30/01/2008

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Birds of Passage

Flight the First

Flight the Second

Flight The Third

(1858)

Table of Contents

FLIGHT THE FIRST

Birds of Passage

Prometheus, Or, The Poet’s Forethought

Epimetheus, Or, The Poet’s Afterthought

The Ladder of St. Augustine

The Phantom Ship

The Warden of the Cinque Ports

Haunted Houses

In The Churchyard at Cambridge

The Emperor’s Bird’s-Nest

The Two Angels

Daylight and Moonlight

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

Oliver Basselin

Victor Galbraith

My Lost Youth

The Ropewalk

The Golden Mile-Stone

Catawba Wine

Santa Filomena

The Discoverer of The North Cape

Daybreak

The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz

Children

Sandalphon

FLIGHT THE SECOND

The Children’s Hour

Enceladus

The Cumberland

Snow-Flakes

A Day of Sunshine

Something Left Undone

Weariness

FLIGHT THE THIRD

Fata Morgana

The Haunted Chamber

The Meeting

Vox Populi

The Castle-Builder

Changed

The Challenge

The Brook and the Wave

Aftermath

FLIGHT THE FIRST

Birds of Passage

Black shadows fall

From the lindens tall,

That lift aloft their massive wall

Against the southern sky;

And from the realms

Of the shadowy elms

A tide-like darkness overwhelms

The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,

And everywhere

A warm, soft vapor fills the air,

And distant sounds seem near,

And above, in the light

Of the star-lit night,

Swift birds of passage wing their flight

Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat

Of their pinions fleet,

As from the land of snow and sleet

They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry

Of their voices high

Falling dreamily through the sky,

But their forms I cannot see.

O, say not so!

Those sounds that flow

In murmurs of delight and woe

Come not from wings of birds.

They are the throngs

Of the poet’s songs,

Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,

The sound of winged words.

This is the cry

Of souls, that high

On toiling, beating pinions, fly,

Seeking a warmer clime,

From their distant flight

Through realms of light

It falls into our world of night,

With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

Prometheus, Or, The Poet’s Forethought

Of Prometheus, how undaunted

On Olympus’ shining bastions

His audacious foot he planted,

Myths are told and songs are chanted,

Full of promptings and suggestions.

Beautiful is the tradition

Of that flight through heavenly portals,

The old classic superstition

Of the theft and the transmission

Of the fire of the Immortals!

First the deed of noble daring,

Born of heavenward aspiration,

Then the fire with mortals sharing,

Then the vulture,—the despairing

Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.

All is but a symbol painted

Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;

Only those are crowned and sainted

Who with grief have been acquainted,

Making nations nobler, freer.

In their feverish exultations,

In their triumph and their yearning,

In their passionate pulsations,

In their words among the nations,

The Promethean fire is burning.

Shall it, then, be unavailing,

All this toil for human culture?

Through the cloud-rack, dark and trailing,

Must they see above them sailing

O’er life’s barren crags the vulture?

Such a fate as this was Dante’s,

By defeat and exile maddened;

Thus were Milton and Cervantes,

Nature’s priests and Corybantes,

By affliction touched and saddened.

But the glories so transcendent

That around their memories cluster,

And, on all their steps attendant,

Make their darkened lives resplendent

With such gleams of inward lustre!

All the melodies mysterious,

Through the dreary darkness chanted;

Thoughts in attitudes imperious,

Voices soft, and deep, and serious,

Words that whispered, songs that haunted!

All the soul in rapt suspension,

All the quivering, palpitating

Chords of life in utmost tension,

With the fervor of invention,

With the rapture of creating!

Ah, Prometheus! heaven-scaling!

In such hours of exultation

Even the faintest heart, unquailing,

Might behold the vulture sailing

Round the cloudy crags Caucasian!

Though to all there is not given

Strength for such sublime endeavor,

Thus to scale the walls of heaven,

And to leaven with fiery leaven

All the hearts of men for ever;

Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted

Honor and believe the presage,

Hold aloft their torches lighted,

Gleaming through the realms benighted,

As they onward bear the message!

Epimetheus, Or, The Poet’s Afterthought

Have I dreamed? or was it real,

What I saw as in a vision,

When to marches hymeneal

In the land of the Ideal

Moved my thought o’er Fields Elysian?

What! are these the guests whose glances

Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me?

These the wild, bewildering fancies,

That with dithyrambic dances

As with magic circles bound me?

Ah! how cold are their caresses!

Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms!

Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses,

And from loose dishevelled tresses

Fall the hyacinthine blossoms!

O my songs! whose winsome measures

Filled my heart with secret rapture!

Children of my golden leisures!

Must even your delights and pleasures

Fade and perish with the capture?

Fair they seemed, those songs sonorous,

When they came to me unbidden;

Voices single, and in chorus,

Like the wild birds singing o’er us

In the dark of branches hidden.

Disenchantment! Disillusion!

Must each noble aspiration

Come at last to this conclusion,

Jarring discord, wild confusion,

Lassitude, renunciation?

Not with steeper fall nor faster,

From the sun’s serene dominions,

Not through brighter realms nor vaster,

In swift ruin and disaster,

Icarus fell with shattered pinions!

Sweet Pandora! dear Pandora!

Why did mighty Jove create thee

Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora,

Beautiful as young Aurora,

If to win thee is to hate thee?

No, not hate thee! for this feeling

Of unrest and long resistance

Is but passionate appealing,

A prophetic whisper stealing

O’er the chords of our existence.

Him whom thou dost once enamour,

Thou, beloved, never leavest;

In life’s discord, strife, and clamor,

Still he feels thy spell of glamour;

Him of Hope thou ne’er bereavest.

Weary hearts by thee are lifted,

Struggling souls by thee are strengthened,

Clouds of fear asunder rifted,

Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted,

Lives, like days in summer, lengthened!

Therefore art thou ever clearer,

O my Sibyl, my deceiver!

For thou makest each mystery clearer,

And the unattained seems nearer,

When thou fillest my heart with fever!

Muse of all the Gifts and Graces!

