I love thy music, mellow bell,

I love thine iron chime,

To life or death, to heaven or hell,

Which calls the sons of Time.

 

Thy voice upon the deep

The home-bound sea-boy hails,

It charms his cares to sleep,

It cheers him as he sails.

 

To house of God and heavenly joys

Thy summons called our sires,

And good men thought thy sacred voice

Disarmed the thunder’s fires.

 

And soon thy music, sad death-bell,

Shall lift its notes once more,

And mix my requiem with the wind

That sweeps my native shore.

1823.

I am not poor, but I am proud,

Of one inalienable right,

Above the envy of the crowd, -

Thought’s holy light.

 

Better it is than gems or gold,

And oh! it cannot die,

But thought will glow when the sun grows cold,

And mix with Deity.

BOSTON, 1823.

 

When success exalts thy lot,

God for thy virtue lays a plot:

And all thy life is for thy own,

Then for mankind’s instruction shown;

And though thy knees were never bent,

To Heaven thy hourly prayers are sent,

And whether formed for good or ill,

Are registered and answered still.

1826 [?].

I bear in youth the sad infirmities

That use to undo the limb and sense of age;

It hath pleased Heaven to break the dream of bliss

Which lit my onward way with bright presage,

And my unserviceable limbs forego.

The sweet delight I found in fields and farms,

On windy hills, whose tops with morning glow,

And lakes, smooth mirrors of Aurora’s charms.

Yet I think on them in the silent night,

Still breaks that morn, though dim, to Memory’s eye,

And the firm soul does the pale train defy

Of grim Disease, that would her peace affright.

Please God, I’ll wrap me in mine innocence,

And bid each awful Muse drive the damned harpies hence.

CAMBRIDGE, 1827.

Be of good cheer, brave spirit; steadfastly

Serve that low whisper thou hast served; for know,

God hath a select family of sons

Now scattered wide thro’ earth, and each alone,

Who are thy spiritual kindred, and each one

By constant service to, that inward law,

Is weaving the sublime proportions

Of a true monarch’s soul. Beauty and strength,

The riches of a spotless memory,

The eloquence of truth, the wisdom got

By searching of a clear and loving eye

That seeth as God seeth. These are their gifts,

And Time, who keeps God’s word, brings on the day

To seal the marriage of these minds with thine,

Thine everlasting lovers. Ye shall be

The salt of all the elements, world of the world.

I rake no coffined clay, nor publish wide

The resurrection of departed pride.

Safe in their ancient crannies, dark and deep,

Let kings and conquerors, saints and soldiers sleep -

Late in the world, – too late perchance for fame,

Just late enough to reap abundant blame, -

I choose a novel theme, a bold abuse

Of critic charters, an unlaurelled Muse.

 

Old mouldy men and books and names and lands

Disgust my reason and defile my hands.

I had as lief respect an ancient shoe,

As love old things for age, and hate the new.

I spurn the Past, my mind disdains its nod,

Nor kneels in homage to so mean a God.

I laugh at those who, while they gape and gaze,

The bald antiquity of China praise.

Youth is (whatever cynic tubs pretend)

The fault that boys and nations soonest mend.

1824.

Ah Fate, cannot a man

Be wise without a beard?

East, West, from Beer to Dan,

Say, was it never heard

That wisdom might in youth be gotten,

Or wit be ripe before ‘t was rotten?

 

He pays too high a price

For knowledge and for fame

Who sells his sinews to be wise,

His teeth and bones to buy a name,

And crawls through life a paralytic

To earn the praise of bard and critic.

 

Were it not better done,

To dine and sleep through forty years;

Be loved by few; be feared by none;

Laugh life away; have wine for tears;

And take the mortal leap undaunted,

Content that all we asked was granted?

 

But Fate will not permit

The seed of gods to die,

Nor suffer sense to win from wit

Its guerdon in the sky,

Nor let us hide, whate’er our pleasure,

The world’s light underneath a measure.

 

Go then, sad youth, and shine;

Go, sacrifice to Fame;

Put youth, joy, health upon the shrine,

And life to fan the flame;

Being for Seeming bravely barter

And die to Fame a happy martyr.

1824.

A sterner errand to the silken troop

Has quenched the uneasy blush that warmed my cheek;

I am commissioned in my day of joy

To leave my woods and streams and the sweet sloth

Of prayer and song that were my dear delight,

To leave the rudeness of my woodland life,

Sweet twilight walks and midnight solitude

And kind acquaintance with the morning stars

And the glad hey-day of my household hours,

The innocent mirth which sweetens daily bread,

Railing in love to those who rail again,

By mind’s industry sharpening the love of life -

Books, Muses, Study, fireside, friends and love,

I loved ye with true love, so fare ye well!

