Complete Poems Read Online

Then flows amain

The surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag,

Hollow and lake, hillside, and pine arcade,

Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged cliff

Has thousand faces in a thousand hours.

Beneath low hills, in the broad interval

Through which at will our Indian rivulet

Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,

Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies,

Here in pine houses built of new-fallen trees,

Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell.

Traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious road,

Or, it may be, apicture; to thesemen,

The landscape is an armoury of powers,

Which, one by one, they know to draw and use.

They harness beast, bird, insect, to their work;

They prove the virtues of each bed of rock,

And, like the chemist mid his loaded jars,

Draw from each stratum itsadapted use

To drug their crops or weapon their arts withal.

They turn the frost upon their chemic heap,

They set the wind to winnow pulse and grain,

They thank the spring-flood for its fertile slime,

Earlier, on cheap summit-levels of the snow.

Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods

O'er meadows bottomless. So, year by year,

They fight the elements with elements,

(That one would say, meadow and forest walked,

Transmuted in these men to rule their like,)

And by the order in the field disclose

The order regnant in the yeoman's brain.

What these strong masters wrote at large in miles

I followed in small copy in my acre;

For there's no rood has not a star above it;

The cordial quality of pear or plum

Ascends as gladly in a single tree

As in broad orchards resonant with bees;

And every atom poises for itself,

And for the whole. The gentle deities

Showed me the lore of colours and of sounds,

The innumerable tenements of beauty,

The miracle of generative force,

Far-reaching concords of astronomy

Felt in the plants, and in the punctual birds;

Better, the linked purpose of the whole,

And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty

In the glad home plain-dealing nature gave.

The polite found me impolite; the great

Would mortify me, but in vain; for still

I am a willow of the wilderness,

Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts

My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk,

A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush,

A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine,

Salve my worst wounds.

For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear:

»Dost love our manners? Canst thou silent lie?

Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass

Into the winter night's extinguished wood?

Canst thou shine now, then darkle,

And being latent feel thyself no less?

As when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye,

The river, hill, stems, foliage are obscure,

Yet envies none, none are unenviable.«

The Day's Ration

When I was born,

From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice,

Saying, »This be thy portion, child; this chalice,

Less than a lily's, thou shalt daily draw

From my great arteries, – nor less, nor more.«

All substances the cunning chemist Time

Melts down into that liquor of my life, –

Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty, and disgust.

And whether I am angry or content,

Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt.

All he distils into sidereal wine

And brims my little cup; heedless, alas!

Of all he sheds how little it will hold,

How much runs over on the desert sands.

If a new Muse draw me with splendid ray,

And I uplift myself into its heaven,

The needs of the first sight absorb my blood,

And all the following hours of the day

Drag a ridiculous age.

To-day, when friends approach, and every hour

Brings book, or star-bright scroll of genius,

The little cup will hold not a bead more,

And all the costly liquor runs to waste;

Nor gives the jealous lord one diamond drop

So to be husbanded for poorer days.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

Why need I galleries, when a pupil's draught

After the master's sketch fills and o'erfills

My apprehension? why seek Italy,

Who cannot circumnavigate the sea

Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn

The nearest matters for a thousand days?

Experience

The lords of life, the lords of life, –

I saw them pass,

In their own guise,

Like and unlike,

Portly and grim, –

Use and Surprise,

Surface and Dream,

Succession swift and spectral Wrong,

Temperament without a tongue,

And the inventor of the game

Omnipresent without name; –

Some to see, some to be guessed,

They marched from east to west:

Little man, least of all,

Among the legs of his guardians tall,

Walked about with puzzled look;

Him by the hand dear Nature took,

Dearest Nature, strong and kind,

Whispered, »Darling, never mind!

To-morrow they will wear another face,

The founder thou; these are thy race!«

Wealth

Who shall tell what did befall,

Far away in time, when once,

Over the lifeless ball,

Hung idle stars and suns?

What god the element obeyed?

Wings of what wind the lichen bore,

Wafting the puny seeds of power,

Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade?

And well the primal pioneer

Knew the strong task to it assigned,

Patient through Heaven's enormous year

To build in matter home for mind.

From air the creeping centuries drew

The matted thicket low and wide,

This must the leaves of ages strew

The granite slab to clothe and hide,

Ere wheat can wave its golden pride.

What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled

(In dizzy æons dim and mute

The reeling brain can ill compute)

Copper and iron, lead and gold?

What oldest star the fame can save

Of races perishing to pave

The planet with a floor of lime?

Dust is their pyramid and mole:

Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed

Under the tumbling mountain's breast,

In the safe herbal of the coal?

But when the quarried means were piled,

All is waste and worthless, till

Arrives the wise selecting will,

And, out of slime and chaos, Wit

Draws the threads of fair and fit.