Though the fields around us wither,

There are ampler realms and spaces,

Where no foot has left its traces:

Let us turn and wander thither!

The Ladder of St. Augustine

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,

That of our vices we can frame

A ladder, if we will but tread

Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

All common things, each day’s events,

That with the hour begin and end,

Our pleasures and our discontents,

Are rounds by which we may ascend.

The low desire, the base design,

That makes another’s virtues less;

The revel of the ruddy wine,

And all occasions of excess;

The longing for ignoble things;

The strife for triumph more than truth;

The hardening of the heart, that brings

Irreverence for the dreams of youth;

All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,

That have their root in thoughts of ill;

Whatever hinders or impedes

The action of the nobler will;—

All these must first be trampled down

Beneath our feet, if we would gain

In the bright fields of fair renown

The right of eminent domain.

We have not wings, we cannot soar;

But we have feet to scale and climb

By slow degrees, by more and more,

The cloudy summits of our time.

The mighty pyramids of stone

That wedge-like cleave the desert airs,

When nearer seen, and better known,

Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

The distant mountains, that uprear

Their solid bastions to the skies,

Are crossed by pathways, that appear

As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they, while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night.

Standing on what too long we bore

With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,

We may discern—unseen before—

A path to higher destinies.

Nor deem the irrevocable Past,

As wholly wasted, wholly vain,

If, rising on its wrecks, at last

To something nobler we attain.

The Phantom Ship

In Mather’s Magnalia Christi,

Of the old colonial time,

May be found in prose the legend

That is here set down in rhyme.

A ship sailed from New Haven,

And the keen and frosty airs,

That filled her sails at parting,

Were heavy with good men’s prayers.

“O Lord! if it be thy pleasure”—

Thus prayed the old divine—

“To bury our friends in the ocean,

Take them, for they are thine!”

But Master Lamberton muttered,

And under his breath said he,

“This ship is so crank and walty

I fear our grave she will be!”

And the ships that came from England,

When the winter months were gone,

Brought no tidings of this vessel

Nor of Master Lamberton.

This put the people to praying

That the Lord would let them hear

What in his greater wisdom

He had done with friends so dear.

And at last their prayers were answered:—

It was in the month of June,

An hour before the sunset

Of a windy afternoon,

When, steadily steering landward,

A ship was seen below,

And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,

Who sailed so long ago.

On she came, with a cloud of canvas,

Right against the wind that blew,

Until the eye could distinguish

The faces of the crew.

Then fell her straining topmasts,

Hanging tangled in the shrouds,

And her sails were loosened and lifted,

And blown away like clouds.

And the masts, with all their rigging,

Fell slowly, one by one,

And the hulk dilated and vanished,

As a sea-mist in the sun!

And the people who saw this marvel

Each said unto his friend,

That this was the mould of their vessel,

And thus her tragic end.

And the pastor of the village

Gave thanks to God in prayer,

That, to quiet their troubled spirits,

He had sent this Ship of Air.

The Warden of the Cinque Ports

A mist was driving down the British Channel,

The day was just begun,

And through the window-panes, on floor and panel,

Streamed the red autumn sun.

It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon,

And the white sails of ships;

And, from the frowning rampart, the black cannon

Hailed it with feverish lips.

Sandwich and Romney, Hastings, Hithe, and Dover

Were all alert that day,

To see the French war-steamers speeding over,

When the fog cleared away.

Sullen and silent, and like couchant lions,

Their cannon, through the night,

Holding their breath, had watched, in grim defiance,

The sea-coast opposite.

And now they roared at drum-beat from their stations

On every citadel;

Each answering each, with morning salutations,

That all was well.

And down the coast, all taking up the burden,

Replied the distant forts,

As if to summon from his sleep the Warden

And Lord of the Cinque Ports.

Him shall no sunshine from the fields of azure,

No drum-beat from the wall,

No morning gun from the black fort’s embrasure,

Awaken with its call!

No more, surveying with an eye impartial

The long line of the coast,

Shall the gaunt figure of the old Field Marshal

Be seen upon his post!

For in the night, unseen, a single warrior,

In sombre harness mailed,

Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer,

The rampart wall has scaled.

He passed into the chamber of the sleeper,

The dark and silent room,

And as he entered, darker grew, and deeper,

The silence and the gloom.

He did not pause to parley or dissemble,

But smote the Warden hoar;

Ah! what a blow! that made all England tremble

And groan from shore to shore.

Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited,

The sun rose bright o’erhead;

Nothing in Nature’s aspect intimated

That a great man was dead.

Haunted Houses

All houses wherein men have lived and died

Are haunted houses. Through the open doors

The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,

With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,

Along the passages they come and go,

Impalpable impressions on the air,

A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table, than the hosts

Invited; the illuminated hall

Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,

As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see

The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;

He but perceives what is; while unto me

All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;

Owners and occupants of earlier dates

From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,

And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense

Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere

Wafts through these earthly mists and vapors dense

A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise

By opposite attractions and desires;

The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,

And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar

Of earthly wants and aspirations high,

Come from the influence of an unseen star,

An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud

Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,

Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd

Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends

A bridge of light, connecting it with this,

O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,

Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

In The Churchyard at Cambridge

In the village churchyard she lies,

Dust is in her beautiful eyes,

No more she breathes, nor feels, nor stirs;

At her feet and at her head

Lies a slave to attend the dead,

But their dust is white as hers.

Was she a lady of high degree,

So much in love with the vanity

And foolish pomp of this world of ours?

Or was it Christian charity,

And lowliness and humility,

The richest and rarest of all dowers?

Who shall tell us? No one speaks;

No color shoots into those cheeks,

Either of anger or of pride,

At the rude question we have asked;

Nor will the mystery be unmasked

By those who are sleeping at her side.

Hereafter?—And do you think to look

On the terrible pages of that Book

To find her failings, faults, and errors?

Ah, you will then have other cares,

In your own short-comings and despairs,

In your own secret sins and terrors!