 

I was a boy; boyhood slid gayly by

And the impatient years that trod on it

Taught me new lessons in the lore of life.

I’ve learned the sum of that sad history

All woman-born do know, that hoped-for days,

Days that come dancing on fraught with delights,

Dash our blown hopes as they limp heavily by.

But I, the bantling of a country Muse,

Abandon all those toys with speed to obey

The King whose meek ambassador I go.

1826.

And I behold once more

My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,

The same blue wonder that my infant eye

Admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came, -

Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed

The fragrant flag-roots in my father’s fields,

And where thereafter in the world he went.

Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now

He hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales

With his redundant waves.

Here is the rock where, yet a simple child,

I caught with bended pin my earliest fish,

Much triumphing, – and these the fields

Over whose flowers I chased the butterfly

A blooming hunter of a fairy fine.

And hark! where overhead the ancient crows

Hold their sour conversation in the sky: -

These are the same, but I am not the same,

But wiser than I was, and wise enough

Not to regret the changes, tho’ they cost

Me many a sigh. Oh, call not Nature dumb;

These trees and stones are audible to me,

These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind,

I understand their faery syllables,

And all their sad significance. The wind,

That rustles down the well-known forest road -

It hath a sound more eloquent than speech.

The stream, the trees, the grass, the sighing wind,

All of them utter sounds of ‘monishment

And grave parental love.

They are not of our race, they seem to say,

And yet have knowledge of our moral race,

And somewhat of majestic sympathy,

Something of pity for the puny clay,

That holds and boasts the immeasurable mind.

I feel as I were welcome to these trees

After long months of weary wandering,

Acknowledged by their hospitable boughs;

They know me as their son, for side by side,

They were coeval with my ancestors,

Adorned with them my country’s primitive times,

And soon may give my dust their funeral shade.

 

CONCORD, June, 1827.

The cup of life is not so shallow

That we have drained the best,

That all the wine at once we swallow

And lees make all the rest.

 

Maids of as soft a bloom shall marry

As Hymen yet hath blessed,

And fairer forms are in the quarry

Than Phidias released.

 

1827.

Tell me, maiden, dost thou use

Thyself thro’ Nature to diffuse?

All the angles of the coast

Were tenanted by thy sweet ghost,

Bore thy colors every flower,

Thine each leaf and berry bore;

All wore thy badges and thy favors

In their scent or in their savors,

Every moth with painted wing,

Every bird in carolling,

The wood-boughs with thy manners waved,

The rocks uphold thy name engraved,

The sod throbbed friendly to my feet,

And the sweet air with thee was sweet.

The saffron cloud that floated warm

Studied thy motion, took thy form,

And in his airy road benign

Recalled thy skill in bold design,

Or seemed to use his privilege

To gaze o’er the horizon’s edge,

To search where now thy beauty glowed,

Or made what other purlieus proud.

 

1829.

Though her eye seek other forms

And a glad delight below,

Yet the love the world that warms

Bids for me her bosom glow.

 

She must love me till she find

Another heart as large and true.

Her soul is frank as the ocean wind,

And the world has only two.

 

If Nature hold another heart

That knows a purer flame than me,

I too therein could challenge part

And learn of love a new degree.

 

1829.

 

A dull uncertain brain,

But gifted yet to know

That God has cherubim who go

Singing an immortal strain,

Immortal here below.

I know the mighty bards,

I listen when they sing,

And now I know

The secret store

Which these explore

When they with torch of genius pierce

The tenfold clouds that cover

The riches of the universe

From God’s adoring lover.

And if to me it is not given

To fetch one ingot thence

Of the unfading gold of Heaven

His merchants may dispense,

Yet well I know the royal mine,

And know the sparkle of its ore,

Know Heaven’s truth from lies that shine -

Explored they teach us to explore.

1831.

Why fear to die

And let thy body lie

Under the flowers of June,

Thy body food

For the ground-worms’ brood

And thy grave smiled on by the visiting moon.

 

Amid great Nature’s halls

Girt in by mountain walls

And washed with waterfalls

It would please me to die,

Where every wind that swept my tomb

Goes loaded with a free perfume

Dealt out with a God’s charity.

