced his temples.
And thus didst _thou_. The far removed thy power
Attracted and subjected to thy will,
The hates and fears which oft beset thy way
Were seen, were met, and conquered by thy courage.
Thy tyrant father's wrath, thy mother's hopeless fate,
Thy sister's harshness,--all were cast behind;
And to a soul like thine, bonds and harsh usage
Taught fortitude, prudence, and self-command,
To act, or to endure. Fate did the rest.
One brilliant day thou heard'st, "Long live the Queen!"
A queen thou wert; and in the heart's despite,
Despite the foes without, within, who ceaseless
Have threatened war and death,--a queen thou _art_,
And wilt be, while a spark of life remains.
But this last deadly blow--I feel it here!
Yet the low, prying world shall ne'er perceive it.
"Actress" they call me,--'tis a queen's vocation!
The people stare and whisper--what would they
But acting, to amuse them? Is deceit
Unknown, except in regal palaces?
The child at play already is an actor.
Still to thyself, let weal or woe betide,
Elizabeth! be true and steadfast ever!
Maintain thy fixed reserve: 'tis just; what heart
Can sympathize with a queen's agony?
The false, false world,--it wooes me for my treasures,
My favors, and the place my smile confers;
And if for love I offer mutual love,
My minion, not content, must have the crown.
'Twas thus with Essex; yet to thee, O heart!
I dare to say it, thy all died with him!
Man must experience--be he who he may--
Of bliss a last, irrevocable day.
Each owns this true, but cannot bear to live
And feel the last has come, the last has gone;
That never eye again in earnest tenderness
Shall turn to him,--no heart shall thickly beat
When his footfall is heard,--no speaking blush
Tell the soul's wild delight at meeting,--never
Rapture in presence, hope in absence more,
Be his,--no sun of love illume his landscape!
Yet thus it is with me. Throughout this heart
Deep night, without a star! What all the host
To me,--my Essex fallen from the heavens!
To me he was the centre of the world,
The ornament of time. Wood, lawn, or hall,
The busy mart, the verdant solitude,
To me were but the fame of one bright image;
That face is dust,--those lustrous eyes are closed,
And the frame mocks me with its empty centre.
How nobly free, how gallantly he bore him,
The charms of youth combined with manhood's vigor!
How sage his counsel, and how warm his valor,--
The glowing fire and the aspiring flame!
Even in his presumption he was kingly!
But ah! does memory cheat me? What was all,
Since Truth was wanting, and the man I loved
Could court his death to vent his anger on me,
And I must punish him, or live degraded.
I chose the first; but in his death I died.
Land, sea, church, people, throne,--all, all are nought,
I live a living death, and call it royalty.
Yet, wretched ruler o'er these empty gauds,
A part remains to play, and I will play it.
A purple mantle hides my empty heart,
The kingly crown adorns my aching brow,
And pride conceals my anguish from the world.
But in the still and ghostly midnight hour,
From each intruding eye and ear set free,
I still may shed the bitter, hopeless tear,
Nor fear the babbling of the earless walls.
I to myself may say, "I die! I die!
Elizabeth, unfriended and alone,
So die as thou hast lived,--alone, but queenlike!"
"And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not
Thus early was Christ's course begun,
Thus radiant dawned celestial day;
And those who such a race would run,
As early should be on the way.
His Father's business was his care,
Yet in man's favor still he grew:
O, might we learn, by thought and prayer,
Like him a work of love to do!
Wisdom and virtue still he sought,
Nor ignorant nor vile despised:
True was each action, pure each thought,
And each pure hope he realized.
The empires of this world, in vain,
Offered their sceptres to his hand;
Fearless he trod the stormy main,
Fearless 'mid throngs of foes could stand.
Yet with his courage and his power
Combined such sweetness and such love,
He could revere the simplest flower,
The vilest sinners firm reprove.
For all mankind he came, nor yet
An infant's visit would deny;
Nor friend nor mother did forget
In his last hour of agony.
O, children, ask him to impart
That spirit clear and temper mild,
Which made the mother in her heart
Keep all the sayings of her child.