The Emperor’s Bird’s-Nest

Once the Emperor Charles of Spain,

With his swarthy, grave commanders,

I forget in what campaign,

Long besieged, in mud and rain,

Some old frontier town of Flanders.

Up and down the dreary camp,

In great boots of Spanish leather,

Striding with a measured tramp,

These Hidalgos, dull and damp,

Cursed the Frenchmen, cursed the weather.

Thus as to and fro they went,

Over upland and through hollow,

Giving their impatience vent,

Perched upon the Emperor’s tent,

In her nest, they spied a swallow.

Yes, it was a swallow’s nest,

Built of clay and hair of horses,

Mane, or tail, or dragoon’s crest,

Found on hedge-rows east and west,

After skirmish of the forces.

Then an old Hidalgo said,

As he twirled his gray mustachio,

“Sure this swallow overhead

Thinks the Emperor’s tent a shed,

And the Emperor but a Macho!”

Hearing his imperial name

Coupled with those words of malice,

Half in anger, half in shame,

Forth the great campaigner came

Slowly from his canvas palace.

“Let no hand the bird molest,”

Said he solemnly, “nor hurt her!”

Adding then, by way of jest,

“Golondrina is my guest,

‘Tis the wife of some deserter!”

Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft,

Through the camp was spread the rumor,

And the soldiers, as they quaffed

Flemish beer at dinner, laughed

At the Emperor’s pleasant humor.

So unharmed and unafraid

Sat the swallow still and brooded,

Till the constant cannonade

Through the walls a breach had made,

And the siege was thus concluded.

Then the army, elsewhere bent,

Struck its tents as if disbanding,

Only not the Emperor’s tent,

For he ordered, ere he went,

Very curtly, “Leave it standing!”

So it stood there all alone,

Loosely flapping, torn and tattered,

Till the brood was fledged and flown,

Singing o’er those walls of stone

Which the cannon-shot had shattered.

The Two Angels

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death,

Passed o’er our village as the morning broke;

The dawn was on their faces, and beneath,

The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke.

Their attitude and aspect were the same,

Alike their features and their robes of white;

But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame,

And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.

I saw them pause on their celestial way;

Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed,

“Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray

The place where thy beloved are at rest!”

And he who wore the crown of asphodels,

Descending, at my door began to knock,

And my soul sank within me, as in wells

The waters sink before an earthquake’s shock.

I recognized the nameless agony,

The terror and the tremor and the pain,

That oft before had filled or haunted me,

And now returned with threefold strength again.

The door I opened to my heavenly guest,

And listened, for I thought I heard God’s voice;

And, knowing whatsoe’er he sent was best,

Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.

Then with a smile, that filled the house with light,

“My errand is not Death, but Life,” he said;

And ere I answered, passing out of sight,

On his celestial embassy he sped.

‘T was at thy door, O friend! and not at mine,

The angel with the amaranthine wreath,

Pausing, descended, and with voice divine,

Whispered a word that had a sound like Death.

Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,

A shadow on those features fair and thin;

And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,

Two angels issued, where but one went in.

All is of God! If he but wave his hand,

The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud,

Till, with a smile of light on sea and land,

Lo! he looks back from the departing cloud.

Angels of Life and Death alike are his;

Without his leave they pass no threshold o’er;

Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this,

Against his messengers to shut the door?

Daylight and Moonlight

In broad daylight, and at noon,

Yesterday I saw the moon

Sailing high, but faint and white,

As a school-boy’s paper kite.

In broad daylight, yesterday,

I read a Poet’s mystic lay;

And it seemed to me at most

As a phantom, or a ghost.

But at length the feverish day

Like a passion died away,

And the night, serene and still,

Fell on village, vale, and hill.

Then the moon, in all her pride,

Like a spirit glorified,

Filled and overflowed the night

With revelations of her light.

And the Poet’s song again

Passed like music through my brain;

Night interpreted to me

All its grace and mystery.

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,

Close by the street of this fair seaport town,

Silent beside the never-silent waves,

At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o’er their sleep

Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind’s breath,

While underneath such leafy tents they keep

The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,

That pave with level flags their burial-place,

Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down

And broken by Moses at the mountain’s base.

The very names recorded here are strange,

Of foreign accent, and of different climes;

Alvares and Rivera interchange

With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

“Blessed be God! for he created Death!”

The mourners said, “and Death is rest and peace”;

Then added, in the certainty of faith,

“And giveth Life that never more shall cease.”

Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,

No Psalms of David now the silence break,

No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue

In the grand dialect the Prophets spake.

Gone are the living, but the dead remain,

And not neglected; for a hand unseen,

Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain,

Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,

What persecution, merciless and blind,

Drove o’er the sea—that desert desolate—

These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,

Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;

Taught in the school of patience to endure

The life of anguish and the death of fire.

All their lives long, with the unleavened bread

And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,

The wasting famine of the heart they fed,

And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears.

Anathema maranatha! was the cry

That rang from town to town, from street to street;

At every gate the accursed Mordecai

Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.

Pride and humiliation hand in hand

Walked with them through the world where’er they went;

Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,

And yet unshaken as the continent.

For in the background figures vague and vast

Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,

And all the great traditions of the Past

They saw reflected in the coming time.

And thus for ever with reverted look

The mystic volume of the world they read,

Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,

Till life became a Legend of the Dead.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more!

The groaning earth in travail and in pain

Brings forth its races, but does not restore,

And the dead nations never rise again.

Oliver Basselin

In the Valley of the Vire

Still is seen an ancient mill,

With its gables quaint and queer,

And beneath the window-sill,

On the stone,

These words alone:

“Oliver Basselin lived here.”

Far above it, on the steep,

Ruined stands the old Chateau;

Nothing but the donjon-keep

Left for shelter or for show.

Its vacant eyes

Stare at the skies,

Stare at the valley green and deep.

Once a convent, old and brown,

Looked, but ah! it looks no more,

From the neighboring hillside down

On the rushing and the roar

Of the stream

Whose sunny gleam

Cheers the little Norman town.