 

I should like to die in sweets,

A hill’s leaves for winding-sheets,

And the searching sun to see

That I am laid with decency.

And the commissioned wind to sing

His mighty psalm from fall to spring

And annual tunes commemorate

Of Nature’s child the common fate.

 

WILLIAMSTOWN, VERMONT, 1 June, 1831.

Dear brother, would you know the life,

Please God, that I would lead?

On the first wheels that quit this weary town

Over yon western bridges I would ride

And with a cheerful benison forsake

Each street and spire and roof, incontinent.

Then would I seek where God might guide my steps,

Deep in a woodland tract, a sunny farm,

Amid the mountain counties, Hants, Franklin, Berks,

Where down the rock ravine a river roars,

Even from a brook, and where old woods

Not tamed and cleared cumber the ground

With their centennial wrecks.

Find me a slope where I can feel the sun

And mark the rising of the early stars.

There will I bring my books, – my household gods,

The reliquaries of my dead saint, and dwell

In the sweet odor of her memory.

Then in the uncouth solitude unlock

My stock of art, plant dials in the grass,

Hang in the air a bright thermometer

And aim a telescope at the inviolate sun.

CHARDON ST., BOSTON, 1831.

Day by day returns

The everlasting sun,

Replenishing material urns

With God’s unspared donation;

But the day of day,

The orb within the mind,

Creating fair and good alway,

Shines not as once it shined.

* * *

Vast the realm of Being is,

In the waste one nook is his;

Whatsoever hap befalls

In his vision’s narrow walls

He is here to testify.

 

1831.

There is in all the sons of men

A love that in the spirit dwells,

That panteth after things unseen,

And tidings of the future tells.

 

And God hath built his altar here

To keep this fire of faith alive,

And sent his priests in holy fear

To speak the truth – for truth to strive.

 

And hither come the pensive train

Of rich and poor, of young and old,

Of ardent youth untouched by pain,

Of thoughtful maids and manhood bold.

 

They seek a friend to speak the word

Already trembling on their tongue,

To touch with prophet’s hand the chord

Which God in human hearts hath strung.

 

To speak the plain reproof of sin

That sounded in the soul before,

And bid you let the angels in

That knock at meek contrition’s door.

 

A friend to lift the curtain up

That hides from man the mortal goal,

And with glad thoughts of faith and hope

Surprise the exulting soul.

 

Sole source of light and hope assured,

O touch thy servant’s lips with power,

So shall he speak to us the word

Thyself dost give forever more.

 

June, 1831.

Henceforth, please God, forever I forego

The yoke of men’s opinions. I will be

Light-hearted as a bird, and live with God.

I find him in the bottom of my heart,

I hear continually his voice therein.

* * *

The little needle always knows the North,

The little bird remembereth his note,

And this wise Seer within me never errs.

I never taught it what it teaches me;

I only follow, when I act aright.

 

October 9, 1832.

 

And when I am entombed in my place,

Be it remembered of a single man,

He never, though he dearly loved his race,

For fear of human eyes swerved from his plan.

 

Oh what is Heaven but the fellowship

Of minds that each can stand against the world

By its own meek and incorruptible will?

 

The days pass over me

And I am still the same;

The aroma of my life is gone

With the flower with which it came.

1833.

We are what we are made; each following day

Is the Creator of our human mould

Not less than was the first; the all-wise God

Gilds a few points in every several life,

And as each flower upon the fresh hillside,

And every colored petal of each flower,

Is sketched and dyed, each with a new design,

Its spot of purple, and its streak of brown,

So each man’s life shall have its proper lights,

And a few joys, a few peculiar charms,

For him round in the melancholy hours

And reconcile him to the common days.

Not many men see beauty in the fogs

Of close low pine-woods in a river town;

Yet unto me not morn’s magnificence,

Nor the red rainbow of a summer eve,

Nor Rome, nor joyful Paris, nor the halls

Of rich men blazing hospitable light,

Nor wit, nor eloquence, – no, nor even the song

Of any woman that is now alive, -

Hath such a soul, such divine influence,

Such resurrection of the happy past,

As is to me when I behold the morn

Ope in such law moist roadside, and beneath

Peep the blue violets out of the black loam,

Pathetic silent poets that sing to me

Thine elegy, sweet singer, sainted wife.

 

March, 1833.

Alone in Rome. Why, Rome is lonely too; -

Besides, you need not be alone; the soul

Shall have society of its own rank.

