# The New Penelope/Poems

POEMS.
A PAGAN REVERIE.
Tell me, mother Nature! tender yet stern mother! In what nomenclature (fitlier than another) Can I laud and praise thee, entreat and implore thee; Ask thee what thy ways be, question yet adore thee.
Over me thy heaven bends its royal arches; Through its vault the seven planets keep their marches: Rising, shining, setting, with no change or turning; Never once forgetting—wasted not with burning.
On and on, unceasing, move the constellations, Lessening nor increasing since the birth of nations: Sun and moon unfailing keep their times and seasons,— But man, unavailing, pleads to thee for reasons.
Why the great dumb mountains, why the ocean hoary— Even the babbling fountains, older are than story, And his life's duration 's but a few short marches Of the constellations through the heavenly arches!
Even the oaks of Mamre, and the palms of Kedar, (Praising thee with psalmry) and the stately cedar, Through the cycling ages, stinted not are growing,— While the holiest sages have not time for knowing.
​Mother whom we cherish, savage while so tender, Do the lilies perish mourning their lost splendor? Does the diamond shimmer brightlier that eternal Time makes nothing dimmer of its light supernal?
Do the treasures hidden in earth's rocky bosom, Cry to men unbidden that they come and loose them? Is the dew of dawntide sad because the Summer Kissed to death the fawn-eyed Spring, the earlier comer?
Would the golden vapors trooping over heaven, Quench the starry tapers of the sunless even? When the arrowy lightnings smite the rocks asunder, Do they shrink with frightenings from the bellowing thunder?
Inconceivable Nature! these, thy inert creatures, With their sphinx-like stature, are of man the teachers; Silent, secret, passive, endless as the ages, 'Gainst their forces massive fruitlessly he rages.
Winds and waves misuse him, buffet and destroy him; Thorns and pebbles bruise him, heat and cold annoy him; Sting of insect maddens, snarl of beast affrights him; Shade of forest saddens, breath of flowers delights him.
O thou great, mysterious mother of all mystery! At thy lips imperious man entreats his history.— Whence he came—and whither is his spirit fleeing: Ere it wandered hither had it other being:
Will its subtile essence, passing through death's portal, Put on nobler presence in a life immortal? Or is man but matter, that a touch ungentle, Back again may shatter to forms elemental?
Can mere atoms question how they feel sensation? Or dust make suggestion of its own creation? Yet if man were better than his base conditions, Could things baser fetter his sublime ambitions?
​What unknown conjunction of the pure etherial, With the form and function of the gross material, Gives the product mortal? whose immortal yearning Brings him to the portal of celestial learning.
To the portal gleaming, where the waiting sphinxes, Humoring his dreaming, give him what he thinks is Key to the arcana—plausible equation Of the problems many in his incarnation.
Pitiful delusion!—in no nomenclature— Maugre its profusion—O ambiguous nature! Can man find expression of his own relation To the great procession of facts in creation?
Fruitless speculating! none may lift the curtain From the antedating ages and uncertain When what is was not, and tides of pristine being Beat on shores forgot, and all, as now, unseeing.
Whence impelled or whither, or by what volition; Borne now here, now thither, in blind inanition. Out of this abysmal, nebulous dim distance, Haunted by a dismal, phantomic existence,
Issued man?—a creature without inspiration, Gross of form and feature, dull of inclination? Or was his primordial self a something higher? Fresh from test and ordeal of elemental fire.
Were these ages golden while the world was younger, When the giants olden knew not toil nor hunger? When no pain nor malice marred joy's full completeness, And life's honeyed chalice rapt the soul with sweetness?
When the restless river of time loved to linger; Ere flesh felt the quiver of death's dissolving finger; When man's intuition led without deflection, To a sure fruition, and a full perfection.
​Individual man is ever new created: What his being's plan is, loosely predicated On the circumstances of his sole condition, Colored by the fancies borrowed from tradition.
His creation gives him clue to nothing older: Naked, life receives him—wondering beholder Of the world about him—and ere aught is certain, Time and mystery flout him; and death drops the curtain.
Man, the dreamer, groping after what he should be, Cheers himself with hoping to be what he would be: When he hopes no longer, with self-adulation, Fancies he was stronger at his first creation:
Else—in him inhering powers of intellection— Death, by interfering with his mind's perfection, Itself gives security to restore life's treasure, Freed from all impurity and in endless measure.
Thou, O Nature, knowest, yet no word is spoken. Time, that ever flowest, presses on unbroken: All in vain the sages toil with proof and question— The immemorial ages give no least suggestion.
PASSING BY HELICON.
My steps are turned away; Yet my eyes linger still, On their beloved hill, In one long, last survey: Gazing through tears that multiply the view, Their passionate adieu!
O, joy-empurpled height, Down whose enchanted sides The rosy mist now glides, ​How can I loose thy sight? How can my eyes turn where my feet must go, Trailing their way in woe?
Gone is my strength of heart; The roses that I brought From thy dear bowers, and thought To keep, since we must part— Thy thornless roses, sweeter until now, Than round Hymettus' brow.
The golden-vested bees Find sweetest sweetness in— Such odors dwelt within The moist red hearts of these— Alas, no longer give out blissful breath, But odors rank with death.
Their dewiness is dank; It chills my pallid arms, Once blushing 'neath their charms; And their green stems hang lank, Stricken with leprosy, and fair no more, But withered to the core.
Vain thought! to bear along, Into this torrid track, Whence no one turneth back With his first wanderer's song Yet on his lips, thy odors and thy dews, To deck these dwarfed yews.
No more within thy vales, Beside thy plashing wells, Where sweet Euterpe dwells With songs of nightingales, And sounds of flutes that make pale Silence glow, Shall I their rapture know.
​Farewell, ye stately palms! Clashing your cymbal tones, In thro' the mystic moans Of pines at solemn psalms: Ye myrtles, singing Love's inspired song, We part, and part for long!
Farewell, majestic peaks! Whereon my listening soul Hath trembled to the roll Of thunders that Jove wreaks— And calm Minerva's oracles hath heard All more than now unstirred!
Adieu, ye beds of bloom! No more shall zephyr bring To me, upon his wing, Your loveliest perfume; No more upon your pure, immortal dyes, Shall rest my happy eyes.
I pass by; at thy foot, O, mount of my delight! Ere yet from out thy sight, I drop my voiceless lute: It is in vain to strive to carry hence Its olden eloquence.
Your sacred groves no more My singing shall prolong, With echoes of my song, Doubling it o'er and o'er. Haunt of the muses, lost to wistful eyes, What dreams of thee shall rise!
​Rise but to be dispelled— For here where I am cast, Such visions may not last, By sterner fancies quelled: Relentless Nemesis my doom hath sent— This cruel banishment!
LOST AT SEA.
A fleet set sail upon a summer sea: 'Tis now so long ago, I look no more to see my ships come home; But in that fleet sailed all 't was dear to me.
Ships never bore such precious freight as these, Please God, to any woe. His world is wide, and they may ride the foam, Secure from danger, in some unknown seas.
But they have left me bankrupt on life's 'change; And daily I bestow Regretful tears upon the blank account, And with myself my losses rearrange.
Oh, mystic wind of fate, dost hold my dower Where I may never know? Of all my treasure ventured what amount Will the sea send me in my parting hour!
'TWAS JUNE, NOT I.
"Come out into the garden, Maud;" In whispered tones young Percy said: He but repeated what he'd read That afternoon, with soft applaud: A snatch, which for my same name's sake, He caught, out of the sweet, soft song, A lover for his love did make, In half despite of some fond wrong:— And more he quoted, just to show How still the rhymes ran in his head, With visions of the roses red That on the poet's pen did grow.
The poet's spell was on our blood; The spell of June was in the air; We felt, more than we understood, The charm of being young and fair. Where everything is fair and young— As on June eves doth fitly seem: The Earth herself lies in among The misty, azure fields of space, A bride, whose startled blushes glow Less flame-like through the shrouds of lace That sweeter all her beauties show.
We walked and talked beneath the trees— Bird-haunted, flowering trees of June— The roses purpled in the moon; We breathed their fragrance on the breeze— Young Percy's voice is tuned to clear Deep tones, as if his heart were deep: This night it fluttered on my ear As young birds flutter in their sleep. My own voice faltered when I said ​How very sweet such hours must be With one we love. At that word he Shook like the aspen overhead: "Must be!" he drew me from the shade, To read my face to show his own: "Say are, dear Maud!"—my tongue was stayed; My pliant limbs seemed turned to stone.
He held my hands I could not move— The nerveless palms together prest— And clasped them tightly to his breast; While in my heart the question strove. The fire-flies flashed like wandering stars— I thought some sprang from out his eyes: Surely some spirit makes or mars At will our earthly destinies! "Speak, Maud!"—at length I turned away: He must have thought it woman's fear; For, whispering softly in my ear Such gentle thanks as might allay Love's tender shame; left on my brow, And on each hand, a warm light kiss— I feel them burn there even now— But all my fetters fell at this.
I spoke like an injured queen: It's our own defence when we're surprised— The way our weakness is disguised; I said things that I could not mean, Or ought not—since it was a lie That love had not been in my mind: 'Twas in the air I breathed; the sky Shone love, and murmured it the wind. It had absorbed my soul with bliss; My blood ran love in every vein, And to have been beloved again ​Were heavenly!—so I thought till this Unlooked for answer to the prayer My heart was making with its might. Thus challenged, caught in sudden snare, Like two clouds meeting on a height, And, pausing first in short strange lull, Then bursting into awful storm, Opposing feelings multiform, Struggled in silence: and then full Of our blind woman-wrath, broke forth In stinging hail of sharp-edged ice, As freezing as the polar north, Yet maddening. O, the poor mean vice We women have been taught to call By virtue's name! the holy scorn We feel for lovers left love-lorn By our own coldness, or by the wall Of other love 'twixt them and us!
The tempest past, I paused. He stood Silent,—and yet "Ungenerous!" Was hurled back, plainer than ere could His lips have said it, by his eyes Fire-flashing, and his pale, set face, Beautiful, and unmarred by trace Of aught save pain and pained surprise. —I quailed at last before that gaze, And even faintly owned my wrong: I said I "spoke in such amaze I could not choose words that belong To such occasions." Here he smiled, To cover one low, quick-drawn sigh: "June eves disturb us differently," He said, at length; "and I, beguiled By something in the air, did do My Lady Maud unmeant offence; ​And, what is stranger far, she too, Under the baleful influence of this fair heaven"—he raised his eyes, And gestured proudly toward the stars— "Has done me wrong. Wrong, lady, mars God's purpose, written on these skies, Painted and uttered in this scene: Acknowledged in each secret heart; We both are wrong, you say; 'twould mean That we too should be wide apart— And so, adieu!"—with this he went.
