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Title: Saga of the oak, and other poems
Author: Venable, William H.
Language: English
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POEMS ***
[Illustration: _W. H. Venable._]
Saga of the Oak
AND OTHER POEMS
BY
WILLIAM H. VENABLE
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
Dodd, Mead & Company
1904
Copyright, 1884, 1893, by W. H. VENABLE
Copyright, 1904, by DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
Published April, 1904
BURR PRINTING HOUSE
NEW YORK
_CONTENTS_
PAGE
SAGA OF THE OAK 1
A DIAMOND 8
MY CATBIRD 9
THE TUNES DAN HARRISON USED TO PLAY 12
FAIRYLAND 14
SUMMER LOVE 17
CLOVER HILL 19
THE WEDDING DEFERRED 21
TO THE LITTLE MIAMI RIVER 23
IMMORTAL BIRD SONG 25
HINCHMAN’S MILL 27
VICTOR 30
THE LAST FLIGHT 33
A GENTLE MAN 36
INVIOLATE 38
FAITH 40
PLATO 41
DANTE 42
WAGNER’S KAISER MARCH 43
DEFOE IN THE PILLORY 44
WE THE PEOPLE 46
EIGHTY-SEVEN 49
THE FOUNDERS OF OHIO 50
THE FOREST SONG 52
A BALLAD OF OLD KENTUCKY 54
JOHN FILSON 57
JOHNNY APPLESEED 62
WENDING WESTWARD 68
THE TEACHER’S DREAM 71
BY THEIR FRUITS 75
PESTALOZZI 76
“THERE IS NO CASTE IN BLOOD” 80
VIVA LA GUERRA 82
BATTLE CRY 84
EL EMPLAZADO 86
NATIONAL SONG 88
THE RIGHT OF MIGHT 90
JAMES E. MURDOCH 92
THE CONCORD SEER 95
THE POET OF CLOVERNOOK 97
THE GREENFIELD WIZARD 99
WILLIAM BAIRD OF RIDGEVILLE 100
LET’S SHAKE 104
A WELCOME TO BOZ 107
THE BOOK AUCTION 109
A GIFT ACKNOWLEDGED 111
THE OLD HOMESTEAD 113
JENNIE MOORE 115
ASHES 116
POSY 117
A SNOW BIRD 119
THE UPSET 121
THE SCHOOL GIRL 122
THE READERS 125
WAG 126
DONATELLO 129
GABRIEL OF SCHWARTZENWALD 131
COFFEA ARABICA 137
AN INDIA SHAWL 140
APOLOGY 141
UNRECONCILED 144
ANNIVERSARY 146
AMAUROTE 148
_SAGA OF THE OAK_
SAGA OF THE OAK.
Hoarsely to the midnight moon
Voiced the oak his rugged rune:
“Harken, sibyl Moon, to me;
Hear the saga of the Tree.
“Thou, O queen of splendor, must
Pale and crumble back to dust;
Through slow eons diest thou,--
Doomsday craves my vitals now.
“I am scion of a line
Old, imperial, divine;
Earth produced my ancestor
Ere great Odin was, or Thor.
“From the hursts of holy oak
Fateful gods of Asgard spoke;
In the consecrated shade
Bard and Druid sang and prayed.
“Fostered in an oaken womb
Slept Trifingus, sword of doom;
Therewith woaded Caratak
Drave the steel-sarked Roman back.
“Where, profaned by legioned foes,
In the shuddering forest rose
Mona’s altars flaming rud,
Britain drowned her woe in blood.
“Then the dread decree of Norn
Sounded in the groves forlorn;
Vikings swooping from the North
Harried every scaur and forth.
“Forests fell with crash and roar,
Masted galiots spurned the shore,
Dragon-breasted,--swum the meer,
Daring danger, scouting fear.
“Hengist’s brood and Horsa’s kin,
Seed of Garmund, sons of Finn,
Dane and Saxon sail and sweep
Battling o’er the wrathful deep;
“Hearts of oak! their valor gave
Right of might to rule the wave,
Gave to Nelson’s ocean war
Copenhagen, Trafalgar!
“Bray of trumpet! roll of drum!
When shall Balder’s kingdom come?
Bitter sap shall when grow sweet
In the acorn at my feet?
“Centuries do I stand here
Thinking thoughts profound and drear,
Dreaming solemn dreams sublime
Of the mysteries of Time.
“Roots of mine do feed on graves;
I have eaten bones of braves;
In the ground the learnéd gnomes
Read to me their cryptic tomes.
“Annals treasured in the air
All the past to me declare;
Every wind of heaven brings
Tribute for me on its wings.
“Through my silence proud and lone
Whispers waft from the Unknown:
Musing eld hath second ken--
Moon! the dead shall live again.
“Sun-scorch have I borne, and pangs
From the gnaw of winter’s fangs;
Fought tornadoes, nor forsook
Roothold when the mountains shook.
“Oft the zig-zag thunder hath
Struck me with his fiery scath,--
To my core the havoc sped,
Yet I never bowed my head.
“I am weary of the years;
Overthrown are all my peers,
Slain by steel or storm or flame,--
I would perish too--the same.
“Yet shall I a little space
Linger still in life’s embrace
Ere metempsychosing time
Drag me down to Niflheim.
“Wherefore shun or summon fate?
Wisest they who sanely wait;
In my fiber nature saith,
Life is good and good is death.
“Mated birds of procreant Spring
In my branches build and sing;
Grass is green and flowers bloom
Where I spread my golden gloom;
“Happy children round me play;
Plighted lovers near me stray;
Insects chirping in the night
Thrill me with obscure delight;
“Circling seasons as they run,
Couriers of the lavish sun,
Dower me with treasure lent
By each potent element;
“Ministers to me the whole
Zonéd globe from pole to pole;
In my buds and blossoms beat
Pulses from the central heat;--
“Everything is part of me,
Firmament and moving sea;
I of all that is am part,
Stone and star and human heart.
“Primal Cause etern, self-wrought,
Majesty transcending thought,
This my substance and my soul,
Origin, desire, and goal.
“Through creation’s vasty range
Blows the winter blast of change;
Leaf-like from the Life-Tree whirled
World shall rot on ruined world.
“Hail, inexorable hour
Fraught with clysmian wrack and stour
Welcome, transmutation’s course
And the cosmic rage of Force.
“Yond the atomed universe
Now we gather, now disperse,--
Unto darkling chaos tost,
Back from the chaos--nothing lost.
“Forth abysmal voids of death
Resurrection issueth:--
Flaming ether, quickened clod,
Bodying new forms of God.
“Harken, Moon!--When I am gone,
I, re-born, shall burgeon on;
Out thine ashes shall arise
Other Thou, to ride the skies.”
Spake no more the hoary oak;
No response the wan moon spoke;
But the poet who had heard
Pondered the Dodonian word.
A DIAMOND.
Upon the breast of senseless earth
This precious sparkling stone,
A jewel of Golconda’s worth,
In sovran beauty shone.
My lady for a moment bore
The gem upon her brow,
A moment on her bosom wore:--
’Tis worth the Orient now.
MY CATBIRD.
A CAPRICCIO.
Nightingale I never heard,
Nor the skylark, poet’s bird;
But there is an æther-winger
So surpasses every singer,
(Though unknown to lyric fame,)
That at morning, or at nooning,
When I hear his pipe a-tuning,
Down I fling Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth,--
What are all their songs of birds worth?
All their soaring
Souls’ outpouring?
When my Mimus Carolinensis,
(That’s his Latin name,)
When my warbler wild commences
Song’s hilarious rhapsody,
Just to please himself and me!
Primo Cantante!
Scherzo! Andante!
Piano, pianissimo!
Presto, prestissimo!
Hark! are there nine birds or ninety and nine?
And now a miraculous gurgling gushes
Like nectar from Hebe’s Olympian bottle,
The laughter of tune from a rapturous throttle!
Such melody must be a hermit-thrush’s!
But that other caroler, nearer,
Outrivaling rivalry with clearer
Sweetness incredibly fine!
Is it oriole, redbird, or bluebird,
Or some strange, un-Auduboned new bird?
All one, sir, both this bird and that bird,
The whole flight are all the same catbird!
The whole visible and invisible choir you see
On one lithe twig of yon green tree.
Flitting, feathery Blondel!
Listen to his rondel!
To his lay romantical!
To his sacred canticle!
Hear him lilting,
See him tilting
His saucy head and tail, and fluttering
While uttering
All the difficult operas under the sun
Just for fun;
Or in tipsy revelry,
Or at love devilry,
Or, disdaining his divine gift and art,
Like an inimitable poet
Who captivates the world’s heart
And don’t know it.
Hear him lilt!
See him tilt!
Then suddenly he stops,
Peers about, flirts, hops,
As if looking where he might gather up
The wasted ecstasy just spilt
From the quivering cup
Of his bliss overrun.
Then, as in mockery of all
The tuneful spells that e’er did fall
From vocal pipe, or evermore shall rise,
He snarls, and mews, and flies.
THE TUNES DAN HARRISON USED TO PLAY.
Ofttimes when recollections throng
Serenely back from childhood years,
Awaking thoughts that slumbered long,
Compelling smiles or starting tears,
The music of a violin
Seems through my window floating in,--
I think I hear from far away
The tunes Dan Harrison used to play.
Dan Harrison! I see him there
Beside the roaring winter hearth,
Fiddling away all mundane care,
His genial face aglow with mirth;
And when he laid his bow aside,
“Well done! well done!” he cheerly cried;
Well done, well done, indeed were they,
The tunes Dan Harrison used to play.
I do not know what tunes he played,
I cannot name one melody;
His instrument was never made
In old Cremona, o’er the sea;
Yet from its chords his raptured skill
Drew magic strains my soul to thrill,
Some ah so mournful, some so gay,
The tunes Dan Harrison used to play.
I have been witness to the art
Of many a master of the bow,
But none have power to charm the heart
Like him I listened long ago;
Love stole on tiptoe through my trance
To welcome dream-eyed young Romance,
Responsive to the passioned sway
Of tunes Dan Harrison used to play.
Now with the music, as it floats,
Seraphic harping faintly blends;
I catch amid the mingling notes
Familiar voices of old friends;
While choral echoes sweetly fall,
Of yearning love angelical,
And melt, like trembling tears, away,
In tunes Dan Harrison used to play.
FAIRYLAND.
A secret glen engirt by hills serene
Sleeps in rich gloom of summer boscage green;
Its dreamy dells, in solemn twilight hush,
Echo dulce warblings of the hermit-thrush;
Kist by young May, the windflower trembles there,
And frail dicentra breathes the dainty air;
The haunt beseems for elfin revels planned,
And so the children call it Fairyland.
