SHE CAME AND WENT

As a twig trembles, which a bird Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, So is my memory thrilled and stirred;— I only know she came and went.

As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, The blue dome's measureless content,— So my soul held, that moment's heaven;— I only know she came and went.

As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps The orchards full of bloom and scent, So clove her May my wintry sleeps;— I only know she came and went.

An angel stood and met my gaze, Through the low doorway of my tent; The tent is struck, the vision stays;— I only know she came and went

Oh, when the room grows slowly dim, And life's last oil is nearly spent, One gush of light these eyes will brim, Only to think she came and went.



THE CHANGELING

I had a little daughter, And she was given to me To lead me gently backward To the Heavenly Father's knee, That I, by the force of nature. Might in some dim wise divine The depth of his infinite patience To this wayward soul of mine.

I know not how others saw her, But to me she was wholly fair, And the light of the heaven she came from Still lingered and gleamed in her hair; For it was as wavy and golden, And as many changes took, As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples On the yellow bed of a brook.

To what can I liken her smiling Upon me, her kneeling lover, How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids, And dimpled her wholly over, Till her outstretched hands smiled also, And I almost seemed to see The very heart of her mother Sending sun through her veins to me!

She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth, And it hardly seemed a day, When a troop of wandering angels Stole my little daughter away; Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari But loosed the hampering strings, And when they had opened her cage-door. My little bird used her wings.

But they left in her stead a changeling A little angel child, That seems like her bud in full blossom, And smiles as she never smiled: When I wake in the morning, I see it Where she always used to lie, And I feel as weak as a violet Alone 'neath the awful sky.

As weak, yet as trustful also; For the whole year long I see All the wonders of faithful Nature Still worked for the love of me; Winds wander, and dews drip earthward, Rain falls, suns rise and set, Earth whirls, and all but to prosper A poor little violet.

This child is not mine as the first was, I cannot sing it to rest, I cannot lift it up fatherly And bliss it upon my breast: Yet it lies in my little one's cradle And sits in my little one's chair, And the light of the heaven she's gone to Transfigures its golden hair.



THE PIONEER

What man would live coffined with brick and stone, Imprisoned from the healing touch of air, And cramped with selfish landmarks everywhere, When all before him stretches, furrowless and lone, The unmapped prairie none can fence or own?

What man would read and read the self-same faces, And, like the marbles which the windmill grinds, Rub smooth forever with the same smooth minds, This year retracing last year's, every year's, dull traces, When there are woods and unpenfolded spaces?

What man o'er one old thought would pore and pore, Shut like a book between its covers thin For every fool to leave his dog's ears in, When solitude is his, and God forevermore, Just for the opening of a paltry door?

What man would watch life's oozy element Creep Letheward forever, when he might Down some great river drift beyond men's sight, To where the undethroned forest's royal tent Broods with its hush o'er half a continent?

What man with men would push and altercate, Piecing out crooked means to crooked ends, When he can have the skies and woods for friends, Snatch back the rudder of his undismantled fate, And in himself be ruler, church, and state?

Cast leaves and feathers rot in last year's nest, The winged brood, flown thence, new dwellings plan; The serf of his own Past is not a man; To change and change is life, to move and never rest;— Not what we are, but what we hope, is best.

The wild, free woods make no man halt or blind; Cities rob men of eyes and hands and feet, Patching one whole of many incomplete; The general preys upon the individual mind, And each alone is helpless as the wind.

Each man is some man's servant; every soul Is by some other's presence quite discrowned; Each owes the next through all the imperfect round, Yet not with mutual help; each man is his own goal, And the whole earth must stop to pay him toll.

Here, life the undiminished man demands; New faculties stretch out to meet new wants; What Nature asks, that Nature also grants; Here man is lord, not drudge, of eyes and feet and hands, And to his life is knit with hourly bands.

Come out, then, from the old thoughts and old ways, Before you harden to a crystal cold Which the new life can shatter, but not mould; Freedom for you still waits, still looking backward, stays, But widens still the irretrievable space.



LONGING

Of all the myriad moods of mind That through the soul come thronging, Which one was e'er so dear, so kind, So beautiful as Longing? The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment, Before the Present poor and bare Can make its sneering comment.

Still, through our paltry stir and strife, Glows down the wished ideal, And Longing moulds in clay what Life Carves in the marble Real; To let the new life in, we know, Desire must ope the portal; Perhaps the longing to be so Helps make the soul immortal.

Longing is God's fresh heavenward will. With our poor earthward striving; We quench it that we may be still Content with merely living; But, would we learn that heart's full scope Which we are hourly wronging, Our lives must climb from hope to hope And realize our longing.

Ah! let us hope that to our praise Good God not only reckons The moments when we tread his ways, But when the spirit beckons,— That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought, Howe'er we fail in action.