I sat down whitening in the moon, With heat as of a desert noon, Sending its fever vehement Across my brow, and through my frame— The fever of a wild regret— A vain regret without a name, In which both love and loathing met.
Was this the same enchanted air I breathed one little hour ago? Did all these purple roses blow But yestermorn, so sweet, so fair? Was it this eve that some one said "Come out into the garden, Maud?" And while the sleepy birds o'erhead Chirped out to know who walked abroad, Did we admire the plumey flowers On the wide-branched catalpa trees, And locusts, scenting all the breeze; And call the balm-trees our bird-towers? Did we recall the "black bat Night," That flew before young Maud walked forth— And say this Night's wings were too bright For bats'—being feathered, from its birth, ​Like butterflies' with powdered gold: Still talking on, from gay to grave, And trembling lest some sudden wave Of the soul's deep, grown over-bold, Should sweep the barriers of reserve, And whelm us in tumultuous floods Of unknown power? What did unnerve Our frames, as if we walked with gods? Unless they, meaning to destroy, Had made us mad with a false heaven, Or drunk with wine and honey given Only for immortals to enjoy.
Alas, I only knew that late I'd seemed in an enchanted sphere; That now I felt the web of fate Close round me, with a mortal fear. If only once the gods invite To banquets that are crowned with roses; After which the celestial closes Are barred to us; if in despite Of such high favor, arrogant We blindly choose to bide our time, Rejecting Heaven's—and ignorant What we have spurned, attempt to climb To heavenly places at our will— Finding no path thereto but one, Nemesis-guarded, where atone To heaven, all such as hopeful still, Press toward the mount,—yet find it strewn With corses, perished by the way, Of those who Fate did importune Too rashly, or her will gainsay. If I have been thrust out from heaven, This night, for insolent disdain, Of putting a young god in pain, ​How shall I hope to be forgiven? Yet let me not be judged as one Who mocks at any high behest; My fault being that I kept the throne Of a Jove vacant in my breast, And when Apollo claimed the place I was too loyal to my Jove; Unmindful how the masks of love Transfigure all things to our face.
Ah, well! if I have lost to fate The greatest boon that heaven disposes; And closed upon myself the gate To fields of bliss; 'tis on these roses, On this intoxicating air, The witching influence of the moon, The poet's rhymes that went in tune To the night's voices low and rare; To all, that goes to make such hours Like hasheesh-dreams. These did defy, With contrary fate-compelling power, The intended bliss;—'twas June, not I.
LINES TO A LUMP OF VIRGIN GOLD.
Dull, yellow, heavy, lustreless— With less of radiance than the burnished tress, Crumpled on Beauty's forehead: cloddish, cold, Kneaded together with the common mold! Worn by sharp contact with the fretted edges Of ancient drifts, or prisoned in deep ledges; Hidden within some mountain's rugged breast From man's desire and quest— Would thou could'st speak and tell the mystery That shrines thy history!
​Yet 'tis of little consequence, To-day, to know how thou wert made, or whence Earthquake and flood have brought thee: thou art here, At once the master that men love and fear— Whom they have sought by many strange devices, In ancient river-beds; in interstices Of hardest quartz; upon the wave-wet strand, Where curls the tawny sand By mountain torrents hurried to the main, And thence hurled back again:—
Yes, suffered, dared, and patiently Offered up everything, O gold, to thee!— Home, wife and children, native soil, and all That once they deemed life's sweetest, at thy call; Fled over burning plains; in deserts fainted; Wearied for months at sea—yet ever painted Thee as the shining Mecca, that to gain Invalidated pain, Cured the sick soul—made nugatory evil Of man or devil.
Alas, and well-a-day! we know What idle dreams were these that fooled men so. On yonder hillside sleep in nameless graves, To which they went untended, the poor slaves Of fruitless toil; the victims of a fever Called home-sickness—no remedy found ever; Or slain by vices that grow rankly where Men madly do and dare, In alternations of high hope and deep abysses Of recklessnesses.
Painfully, and by violence: Even as heaven is taken, thou wert dragged whence Nature had hidden thee—whose face is worn With anxious furrows, and her bosom torn ​In the hard strife—and ever yet there lingers Upon these hills work for the "effacing fingers" Of time, the healer, who makes all things seem A half forgotten dream; Who smooths deep furrows and lone graves together, By touch of wind and weather.
Thou heavy, lustreless, dull clod! Digged from the earth like a base common sod; I wonder at thee, and thy power to hold The world in bond to thee, thou yellow gold! Yet do I sadly own thy fascination, And would I gladly show my estimation By giving house-room to thee, if thou'lt come And cumber up my home;— I'd even promise not to call attention To these things that I mention!
"The King can do no wrong," and thou Art King indeed to most of us, I trow. Thou'rt an enchanter, at whose sovreign will All that there is of progress, learning, skill, Of beauty, culture, grace—and I might even Include religion, though that flouts at heaven— Comes at thy bidding, flies before thy loss;— And yet men call thee dross! If thou art dross then I mistaken be Of thy identity.
Ah, solid, weighty, beautiful! How could I first have said that thou wert dull? How could have wondered that men willingly Gave up their homes, and toiled and died for thee? Theirs was the martyrdom in which was planted A glorious State, by precious memories haunted: Ours is the comfort, ease, the power, the fame Of an exalted name: ​Theirs was the struggle of a proud ambition— Ours is the full fruition.
Thou, yellow nugget, wert the star That drew these willing votaries from afar, 'Twere wrong to call thee lustreless or base That lightest onward all the human race, Emblem art thou, in every song or story, Of highest excellence and brightest glory: Thou crown'st the angels, and enthronest Him Who made the cherubim: My reverend thought indeed is not withholden, O nugget golden!
MAGDALENA.
You say there's a Being all-loving, Whose nature is justice and pity; Could you say where you think he is roving? We have sought him from city to city, But he never is where we can find him, When outrage and sorrow beset us; It is strange we are always behind him, Or that He should forever forget us.
But being a god, he is thinking Of the masculine side of the Human; And though just, it would surely be sinking The God to be thoughtful for woman. For him and by him was man made: Sole heir of the earth and its treasures; An after-thought, woman—the handmaid, Not of God, but of man and his pleasures.
Should you say that man's God would reprove us, If we found him and showed him our bruises? ​It is dreary with no one to love us, Or to hold back the hand that abuses: Man's hand, that first led and caressed us, Man's lips, that first kissed and betrayed;— If his God could know how he's oppressed us, Do you think that we need be afraid?
For we loved him—and he who stood nearest To God, who could doubt or disdain? When he swore by that God, and the dearest Of boons that he hoped to obtain Of that God, that he truly would keep us In his heart of hearts precious and only: Say, how could we think he would steep us In sorrow, and leave us thus lonely?
But you see how it is: he has left us, This demi-god, heir of creation; Of our only good gifts has bereft us, And mocked at our mad desolation: Says that we knew that such oaths would be broken— Says we lured him to lie and betray; Quotes the word of his God as a token Of the law that makes woman his prey.
And now what shall we do? We have given To this master our handmaiden's dower: Our beauty and youth, aye, and even Our souls have we left in his power. Though we thought when we loved him, that loving Made of woman an angel, not demon; We have found, to our fond faith's disproving, That love makes of woman a leman!
Yes, we gave, and he took: took not merely What we gave, for his lying pretences: But our whole woman world, that so dearly ​We held by till then: our defences Of home, of fair fame; the affection Of parents and kindred; the human Delight of child-love; the protection That is everywhere owed to a woman.
You say there's a Being all-loving, Whose nature is justice and pity: Could you say where you think he is roving? We have sought him from city to city. We have called unto him, our eyes streaming With the tears of our pain and despair: We have shouted unto him blaspheming, And whispered unto him in prayer.
But he sleeps, or is absent, or lending His ear to man's prouder petition: And the black silence over us bending Scorches hot with the breath of perdition. For this fair world of man's, in which woman Pays for all that she gets with her beauty, Is a desert that starves out the human, When her charms charm not squarely with duty.
For man were we made, says the preacher, To love him and serve him in meekness, Of man's God is man solely the teacher Interpreting unto our weakness: He the teacher, the master, dispenser Not only of law, but of living, Breaks his own law with us, then turns censor, Accusing, but never forgiving.
Do you think that we have not been nursing Resentment for wrong and betrayal? From our hearts, filled with gall, rises cursing, To our own and our masters' dismayal. ​'Tis for this that we seek the all-loving, Whose nature is justice and pity; And we'll find Him, wherever he's roving, In country, in town, or in city.
He must show us his justice, who made us; He must place sin where sin was conceived; We must know if man's God will upbraid us Because we both loved and believed. We must know if man's riches and power, His titles, crowns, sceptres and ermine, Weigh with God against womanhood's dower, Or whether man's guilt they determine.
It would seem that man's God should restrain him, Or else should avenge our dishonor: Shall the cries of the hopeless not pain him, Or shall woman take all guilt upon her? Let us challenge the maker that made us; Let us cry to Christ, son of a woman; We shall learn if, when man has betrayed us, Heaven's justice accords with the human.
We must know if because we were lowly, And kept in the place man assigned us, He could seek us with passions unholy And be free, while his penalties bind us. We would ask if his gold buys exemption, Or whether his manhood acquits him; How it is that we scarce find redemption For sins less than his self-law permits him.
Do we dare the Almighty to question? Shall the clay to the potter appeal? To whom else shall we go with suggestion? Shall the vase not complain to the wheel? God answered Job out of the groaning ​Of thunder and whirlwind and hailing; Will he turn a deaf ear to our moaning, Or reply to our prayers with railing?
Did you speak of a Christ who is tender— A deity born of a woman? Of the sorrowful, God and defender, And brother and friend of the human? Long ago He ascended to heaven, Long ago was His teaching forgotten; The lump has no longer the leaven, But is heavy, unwholesome and rotten.
The gods are all man's, whom he praises For laws that make woman his creature; For the rest, theological mazes Furnish work for the salaried preacher. In the youth of the world it was better, We had deities then of our choosing; We could pray, though we wore then a fetter, To a Goddess of binding and loosing.
We could kneel in a grove or a temple, No man's heavy hand on our shoulder: Had in Pallas Athene example To make womanhood stronger and bolder. But the temples are broken and plundered, Sacred altars profanely o'erthrown; Where the oracle trembled and thundered, Are a cavern, a fount, and a stone.
Yet we would of the Christ hear the story, 'Twas familiar in days that are ended; His humility, purity, glory, Are they not into heaven ascended? We see naught but scorning and hating; We hear naught but threats and contemning; For your Christian is good and berating, And your sinner is first in condemning.