A silvern rill, loved by the watercress,
Winds purling through this drowsy wilderness,
Suckling the willow, snowy-corymbed haw,
Vain-flaunting redbud, indolent pawpaw,
Suave linden, and gay buckeye brimming free
His nectar cups to lure the drunken bee;
Aloof, in coats of pearl-green armor, stand
Three sycamores, to guard the Fairyland.
The busy grapevine o’er the coppice weaves
A cunning mesh of interlacing leaves,
Whereon adventurous urchins clamber high,
With giddy shout saluting the blue sky;
Or loll in golden sunshine baptismal,
Inhaling balm of buds ambrosial,
And, by hilarious breezes rocked and fanned,
Through loops of verdure gaze from Fairyland.
Ere dies on heaven’s breast the morning star,
All unsubstantial, visionary, far,
In opalescent vapor loom the glades,
Dawn-rosy domes, dim grottoes and arcades,
Of yon enchanted dingles of the fay;
Behold! transmuted in the sheen of day,
By aureolar rays of Iris spanned,
A bower of dewdrops, glitters Fairyland!
When dusk descends, the eerie host delight
As twinkling fireflies to bestar the night;
Then melancholy tree-toads shrill the throat,
And chirring crickets chime an irksome note;
Flits the lean bat the timorous wren to fray;
The muffled screech-owl hurtles on his prey;
For evil wings a gruesome hour command,
Though holy stars keep watch o’er Fairyland.
All demonkind, or wicked, null, or good,
Lurk in the hollows of the sprightful wood;
There murk fogs drop distillings of the sea;
The weird moon plies her midnight witchery;
Time slumbers there; there Love and Beauty sport;
And Death holds there his grim, fantastic court;
No ghost may blab, no mortal understand
The mystic wonders of our Fairyland.
SUMMER LOVE.
I know ’tis late, but let me stay,
For night is tenderer than day;
Sweet love, dear love, I cannot go,
Dear love, sweet love, I love thee so.
The birds in leafy hiding sleep;
Shrill katydids their vigil keep;
The woodbine breathes a fragrance rare
Upon the dewy languid air;
The fireflies twinkle in the vale,
The river looms in moonshine pale,
And look! a meteor’s dreamy light
Streams mystic down the solemn night!
Ah, life glides swift, like that still fire--
How soon our throbbing joys expire;
Who can be sure the present kiss
Is not his last? Make all of this.
I know ’tis late, sweet love, I know,
Dear love, sweet love, I love thee so.
Fantastic mist obscurely fills
The hollows of Kentucky hills;
Heardst thou? I heard or fear I heard
Vague twitters of some wakeful bird;
The wingéd hours are swift indeed!
Why makes the jealous morn such speed?
This rose thou wearst may I not take
For passionate remembrance’ sake?
Press with thy lips its crimson heart;
Yes, blushing rose, we must depart;
A rose cannot return a kiss--
I pay its due with this, and this;
The stars grow faint, they soon will die,
But love faints not nor fails.--Good-bye!
Unhappy joy--delicious pain--
We part in love, we meet again!
Good-bye!--the morning dawns--I go,
Dear love, sweet love, I love thee so.
CLOVER HILL.
On the brow of Clover Hill
Stands a maiden gazing out
Through the purple twilight still,
Half in rapture, half in doubt;
In the heavens Venus glistens,
While the maiden looks and listens.
On the brow of Clover Hill
Deeper gloaming shadows fall;
Moans the plaintive whippowill;
Lonesome is the cricket’s call;
In the heavens Venus glistens,
Far the maiden looks and listens.
On the brow of Clover Hill
Lingering she fondly sighs;
Anxious fears her bosom fill,
Tears bedew her mournful eyes;
In the heavens Venus glistens,
Still the maiden looks and listens.
Footsteps! hark! On Clover Hill!
Faring nearer and more near!
Hearts ecstatic throb and thrill!
“War is over! He is here!”
In the zenith Venus glistens,
Lovers kiss and Heaven listens.
THE WEDDING DEFERRED.
Complaining flow the waters slow
Along the valley green and low;
The lilies dight in virgin white
Float fragrant in the ardent light,
And to the gossip ripples say,
“It is the Day!--is’t not the Day?
When comes the bridal train this way?”
Yon amethystine hill-top kist
By lingering enamored mist,
Hears in the sky warm zephyrs sigh
To wooing clouds that dally by;
The wandering whispers seem to say,
“Is’t not the Day?--it is the Day!
Why comes no bridal train this way?”
Forlorn of mood, by love pursued,
A youth laments in solitude;
The brown dove’s eyes soft sympathize
With him and to her mate she cries,
“What can the glad espousals stay?
It is the Day!--is’t not the Day?
Yet comes no bridal train this way.”
O laggard moon, arise full soon
And swim to night’s auspicious noon,
The star-sea ride and swiftly glide
From eventide to eventide,--
Whirl through a month, that I may say
“It _is_ the Day! It _is_ the Day!
Now comes the bridal train this way!”
TO THE LITTLE MIAMI RIVER.
Romantic the rocky and fern-scented regions,
Miami, the grots where thy rambles begin,
By cedars and hemlocks, in evergreen legions,
With silence and twilight seclusion shut in.
There darkling recesses in miniature mountains
Recall to my fancy the haunts of the gnome;
There fabled Undina might rise from the fountains,
Or sport in the waterfalls’ glistening foam.
Now laughing in ripples and dancing the sedges,
Now fretting the minnows in eddy and whirl,
Now kissing the pebbles that sprinkle thy edges,
And laving the pearl and the mother-of-pearl;
Glide, whispering now under sycamore shadow,
Now singing by hamlet and cottage and mill,
Now shimmering onward through flowery meadow,
Now glassing the image of foresty hill.
The farm boy, as careless he follows the harrow
O’er lowlands which quicken and ripen the maize,
Reads oft in some token of stone,--axe or arrow,
The wars and the loves of unchronicled days.
Then steals on the air with thy murmuring numbers
A moan of lament for a race and its lore,--
A sigh for yon chieftain forgotten, who slumbers
Beneath the lone mound on thy emerald shore.
IMMORTAL BIRDSONG.
What though mine ear hath never heard
The wing’d voice of the sky?
Nor listened to the love-lorn bird
Whose plaints in darkness die?
The poets improvise for me
Lark-notes that never fail,
And make more sweet than sound can be
The song of nightingale.
From rapt Alastor’s lyric leaves
Joy’s flying carol springs!
On darkling pinion sorrow grieves
When Adonais sings.
I list the lavrock warbling clear
In birks of bonny Doon;
The bulbul’s swooning voice I hear,
Beneath the Persian moon.
I hear across the centuries
What Philomela sung,
In Attic groves, to Sophocles,
When Poesie was young.
HINCHMAN’S MILL.
Lonely by Miami stream,
Gray in twilight’s fading beam,
Spectral, desolate and still,
Smitten by the storms of years,
Ah! how changed to me appears
Yonder long-deserted mill.
While the ruin I behold,
Mossy roof and gable old,
Shadowy mid obscuring trees,
Memory’s vision, quick and true,
Time’s long vista gazing through,
Unseen pictures dimly sees.
Sees upon the garner floor
Wheat and maize in golden store,--
Powdery whiteness everywhere,--
Sees a miller short and stout
Whistling cheerfully about,
Making merry with his care.
Pleased, he listens to the whirr
Of the swift-revolving burr,
Deeming brief each busy hour;
Like a stream of finest snow,
Sifting to the bin below,
Fall the tiny flakes of flour.
Once my childish feet were led
Down some furtive way of dread,
Through yon broken floor to peer,
Where the fearful waters drift
In a current dark and swift,
Flying from the angry weir.
Once, with timid step and soft,
Stealthily I climbed aloft,
Up and up the highest stair;--
Iron cogs were rumbling round,
Every vague and awful sound
Mocked and mumbled at me there.
Wonder if those wheels remain,
And would frighten me again?
Wonder if the miller’s dead?
Wonder if his ghost at night
Haunts the stairs, a phantom white?
Walks the loft with hollow tread?
Spectral, desolate and still,
Stands the solitary mill,
Close beside the gliding stream:
Darkness overtakes the sun,
Suddenly the day is done,
And of Time and Death I dream.
VICTOR.
When June exhaled her rose-sweet breath
And earth in sunshine smiled,
Untimely came intrusive Death
And stole away our child.
As some fast-fading star declines,
Dissolving in the sky;
As wastes the dewdrop while it shines,
So did our darling die.
Ah, fairer than the violet frail,
Frost-slain on April’s breast,
And purer than the lily pale,
The babe’s unbreathing rest.
Our eyes grew numb with tearless woe,
Prayer swooned upon the tongue,
As to his lips of smiling snow
Our anguished kisses clung.
O hapless Victor, name of pride!
Dear hands, poor little feet!
No thorn ye found, no path ye tried;--
O envious winding sheet!
Most mournful change and utter loss!
Return, my child, return!
Or, angels, guide my faith across
The grave his state to learn.
Oh, grant me from the vast unknown
Some breath of solacing!
The spirit! whither has it flown
On timorous alien wing?
All silent is the cruel sky;
The saints no pity lend;
My lamentation and my cry
To heedless void ascend.
My heart, my weeping, bleeding heart
Wails at the door of fate,
And faints in darkness and apart,
Bereft and desolate.
I only find, wher’er I grope,
A cradle and a pall;
Find, at the gloomy verge of hope,
A grave--and that is all.
An empty cradle and a lone
Small mound of chilly sod,
O’er which I bow and vainly moan
To move the heart of God.
THE LAST FLIGHT.
Lo, in my path
A frozen songbird lies,
A victim of the sky’s
Blind, elemental wrath.
The stolid year
Shall not in me repress
The impulsive tenderness
That moves a pitying tear.
Life’s flutter o’er,
Thy quavering heart, now still,
No more shall throb and thrill,
Shall love and fear no more.
For thee in vain
Shall Spring array the woods,
In nest-safe neighborhoods:--
Thou canst not build again.
Did instinct fail
When, from the Boreal rack,
Athwart thy migrant track
Hurtled the ruthless gale?
A cruel nest
The feather-mocking snows!
And ah, what gasping throes
Assailed thy dying breast!
Wing-spent, alone,
Adrift from every mate,
Flung down by baffling fate,
Thou froze to the Unknown.
How saith the Word?
Does He who governs all
Take notice of the fall
Forlorn, of thee, poor bird?
