Channing was written when the poet was ignorant of the great preacher’s death.
“Since that event,” he says in his prefatory note to the volume, “the poem addressed to him is no longer appropriate. I have decided, however, to let it remain as it was written, in testimony of my admiration for a great and good man.”
THE PAGES of thy book I read,
And as I closed each one,
My heart, responding, ever said,
“Servant of God! well done!”
Well done! Thy words are great and bold; 5
At times they seem to me,
Like Luther’s, in the days of old,
Half-battles for the free.
Go on, until this land revokes
The old and chartered Lie, 10
The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes
Insult humanity.
A voice is ever at thy side
Speaking in tones of might,
Like the prophetic voice, that cried 15
To John in Patmos, “Write!”
Write! and tell out this bloody tale;
Record this dire eclipse,
This Day of Wrath, this Endless Wail,
This dread Apocalypse! 20
The Slave’s Dream
BESIDE the ungathered rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;
His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand.
Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, 5
He saw his Native Land.
Wide through the landscape of his dreams
The lordly Niger flowed;
Beneath the palm-trees on the plain
Once more a king he strode; 10
And heard the tinkling caravans
Descend the mountain road.
He saw once more his dark-eyed queen
Among her children stand;
They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks, 15
They held him by the hand! —
A tear burst from the sleeper’s lids
And fell into the sand.
And then at furious speed he rode
Along the Niger’s bank: 20
His bridle-reins were golden chains,
And, with a martial clank,
At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel
Smiting his stallion’s flank.
Before him, like a blood-red flag, 25
The bright flamingoes flew;
From morn till night he followed their flight,
O’er plains where the tamarind grew,
Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts,
And the ocean rose to view. 30
At night he heard the lion roar,
And the hyena scream,
And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds
Beside some hidden stream;
And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums, 35
Through the triumph of his dream.
The forests, with their myriad tongues,
Shouted of liberty;
And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud,
With a voice so wild and free, 40
That he started in his sleep and smiled
At their tempestuous glee.
He did not feel the driver’s whip,
Nor the burning heat of day;
For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep, 45
And his lifeless body lay
A worn-out fetter, that the soul
Had broken and thrown away!
The Good Part, that shall not be taken away
SHE dwells by Great Kenhawa’s side,
In valleys green and cool;
And all her hope and all her pride
Are in the village school.
Her soul, like the transparent air 5
That robes the hills above,
Though not of earth, encircles there
All things with arms of love.
And thus she walks among her girls
With praise and mild rebukes; 10
Subduing e’en rude village churls
By her angelic looks.
She reads to them at eventide
Of One who came to save;
To cast the captive’s chains aside 15
And liberate the slave.
And oft the blessed time foretells
When all men shall be free;
And musical, as silver bells,
Their falling chains shall be. 20
And following her beloved Lord,
In decent poverty,
She makes her life one sweet record
And deed of charity.
For she was rich, and gave up all 25
To break the iron bands
Of those who waited in her hall,
And labored in her lands.
Long since beyond the Southern Sea
Their outbound sails have sped, 30
While she, in meek humility,
Now earns her daily bread.
It is their prayers, which never cease,
That clothe her with such grace;
Their blessing is the light of peace 35
That shines upon her face.
The Slave in the Dismal Swamp
IN dark fens of the Dismal Swamp
The hunted Negro lay;
He saw the fire of the midnight camp,
And heard at times a horse’s tramp
And a bloodhound’s distant bay. 5
Where will-o’-the-wisps and glow-worms shine,
In bulrush and in brake;
Where waving mosses shroud the pine,
And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine
Is spotted like the snake; 10
Where hardly a human foot could pass,
Or a human heart would dare,
On the quaking turf of the green morass
He crouched in the rank and tangled grass,
Like a wild beast in his lair. 15
A poor old slave, infirm and lame;
Great scars deformed his face;
On his forehead he bore the brand of shame,
And the rags, that hid his mangled frame,
Were the livery of disgrace. 20
All things above were bright and fair,
All things were glad and free;
Lithe squirrels darted here and there,
And wild birds filled the echoing air
With songs of Liberty! 25
On him alone was the doom of pain,
From the morning of his birth;
On him alone the curse of Cain
Fell, like a flail on the garnered grain,
And struck him to the earth! 30
The Slave Singing at Midnight
LOUD he sang the psalm of David!