ODE TO FRANCE

FEBRUARY, 1848

I

As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow, Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches In unwarned havoc on the roofs below, So grew and gathered through the silent years The madness of a People, wrong by wrong. There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears, No strength in suffering; but the Past was strong: The brute despair of trampled centuries Leaped up with one hoarse yell and snapped its bands, 10 Groped for its right with horny, callous hands, And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes. What wonder if those palms were all too hard For nice distinctions,—if that maenad throng— They whose thick atmosphere no bard Had shivered with the lightning of his song, Brutes with the memories and desires of men, Whose chronicles were writ with iron pen, In the crooked shoulder and the forehead low, Set wrong to balance wrong, 20 And physicked woe with woe?

II

They did as they were taught; not theirs the blame, If men who scattered firebrands reaped the flame: They trampled Peace beneath their savage feet, And by her golden tresses drew Mercy along the pavement of the street. O Freedom! Freedom! is thy morning-dew So gory red? Alas, thy light had ne'er Shone in upon the chaos of their lair! They reared to thee such symbol as they knew, 30 And worshipped it with flame and blood, A Vengeance, axe in hand, that stood Holding a tyrant's head up by the clotted hair.

III

What wrongs the Oppressor suffered, these we know; These have found piteous voice in song and prose; But for the Oppressed, their darkness and their woe, Their grinding centuries,—what Muse had those? Though hall and palace had nor eyes nor ears, Hardening a people's heart to senseless stone, Thou knewest them, O Earth, that drank their tears, 40 O Heaven, that heard their inarticulate moan! They noted down their fetters, link by link; Coarse was the hand that scrawled, and red the ink; Rude was their score, as suits unlettered men, Notched with a headsman's axe upon a block: What marvel if, when came the avenging shock, 'Twas Ate, not Urania, held the pen?

IV

With eye averted, and an anguished frown, Loathingly glides the Muse through scenes of strife, Where, like the heart of Vengeance up and down, 50 Throbs in its framework the blood-muffled knife; Slow are the steps of Freedom, but her feet Turn never backward: hers no bloody glare; Her light is calm, and innocent, and sweet, And where it enters there is no despair: Not first on palace and cathedral spire Quivers and gleams that unconsuming fire; While these stand black against her morning skies, The peasant sees it leap from peak to peak Along his hills; the craftsman's burning eyes 60 Own with cool tears its influence mother-meek; It lights the poet's heart up like a star; Ah! while the tyrant deemed it still afar, And twined with golden threads his futile snare. That swift, convicting glow all round him ran; 'Twas close beside him there, Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man.

V

O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit? A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weed Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no seed! 70 Could eighteen years strike down no deeper root? But now thy vulture eye was turned on Spain; A shout from Paris, and thy crown falls off, Thy race has ceased to reign, And thou become a fugitive and scoff: Slippery the feet that mount by stairs of gold, And weakest of all fences one of steel; Go and keep school again like him of old, The Syracusan tyrant;—thou mayst feel Royal amid a birch-swayed commonweal! 80

VI

Not long can he be ruler who allows His time to run before him; thou wast naught Soon as the strip of gold about thy brows Was no more emblem of the People's thought: Vain were thy bayonets against the foe Thou hadst to cope with; thou didst wage War not with Frenchmen merely;—no, Thy strife was with the Spirit of the Age, The invisible Spirit whose first breath divine 89 Scattered thy frail endeavor, And, like poor last year's leaves, whirled thee and thine Into the Dark forever!

VII

Is here no triumph? Nay, what though The yellow blood of Trade meanwhile should pour Along its arteries a shrunken flow, And the idle canvas droop around the shore? These do not make a state, Nor keep it great; I think God made The earth for man, not trade; 100 And where each humblest human creature Can stand, no more suspicious or afraid, Erect and kingly in his right of nature, To heaven and earth knit with harmonious ties,— Where I behold the exultation Of manhood glowing in those eyes That had been dark for ages, Or only lit with bestial loves and rages, There I behold a Nation: The France which lies 110 Between the Pyrenees and Rhine Is the least part of France; I see her rather in the soul whose shine Burns through the craftsman's grimy countenance, In the new energy divine Of Toil's enfranchised glance.