And is it so
His awful love divine
Provides for me and mine
When frore the tempests blow?
Mute traveler, say,
How fare we when we die,
And whither do we fly
Along the unseen way?
Vain questionings
In death’s bleak eddy whirled!
What heeds the other world
My broken, bleeding wings?
Is life no more?
Is death the final doom?
Or shall the soul replume
Her flight and sing and soar?
Yea, surely, He
Who melts my love to tears
For this dead songster, hears
And pities mine and me.
His love must know
Our sorrow, and will lift
Our numbed lives from the drift
Of death’s all-hushing snow.
A GENTLE MAN.
I knew a gentle Man;--
Alas! his soul has flown;
Now that his tender heart is still,
Pale anguish haunts my own.
His eye, in pity’s tear,
Would often saintly swim;
He did to others as he would
That they should do to him.
He suffered many things,--
Renounced, forgave, forbore;
And sorrow’s crown of thorny stings,
Like Christ, he meekly wore;
At rural toils he strove;
In beauty, joy he sought;
His solace was in children’s words
And wise men’s pondered thought.
He was both meek and brave,
Not haughty, and yet proud;
He daily died his soul to save,
And ne’er to Mammon bowed.
E’en as a little child
He entered Heaven’s Gate;
I caught his parting smile, which said,
“Be reconciled, and wait.”
INVIOLATE.
We took a walk in Winter woods,
My little lad and I,--
The hills and hollows all were pearl,
And sapphire all the sky.
Before guerilla winds we saw
The skurrying drift retreat;
We thought of budded roots that lay
Asleep beneath our feet.
We spoke of how, last year, in May,
One sunny bank we found,
Where wind-flowers stood in fairy crowds,
To charm the gladdened ground.
A subtle feeling checked the boy,--
His small hand held me back,
With mute appeal that we should tread
The wood-path’s beaten track.
“My child, ’tis pleasanter to break
New pathways as we go.”
He said, “I do not like to spoil
The beauty of the snow.”
FAITH.
The spreading circle of the known
That Science strives to bound with laws
Is but a glowing sparkle thrown
From God, the radiant central cause.
His mystery is vaster far
Than knowledge is or e’er can be;
The wheel of Evolution’s car
Rolls onward through eternity.
A stilly voice forever sounds
The lapses of our doubt between:
“Seek not to give Religion bounds,
Nor limit Faith by forces seen.”
PLATO.
Athenian prophet of the soaring mind!
What new lamp burns so brightly as his old?
He changed Philosophy from dross to gold
By poet’s alchemy; and he combined
Egypt and Ind and the Hellenic States
With all the knowledge Cadmus’ letters hold,
In Logic’s crucible to be refined;
He opened Speculation’s splendid gates
To Western ways where Science after trod;
A reign of sweeter Ethics he foretold,
Renouncing Zeus for a diviner God;
And, unaffrighted by the awful Fates,
In starry sandals of Religion shod,
From pagan darkness Plato led mankind.
DANTE.
AFTER READING “PARADISO.”
His sacred Muse, on soaring rapture’s wings,
Aspired the radiant empyrean high,
And bore to earth the splendor of the sky!
Durante’s spirit to my senses brings
The excessive beauty of transcendent things
That thrill imagination’s ear and eye;
With joy I hear the blissful carolings
Of angel hosts in robes of dazzling white;
My soul partakes the poet’s ecstasy!
Through all my meditation and my prayer
Steals reminiscence of the Stream of Light,
And of the Rose unutterably fair,--
And O! the threefold glory of The One,
The Love that moves the circling stars and sun!
WAGNER’S KAISER MARCH.
TO THEODORE THOMAS.
What diapasons from the hush profound
Thy magic wand, O Master, summons forth
To laud imperial Kaiser, robed and crowned!
Hail! multitudinous music of the North!
Titanic Wagner’s soul informs the sound!
Ho! instruments triumphant, trump and drum,
And cymbal clanging where the troopers come!
The Gothic valor now is set to score;
I hear the tramp of Saxon thought unbound,
The victor’s cry, disdaining death or wound,--
I hear the saber ring, the cannon roar!
This is the throbbing tune for Halfred’s rhyme,
The symphony of glorious war sublime,
Valhalla’s martial joy forevermore!
DEFOE IN THE PILLORY.
On to the Pillory, ho!
To punish bold Daniel Defoe!
Come on to the place
Of shame and disgrace!
Bring rose-garlands sweet
To cast at his feet!
Fill glasses! Fill, ho!
Here’s to Daniel Defoe!
On to the Pillory, ho!
To punish bold Daniel Defoe!
His fate he has earned,
His book we have burned,
That its soul may fly forth,
East, west, south and north!
Blow, trumpeter, blow!
Here’s to Daniel Defoe!
On to the Pillory, ho!
To punish bold Daniel Defoe!
Shout him greeting full loud!
Sing his praise to the crowd!
The sentries may swear,
But what do we care?
More roses we’ll throw!
Here’s to Daniel Defoe!
On to the Pillory, ho!
To punish rogue Daniel Defoe!
Pelt him, maidens and men!
For he thinks with a pen,
And his thought is too free!
God bless him! See! See!
Fill glasses! Fill, ho!
Here’s to Daniel Defoe!
WE THE PEOPLE.
We the People, not the Crown,
Not the surplice nor the brand,
Noble’s crest nor schoolman’s gown,
Burse nor rostrum, grange nor town,--
We the People rule our land.
We the People, not the Few,
High nor low nor middle class,
High and low and middle too,
Freemen, he and I and you,
We the multitude, the mass.
Dumb we plodded feudal years,
Goaded by the lash of scorn;
Groaning, wept a sea of tears;
Lo! at last our day appears,
Dawn of the millennial morn!
Asia deemed our woe decreed,
Brahm nor Buddha heard our cry,
Europe heard with sullen heed,
Prince and Pontiff mocked our need,
Making Christ a bitter lie.
Demagogue nor Demigod
Shall again control the World;
_Man_ awoke! disdained the rod,
Spurned the despot whip and prod,
To the dust his rider hurled.
Man has come unto his own;
Broken are his bands and bars;
Faith’s futurity foreknown
Domes a sky of promise sown
Thick with happy-omened stars.
Zealous, not iconoclast,
We would spare the ancient true;
Life in death is rooted fast;
And the fruitage of the Past
Is the Passing,--is the New.
Azure blood and haughty crest,
Blazon of heraldic scroll,
Coin in coffer, star on breast,--
These are good, but better, best,
Is the rank, the wealth, of soul.
Earth grows better growing old,
Still by happier races trod;
Plato’s iron men are gold;
Large humanities unfold;
Evolution’s law is--God.
We the People, We the State,
Subject, Sovereign, both in one,
Trust in Highest Potentate.
Trust, O World, in Us and wait.
God has willed our will be done.
EIGHTY-SEVEN.
As a mighty heart in a giant’s breast
With rhythmic beat
Sends marching from brain to feet
The crimson vigor of creative blood,
So, in the bosom of the brawny West,
So, in the stalwart breast of the Nation,
Throbs the Great Ordinance,--a heart,
A vital and organic part,
Propelling by its strong pulsation
The unremitting stream and flood
Of wholesome influences that give
Unto the body politic
The elements and virtues quick
Whereby Republics live.
THE FOUNDERS OF OHIO.
APRIL, 1888.
The footsteps of a hundred years
Have echoed, since o’er Braddock’s Road
Bold Putnam and the Pioneers
Led History the way they strode.
On wild Monongahela stream
They launched the Mayflower of the West,
A perfect State their civic dream,
A new New World their pilgrim quest.
When April robed the Buckeye trees
Muskingum’s bosky shore they trod;
They pitched their tents and to the breeze
Flung freedom’s star-flag, thanking God.
As glides the Oyo’s solemn flood
So fleeted their eventful years;
Resurgent in their children’s blood,
They still live on--the Pioneers.
Their fame shrinks not to names and dates
On votive stone, the prey of time;--
Behold where monumental States
Immortalize their lives sublime!
FOREST SONG.
Read at the first meeting of the American Forestry Congress, in Music
Hall, Cincinnati, April 19, 1882.
A song for the beautiful trees!
A song for the forest grand,
The Garden of God’s own hand,
The pride of His centuries.
Hurrah! for the kingly oak,
For the maple, the sylvan queen,
For the lords of the emerald cloak,
For the ladies in golden green.
For the beautiful trees a song!
The peers of a glorious realm,
The linden, the ash, and the elm,
The poplar stately and strong,--
For the birch and the hemlock trim,
For the hickory staunch at core,
For the locust thorny and grim,
For the silvery sycamore.
A song for the palm,--the pine,
And for every tree that grows,
From the desolate zone of snows
To the zone of the burning line;
Hurrah! for the warders proud
Of the mountainside and the vale,
That challenge the thunder-cloud,
And buffet the stormy gale.
A song for the forest, aisled,
With its Gothic roof sublime,
The solemn temple of Time,
Where man becometh a child,
As he listens the anthem-roll
Of the voiceful winds that call,
In the solitude of his soul,
On the name of the All-in-All.
So long as the rivers flow,
So long as the mountains rise,
May the foliage drink of the skies
And shelter the flowers below;
Hurrah! for the beautiful trees!
Hurrah! for the forest grand,
The pride of His centuries,
The Garden of God’s own hand.
A BALLAD OF OLD KENTUCKY.
Well, this is my story of Schoolmaster John,
And how, single-handed, he slew
A terrible monster, one May day, at dawn,
When our staunch old Kentucky was new.
Full rude was the cabin, o’ershadowed by trees,
For the Lexington school-children made;
For, Cadmus forbid that the shrewd A-B-C’s
Be lost in the tanglewood shade!
Alone sat the pedagogue, throned on a stool,
Entranced by poetical lore;
He waited and read, while the morning’s breath cool
Floated in through the wide-open door.
Bent over a magical page of the tome
That Vergil--how long ago!--wrote,
He mused of Æneas and Dido and Rome,
When a tiger-cat sprang at his throat!
Fight, fight! John McKinney, or perish! He fought!
Forgot was the Queen and her woe!
He uttered no cry; of the children he thought
As he grappled his terrible foe!
Now which shall be victor, the brute or the man?
Hands battle against teeth and claws!
Survive the dread struggle the nature that can!
Savage might against letters and laws!
The beast by the master was throttled and crushed
On his desk, while its fangs stung his side;
With the crimsoning rill from his pulses that gushed,
The leaves of his Vergil were dyed.
Who fly to the rescue? Who scream with alarm?