Be great, be true, and all the Scipios,

The Catos, the wise patriots of Rome,

Shall flock to you and tarry by your side,

And comfort you with their high company.

Virtue alone is sweet society,

It keeps the key to all heroic hearts,

And opens you a welcome in them all.

You must be like them if you desire them,

Scorn trifles and embrace a better aim

Than wine or sleep or praise;

Hunt knowledge as the lover wooes a maid,

And ever in the strife of your own thoughts

Obey the nobler impulse; that is Rome:

That shall command a senate to your side;

For there is no might in the universe

That can contend with love. It reigns forever.

Wait then, sad friend, wait in majestic peace

The hour of heaven. Generously trust

Thy fortune’s web to the beneficent hand

That until now has put his world in fee

To thee. He watches for thee still. His love

Broods over thee, and as God lives in heaven,

However long thou walkest solitary,

The hour of heaven shall come, the man appear.

 

1833.

1831

 

Let Webster’s lofty face

Ever on thousands shine,

A beacon set that Freedom’s race

Might gather omens from that radiant sign.

1834

 

Ill fits the abstemious Muse a crown to weave

For living brows; ill fits them to receive:

And yet, if virtue abrogate the law,

One portrait – fact or fancy – we may draw;

A form which Nature cast in the heroic mould

Of them who rescued liberty of old;

He, when the rising storm of party roared,

Brought his great forehead to the council board,

There, while hot heads perplexed with fears the state,

Calm as the morn the manly patriot sate;

Seemed, when at last his clarion accents broke,

As if the conscience of the country spoke.

Not on its base Monadnoc surer stood,

Than he to common sense and common good:

No mimic; from his breast his counsel drew,

Believed the eloquent was aye the true;

He bridged the gulf from th’ alway good and wise

To that within the vision of small eyes.

Self-centred; when he launched the genuine word

It shook or captivated all who heard,

Ran from his mouth to mountains and the sea,

And burned in noble hearts proverb and prophecy.

 

1854

 

Why did all manly gifts in Webster fail?

He wrote on Nature’s grandest brow, For Sale.

Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home:

Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine.

Long through thy weary crowds I roam;

A river-ark on the ocean brine,

Long I’ve been tossed like the driven foam:

But now, proud world! I’m going home.

 

 

Good-bye to Flattery’s fawning face;

To Grandeur with his wise grimace;

To upstart Wealth’s averted eye;

To supple Office, low and high;

To crowded halls, to court and street;

To frozen hearts and hasting feet;

To those who go, and those who come;

Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home.

 

I am going to my own hearth-stone,

Bosomed in yon green hills alone, -

secret nook in a pleasant land,

Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;

Where arches green, the livelong day,

Echo the blackbird’s roundelay,

And vulgar feet have never trod

A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

 

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,

I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;

And when I am stretched beneath the pines,

Where the evening star so holy shines,

I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,

At the sophist schools and the learned clan;

For what are they all, in their high conceit,

When man in the bush with God may meet?

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown

Of thee from the hill-top looking down;

The heifer that lows in the upland farm,

Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;

The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,

Deems not that great Napoleon

Stops his horse, and lists with delight,

Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;

Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent.

All are needed by each one;

Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven,

Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home, in his nest, at even;

He sings the song, but it cheers not now,

For I did not bring home the river and sky; -

He sang to my ear, – they sang to my eye.

The delicate shells lay on the shore;

The bubbles of the latest wave

Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,

And the bellowing of the savage sea

Greeted their safe escape to me.

I wiped away the weeds and foam,

I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things

Had left their beauty on the shore

With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

The lover watched his graceful maid,

As ‘mid the virgin train she strayed,

Nor knew her beauty’s best attire

Was woven still by the snow-white choir.

At last she came to his hermitage,

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; -

The gay enchantment was undone,

A gentle wife, but fairy none.

Then I said, ‘I covet truth;

Beauty is unripe childhood’s cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth:’ -

As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,

Running over the club-moss burrs;

I inhaled the violet’s breath;

Around me stood the oaks and firs;

Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;

Over me soared the eternal sky.

Full of light and of deity;

Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird; -

Beauty through my senses stole;

I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

I like a church; I like a cowl;

I love a prophet of the soul;

And on my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles

Yet not for all his faith can see

Would I that cowlèd churchman be.

 

Why should the vest on him allure,

Which I could not on me endure?

