# May-day and other pieces/Occasional and Miscellaneous Pieces

OCCASIONAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.
BRAHMA.
IF the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven; But thou, meek lover of the good! Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
NEMESIS.
ALREADY blushes in thy cheek The bosom-thought which thou must speak; The bird, how far it haply roam By cloud or isle, is flying home; The maiden fears, and fearing runs Into the charmed snare she shuns; And every man, in love or pride, Of his fate is never wide.
Will a woman's fan the ocean smooth? Or prayers the stony Parcæ sooth, Or coax the thunder from its mark? Or tapers light the chaos dark? ​In spite of Virtue and the Muse, Nemesis will have her dues, And all our struggles and our toils Tighter wind the giant coils.
FATE.
DEEP in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes mean or great: Unknown to Cromwell as to me Was Cromwell's measure or degree; Unknown to him, as to his horse, If he than his groom be better or worse. He works, plots, fights, in rude affairs, With squires, lords, kings, his craft compares, Till late he learned, through doubt and fear, Broad England harbored not his peer: Obeying Time, the last to own The Genius from its cloudy throne. For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates.
FREEDOM.
ONCE I wished I might rehearse Freedom's pæan in my verse, That the slave who caught the strain Should throb until he snapped his chain. But the Spirit said, 'Not so; Speak it not, or speak it low; Name not lightly to be said, Gift too precious to be prayed, Passion not to be expressed But by heaving of the breast: Yet,—wouldst thou the mountain find Where this deity is shrined, Who gives to seas and sunset skies ​Their unspent beauty of surprise, And, when it lists him, waken can Brute or savage into man; Or, if in thy heart he shine, Blends the starry fates with thine, Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee, And makes thy thoughts archangels be; Freedom's secret wilt thou know?— Counsel not with flesh and blood; Loiter not for cloak or food; Right thou feelest, rush to do.'
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,— Present and 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 honor 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.
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 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 succor men; 'T is 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 labor 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.
North! give him beauty for rags, And honor, 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.
VOLUNTARIES.
I.
LOW and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Tones of penitence and pain, Meanings 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 forbore to break the chain Which bound the dusky tribe, Checked by the owners' fierce disdain, Lured by "Union" as the bribe. 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 she 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, Shuts 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.
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; Forever: 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.
LOVE AND THOUGHT.
TWO well-assorted travellers use The highway, Eros and the Muse. From the twins is nothing hidden, To the pair is naught forbidden; Hand in hand the comrades go Every nook of nature through: Each for other they were born, Each can other best adorn; They know one only mortal grief Past all balsam or relief, When, by false companions crossed, The pilgrims have each other lost.
LOVER'S PETITION.
GOOD Heart, that ownest all! I ask a modest boon and small: Not of lands and towns the gift,— Too large a load for me to lift,— But for one proper creature, Which geographic eye, Sweeping the map of Western earth, Or the Atlantic coast, from Maine To Powhatan's domain, Could not descry. Is 't much to ask in all thy huge creation, So trivial a part,— A solitary heart? ​Yet count me not of spirit mean, Or mine a mean demand, For 't is the concentration And worth of all the land, The sister of the sea, The daughter of the strand, Composed of air and light, And of the swart earth-might. So little to thy poet's prayer Thy large bounty well can spare. And yet I think, if she were gone, The world were better left alone.
UNA.
ROVING, roving, as it seems, Una lights my clouded dreams; Still for journeys she is dressed; We wander far by east and west.
In the homestead, homely thought; At my work I ramble not; If from home chance draw me wide, Half-seen Una sits beside.
In my house and garden-plot, Though beloved, I miss her not; But one I seek in foreign places, One face explore in foreign faces.
​At home a deeper thought may light The inward sky with chrysolite, And I greet from far the ray, Aurora of a dearer day.
But if upon the seas I sail, Or trundle on the glowing rail, I am but a thought of hers, Loveliest of travellers.
So the gentle poet's name To foreign parts is blown by fame; Seek him in his native town, He is hidden and unknown.
LETTERS.
EVERY day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear.
RUBIES.
THEY brought me rubies from the mine, And held them to the sun; I said, they are drops of frozen wine From Eden's vats that run.
I looked again,—I thought them hearts Of friends to friends unknown; Tides that should warm each neighboring life Are locked in sparkling stone.
But fire to thaw that ruddy snow, To break enchanted ice, And give love's scarlet tides to flow,— When shall that sun arise?
MERLIN'S SONG.
OF Merlin wise I learned a song,— Sing it low, or sing it loud, It is mightier than the strong, And punishes the proud. I sing it to the surging crowd,— Good men it will calm and cheer, Bad men it will chain and cage. In the heart of the music peals a strain Which only angels hear; Whether it waken joy or rage, Hushed myriads hark in vain, Yet they who hear it shed their age, And take their youth again.
THE TEST.
(Musa loquitur.)
I HUNG my verses in the wind, Time and tide their faults may find. All were winnowed through and through, Five lines lasted sound and true; Five were smelted in a pot Than the South more fierce and hot; These the siroc could not melt, Fire their fiercer flaming felt, And the meaning was more white Than July's meridian light. Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know. Have you eyes to find the five Which five hundred did survive?
SOLUTION.
I AM the Muse who sung alway By Jove, at dawn of the first day. Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought To fire the stagnant earth with thought: On spawning slime my song prevails, Wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales; Flushed in the sky the sweet May-morn, Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born. Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race, And Nile substructs her granite base,— Tented Tartary, columned Nile,— And, under vines, on rocky isle, Or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak, Forward stepped the perfect Greek: ​That wit and joy might find a tongue, And earth grow civil, Homer sung.
Flown to Italy from Greece, I brooded long, and held my peace, For I am wont to sing uncalled, And in days of evil plight Unlock doors of new delight; And sometimes mankind I appalled With a bitter horoscope, With spasms of terror for balm of hope. Then by better thought I lead Bards to speak what nations need; So I folded me in fears, And Dante searched the triple spheres, Moulding nature at his will, So shaped, so colored, swift or still, And, sculptor-like, his large design Etched on Alp and Apennine.
​Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur, Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power, England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakspeare's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.
Far in the North, where polar night Holds in check the frolic light, In trance upborne past mortal goal The Swede Emanuel leads the soul. Through snows above, mines underground, The inks of Erebus he found; Kehearsed to men the damned wails On which the seraph music sails. ​In spirit-worlds he trod alone, But walked the earth unmarked, unknown. The near by-stander caught no sound,— Yet they who listened far aloof Heard rendings of the skyey roof, And felt, beneath, the quaking ground; And his air-sown, unheeded words, In the next age, are flaming swords.
In newer days of war and trade, Romance forgot, and faith decayed, When Science armed and guided war, And clerks the Janus-gates unbar, When France, where poet never grew, Halved and dealt the globe anew, Goethe, raised o'er joy and strife, Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life, And brought Olympian wisdom down To court and mart, to gown and town; ​Stooping, his finger wrote in clay The open secret of to-day.
So bloom the unfading petals five, And verses that all verse outlive.