Three scared little maidens! Then said
The schoolmaster, smiling, “No harm, dears, no harm!
I have caught you a wild-cat;--it’s dead.”
And this is the story of pedagogue John
Of Kentucky, and how it befell
That, in the heroic old days that are gone,
He did what he had to do, well.
God set him his task in the woods of the West
To teach and to tame what was wild;
To give his heart’s love and the blood of his breast
For the good of the pioneer’s child.
No story of Theseus or Hercules strong
More beautiful is, nor so true;
The meed of devotion to duty is song:
Then pay John McKinney his due.
JOHN FILSON.
Matthias Denman, Robert Patterson and John Filson laid out the town of
Losantiville, now the city of Cincinnati, in 1788. Filson, schoolmaster
and surveyor, went out to explore the woods between the Miamis, but
never returned.
John Filson was a pedagogue--
A pioneer was he;
I know not what his nation was
Nor what his pedigree.
Tradition’s scanty records tell
But little of the man,
Save that he to the frontier came
In immigration’s van.
Perhaps with phantoms of reform
His busy fancy teemed,
Perhaps of new Utopias
Hesperian he dreamed.
John Filson and companions bold
A frontier village planned,
In forest wild, on sloping hills,
By fair Ohio’s strand.
John Filson from three languages
With pedant skill did frame
The novel word Losantiville
To be the new town’s name.
Said Filson: “Comrades, hear my words:
Ere three-score years have flown
Our town will be a city vast.”
Loud laughed Bob Patterson.
Still John exclaimed, with prophet-tongue,
“A city fair and proud,
The Queen of Cities in the West!”
Mat Denman laughed aloud.
Deep in the wild and solemn woods
Unknown to white man’s track,
John Filson went, one autumn day,
But nevermore came back.
He struggled through the solitude
The inland to explore,
And with romantic pleasure traced
Miami’s winding shore.
Across his path the startled deer
Bounds to its shelter green;
He enters every lonely vale
And cavernous ravine.
Too soon the murky twilight comes,
The boding night-winds moan;
Bewildered wanders Filson, lost,
Exhausted, and alone.
By lurking foes his steps are dogged,
A yell his ear appalls!
A ghastly corpse, upon the ground,
A murdered man, he falls.
The Indian, with instinctive hate,
In him a herald saw
Of coming hosts of pioneers,
The friends of light and law;
In him beheld the champion
Of industries and arts,
The founder of encroaching roads
And great commercial marts;
The spoiler of the hunting-ground,
The plower of the sod,
The builder of the Christian school
And of the house of God.
And so the vengeful tomahawk
John Filson’s blood did spill,--
The spirit of the pedagogue
No tomahawk could kill.
John Filson had no sepulcher,
Except the wildwood dim;
The mournful voices of the air
Made requiem for him.
The druid trees their waving arms
Uplifted o’er his head;
The moon a pallid veil of light
Upon his visage spread.
The rain and sun of many years
Have worn his bones away,
And what he vaguely prophesied
We realize today.
Losantiville, the prophet’s word,
The poet’s hope fulfils,--
She sits a stately Queen to-day
Amid her royal hills!
Then come, ye pedagogues, and join
To sing a grateful lay
For him, the martyr pioneer,
Who led for you the way.
And may my simple ballad be
A monument to save
His name from blank oblivion,
Who never had a grave.
JOHNNY APPLESEED.
A Ballad of the Old Northwest.
A midnight cry appalls the gloom,
The puncheon door is shaken:
“Awake! arouse! and flee the doom!
Man, woman, child, awaken!
“Your sky shall glow with fiery beams
Before the morn breaks ruddy!
The scalpknife in the moonlight gleams,
Athirst for vengeance bloody!”
Alarumed by the dreadful word
Some warning tongue thus utters,
The settler’s wife, like mother bird,
About her young ones flutters.
Her first-born, rustling from a soft
Leaf-couch, the roof close under,
Glides down the ladder from the loft,
With eyes of dreamy wonder.
The pioneer flings open wide
The cabin door, naught fearing;
The grim woods drowse on every side,
Around the lonely clearing.
“Come in! come in! nor like an owl
Thus hoot your doleful humors;
What fiend possesses you, to howl
Such crazy, coward rumors?”
The herald strode into the room;
That moment, through the ashes,
The back-log struggled into bloom
Of gold and crimson flashes.
The glimmer lighted up a face,
And o’er a figure dartled,
So eerie, of so solemn grace,
The bluff backwoodsman startled.
The brow was gathered to a frown,
The eyes were strangely glowing,
And, like a snow-fall drifting down,
The stormy beard went flowing.
The tattered cloak that round him clung
Had warred with foulest weather;
Across his shoulders broad were flung
Brown saddlebags of leather.
One pouch with hoarded seed was packed,
From Pennland cider-presses;
The other garnered book and tract
Within its creased recesses.
A glance disdainful and austere,
Contemptuous of danger,
Cast he upon the pioneer,
Then spake the uncouth stranger:
“Heed what the Lord’s anointed saith;
Hear one who would deliver
Your bodies and your souls from death;
List ye to John the Giver.
“Thou trustful boy, in spirit wise
Beyond thy father’s measure,
Because of thy believing eyes
I share with thee my treasure.
“Of precious seed this handful take;
Take next this Bible Holy:
In good soil sow both gifts, for sake
Of Him, the meek and lowly.
“Farewell! I go!--the forest calls
My life to ceaseless labors;
Wherever danger’s shadow falls
I fly to save my neighbors.
“I save; I neither curse nor slay;
I am a voice that crieth
In night and wilderness. Away!
Whoever doubteth, dieth!”
The prophet vanished in the night,
Like some fleet ghost belated;
Then, awe-struck, fled with panic fright
The household, evil-fated.
They hurried on with stumbling feet,
Foreboding ambuscado;
Bewildered hope told of retreat
In frontier palisado.
But ere a mile of tangled maze
Their bleeding hands had broken,
Their home-roof set the dark ablaze,
Fulfilling doom forespoken.
The savage death-whoop rent the air!
A howl of rage infernal!
The fugitives were in Thy care,
Almighty Power eternal!
Unscathed by tomahawk or knife,
In bosky dingle nested,
The hunted pioneer, with wife
And babes, hid unmolested.
The lad, when age his locks of gold
Had changed to silver glory,
Told grandchildren, as I have told,
This western wildwood story.
Told how the fertile seeds had grown
To famous trees, and thriven;
And oft the Sacred Book was shown,
By that weird Pilgrim given.
Remember Johnny Appleseed,
All ye who love the apple;
He served his kind by Word and Deed,
In God’s grand greenwood chapel.
WENDING WESTWARD.
A new star rose in Freedom’s sky
A hundred years ago;
It gleamed on Labor’s wistful eye,
With bright magnetic glow;
Hope and Courage whispered, Go,
Ye who toil and ye who wait!
Open swings the People’s gate!
Beyond the mountains and under the skies
Of the Wonderful West your Canaan lies:--
On the banks of the Beautiful River,
By the shores of the Lakes of the North,
There fortune to each will deliver
His share of the teeming earth.
Jocund voices called from the dark
Hesperian solitude, saying, Hark!
Harken, ye people! come from the East,
Come from the marge of the ocean, come!
Here in the Wilderness spread a feast;
This is the poor man’s welcome home.
Hither with axe and plow;
(Carry the stripes and stars!)
Come with the faith and the vow
Of patriots wearing your scars
Like trophies, upon the victorious breast,--
Noblemen! wend to the West!
Load your rude wagon with your scanty goods
And drive to the plentiful woods;
Your wheels as they rumble shall scare
The fleet-footed deer from the road,
And waken the sulky brown bear
In his long unmolested abode;
The Redman shall gaze in dumb fear
At the wain of the strange pioneer,
His barbarous eyes vainly spell
The capital letters which tell
That the White-foot is bound
For the good hunting-ground
Where the buffaloes dwell.
To the Ohio Country, move on!
Bring your brain and your brawn
(Some books of the best,
Pack into the chest!)
Bring your wives and your sons,
Your maidens and lisping ones;
Your trust in God bring;
Choose a spot by a spring,
And build you a castle--a throne,
A palace of logs--but your own!
Happy the new-born child
Nursed in the greenwood wild;
Though his cradle be only a trough,
Account him well off;
For born to the purple is he,
The proud royal robe of the Free!
For the latest time is the best,
And the happiest place is the West,
Where man shall establish anew
Things excellent, beautiful, true!
THE TEACHER’S DREAM.
The weary teacher sat alone,
While twilight gathered on:
And not a sound was heard around,
The boys and girls were gone.
The weary teacher sat alone,
Unnerved and pale was he;
Bowed by a yoke of care he spoke
In sad soliloquy:
“Another round, another round
Of labor thrown away,
Another chain of toil and pain
Dragged through a tedious day.
“Of no avail is constant zeal,
Love’s sacrifice is loss,
The hopes of morn, so golden, turn,
Each evening, into dross.
“I squander on a barren field
My strength, my life, my all;
The seeds I sow will never grow,
They perish where they fall.”
He sighed, and low upon his hands
His aching brow he prest,
And like a spell upon him fell
A soothing sense of rest.
Ere long he lifted drowsy eyes,
When, on his startled view,
The room by strange and sudden change
To vast proportions grew!
It seemed a senate house, and one
Addressed a listening throng;
Each burning word all bosoms stirred,
Applause rose loud and long.
The wildered teacher thought he knew
The speaker’s voice and look,
“And for his name,” said he, “the same
Is in my record-book.”
The stately congress hall dissolved,
A church rose in its place,
Wherein there stood a man of God,
Dispensing words of grace.
And though he heard the solemn voice,
And saw the beard of gray,
The teacher’s thought was strangely wrought
“My yearning heart to-day
“Wept for this youth whose wayward will
Against persuasion strove,
Compelling force, love’s last resource,
To stablish laws of love.”
The church, a phantasm, vanished soon;
What shadowy picture then?
In classic gloom of alcoved room
An author plied his pen.
“My idlest lad!” the master said,
Filled with a new surprise,
“Shall I behold _his_ name enrolled
Among the great and wise?”
The vision of a cottage home
Was now through tears descried:
A mother’s face illumed the place
Her influence sanctified.
“A miracle! a miracle!
This matron well I know!
She was a wild and careless child
Not half an hour ago.
“Now, when she to her children speaks
Of duty’s golden rule,
Her lips repeat, in accents sweet,
My words to her at school.”
Dim on the teacher’s brain returned
The humble school-room old;
Upon the wall did darkness fall,
The evening air was cold.