In that darksome mill of stone,

To the water’s dash and din,

Careless, humble, and unknown,

Sang the poet Basselin

Songs that fill

That ancient mill

With a splendor of its own.

Never feeling of unrest

Broke the pleasant dream he dreamed;

Only made to be his nest,

All the lovely valley seemed;

No desire

Of soaring higher

Stirred or fluttered in his breast.

True, his songs were not divine;

Were not songs of that high art,

Which, as winds do in the pine,

Find an answer in each heart;

But the mirth

Of this green earth

Laughed and revelled in his line.

From the alehouse and the inn,

Opening on the narrow street,

Came the loud, convivial din,

Singing and applause of feet,

The laughing lays

That in those days

Sang the poet Basselin.

In the castle, cased in steel,

Knights, who fought at Agincourt,

Watched and waited, spur on heel;

But the poet sang for sport

Songs that rang

Another clang,

Songs that lowlier hearts could feel.

In the convent, clad in gray,

Sat the monks in lonely cells,

Paced the cloisters, knelt to pray,

And the poet heard their bells;

But his rhymes

Found other chimes,

Nearer to the earth than they.

Gone are all the barons bold,

Gone are all the knights and squires,

Gone the abbot stern and cold,

And the brotherhood of friars;

Not a name

Remains to fame,

From those mouldering days of old!

But the poet’s memory here

Of the landscape makes a part;

Like the river, swift and clear,

Flows his song through many a heart;

Haunting still

That ancient mill,

In the Valley of the Vire.

Victor Galbraith

Under the walls of Monterey

At daybreak the bugles began to play,

Victor Galbraith!

In the mist of the morning damp and gray,

These were the words they seemed to say:

“Come forth to thy death,

Victor Galbraith!”

Forth he came, with a martial tread;

Firm was his step, erect his head;

Victor Galbraith,

He who so well the bugle played,

Could not mistake the words it said:

“Come forth to thy death,

Victor Galbraith!”

He looked at the earth, he looked at the sky,

He looked at the files of musketry,

Victor Galbraith!

And he said, with a steady voice and eye,

“Take good aim; I am ready to die!”

Thus challenges death

Victor Galbraith.

Twelve fiery tongues flashed straight and red,

Six leaden balls on their errand sped;

Victor Galbraith

Falls to the ground, but he is not dead;

His name was not stamped on those balls of lead,

And they only scath

Victor Galbraith.

Three balls are in his breast and brain,

But he rises out of the dust again,

Victor Galbraith!

The water he drinks has a bloody stain;

“O kill me, and put me out of my pain!”

In his agony prayeth

Victor Galbraith.

Forth dart once more those tongues of flame,

And the bugler has died a death of shame,

Victor Galbraith!

His soul has gone back to whence it came,

And no one answers to the name,

When the Sergeant saith,

“Victor Galbraith!”

Under the walls of Monterey

By night a bugle is heard to play,

Victor Galbraith!

Through the mist of the valley damp and gray

The sentinels hear the sound, and say,

“That is the wraith

Of Victor Galbraith!”

My Lost Youth

Often I think of the beautiful town

That is seated by the sea;

Often in thought go up and down

The pleasant streets of that dear old town,

And my youth comes back to me.

And a verse of a Lapland song

Is haunting my memory still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,

And catch, in sudden gleams,

The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,

And islands that were the Hersperides

Of all my boyish dreams.

And the burden of that old song,

It murmurs and whispers still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the black wharves and the slips,

And the sea-tides tossing free;

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,

And the beauty and mystery of the ships,

And the magic of the sea.

And the voice of that wayward song

Is singing and saying still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the bulwarks by the shore,

And the fort upon the hill;

The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,

The drum-beat repeated o’er and o’er,

And the bugle wild and shrill.

And the music of that old song

Throbs in my memory still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the sea-fight far away,

How it thundered o’er the tide!

And the dead captains, as they lay

In their graves, o’erlooking the tranquil bay,

Where they in battle died.

And the sound of that mournful song

Goes through me with a thrill:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I can see the breezy dome of groves,

The shadows of Deering’s Woods;

And the friendships old and the early loves

Come back with a sabbath sound, as of doves

In quiet neighborhoods.

And the verse of that sweet old song,

It flutters and murmurs still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart

Across the schoolboy’s brain;

The song and the silence in the heart,

That in part are prophecies, and in part

Are longings wild and vain.

And the voice of that fitful song

Sings on, and is never still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

There are things of which I may not speak;

There are dreams that cannot die;

There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,

And bring a pallor into the cheek,

And a mist before the eye.

And the words of that fatal song

Come over me like a chill:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

Strange to me now are the forms I meet

When I visit the dear old town;

But the native air is pure and sweet,

And the trees that o’ershadow each well-known street,

As they balance up and down,

Are singing the beautiful song,

Are sighing and whispering still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

And Deering’s Woods are fresh and fair,

And with joy that is almost pain

My heart goes back to wander there,

And among the dreams of the days that were,

I find my lost youth again.

And the strange and beautiful song,

The groves are repeating it still:

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

The Ropewalk

In that building, long and low,

With its windows all a-row,

Like the port-holes of a hulk,

Human spiders spin and spin,

Backward down their threads so thin

Dropping, each a hempen bulk.

At the end, an open door;

Squares of sunshine on the floor

Light the long and dusky lane;

And the whirring of a wheel,

Dull and drowsy, makes me feel

All its spokes are in my brain.

As the spinners to the end

Downward go and reascend,

Gleam the long threads in the sun;

While within this brain of mine

Cobwebs brighter and more fine

By the busy wheel are spun.

Two fair maidens in a swing,

Like white doves upon the wing,

First before my vision pass;

Laughing, as their gentle hands

Closely clasp the twisted strands,

At their shadow on the grass.

Then a booth of mountebanks,

With its smell of tan and planks,

And a girl poised high in air

On a cord, in spangled dress,

With a faded loveliness,

And a weary look of care.

Then a homestead among farms,

And a woman with bare arms

Drawing water from a well;

As the bucket mounts apace,

With it mounts her own fair face,

As at some magician’s spell.