​Should you say that the Christ would reprove us, If we found him and told him our trouble? It is fearful with no one to love us, And our pain and despair growing double. It is mad'ning to feel we're excluded From the homes of the mothers that bore us; And that man, by no false arts deluded, May enter unchallenged before us.
It is hard to be humble when trodden; We cannot be meek when oppressed; Nor pure while our souls are made sodden With loathing that can't be confessed; Or true, while our bread and our shelter By a lying pretence is obtained— Deceived, in deception we welter; By a touch are we evermore stained.
O hard lot of woman! the creature Of a creature whose God is asleep, Or gone on a journey. You teach her She was made to sin, suffer, and weep; We wait for a new revelation, We cry for a God of our own; O God unrevealed, bring salvation, From our necks lift the collar of stone!
REPOSE.
I lay me down straight, with closed eyes, And pale hands folded across my breast, Thinking, unpained, of the sad surprise Of those who shall find me thus fall'n to rest; And the grief in their looks when they learn no endeavor, Can disturb my repose—for my sleep is forever. ​I know that a smile will lie hid in my eyes, Even a soft throb of joy stir the pulse in my breast, When they sit down to mourning, with tears and with sighs, And shudder at death, which to me is but rest.
So sweet to be parted at once from our pain; To put off our care as a robe that is worn; To drop like a link broken out of a chain, And be lost in the sands by Time's tide overborne: And to know at my loss all the wildest regretting, Will be as a foot-print, washed out in forgetting. To be certain of this—that my faults perish first; That when they behold me so calmly asleep, They can but forgive me my errors at worst, And speak of my praises alone as they weep.
"Whom the gods love die young," they will say; Though they should think it, they will not say so: "Whom the world pierces with thorns pass away, Grieving, yet asking and longing to go!" No, when they see how divine my repose is, They'll forget that my-life-path is not over roses; And they'll whisper together, with hands full of flowers, How always I loved them to wear on my breast; And strewing them over my bosom in showers, With hands shaken by sobs, leave me softly to rest.
There is one who will come when the rest are away; One bud of a rose will he bring for my hair; He knows how I liked it, worn always that way, And his fingers will tremble while placing it there. Yes, he'll remember those soft June-day closes, When the sky was as flushed as our own crimson roses; He'll remember the flush on the sky and the flowers, And the red on my cheek where his lips had been prest; But the throes of his heart in the long, silent hours, Will disturb not my dreams, so profoundly I'll rest.
​So, all will forget, what to think of mere pain, That the heart now asleep in this solemn repose, Had contended with tempests of sorrow in vain, And gone down in the strife at the feet of its foes: They will choose to be mute when a deed I have done, Or a word I have spoke I can no more atone; They'll remember I loved them, was faithful and true; They'll not say what a wild will abode in my breast; But repeat to each other, as if they were new, Old stories of what did the loved one at rest.
Ah! while I lie soothing my soul with this dream, The terror of waking comes back to my heart; Why is it not as I thus make it seem? Must I come back to the world, ere we part? Deep was the swoon of my spirit—why break it? Why bring me back to the struggles that shake it? Alas, there is room on my feet for fresh bruises— The flowers are not dead on my brow or my breast— When shall I learn "sweet adversity's uses," And my tantalized spirit be truly at rest!
ASPASIA.
O, ye Athenians, drunken with self-praise, What dreams I had of you, beside the sea, In far Milentus! while the golden days Slid into silver nights, so sweet to me; For then I dreamed my day-dreams sweetly o'er, Fancying the touch of Pallas on my brow— Libations of both heart and wine did pour, And offered up my being with my vow.
'Twas thus to Athens my heart drew at last My life, my soul, myself. Ah, well, I learn ​To love and loathe the bonds that hold me fast, Your captive and your conquerer in turn; Am I not shamed to match my charms with those Of fair boy-beauties? gentled for your love To match the freshness of the morning rose, And lisp in murmurs like the cooing dove.
O, men of Athens! by the purple sea In far Miletus, when I dreamed of you, Watching the winged ships that invited me To follow their white track upon the blue; 'Twas the desire to mate my lofty soul That drew me ever like a viewless chain Toward Homer's land of heroes, 'til I stole Away from home and dreams, to you and pain.
I brought you beauty—but your boys invade My woman's realm of love with girlish airs. I brought high gifts, and powers to persuade, To charm, to teach, with your philosophers. But knowledge is man's realm alone, you hold; And I who am your equal am cast down Level with those who sell themselves for gold— A crownless queen—a woman of the town!
Ye vain Athenians, know this, that I By your hard laws am only made more free; Your unloved dames may sit at home and cry, But, being unwed, I meet you openly, A foreigner, you cannot wed with me; But I can win your hearts and sway your will, And make your free wives envious to see What power Aspasia wields, Milesian still.
Who would not be beloved of Pericles? I could have had all Athens at my feet; And have them for my flatterers, when I please; ​Yet, one great man's great love is far more sweet! He is my proper mate as I am his— You see my young dreams were not all in vain— And I have tasted of ineffable bliss, If I am stung at times with fiery pain.
It is not that I long to be a wife By your Athenian laws, and sit at home Behind a lattice, prisoner for life, With my lord left at liberty to roam; Nor is it that I crave the right to be At the symposium or the Agora known; My grievance is, that your proud dames to me Came to be taught, in secret and alone. They fear; what do they fear? is't me or you? Am I not pure as any of them all? But your laws are against me; and 'tis true, If fame is lowering, I have had a fall! O, selfish men of Athens, shall the world Remember you, and pass my glory by? Nay, 'til from their proud heights your names are hurled, Mine shall blaze with them on your Grecian sky.
Am I then boastful? It is half in scorn Of caring for your love, or for your praise, As women do, and must. Had I been born In this proud Athens, I had spent my days In jealousy of boys, and stolen hours With some Milesian, of a questioned place, Learning of her the use of woman's powers Usurped by men of this patrician race.
Alas! I would I were a child again, Steeped in dream langours by the purple sea; And Athens but the vision it was then, Its great men good, its noble women free: That I in some winged ship should strive to fly ​To reach this goal, and founder and go down! O impious thought, how could I wish to die, With all that I have felt and learned unknown?
Nay, I am glad to be to future times As much Athenian as is Pericles; Proud to be named by men of other climes The friend and pupil of great Socrates. What is the gossip of the city dames Behind their lattices to one like me? More glorious than their high patrician names I hold my privilege of being free!
And yet I would that they were free as I; It angers me that women are so weak, Looking askance when ere they pass me by Lest on a chance their lords should see us speak; And coming next day to an audience In hope of learning to resemble me: They wish, they tell me, to learn eloquence— The lesson they should learn is liberty.
O Athens, city of the beautiful, Home of all art, all elegance, all grace; Whose orators and poets sway the soul As the winds move the sea's unstable face; O wonderous city, nurse and home of mind, This is my oracle to you this day— No generous growth from starved roots will you find, But fruitless blossoms weakening to decay.
You take my meaning? Sappho is no more, And no more Sapphos will be, in your time; The tree is dead on one side that before Ran with such burning sap of love and rhyme. Your glorious city is the utmost flower Of a one-sided culture, that will spend ​Itself upon itself, 'till, hour by hour, It runs its sources dry, and so must end.
That race is doomed, behind whose lattices Its once free women are constrained to peer Upon the world of men with vacant eyes; It was not so in Homer's time, I hear. But Eastern slaves have eaten of your store, Till in your homes all eating bread are slaves; They're built into your walls, beside your door, And bend beneath your lofty architraves.
A woman of the race that looks upon The sculptured emblems of captivity, Shall bear a slave or tyrant for a son; And none shall know the worth of liberty. Am I seditious?—Nay, then, I will keep My lesson for your dames when next they steal On tip-toe to an audience. Pray sleep Securely, and dream well: we wish your weal!
Why, what vain prattle: but my heart is sore With thinking on the emptiness of things, And these Athenians, treacherous to the core, Who hung on Pericles with flatterings. I would indeed I were a little child, Resting my tired limbs on the sunny sands In far Miletus, where the airs blow mild, And countless looms throb under busy hands.
The busy hand must calm the busy thought, And labor cool the passions of the hour; To the tired weaver, when his web is wrought, What signifies the party last in power? But here in Athens, 'twixt philosophers Who reason on the nature of the soul; And all the vain array of orators, Who strove to hold the people in control.
​Between the poets, artists, critics, all, Who form a faction or who found a school, We weave Penelope's web with hearts of gall, And my poor brain is oft the weary tool. Yet do I choose this life. What is to me Peace or good fame, away from all of these, But living death? I do choose liberty, And leave to Athens' dames their soulless ease.
The time shall come, when Athens is no more, And you and all your gods have passed away; That other men, upon another shore, Shall from your errors learn a better way. To them eternal justice will reveal Eternal truth, and in its better light All that your legal falsehoods now conceal, Will stand forth clearly in the whole world's sight.
A REPRIMAND.
Behold my soul? She sits so far above you Your wildest dream has never glanced so high; Yet in the old-time when you said, "I love you," How fairly we were mated, eye to eye. How long we dallied on in flowery meadows, By languid lakes of purely sensuous dreams, Steeped in enchanted mists, beguiled by shadows, Casting sweet flowers upon loitering streams, My memory owns, and yours; mine with deep shame, Yours with a sigh that life is not the same.
What parted us, to leave you in the valley And send me struggling to the mountain-top? Too weak for duty, even love failed to rally The manhood that should float your pinions up. ​On my spent feet are many half-healed bruises, My limbs are wasted with their heavy toil, But I have learned adversity's "sweet uses," And brought my soul up pure through every soil; Have I no right to scorn the man's dead power That leaves you far below me at this hour?
Scorn you I do, while pitying even more The ignoble weakness of a strength debased. Do I yet mourn the faith that died of yore— The trust by timorous treachery effaced? Through all, and over all, my soul mounts free To heights of peace you cannot hope to gain, Sings to the stars its mountain minstrelsy, And smiles down proudly on your murky plain; 'Tis vain to invite you—yet come up, come up, Conquer your way toward the mountain-top!
TO MRS. ——.
I cannot find the meaning out That lies in wrong and pain and strife; I know not why we grope through grief, Tear-blind, to touch the higher life.
I see the world so subtly fair, My heart with beauty often aches; But ere I quiet this sweet pain, Some cross so presses, the heart breaks.
To-day, this lovely golden day, When heaven and earth are steeped in calm; When every lightest air that blows, Sheds its delicious freight of balm.
​If I but ope my lips, I sob; If but an eyelid lift, I weep; I deprecate all good or ill, And only wish for endless sleep.
For who, I ask, has set my feet In all these dark and troubled ways? And who denies my soul's desire, When with its might it cries and prays?