Bless him who said, of such as you
His Father's kingdom is, and still,
His yoke to bear, his work to do,
Study his life to learn his will.
With my lamenting touched, the lofty trees
Incline their graceful heads without a breeze;
The listening birds forego their joyous song,
For soft and mournful strains, which echoes faint prolong.
Lions and bears resign the charms of sleep
To hear my lonely plaint, and see me weep;
At my approaching death e'en stones relent.
Yet though yourself the fatal cause you know,
Not once on me those lovely eyes are bent:
Flow freely, tears! 'tis meet that you should flow!
Although for my relief thou wilt not come,
Leave not the place where once thou loved'st to roam!
Here thou mayst rove secure from meeting me;
With a torn heart forever hence I flee.
Come, if 'twere this alone thy footsteps stayed,
Here the soft meadow, the delightful shade,
The roses now in flower, the waters clear,
Invite thee to the valley once so dear.
Come, and bring with thee thy late-chosen love;
Each object shall thy perfidy reprove;
Since to another thou hast given thy heart,
From this sweet scene forever I depart.
And soon kind Death my sorrows shall remove,
The bitter ending of my faithful love.
O, blessed be this sweet May day,
The fairest of the year;
The birds are heard from every spray,
And the blue sky shines so clear!
White blossoms deck the apple tree,
Blue violets the plain;
Their fragrance tells the wand'ring bee
That Spring is come again.
We'll cull the blossoms from the bough
Where robins gayly sing,
We'll wreathe them for our queen's pure brow,
We'll wreathe them for our king.
The winter wind is bleak and sad,
And chill the winter rain;
But these May gales blow warm and glad,
And charm the heart from pain.
The sick, the poor rejoice once more,
Pale cheeks resume their glow,
And those who thought their day was o'er
New life to May suns owe.
And we, in youth and health so gay,
Sheltered by love and care,
How should we joy in blooming May,
And bless its balmy air!
We are the children of the Spring;
Our home is always green;
Green be the garland of our king,
The livery of our queen.
The gardener's care the seed has strown,
To deck our home with flowers;
Our Father's love from high has shone,
And sent the needed showers.
Barren indeed the plants must be,
If they should not disclose,
Tended and cherished with such toil,
The lily and the rose.
Meanwhile through the wild wood we'll rove,
Where earliest flowerets grow,
And greet each simple bud with love,
Which tells us what to do--
That, though untended, we may bloom
And smile on all around,
And one day rise from earth's low tomb,
To live where light is found.
A modest violet be our queen,
Still fragrant, though alone,
Our king a laurel--evergreen--
To which no blight is known.
So let us bless the sweet May day,
And pray the coming year
May see us walk the upward way--
Minds earnest, conscience clear;
That fruit Spring's amplest hope may crown,
And every winged day
Make to our hearts more dear, more known,
The hope, the peace of May!
So cull the blossoms from the bough
Where birds so gayly sing;
We'll wreathe them for our queen's pure brow,
We'll wreathe them for our king.
Let not the heart o'erladen hither fly,
Hoping in tears to vent its misery:
She soars not like the lark with eager cry,
Not hers the robin's notes of love and joy;
Nor, like the nightingale's love-descant, tells
Her song the truths of the heart's hidden wells.
Come, if thy soul be tranquil, and her voice
Shall bid the tranquil lake laugh and rejoice;
Shall lightly warble, flutter, hover, dance,
And charm thee by its sportive elegance.
A finished style the highest art has given,
And a fine organ she received from heaven:
But genius casts not here one living ray;
Thou shalt approve, admire, not weep, to-day.
As by the wayside the worn traveller lies,
And finds no pillow for his aching brow,
Except the pack beneath whose weight he dies,--
If loving breezes from the far west blow,
Laden with perfume from those blissful bowers
Where gentle youth and hope once gilded all his hours,
As fans that loving breeze, tears spring again,
And cool the fever of his wearied brain.