Then temples rose, and towns, and marts,

The shop of toil, the hall of arts;

Then flew the sail across the seas

To feed the North from tropic trees;

The storm-wind wove, the torrent span,

Where they were bid the rivers ran;

New slaves fulfilled the poet's dream,

Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam.

Then docks were built, and crops were stored,

And ingots added to the hoard.

But, though light-headed man forget,

Remembering Matter pays herdebt:

Still, through her motes and masses, draw

Electric thrills and ties of Law,

Which bind the strength of Nature wild

To the conscience of a child.

Days

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,

Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,

And marching single in an endless file,

Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

To each they offer gifts after his will,

Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.

I, in my pleachéd garden, watched the pomp,

Forgot my morning wishes, hastily

Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day

Turned and departed silent. I, too late,

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

My Garden

If I could put my woods in song,

And tell what's there enjoyed,

All men would to my gardens throng,

And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow, –

Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;

And rank the savage maples grow

From spring's faint flush to autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge

Which older forests bound;

The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,

Then plunge to depths profound.

Here once the Deluge ploughed,

Laid the terraces, one by one;

Ebbing later whence it flowed,

They bleach and dry in the sun.

The sowers made haste to depart, –

The wind and the birds which sowed it;

Not for fame, nor by rules of art,

Planted these, and tempests flowed it.

Waters that wash my garden side

Play not in Nature's lawful web,

They heed not moon or solar tide, –

Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,

And every god, – none did refuse;

And be sure at last came Love,

And after Love, the Muse.

Keen ears can catch a syllable,

As if one spake to another,

In the hemlocks tall, untamable,

And what the whispering grasses smother.

Æolian harps in the pine

Ring with the song of the Fates;

Infant Bacchus in the vine, –

Far distant yet his chorus waits.

Canst thou copy in verse one chime

Of the wood-bell's peal and cry,

Write in a book the morning's prime,

Or match with words that tender sky?

Wonderful verse of the gods,

Of one import, of varied tone;

They chant the bliss of their abodes

To man imprisoned in his own.

Ever the words of the gods resound;

But the porches of man's ear

Seldom in this low life's round

Are unsealed, that he may hear.

Wandering voices in the air,

And murmurs in the wold,

Speak what I cannot declare,

Yet cannot all withhold.

When the shadow fell on the lake,

The whirlwind in ripples wrote

Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,

And omens above thought.

But the meanings cleave to the lake,

Cannot be carried in book or urn;

Go thy ways now, come later back,

On waves and hedges still they burn.

These the fates of men forecast,

Of better men than live to-day;

If who can read them comes at last

He will spell in the sculpture, »Stay.«

Maiden Speech of the Æolian Harp

Soft and softlier hold me, friends!

Thanks if your genial care

Unbind and give me to the air.

Keep your lips or finger-tips

For flute or spinnet's dancing chips;

I await a tenderer touch,

I ask more or not so much:

Give me to the atmosphere, –

Where is the wind my brother, – where?

Lift the sash, lay me within,

Lend me your ears, and I begin.

For gentle harp to gentle hearts

The secret of the world imparts;

And not to-day and not to-morrow

Can drain its wealth of hope and sorrow;

But day by day, to loving ear

Unlocks new sense and loftier cheer.

I've come to live with you, sweet friends,

This home my minstrel journeying ends.

Many and subtle are my lays,

The latest better than the first,

For I can mend the happiest days,

And charm the anguish of the worst.

Friendship

A ruddy drop of manly blood

The surging sea outweighs,

The world uncertain comes and goes,

The lover rooted stays.

I fancied he was fled, –

And, after many a year,

Glowed unexhausted kindliness,

Like daily sunrise there.

My careful heart was free again,

O friend, my bosom said,

Through thee alone the sky is arched,

Through thee the rose is red;

All things through thee take nobler form,

And look beyond the earth,

The mill-round of our fate appears

A sun-path in thy worth.

Me too thy nobleness has taught

To master my despair;

The fountains of my hidden life

Are through thy friendship fair.

Beauty

Was never form and never face

So sweet to SEYD as only grace

Which did not slumber like a stone,

But hovered gleaming and was gone.

Beauty chased he everywhere,

In flame, in storm in clouds of air.

He smote the lake to feed his eye

With the beryl beam of the broken wave;

He flung in pebbles well to hear

The moment's music which they gave.

Oft pealed for him a lofty tone

From nodding pole and belting zone.

He heard a voice none else could hear

From centred and from errant sphere.

The quaking earth did quake in rhyme,

Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime.

In dens of passion, and pits of woe,

He saw strong Eros struggling through,

To sun the dark and solve the curse,

And beam to the bounds of the universe.