Then an old man in a tower,

Ringing loud the noontide hour,

While the rope coils round and round

Like a serpent at his feet,

And again, in swift retreat,

Nearly lifts him from the ground.

Then within a prison-yard,

Faces fixed, and stern, and hard,

Laughter and indecent mirth;

Ah! it is the gallows-tree!

Breath of Christian charity,

Blow, and sweep it from the earth!

Then a school-boy, with his kite

Gleaming in a sky of light,

And an eager, upward look;

Steeds pursued through lane and field;

Fowlers with their snares concealed;

And an angler by a brook.

Ships rejoicing in the breeze,

Wrecks that float o’er unknown seas,

Anchors dragged through faithless sand;

Sea-fog drifting overhead,

And, with lessening line and lead,

Sailors feeling for the land.

All these scenes do I behold,

These, and many left untold,

In that building long and low;

While the wheel goes round and round,

With a drowsy, dreamy sound,

And the spinners backward go.

The Golden Mile-Stone

Leafless are the trees; their purple branches

Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral,

Rising silent

In the Red Sea of the Winter sunset.

From the hundred chimneys of the village,

Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,

Smoky columns

Tower aloft into the air of amber.

At the window winks the flickering fire-light;

Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer,

Social watch-fires

Answering one another through the darkness.

On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing,

And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree

For its freedom

Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them.

By the fireside there are old men seated,

Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,

Asking sadly

Of the Past what it can ne’er restore them.

By the fireside there are youthful dreamers,

Building castles fair, with stately stairways,

Asking blindly

Of the Future what it cannot give them.

By the fireside tragedies are acted

In whose scenes appear two actors only,

Wife and husband,

And above them God the sole spectator.

By the fireside there are peace and comfort,

Wives and children, with fair, thoughtful faces,

Waiting, watching

For a well-known footstep in the passage.

Each man’s chimney is his Golden Mile-stone;

Is the central point, from which he measures

Every distance

Through the gateways of the world around him.

In his farthest wanderings still he sees it;

Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind,

As he heard them

When he sat with those who were, but are not.

Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion,

Nor the march of the encroaching city,

Drives an exile

From the hearth of his ancestral homestead.

We may build more splendid habitations,

Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures,

But we cannot

Buy with gold the old associations!

Catawba Wine

This song of mine

Is a Song of the Vine,

To be sung by the glowing embers

Of wayside inns,

When the rain begins

To darken the drear Novembers.

It is not a song

Of the Scuppernong,

From warm Carolinian valleys,

Nor the Isabel

And the Muscadel

That bask in our garden alleys.

Nor the red Mustang,

Whose clusters hang

O’er the waves of the Colorado,

And the fiery flood

Of whose purple blood

Has a dash of Spanish bravado.

For richest and best

Is the wine of the West,

That grows by the Beautiful River;

Whose sweet perfume

Fills all the room

With a benison on the giver.

And as hollow trees

Are the haunts of bees,

For ever going and coming;

So this crystal hive

Is all alive

With a swarming and buzzing and humming.

Very good in its way

Is the Verzenay,

Or the Sillery soft and creamy;

But Catawba wine

Has a taste more divine,

More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.

There grows no vine

By the haunted Rhine,

By Danube or Guadalquivir,

Nor on island or cape,

That bears such a grape

As grows by the Beautiful River.

Drugged is their juice

For foreign use,

When shipped o’er the reeling Atlantic,

To rack our brains

With the fever pains,

That have driven the Old World frantic.

To the sewers and sinks

With all such drinks,

And after them tumble the mixer;

For a poison malign

Is such Borgia wine,

Or at best but a Devil’s Elixir.

While pure as a spring

Is the wine I sing,

And to praise it, one needs but name it;

For Catawba wine

Has need of no sign,

No tavern-bush to proclaim it.

And this Song of the Vine,

This greeting of mine,

The winds and the birds shall deliver

To the Queen of the West,

In her garlands dressed,

On the banks of the Beautiful River.

Santa Filomena

Whene’er a noble deed is wrought,

Whene’er is spoken a noble thought,

Our hearts, in glad surprise,

To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls

Into our inmost being rolls,

And lifts us unawares

Out of all meaner cares.

Honor to those whose words or deeds

Thus help us in our daily needs,

And by their overflow

Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read

Of the great army of the dead,

The trenches cold and damp,

The starved and frozen camp,—

The wounded from the battle-plain,

In dreary hospitals of pain,

The cheerless corridors,

The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery

A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,

And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss,

The speechless sufferer turns to kiss

Her shadow, as it falls

Upon the darkening walls.

As if a door in heaven should be

Opened and then closed suddenly,

The vision came and went,

The light shone and was spent.

On England’s annals, through the long

Hereafter of her speech and song,

That light its rays shall cast

From portals of the past.

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand

In the great history of the land,

A noble type of good,

Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here

The palm, the lily, and the spear,

The symbols that of yore

Saint Filomena bore.

The Discoverer of The North Cape

A Leaf from King Alfred’s Orosius

Othere, the old sea-captain,

Who dwelt in Helgoland,

To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth,

Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,

Which he held in his brown right hand.

His figure was tall and stately,

Like a boy’s his eye appeared;

His hair was yellow as hay,

But threads of a silvery gray

Gleamed in his tawny beard.

Hearty and hale was Othere,

His cheek had the color of oak;

With a kind of laugh in his speech,

Like the sea-tide on a beach,

As unto the King he spoke.

And Alfred, King of the Saxons,

Had a book upon his knees,

And wrote down the wondrous tale

Of him who was first to sail

Into the Arctic seas.

“So far I live to the northward,

No man lives north of me;

To the east are wild mountain-chains;

And beyond them meres and plains;

To the westward all is sea.

“So far I live to the northward,

From the harbor of Skeringes-hale,

If you only sailed by day,

With a fair wind all the way,

More than a month would you sail.

“I own six hundred reindeer,

With sheep and swine beside;

I have tribute from the Finns,

Whalebone and reindeer-skins,

And ropes of walrus-hide.