 

Not from a vain or shallow thought

His awful Jove young Phidias brought;

Never from lips of cunning fell

The thrilling Delphic oracle;

Out from the heart of nature rolled

The burdens of the Bible old;

The litanies of nations came,

Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,

Up from the burning core below, -

The canticles of love and woe:

The hand that rounded Peter’s dome

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome

Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew; -

The conscious stone to beauty grew.

 

Know’st thou what wove yon woodbird’s nest

Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?

Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,

Painting with morn each annual cell?

Or how the sacred pine-tree adds

To her old leaves new myriads?

Such and so grew these holy piles,

Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,

As the best gem upon her zone,

And Morning opes with haste her lids

To gaze upon the Pyramids;

O’er England’s abbeys bends the sky,

As on its friends, with kindred eye;

For out of Thought’s interior sphere

These wonders rose to upper air;

And Nature gladly gave them place,

Adopted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date

With Andes and with Ararat.

 

These temples grew as grows the grass;

Art might obey, but not surpass.

The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast soul that o’er him planned;

And the same power that reared the shrine

Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,

Trances the heart through chanting choirs,

And through the priest the mind inspires.

The word unto the prophet spoken

Was writ on tables yet unbroken;

The word by seers or sibyls told,

In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,

Still floats upon the morning wind,

Still whispers to the willing mind.

One accent of the Holy Ghost

The heedless world hath never lost.

I know what say the fathers wise, -

The Book itself before me lies,

Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,

And he who blent both in his line,

The younger Golden Lips or mines,

Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines.

His words are music in my ear,

I see his cowlèd portrait dear;

And yet, for all his faith could see,

I would not the good bishop be.

Thee, dear friend, a brother soothes,

Not with flatteries, but truths,

Which tarnish not, but purify

To light which dims the morning’s eye.

I have come from the spring-woods,

From the fragrant solitudes; -

Listen what the poplar-tree

And murmuring waters counselled me.

 

If with love thy heart has burned;

If thy love is unreturned;

Hide thy grief within thy breast,

Though it tear thee unexpressed;

For when love has once departed

From the eyes of the false-hearted,

And one by one has torn off quite

The bandages of purple light;

Though thou wert the loveliest

Form the soul had ever dressed,

Thou shalt seem, in each reply,

A vixen to his altered eye;

Thy softest pleadings seem too bold,

Thy praying lute will seem to scold;

Though thou kept the straightest road,

Yet thou errest far and broad.

 

But thou shalt do as do the gods

In their cloudless periods;

For of this lore be thou sure, -

Though thou forget, the gods, secure,

Forget never their command,

But make the statute of this land.

As they lead, so follow all,

Ever have done, ever shall.

Warning to the blind and deaf,

‘T is written on the iron leaf,

Who drinks of Cupid’s nectar cup

Loveth downward, and not up;

He who loves, of gods or men,

Shall not by the same be loved again;

His sweetheart’s idolatry

Falls, in turn, a new degree.

When a god is once beguiled

By beauty of a mortal child

And by her radiant youth delighted,

He is not fooled, but warily knoweth

His love shall never be requited.

And thus the wise Immortal doeth, -

‘T is his study and delight

To bless that creature day and night;

From all evils to defend her;

In her lap to pour all splendor;

To ransack earth for riches rare,

And fetch her stars to deck her hair:

He mixes music with her thoughts,

And saddens her with heavenly doubts:

All grace, all good his great heart knows,

Profuse in love, the king bestows,

Saying, ‘Hearken! Earth, Sea, Air!

This monument of my despair

Build I to the All-Good, All-Fair.

Not for a private good,

But I, from my beatitude,

Albeit scorned as none was scorned,

Adorn her as was none adorned.

I make this maiden an ensample

To Nature, through her kingdoms ample,

Whereby to model newer races,

Statelier forms and fairer faces;

To carry man to new degrees

Of power and of comeliness.

These presents be the hostages

Which I pawn for my release.

See to thyself, O Universe!

Thou art better, and not worse.’ -

And the god, having given all,

Is freed forever from his thrall.

Askest, ‘How long thou shalt stay?’

Devastator of the day!

Know, each substance and relation,

Thorough nature’s operation,

Hath its unit, bound and metre;

And every new compound

Is some product and repeater, -

Product of the earlier found.

But the unit of the visit,

The encounter of the wise, -

Say, what other metre is it

Than the meeting of the eyes?

Nature poureth into nature

Through the channels of that feature,

Riding on the ray of sight,

Fleeter far than whirlwinds go,

Or for service, or delight,

Hearts to hearts their meaning show,

Sum their long experience,

And import intelligence.