He, a Negro and enslavèd,
Sang of Israel’s victory,
Sang of Zion, bright and free.
In that hour, when night is calmest, 5
Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist,
In a voice so sweet and clear
That I could not choose but hear,
Songs of triumph, and ascriptions,
Such as reached the swart Egyptians, 10
When upon the Red Sea coast
Perished Pharaoh and his host.
And the voice of his devotion
Filled my soul with strange emotion;
For its tones by turns were glad, 15
Sweetly solemn, wildly sad.
Paul and Silas, in their prison,
Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen.
And an earthquake’s arm of might
Broke their dungeon-gates at night. 20
But, alas! what holy angel
Brings the Slave this glad evangel?
And what earthquake’s arm of might
Breaks his dungeon-gates at night?
The Witnesses
IN Ocean’s wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.
Beyond the fall of dews, 5
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships, with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.
There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms, 10
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.
These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning waves, 15
“We are the Witnesses!”
Within Earth’s wide domains
Are markets for men’s lives;
Their necks are galled with chains,
Their wrists are cramped with gyves. 20
Dead bodies, that the kite
In deserts makes its prey;
Murders, that with affright
Scare school-boys from their play!
All evil thoughts and deeds; 25
Anger, and lust, and pride;
The foulest, rankest weeds,
That choke Life’s groaning tide!
These are the woes of Slaves;
They glare from the abyss; 30
They cry, from unknown graves,
“We are the Witnesses!”
The Quadroon Girl
THE SLAVER in the broad lagoon
Lay moored with idle sail;
He waited for the rising moon,
And for the evening gale.
Under the shore his boat was tied, 5
And all her listless crew
Watched the gray alligator slide
Into the still bayou.
Odors of orange-flowers, and spice,
Reached them from time to time, 10
Like airs that breathe from Paradise
Upon a world of crime.
The Planter, under his roof of thatch,
Smoked thoughtfully and slow;
The Slaver’s thumb was on the latch, 15
He seemed in haste to go.
He said, “My ship at anchor rides
In yonder broad lagoon;
I only wait the evening tides,
And the rising of the moon.” 20
Before them, with her face upraised,
In timid attitude,
Like one half curious, half amazed,
A Quadroon maiden stood.
Her eyes were large, and full of light, 25
Her arms and neck were bare;
No garment she wore save a kirtle bright,
And her own long, raven hair.
And on her lips there played a smile
As holy, meek, and faint, 30
As lights in some cathedral aisle
The features of a saint.
“The soil is barren, — the farm is old,”
The thoughtful planter said;
Then looked upon the Slaver’s gold, 35
And then upon the maid.
His heart within him was at strife
With such accursèd gains:
For he knew whose passions gave her life,
Whose blood ran in her veins. 40
But the voice of nature was too weak;
He took the glittering gold!
Then pale as death grew the maiden’s cheek,
Her hands as icy cold.
The Slaver led her from the door, 45
He led her by the hand,
To be his slave and paramour
In a strange and distant land!
The Warning
BEWARE! The Israelite of old, who tore
The lion in his path, — when, poor and blind,
He saw the blessed light of heaven no more,
Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind
In prison, and at last led forth to be 5
A pander to Philistine revelry, —
Upon the pillars of the temple laid
His desperate hands, and in its overthrow
Destroyed himself, and with him those who made
A cruel mockery of his sightless woe; 10
The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all,
Expired, and thousands perished in the fall!
There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,
Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel,
Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand, 15
And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,
Till the vast Temple of our liberties
A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.