In my unconscious veins there runs Perchance, some old ancestral taint; In Eve I sinned: poor Eve and I! We each may utter one complaint:—
One and the same—for knowledge came Too late to save her paradise; And I my paradise have lost; Forsooth because I am not wise.
O vain traditions! small the aid We women gather from your lore: Why, when the world was lost, did death Not come our children's birth before?
It had been better to have died, Sole prey of death, and ended so; Than to have dragged through endless time, One long, unbroken trail of woe.
To suffer, yet not expiate; To die at last, yet not atone; To mourn our heirship to a guilt, Erased by innocent blood alone!
You lift your hands in shocked surprise; You say enough I have not prayed: Can prayer go back through centuries, And change the web of fate one braid?
​Nay, own the truth, and say that we Are but the bonded slaves of doom; Unconscious to the cradle came, Unwilling must go to the tomb.
Your woman's hands are void of help, Though my soul should be stung to death; Could I avert one pang from you, Imploring with my latest breath?
And men!—we suffer any wrong That men, or mad, or blind, may do;— Let me alone in my despair! There is no help for me or you.
I wait to find the meaning out That lies beyond the bitter end; Comfort yourself with 'wearying heaven, I ask no comfort, oh my friend!
MOONLIGHT MEMORIES.
Do thy chamber windows open east, Beloved, as did ours of old? And do you stand when day has ceased, Withdrawn thro' evening's porch of gold, And watch the pink flush fade above The hills on which the wan moon leans, Remembering the sweet girlish love That blest this hour in other scenes!
I see your hand upon your heart— I see you dash away the tears— It is the same undying smart, That touched us in the long-gone years; And cannot pass away. You stand ​Your forehead to the window crest, And stifle sobs that no command Can keep from rising in your breast.
Dear, balm is not for griefs like ours, Nor resurrection for dead hope: In vain we cover wounds with flowers, That grow upon life's western slope. Their leaves tho' bright, are hard, and dry, They have no soft and healing dew; The pansies of past spring-times lie Dead in the shadow of the yew.
You feel this in your heart, and turn To pace the dimness of your room; But lo, like fire within an urn, The moonlight glows through all the gloom. It sooths you like a living touch, And spite of the slow-falling tears, Sweet memories crowd with oh, so much, Of all that girlhood's time endears.
On nights like this, with such a moon, Full shining in a wintry sky; Or on the softer nights of June, When fleecy clouds fled thought-like by, Within our chamber opening east, With curtains from the window parted, With hands and cheeks together prest, We dreamed youth's glowing dreams, light-hearted.
Or talked of that mysterious love That comes like fate to every soul: And vowed to hold our lives above, Perchance its sorrowful control. Alas, the very vow we made, To keep our lives from passion free, To wiser hearts well had betrayed Some future love's intensity.
​How well that youthful vow was kept, Is written on a deathless page— Vain all regrets, vain tears we've wept, The record lives from age to age. But one who "doeth all things well," Who made us differ from the throng, Has it within his heart to quell This torturing pain of thirst, ere long.
And you, whose soul is all aglow With fire Prometheus brought from heaven, Shall in some future surely know Joys for which high desires are given. Not always in a restless pain Shall beat your heart, or throb your brow; Not always shall you sigh in vain For hope's fruition, hidden now.
Beloved, are your tear-drops dried? The moon is riding high above:— Though each from other's parted wide, We have not parted early love. And tho' you never are forgot, The moonrise in the east shall be The token that my evening thought Returns to home, and love and thee!
VERSES FOR M——.
The river on the east Ripples its azure flood within my sight; And, darting from the west, Are "sunset arrows," feathered with red light. The northern breeze has hung His wintry harp upon some giant pine; ​And the pale stars among, I see the star I love to name as mine: But toward the south I turn my eager eyes— Beyond its flushed horizon my heart lies.
The snow-clad isles of ice, Launched by wild Boreas from a northern shore, Journey the way my eyes Turn with an envious longing evermore— Smiling back to the sky Its own pink blush, and, floating out of sight, Bear south the softest dye Of northern heavens, to fade in southern night:— My eyes but look the way my joys are gone, And the ice-islands travel not alone.
The untrod fields of snow, Glow with the rosy blush of parting day; And fancy asks if so The snow is stained with sunset far away; And if some face, like mine, Its forehead pressed against the window-pane, Peers northward, with the shine Of the pole-star reflected in eyes' rain: "Ah yes," my heart says, "it is surely so;" And, like a bound bird, flutters hard to go.
Sad eyes, that, blurred with tears, Gaze into darkness, gaze no more in vain Whence no loved face appears, And no voice comes to lull the heart's fond pain! Sad heart! restrain thy throbs, For beauty, like a presence out of heaven, Rests over all, and robs Sorrow of pain, and makes earth seem forgiven:— Twilight the fair eve ushers in with grace, And rose clouds melt for stars to take their place.
AUTUMNALIA.
The crimson color lays As bright as beauty's blush along the West; And a warm golden haze, Promising sheafs of ripe Autumnal days To crown the old year's crest. Hangs in mid air, a half-pellucid maze, Through which the sun at set, Grown round and rosy, looks with Bacchian blush, For an old wine-god meet— Whose brows are dripping with the grape-blood sweet, As if his southern flush Rejoiced him, in his northern-zone retreat.
The amber-colored air Musical is with hum of tiny things Held idly, struggling there, As if the golden mist entangled were About the viewless wings, That beat out music on their gilded snare.
If but a leaf, all gay With Autumn's gorgeous coloring, doth fall, Along its fluttering way A shrill alarum wakes a sharp dismay, And, answering to the call, The insect chorus swells and dies away With a fine piping noise. As if some younger singing notes cried out, As do mischievous boys— Startling their playmates with a pained voice, Or sudden thrilling shout, Followed by laughters, full of little joys.
​Perchance a lurking breeze Springs, just awakened to its wayward play, Tossing the sober trees Into a frolic maze of ecstasies, And snatching at the gay Banners of Autumn, strews them where it please.
The sunset colors glow A second time in flame from out the wood, As bright and warm as though The vanished clouds had fallen, and lodged below Among the tree-tops, hued With all the colors of heaven's signal-bow.
The fitful breezes die Into a gentle whisper, and then sleep; And sweetly, mournfully, Starting to sight, in the transparent sky, Lone in the upper deep, Sad Hesper pours its beams upon the eye; And for one little hour, Holds audience with the lesser lights of heaven; Then to its western bower Descends in sudden darkness, as the flower That at the fall of Even Shuts its bright eye, and yields to slumber's power.
Soon, with a dusky face, Pensive and proud as an East Indian queen, And with a solemn grace, The moon ascends, and takes her royal place In the fair evening scene; While all the reverential stars, apace, Take up their march through the cool fields of space, And dead is the sweet Autumn day whose close we've seen.
PALO SANTO.
In the deep woods of Mexico, Where screams the "painted paraquet," And mocking-birds flit to and fro, With borrowed notes they half forget; Where brilliant flowers and poisonous vines Are mingled in a firm embrace, And the same gaudy plant entwines Some reptile of a poisonous race; Where spreads the Itos' icy shade, Benumbing, even in summer's heat, The thoughtless traveler who hath laid Himself to noonday slumbers sweet;— Where skulks unseen the beast of prey— The native robber glares and hides,— And treacherous death keeps watch alway On him who flies, or he who bides.
In these deep tropic woods there grows A tree, whose tall and silvery bole Above the dusky forest shows, As shining as a saintly soul Among the souls of sinful men;— Lifting its milk-white flowers to heaven, And breathing incense out, as when The passing saints of earth are shriven.
The skulking robber drops his eyes, And signs himself with holy cross, If, far between him and the skies, He sees its pearly blossoms toss. The wanderer halts to gaze upon The lovely vision, far or near, And smiles and sighs to think of one He wishes for the moment here.
​The Mexic native fears not fang Of poisonous serpent, vine, nor bee, If he may soothe the baleful pang With juices of this "holy tree."
How do we all, in life's wild ways, Which oft we traverse lost and lone, Need that which heavenward draws the gaze, Some Palo Santo of our own!
A SUMMER DAY.
Fade not, sweet day! Another hour like this— So full of tranquil bliss— May never come my way, I walk in paths so shadowed and so cold: But stay thou, darling hour, Nor stint thy gracious power To smile away the clouds that me enfold: Oh stay! when thou art gone, I shall be lost and lone.
Lost, lone, and sad; And troubled more and more, By the dark ways, and sore, In which my feet are led;— Alas, my heart, it was not always so! Therefore, O happy day, Haste not to fade away, Nor let pale night chill all thy tender glow— Thy rosy mists, that steep The violet hills in sleep—
​Thy airs of gold, That over all the plain, And fields of ripened grain, A shimmering glory hold,— The soft fatigue-dress of the drowsy sun; Dreaming, as one who goes To peace, and sweet repose, After a battle hardly fought, and won: Even so, my heart, to-day, Dream all thy fears away.
O happy tears, That everywhere I gaze, Jewel the golden maze, Flow on, till earth appears Worthy the soft perfection of this scene: Beat, heart, more soft and low, Creep, hurrying blood, more slow: Waste not one throb, to lose me the serene, Deep, satisfying bliss Of such an hour as this!
How like our dream, Of that delightful rest God keepeth for the blest, This lovely peace doth seem;— Perchance, my heart, He sent this gracious day, That when the dark and cold, Thy doubtful steps enfold, Thou, may'st remember, and press on thy way, Nor faint midway the gloom That lies this side the tomb.
All, all in vain, Sweet day, do I entreat To stay thy wingéd feet; The gloom, the cold, the pain, ​Gather me back as thou dost pale and fade; Yet in my heart I make A chamber for thy sake, And keep thy picture in warm color laid:— Thy memory, happy day, Thou can'st not take away.
HE AND SHE.
Under the pines sat a young man and maiden, "Love," said he; "life is sweet, think'st thou not so?" Sweet were her eyes, full of pictures of Aidenn,— "Life?" said she; "love is sweet; no more I know."
Into the wide world the maid and her lover Wandered by pathways that sundered them far; From pine-groves to palm-groves, he flitted a rover, She tended his roses, and watched for his star.
Oft he said softly, while melting eyes glistened, "Sweet is my life, love, with you ever near:" Morning and evening she waited and listened For a voice and a foot-step that never came near.
Fainting at last, on her threshold she found him: "Life is but ashes, and bitter," he sighed. She, with her tender arms folded around him, Whispered—"But love is still sweet;" and so died.
O WILD NOVEMBER WIND.