Single look has drained the breast;

Single moment years confessed.

The duration of a glance

Is the term of convenance,

And, though thy rede be church or state,

Frugal multiples of that.

Speeding Saturn cannot halt;

Linger, – thou shalt rue the fault:

If Love his moment overstay,

Hatred’s swift repulsions play.

It fell in the ancient periods

Which the brooding soul surveys,

Or ever the wild Time coined itself

Into calendar months and days.

 

This was the lapse of Uriel,

Which in Paradise befell.

Once, among the Pleiads walking,

Seyd overheard the young gods talking;

And the treason, too long pent,

To his ears was evident.

The young deities discussed

Laws of form, and metre just,

Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,

What subsisteth, and what seems.

One, with low tones that decide,

And doubt and reverend use defied,

With a look that solved the sphere,

And stirred the devils everywhere,

Gave his sentiment divine

Against the being of a line.

‘Line in nature is not found;

Unit and universe are round;

In vain produced, all rays return;

Evil will bless, and ice will burn.’

As Uriel spoke with piercing eye,

A shudder ran around the sky;

The stern old war-gods shook their heads,

The seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds;

Seemed to the holy festival

The rash word boded ill to all;

The balance-beam of Fate was bent;

The bounds of good and ill were rent;

Strong Hades could not keep his own,

But all slid to confusion.

 

A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell

On the beauty of Uriel;

In heaven once eminent, the god

Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud;

Whether doomed to long gyration

In the sea of generation,

Or by knowledge grown too bright

To hit the nerve of feebler sight.

Straightway, a forgetting wind

Stole over the celestial kind,

And their lips the secret kept,

If in ashes the fire-seed slept.

But now and then, truth-speaking things

Shamed the angels’ veiling wings;

And, shrilling from the solar course,

Or from fruit of chemic force,

Procession of a soul in matter,

Or the speeding change of water,

Or out of the good of evil born,

Came Uriel’s voice of cherub scorn,

And a blush tinged the upper sky,

And the gods shook, they knew not why.

Thanks to the morning light,

Thanks to the foaming sea,

To the uplands of New Hampshire,

To the green-haired forest free;

Thanks to each man of courage,

To the maids of holy mind,

To the boy with his games undaunted

Who never looks behind.

 

Cities of proud hotels,

Houses of rich and great,

Vice nestles in your chambers,

Beneath your roofs of slate.

It cannot conquer folly, -

Time-and-space-conquering steam, -

And the light-outspeeding telegraph

Bears nothing on its beam.

 

The politics are base;

The letters do not cheer;

And ’tis far in the deeps of history,

The voice that speaketh clear.

Trade and the streets ensnare us,

Our bodies are weak and worn;

We plot and corrupt each other,

And we despoil the unborn.

 

Yet there in the parlor sits

Some figure of noble guise, -

Our angel, in a stranger’s form,

Or woman’s pleading eyes;

Or only a flashing sunbeam

In at the window-pane;

Or Music pours on mortals

Its beautiful disdain.

 

The inevitable morning

Finds them who in cellars be;

And be sure the all-loving Nature

Will smile in a factory.

Yon ridge of purple landscape,

Yon sky between the walls,

Hold all the hidden wonders

In scanty intervals.

 

Alas! the Sprite that haunts us

Deceives our rash desire;

It whispers of the glorious gods,

And leaves us in the mire.

We cannot learn the cipher

That’s writ upon our cell;

Stars taunt us by a mystery

Which we could never spell.

 

If but one hero knew it,

The world would blush in flame;

The sage, till he hit the secret,

Would hang his head for shame.

Our brothers have not read it,

Not one has found the key;

And henceforth we are comforted, -

We are but such as they.

 

Still, still the secret presses;

The nearing clouds draw down;

The crimson morning flames into

The fopperies of the town.

Within, without the idle earth,

Stars weave eternal rings;

The sun himself shines heartily,

And shares the joy he brings.

 

And what if Trade sow cities

Like shells along the shore,

And thatch with towns the prairie broad

With railways ironed o’er? -

They are but sailing foam-bells

Along Thought’s causing stream,

And take their shape and sun-color

From him that sends the dream.

 

For Destiny never swerves

Nor yields to men the helm;

He shoots his thought, by hidden nerves,

Throughout the solid realm.

The patient Daemon sits,

With roses and a shroud;

He has his way, and deals his gifts, -

But ours is not allowed.