CONTENTS
Carillon
The Belfry of Bruges
A Gleam of Sunshine
The Arsenal at Springfield
Nuremberg
The Norman Baron
Rain in Summer
To a Child
The Occultation of Orion
The Bridge
To the Driving Cloud
Longfellow, close to the time of publication
Introductory Note
The Belfry of Bruges and other Poems was published December 23, 1845, but the greater part of the volume had already appeared in the illustrated edition of Mr. Longfellow’s poems published earlier in the year in Philadelphia, as well as in the pages of Graham’s Magazine, which at this time was the most frequent vehicle of his writing. 1 The poem which gives the title to the volume was the product of his excursion in Europe in the summer of 1842. While on his way to the watercure at Marienberg on the Rhine, he spent a few days in Belgium, and here is the entry which he makes in his diary: — 2 May 30. In the evening took the railway from Ghent to Bruges. Stopped at La Fleur de Blé attracted by the name, and found it a good hotel. It was not yet night; and I strolled through the fine old streets and felt myself a hundred years old. The chimes seemed to be ringing incessantly; and the air of repose and antiquity was delightful.… Oh, those chimes, those chimes! how deliciously they lull one to sleep! The little bells, with their clear, liquid notes, like the voices of boys in a choir, and the solemn bass of the great bell tolling in, like the voice of a friar! 3 May 31. Rose before five and climbed the high belfry which was once crowned by the gilded copper drag-on now at Ghent. The carillon of forty-eight bells; the little chamber in the tower; the machinery, like a huge barrel-organ, with keys like a musical instrument for the carilloneur; the view from the tower; the singing of swallows with the chimes; the fresh morning air; the mist in the horizon; the red roofs far below; the canal, like a silver clasp, linking the city with the sea, — how much to remember! 4 From some expressions in a letter to Freiligrath it would seem that this poem and Nuremberg formed part of a plan which the poet had designed of a series of travel-sketches in verse, a plan which in a desultory way he may be said to have been executing all his days and to have carried out systematically in another shape in his collection of Poems of Places. 5 The contents of this division are the same as in the volume so entitled, except that a group of six translations has been withheld, to be placed with the other translated pieces at the end of the volume; except also that to the Sonnets is added the personal one entitled Mezzo Cammin, written at this time and first printed in the Life.
Carillon
IN the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times, 5
And changing like a poet’s rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
Then, with deep sonorous clangor 10
Calmly answering their sweet anger,
When the wrangling bells had ended,
Slowly struck the clock eleven,
And, from out the silent heaven,
Silence on the town descended. 15
Silence, silence everywhere,
On the earth and in the air,
Save that footsteps here and there
Of some burgher home returning,
By the street lamps faintly burning, 20
For a moment woke the echoes
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
But amid my broken slumbers
Still I heard those magic numbers,
As they loud proclaimed the flight 25
And stolen marches of the night;
Till their chimes in sweet collision
Mingled with each wandering vision,
Mingled with the fortune-telling
Gypsy-bands of dreams and fancies, 30
Which amid the waste expanses
Of the silent land of trances
Have their solitary dwelling;
All else seemed asleep in Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city. 35
And I thought how like these chimes
Are the poet’s airy rhymes,
All his rhymes and roundelays,
His conceits, and songs, and ditties,
From the belfry of his brain, 40
Scattered downward, though in vain,
On the roofs and stones of cities!
For by night the drowsy ear
Under its curtains cannot hear,
And by day men go their ways, 45
Hearing the music as they pass,
But deeming it no more, alas!
Than the hollow sound of brass.
Yet perchance a sleepless wight,
Lodging at some humble inn 50
In the narrow lanes of life,
When the dusk and hush of night
Shut out the incessant din
Of daylight and its toil and strife,
May listen with a calm delight 55
To the poet’s melodies,
Till he hears, or dreams he hears,
Intermingled with the song,
Thoughts that he has cherished long;
Hears amid the chime and singing 60
The bells of his own village ringing,
And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes
Wet with most delicious tears.
Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay
In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Blé, 65
Listening with a wild delight
To the chimes that, through the night,
Rang their changes from the Belfry
Of that quaint old Flemish city.
The Belfry of Bruges
IN the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o’er the town.
As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood,
And the world threw off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood.
Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapors gray, 5
Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay.
At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys, here and there,
Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like, into air.
Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour,
But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower. 10
From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and high;
And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky.
Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times,
With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes,
Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir; 15
And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar.
Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain;
They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again;
All the Foresters of Flanders, — mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer,
Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy, Philip, Guy de Dampierre. 20
I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those days of old;
Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold;
Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.
I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on the ground; 25
I beheld the gentle Mary, hunting with her hawk and hound;
And her lighted bridal-chamber, where a duke slept with the queen,
And the armèd guard around them, and the sword unsheathed between.
I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers bold,
Marching homeward from the bloody battle of the Spurs of Gold; 30
Saw the fight at Minnewater, saw the White Hoods moving west,
Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon’s nest.
And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote;
And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin’s throat;
Till the bell of Ghent responded o’er lagoon and dike of sand, 35
“I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!”
Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city’s roar
Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more.