O wild November wind, blow back to me The withered leaves, that drift adown the past; Waft me some murmur of the summer sea, On which youth's fairy fleet of dreams was cast; ​Return to me the beautiful No More— O wild November wind, restore, restore!
November wind, in what dim, loathsome cave, Languish the tender-plumed gales of spring? No more their dances dimple o'er the wave, Nor freighted pinions song and perfume bring: Those gales are dead—that dimpling sea is dark; And cloudy ghosts clutch at each mist-like bark.
O wild, wild wind, where are the summer airs That kissed the roses of the long-ago? Taking them captive—swooned in blissful snares— To let them perish. Now no roses blow In the waste gardens thou art laying bare: Where are my heart's bright roses, where, oh where?
Thou hast no answer, thou unpitying gale? No gentle whisper from the past to me! No snatches of sweet song—no tender tale— No happy ripple of that summer sea; Are all my dreams wrecked on the nevermore? O wild November wind, restore, restore!
BY THE SEA.
Blue is the mist on the mountains, White is the fog on the sea; Ruby and gold is the sunset,— And Bertha is waiting for me.
Down on the loathsome sand-beach, Her eyes as blue as the mist; Her brows as white as the sea-fog,— Bertha, whose lips I have kissed.
​Bertha, whose lips are like rubies, Whose hair is like coiléd gold; Whose sweet, rare smile is tenderer Than any legend of old.
One morn, one noon, one sunset, Must pass before we meet; O wind and sail bear steady on, And bring me to her feet.
The morn rose pale and sullen, The noon was still and dun; Across the storm at sunset, Came the boom of a signal-gun.
Who treads the loathsome sand-beach, With wet, disordered hair; With garments tangled with sea-weed, And cheeks more pale than fair?
O blue-eyed, white-browed maiden, He will keep love's tryst no more; His ship sailed safely into port— But on the heavenward shore.
POLK COUNTY HILLS.
November came that day, And all the air was gray With delicate mists, blown down From hill-tops by the south wind's balmy breath; And all the oaks were brown As Egypt's kings in death; The maple's crown of gold Laid tarnished on the wold; The alder and the ash, the aspen and the willow, Wore tattered suits of yellow.
​The soft October rains Had left some scarlet stains Of color on the landscape's neutral ground; Those fine ephemeral things, The winged motes of sound, That sing the "Harvest Home" Of ripe Autumn in the gloam Of the deep and bosky woods, in the field and by the river, Sang that day their best endeavor.
I said: "In what sweet place Shall we meet face to face, Her loveliest self to see— Meet Nature at her sad autumnal rites, And learn the mystery Of her unnamed delights?" Then you said: "Let us go Where the late violets blow In hollows of the hills, under dead oak leaves hiding;— We'll find she's there abiding."
Do we recall that day? Has its grace passed away? Its tenderest, dream-like tone, Like one of Turner's landscapes limned on air— Has its fine perfume flown And left the memory bare? Not so; its charm is still Over wood, vale and hill— The ferny odor sweet, the humming insect chorus, The spirit that before us
Enticed us with delights To the blue, breezy hights. ​O, beautiful hills that stand Serene 'twixt earth and heaven, with the grace Of both to make you grand,— Your loveliness leaves place For nothing fairer; fair And complete beyond compare. O, lovely purple hills, O, first day of November, Be sure that I remember!
WAITING.
I cannot wean my wayward heart from waiting, Though the steps watched for never come anear; The wearying want clings to it unabating— The fruitless wish for presences once dear.
No fairer eve e'er blessed a poet's vision; No softer airs e'er kissed a fevered brow; No scene more truly could be called Elysian, Than this which holds my gaze enchanted now.
And yet I pine;—this beautiful completeness Is incomplete, to my desiring heart; 'Tis Beauty's form, without her soul of sweetness— The pure, but chiseled loveliness of art.
There is no longer pleasure in emotion. I envy those dead souls no touch can thrill; Who—"painted ships upon a painted ocean,"— Seem to be moved, yet are forever still.
Where are they fled?—they whose delightful voices, Whose very footsteps had a charmed fall: No more, no more their sound my heart rejoices: Change, death, and distance part me now from all.
​And this fair evening, with remembrance teeming, Pierces my soul with every sharp regret; The sweetest beauty saddens to my seeming, Since all that's fair forbids me to forget.
Eyes that have gazed upon yon silver crescent, 'Till filled with light, then turned to gaze in mine, Lips that could clothe a fancy evanescent, In words whose magic thrilled the brain like wine:
Hands that have wreathed June's roses in my tresses, And gathered violets to deck my breast, Where are ye now? I miss your dear caresses— I miss the lips, the eyes, that made me blest.
Lonely I sit and watch the fitful burning Of prairie fires, far off, through gathering gloom; While the young moon, and one bright star returning Down the blue solitude, leave Night their room.
Gone is the glimmer of the silent river; Hushed is the wind that sped the leaves to-day; Alone through silence falls the crystal shiver Of the sweet starlight, on its earthward way.
And yet I wait, how vainly! for a token— A sigh, a touch, a whisper from the past; Alas, I listen for a word unspoken, And wail for arms that have embraced their last.
I wish no more, as once I wished, each feeling To grow immortal in my happy breast; Since not to feel will leave no wounds for healing— The pulse that thrills not has no need of rest.
As the conviction sinks into my spirit That my quick heart is doomed to death in life; Or that these pangs must pierce and never sear it, I am abandoned to despairing strife.
​To the lost life, alas! no more returning— In this to come no semblance of the past— Only to wait!—hoping this ceaseless yearning May, 'ere long, end—and rest may come at last.
PALMA.
What tellest thou to heaven, Thou royal tropic tree? At morn or noon or even, Proud dweller by the sea, What is thy song to heaven?
The homesick heart that fainted In torrid sun and air, With peace becomes acquainted Beholding thee so fair— With joy becomes acquainted:
And charms itself with fancies About thy kingly race— With gay and wild romances That mimic thee in grace— Of supple, glorious fancies.
I feel thou art not tender, Scion of sun and sea— The wild-bird does not render To thee its minstrelsy— Fearing thou art not tender:
But calm, serene and saintly, As highborn things should be: Who, if they love us faintly, Make us love reverently, Because they are so saintly.
​To be loved without loving, O proud and princely palm! Is to fancy our ship moving With the ocean at dead calm— The joy of love is loving.
Because the Sun did sire thee, The Ocean nurse thy youth, Because the Stars desire thee, The warm winds whisper truth, Shall nothing ever fire thee?
What is thy tale to heaven In the sultry tropic noon? What whisperest thou at even To the dusky Indian Moon— Has she sins to be forgiven?
Keep all her secrets; loyal As only great souls are— As only souls most royal, To the flower or to the star Alike are purely loyal.
O Palma, if thou hearest, Thou proud and princely tree! Thou knowest that my Dearest Is emblemed forth in thee— My kingly Palm, my Dearest.
I am his Moon admiring, His wooing Wind, his Star; And I glory in desiring My Palm-tree from afar— Glad as happier lovers are, Am happy in desiring!
MAKING MOAN.
I have learned how vainly given Life's most precious things may be.
—Landon.
O, Christ, to-night I bring A sad, weak heart, to lay before thy feet; Too sad, almost, to cling Even to Thee; too suffering, If Thou shouldst pierce me, to regard the sting; Too stunned to feel the pity I entreat Closing around me its embraces sweet.
Shepherd, who gatherest up The weary ones from all the world's highways; And bringest them to sup Of Thy bread, and Thy blessed cup; If so Thou will, lay me within the scope Only of Thy great tenderness, that rays Too melting may not reach me from Thy face.
Here let me lie, and press My forehead's pain out on Thy mantle's hem; And chide not my distress, For this, that I have loved thee less, In loving so much some, whose sordidness Has left me outcast, at the last, from them And their poor love, which I cannot contemn.
No, cannot, even now, Put Thee before them in my broken heart. But, gentle Shepherd, Thou Dost even such as I allow The healing of Thy presence. Let my brow Be covered from thy sight, while I, apart, Brood over in dull pain my mortal hurt.
CHILDHOOD.
A child of scarcely seven years, Light haired, and fair as any lily; With pure eyes ready in their tears At chiding words, or glances chilly; And sudden smiles, as inly bright As lamps through alabaster shining, With ready mirth, and fancies light, Dashed with strange dreams of child-divining: A child in all infantile grace, Yet with the angel lingering in her face.
A curious, eager, questioning child, Whose logic leads to naive conclusions; Her little knowledge reconciled To truth amid some odd confusions; Yet credulous, and loving much The problems hardest for her reason, Placing her lovely faith on such, And deeming disbelief a treason; Doubting that which she can disprove, And wisely trusting all the rest to love.
Such graces dwell beside your hearth, And bless you in a priceless pleasure, Leaving no sweeter spot on earth Than that which holds your household treasure. No entertainment ever yet Had half the exquisite completeness— The gladness without one regret, You gather from your darling's sweetness: An angel sits beside the hearth Where e're an innocent child is found on earth.
A LITTLE BIRD THAT EVERY ONE KNOWS.
There's a little bird with a wondrous song— A little bird that every one knows— (Though it sings for the most part under the rose), That is petted and pampered wherever it goes, And nourished in bosoms gentle and strong.
This petted bird has a crooked beak And eyes like live coals set in its head, A gray breast dappled with glowing red— Dabbled—not dappled, I should have said, From a fancy it has of which I shall speak.
This eccentricity that I name Is, that whenever the bird would sing It darts its black head under its wing, And moistens its beak in—darling thing!— A human heart that is broken with shame.
Then this cherished bird its song begins— Always begins its song one way— With two little dulcet words, They Say, Carolled in such a charming way That the listener's heart it surely wins.
This sweetest of songsters sits beside Every hearth in this Christian land, Ever so humble or never so grand, Gloating o'er crumbs which many a hand Gathers to nourish it, far and wide.
Over each crumb that it gathers up It winningly carols those two soft words In the dulcet notes of the sweetest of birds, Darting its sharp beak under its wing As it might in a ruby drinking-cup.
​A delicate thing is our bird withal And owns but a fickle appetite, So that old and young take a keen delight In serving it ever, day and night, With the last gay heart now turned to gall.
Thus, though a dainty dear, it sings In a very well-conditioned way A truly wonderful sort of lay, Whose burden is ever the same—They Say— Darting its dabbled beak under its wings.
WAYWARD LOVE.
I leant above your chair last night, And on your brow once and again, I pressed a kiss as still and light As I would have your bosom's pain. You did not feel the gentle touch, It gave you neither grief nor pleasure, Though that caress held, oh, so much, Of love and blessing without measure.
Thus ever when I see you sad, My heart toward you overflows; But when again you're gay and glad, I shrink back into cold repose, I know not why I like you best, O'erclouded by a passing sorrow— Unless because it gives a zest To the insouciance of to-morrow.
