The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-07-07
POETRY.
Hawthorne.
BY EDMUND C. sTEDMAN.

Sweet harp Of Eastern song
That even in sumber tremblest with the touch
Ofpoets who like the four winds from thee waken
All harmonies that to thy strings belong
Say. wilt thou blame the alien hands too much
Which from thy laurelled resting place have taken
Thee, crowned one, in their hold? There is name
Should quicken thee! No carol Hawthorne sang,
Y ct his articulate spirit, like thine own,
Made answer quick as flame,
To each breath of the shore from which he sprang
And plose like his was poesy's high tone.
By measufeless degrees
Star follows star throughout the rounded night.
Far off his path began, yet reached the near
Sweet influences of the Pleades,-
A portion and sharer of the light
That shall so long outlast each burning sphere.
Beneath the shade and whisper OF the pines
Two youths were fostered in the Norselandair;
One fonnd an eagles plume, and one the wand
Wherewith seer divines;
Now but the Minstrel fingers Of that pair
The rod has fallen from the Mage's hand.
Gray on thy mountain height,
More fair than wonderful beside thy streams,
Thou with the Sendos IVA Of youth, and
OF whom thou vast beholden in his Dreams
The one New Highlander! Upon whose page
Thine offspring still are animate, and move
Adown thy paths, quaint and stately throng:
Grave men Of God, who made the oden law,
Fair maidens, meet for love-
All living types that to the coast belong
Since Carver from the PROV thy headlands saw.
What should the master be
Her best interpreter, her very own?
How spake the brooding Mother strong and tender,
Back looking through her youth betwixt the moan
OF forests and the murmur of the sea?
''Thou, too" she said, ''must first be set aside,
To keep my ancient vigil for a space
Taught by repression, by the combating
With thine own pride of pride,
An unknown watcher in lonely place,
With none on whom thine utterance to fling"
But first of all she fed
Her hearts own favorite upon the store
Ofprecious things she treasures in her woods,
or charm and story in her valleys spread.
For him her whispering winds and brooks that pour
Made ceaseless music in the solitudes;
The manifold bright surges Of her deep
She luied him on, by roadways oyerhung
With elms, that he might keep
Remembrance of her legends as they fall
Her shaded walks and gabled roofs among.
Within the mists she drew,
Anon, his silent footsteps as her own
Were led of old, until he came to be
An eremite, whose life the desert knew,
And gained companionship in dreams alone.
The world, it seemed had naught for such as he, -
For one who, in his hearts deep wilderness
Shrunk darkling and, whatever wind might blow,
Found no quick use for potent hands and fain,
No chance that might express
To humankind the thoughts that moved him so
%, deem not those long years were quite in vain
For his was the brave soul
Which, touched with fire, dwes not on whatsoever
Its outer senses hold in their intent,
But, seepless even in sleep, must gather toll,
OF dreams which pass like barks upon the river
And make each vision Beauty's instrument;
That from Its own love Loves delight can tell,
And from its own grief guess the shrouded Sorrow
From its own joyousness Of Joy can sing;
That can predict SO well