Hours had passed away like minutes; and, before I was aware,
Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square. 40
A Gleam of Sunshine
The scene of this poem is mentioned in the poet’s diary, under date of August 31, 1846. “In the afternoon a delicious drive with F. and C. through Brookline, by the church and ‘the green lane,’ and homeward through a lovelier lane, with barberries and wild vines clustering over the old stone walls.”
THIS is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been.
The Past and Present here unite 5
Beneath Time’s flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.
Here runs the highway to the town;
There the green lane descends, 10
Through which I walked to church with thee,
O gentlest of my friends!
The shadow of the linden-trees
Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs, 15
A shadow, thou didst pass.
Thy dress was like the lilies,
And thy heart as pure as they;
One of God’s holy messengers
Did walk with me that day. 20
I saw the branches of the trees
Bend down thy touch to meet,
The clover-blossoms in the grass
Rise up to kiss thy feet.
“Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares, 25
Of earth and folly born!”
Solemnly sang the village choir
On that sweet Sabbath morn.
Through the closed blinds the golden sun
Poured in a dusty beam, 30
Like the celestial ladder seen
By Jacob in his dream.
And ever and anon, the wind
Sweet-scented with the hay,
Turned o’er the hymn-book’s fluttering leaves 35
That on the window lay.
Long was the good man’s sermon,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For he spake of Ruth the beautiful,
And still I thought of thee. 40
Long was the prayer he uttered,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For in my heart I prayed with him,
And still I thought of thee.
But now, alas! the place seems changed; 45
Thou art no longer here:
Part of the sunshine of the scene
With thee did disappear.
Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart,
Like pine-trees dark and high, 50
Subdue the light of noon, and breathe
A low and ceaseless sigh;
This memory brightens o’er the past,
As when the sun, concealed
Behind some cloud that near us hangs, 55
Shines on a distant field.
The Arsenal at Springfield
On his wedding journey in the summer of 1843, Mr. Longfellow passed through Springfield, Massachusetts, and visited the United States arsenal there, in company with Mr. Charles Summer. “While Mr. Sumner was endeavoring,” says Mr. S. Longfellow, “to impress upon the attendant that the money expended upon these weapons of war would have been much better spent upon a great library, Mrs. Longfellow pleased her husband by remarking how like an organ looked the ranged and shining gun-barrels which covered the walls from floor to ceiling, and suggesting what mournful music Death would bring from them. ‘We grew quite warlike against war,’ she wrote, ‘and I urged H. to write a peace poem.’” The poem was written some months later.
THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.
Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, 5
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal Miserere
Will mingle with their awful symphonies!
I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan, 10
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.
On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer,
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman’s song,
And loud, amid the universal clamor, 15
O’er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.
I hear the Florentine, who from his palace
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din,
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis
Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent’s skin; 20
The tumult of each sacked and burning village;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldiers’ revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;
The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, 25
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder
The diapason of the cannonade.
Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these, 30
Thou drownest Nature’s sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies?
Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error, 35
There were no need of arsenals or forts:
The warrior’s name would be a name abhorrèd!
And every nation, that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain! 40
Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,
I hear once more the voice of Christ say, “Peace!”
Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals 45
The blast of War’s great organ shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise.
Nuremberg
In a letter to Freiligrath, printed in the Life, I. 436, Mr. Longfellow describes with enthusiasm a day at Nuremberg, from the memory of which this poem sprang.
IN the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.
Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song,
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng:
Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, 5
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old;
And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme,
That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime.
In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band,
Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde’s hand; 10
On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days
Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian’s praise.
Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art:
Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart;
And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, 15
By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own.
In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust,
And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust;
In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare,
Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. 20
Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart,
Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art;
Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand,
Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.
Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies; 25
Dead he is not, but departed, — for the artist never dies.
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!
Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes,
Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains. 30
From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild,
Building nests in Fame’s great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.
As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme,
And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil’s chime;
Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom 35
In the forge’s dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.
Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft,
Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed.
But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor,
And a garland in the window, and his face above the door; 40
Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman’s song,
As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long.
And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care,
Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master’s antique chair.
Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye 45
Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry.
Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world’s regard;
But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs thy cobbler bard.
Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away,
As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay: 50
Gathering from the pavement’s crevice, as a floweret of the soil,
The nobility of labor, — the long pedigree of toil.
The Norman Baron
The following passage from Thierry was sent to Mr. Longfellow by an unknown correspondent, who suggested it as a theme for a poem.