VIII

And if it be a dream, If the great Future be the little Past 'Neath a new mask, which drops and shows at last The same weird, mocking face to balk and blast, 120 Yet, Muse, a gladder measure suits the theme, And the Tyrtaean harp Loves notes more resolute and sharp, Throbbing, as throbs the bosom, hot and fast: Such visions are of morning, Theirs is no vague forewarning, The dreams which nations dream come true. And shape the world anew; If this be a sleep, 129 Make it long, make it deep, O Father, who-sendest the harvests men reap! While Labor so sleepeth, His sorrow is gone, No longer he weepeth, But smileth and steepeth His thoughts in the dawn; He heareth Hope yonder Rain, lark-like, her fancies, His dreaming hands wander Mid heart's-ease and pansies; 140 ''Tis a dream! 'Tis a vision!' Shrieks Mammon aghast; 'The day's broad derision Will chase it at last; Ye are mad, ye have taken A slumbering kraken For firm land of the Past!' Ah! if he awaken, God shield us all then, 149 If this dream rudely shaken Shall cheat him again!

IX

Since first I heard our Northwind blow, Since first I saw Atlantic throw On our grim rocks his thunderous snow, I loved thee, Freedom; as a boy The rattle of thy shield at Marathon Did with a Grecian joy Through all my pulses run; But I have learned to love thee now Without the helm upon thy gleaming brow, 160 A maiden mild and undefiled Like her who bore the world's redeeming child; And surely never did thine altars glance With purer fires than now in France; While, in their clear white flashes, Wrong's shadow, backward cast, Waves cowering o'er the ashes Of the dead, blaspheming Past, O'er the shapes of fallen giants, His own unburied brood, 170 Whose dead hands clench defiance At the overpowering Good: And down the happy future runs a flood Of prophesying light; It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood, Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud Of Brotherhood and Right.



ANTI-APIS

Praisest Law, friend? We, too, love it much as they that love it best; 'Tis the deep, august foundation, whereon Peace and Justice rest; On the rock primeval, hidden in the Past its bases be, Block by block the endeavoring Ages built it up to what we see.

But dig down: the Old unbury; thou shalt find on every stone That each Age hath carved the symbol of what god to them was known, Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but the fairest that they knew; If their sight were dim and earthward, yet their hope and aim were true.

Surely as the unconscious needle feels the far-off loadstar draw, So strives every gracious nature to at-one itself with law; 10 And the elder Saints and Sages laid their pious framework right By a theocratic instinct covered from the people's sight.

As their gods were, so their laws were; Thor the strong could reave and steal, So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman's eager keel; But a new law came when Christ came, and not blameless, as before, Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our lives and faiths to Thor.

Law is holy: ay, but what law? Is there nothing more divine Than the patched-up broils of Congress, venal, full of meat and wine? Is there, say you, nothing higher? Naught, God save us! that transcends Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends? 20

Did Jehovah ask their counsel, or submit to them a plan, Ere He filled with loves, hopes, longings, this aspiring heart of man? For their edict does the soul wait, ere it swing round to the pole Of the true, the free, the God-willed, all that makes it be a soul?

Law is holy; but not your law, ye who keep the tablets whole While ye dash the Law to pieces, shatter it in life and soul; Bearing up the Ark is lightsome, golden Apis hid within, While we Levites share the offerings, richer by the people's sin.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's? yes, but tell me, if you can, Is this superscription Caesar's here upon our brother man? 30 Is not here some other's image, dark and sullied though it be, In this fellow-soul that worships, struggles Godward even as we?

It was not to such a future that the Mayflower's prow was turned, Not to such a faith the martyrs clung, exulting as they burned; Not by such laws are men fashioned, earnest, simple, valiant, great In the household virtues whereon rests the unconquerable state.

Ah! there is a higher gospel, overhead the God-roof springs, And each glad, obedient planet like a golden shuttle sings Through the web which Time is weaving in his never-resting loom, Weaving seasons many-colored, bringing prophecy to doom. 40

Think you Truth a farthing rushlight, to be pinched out when you will With your deft official fingers, and your politicians' skill? Is your God a wooden fetish, to be hidden out of sight That his block eyes may not see you do the thing that is not right?

But the Destinies think not so; to their judgment-chamber lone Comes no noise of popular clamor, there Fame's trumpet is not blown; Your majorities they reck not; that you grant, but then you say That you differ with them somewhat,—which is stronger, you or they?

Patient are they as the insects that build islands in the deep; They hurl not the bolted thunder, but their silent way they keep; 50 Where they have been that we know; where empires towered that were not just; Lo! the skulking wild fox scratches in a little heap of dust.



A PARABLE

Said Christ our Lord, 'I will go and see How the men, my brethren, believe in me.' He passed not again through the gate of birth, But made himself known to the children of earth.

Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and kings, 'Behold, now, the Giver of all good things; Go to, let us welcome with pomp and state Him who alone is mighty and great.'

With carpets of gold the ground they spread Wherever the Son of Man should tread, And in palace-chambers lofty and rare They lodged him, and served him with kingly fare.

Great organs surged through arches dim Their jubilant floods in praise of him; And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall, He saw his own image high over all.

But still, wherever his steps they led, The Lord in sorrow bent down his head, And from under the heavy foundation-stones, The son of Mary heard bitter groans.