While thus to love he gave his days

In loyal worship, scorning praise,

How spread their lures for him in vain

Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain!

He thought it happier to be dead,

To die for Beauty, than live for bread.

Manners

Grace, Beauty, and Caprice

Build this golden portal;

Graceful women, chosen men,

Dazzle every mortal.

Their sweet and lofty countenance

His enchanted food;

He need not go to them, their forms

Beset his solitude.

He looketh seldom in their face,

His eyes explore the ground, –

The green grass is a looking-glass

Whereon their traits are found.

Little and less he says to them,

So dances his heart in his breast;

Their tranquil mien bereaveth him

Of wit, of words, of rest.

Too weak to win, too fond to shun

The tyrants of his doom,

The much-deceived Endymion

Slips behind a tomb.

Cupido

The solid, solid universe

Is pervious to Love;

With bandaged eyes he never errs,

Around, below, above.

His blinding light

He flingeth white

On God's and Satan's brood,

And reconciles

By mystic wiles

The evil and the good.

Art

Give to barrows, trays, and pans

Grace and glimmer of romance;

Bring the moonlight into noon

Hid in gleaming piles of stone;

On the city's paved street

Plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet:

Let spouting fountains cool the air,

Singing in the sun-baked square;

Let statue, picture, park, and hall,

Ballad, flag, and festival,

The past restore, the day adorn,

And make to-morrow a new morn.

So shall the drudge in dusty frock

Spy behind the city clock

Retinues of airy kings,

Skirts of angels, starry wings,

His fathers shining in bright fables,

His children fed at heavenly tables.

'Tis the privilege of Art

Thus to play its cheerful part,

Man on earth to acclimate,

And bend the exile to his fate,

And, moulded of one element

With the days and firmament,

Teach him on these as stairs to climb,

And live on even terms with Time;

Whilst upper life the slender rill

Of human sense doth overfill.

Worship

This is he, who, felled by foes,

Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows:

He to captivity was sold,

But him no prison-bars would hold:

Though they sealed him in a rock,

Mountain chains he can unlock:

Thrown to lions for their meat,

The crouching lion kissed his feet:

Bound to the stake, no flames appalled,

But arched o'er him an honouring vault.

This is he men miscall Fate,

Threading dark ways, arriving late,

But ever coming in time to crown

The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down.

He is the oldest, and best known,

More near than aught thou call'st thy own,

Yet, greeted in another's eyes,

Disconcerts with glad surprise.

This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers,

Floods with blessings unawares.

Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line

Severing rightly his from thine,

Which is human, which divine.

The Nun's Aspiration

The yesterday doth never smile,

To-day goes drudging through the while,

Yet in the name of Godhead, I

The morrow front, and can defy;

Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed,

Cannot withhold his conquering aid.

Ah me! it was my childhood's thought,

If he should make my web a blot

On life's fair picture of delight,

My heart's content would find it right.

But O, these waves and leaves, –

When happy stoic Nature grieves, –

No human speech so beautiful

As their murmurs, mine to lull.

On this altar God hath built

I lay my vanity and guilt;

Nor me can Hope or Passion urge

Hearing as now the lofty dirge

Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn,

Nature's funeral, high and dim, –

Sable pageantry of clouds,

Mourning summer laid in shrouds.

Many a day shall dawn and die,

Many an angel wander by,

And passing, like my sunken turf

Moist perhaps by ocean surf,

Forgotten amid splendid tombs,

Yet wreathed and hid by summer blooms.

On earth I dream; – I die to be:

Time! shake not thy bald head at me.

I challenge thee to hurry past,

Or for my turn to fly too fast.

Think me not numbed or halt with age,

Or cares that earth to earth engage,

Caught with love's cord of twisted beams,

Or mired by climate's gross extremes.

I tire of shams, I rush to Be,

I pass with yonder comet free, –

Pass with the comet into space

Which mocks thy æons to embrace;

Æons which tardily unfold

Realm beyond realm, – extent untold;

No early morn, no evening late, –

Realms self-upheld, disdaining Fate,

Whose shining sons, too great for fame,

Never heard thy weary name;

Nor lives the tragic bard to say

How drear the part I held in one,

How lame the other limped away.

Terminus

It is time to be old,

To take in sail: –

The god of bounds,

Who sets to seas a shore,

Came to me in his fatal rounds,

And said: »No more!

No farther shoot

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root,

Fancy departs: no more invent,

Contract thy firmament

To compass of a tent.

There's not enough for this and that,

Make thy option which of two;

Economize the falling river,

Not the less revere the Giver,

Leave the many and hold the few.

Timely wise accept the terms,

Soften the fall with wary foot;

A little while

Still plan and smile,

And, fault of novel germs,

Mature the unfallen fruit.

Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,

Bad husbands of their fires,

Who, when they gave thee breath,

Failed to bequeath

The needful sinew stark as once,

The Baresark marrow to thy bones,

But left a legacy of ebbing veins,

Inconstant heat and nerveless reins, –

Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,

Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.«

As the bird trims her to the gale,

I trim myself to the storm of time,

I man the rudder, reef the sail,

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:

»Lowly faithful, banish fear,

Right onward drive unharmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near,

And every wave is charmed.«

Dirge

Knows he who tills this lonely field,

To reap its scanty corn,

What mystic fruit his acres yield

At midnight and at morn?

In the long sunny afternoon,

The plain was full of ghosts;

I wandered up, I wandered down,

Beset by pensive hosts.

The winding Concord gleamed below,

Pouring as wide a flood

As when my brothers, long ago,

Came with me to the wood.

But they are gone, – the holy ones

Who trod with me this lovely vale;

The strong, star-bright companions

Are silent, low, and pale.

My good, my noble, in their prime,

Who made this world the feast it was,

Who learned with me the lore of time,

Who loved this dwelling-place!

They took this valley for their toy,

They played with it in every mood;

A cell for prayer, a hall for joy, –

They treated nature as they would.

They coloured the horizon round;

Stars flamed and faded as they bade;

All echoes hearkened for their sound, –

They made the woodlands glad or mad.

I touch this flower of silken leaf,

Which once our childhood knew;

Its soft leaves wound me with a grief

Whose balsam never grew.

Hearken to yon pine-warbler

Singing aloft in the tree!

Hearest thou, O traveller,

What he singeth to me?

Not unless God made sharp thine ear

With sorrow such as mine,

Out of that delicate lay couldst thou

Its heavy tale divine.

»Go, lonely man,« it saith;

»They loved thee from their birth;

Their hands were pure, and pure their faith, –

There are no such hearts on earth.

You cannot unlock your heart,

The key is gone with them;

The silent organ loudest chants

The master's requiem.«

Threnody

The south-wind brings

Life, sunshine, and desire,

And on every mount and meadow

Breathes aromatic fire;

But over the dead he has no power,

The lost, the lost, he cannot restore;

And, looking over the hills, I mourn

The darling who shall not return.

I see my empty house,

I see my trees repair their boughs;

And he, the wondrous child,

Whose silver warble wild

Outvalued every pulsing sound

Within the air's cerulean round, –

The hyacinthine boy, for whom

Morn well might break and April bloom,

The gracious boy, who did adorn

The world where into he was born,

And by his countenance repay

The favour of the loving Day, –

Has disappeared from the Day's eye;

Far and wide she cannot find him;

My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.

Returned this day, the south-wind searches,

And finds young pines and budding birches;

But finds not the budding man;

Nature, who lost, cannot remake him;

Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him;

Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain.

And whither now, my truant wise and sweet,

O, whither tend thy feet?

I had the right, few days ago,

Thy steps to watch, thy place to know;

How have I forfeited the right?

Hast thou forgot me in a new delight?

I hearken for thy household cheer,

O eloquent child!

Whose voice, an equal messenger,

Conveyed thy meaning mild.

What though the pains and joys

Whereof it spoke were toys

Fitting his age and ken,

Yet fairest dames and bearded men,

Who heard the sweet request,

So gentle, wise, and grave,

Bended with joy to his behest,

And let the world's affairs go by,

Awhile to share his cordial game,

Or mend his wicker wagon-frame,

Still plotting how their hungry ear

That winsome voice again might hear;

For his lips could well pronounce

Words that were persuasions.

Gentlest guardians marked serene

His early hope, his liberal mien;

Took counsel from his guiding eyes

To make this wisdom earthly wise.

Ah, vainly do these eyes recall

The school-march, each day's festival,

When every morn my bosom glowed

To watch the convoy on the road;

The babe in willow-wagon closed,

With rolling eyes and face composed;

With children forward and behind,

Like Cupids studiously inclined;

And he the chieftain paced beside,

The centre of the troop allied,

With sunny face of sweet repose,

To guard the babe from fancied foes.

The little captain innocent

Took the eye with him as he went;

Each village senior paused to scan

And speak the lovely caravan.

From the window I look out

To mark thy beautiful parade,

Stately marching in cap and coat

To some tune by fairies played; –

A music heard by thee alone

To works as noble led thee on.

Now Love and Pride, alas! in vain,

Up and down their glances strain,

The painted sled stands where it stood;

The kennel by the corded wood;

The gathered sticks to stanch the wall

Of the snow-tower, when snow should fall;

The ominous hole he dug in the sand,

And childhood's castles built or planned;

His daily haunts I well discern, –

The poultry-yard, the shed, the barn, –

And every inch of garden ground

Paced by the blessed feet around,

From the roadside to the brook

Where into he loved to look.