You're welcome to my light caress, And all the love that with it went; To live, and love you any less, Would rob me of my soul's content. ​Continue sometimes to be sad, That I may feel that pity tender, Which grieves for you, and yet is glad Of an excuse for love's surrender.
A LYRIC OF LIFE.
Said one to me: "I seem to be— Like a bird blown out to sea, In the hurricane's wild track— Lost, wing-weary, beating back Vainly toward a fading shore, It shall rest on nevermore."
Said I: "Betide, some good ships ride, Over all the waters wide; Spread your wings upon the blast, Let it bear you far and fast: In some sea, serene and blue, Succor-ships are waiting you."
This soul then said: "Would I were dead— Billows rolling o'er my head! Those that sail the ships will cast Storm-waifs back into the blast; Omens evil will they call What the hurricane lets fall."
For my reply: "Beneath the sky Countless isles of beauty lie: Waifs upon the ocean thrown, After tossings long and lone, To those blessed shores have come, Finding there love, heaven, and home."
This soul to me: "The seething sea, Tossing hungry under me, ​I fear to trust; the ships I fear; I see no isle of beauty near; The sun is blotted out—no more 'T will shine for me on any shore."
Once more I said: "Be not afraid; Yield to the storm without a dread; For the tree, by tempests torn From its native soil, is borne Green, to where its ripened fruit Gives a sturdy forest-root.
"That which we lose, we think we choose, Oft, from slavery to use. Shocks that break our chains, tho' rude, Open paths to highest good: Wise, my sister soul, is she Who takes of life the proffered key."
FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.
"Nay, Hylas, I have come To where life's landscape takes a western slope, And breezes from the occidental shores Sigh thro' the thinning locks around my brow, And on my cheeks fan flickering summer fires. Oh, winged feet of Time, forget your flight, And let me dream of those rose-scented bowers That lapped my soul in youth's enchanted East! It needs no demon-essence of Hasheesh To flash that sunrise glory in my eyes!— It needs no Flora to bring back those flowers— No gay Apollo to sound liquid reeds— No muse to consecrate the hills and streams— No God or oracle within those groves ​To render sacred all the emerald glooms: For here dwelt such bright angels as attend The innocent ways of youth's unsullied feet; And all the beautiful band of sinless hopes, Twining their crowns of pearl-white amaranth; And rosy, dream-draped, sapphire-eyed desires Whose twin-born deities were Truth and Faith Having their altars over all the land. Beauty held court within its vales by day, And Love made concert with the nightingales In singing 'mong the myrtles, starry eves."
"You are inspired, Zobedia, your eyes Look not upon the present summer world, But see some mystery beyond the close Of this pale blue horizon."
"Erewhile I wandered from this happy land. Crowned with its roses, wearing in my eyes Reflections of its shining glorious heaven, And bearing on my breast and in my hands Its violets, and lilies white and sweet,— Following the music floating in the air Made by the fall of founts, the voice of streams And murmur of the winds among the trees, I strayed in reveries of soft delight Beyond the bounds of this delicious East.
But oh, the splendors of that newer clime! It was as if those oriental dreams In which my soul was steeped to fervidness, Were here transmuted to their golden real With added glories for each shape or hue. The stately trees wore coronals of flowers That swung their censers in the mid-day sun: The pines and palms of my delightful east Chaunted their wild songs nearer to the stars; ​Even the roses had more exquisite hues, And for one blossom I had left behind I found a bower in this fragrant land. Bright birds, no larger than the costly gems The river bedded in their golden sands, Sparkle like prismal rain-drops 'mong the leaves; And others sang, or flashed their plumage gay Like rainbow fragments on my dazzled eyes. The sky had warmer teints: I could not tell Whether the heavens lent color to the flowers, Or but reflected that which glowed in them. The gales that blew from off the cloud-lost hills, Struck from the clambering vines Eolian songs, That mingled with the splashing noise of founts, In music such as stirs to passionate thought: This peerless land was thronged with souls like mine, Straying from East to South, impelled unseen, And lost, like mine, in its enchanted vales:— Souls that conversed apart in pairs, or sang Low breeze-like airs, more tender than sweet words; Save here and there a wanderer like myself, Dreaming alone, and dropping silent tears, Scarce knowing why, upon the little group Of Eastern flowers we had not yet resigned:— 'Till one came softly smiling in my eyes, And dried their tears with radiance from his own.
At last it came—I knew not how it came— But a tornado swept this sunny South, And when I woke once more, I stood alone. My senses sickened at the dismal waste, And caring not, now all things bright were dead, That a volcano rolled its burning tide In fiery rivers far athwart the land, I turned my feet to aimless wanderings. The equatorial sun poured scorching beams, ​On my defenceless head. The burning winds Seemed drying up the blood within my veins. The straggling flowers that had outlived the storm Won but a feeble, half-contemptuous smile; And if a bird attempted a brief song, I closed my ears lest it should burst my brain. After much wandering I came at last To cooler skies and a less stifling air; And finally to this more temperate clime. Where every beauty is of milder type— Where the simoon nor tempest ever come, And I can soothe the fever of my soul In the bland breezes blowing from the West."
NEVADA.
Sphinx, down whose rugged face The sliding centuries their furrows cleave By sun and frost and cloud-burst; scarce to leave Perceptible a trace Of age or sorrow; Faint hints of yesterdays with no to-morrow;— My mind regards thee with a questioning eye, To know thy secret, high.
If Theban mystery, With head of woman, soaring, bird-like wings And serpent's tail on lion's trunk, were things Puzzling in history; And men invented For it an origin which represented Chimera and a monster double-headed, By myths Phenician wedded—
Their issue being this— This most chimerical and wonderous thing ​From whose dumb mouth not even the gods could wring Truth, nor antithesis: Then, what I think is, This creature—being chief among men's sphinxes— Is eloquent, and overflows with story, Beside thy silence hoary!
Nevada!—desert waste! Mighty, and inhospitable, and stern; Hiding a meaning over which we yearn In eager, panting haste— Grasping and losing, Still being deluded ever by our choosing— Answer us Sphinx: What is thy meaning double But endless toil and trouble?
Inscrutable, men strive To rend thy secret from thy rocky breast; Breaking their hearts, and periling heaven's rest For hopes that cannot thrive; Whilst unrelenting, Upon thy mountain throne, and unrepenting, Thou sittest, basking in a fervid sun, Seeing or hearing none.
I sit beneath thy stars, The shallop moon beached on a bank of clouds—; And see thy mountains wrapped in shadowed shrouds, Glad that the darkness bars The day's suggestion— The endless repetition of one question; Glad that thy stony face I cannot see, Nevada—Mystery!
THE VINE.
"Too many clusters weaken the vine"— And that is why, on this morn in May, She who should walk doth weakly recline By the window whose view overlooks the Bay; While I and the "clusters" dance in the sun, Defying the breeze coming in from the sea, Mocking the bird-song and chasing the bee, Letting our fullness of mirth over-run, While the "Vine" at the window smiles down on our glee.
If I should vow that these "clusters" are fair, So, you would say, are a million more; Ah, even jewels a rank must share— Not every diamond's a Koh-i-noor! Thus when our Lillian, needing but wings, Plays us the queen of the fairies, we deem Grace such as hers a bewildering dream— Her laughter, her gestures, a dozen things, Furnish our worshiping fondness a theme.
Or when our Alice, scarcely less tall, And none the less fair, tries her slim baby feet, Or a new has lisped, to the pride of us all, Smiling, we cry, "was aught ever so sweet?" Even wee Bertha, turning her eyes, Searching and slow from one face to another— Wrinkling her brow in a comic surprise, And winking so soberly at her pale mother, For a baby, is wondrously pretty and wise!
Well, let the "vine" recline in the sun— Three such rare "clusters" in three short years, Have sapped the red wine in her veins that should run— ​For the choicest of species the gardener fears! Lillian, queen of the lilies shall be, Fair, tall and graceful—queenly in will; Alice a Provence rose—rarely sweet she; Bertha Narcissa—white daffodil— And the "vine," once more strong, shall entwine around the three!
WHAT THE SEA SAID TO ME.
One evening as I sat beside the sea, A little rippling wave stole up to me, And whispered softly, yet impressively, The word Eternity: I smiled, that anything so small should utter, A word the ocean in its wrath might mutter; And with a mirthful fancy, vainly strove, To suit its cadence to some word of love— But all the little wave would say to me, Was, over and again, Eternity!
After a time, the winds, from their dark caves, Arose, and wrestled with the swelling waves, Shrieking as doth a madman when he raves; Yet still Eternity Was spoken audibly unto my hearing; While foaming billows, their huge crests up-rearing, Rushed with a furious force upon the shore, That only answered with a sullen roar; As if it hoarsely echoed what the sea Said with such emphasis—Eternity!
And by and by, the sky grew dun and dim; Soon all was darkness, save the foam's white gleam; And all was silence save the sea's deep hymn— That hymn Eternity: ​While some dread presence, all the darkness filling, Crept round my heart, its healthy pulses chilling; Making the night, so awful unto me, More fearful with that word Eternity.
So that my spirit, trembling and afraid, Bowed down itself before its God, and prayed For His strong arm of terror to be stayed; And sighed Eternity From its white lips, as the dark sea, subsiding, Sank into broken murmurs; and the gliding Of the soothed waters seemed once more to me The whisper I first heard, Eternity.
But now I mocked not what the ripple said: I only reverently bent my head, While the pure stars, unveiled, their lustre shed Upon the peaceful sea— And the mild moon, with a majestic motion, Uprose, and shed upon the murmuring ocean, Her calm and radiant glory, as if she Knew it the symbol of Eternity.
HYMN.
Down through the dark, my God, Reach me Thy hand; Guide me along the road I fail to understand. Blindly I grope my way, In doubt and fear, Uncertain when I pray If Thou art near.
O, God, renew my trust, Hear when I cry; ​Out of the cloud and dust Lift me to thee on high. The crooked paths make plain, The burden light; Touch me and heal my pain, And clear my sight.
O, take my hand in Thine, And lead me so That all my steps incline In Thy right way to go. Out of this awful night Some whisper send, That I may feel my God, My loving friend.
O, let me feel and see Thy hand and face; And let me learn of Thee My true right place. For I am Thine, and Thou Art also mine. Unto Thy will I bow, Helper divine!
DO YOU HEAR THE WOMEN PRAYING?
[Read before the Women's Prayer League of Portland, Oregon, May 27, 1874.]