And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall, He marked great fissures that rent the wall, And opened wider and yet more wide As the living foundation heaved and sighed.

'Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, On the bodies and souls of living men? And think ye that building shall endure, Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?

'With gates of silver and bars of gold Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold; I have heard the dropping of their tears In heaven these eighteen hundred years.'

'O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt, We build but as our fathers built; Behold thine images, how they stand, Sovereign and sole, through all our land.

'Our task is hard,—with sword and flame To hold thine earth forever the same, And with sharp crooks of steel to keep Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep.'

Then Christ sought out an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin Pushed from her faintly want and sin.

These set he in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garment-hem, For fear of defilement, 'Lo, here,' said he, 'The images ye have made of me!'



ODE

WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE COCHITUATE WATER INTO THE CITY OF BOSTON

My name is Water: I have sped Through strange, dark ways, untried before, By pure desire of friendship led, Cochituate's ambassador; He sends four royal gifts by me: Long life, health, peace, and purity.

I'm Ceres' cup-bearer; I pour, For flowers and fruits and all their kin, Her crystal vintage, from of yore Stored in old Earth's selectest bin, Flora's Falernian ripe, since God The wine-press of the deluge trod.

In that far isle whence, iron-willed, The New World's sires their bark unmoored, The fairies' acorn-cups I filled Upon the toadstool's silver board, And, 'neath Herne's oak, for Shakespeare's sight, Strewed moss and grass with diamonds bright.

No fairies in the Mayflower came, And, lightsome as I sparkle here, For Mother Bay State, busy dame, I've toiled and drudged this many a year, Throbbed in her engines' iron veins, Twirled myriad spindles for her gains.

I, too, can weave: the warp I set Through which the sun his shuttle throws, And, bright as Noah saw it, yet For you the arching rainbow glows, A sight in Paradise denied To unfallen Adam and his bride.

When Winter held me in his grip, You seized and sent me o'er the wave, Ungrateful! in a prison-ship; But I forgive, not long a slave, For, soon as summer south-winds blew, Homeward I fled, disguised as dew.

For countless services I'm fit, Of use, of pleasure, and of gain, But lightly from all bonds I flit, Nor lose my mirth, nor feel a stain; From mill and wash-tub I escape, And take in heaven my proper shape.

So, free myself, to-day, elate I come from far o'er hill and mead, And here, Cochituate's envoy, wait To be your blithesome Ganymede, And brim your cups with nectar true That never will make slaves of you.



LINES

SUGGESTED BY THE GRAVES OF TWO ENGLISH SOLDIERS ON CONCORD BATTLE-GROUND

The same good blood that now refills The dotard Orient's shrunken veins, The same whose vigor westward thrills, Bursting Nevada's silver chains, Poured here upon the April grass, Freckled with red the herbage new; On reeled the battle's trampling mass, Back to the ash the bluebird flew.

Poured here in vain;—that sturdy blood Was meant to make the earth more green, But in a higher, gentler mood Than broke this April noon serene; Two graves are here: to mark the place, At head and foot, an unhewn stone, O'er which the herald lichens trace The blazon of Oblivion.

These men were brave enough, and true To the hired soldier's bull-dog creed; What brought them here they never knew, They fought as suits the English breed: They came three thousand miles, and died, To keep the Past upon its throne: Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, Their English mother made her moan.

The turf that covers them no thrill Sends up to fire the heart and brain; No stronger purpose nerves the will, No hope renews its youth again: From farm to farm the Concord glides, And trails my fancy with its flow; O'erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides, Twinned in the river's heaven below.

But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs, Proud of thy birth and neighbor's right, Where sleep the heroic villagers Borne red and stiff from Concord fight; Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun, Or Seth, as ebbed the life away, What earthquake rifts would shoot and run World-wide from that short April fray?

What then? With heart and hand they wrought, According to their village light; 'Twas for the Future that they fought, Their rustic faith in what was right. Upon earth's tragic stage they burst Unsummoned, in the humble sock; Theirs the fifth act; the curtain first Rose long ago on Charles's block.

Their graves have voices; if they threw Dice charged with fates beyond their ken, Yet to their instincts they were true, And had the genius to be men. Fine privilege of Freedom's host, Of humblest soldiers for the Right!— Age after age ye hold your post, Your graves send courage forth, and might.



TO——

We, too, have autumns, when our leaves Drop loosely through the dampened air, When all our good seems bound in sheaves, And we stand reaped and bare.

Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go; At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow.

But each day brings less summer cheer, Crimps more our ineffectual spring, And something earlier every year Our singing birds take wing.

As less the olden glow abides, And less the chillier heart aspires, With drift-wood beached in past spring-tides We light our sullen fires.