Step the meek birds where erst they ranged;

The wintry garden lies unchanged;

The brook into the stream runs on;

But the deep-eyed boy is gone.

On that shaded day,

Dark with more clouds than tempests are,

When thou didst yield thy innocent breath

In birdlike heavings unto death,

Night came, and Nature had not thee;

I said, »We are mates in misery.«

The morrow dawned with needless glow;

Each snowbird chirped, each fowl must crow;

Each tramper started; but the feet

Of the most beautiful and sweet

Of human youth had left the hill

And garden, – they were bound and still.

There's not a sparrow or a wren,

There's not a blade of autumn grain,

Which the four seasons do not tend,

And tides of life and increase lend;

And every chick of every bird,

And weed and rock-moss is preferred.

O ostrich-like forgetfulness!

O loss of larger in the less!

Was there no star that could be sent,

No watcher in the firmament,

No angel from the countless host

That loiters round the crystal coast,

Could stoop to heal that only child,

Nature's sweet marvel undefiled,

And keep the blossom of the earth,

Which all her harvests were not worth?

Not mine, – I never called thee mine,

But Nature's heir, – if I repine,

And seeing rashly torn and moved

Not what I made, but what I loved,

Grow early old with grief that thou

Must to the wastes of nature go, –

'Tis because a general hope

Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope.

For flattering planets seemed to say

This child should ills of ages stay,

By wondrous tongue, and guided pen,

Bring the flown Muses back to men.

Perchance not he but Nature ailed,

The world and not the infant failed.

It was not ripe yet to sustain

A genius of so fine a strain,

Who gazed upon the sun and moon

As if he came unto his own,

And, pregnant with his grander thought,

Brought the old order into doubt.

His beauty once their beauty tried;

They could not feed him, and he died,

And wandered backward as in scorn,

To wait an æon to be born.

Ill day which made this beauty waste,

Plight broken, this high face defaced!

Some went and came about the dead;

And some in books of solace read;

Some to their friends the tidings say;

Some went to write, some went to pray;

One tarried here, there hurried one;

But their heart abode with none.

Covetous death bereaved us all,

To aggrandize one funeral.

The eager fate which carried thee

Took the largest part of me:

For this losing is true dying;

This is lordly man's down-lying,

This his slow but sure reclining,

Star by star his world resigning.

O child of paradise,

Boy who made dear his father's home,

In whose deep eyes

Men read the welfare of the times to come,

I am too much bereft.

The world dishonoured thou hast left.

O truth's and nature's costly lie!

O trusted broken prophecy!

O richest fortune sourly crossed!

Born for the future, to the future lost!

The deep Heart answered, »Weepest thou?

Worthier cause for passion wild

If I had not taken the child.

And deemest thou as those who pore,

With aged eyes, short way before, –

Think'st Beauty vanished from the coast

Of matter, and thy darling lost?

Taught he not thee – the man of eld,

Whose eyes within his eyes beheld

Heaven's numerous hierarchy span

The mystic gulf from God to man?

To be alone wilt thou begin

When worlds of lovers hem thee in?

To-morrow, when the masks shall fall

That dizen Nature's carnival,

The pure shall see by their own will,

Which overflowing Love shall fill,

'Tis not within the force of fate

The fate-conjoined to separate.

But thou, my votary, weepest thou?

I gave thee sight – where is it now?

I taught thy heart beyond the reach

Of ritual, bible, or of speech;

Wrote in thy mind's transparent table,

As far as the incommunicable;

Taught thee each private sign to raise,

Lit by the supersolar blaze.

Past utterance, and past belief,

And past the blasphemy of grief,

The mysteries of Nature's heart;

And though no Muse can these impart,

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast

And all is clear from east to west.

I came to thee as to a friend;

Dearest, to thee I did not send

Tutors, but a joyful eye,

Innocence that matched the sky,

Lovely locks, a form of wonder,

Laughter rich as woodland thunder,

That thou might'st entertain apart

The richest flowering of all art:

And, as the great all-loving Day

Through smallest chambers takes its way,

That thou might'st break thy daily bread

With prophet, saviour, and head;

That thou might'st cherish for thine own

The riches of sweet Mary's Son,

Boy-Rabbi, Israel's paragon.

And thoughtest thou such guest

Would in thy hall take up his rest?

Would rushing life forget her laws,

Fate's glowing revolution pause?

High omens ask diviner guess;

Not to be conned to tediousness.

And know my higher gifts unbind

The zone that girts the incarnate mind.

When the scanty shores are full

With Thought's perilous, whirling pool;

When frail Nature can no more,

Then the Spirit strikes the hour:

My servant Death with solving rite,

Pours finite into infinite.

Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,

Whose streams through nature circling go?

Nail the wild star to its track

On the half-climbed zodiac?

Light is light which radiates,

Blood is blood which circulates,

Life is life which generates,

And many-seeming life is one, –

Wilt thou transfix and make it none?

Its onward force too starkly pent

In figure, bone, and lineament?

Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate,

Talker! the unreplying Fate?

Nor see the genius of the whole

Ascendant in the private soul,

Beckon it when to go and come,

Self-announced its hour of doom?

Fair the soul's recess and shrine,

Magic-built to last a season;

Masterpiece of love benign

Fairer than expansive reason

Whose omen 'tis, and sign.

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know

What rainbows teach, and sunsets show?

Verdict which accumulates

From lengthening scroll of human fates,

Voice of earth to earth returned,

Prayers of saints that inly burned, –

Saying, What is excellent,

As God lives, is permanent;

Hearts are dust, heart's loves remain,

Heart's love will meet thee again.

Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye

Up to his style, and manners of the sky.

Not of adamant and gold

Built he heaven stark and cold;

No, but a nest of bending reeds,

Flowering grass, and scented weeds;

Or like a traveller's fleeing tent,

Or bow above the tempest bent;

Built of tears and sacred flames,

And virtue reaching to its aims:

Built of furtherance and pursuing,

Not of spent deeds, but of doing.

Silent rushes the swift Lord

Through ruined systems still restored,

Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,

Plants with worlds the wilderness;

Waters with tears of ancient sorrow

Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.

House and tenant go to ground,

Lost in God, in Godhead found.«

Hymn

Sung at the Second Church, Boston, at the Ordination of Rev. Chandler Robbins.

We love the venerable house

Our fathers built to God; –

In heaven are kept their grateful vows,

Their dust endears the sod.

Here holy thoughts a light have shed

From many a radiant face,

And prayers of humble virtue made

The perfume of the place.

And anxious hearts have pondered here

The mystery of life,

And prayed the eternal Light to clear

Their doubts, and aid their strife.

From humble tenements around

Came up the pensive train,

And in the church a blessing found

That filled their homes again;

For faith and peace and mighty love

That from the Godhead flow,

Showed them the life of Heaven above

Springs from the life below.

They live with God; their homes are dust;

Yet here their children pray,

And in this fleeting lifetime trust

To find the narrow way.

On him who by the altar stands,

On him thy blessing fall,

Speak through his lips thy pure commands,

Thou heart that lovest all.

Concord Fight

Hymn sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set to-day a votive stone;

That memory may their deed redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children free,

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and Thee.

Boston Hymn

Read in Music Hall, January 1, 1863.

The word of the Lord by night

To the watching Pilgrims came,

As they sat by the seaside,

And filled their hearts with flame.

God said, I am tired of kings,

I suffer them no more;

Up to my ear the morning brings

The outrage of the poor.

Think ye I made this ball

A field of havoc and war,

Where tyrants great and tyrants small

Might harry the weak and poor?

My angel, – his name is Freedom, –

Choose him to be your king;

He shall cut pathways east and west,

And fend you with his wing.

Lo! I uncover the land

Which I hid of old time in the West,

As the sculptor uncovers the statue

When he has wrought his best;

I show Columbia, of the rocks

Which dip their foot in the seas,

And soar to the air-borne flocks

Of clouds, and the boreal fleece.

I will divide my goods;

Call in the wretch and slave:

None shall rule but the humble,

And none but Toil shall have.

I will have never a noble,

No lineage counted great:

Fishers and choppers and ploughmen

Shall constitute a state.

Go, cut down trees in the forest,

And trim the straightest boughs;

Cut down the trees in the forest,

And build me a wooden house.

Call the people together,

The young men and the sires,

The digger in the harvest field,

Hireling, and him that hires;

And here in a pine state-house

They shall choose men to rule

In every needful faculty,

In church, and state, and school.

Lo, now! if these poor men

Can govern the land and sea,

And make just laws below the sun,

As planets faithful be.

And ye shall succour men;

'Tis nobleness to serve;

Help them who cannot help again:

Beware from right to swerve.

I break your bonds and masterships,

And I unchain the slave:

Free be his heart and hand henceforth

As wind and wandering wave.

I cause from every creature

His proper good to flow:

As much as he is and doeth,

So much he shall bestow.

But, laying hands on another

To coin his labour and sweat,

He goes in pawn to his victim

For eternal years in debt.

To-day unbind the captive,

So only are ye unbound;

Lift up a people from the dust,

Trump of their rescue, sound!

Pay ransom to the owner,

And fill the bag to the brim.

Who is the owner? The slave is owner,

And ever was. Pay him.