“A dream!” the sleeper, waking, said,
Then paced along the floor,
And, whistling low and soft and slow,
He locked the school-house door.
His musing heart was reconciled
To love’s divine delays:
“The bread forth cast returns at last,
Lo, after many days!”
BY THEIR FRUITS.
Above the clash of counter creeds
These gospel accents swell:
Whoever doeth righteous deeds
Hath read his Bible well.
Like fragrant blooms of lavish spring
Are adoration’s vows;
The tree that pleases God will bring
Fair fruitage on its boughs.
PESTALOZZI.
For the 150th anniversary of the birthday of Pestalozzi, celebrated in
Cincinnati, January 13, 1896.
Through vasty shades of savage Occident
The Ohio groped what time the man I sing
Took first quick draught of that free element
That thrills Swiss life, and felt the quivering
Of Alpine light which welcomed him to earth.
In Zurich then was born--sublime event--
A man-child in whose soul new gospels waited birth.
The world is ever plastic in the hand
Of humble saviours fearless of the cross:
One self-forgetting hero may command
And mould the future, scorning present loss:
Meek Pestalozzi, herding in his mind
Helvetia’s strayling little children, planned
By their salvation surely to redeem mankind.
Much hope, more love possessed him, but most grief;
His heart, a mourner, sobbed o’er common woe:
Did the Almighty slumber or seem deaf
To wails ascending from His poor below?
Nay, Heaven remembers every bitter tear,
Yet mundane ills must seek on earth relief;
Lo, the Divine hath found a human volunteer.
By sad Lucern arose the children’s cry,
The shelterless, the poor, the innocent;
The man of Zurich spake: “They must not die:
War cast them out, but I by Peace am sent
To father them and mother them and feed
Their bodies and their spirits; need have I
None other than to share their utmost dolorous need.
“Oh, better never to be born at all
Than live forlorn, the victim of neglect!
To fall from brotherhood is lowest fall.
Lift up the low! bid man’s soul stand erect!
On Education found the Church and State.
I send through Europe my imploring call:
Millennial blessings round the Kindergarten wait!
“Unfold what is within! Develop! Make
Full, fragrant efflorescence of the soul!
Let bloom the brain and call the heart awake!
Nothing repress; expand the being, whole,
Complete and perfect under nature’s awe,
Our dear Schoolmistress.” Thus prophetic spake
A voice of faith, forecharged with evolution’s law.
Thus the reformer’s zealous wisdom taught:
Thus, sometime, plead with Bonaparte austere,
Who, scorning prophecy in soaring thought
Of self, flung answer with a royal sneer:
“We can’t be troubled with the A-B-C!”
Vain Emperor! the sword with which he fought
Made slaves which battling alphabets set free.
The culture-captain had his marshals, too,
Ritter and Froebel and a legion more;
They proselyted nations, old and new,
They set their banners fair on every shore;
A million teachers follow in the way
The martyr opened to the good and true;
Our children bask in beam of Pestalozzi’s day.
He deemed his lavish life of no avail,
Dim was his prospect of the Promised Land;
But even then when faith and hope did fail,
The seed, wide scattered from his weary hand,
Was springing, waving, bursting into flower;
For grain of truth is waft on every gale
And sinks in every soil its root of deathless power.
He fell in conflict, but the field was won;
First Democrat of Culture! Thinker brave!
Hail, Switzerland, proud mother of such son,
Heap laurel garlands on his honored grave!
In flowers hide its consecrated sod!
Time writes his shining epitaph: “Well done!”
And Science vindicates his confidence in God.
“THERE IS NO CASTE IN BLOOD.”
In Gunga’s vale is heard
Siddhartha’s sacred word;
Thrill, heart of Hindustan!
Good tidings! Man is _Man_.
The Sudra’s eyes grow dim
With tears, for unto him
Thus spake Siddhartha good,
“There is no caste in blood.”
Take comfort, humble soul!
The ages hopeward roll;
Time grows compassionate;
Thou art not doomed by Fate;
Religion shall prevail;--
Hail! blessed Buddha! hail!
Proclaim thy message good,
“There is no caste in blood.”
Ye plains of Ind, rejoice
At Love’s sweet-sounding voice!
Ye heights of Himalay
Gleam bright for joy to-day!
The truth to Buddha sent
New lights the Orient,
Presaging all men good:
“There is no caste in blood.”
VIVA LA GUERRA.
April 23, 1898.
Viva la Guerra!
That is Spain’s cry;
This our reply:
Viva la Guerra!
Saber clash saber!
Scath visit scath!
Wrath answer wrath!
Saber clash saber.
Army front army!
People or crown,
Which shall go down?
Army face army.
Navy meet navy,
Strong versus strong;
Right against wrong;
Navy dares navy.
Cannon to cannon,
Powder and ball!
God over all!
Cannon to cannon.
Viva la Guerra!
Mars against Thor!
Beautiful War!
Viva la Guerra!
BATTLE CRY.
May 1, 1898.
The loud drums are rolling, the mad trumpets blow!
To battle! the war is begun and we go
To humble the pride of an arrogant foe!
_The ensign and standard which wave for the Crown
Of Castile and Aragon--trample them down!
Granada and Leon and haughty Navarre
Shall lower their banner to Cuba’s lone star!_
Now under Old Glory, the Blue and the Gray
United march shoulder to shoulder away,
To meet the Hidalgos in furious fray.
With musket and haversack ready are we
To tramp the globe over, to sweep every sea,
From isles of dead Philip to Florida’s Key.
We think of the Maine and our hot bosoms swell
With rage of love’s sorrow, which vengeance must quell,
And then we are ready to storm gates of Hell.
Our flag streams aloft by the tempest unfurled!
We strike for a Continent;--nay, for the World!
Mene, Tekel, Upharsin! the thunder is hurled!
_The ensign and standard which wave for the Crown
Of Castile and Aragon--trample them down!
Granada and Leon and haughty Navarre
Shall lower their banner to Cuba’s lone star!_
EL EMPLAZADO.
El Emplazado, the Summoned, the Doomed One,
Spain whom the nations denounce and abhor,
Robe thy dismay in the black sanbenito,
Come to the frowning tribunal of war.
Curst were thy minions, their roster and scutcheon,
Alvas, Alfonsos, archarchons of hate;
Pillared on bigotry, pride, and extortion,
Topples to ruin thy mansion of state.
Violence, Cruelty, Intrigue, and Treason,
These the false courtiers who flattered thy throne;
Empires, thy sisters, forbode thee disaster,
Even thy children their mother disown.
Suppliant Cuba, thy daughter forsaken,
Famished and bleeding and buffeted sore,
Ghastly from gashes and stabs of thy rancor,
Binds up her wounds at an alien door.
Courts and corregidors erst at thy bidding
Banished or butchered Moresco and Jew;
Ghosts from all Christendom, shades of the Martyrs
Flock from the sepulcher thee to pursue.
Wrath of retributive justice o’ertakes thee:
Brand of time’s malison blisters thy brow:
Armed cabelleros and crowned kings of Bourbon,
All are unable to succor thee now.
El Emplazado, the Summoned, the Doomed One!
God’s Inquisition condemns thee today!
Earth-shaking cannon-bolts thunder thy sentence,--
Heaven re-echoes the auto de fe.
NATIONAL SONG.
Dedicated to the Business Men’s Club of Cincinnati, May 13, 1903.
America, my own!
Thy spacious grandeurs rise
Faming the proudest zone
Pavilioned by the skies;
Day’s flying glory breaks
Thy vales and mountains o’er,
And gilds thy streams and lakes
From ocean shore to shore.
Praised be thy wood and wold,
Thy corn and wine and flocks,
The yellow blood of gold
Drained from thy cañon rocks;
Thy trains that shake the land,
Thy ships that plow the main,
Triumphant cities grand
Roaring with noise of gain.
Earth’s races look to Thee:
The peoples of the world
Thy risen splendors see
And thy wide flag unfurled;
Thy sons, in peace or war,
That emblem who behold,
Bless every shining star,
Cheer every streaming fold!
Float high, O gallant flag,
O’er Carib Isles of palm,
O’er bleak Alaskan crag,
O’er far-off lone Guam;
Where Mauna Loa pours
Black thunder from the deeps;
O’er Mindanao’s shores,
O’er Luzon’s coral steeps.
Float high, and be the sign
Of love and brotherhood,--
The pledge, by right divine
Of Power, to do good;
For aye and everywhere,
On continent and wave,
Armipotent to dare,
Imperial to save!
RIGHT OF MIGHT.
I do enlist me in the cause of man,
The old, dear cause of liberty for all,
The hope of history since bards began
To sing inspired heroic battle-call.
The precious purchase of ten thousand years,
The slow-won gains hard held at awful cost
Of toil and thought and grief and blood and tears--
Shall these be stolen from the world, and lost?
These to retain, must force, perforce, alas,
Lift up her banners and her thunders hurl:
Then, when the reign of cruelty shall pass,
Dare Charity her fighting ensign furl.
Where rings no song for freedom, none are free;
Where gleams no sword for justice, justice dies;
Where gates of hell prevail, then must it be
The Powers of Darkness storm the very skies.
The Prince of Gentleness, did He not bring
A brand, lest violence on earth prevail?
He preached, He prayed. And poets needs must sing
War against wrong, or Christ himself must fail.
JAMES E. MURDOCH.
On His Eightieth Birthday.
Four-score! That gallant stripling? No!
That passion-breathing Romeo,
Who climbed, last night, the garden wall,
Mocked by Mercutio’s madcap call!
Four-score? What, he? Charles Surface? Nay;
He is as young as blooming May;
You do but jest; I know him well--
Who can forget wild Mirabel?
Whatever the costume, forsooth,
The same inimitable youth!
Marked you the sables Hamlet wore,
Dark-plumed, in moonlit Elsinore?
Gray locks? Believe the joke who can!
They “make him up” to play “old man”;
Pluck off the wig! Crow’s feet erase!
And recognize wag Murdoch’s face!
Nay;--sober Time his card holds high,
And, swearing figures will not lie,
Adds up the years and proves the date:
See, in the ten’s place, here, an eight.
So be it; Chronos, go thy ways;
Our friend grows old and full of days;
His frame may bend to Time’s control,
But Time is servant to his soul.
His drama on the world’s wide stage,
Now in the last calm scene, old age,
Has been throughout legitimate,
In motive true, performance great.
Whoever thus fulfils his part
Achieves the uttermost of art;
Who thus the scene of life has trod
Pleases the Manager--his God.