Even so to me the soft romantic dream
Of one who still may sit at fancy's feet,
Where love and beauty yet are all the theme,
Where spheral concords find an echo meet.
To the ideal my vexed spirit turns,
But often for communion vainly burns.
Blest is that hour when breeze of poesy
From far the ancient fragrance wafts to me;
_This time_ thrice blest, because it came unsought,
"Sweet suppliance," and _dear_, because _unbought_.
The sun, the moon, the waters, and the air,
The hopeful, holy, terrible, and fair;
Flower-alphabets, love-letters from the wave,
All mysteries which flutter, blow, skim, lave;
All that is ever-speaking, never spoken,
Spells that are ever breaking, never broken,--
Have played upon my soul, and every string
Confessed the touch which once could make it sing
Triumphal notes; and still, though changed the tone,
Though damp and jarring fall the lyre hath known,
It would, if fitly played, and all its deep notes wove
Into one tissue of belief and love,
Yield melodies for angel-audience meet,
And paeans fit creative power to greet.
O, injured lyre! thy golden frame is marred;
No garlands deck thee; no libations poured
Tell to the earth the triumphs of thy song;
No princely halls echo thy strains along;
But still the strings are there; and if at last they break,
Even in death some melody will make.
Mightst thou once more be strung, might yet the power be given,
To tell in numbers all thou hast of heaven!
But no! thy fragments scattered by the way,
To children given, help the childish play.
Be it thy pride to feel thy latest sigh
Could not forget the law of harmony,
Thou couldst not live for bliss--but thou for truth couldst die!
A graceful fiction of the olden day
Tells us that, by a mighty master's sway,
A city rose, obedient to the lyre;
That his sweet strains rude matter could inspire
With zeal his harmony to emulate;
Thus to the spot where that sweet singer sat
The rocks advanced, in symmetry combined,
To form the palace and the temple joined.
The arts are sisters, and united all,
So architecture answered music's call.
In modern days such feats no more we see,
And matter dares 'gainst mind a rebel be;
The faith is gone such miracles which wrought;
Masons and carpenters must aid our thought;
The harp and voice in vain would try their skill
To raise a city on our hard-bound soil;
The rocks have lain asleep so many a year,
Nothing but gunpowder will make them stir;
I doubt if even for your voice would come
The smallest pebble from its sandy home;
But, if the minstrel can no more create,
For _building_, if he live a little late,
He wields a power of not inferior kind,
No longer rules o'er matter, but o'er mind.
And when a voice like yours its song doth pour,
If it can raise palace and tower no more,
It can each ugly fabric melt away,
Bidding the fancy fairer scenes portray;
Its soft and brilliant tones our thoughts can wing
To climes whence they congenial magic bring;
As by the sweet Italian voice is given
Dream of the radiance of Italia's heaven.
Whether in round, low notes the strain may swell,
As if some tale of woe or wrong to tell,
Or swift and light the upward notes are heard,
With the full carolling clearness of a bird,
The stream of sound untroubled flows along,
And no obstruction mars your finished song.
No stifled notes, no gasp, no ill-taught graces,
No vulgar trills in worst-selected places,
None of the miseries which haunt a land
Where all would learn what so few understand,
Afflict in hearing you; in you we find
The finest organ, and informed by mind.
And as, in that same fable I have quoted,
It is of that town-making artist noted,
That, where he leaned his lyre upon a stone,
The stone stole somewhat of that lovely tone,
And afterwards each untaught passer-by,
By touching it, could rouse the melody,--
Even thus a heart once by your music thrilled,
An ear which your delightful voice has filled,
In memory a talisman have found
To repel many a dull, harsh, after-sound;
And, as the music lingered in the stone,
After the minstrel and the lyre were gone,
Even so my thoughts and wishes, turned to sweetness,
Lend to the heavy hours unwonted fleetness;
And common objects, calling up the tone,
I caught from you, wake beauty not their own.
Triune, shaping, restless power,
Life-flow from life's natal hour,
No music chords are in thy sound;
By some thou'rt but a rattle found;
Yet, without thy ceaseless motion,
To ice would turn their dead devotion.