By the pinched rushlight's starving beam We cower and strain our wasted sight, To stitch youth's shroud up, seam by seam, In the long arctic night.

It was not so—we once were young When Spring, to womanly Summer turning, Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung, In the red sunrise burning.

We trusted then, aspired, believed That earth could be remade to-morrow; Ah, why be ever undeceived? Why give up faith for sorrow?

O thou, whose days are yet all spring, Faith, blighted one, is past retrieving; Experience is a dumb, dead thing; The victory's in believing.



FREEDOM

Are we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be That thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringest Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea, Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom flingest, As on an altar,—can it be that ye Have wasted inspiration on dead ears, Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains? The people's heart is like a harp for years Hung where some petrifying torrent rains Its slow-incrusting spray: the stiffened chords 10 Faint and more faint make answer to the tears That drip upon them: idle are all words: Only a golden plectrum wakes the tone Deep buried 'neath that ever-thickening stone.

We are not free: doth Freedom, then, consist In musing with our faces toward the Past, While petty cares and crawling interests twist Their spider-threads about us, which at last Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind In formal narrowness heart, soul and mind? 20 Freedom is re-created year by year, In hearts wide open on the Godward side, In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, In minds that sway the future like a tide. He broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes; She chooses men for her august abodes, Building them fair and fronting to the dawn; Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few Light footprints, leading mornward through the dew: Before the day had risen, she was gone. 30

And we must follow: swiftly runs she on, And, if our steps should slacken in despair, Half turns her face, half smiles through golden hair, Forever yielding, never wholly won: That is not love which pauses in the race Two close-linked names on fleeting sand to trace; Freedom gained yesterday is no more ours; Men gather but dry seeds of last year's flowers; Still there's a charm uugranted, still a grace, Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained, 40 Makes us Possession's languid hand let fall; 'Tis but a fragment of ourselves is gained, The Future brings us more, but never all.

And, as the finder of some unknown realm, Mounting a summit whence he thinks to see On either side of him the imprisoning sea, Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelm The valley-land, peak after snowy peak Stretch out of sight, each like a silver helm Beneath its plume of smoke, sublime and bleak, 50 And what he thought an island finds to be A continent to him first oped,—so we Can from our height of Freedom look along A boundless future, ours if we be strong; Or if we shrink, better remount our ships And, fleeing God's express design, trace back The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet-track To Europe entering her blood-red eclipse.

* * * * *

Therefore of Europe now I will not doubt, For the broad foreheads surely win the day, 60 And brains, not crowns or soul-gelt armies, weigh In Fortune's scales: such dust she brushes out. Most gracious are the conquests of the Word, Gradual and silent as a flower's increase, And the best guide from old to new is Peace— Yet, Freedom, than canst sanctify the sword!

Bravely to do whate'er the time demands, Whether with pen or sword, and not to flinch, This is the task that fits heroic hands; So are Truth's boundaries widened inch by inch. 70

I do not love the Peace which tyrants make; The calm she breeds let the sword's lightning break! It is the tyrants who have beaten out Ploughshares and pruning-hooks to spears and swords, And shall I pause and moralize and doubt? Whose veins run water let him mete his words! Each fetter sundered is the whole world's gain! And rather than humanity remain A pearl beneath the feet of Austrian swine, Welcome to me whatever breaks a chain. 80 That surely is of God, and all divine!



BIBLIOLATRES

Bowing thyself in dust before a Book, And thinking the great God is thine alone, O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brook What gods the heathen carves in wood and stone, As if the Shepherd who from the outer cold Leads all his shivering lambs to one sure fold Were careful for the fashion of his crook.

There is no broken reed so poor and base, No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue, But He therewith the ravening wolf can chase, And guide his flock to springs and pastures new; Through ways unloosed for, and through many lands, Far from the rich folds built with human hands, The gracious footprints of his love I trace.

And what art thou, own brother of the clod, That from his hand the crook wouldst snatch away And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod, To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day? Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew, That with thy idol-volume's covers two Wouldst make a jail to coop the living God?

Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ-tone By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught, Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brains Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought, Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire, Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desire To weld anew the spirit's broken chains.

God is not dumb, that He should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor; There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less, Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends, Intent on manna still and mortal ends, Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore.

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone; Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, While thunder's surges burst on cliffs and cloud, Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.



BEAVER BROOK

Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, And, minuting the long day's loss, The cedar's shadow, slow and still, Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss.

Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, The aspen's leaves are scarce astir; Only the little mill sends up Its busy, never-ceasing burr.

Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems The road along the mill-pond's brink, From 'neath the arching barberry-stems, My footstep scares the shy chewink.

Beneath a bony buttonwood The mill's red door lets forth the din; The whitened miller, dust-imbued, Flits past the square of dark within.

No mountain torrent's strength is here; Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, And gently waits the miller's will.