Or soon or late, _exeunt_ all--
The bell will ring, the curtain fall,
And we, the actors, put away
The masking garments of the play.
When we from off the boards have passed,
And every light is out at last,
We’ll leave the theater and go
Where real life replaces show.
Play out the play! and be content
To wait for that supreme event;
Dear Murdoch! master, father, friend,--
Star on! still bright’ning to the end!
THE CONCORD SEER.
The Transcendentalist--he now transcends
The cloud of death to join exalted friends.
The Saadi of the West, the Saint, the Sage,
The north-sprung Plato of an un-Greek age,
Hath changed his habitation, and his ghost
Takes note authentic of the unknown coast.
Ah, joy serene! there doth he recognize
Congenial souls foreknown “polite and wise”:--
Two bards were first to hail his risen wraith,
One sang the Psalm of Life, one that of Death;
Then mystic Hawthorne took his willing hand,
As Vergil Dante’s in the Shadow Land;
Now haply doth his converse reconcile
Momentous discords with redeemed Carlyle;
Perhaps in Soul’s consortable domain
He meets the shade of erudite Montaigne;
Or German-Grecian Goethe shows the way
To Fields Elysian where the Ancients stray;--
By some celestial brook of lucent flow,
Where plane-trees with immortal verdure grow,
May sit, discoursing calm philosophies,
The Concord Seer, with argute Socrates.
THE POET OF CLOVERNOOK.
Read at the Celebration of Alice Cary’s birthday,
to the children of the Public Schools of
Cincinnati, April 26, 1880.
A poet born, not made,
By Nature taught, she knew,
And, knowing, still obeyed
The Beautiful, the True.
Hers was the seeing eye,
The sympathetic heart,
The subtle art whereby
Lone genius summons art.
She caught the primal charm
Of every rural scene,--
Of river, cottage, farm,
Blue sky, and woodland green.
Baptized in Sorrow’s stream,
She sang, how sweetly well,
Of true Love’s tender dream,
And Death’s pale asphodel.
Her pensive muse has fled
From hill and meadow-brook;
No more her footsteps tread
Thy paths, fair Clovernook.
No more may she behold
The dew-crowned Summer morn
On wings of sunrise gold
Fly o’er the bending corn.
No more her mournful gaze
Shall seek the twilight sky,
When parting Autumn days
Flush hectic ere they die.
Nor note of joyous bird,
Nor April’s fragrant breath,
Nor tear, nor loving word,
May break the spell of Death.
Sleep on! and take thy rest,
In Greenwood by the sea!
Dear Poet of the West,
Thy West remembers thee.
THE GREENFIELD WIZARD.
(J. W. R.)
Two things there are in heaven above
And earth below--the greater, Love,
The lesser, Death--and therefor grew
Heart’s-ease and rosemary and rue
And myrrh and moly, magic plants;
These, and a common rose or two
Besprent with Indiana dew,
My wizard gathers from their haunts;
Distils the balmy, subtle juice
To make a spell of potent use;
Filters a seeming simple wine
Nectared with some drops most rare--
(How he finds the tinct or where,
Not the critics can divine!)
Whoso gives the wine his lips,
Sipping smiles, and laughing sips;
But, before he drinks it up,
Tears have trickled in the cup.
WILLIAM BAIRD OF RIDGEVILLE.
Now who is the delightfulest
Old soldier that shakes hands with you?
The genial host, the welcome guest,
The teeming brain, the bosom true,
The soul of song and merry jest?
The prince of all good fellows, who?
“Why, William Baird of Ridgeville!”
Whenever meets the G. A. R.,
Through rain or dust he hies to town;
He gladdens the excursion car,
And, as his regiment tramps down
The gala street, you hear afar
The marching measure, “Old John Brown,”
From William Baird of Ridgeville.
Then all the casements open wide,
A thousand flags are shaken free,
The balconies on either side
Are loud with shouts of jubilee,
And thrilling maidens wave with pride
Their kerchiefs, laughing, crying: “See!
That’s William Baird of Ridgeville!”
All children feel his gracious charm,--
Of gentle birth, or sprung of churls;
From hut and mansion, street and farm,
Troop eager round him lads and girls;
The baby leaves its mother’s arm
To ride the shoulder, pull the curls
Of William Baird of Ridgeville.
The fools in flock from William fly,
Like fluttered sparrows from a hawk;
The women hover warmly nigh,
Like bees around a lily-stalk,--
Enchanted by the sparkling eye
And by the spiced and nectared talk
Of William Baird of Ridgeville.
Yet Bill is not a ladies’ man;
He consorts with “the boys”;--he jokes--
This front-faced, sturdy veteran--
With common and uncommon folks;
He’s not the least a Puritan:--
Sometimes he drinks, and daily smokes
His briar-pipe, at Ridgeville.
Wit’s gold is minted in his brain
And glitters from his lavish tongue:
The gravest deacon frowns in vain
To quench the laughter; old and young
Report the brilliant quips that rain
Like scattered pearls at random flung
By William Baird of Ridgeville.
No wight can counterfeit or steal
What unpremeditated art
Gives him to improvise, to feel,
To waken in the answering heart;
What they from learning’s pride conceal,
The Muses uninvoked impart
To William Baird of Ridgeville.
An unambitious soul hath Bill;
The man is modest as a maid;
Down at the foot of fortune’s hill
His genius bides in calm and shade;
He reads his Shakespeare, dreams his fill;
A scythe he swings or plies a spade,--
Bold Captain Baird of Ridgeville.
Nor wife nor child his arms enfold;
No, no--he is a bachelor;
Yet, in his bosom aches an old
Deep wound which antedates the war;
He mourns--so is the secret told--
His dear, dead sweetheart, Eleanor;--
True William Baird of Ridgeville.
Bill’s time must come some day, to die!
Then like a soldier he’ll be found,
Nor fear the bullet’s whizzing cry,
Nor dread the final trumpet’s sound.
If I be breathing then, may I
Be with him on that battleground,
To kiss his lips and say good-bye
To William Baird of Ridgeville.
LET’S SHAKE.
Impromptu.
You thought you would take me, you say, by surprise!
You rascal! I knew you the moment my eyes
Lit on your old phiz, and I couldn’t mistake
Your voice nor your motions. How are you?
Let’s shake!
Train late? But you got here? Now why did you wire
Me not to expect you, you measureless liar?
Come up to my den, and by jolly! we’ll make
A night of it--where is your luggage?
Let’s shake!
Say, how have you been? Let me look in your face;
Have you won, have you lost, in the strenuous race?
Have you knocked the persimmons and taken the cake?
No? Here’s a small wallet--we’ll share it--
Let’s shake!
You may bank on my heart,--it is truer than gold;
Hot, hotter it grows as the world waxes cold;
Through flood and through flame I would go for your sake,
That’s so, Bill, you grizzly old humbug,
Let’s shake!
You’re married, I dare say, or leastwise, in love?
Speak out, for you know we are like hand and glove;
I used to think you and Belle Esmond would wed;--
Yes, yes, as I wrote you, the baby is dead;--
I feared for awhile that my wife’s heart must break;
Your hand, dear old comrade--don’t mind me,--
Let’s shake!
God bless you! I’m awfully glad you are here,
You must not make fun of this womanish tear;
He was only a baby, scarce two Aprils old,
But, William, I tell you they do get a hold
Of the heartstrings, these babies, and, since ours went,
Why, somehow or other, we’re not quite content
With this planet;--but when all our miseries here
Are over, I hope we may strike a new sphere
Up yonder, where hearts never hunger nor ache;--
You’ll get there, I reckon, if I do?
Let’s shake!
A WELCOME TO BOZ.
Impromptu.
In immortal Weller’s name,
By Micawber’s deathless fame,
By the flogging wreaked on Squeers,
By Job Trotter’s fluent tears,
By the beadle Bumble’s fate
At the hands of vixen mate,
By the famous Pickwick Club,
By the dream of Gabriel Grubb,
In the name of Snodgrass’ muse,
Tupman’s amorous interviews,
Winkle’s ludicrous mishaps,
And the fat boy’s countless naps,
By Ben Allen and Bob Sawyer,
By Miss Sally Brass, the lawyer,
In the name of Newman Noggs,
River Thames and London fogs,
Richard Swiveller’s excess,
Feasting with the Marchioness,
By Jack Bunsby’s oracles,
By the chime of Christmas bells,
By the cricket on the hearth,
Scrooge’s frown and Crotchit’s mirth,
By spread tables and good cheer,
Wayside inns and pots of beer,
Hostess plump and jolly host,
Coaches for the country post,
Chambermaid in love with Boots,
Toodles, Traddles, Tapley, Toots,
Jarley, Varden, Mister Dick,
Susan Nipper, Mistress Chick,
Snevellicci, Lilyvick,
Mantalini’s predilections
To transfer his “dem” affections,
Podsnap, Pecksniff, Chuzzlewit,
Quilp and Simon Tappertit,
Weg and Boffin, Smike and Paul,
Nell and Jenny Wren and all,--
Be not Sairy Gamp forgot,--
No, nor Peggotty and Trot,--
By poor Barnaby and Grip,
Dora, Flora, Di and Gip,
Perrybingle, Pinch and Pip--
Welcome, long-expected guest,
Welcome, Dickens, to the West.
1867.
THE BOOK AUCTION.
“How much am I bid?” said the spry auctioneer,
“For the lays of a well-known bard?”
The bard, incog, who was hovering near,
Glanced up, and his breath came hard.
“I am offered a dime! Just think of it, gents!
For these ‘Songs of the Dewy Dawn’!
Are you all done bidding? Ten! ten cents--
Ten cents--and--going--and--gone!
“You don’t know elegant books from trash!”
Joked the jubilant auctioneer;
The dubious author bit his mustache,
And felt confoundedly queer.
“A beautiful copy of Shakespeare’s pomes!
How much am I bid? Look alive!
A right nice work to embellish your homes;
Five cents! Sold to cash, for five!”
The incog singer twinkled his eye
And inwardly said with a thrill:
“American poetry doesn’t sell high,
But I’d hate to go cheap as old Bill.”
A GIFT ACKNOWLEDGED.
February 19, 1881.
Your Winter gift of bud and bloom
Took nature by surprise;
’Twas sudden Summer in my room,
And April in my eyes.
The kindly mist a moment stole
The flowers from my view,
But lo! they blossomed in my soul,
Where love their fragrance knew.
Fair embassy! their smiles I greet,
Camellia, pink and rose;
I understand the message sweet
Their gentle hearts enclose.