Life-flow of my natal hour,
I will not weary of thy power,
Till in the changes of thy sound
A chord's three parts distinct are found.
I will faithful move with thee,
God-ordered, self-fed energy.
Nature in eternity.
The peasant boy watches the midnight sky;
He sees the meteor dropping from on high;
He hastens whither the bright guest hath flown,
And finds--a mass of black, unseemly stone.
Disdainful, disappointed, turns he home.
If a philosopher that way had come,
He would have seized the waif with great delight,
And honored it as an aerolite.
But truly it would need a Cuvier's mind
High meaning in _my_ meteors to find.
Well, in my museum there is room to spare--
I'll let them stay till Cuvier goes there!
Lonely lady, tell me why
That abandonment of eye?
Life is full, and nature fair;
How canst thou dream of dull despair?
Life is full and nature fair;
A dull folly is despair;
But the heart lies still and tame
For want of what it may not claim.
Lady, chide that foolish heart,
And bid it act a nobler part;
The love thou couldst be bid resign
Never could be worthy thine.
O, I know, and knew it well,
How unworthy was the spell
In its silken band to bind
My heaven-born, heaven-seeking mind.
Thou lonely moon, thou knowest well
Why I yielded to the spell;
Just so thou didst condescend
Thy own precept to offend.
When wondering nymphs thee questioned why
That abandonment of eye,
Crying, "Dian, heaven's queen,
What can that trembling eyelash mean?"
Waning, over ocean's breast,
Thou didst strive to hide unrest
From the question of their eyes,
Unseeing in their dull surprise.
Thy Endymion had grown old;
Thy only love was marred with cold;
No longer to the secret cave
Thy ray could pierce, and answer have.
No more to thee, no more, no more,
Till thy circling life be o'er,
A mutual heart shall be a home,
Of weary wishes happy tomb.
No more, no more--O words which sever
Hearts from their hopes, to part forever!
They can believe it never!
Some names there are at sight of which will rise
Visions of triumph to the dullest eyes;
They breathe of garlands from a grateful race,
They tell of victory o'er all that's base;
To write them eagles might their plumage give,
And granite rocks should yield, that they may live.
Others there are at sight of which will rise
Visions of beauty to all loving eyes,
Of radiant sweetness, or of gentle grace,
The poesy of manner or of face,
Spell of intense, if not of widest power;
The strong the ages rule; the fair, the hour.
And there are names at sight of which will rise
Visions of goodness to the mourner's eyes;
They tell of generosity untired,
Which gave to others all the heart desired;
Of Virtue's _uncomplaining_ sacrifice,
And holy hopes which sought their native skies.
If I could hope that at my name would rise
Visions like these, before those gentle eyes,
How gladly would I place it in the shrine
Where many honored names are linked with thine,
And know, if lone and far my pathway lies,
My name is living 'mid the good and wise.
It must not be, for now I know too well
That those to whom my name has aught to tell
O'er baffled efforts would lament or blame.
Who heeds a breaking reed?--a sinking flame?
Best wishes and kind thoughts I give to thee,
But mine, indeed, an _empty name_ would be.
Our friend has likened thee to the sweet fern,
Which with no flower salutes the ardent day,
Yet, as the wanderer pursues his way,
While the dews fall, and hues of sunset burn,
Sheds forth a fragrance from the deep green brake,
Sweeter than the rich scents that gardens make.
Like thee, the fern loves well the hallowed shade
Of trees that quietly aspire on high;
Amid such groves was consecration made
Of vestals, tranquil as the vestal sky.
Like thee, the fern doth better love to hide
Beneath the leaf the treasure of its seed,
Than to display it, with an idle pride,
To any but the careful gatherer's heed--
A treasure known to philosophic ken,
Garnered in nature, asking nought of men;
Nay, can invisible the wearer make,
Who would unnoted in life's game partake.
But I will liken thee to the sweet bay,
Which I first learned, in the Cohasset woods,
To name upon a sweet and pensive day
Passed in their ministering solitudes.