Swift slips Undine along the race Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round.

The miller dreams not at what cost The quivering millstones hum and whirl, Nor how for every turn are tost Armfuls of diamond and of pearl.

But Summer cleared my happier eyes With drops of some celestial juice, To see how Beauty underlies Forevermore each form of use.

And more; methought I saw that flood, Which now so dull and darkling steals, Thick, here and there, with human blood, To turn the world's laborious wheels.

No more than doth the miller there, Shut in our several cells, do we Know with what waste of beauty rare Moves every day's machinery.

Surely the wiser time shall come When this fine overplus of might, No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, Shall leap to music and to light.

In that new childhood of the Earth Life of itself shall dance and play, Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make mirth, And labor meet delight halfway.



MEMORIAL VERSES



KOSSUTH

A race of nobles may die out, A royal line may leave no heir; Wise Nature sets no guards about Her pewter plate and wooden ware.

But they fail not, the kinglier breed, Who starry diadems attain; To dungeon, axe, and stake succeed Heirs of the old heroic strain.

The zeal of Nature never cools, Nor is she thwarted of her ends; When gapped and dulled her cheaper tools, Then she a saint and prophet spends.

Land of the Magyars! though it be The tyrant may relink his chain, Already thine the victory, As the just Future measures gain.

Thou hast succeeded, thou hast won The deathly travail's amplest worth; A nation's duty thou hast done, Giving a hero to our earth.

And he, let come what will of woe Hath saved the land he strove to save; No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow, Can quench the voice shall haunt his grave.

'I Kossuth am: O Future, thou That clear'st the just and blott'st the vile, O'er this small dust in reverence bow, Remembering what I was erewhile.

'I was the chosen trump wherethrough Our God sent forth awakening breath; Came chains? Came death? The strain He blew Sounds on, outliving chains and death.'



TO LAMARTINE

1848

I did not praise thee when the crowd, 'Witched with the moment's inspiration, Vexed thy still ether with hosannas loud, And stamped their dusty adoration; I but looked upward with the rest, And, when they shouted Greatest, whispered Best.

They raised thee not, but rose to thee, Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging; So on some marble Phoebus the swol'n sea Might leave his worthless seaweed clinging, But pious hands, with reverent care, Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare.

Now thou'rt thy plain, grand self again, Thou art secure from panegyric, Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain, And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric; This side the Blessed Isles, no tree Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee.

Nor can blame cling to thee; the snow From swinish footprints takes no staining, But, leaving the gross soils of earth below, Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining, And unresentful falls again, To beautify the world with dews and rain.

The highest duty to mere man vouchsafed Was laid on thee,—out of wild chaos, When the roused popular ocean foamed and chafed And vulture War from his Imaus Snuffed blood, to summon homely Peace, And show that only order is release.

To carve thy fullest thought, what though Time was not granted? Aye in history, Like that Dawn's face which baffled Angelo Left shapeless, grander for its mystery, Thy great Design shall stand, and day Flood its blind front from Orients far away.

Who says thy day is o'er? Control, My heart, that bitter first emotion; While men shall reverence the steadfast soul, The heart in silent self-devotion Breaking, the mild, heroic mien, Thou'lt need no prop of marble, Lamartine.

If France reject thee, 'tis not thine, But her own, exile that she utters; Ideal France, the deathless, the divine, Will be where thy white pennon flutters, As once the nobler Athens went With Aristides into banishment.

No fitting metewand hath To-day For measuring spirits of thy stature; Only the Future can reach up to lay The laurel on that lofty nature, Bard, who with some diviner art Hast touched the bard's true lyre, a nation's heart.

Swept by thy hand, the gladdened chords, Crashed now in discords fierce by others, Gave forth one note beyond all skill of words, And chimed together, We are brothers. O poem unsurpassed! it ran All round the world, unlocking man to man.

France is too poor to pay alone The service of that ample spirit; Paltry seem low dictatorship and throne, Weighed with thy self-renouncing merit; They had to thee been rust and loss; Thy aim was higher,—thou hast climbed a Cross!



TO JOHN GORHAM PALFREY

There are who triumph in a losing cause, Who can put on defeat, as 'twere a wreath Unwithering in the adverse popular breath, Safe from the blasting demagogue's applause; 'Tis they who stand for Freedom and God's laws.

And so stands Palfrey now, as Marvell stood, Loyal to Truth dethroned, nor could be wooed To trust the playful tiger's velvet paws: And if the second Charles brought in decay Of ancient virtue, if it well might wring Souls that had broadened 'neath a nobler day, To see a losel, marketable king Fearfully watering with his realm's best blood Cromwell's quenched bolts, that erst had cracked and flamed, Scaring, through all their depths of courtier mud, Europe's crowned bloodsuckers,—how more ashamed Ought we to be, who see Corruption's flood Still rise o'er last year's mark, to mine away Our brazen idol's feet of treacherous clay!