 

He is no churl nor trifler,

And his viceroy is none, -

Love-without-weakness, -

Of Genius sire and son.

And his will is not thwarted;

The seeds of land and sea

Are the atoms of his body bright,

And his behest obey.

 

He serveth the servant,

The brave he loves amain;

He kills the cripple and the sick,

And straight begins again;

For gods delight in gods,

And thrust the weak aside;

To him who scorns their charities

Their arms fly open wide.

 

When the old world is sterile

And the ages are effete,

He will from wrecks and sediment

The fairer world complete.

He forbids to despair;

His cheeks mantle with mirth;

And the unimagined good of men

Is yeaning at the birth.

 

Spring still makes spring in the mind

When sixty years are told;

Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,

And we are never old;

Over the winter glaciers

I see the summer glow,

And through the wild-piled snow-drift

The warm rosebuds below.

The Sphinx is drowsy,

Her wings are furled:

Her ear is heavy,

She broods on the world.

“Who’ll tell me my secret,

The ages have kept? -

I awaited the seer

While they slumbered and slept: -

 

“The fate of the man-child,

The meaning of man;

Known fruit of the unknown;

Daedalian plan;

Out of sleeping a waking,

Out of waking a sleep;

Life death overtaking;

Deep underneath deep?

 

“Erect as a sunbeam,

Upspringeth the palm;

The elephant browses,

Undaunted and calm;

In beautiful motion

The thrush plies his wings;

Kind leaves of his covert,

Your silence he sings.

 

“The waves, unashamèd,

In difference sweet,

Play glad with the breezes,

Old playfellows meet;

The journeying atoms,

Primordial wholes,

Firmly draw, firmly drive,

By their animate poles.

 

“Sea, earth, air, sound, silence.

Plant, quadruped, bird,

By one music enchanted,

One deity stirred, -

Each the other adorning,

Accompany still;

Night veileth the morning,

The vapor the hill.

 

“The babe by its mother

Lies bathèd in joy;

Glide its hours uncounted, -

The sun is its toy;

Shines the peace of all being,

Without cloud, in its eyes;

And the sum of the world

In soft miniature lies.

 

“But man crouches and blushes,

Absconds and conceals;

He creepeth and peepeth,

He palters and steals;

Infirm, melancholy,

Jealous glancing around,

An oaf, an accomplice,

He poisons the ground.

 

“Out spoke the great mother,

Beholding his fear; -

At the sound of her accents

Cold shuddered the sphere: -

‘Who has drugged my boy’s cup?

Who has mixed my boy’s bread?

Who, with sadness and madness,

Has turned my child’s head?’”

 

I heard a poet answer

Aloud and cheerfully,

‘Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges

Are pleasant songs to me.

Deep love lieth under

These pictures of time;

They fade in the light of

Their meaning sublime.

 

“The fiend that man harries

Is love of the Best;

Yawns the pit of the Dragon,

Lit by rays from the Blest.

The Lethe of Nature

Can’t trance him again,

Whose soul sees the perfect,

Which his eyes seek in vain.

 

“To vision profounder,

Man’s spirit must dive;

His aye-rolling orb

At no goal will arrive;

The heavens that now draw him

With sweetness untold,

Once found, – for new heavens

He spurneth the old.

 

“Pride ruined the angels,

Their shame them restores;

Lurks the joy that is sweetest

In stings of remorse.

Have I a lover

Who is noble and free? -

I would he were nobler

Than to love me.

 

“Eterne alternation

Now follows, now flies;

And under pain, pleasure, -

Under pleasure, pain lies.

Love works at the centre,

Heart-heaving alway;

Forth speed the strong pulses

To the borders of day.

 

“Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits;

Thy sight is growing blear;

Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Sphinx,

Her muddy eyes to clear!”

The old Sphinx bit her thick lip, -

Said, “Who taught thee me to name?

I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow;

Of thine eye I am eyebeam.

 

“Thou art the unanswered question;

Couldst see thy proper eye,

Alway it asketh, asketh;

And each answer is a lie.

So take thy quest through nature,

It through thousand natures ply;

Ask on, thou clothed eternity;

Time is the false reply.”

 

Uprose the merry Sphinx,

And crouched no more in stone;

She melted into purple cloud,

She silvered in the moon;

She spired into a yellow flame;

She flowered in blossoms red;

She flowed into a foaming wave:

She stood Monadnoc’s head.