“I ploughed the land with horses,

But my heart was ill at ease,

For the old seafaring men

Came to me now and then,

With their sagas of the seas;—

“Of Iceland and of Greenland,

And the stormy Hebrides,

And the undiscovered deep;—

I could not eat nor sleep

For thinking of those seas.

“To the northward stretched the desert,

How far I fain would know;

So at last I sallied forth,

And three days sailed due north,

As far as the whale-ships go.

“To the west of me was the ocean,

To the right the desolate shore,

But I did not slacken sail

For the walrus or the whale,

Till after three days more.

“The days grew longer and longer,

Till they became as one,

And southward through the haze

I saw the sullen blaze

Of the red midnight sun.

“And then uprose before me,

Upon the water’s edge,

The huge and haggard shape

Of that unknown North Cape,

Whose form is like a wedge.

“The sea was rough and stormy,

The tempest howled and wailed,

And the sea-fog, like a ghost,

Haunted that dreary coast,

But onward still I sailed.

“Four days I steered to eastward,

Four days without a night:

Round in a fiery ring

Went the great sun, O King,

With red and lurid light.”

Here Alfred, King of the Saxons,

Ceased writing for a while;

And raised his eyes from his book,

With a strange and puzzled look,

And an incredulous smile.

But Othere, the old sea-captain,

He neither paused nor stirred,

Till the King listened, and then

Once more took up his pen,

And wrote down every word.

“And now the land,” said Othere,

“Bent southward suddenly,

And I followed the curving shore

And ever southward bore

Into a nameless sea.

“And there we hunted the walrus,

The narwhale, and the seal;

Ha! ‘t was a noble game!

And like the lightning’s flame

Flew our harpoons of steel.

“There were six of us all together,

Norsemen of Helgoland;

In two days and no more

We killed of them threescore,

And dragged them to the strand!”

Here Alfred the Truth-Teller

Suddenly closed his book,

And lifted his blue eyes,

With doubt and strange surmise

Depicted in their look.

And Othere the old sea-captain

Stared at him wild and weird,

Then smiled, till his shining teeth

Gleamed white from underneath

His tawny, quivering beard.

And to the King of the Saxons,

In witness of the truth,

Raising his noble head,

He stretched his brown hand, and said,

“Behold this walrus-tooth!”

Daybreak

A wind came up out of the sea,

And said, “O mists, make room for me.”

It hailed the ships, and cried, “Sail on,

Ye mariners, the night is gone.”

And hurried landward far away,

Crying, “Awake! it is the day.”

It said unto the forest, “Shout!

Hang all your leafy banners out!”

It touched the wood-bird’s folded wing,

And said, “O bird, awake and sing.”

And o’er the farms, “O chanticleer,

Your clarion blow; the day is near.”

It whispered to the fields of corn,

“Bow down, and hail the coming morn.”

It shouted through the belfry-tower,

“Awake, O bell! proclaim the hour.”

It crossed the churchyard with a sigh,

And said, “Not yet! in quiet lie.”

The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz

MAY 28, 1857

It was fifty years ago

In the pleasant month of May,

In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,

A child in its cradle lay.

And Nature, the old nurse, took

The child upon her knee,

Saying: “Here is a story-book

Thy Father has written for thee.”

“Come, wander with me,” she said,

“Into regions yet untrod;

And read what is still unread

In the manuscripts of God.”

And he wandered away and away

With Nature, the dear old nurse,

Who sang to him night and day

The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long,

Or his heart began to fail,

She would sing a more wonderful song,

Or tell a more marvellous tale.

So she keeps him still a child,

And will not let him go,

Though at times his heart beats wild

For the beautiful Pays de Vaud;

Though at times he hears in his dreams

The Ranz des Vaches of old,

And the rush of mountain streams

From glaciers clear and cold;

And the mother at home says, “Hark!

For his voice I listen and yearn;

It is growing late and dark,

And my boy does not return!”

Children

Come to me, O ye children!

For I hear you at your play,

And the questions that perplexed me

Have vanished quite away.

Ye open the eastern windows,

That look towards the sun,

Where thoughts are singing swallows

And the brooks of morning run.

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,

In your thoughts the brooklet’s flow,

But in mine is the wind of Autumn

And the first fall of the snow.

Ah! what would the world be to us

If the children were no more?

We should dread the desert behind us

Worse than the dark before.

What the leaves are to the forest,

With light and air for food,

Ere their sweet and tender juices

Have been hardened into wood,—

That to the world are children;

Through them it feels the glow

Of a brighter and sunnier climate

Than reaches the trunks below.

Come to me, O ye children!

And whisper in my ear

What the birds and the winds are singing

In your sunny atmosphere.

For what are all our contrivings,

And the wisdom of our books,

When compared with your caresses,

And the gladness of your looks?

Ye are better than all the ballads

That ever were sung or said;

For ye are living poems,

And all the rest are dead.

Sandalphon

Have you read in the Talmud of old,

In the Legends the Rabbins have told

Of the limitless realms of the air,—

Have you read it,—the marvellous story

Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory,

Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer?

How, erect, at the outermost gates

Of the City Celestial he waits,

With his feet on the ladder of light,

That, crowded with angels unnumbered,

By Jacob was seen, as he slumbered

Alone in the desert at night?

The Angels of Wind and of Fire

Chant only one hymn, and expire

With the song’s irresistible stress;

Expire in their rapture and wonder,

As harp-strings are broken asunder

By music they throb to express.

But serene in the rapturous throng,

Unmoved by the rush of the song,

With eyes unimpassioned and slow,

Among the dead angels, the deathless

Sandalphon stands listening breathless

To sounds that ascend from below;—

From the spirits on earth that adore,

From the souls that entreat and implore

In the fervor and passion of prayer;

From the hearts that are broken with losses,

And weary with dragging the crosses

Too heavy for mortals to bear.

And he gathers the prayers as he stands,

And they change into flowers in his hands,

Into garlands of purple and red;

And beneath the great arch of the portal,

Through the streets of the City Immortal

Is wafted the fragrance they shed.