O utter degradation! Freedom turned Slavery's vile bawd, to cozen and betray To the old lecher's clutch a maiden prey, If so a loathsome pander's fee be earned! And we are silent,—we who daily tread A soil sublime, at least, with heroes' graves!— Beckon no more, shades of the noble dead! Be dumb, ye heaven-touched lips of winds and waves! Or hope to rouse some Coptic dullard, hid Ages ago, wrapt stiffly, fold on fold, With cerements close, to wither in the cold, Forever hushed, and sunless pyramid!

Beauty and Truth, and all that these contain, Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet; We climb to them through years of sweat and pain; Without long struggle, none did e'er attain The downward look from Quiet's blissful seat: Though present loss may be the hero's part, Yet none can rob him of the victor heart Whereby the broad-realmed future is subdued, And Wrong, which now insults from triumph's car, Sending her vulture hope to raven far, Is made unwilling tributary of Good.

O Mother State, how quenched thy Sinai fires! Is there none left of thy stanch Mayflower breed? No spark among the ashes of thy sires, Of Virtue's altar-flame the kindling seed? Are these thy great men, these that cringe and creep, And writhe through slimy ways to place and power?— How long, O Lord, before thy wrath shall reap Our frail-stemmed summer prosperings in their flower? Oh for one hour of that undaunted stock That went with Vane and Sidney to the block!

Oh for a whiff of Naseby, that would sweep, With its stern Puritan besom, all this chaff From the Lord's threshing-floor! Yet more than half The victory is attained, when one or two, Through the fool's laughter and the traitor's scorn, Beside thy sepulchre can bide the morn, Crucified Truth, when thou shalt rise anew.



TO W.L. GARRISON

'Some time afterward, it was reported to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all colors.'—Letter of H.G. Otis.

In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young man; The place was dark, unfurnitured, and mean; Yet there the freedom of a race began.

Help came but slowly; surely no man yet Put lever to the heavy world with less: What need of help? He knew how types were set, He had a dauntless spirit, and a press.

Such earnest natures are the fiery pith, The compact nucleus, round which systems grow; Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith, And whirls impregnate with the central glow.

O Truth! O Freedom! how are ye still born In the rude stable, in the manger nurst! What humble hands unbar those gates of morn Through which the splendors of the New Day burst!

What! shall one monk, scarce known beyond his cell, Front Rome's far-reaching bolts, and scorn her frown? Brave Luther answered YES; that thunder's swell Rocked Europe, and discharmed the triple crown.

Whatever can be known of earth we know, Sneered Europe's wise men, in their snail-shells curled; No! said one man in Genoa, and that No Out of the darkness summoned this New World.

Who is it will not dare himself to trust? Who is it hath not strength to stand alone? Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward MUST? He and his works, like sand, from earth are blown.

Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here! See one straightforward conscience put in pawn To win a world; see the obedient sphere By bravery's simple gravitation drawn!

Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old, And by the Present's lips repeated still, In our own single manhood to be bold, Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?

We stride the river daily at its spring, Nor, in our childless thoughtlessness, foresee What myriad vassal streams shall tribute bring, How like an equal it shall greet the sea.

O small beginnings, ye are great and strong, Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain! Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong, Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain.



ON THE DEATH OF CHARLES TURNER TORREY

Woe worth the hour when it is crime To plead the poor dumb bondman's cause, When all that makes the heart sublime, The glorious throbs that conquer time, Are traitors to our cruel laws!

He strove among God's suffering poor One gleam of brotherhood to send; The dungeon oped its hungry door To give the truth one martyr more, Then shut,—and here behold the end!

O Mother State! when this was done, No pitying throe thy bosom gave; Silent thou saw'st the death-shroud spun, And now thou givest to thy son The stranger's charity,—a grave.

Must it be thus forever? No! The hand of God sows not in vain, Long sleeps the darkling seed below, The seasons come, and change, and go, And all the fields are deep with grain.

Although our brother lie asleep, Man's heart still struggles, still aspires; His grave shall quiver yet, while deep Through the brave Bay State's pulses leap Her ancient energies and fires.

When hours like this the senses' gush Have stilled, and left the spirit room, It hears amid the eternal hush The swooping pinions' dreadful rush, That bring the vengeance and the doom;—

Not man's brute vengeance, such as rends What rivets man to man apart,— God doth not so bring round his ends, But waits the ripened time, and sends His mercy to the oppressor's heart.



ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF DR. CHANNING

I do not come to weep above thy pall, And mourn the dying-out of noble powers, The poet's clearer eye should see, in all Earth's seeming woe, seed of immortal flowers.

Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep Of everlasting Soul her strength abides, From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap, Through Nature's veins her strength, undying, tides.