 

Thorough a thousand voices

Spoke the universal dame;

“Who telleth one of my meanings

Is master of all I am.”

I, Alphonso, live and learn,

Seeing Nature go astern.

Things deteriorate in kind;

Lemons run to leaves and rind;

Meagre crop of figs and limes;

Shorter days and harder times.

Flowering April cools and dies

In the insufficient skies.

Imps, at high midsummer, blot

Half the sun’s disk with a spot;

‘Twill not now avail to tan

Orange cheek or skin of man.

Roses bleach, the goats are dry,

Lisbon quakes, the people cry.

Yon pale, scrawny fisher fools,

Gaunt as bitterns in the pools,

Are no brothers of my blood; -

They discredit Adamhood.

Eyes of gods! ye must have seen,

O’er your ramparts as ye lean,

The general debility;

Of genius the sterility;

Mighty projects countermanded;

Rash ambition, brokenhanded;

Puny man and scentless rose

Tormenting Pan to double the dose.

Rebuild or ruin: either fill

Of vital force the wasted rill,

Or tumble all again in heap

To weltering Chaos and to sleep.

 

Say, Seigniors, are the old Niles dry,

Which fed the veins of earth and sky,

That mortals miss the loyal heats,

Which drove them erst to social feats;

Now, to a savage selfness grown,

Think nature barely serves for one;

With science poorly mask their hurt;

And vex the gods with question pert,

Immensely curious whether you

Still are rulers, or Mildew?

 

Masters, I’m in pain with you;

Masters, I’ll be plain with you;

In my palace of Castile,

I, a king, for kings can feel.

There my thoughts the matter roll,

And solve and oft resolve the whole.

And, for I’m styled Alphonse the Wise,

Ye shall not fail for sound advice.

Before ye want a drop of rain,

Hear the sentiment of Spain.

 

You have tried famine: no more try it;

Ply us now with a full diet;

Teach your pupils now with plenty,

For one sun supply us twenty.

I have thought it thoroughly over, -

State of hermit, state of lover;

We must have society,

We cannot spare variety.

Hear you, then, celestial fellows!

Fits not to be overzealous;

Steads not to work on the clean jump,

Nor wine nor brains perpetual pump.

Men and gods are too extense;

Could you slacken and condense?

Your rank overgrowths reduce

Till your kinds abound with juice?

Earth, crowded, cries, ‘Too many men!’

My counsel is, kill nine in ten,

And bestow the shares of all

On the remnant decimal.

Add their nine lives to this cat;

Stuff their nine brains in one hat;

Make his frame and forces square

With the labors he must dare;

Thatch his flesh, and even his years

With the marble which he rears.

There, growing slowly old at ease

No faster than his planted trees,

He may, by warrant of his age,

In schemes of broader scope engage.

So shall ye have a man of the sphere

Fit to grace the solar year.

I cannot spare water or wine,

Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;

From the earth-poles to the Line,

All between that works or grows,

Every thing is kin of mine.

 

Give me agates for my meat;

Give me cantharids to eat;

From air and ocean bring me foods,

From all zones and altitudes; -

 

From all natures, sharp and slimy,

Salt and basalt, wild and tame:

Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion,

Bird, and reptile, be my game.

 

Ivy for my fillet band;

Blinding dog-wood in my hand;

Hemlock for my sherbet cull me,

And the prussic juice to lull me;

Swing me in the upas boughs,

Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse.

 

Too long shut in strait and few,

Thinly dieted on dew,

I will use the world, and sift it,

To a thousand humors shift it,

As you spin a cherry.

O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry!

O all you virtues, methods, mights,

Means, appliances, delights,

Reputed wrongs and braggart rights,

Smug routine, and things allowed,

Minorities, things under cloud!

Hither! take me, use me, fill me,

Vein and artery, though ye kill me!

Set not thy foot on graves;

Hear what wine and roses say;

The mountain chase, the summer waves,

The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.

 

Set not thy foot on graves;

Nor seek to unwind the shroud

Which charitable Time

And Nature have allowed

To wrap the errors of a sage sublime.

 

Set not thy foot on graves;

Care not to strip the dead

Of his sad ornament,

His myrrh, and wine, and rings,

 

His sheet of lead,

And trophies buried:

Go, get them where he earned them when alive;

As resolutely dig or dive.

 

Life is too short to waste

In critic peep or cynic bark,

Quarrel or reprimand:

‘T will soon be dark;

Up! mind thine own aim, and

God speed the mark!