Their winsome beauty gladdens me
With this immortal truth:
No age can quite unhappy be
That still remembers youth.
Dear boys! companions! friends sincere!
More warm and true than men,
I thank you most because my tear
Made me a boy again.
THE OLD HOMESTEAD.
Enshrined among roses
The Homestead reposes
With vines mantled o’er;
Ground-ivy and clover
Are running all over
The stone at the door.
Pinks, lilies, are blowing,
Blue violets showing
Gold hearts to the June;
Bees going and coming
Keep evermore humming
Their Hyblean tune.
’Twas here that I wasted
Youth’s flower and tasted
Love’s first honey-dew;
A boy here I slumbered,
By care unencumbered,
Long, balmy nights through.
The wood-birds each morning
Gave musical warning
For shadows to fly;
Their rhapsody choral
Foretold the auroral
First flush of the sky.
With rising emotion
Akin to devotion
The scene I behold;--
With fond recollections
Of tender affections
Too sweet to be told.
JENNIE MOORE.
The morning air is richly rife
With southern soft perfumes;
Yon orchard glows with sudden blush
Of mingled buds and blooms;
The madrigals of wooing birds
Awaken amorous Spring,
And “Jennie Moore, sweet Jennie Moore”
Is all the song they sing.
Glad Yalobusha’s rippling waves
Repeat the darling name;
The zephyr lost among the pines
Dies murmuring the same;
And when the hush of twilight steals
Along the dreamy shore,
The blissful silence to my heart
Keeps singing “Jennie Moore.”
ASHES.
The fire of love is dead.
No spark of living red
The cold, gray ashes show.
Be still! thy sighing breath--
Can it requicken death?
Nay, hope not, dream not so.
Ah, no, no, no!
POSY.
Laura is the first to seek
Rime of March in wildwood bleak;
First to mourn the aster’s death,
Withered by November’s breath;
Every glade and glen she knows
Where the coy spring-beauty grows,
Searches sunny slope and dell
For the pearl or golden bell
Of the quivering addertongue
By the wandering zephyr swung;
She and April, comrades boon,
Hail the early-crowned puccoon;
In the dingle lone she sees
Tremulous anemones;
From the breast of June she takes
Columbines and plumy brakes;
Not a daisy she’ll forget,
Nor the humblest violet.
Lilies proud, on stately stalks,
Bow to greet her where she walks;
Roses to her pathway lean,
Queens saluting lovelier queen,
Emulous to win her eyes,
Rivals for self-sacrifice;
Blesséd they whom she shall choose
Though their fragrant lives they lose!
Joyful the elected flower
Which may triumph one brief hour,
Mingled with the clustered few,
Musical in form and hue!
Thus sweet notes that singly please
Join in chordant melodies!
So do gathered fancies twine
Graceful in the rhythmic line;--
Like a perfect lyric lay
Laura’s exquisite bouquet.
A SNOW BIRD.
Beside the curbstone, in gusty whirl
Of dust and snow-drift, stood a little girl;
The piteous tears ran down her baby face;
In dumb despair she stood, nor moved a pace,
Her flying curls and fluttering short dress
Pathetic signals of forlorn distress;
Her fondling hands, all purple with the cold,
Unto her breast a china doll did hold.
“What is the matter, dear, why do you cry?”
Her chill-cramped lips made dolefullest reply:
“I am so cold, and I don’t know the way.”
That was the most her helplessness could say.
Ere long, before a laughing, ruddy flame,
She smiled through tears and shyly told her name;
I led the strayling to her mother’s door,
And in she flew,--I never saw her more.
Yet oftentimes, when Winter scoffs the sun,
She is my bosom’s guest, that timid one;
She steals into my heart and sobbing stands,
A naked doll in her caressing hands;
I see her shiver and I hear her say,
“I am so cold, and I don’t know the way.”
THE UPSET.
Enforced pursuit of silver eagles fleet
Gave early haste to my reluctant feet,
And so it chanced I hurried--I and Care--
At sunrise down a city thoroughfare;
But by the grace of some directing fay
I met a sight that gladdened me all day.
I saw a beer-plump Saxon--Bacchus’ son--
His red, round face the symbol of slow fun;
Unconscious he of all ’twixt sky and earth
Except one soul-engrossing cause of mirth:
He dragged a painted sled, and, perched thereon,
Sat snug a three-years’ maiden, bright as dawn,
And happy as the sparrows chirping round,
Crumb-hunting near her on the snowy ground.
A sudden turn! a laughing cry, and lo!
The sled upsets, and Mädchen prints the snow.
She laughs; I laugh; loud ha-ha’s Bacchus’ son;--
Then gravely he,--“By yolly! dot vas fun.”
THE SCHOOL GIRL.
From some sweet home the morning train
Brings to the city,
Five days a week, in sun or rain,
Returning like a song’s refrain,
A school girl pretty.
A violet’s unaffected grace
Is dainty miss’s,
Yet, in her shy, expressive face,
The touch of urban arts I trace,
And artifices.
No one but she and Heaven knows
Of what she’s thinking;
It may be either books or beaux,
Fine scholarship or stylish clothes,
Per cents or prinking.
How happy must the household be
This morn who kissed her;
Not every one can make so free;
Who sees her, inly wishes she
Were his own sister.
How favored is the book she cons,
The slate she uses,
The hat she lightly doffs and dons,
The orient sunshade that she owns,
The desk she chooses.
Is she familiar with the wars
Of Julius Caesar?
Do crucibles, and Leyden jars,
And Browning, and the moons of Mars,
And Euclid, please her?
She studies music, I opine;
O day of knowledge!
And other mysteries divine
Of imitation or design,
Taught in the college.
A charm attends her everywhere,
A sense of beauty;
Care smiles to see her free of care;
The hard heart loves her unaware;
Age pays her duty.
Her innocence is panoply,
Her weakness, power;
The earth her guardian, and the sky;
God’s every star is her ally,
And every flower.
THE READERS.
Come hither, my ten years’ maiden;
O’er what do you ponder so much?
“I am reading in Tanglewood Stories,
The tale of the Golden Touch.”
Ah! Hattie, my flax-haired darling,
How buried in study you seem.
“I am reading in Tales from Shakespeare,
Of Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
And there on the sofa is Mayo;
My laddie, what pleases you so?
“This picture and fable in Æsop,--
See here,--of the Pitcher and Crow.”
Come hither, my dream-eyed baby,
You’re falling asleep on the floor!
“I’m reading in Sing Song, papa,--
I wish you would read me some more.”
WAG.
Obiit, February 7, 1878.
He was only a dog, and a mongrel at that,
And worthless and troublesome, lazy and fat,--
Was Wag, who died yesterday night;
Yet now that his barking forever is o’er,
And his caudal appendage can waggle no more,
His elegy I will indite.
’Twas seldom authority mastered his will;
He always was noisy when bid to be still;
He slumbered while danger was near;
He ran after chickens against all command;
When ordered to “sick” he would heedlessly stand;
His principal passion was fear.
From morning till night he would dig in the ground
To get at a rabbit, but, when it was found,
In terror he took to his heels;
But there was one duty he never did shun,
From that naught could drive him, to that he would run:
Wag never neglected his meals.
The tax that I paid the police on his poll,
A dollar a year, I begrudged in my soul,
For Wag I thought dear at a cent;
And once, in my hardness, I gloomily said,
“I wish that the no-account puppy were dead!”
But now he _is_ dead, I repent.
Wag came from Kentucky, a waif, bundled up
And packed in a basket, a charity pup,--
In pity we warmed him and fed;
The only return that his nature could give
For preserving his life, was serenely to live,
Content with his board and his bed.
He was kind to the dogs upon Tusculum Hill;
He followed them all with fraternal good will,
From coach dog to commonest cur;
He was grateful to _people_ who treated him right,
And for his young mistress he even would fight,
But not lose his dinner for her.
I miss his black body curled up and asleep,
I miss his contortions, his bark, and his leap,
And the sound of his gnawing at bones;
The very same night that the Pope died at Rome,
Poor Wag, all alone, in the wash-house at home,
Yielded up his last shivering moans.
And when to the children, next morning, I said,
As they sat at the table, “Yes, Wag--he is dead,”
There was not a dry eye in the room;
And Auntie began, with remorse, to recall
How lately she’d driven deceased from the hall,
With scoldings and blows of a broom.
Now Wag is asleep near an apple-tree old,
And a dog-rose shall blossom above his dear mold,
And there shall a tablet be set;
For though but a dog, and a mongrel at that,
And worthless, and idle, and lazy, and fat,--
Poor Wag was _our_ dog, and a pet.
DONATELLO.
Who will capture Donatello?
Roving cat!
Fierce, ungovernable fellow;
Musical as Leporello,--
Sharp and flat!
Terrible in a duello.
Ragamuffin, have you met a
Felis fat?
Ancestored in gay Valetta,
Where brown dames in black faldetta,
Walk and chat--
Hot his blood as flame of Ætna.
Beautiful, romantic, splendid
Autocrat!
To the forest, unattended,
Daring Donatello wended:
Owl and bat,
Weasel, mole, and mink, he rended.
Savage wildwood his unbounded
Habitat;
By no man or mastiff hounded,
By the midnight mirk surrounded--
Think of that!
Oft his caterwaul he sounded.
Freedom to the gallant fellow.
Exeat!
Victor in each fierce duello,
Midnight, madcap Leporello!
Roving cat!
Graceless, graceful Donatello!
GABRIEL OF SCHWARTZENWALD.
Rhyme, and ring the changes well,
Sing the song of Gabriel,
Gabriel of Schwartzenwald.
Lo, a voice delusive called
From the Ohio’s crooked vale,
Saying, “Sail and sail and sail
Over the sea and hither away,
Westering to the Land of Play;
Happy region of Do-as-you-please,
Where the guilders grow on trees,
Where the peasants all are kings
And there be no underlings.”
Gabriel, the idle dreamer,
Heard the Utopian voice alluring;
Sought a sail-ship,--not a steamer;
Soon the vessel leaves her mooring,
Veers and tacks to Occident,
Bears him o’er the crinkled sea;
Never soul so indolent
Lounged upon a deck as he.
With the vagrant breeze he glides
Over sun-lit, moon-lit tides,
Skims to port and shore;
Spins along the shining rail,
Sleeps into Ohio’s vale,--
Wakes--the journey o’er.
Not an idler Gabriel sees,
Not a kreutzer on the trees;
Every bretzel must be bought;
Naught is proffered him for naught.
’Tis the Region of Unrest,
Busy, toiling, moiling West!