O North! give him beauty for rags,

And honour, O South! for his shame;

Nevada! coin thy golden crags

With Freedom's image and name.

Up! and the dusky race

That sat in darkness long, –

Be swift their feet as antelopes,

And as behemoth strong.

Come, East and West and North,

By races, as snow-flakes,

And carry my purpose forth,

Which neither halts nor shakes.

My will fulfilled shall be,

For, in daylight or in dark,

My thunderbolt has eyes to see

His way home to the mark.

Ode

Sung in the Town Hall, Concord, July 4, 1857.

O tenderly the haughty day

Fills his blue urn with fire;

One morn is in the mighty heaven,

And one in our desire.

The cannon booms from town to town,

Our pulses are not less,

The joy-bells chime their tidings down,

Which children's voices bless.

For he that flung the broad blue fold

O'er-mantling land and sea,

One third part of the sky unrolled

For the banner of the free.

The men are ripe of Saxon kind

To build an equal state, –

To take the statute from the mind,

And make of duty fate.

United States! the ages plead, –

Presentand Past in under-song, –

Go put your creed into your deed,

Nor speak with double tongue.

For sea and land don't understand,

Nor skies without a frown

See rights for which the one hand fights

By the other cloven down.

Be just at home; then write your scroll

Of honour o'er the sea,

And bid the broad Atlantic roll

A ferry of the free.

And, henceforth, there shall be no chain,

Save underneath the sea

The wires shall murmur through the main

Sweet songs of LIBERTY.

The conscious stars accord above,

The waters wild below,

And under, through the cable wove,

Her fiery errands go.

For he that worketh high and wise,

Nor pauses in his plan,

Will take the sun out of the skies,

Ere freedom out of man.

Voluntaries

I

Low and mournful be the strain,

Haughty thought be far from me;

Tones of penitence and pain,

Moanings of the tropic sea;

Low and tender in the cell

Where a captive sits in chains,

Crooning ditties treasured well

From his Afric's torrid plains.

Sole estate his sire bequeathed –

Hapless sire to hapless son –

Was the wailing song he breathed,

And his chain when life was done.

What his fault, or what his crime?

Or what ill planet crossed his prime?

Heart too soft and will too weak

To front the fate that crouches near, –

Dove beneath the vulture's beak; –

Will song dissuade the thirsty spear?

Dragged from his mother's arms and breast,

Displaced, disfurnished here,

His wistful toil to do his best

Chilled by a ribald jeer.

Great men in the Senate sate,

Sage and hero, side by side,

Building for their sons the State,

Which they shall rule with pride.

They forebore to break the chain

Which bound the dusky tribe,

Checked by the owner's fierce disdain,

Lured by ›Union‹ as the bride.

Destiny sat by, and said,

»Pang for pang your seed shall pay,

Hide in false peace your coward head,

I bring round the harvest-day.«

II

Freedom all winged expands,

Nor perches in a narrow place;

Her broad van seeks unplanted lands;

She loves a poor and virtuous race.

Clinging to a colder zone

Whose dark sky sheds the snow-flake down,

The snow-flake is her banner's star,

Her stripes the boreal streamers are.

Long the loved the Northman well;

Now the iron age is done,

She will not refuse to dwell

With the offspring of the Sun;

Foundling of the desert far,

Where palms plume, siroccos blaze,

He roves unhurt the burning ways

In climates of the summer star.

He has avenues to God

Hid from men of Northern brain,

Far beholding, without cloud,

What these with slowest steps attain.

If once the generous chief arrive

To lead him willing to be led,

For freedom he will strike and strive,

And drain his heart till he be dead.

III

In an age of fops and toys,

Wanting wisdom, void of right,

Who shall nerve heroic boys

To hazard all in Freedom's fight,

Break sharply off their jolly games,

Forsake their comrades gay,

And quit proud homes and youthful dames,

For famine, toil, and fray?

Yet on the nimble air benign

Speed nimbler messages,

That waft the breath of grace divine

To hearts in sloth and ease.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, Thou must,

The youth replies, I can.

IV

O, well for the fortunate soul

Which Music's wings infold,

Stealing away the memory

Of sorrows new and old!

Yet happier he whose inward sight,

Stayed on his subtile thought,

Shut his sense on toys of time,

To vacant bosoms brought.

But best befriended of the God

He who, in evil times,

Warned by an inward voice,

Heeds not the darkness and the dread,

Biding by his rule and choice,

Feeling only the fiery thread

Leading over heroic ground,

Walled with mortal terror round,

To the aim which him allures,

And the sweet heaven his deed secures.

Peril around all else appalling,

Cannon in front and leaden rain;

Him Duty through the clarion calling

To the van called not in vain.