It is but a legend, I know,—

A fable, a phantom, a show,

Of the ancient Rabbinical lore;

Yet the old mediaeval tradition,

The beautiful, strange superstition,

But haunts me and holds me the more.

When I look from my window at night,

And the welkin above is all white,

All throbbing and panting with stars,

Among them majestic is standing

Sandalphon the angel, expanding

His pinions in nebulous bars.

And the legend, I feel, is a part

Of the hunger and thirst of the heart,

The frenzy and fire of the brain,

That grasps at the fruitage forbidden,

The golden pomegranates of Eden,

To quiet its fever and pain.

FLIGHT THE SECOND

The Children’s Hour

Between the dark and the daylight,

When the night is beginning to lower,

Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,

That is known as the Children’s Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me

The patter of little feet,

The sound of a door that is opened,

And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,

Descending the broad hall stair,

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,

And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:

Yet I know by their merry eyes

They are plotting and planning together

To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,

A sudden raid from the hall!

By three doors left unguarded

They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret

O’er the arms and back of my chair;

If I try to escape, they surround me;

They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,

Their arms about me entwine,

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen

In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,

Because you have scaled the wall,

Such an old mustache as I am

Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,

And will not let you depart,

But put you down into the dungeon

In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,

Yes, forever and a day,

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,

And moulder in dust away!

Enceladus

Under Mount Etna he lies,

It is slumber, it is not death;

For he struggles at times to arise,

And above him the lurid skies

Are hot with his fiery breath.

The crags are piled on his breast,

The earth is heaped on his head;

But the groans of his wild unrest,

Though smothered and half suppressed,

Are heard, and he is not dead.

And the nations far away

Are watching with eager eyes;

They talk together and say,

“To-morrow, perhaps to-day,

Euceladus will arise!”

And the old gods, the austere

Oppressors in their strength,

Stand aghast and white with fear

At the ominous sounds they hear,

And tremble, and mutter, “At length!”

Ah me! for the land that is sown

With the harvest of despair!

Where the burning cinders, blown

From the lips of the overthrown

Enceladus, fill the air.

Where ashes are heaped in drifts

Over vineyard and field and town,

Whenever he starts and lifts

His head through the blackened rifts

Of the crags that keep him down.

See, see! the red light shines!

‘T is the glare of his awful eyes!

And the storm-wind shouts through the pines

Of Alps and of Apennines,

“Enceladus, arise!”

The Cumberland

At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay,

On board of the cumberland, sloop-of-war;

And at times from the fortress across the bay

The alarum of drums swept past,

Or a bugle blast

From the camp on the shore.

Then far away to the south uprose

A little feather of snow-white smoke,

And we knew that the iron ship of our foes

Was steadily steering its course

To try the force

Of our ribs of oak.

Down upon us heavily runs,

Silent and sullen, the floating fort;

Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns,

And leaps the terrible death,

With fiery breath,

From each open port.

We are not idle, but send her straight

Defiance back in a full broadside!

As hail rebounds from a roof of slate,

Rebounds our heavier hail

From each iron scale

Of the monster’s hide.

“Strike your flag!” the rebel cries,

In his arrogant old plantation strain.

“Never!” our gallant Morris replies;

“It is better to sink than to yield!”

And the whole air pealed

With the cheers of our men.

Then, like a kraken huge and black,

She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp!

Down went the Cumberland all a wrack,

With a sudden shudder of death,

And the cannon’s breath

For her dying gasp.

Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay,

Still floated our flag at the mainmast head.

Lord, how beautiful was Thy day!

Every waft of the air

Was a whisper of prayer,

Or a dirge for the dead.

Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas

Ye are at peace in the troubled stream;

Ho! brave land! with hearts like these,

Thy flag, that is rent in twain,

Shall be one again,

And without a seam!

Snow-Flakes

Out of the bosom of the Air,

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow

Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take

Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

In the white countenance confession,

The troubled sky reveals

The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

Now whispered and revealed

To wood and field.

A Day of Sunshine

O gift of God! O perfect day:

Whereon shall no man work, but play;

Whereon it is enough for me,

Not to be doing, but to be!

Through every fibre of my brain,

Through every nerve, through every vein,

I feel the electric thrill, the touch

Of life, that seems almost too much.

I hear the wind among the trees

Playing celestial symphonies;

I see the branches downward bent,

Like keys of some great instrument.

And over me unrolls on high

The splendid scenery of the sky,

Where though a sapphire sea the sun

Sails like a golden galleon,

Towards yonder cloud-land in the West,

Towards yonder Islands of the Blest,

Whose steep sierra far uplifts

Its craggy summits white with drifts.

Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms

The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms!

Blow, winds! and bend within my reach

The fiery blossoms of the peach!

O Life and Love! O happy throng

Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!

O heart of man! canst thou not be

Blithe as the air is, and as free?

Something Left Undone

Labor with what zeal we will,

Something still remains undone,

Something uncompleted still

Waits the rising of the sun.

By the bedside, on the stair,

At the threshold, near the gates,

With its menace or its prayer,

Like a mendicant it waits;

Waits, and will not go away;

Waits, and will not be gainsaid;

By the cares of yesterday

Each to-day is heavier made;

Till at length the burden seems

Greater than our strength can bear,

Heavy as the weight of dreams,

Pressing on us everywhere.

And we stand from day to day,

Like the dwarfs of times gone by,

Who, as Northern legends say,

On their shoulders held the sky.

Weariness

O little feet! that such long years

Must wander on through hopes and fears,

Must ache and bleed beneath your load;

I, nearer to the wayside inn

Where toil shall cease and rest begin,

Am weary, thinking of your road!

O little hands! that, weak or strong,

Have still to serve or rule so long,

Have still so long to give or ask;

I, who so much with book and pen

Have toiled among my fellow-men,

Am weary, thinking of your task.

O little hearts! that throb and beat

With such impatient, feverish heat,

Such limitless and strong desires;

Mine that so long has glowed and burned,

With passions into ashes turned

Now covers and conceals its fires.