I had grown weary of the anthem high
Of the full waves, cheering the patient rocks;
I had grown weary of the sob and sigh
Of the dull ebb, after emotion's shocks;
My eye was weary of the glittering blue
And the unbroken horizontal line;
My mind was weary, tempted to pursue
The circling waters in their wide design,
Like snowy sea-gulls stooping to the wave,
Or rising buoyant to the utmost air,
To dart, to circle, airily to lave,
Or wave-like float in foam-born lightness fair:
I had swept onward like the wave so full,
Like sea weed now left on the shore so dull.
I turned my steps to the retreating hills,
Rejected sand from that great haughty sea,
Watered by nature with consoling rills,
And gradual dressed with grass, and shrub, and tree;
They seemed to welcome me with timid smile,
That said, "We'd like to soothe you for a while;
You seem to have been treated by the sea
In the same way that long ago were we."
They had not much to boast, those gentle slopes,
For the wild gambols of the sea-sent breeze
Had mocked at many of their quiet hopes,
And bent and dwarfed their fondly cherished trees;
Yet even in those marks of by-past wind,
There was a tender stilling for my mind.
Hiding within a small but thick-set wood,
I soon forgot the haughty, chiding flood.
The sheep bell's tinkle on the drowsy ear,
With the bird's chirp, so short, and light, and clear,
Composed a melody that filled my heart
With flower-like growths of childish, artless art,
And of the tender, tranquil life I lived apart.
It was an hour of pure tranquillity,
Like to the autumn sweetness of thine eye,
Which pries not, seeks not, and yet clearly sees--
Which wooes not, beams not, yet is sure to please.
Hours passed, and sunset called me to return
Where its sad glories on the cold wave burn.
Rising from my kind bed of thick-strewn leaves,
A fragrance the astonished sense receives,
Ambrosial, searching, yet retiring, mild:
Of that soft scene the soul was it? or child?
'Twas the sweet bay I had unwitting spread,
A pillow for my senseless, throbbing head,
And which, like all the sweetest things, demands,
To make it speak, the grasp of alien hands.
All that this scene did in that moment tell,
I since have read, O wise, mild friend! in thee.
Pardon the rude grasp, its sincerity,
And feel that I, at least, have known thee well.
Grudge not the green leaves ravished from thy stem,
Their music, should I live, muse-like to tell;
Thou wilt, in fresher green forgetting them,
Send others to console me for farewell.
Thou wilt see why the dim word of regret
Was made the one to rhyme with Margaret.
But to the Oriental parent tongue,
Sunrise of Nature, does my chosen name,
My name of Leila, as a spell, belong,
Teaching the meaning of each temporal blame;
I chose it by the sound, not knowing why;
But since I know that Leila stands for night,
I own that sable mantle of the sky,
Through which pierce, gem-like, points of distant light;
As sorrow truths, so night brings out her stars;
O, add not, bard! that those stars shine too late!
While earth grows green amid the ocean jars,
And trumpets yet shall wake the slain of her long century-wars.
As late we lived upon the gentle stream,
Nature refused us smiles and kindly airs;
The sun but rarely deigned a pallid gleam;
Then clouds came instantly, like glooms and tears,
Upon the timid flickerings of our hope;
The moon, amid the thick mists of the night,
Had scarcely power her gentle eye to ope,
And climb the heavenly steeps. A moment bright
Shimmered the hectic leaves, then rudely torn
By winds that sobbed to see the wreck they made,
Upon the amber waves were thickly borne
Adonis' gardens for the realms of shade,
While thoughts of beauty past all wish for livelier life forbade.
So sped the many days of tranquil life,
And on the stream, or by the mill's bright fire,
The wailing winds had told of distant strife,
Still bade us for the moment yield desire
To think, to feel, the moment gave,--we needed not aspire!
Returning here, no harvest fields I see,
Nor russet beauty of the thoughtful year.
Where is the honey of the city bee?
No leaves upon this muddy stream appear.