All the peasant kings he found
Building houses, tilling ground.
Gabriel of Schwartzenwald
From his dream is disenthralled;
Transatlantic, far away,
Eastward looms the Land of Play.
Like the lily, like the daisy,
Lolling Gabriel was lazy;
Clownish were his clumsy paces,
Ludicrous his slow grimaces;
Ill-defined the thoughts he spoke,
Like the wreathed tobacco smoke
From his meerschaum upward shed
Curling round his shaggy head.
Little could he understand:--
“Vish I vas in Faderland,
Nicht is goot for notings here
Only shust das lager-bier.”
Easily he wept or smiled,
Easily was he beguiled;
Rill-like, shallow, o’er his mind,
Ran affections swift and kind;
Secretly he shared his meat
With a lame cur on the street;
“Vonce I had a hund,” said he,
“Vat vas very freund to me;
Ya, mein Herr, dat hund vas mine;
Vish I heard him barkin’ here;
Vish I had a glass goot bier,
Oder flash von German wein.”
Hard by Mineami Bayou,
Where the gadding breezes cool
Loiter up from the Ohio,
Gabriel, at sink of sun,
Throned upon a wooden stool,
Fondled his accordion.
Then the ragged urchins round,
And their brown-legged sisters, maybe,
Lugging each a flax-haired baby,--
Sometimes, too, the weary mothers,
Yea, and I, and lingering others,
By sad, dulcet quaverings won,
Gathered near to catch the sound;
O’er the hill the risen moon
Paused to hear the mellow tune;
All too sadly, all too soon,
Gabriel would cease to play,
Light his pipe and puff away.
“Vas a Fräulein,”--mumbled he;
“Vish I vas to-night not hier;
Not America for me,--
Only shust das lager-bier.”
“Play a waltz now, Gabriel!” “Nein,
Rhine wein ist der beste wein.”
Gabriel did sigh and sadden
For the linden shades of Baden,
For the glooms of Schwartzenwald;
So a homesick brief he scrawled
To his mother, her to tell
That he was not strong or well.
(Of the Fräulein wrote he not,--
Haply Gabriel forgot.)
Soon the doting mother old,--
Four-score were her years and three,--
Sent the lout a purse of gold,
With the summons--“Come to me!
Komm zu mir, mein Sohn, geschwind,
Komm zu mir, mein liebes Kind.”
From the Ohio’s crooked vale,
Flying fast by rail and sail,
Home to Schwartzenwald away,
Eastward to the Land of Play,
Gabriel of Schwartzenwald
Followed the mother-tongue that called
From the fatherland in tearful tone,
“Komm, Gabriel, mein lieber Sohn!”
Followed the mother-voice and the call
Of the nameless Fräulein, short or tall,
And the coaxing lisp of the linden leaves,
And the bark of a dog forlorn that grieves
For an absent master; the gurgle, too,
Of bottled grape-juice and foamy brew,
And the tweedle-dee of the fiddle gay
That leads to the dance on a holiday;--
Followed his dreams and his memories,
Whirled with the sleeping speed of wheels,
Flew on the eager wings of the breeze,
Doubting of naught that his foolish heart feels,
Sure that the country of Do-as-you-please,
If any such ever is found upon earth,
Is the home of our mother, the land of our birth.
COFFEA ARABICA.
More entrancing than aroma
From the Hindu sacred soma,
Comes a fragrant
Essence vagrant
Floating up
From my quaint Zumpango cup,
Incense rare,
Evanescent steam ascending,
Curling, wavering, fading, blending,
Vanishing in viewless air.
Let me sip and dream and sing
Musing many an idle thing,
Let me sing and dream and sip
Making many an fancied trip
Far away and far away
Over ocean, gulf and bay
To islands whence the spicy wind
Breathes languor on the tropic sea,
To sultry strands of teeming Ind,
To coasts of torrid Araby,
To realms no Boreal breath may chill,
Like rich Brazil,
Or Jabal’s clouded hill on hill,
Or warm Bulgosa’s valley low,
To zones where Summer splendors glow,
Where seasons never come or go,
Where coffee trees perpetual blow.
While I drowse and dream and sip,
Sailing, sailing slides a ship
Over the glittering sea,
Measuring leagues of night and day,
Bearing and bringing to me,
Bringing from far away, away,
The pale green magical berry,
The seed of the virtuous cherry,
The bean of the blossom divine!
Bringing from over the brine,
Bringing from Demarara,
From balsamy San Pará,
Bringing from Trans-Sahara,
From hoard of the Grand Bashaw,
Or redolent chests of Menelek,
An Abyssinian cargo
Richer than freight of Argo,
Treasured in garners under the deck,
Bringing and bearing for me
The gift of the coffee tree!
Better than blood of the Spanish vine,
Or ruddy or amber wine of the Rhine;
Bearing the bean of the blessed tree!
Better than bousa or sake fine,
Or sampan loads of oolong tea,
Souchong, twankay, or bohea,--
Bringing the virtuous bean divine,
The coffee-tree cherry,
The magical berry,
More entrancing than aroma
From the Hindu sacred soma.
AN INDIA SHAWL.
This dainty shawl an Eastern shuttle wove,
Where Ravee stream winds sunward from Cashmere;
By nimble gold ’twas borne around the sphere
For one who gave it me in friendly love.
To rival nature’s hues the weaver strove,
For beauty’s sake and not barbaric show;
Behold, commingled here, elusive glow
The brilliant, innocent dyes of field and grove.
This silk soft web was never merchandise;
A charm of peerless art proclaims it rare,--
A sumptuous robe that Majesty would prize,
And India’s British Empress well might wear;
’Tis mine for thee within whose beaming eyes
I see love’s India, O my queenly Fair!
APOLOGY.
Full well my loyal heart remembers
The vow of rapture’s lavish tongue,
For thee to smother grief’s Decembers
In joy’s June roses and make over
The world;--how easily, fond lover,
Could I when life and hope were young.
When troth-plight had begemmed thy finger
Unhappiness should cease to be;
No shape of care near thee should linger;
Exultant, I, thy love to guerdon,
Would weep thy tears and bear thy burden,
Yea, purchase thy Gethsemane.
For thee should hemlock turn to honey,
Thy hand, unhurt, the thorn might hold,
Darkness should light thee, and the sunny
Celestial days, triumphal, singing
Around the globe, should bless thee, bringing
Anew to earth the Age of Gold.
Thy beauty and thy grace to glory,
Would I inweave thy golden name
In shining weft of song and story;
Would I, on love’s heroic mission,
Ascend the sunned peak of ambition
To pluck the Alpine flower, fame.
O season of delirious passion!
What knew or recked my spirit then
Of deeds in less transcendent fashion
Than youth’s high drama realizes
In visions, dreams, and enterprises,
That lift to godhood mortal men!
Naught is impossible to Heaven,
Nor to the puissance of youth!
Imagination’s quickening leaven
Works in the pulsing brain and being
Till every sense hath second-seeing
And all that should be true is truth.
O glorious falsehood and illusion!
Call not the lover’s transports lies:
The white light of his heart in fusion
Makes visible the far ideal,
Only the low earth is unreal,
Secure the lover walks the skies.
I trod with thee the starry spaces,
I told the only tale I knew;
We dwelt in spirit, not in places,
And, if the promises then spoken,--
Be witness, O my God!--were broken,
The promising was heavenly true.
UNRECONCILED.
When winter’s loom of cloud
Weaves robes of snow
To wrap the hills in shroud,
My meditations go
Where shuddering tempests blow
Above a little grave.
When spring’s pale wild-flowers wake
Where sunbeams play,
Must not my full heart break?
Birds, blossoms, come with May,--
Would that, some happy day,
My child could come again.
When air-built cloud-fleets sail
Blue summer’s sky,
And violets exhale
Their fragrant souls and die,
My soul lifts Rachel’s cry,
For, oh! the child is not.
Most mournful time of all
Is when the leaf
Fades, withering to its fall,
Ending its term so brief,
Like him, my joy, my grief,
Lost in the senseless grave.
The new moons come and go,
Stars rise and set,
Time’s healing waters flow
Across my wound, and yet
Grief cannot pay love’s debt;--
Love’s solace is to mourn.
ANNIVERSARY.
This is your birthday, dearest? Dearest wife,
Fond sweetheart of my youth and of my prime,
Lover and friend and comrade, in whose life
I live unconscious of the flight of time!
Three-score? and must we grant it so? Why, then
Thank Heaven we have tasted life thus long,
For life is rich, and shall grow sweeter when
Like mellowing wine age renders it less strong.
We shall grow old together, count the years,
Welcome each sunrise and each setting sun;
Together laugh our laugh or weep our tears,
Wait, act and suffer, till the sands be run.
I owned Golconda and the Coast of Pearl,
Being a boy--it was but yesterday;
One shared my fortune, giving hers--one girl--
Whither, my darling, fled youth’s dream away?
Where are the morning and the wealth of spring?
Gone with the air-built castle--vanished, gone!
The dew of youth went sunward, and the wing
Is broken now that soared at golden dawn.
It is too late for riches, land and gold;
Too late to pluck the flaming rose of power;
My hands have bled to gather what they hold--
Buds of dead hope--ambition’s phantom flower.
Yet all I am I dedicate to you,
As on our spousal morning, Love, and bring
This heart-born offering to pledge anew,
In Autumn song, the promises of Spring.
AMAUROTE.
Safe in towery Amaurote
Now I dwell;
From the tumbling sea my boat,
Like a bell of foam afloat,
Up Anyder’s refluent stream
Voyaged well;
And I woke unto a dream
Realized in realm remote
Of Utopia.
Whiles my eudæmonian guide
Thrummed her lyre,
Charmful o’er the billows wide,
In the distance I espied
Gleam of opalescent dome,
Golden spire;
Then my soul foreknew its home
Far beyond the roaring tide,
In Utopia!
All was sooth as poets old
Gave renown;
All that seers and sages told,
Fabling of an Age of Gold;--
Towery Amaurote was there,
Blissful town!
Far away from everywhere,
Flushed with rosy light, behold!
In Utopia.
Visioned splendor reared from naught
Rose sublime;
Art and Beauty thither brought
All Imagination taught
Of the mystery of Man
And of Time;
Wisdom, smiling on the plan,
Bade the wonderwork be wrought,
In Utopia!
Have I eaten of the lote
So its spell
Laps and lulls me to devote
Hours Lethean, far remote
From the dreadful things that be?
Nay, I dwell
Where o’er dream-deeps Poesie
Sang me, in a foam-bell boat,
To Utopia.
THE END
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