Stainless soldier on the walls,

Knowing this, – and knows no more, –

Whoever fights, whoever falls,

Justice conquers evermore,

Justice after as before, –

And he who battles on her side,

God, though he were ten times slain,

Crowns him victor glorified,

Victor over death and pain;

For ever: but his erring foe,

Self-assured that he prevails,

Looks from his victim lying low,

And sees aloft the red right arm

Redress the eternal scales.

He, the poor foe, whom angels foil,

Blind with pride, and fooled by hate,

Writhes within the dragon coil,

Reserved to a speechless fate.

V

Blooms the laurel which belongs

To the valiant chief who fights;

I see the wreath, I hear the songs

Lauding the Eternal Rights,

Victors over daily wrongs;

Awful victors, they misguide

Whom they will destroy,

And their coming triumph hide

In our downfall, or our joy:

They reach no term, they never sleep,

In equal strength through space abide;

Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep,

The strong they slay, the swift outstride:

Fate's grass grows rank in valley clods,

And rankly on the castled steep, –

Speak it firmly, these are gods,

All are ghosts beside.

Boston

Sicut patribus, sit Deus nobis.

Read in Faneuil Hall, on December 16, 1873, on the Centennial Anniversary of the Destruction of the Tea in Boston Harbour.

The rocky nook with hill-tops three

Looked eastward from the farms,

And twice each day the flowing sea

Took Boston in its arms;

The men of yore were stout and poor,

And sailed for bread to every shore.

And where they went on trade intent

They did what freemen can,

Their dauntless ways did all men praise,

The merchant was a man.

The world was made for honest trade,

To plant and eat be none afraid.

The waves that rocked them on the deep

To them their secret told;

Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep,

»Like us be free and bold!«

The honest waves refuse to slaves

The empire of the ocean caves.

Old Europe groans with palaces,

Has lords enough and more; –

We plant and build by foaming seas

A city of the poor; –

For day by day could Boston Bay

Their honest labour overpay.

We grant no dukedoms to the few,

We hold like rights and shall; –

Equal on Sunday in the pew,

On Monday in the mall.

For what avail the plough or sail,

Or land or life, if freedom fail?

The noble craftsman we promote,

Disown the knave and fool;

Each honest man shall have his vote,

Each child shall have his school.

A union then of honest men,

Or union nevermore again.

The wild rose and the barberry thorn

Hung out their summer pride

Where now on heated pavements worn

The feet of millions stride.

Fair rose the planted hills behind

The good town on the bay,

And where the western hills declined

The prairie stretched away.

What care though rival cities soar

Along the stormy coast,

Penn's town, New York, and Baltimore,

If Boston knew the most!

They laughed to know the world so wide;

The mountains said, »Good day!

We greet you well, you Saxon men,

Up with your towns and stay!«

The world was made for honest trade, –

To plant and eat be noneafraid.

»For you,« they said, »no barriers be,

For you no sluggard rest;

Each street leads downward to the sea,

Or landward to the West.«

O happy town beside the sea,

Whose roads lead everywhere to all;

Than thine no deeper moat can be,

No stouter fence, no steeper wall!

Bad news from George on the English throne:

»You are thriving well,« said he;

»Now by these presents be it known,

You shall pay us a tax on tea;

'Tis very small, – no load at all, –

Honour enough that we send the call.«

»Not so,« said Boston, »good my lord,

We pay our governors here

Abundant for their bed and board,

Six thousand pounds a year.

(Your Highness knows our homely word,)

Millions for self-government,

But for tribute never a cent.«

The cargo came! and who could blame

If Indians seized the tea,

And, chest by chest, let down the same

Into the laughing sea?

For what avail the plough or sail,

Or land or life, if freedom fail?

The townsmen braved the English king,

Found friendship in the French,

And Honour joined the patriot ring

Low on their wooden bench.

O bounteous seas that never fail!

O day remembered yet!

O happy port that spied the sail

Which wafted Lafayette!

Pole-star of light in Europe's night,

That never faltered from the right.

Kings shook with fear, old empires crave

The secret force to find

Which fired the little State to save

The rights of all mankind.

But right is might through all the world:

Province to province faithful clung,

Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled,

Till Freedom cheered and the joy-bells rung.

The sea returning day by day

Restores the world-wide mart;

So let each dweller on the Bay

Fold Boston in his heart,

Till these echoes be choked with snows,

Or over the town blue ocean flows.

Let the blood of her hundred thousands

Throb in each manly vein;

And the wit of all her wisest,

Make sunshine in her brain.

For you can teach the lightning speech,

And round the globe your voices reach.

And each shall care for other,

And each to each shall bend,

To the poor a noble brother,

To the good an equal friend.

A blessing through the ages thus,

Shield all thy roofs and towers!

God with the fathers, so with us,

Thou darling town of ours!