O little souls! as pure and white

And crystalline as rays of light

Direct from heaven, their source divine;

Refracted through the mist of years,

How red my setting sun appears,

How lurid looks this soul of mine!

FLIGHT THE THIRD

Fata Morgana

O sweet illusions of Song,

That tempt me everywhere,

In the lonely fields, and the throng

Of the crowded thoroughfare!

I approach, and ye vanish away,

I grasp you, and ye are gone;

But ever by nigh an day,

The melody soundeth on.

As the weary traveller sees

In desert or prairie vast,

Blue lakes, overhung with trees,

That a pleasant shadow cast;

Fair towns with turrets high,

And shining roofs of gold,

That vanish as he draws nigh,

Like mists together rolled,—

So I wander and wander along,

And forever before me gleams

The shining city of song,

In the beautiful land of dreams.

But when I would enter the gate

Of that golden atmosphere,

It is gone, and I wander and wait

For the vision to reappear.

The Haunted Chamber

Each heart has its haunted chamber,

Where the silent moonlight falls!

On the floor are mysterious footsteps,

There are whispers along the walls!

And mine at times is haunted

By phantoms of the Past

As motionless as shadows

By the silent moonlight cast.

A form sits by the window,

That is not seen by day,

For as soon as the dawn approaches

It vanishes away.

It sits there in the moonlight

Itself as pale and still,

And points with its airy finger

Across the window-sill.

Without before the window,

There stands a gloomy pine,

Whose boughs wave upward and downward

As wave these thoughts of mine.

And underneath its branches

Is the grave of a little child,

Who died upon life’s threshold,

And never wept nor smiled.

What are ye, O pallid phantoms!

That haunt my troubled brain?

That vanish when day approaches,

And at night return again?

What are ye, O pallid phantoms!

But the statues without breath,

That stand on the bridge overarching

The silent river of death?

The Meeting

After so long an absence

At last we meet again:

Does the meeting give us pleasure,

Or does it give us pain?

The tree of life has been shaken,

And but few of us linger now,

Like the Prophet’s two or three berries

In the top of the uppermost bough.

We cordially greet each other

In the old, familiar tone;

And we think, though we do not say it,

How old and gray he is grown!

We speak of a Merry Christmas

And many a Happy New Year

But each in his heart is thinking

Of those that are not here.

We speak of friends and their fortunes,

And of what they did and said,

Till the dead alone seem living,

And the living alone seem dead.

And at last we hardly distinguish

Between the ghosts and the guests;

And a mist and shadow of sadness

Steals over our merriest jests.

Vox Populi

When Mazarvan the Magician,

Journeyed westward through Cathay,

Nothing heard he but the praises

Of Badoura on his way.

But the lessening rumor ended

When he came to Khaledan,

There the folk were talking only

Of Prince Camaralzaman,

So it happens with the poets:

Every province hath its own;

Camaralzaman is famous

Where Badoura is unknown.

The Castle-Builder

A gentle boy, with soft and silken locks

A dreamy boy, with brown and tender eyes,

A castle-builder, with his wooden blocks,

And towers that touch imaginary skies.

A fearless rider on his father’s knee,

An eager listener unto stories told

At the Round Table of the nursery,

Of heroes and adventures manifold.

There will be other towers for thee to build;

There will be other steeds for thee to ride;

There will be other legends, and all filled

With greater marvels and more glorified.

Build on, and make thy castles high and fair,

Rising and reaching upward to the skies;

Listen to voices in the upper air,

Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries.

Changed

From the outskirts of the town

Where of old the mile-stone stood.

Now a stranger, looking down

I behold the shadowy crown

Of the dark and haunted wood.

Is it changed, or am I changed?

Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,

But the friends with whom I ranged

Through their thickets are estranged

By the years that intervene.

Bright as ever flows the sea,

Bright as ever shines the sun,

But alas! they seem to me

Not the sun that used to be,

Not the tides that used to run.

The Challenge

I have a vague remembrance

Of a story, that is told

In some ancient Spanish legend

Or chronicle of old.

It was when brave King Sanchez

Was before Zamora slain,

And his great besieging army

Lay encamped upon the plain.

Don Diego de Ordonez

Sallied forth in front of all,

And shouted loud his challenge

To the warders on the wall.

All the people of Zamora,

Both the born and the unborn,

As traitors did he challenge

With taunting words of scorn.

The living, in their houses,

And in their graves, the dead!

And the waters of their rivers,

And their wine, and oil, and bread!

There is a greater army,

That besets us round with strife,

A starving, numberless army,

At all the gates of life.

The poverty-stricken millions

Who challenge our wine and bread,

And impeach us all as traitors,

Both the living and the dead.

And whenever I sit at the banquet,

Where the feast and song are high,

Amid the mirth and the music

I can hear that fearful cry.

And hollow and haggard faces

Look into the lighted hall,

And wasted hands are extended

To catch the crumbs that fall.

For within there is light and plenty,

And odors fill the air;

But without there is cold and darkness,

And hunger and despair.

And there in the camp of famine,

In wind and cold and rain,

Christ, the great Lord of the army,

Lies dead upon the plain!

The Brook and the Wave

The brooklet came from the mountain,

As sang the bard of old,

Running with feet of silver

Over the sands of gold!

Far away in the briny ocean

There rolled a turbulent wave,

Now singing along the sea-beach,

Now howling along the cave.

And the brooklet has found the billow

Though they flowed so far apart,

And has filled with its freshness and sweetness

That turbulent bitter heart!

Aftermath

When the summer fields are mown,

When the birds are fledged and flown,

And the dry leaves strew the path;

With the falling of the snow,

With the cawing of the crow,

Once again the fields we mow

And gather in the aftermath.

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers

Is this harvesting of ours;

Not the upland clover bloom;

But the rowan mired with weeds,

Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,

Where the poppy drops its seeds

In the silence and the gloom.

The End

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30/01/2008

Date:

30/01/2008