Do you hear the women praying, oh my brothers? Do you hear what words they say? These, this free-born nation's wives and mothers, Bowing, where you proudly stand, to pray! Can you coldly look upon their faces, Pale, sad faces, seamed with frequent tears; ​See their hands uplifted in their places— Hands that toiled for all your boyhood's years?
Can you see your wives and daughters pleading In the dust you spurn beneath your feet, Baring hearts for years in secret bleeding, To the scoffs and jestings of the street? Can you hear, and yet not heed the crying Of the children perishing for bread? Born in fear, not love, and daily dying, Cursed of God, they think, but cursed of you instead?
Do you hear the women praying, oh my brothers? Hear the oft-repeated burden of their prayer— Hear them asking for one boon above all others— Not for vengeance on the wrongs they have to bear; But imploring, as their Lord did, "God forgive them, For they know not what they do; Strike the sin, but spare the sinners—save them"— Meaning, oh ye men and brothers, you!
For your heels have ground the women's faces; You have coined their blood and tears for gold; Have betrayed their kisses and embraces— Returned their love with curses twentyfold; Made the wife's crown one of thorns and not of honor, Made her motherhood a pain and dread; Heaped life's toil unrecompensed upon her; Laid her sons upon her bosom, dead!
Do you hear the women praying, oh my brothers? Have you not one word to say? Will a just God be as gentle as these mothers, If you dare to say them nay? Oh, ye men, God waits for you to answer The prayers that to him rise, He waits to know if you are just ere He is— There your deliverance lies!
​Rise and assert the manhood of this nation, Its courage, honor, might— Wipe off the dust of our humiliation— Dare nobly to do right! Shall women plead from out the dust forever? Will you not work, men, if you cannot pray? Hold up the suppliant hands with your endeavor, And seize the world's salvation while you may.
Yes, from the eastern to the western ocean, The sound of prayer is heard; And in our hearts great billows of emotion At every breath are stirred. From mountain tops of prayer down to sin's valley The voice of women sounds the cry, "Come up!" O, men and brothers, heed that cry, and rally— Help us to dash to earth the deadly cup!
"OUR LIFE IS TWOFOLD."
Sweet, kiss my eyelids close, and let me lie, On this old-fashioned sofa, in the dim And purple twilight, shut out from the sky, Which is too garish for my softer whim. And while I, looking inward on my thought, Tell thee what phantoms thicken in its air. Twine thou thy gentle fingers, slumber-fraught, With the loose shreds of my disheveled hair: I shall see inly better if thou keep My outer senses in a charmed sleep.
Sweet friend!—I love that pleasant name of friend— We walk not ever singly, through the world; But even as our shadow doth attend Our going in the sunshine, and is furled ​About us in the darkness—so that shade Which haunts our other self, is faintly seen Beside us in our gladness, and is made To wrap us coldly life's bright hours between. Unconsciously we court it. In our youth, While yet our morning sky is pink with joy, We, curious if our happiness be truth, Try to discern the shadow of alloy. O, I remember well the earliest time A sorrow touched me, and I nursed it then; Tho' but few summers of our northern clime Had sunned my growth among the souls of men.
In an old wood, reputed for its age, And for its beauty wild and picturesque; The bound and goal of each day's pilgrimage, Where were all forms of graceful and grotesque; And countless hues, from the dark stately pine That whispered its wild mysteries to my ear, To the smooth silver of the birch-trees shine, Showing between the aspens straight and fair; With forest flowers, and delicate vines that crept From the rich soil far up among the trees, Seeking that light their boughs did intercept, And dalliance and caresses of the breeze. In midst of these, sheltered from sun and wind Glimmered a lake, in long and shining curves, Like a bright fillet that should serve to bind That scene to earth—if she the gem deserves! For gem it was, as proud upon her brow As jewels on the forehead of a queen; And one thought as one turned from it, of how Eve exiled, must have missed some just such scene. O, there I type my life! I used to sigh Sitting on this side, with my lap piled up With violets of the real sapphire dye, ​For the gay gold of the bright buttercup Spangling the green sod on the other side— For the lake's breadth was but an arrow's flight, And the brief distance did not serve to hide What yet could not be reached except by sight.
Day after day I dreamed there, while my heart Gathered up knowledge in its childish way, Making fine pictures with unconscious art, And learning beauty more and more each day. Ever and ever haunted I that spot— Sitting in dells scooped out between the hills, That rising close around me, formed a grot Fragrant with ferns, and musical with rills. Far up above me grew the long-armed beech, Dropping its branches down in graceful bent; While farther up, beyond my utmost reach, Stood dusky hemlocks, crowning the ascent. And all about were sweeter sights and sounds Than elsewhere, but in poet's dream, abounds.
Thus, and because my life was all too fair, I sought to color it with thoughts I nursed In sylvan solitudes: and in the air Of these soft, silent influences, I first Saw, or felt, rather, that the shadow fell Upon my pathway from the light behind— The light of youth's first joyousness. Ah, well, If it had stayed there, nor been more unkind! My earliest sorrow was a flower's death— At which I wept until my swollen eyes Refused to shed more tears—just that my wreath One morn in autumn lacked its choicest dyes. So, knowing what it was to have a loss, I went on losing, and the shadow grew Darker and longer, 'till it lies across ​My pathway to the measure of my view. We all remember sorrow's first impress— No matter whether we had cause to grieve, Or whether sad in very willfulness— The lesson is the same that we receive. And afterwards, when the great shadow falls— The tempest—when the lightning's flash reveals The darkness brooding o'er us, and appals Hope by the terror of the stroke it deals— Then, how the shadow hugs us in its fold! We see no light behind, and none to come; But dumbly shiver in the gloom and cold, Or with despair lie down, and wait our doom.
Sweet, press thy cheek upon my own again— Even now my life's dark ghost is haunting nigh: Sing me to sleep with some old favorite strain— Some gentle poet's loving lullaby; For I would dream, and in my dream forget Our twofold life is full of shadows set.
SOUVENIR.
You ask me, "Do you think of me? Dear, thoughts of thee are like this river, Which pours itself into the sea, Yet empties its own channel never.
All other thoughts are like these sail Drifting the river's surface over; They veer about with every gale— The river keeps its course forever.
So deep and still, so strong and true, The current of my soul sets thee-ward, Thy river I, my ocean you, And all myself am running seaward.
I ONLY WISH TO KNOW.
Pray do not take the kiss again I risked so much in getting, Nor let my blushes make you vain To your and my regretting. I'm sure I've heard your sex repeat A thousand times or so, That stolen kisses are most sweet— I only wished to know!
I own 'twas not so neatly done As you know how to do it, And that the fright out-did the fun, But still I do not rue it. I can afford the extra beat My heart took at your "Oh!" Which plainly said that kiss was sweet— When I so wished to know!
Nay, I will not give back the kiss, Nor will I take a second; Creme de la creme of pain and bliss This one shall e'er be reckoned. The pain was mine, the bliss was—ours, You smile to hear it so; But the same thought was surely yours, As I have cause to know.
LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM.
The highest use of happy love is this; To make us loving to the loveless ones; Willing indeed to halve our meed of bliss, If our sweet plenty others' want atones: Of love's abundance may God give thee store, To spend in love's sweet charities, Lenore.
LOVE'S FOOTSTEPS.
I sang a song of olden times, Sitting upon our sacred hill— Sang it to feel my bosom thrill To the sweet pathos of its rhymes.
I trilled the music o'er and o'er, And happy, gazed upon the scene, Thinking that there had never been So blue a sea, so fair a shore.
A vague half dream was in my mind; I hardly saw how sat the sun; I noted not the day was gone The rosy western hills behind.
'Till, soft as if Apollo blew For me the sweet Thessalian flute, I heard a sound which made me mute, And more than singing thrilled me through.
Thy step—well known and well beloved! No more I dreamed on shore or sea; I thought of, saw but only thee, Nor spoke, but blushed to be so moved.
THE POET'S MINISTERS.
POET.
Oh, my soul! the draught is bitter Yet it must be sweetly drunken: Heart and soul! the grinding fetter Galls, yet have ye never shrunken: Heart and soul, and pining spirit, Fail me not! no coward weakness ​Such as ye are should inherit— Be ye strong even in your meekness.
Born were ye to these strange uses, To brief joy and crushing ill, To small good and great abuses; Yet oh, yield not, till they kill. The stag wounded runneth steady With his blood in streams a-gushing; Soul and spirit, be ye ready For the arrows toward ye rushing.
SPIRIT OF THE FLOWERS.
Now what ails our gentle friend? In his eye a meaning double, Sorrow and defiance blend— Let us soothe him of his trouble. Poet! do not pass us by: See how we are robed to meet you; Heed you not our perfumed sigh? Heed you not how sweet we greet you? Ever since the breath of morn We have waited for your coming, Fearing when the bee's dull horn Round our quiet bower was humming: We have kept our sweets for thee— Poet, do not pass us by: Place us on thy breast, for see! By the sunset we must die.
SPIRIT OF THE MOUNTAIN STREAM.
Bathe thy pale face in the flood Which overflows this crystal fountain, Then to rouse thy sluggish blood, Seek its source far up the mountain. Note thou how the stream doth sing Its soft carol, low and light, ​To the jagged rocks that fling Mildew shadows, black and blight. Learn a lesson from the stream, Poet! though thy path may lie Hid forever from the gleam Of the blue and sunny sky,— Though thy way be steep and long, Sing thou still a cheerful song!
SPIRIT OF BEAUTY.
Come sister spirits, touch his eyelids newly, With that rare juice whose magic power it is, To give the rose-hue to those things which truly Wear the sad livery of ugliness. Oh, dignify the office of the meanest Of all God's manifold created things; And sprinkle his heart's wounds with the serenest Waters of sweetness, from our fabled springs. Oh, close him round with visions of all rareness, Make him see everything with smiling eye; Let all his dreams be unsurpassed for fairness, And what we feign out-charm reality. Come, sister spirits, up and do your duty; When the Poet pines, feast his soul with beauty.
SPIRIT OF THE TREES.
Let us wave our branches gently With a murmur low and loving; He will say we sang him quaintly Some old ballad, sweetly moving. 'Tis of all the ways the surest To awake a poet's fancies, For he loves these things the purest— Sigh of leaves, and scent of pansies. He has loved us, we will love him, And will cheer his hour of sadness, ​Spirits, wave your boughs above him To a measure of soft gladness.
SPIRIT OF LOVE.
Ye gentle ministers, ye have done well, But 'tis for love that most the poet pineth, And till I spell him with my magic spell, In vain for him earth smiles or heaven shineth. Behold I touch his heart, and there upspring Blooms to his cheeks, and flashes to his eyes; His scornful lips upon the instant sing, And all his pulses leap with ecstasies. 'Tis love the poet wants; he cannot live Without caressing and without caress, Which all to charity his fellows give; But I will wrap his soul in tenderness, And straightway from his lips will burst a song All loving hearts shall echo and prolong.