The housekeeper is getting in his coal,
The lecturer his showiest thoughts is selling;
I hear of Major Somebody, the Pole,
And Mr. Lyell, how rocks grow, is telling;
But not a breath of thoughtful poesy
Does any social impulse bring to me;
But many cares, sad thoughts of men unwise,
Base yieldings, and unransomed destinies,
Hopes uninstructed, and unhallowed ties.
Yet here the sun smiles sweet as heavenly love,
Upon the eve of earthly severance;
The youthfulest tender clouds float all above,
And earth lies steeped in odors like a trance.
The moon looks down as though she ne'er could leave us,
And these last trembling leaves sigh, "Must they too deceive us?"
Truer than mine some soul received last night;
I cannot freely greet this beauteous day,
But does not _thy_ heart swell to hail the genial ray?
I would not nature these last loving words in vain should say.
Dost thou remember that fair summer's day,
As, sick and weary on my couch I lay,
Thou broughtst this little book, and didst diffuse
O'er my dark hour the light of Herbert's muse?
The "Elixir," and "True Hymn," were then thy choice,
And the high strain gained sweetness from thy voice.
The book, before that day to me unknown,
I took to heart at once, and made my own.
Three winters and three summers since have passed,
And bitter griefs the hearts of both have tried;
Thy sympathy is lost to me at last;
A dearer love has torn thee from my side;
Scenes, friends, to me unknown, now claim thy care;
No more thy joys or griefs I soothe or share;
No more thy lovely form my eye shall bless;
The gentle smile, the timid, mute caress,
No more shall break the icy chains which may my heart oppress.
New duties claim us both; indulgent Heaven
Ten years of mutual love to us had given;
The plants from early youth together grew,
Together all youth's sun and tempests knew.
At age mature arrived, thou, graceful vine!
Didst seek a sheltering tree round which to twine;
While I, like northern fir, must be content
To clasp the rock which gave my youth its scanty nourishment.
The world for which we sighed is with us now;
No longer musing on the _why_ or _how_,
_What_ really does exist we now must meet;
Life's dusty highway is beneath our feet;
Life's fainting pilgrims claim our ministry,
And the whole scene speaks stern _reality_.
Say, in the tasks reality has brought,
Keepst _thou_ the plan that pleased thy childish thought?
Does Herbert's "Hymn" in thy heart echo now?
Herbert's "Elixir" in thy bosom glow?
In Herbert's "Temper" dost thou strive to be?
Does Herbert's "Pearl" seem the true pearl to thee?
O, if 'tis so, I have not prayed in vain!--
My friend, my sister, we shall meet again.
I dare not say that _I_ am always true
To the vocation which my young thought knew;
But the Great Spirit blesses me, and still,
Though clouds may darken o'er the heavenly will,
Upon the hidden sun my thoughts can rest,
And oft the rainbow glitters in the west.
This earth no more seems all the world to me;
Before me shines a far eternity,
Whose laws to me, when thought is calmly poised,
Suffice, as they to angels have sufficed.
I know the thunder has not ceased to roll,
Not all the iron yet has pierced my soul;
I know no earthly honors wait for me,
No earthly love my heart shall satisfy.
Tears, of these eyes still oft the guests must be,
Long hours be borne, of chilling apathy;
Still harder teachings come to make me wise,
And life's best blood must seal the sacrifice.
But He who still seems nearer and more bright,
Nor from my _seeking_ eye withholds his light,
Will not forsake me, for his pledge is given;
Virtue shall teach the soul its way to heaven.
O, pray for me, and I for thee will pray;
And more than loving words we used to say
Shall this avail. But little more we meet
In life--ah, how the years begin to fleet!
Ask--pray that I may seek beauty and truth,
In their high sphere we shall renew our youth.
On wings of _steadfast faith_ there mayst _thou_ soar,
And _my_ soul fret at barriers no more!
impressive."--_Saturday Gazette._
entertainment."--_Professor Woods in Saturday Mirror._
"A biography of Mary Lamb must inevitably be also, almost more, a
well-considered record of her life."--_Boston Courier._