Dans les moments de la vie où la réflexion devient plus calme et plus profonde, où l’intérêt et l’avarice parlent moins haut que la raison, dans les instants de chagrin domestique, de maladie, et de péril de mort, les nobles se repentirent de posséder des serfs, comme d’une chose peu agréable à Dieu, qui avait créé tous les hommes à son image. — Conquête de l’Angleterre.
IN his chamber, weak and dying,
Was the Norman baron lying;
Loud, without, the tempest thundered,
And the castle-turret shook.
In this fight was Death the gainer, 5
Spite of vassal and retainer,
And the lands his sires had plundered,
Written in the Doomsday Book.
By his bed a monk was seated,
Who in humble voice repeated 10
Many a prayer and pater-noster,
From the missal on his knee;
And, amid the tempest pealing,
Sounds of bells came faintly stealing,
Bells, that from the neighboring kloster 15
Rang for the Nativity.
In the hall, the serf and vassal
Held, that night, their Christmas wassail
Many a carol, old and saintly,
Sang the minstrels and the waits; 20
And so loud these Saxon gleemen
Sang to slaves the songs of freemen,
That the storm was heard but faintly,
Knocking at the castle-gates.
Till at length the lays they chanted 25
Reached the chamber terror-haunted,
Where the monk, with accents holy,
Whispered at the baron’s ear.
Tears upon his eyelids glistened,
As he paused awhile and listened, 30
And the dying baron slowly
Turned his weary head to hear.
“Wassail for the kingly stranger
Born and cradled in a manger!
King, like David, priest, like Aaron, 35
Christ is born to set us free!”
And the lightning showed the sainted
Figures on the casement painted,
And exclaimed the shuddering baron,
“Miserere, Domine!” 40
In that hour of deep contrition
He beheld, with clearer vision,
Through all outward show and fashion,
Justice, the Avenger, rise.
All the pomp of earth had vanished, 45
Falsehood and deceit were banished,
Reason spake more loud than passion,
And the truth wore no disguise.
Every vassal of his banner,
Every serf born to his manor, 50
All those wronged and wretched creatures,
By his hand were freed again.
And, as on the sacred missal
He recorded their dismissal,
Death relaxed his iron features, 55
And the monk replied, “Amen!”
Many centuries have been numbered
Since in death the baron slumbered
By the convent’s sculptured portal,
Mingling with the common dust: 60
But the good deed, through the ages
Living in historic pages,
Brighter grows and gleams immortal,
Unconsumed by moth or rust.
Rain in Summer
HOW beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain! 5
How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane 10
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain! 15
The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain 20
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.
From the neighboring school
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise 25
And commotion;
And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Ingulfs them in its whirling 30
And turbulent ocean.
In the country, on every side,
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard’s tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain, 35
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!
In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head, 40
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
And the vapors that arise
From the well-watered and smoking soil. 45
For this rest in the furrow after toil
Their large and lustrous eyes
Seem to thank the Lord,
More than man’s spoken word.
Near at hand, 50
From under the sheltering trees,
The farmer sees
His pastures, and his fields of grain,
As they bend their tops
To the numberless beating drops 55
Of the incessant rain.
He counts it as no sin
That he sees therein
Only his own thrift and gain.
These, and far more than these, 60
The Poet sees!
He can behold
Aquarius old
Walking the fenceless fields of air;
And from each ample fold 65
Of the clouds about him rolled
Scattering everywhere
The showery rain,
As the farmer scatters his grain.
He can behold
70
Things manifold
That have not yet been wholly told, —
Have not been wholly sung nor said.
For his thought, that never stops,
Follows the water-drops 75
Down to the graves of the dead,
Down through chasms and gulfs profound,
To the dreary fountain-head
Of lakes and rivers under ground;
And sees them, when the rain is done, 80
On the bridge of colors seven
Climbing up once more to heaven,
Opposite the setting sun.
Thus the Seer,
With vision clear, 85
Sees forms appear and disappear,
In the perpetual round of strange,
Mysterious change
From birth to death, from death to birth,
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth; 90
Till glimpses more sublime
Of things unseen before,
Unto his wondering eyes reveal
The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel
Turning forevermore 95
In the rapid and rushing river of Time.
To a Child
This poem was begun October 2, 1845, and on the 13th of the next month Mr.
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