POET.
O Earth, and Sky, and Flowers, and Streams agushing, God made ye beautiful to make us blest: O bright-winged Songsters through the blue air rushing; O murmuring Tree-tops, by the winds carest; O Waves of Ocean, Ripples of the River, O Dew and Fragrance, Sunlight, and Starbeam, O blessed summer-sounds that round me quiver, Delights impassable that round me teem— Oh all things beautiful! God made ye so That the glad hearts of men might overflow!
O Soul within me, whose wings sweep a lyre— God gave thee song that thou might'st give him praise; O Heart that glows with the Promethean fire, O Spirit whose fine chords some influence plays: O all sweet thoughts and beautiful emotions, O smiles and tears, and trembling and delight, ​Have ye not all part in the soul's devotions, To help it swell its anthem's happy height? Spirit of Love, of God, of inspiration, The poet's glad heart bursts in acclamation!
CHORUS OF SPIRITS.
Ring every flower-bell on the wind, And let each insect louder sing; Let elfin "joy be unconfined;" And let the laughing fairies bring A wreath enchanted, and to bind Upon the Poet's worthy brow Heartsease and laurel, and a kind Of valley lily, white as snow; And fresh May-roses, branching long— Braid all these in a garland gay, To crown the Poet for his song, Sung in our haunts this summer day!
SUNSET AT THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA.
There sinks the sun; like cavalier of old, Servant of crafty Spain, He flaunts his banner, barred with blood and gold, Wide o'er the western main, A thousand spear heads glint beyond the trees In columns bright and long: While kindling fancy hears upon the breeze The swell and shout of song.
And yet, not here Spain's gay, adventurous host, Dipped sword or planted cross; The treasures guarded by this rock-bound coast, Counted them gain nor loss. The blue Columbia, sired by the eternal hills, ​And wedded with the sea; O'er golden sands, tithes from a thousand rills, Rolled in lone majesty—
Through deep ravine, through burning, barren plain, Through wild and rocky strait, Through forest dark, and mountain rent in twain, Toward the sunset gate. While curious eyes, keen with the lust of gold, Caught not the informing gleam; These mighty breakers age on age have rolled To meet this mighty stream.
Age after age these noble hills have kept, The same majestic lines: Age after age the horizon's edge been swept By fringe of pointed pines. Summers and Winters circling came and went, Bringing no change of scene; Unresting, and unhasting, and unspent, Dwelt nature here serene.
Till God's own time to plant of Freedom's seed, In this selected soil; Denied forever unto blood and greed; But blest to honest toil. There sinks the sun. Gay Cavalier! no more His banners trail the sea, And all his legions shining on the shore Fade into mystery.
The swelling tide laps on the shingly beach, Like any starving thing; And hungry breakers, white with wrath, upreach, In vain clamoring. The shadows fall; just level with mine eye Sweet Hesper stands and shines, ​And shines beneath an arc of golden sky, Pinked round with pointed pines.
A noble scene! all breadth, deep tone and power, Suggesting glorious themes; Shaming the idler who would fill the hour With unsubstantial dreams. Be mine the dreams prophetic, shadowing forth The things that yet shall be, When through this gate the treasures of the North Flow outward to the sea.
THE PASSING OF THE YEAR.
Worn and poor, The Old Year came to Eternity's door. Once, when his limbs were young and strong, From that shining portal came he forth, Led by the sound of shout and song, To the festive halls of jubilant earth;— Now, his allotted cycle o'er, He waited, spent, by the Golden Door.
Faint and far—faint and far, Surging up soft between sun and star, Strains of revelry smote his ear; Musical murmurs from lyre and lute— Rising in choruses grand and clear, Sinking in cadences almost mute— Vexing the ear of him who sate Wearied beside the Shining Gate.
Sad and low, Flowed in an undertone of woe: Wailing among the moons it came, Sobbing in echoes against the stars; ​Smothered behind some comet's flame, Lost in the wind of the war-like Mars, —Mingling, ever and anon, With the music's swell a sigh or moan.
"As in a glass, Let the earth once before me pass," The Old Year said; and space untold Vanished, till nothing came between; Folded away, crystal and gold, Nor azure air did intervene; "As in a glass" he saw the earth Decking a bier and waiting a birth.
"You crown me dead," the Old Year said, "Before my parting hour is sped: O fickle, false, and reckless world! Time to Eternity may not haste; Not till the last Hour's wing is furled Within the gate my reign is past! O Earth! O World! fair, false and vain, I grieve not at my closing reign."
Yet spirit-sore The dead king noted a palace door; He saw the gay crowd gather in; He scanned the face of each passer by; Snowiest soul, and heart of sin; Tried and untried humanity: Age and Youth, Pleasure and Pain, Braided at chance in a motley skein.
"Ill betide Ye thankless ones!" the Old Year cried; "Have I not given you night and day, Over and over, score upon score, Wherein to live, and love, and pray, ​And suck the ripe world to its rotten core? Yet do you reek if my reign be done? E're I pass ye crown the newer one! At ball and rout ye dance and shout, Shutting men's cries of suffering out, That startle the white-tressed silences Musing beside the fount of light, In the eternal space, to press Their roses, each a nebula bright, More close to their lips serene, While ye wear this unconscious mein!"
"Even so." The revelers said: "We'll have naught of woe. Why should we mourn, who have our fill? Enough that the hungry wretches cry: We from our plenty cast at will Some crumbs to make their wet eyelids dry; But to the rich the world is fair— Why should we grovel in tears and prayer?"
In her innocent bliss, A fair bride said with sweet earnestness, "For the dead Year am I truly sad; Since in its happy and hopeful days, Every brief hour my heart was glad, And blessings were strewn in all my ways: Will it be so forevermore? Will the New Years bring of love new store?"
Youth and maid. Of their conscious blushes half afraid, Shunning each other's tell-tale eyes, Yet cherishing hopes too fond to own; Speed the Old Year with secret sighs; And smile that his time is overflown; Shall they not hear each other say "Dear Love!" ere the New Year's passed away?
​"O, haste on! The year or the pleasure is dead that is gone!" Boasted the man of pomp and power; "That which we hold is alone the good; Give me new pleasures for every hour, And grieve over past joys ye who would— Joys that are fled are poor, I wis— Give me forever the newest bliss!"
"Wish me joy," Girl-Beauty cried, with glances coy: "In the New Year a woman I; I'll then have jewels in my hair, And such rare webs as Princes buy Be none too choice for me to wear: I'll queen it as a beauty should, And not be won before I'm wooed!"
"Poor and proud—poor and proud!" Sighed a student in the motley crowd— "I heard her whisper that aside: O fatal fairness, aping heaven When earthly most!—I'll not deride— God knows that were all good gifts given To me as lavishly as rain, I'd bring them to her feet again."
"Here are the fools we use for tools; Bending their passion, ere it cools, To any need," the cynic said: "Lo, I will give him gold, and he Shall sell me brain as it were bread! His very soul I'll hold in fee For baubles that shall buy the hand Of the coldest woman in the land!"
​Spirit sore, The Old Year cared to see no more; While, as he turned, he heard a moan— Frosty and keen was the wintry night— Prone on the marble paving-stone, Unwatched, unwept, a piteous sight, Starved and dying a poor wretch lay; Through the blast he heard him gasping say:
"O, Old Year! From sightless eyes you force this tear; Sorrows you've heaped upon my head, Losses you've gathered to drive me wild, All that I lived for, loved, are dead,— Brother and sister, wife and child, I, too, am perishing as well; I shall share the toll of your passing bell!"
Grieved, and sad, For the sins and woes the Human had, The Old Year strove to avert his eyes; But fly or turn wherever he would, On his vexed ear smote the mingled cries Of revel and new-made widowhood— Of grief that would not be comforted With the loved and beautiful lying dead.
Evermore, every hour, Rising from hovel, hall and tower, Swelling the strain of discontent; Gurgled the hopeless prayer for alms, Rung out the wild oath impotent; Echoed by some brief walls of calms, Straining the listener's shrinking ears, Like silence when thunderbolts are near.
​Across that calm, like gales of balm, Some low, sweet household voices came; Thrilling, like flute-notes straying out From land to sea, some stormy night, The ear that listens for the shout Of drowning boatmen lost to sight— And died away, again so soon The pulseless air seemed fallen in a swoon.
Once pure and clear, Clarion strains fell on his ear: The preacher shook the soulless creeds, And pierced men's hearts with arrowy words, Yet failed to stir them to good deeds: Their new-fledged thoughts, like July birds, Soared on the air and glanced away, Before the eloquent voice could stay.
"'Tis very sad the man is mad," The men and women gaily said; As they, laughing, thread their homeward road, Talking of other holidays; Of last year, how it rained or snowed; Who went abroad, who wed a blaze Of diamonds with his shoddy bride, On certain days—and who had died.
"Would I were dead, And vexed no more," the Old Year said: "In vain may the preacher pray and warn; The tinkling cymbals in your ears Turn every gracious word to scorn; Ye care not for the orphan's tears; Your sides are fed, and your bodies clad Is there anything heaven itself could add?"
​And then he sighed, as one who died, With a great wish unsatisfied; Around him like a wintry sea, Whose waves were nations, surged the world, Stormy, unstable, constantly Upheaved to be again down-hurled; Here struggled some for freedom; here Oppression rode in the high career.
In hot debate Men struggled, while the hours waxed late; Contending with the watchful zeal Of gladiators, trained to die; Yet not for life, nor country's weal, But that their names might hang on high As men who loved themselves, indeed, And robbed the State to satisfy their need!
Heads of snow, and eyes aglow With fires that youth might blush to know; And brows whose youthful fairness shamed The desperate thoughts that strove within; While each his cause exulting named As purest that the world had seen: All names they had to tickle honest ears, Reform, and Rights, and sweet Philanthropy's cares.
"Well-a-day! Well-a-day!" The Old Year strove to put away Sight and sound of the reckless earth; But soft! from out a cottage door, Sweet strains of neither grief nor mirth, Upon his dying ear did pour; "Give us, O God," the singers said, "As good a year as this one dead!"
​Pealing loud from sod to cloud, Earth's bell's rang out in a chorus proud; Great waves of music shook the air From organs pulsing with the sound; Hushed was the voice of sob and prayer, As time touched the eternal bound: To the dead monarch earth was dimmed, But the golden portals brighter beamed.
Sad no more, The Old Year reached the golden door, Just as the hours with crystal clang Aside the shining portals bent And murmuring 'mong the spheres there rang The chorus of earth's acknowledgment: One had passed out at the golden door, And one had gone in forevermore!