Peace is more strong than war, and gentleness, Where force were vain, makes conquest o'er the wave; 10 And love lives on and hath a power to bless, When they who loved are hidden in the grave.

The sculptured marble brags of deathstrewn fields, And Glory's epitaph is writ in blood; But Alexander now to Plato yields, Clarkson will stand where Wellington hath stood.

I watch the circle of the eternal years, And read forever in the storied page One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears, One onward step of Truth from age to age. 20

The poor are crushed: the tyrants link their chain; The poet sings through narrow dungeon-grates; Man's hope lies quenched; and, lo! with steadfast gain Freedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates.

Men slay the prophets; fagot, rack, and cross Make up the groaning record of the past; But Evil's triumphs are her endless loss, And sovereign Beauty wins the soul at last.

No power can die that ever wrought for Truth; Thereby a law of Nature it became, 30 And lives unwithered in its blithesome youth, When he who called it forth is but a name.

Therefore I cannot think thee wholly gone; The better part of thee is with us still; Thy soul its hampering clay aside hath thrown, And only freer wrestles with the ill.

Thou livest in the life of all good things; What words thou spak'st for Freedom shall not die; Thou sleepest not, for now thy Love hath wings To soar where hence thy Hope could hardly fly. 40

And often, from that other world, on this Some gleams from great souls gone before may shine, To shed on struggling hearts a clearer bliss, And clothe the Right with lustre more divine.

Thou art not idle: in thy higher sphere Thy spirit bends itself to loving tasks, And strength to perfect what it dreamed of here Is all the crown and glory that it asks.

For sure, in Heaven's wide chambers, there is room For love and pity, and for helpful deeds; 50 Else were our summons thither but a doom To life more vain than this in clayey weeds.

From off the starry mountain-peak of song, Thy spirit shows me, in the coming time, An earth unwithered by the foot of wrong, A race revering its own soul sublime.

What wars, what martyrdoms, what crimes, may come, Thou knowest not, nor I; but God will lead The prodigal soul from want and sorrow home, And Eden ope her gates to Adam's seed. 60

Farewell! good man, good angel now! this hand Soon, like thine own, shall lose its cunning too; Soon shall this soul, like thine, bewildered stand, Then leap to thread the free, unfathomed blue:

When that day comes, oh, may this hand grow cold, Busy, like thine, for Freedom and the Right; Oh, may this soul, like thine, be ever bold To face dark Slavery's encroaching blight!

This laurel-leaf I cast upon thy bier; Let worthier hands than these thy wreath intwine; 70 Upon thy hearse I shed no useless tear,— For us weep rather thou in calm divine!



TO THE MEMORY OF HOOD

Another star 'neath Time's horizon dropped, To gleam o'er unknown lands and seas; Another heart that beat for freedom stopped,— What mournful words are these!

O Love Divine, that claspest our tired earth, And lullest it upon thy heart, Thou knowest how much a gentle soul is worth To teach men what thou art!

His was a spirit that to all thy poor Was kind as slumber after pain: Why ope so soon thy heaven-deep Quiet's door And call him home again?

Freedom needs all her poets: it is they Who give her aspirations wings, And to the wiser law of music sway Her wild imaginings.

Yet thou hast called him, nor art thou unkind, O Love Divine, for 'tis thy will That gracious natures leave their love behind To work for Mercy still.

Let laurelled marbles weigh on other tombs, Let anthems peal for other dead, Rustling the bannered depth of minster-glooms With their exulting spread.

His epitaph shall mock the short-lived stone, No lichen shall its lines efface, He needs these few and simple lines alone To mark his resting-place:

'Here lies a Poet. Stranger, if to thee His claim to memory be obscure, If thou wouldst learn how truly great was he, Go, ask it of the poor.'



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL

According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus partook of the Last Supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but one of the keepers having broken this condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur's court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the most exquisite of his poems.

The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to include, not only other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the supposed date of King Arthur's reign.

PRELUDE TO PART FIRST

Over his keys the musing organist, Beginning doubtfully and far away, First lets his fingers wander as they list, And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay: Then, as the touch of his loved instrument Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent Along the wavering vista of his dream.

* * * * *

Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; 10 Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.

Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite; And to our age's drowsy Wood Still shouts the inspiring sea. 20

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his lee who comes and shrives us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; At the devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking: 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking 30 No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer.

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays; Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,— In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 60 Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near, 70 That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,— And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 80 Everything is happy now, Everything is upward striving; 'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,— 'Tis the natural way of living: Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes the season's youth, 90 And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow?

PART FIRST

I

'My golden spurs now bring to me, And bring to me my richest mail, For to-morrow I go over land and sea In search of the Holy Grail; Shall never a bed for me be spread, 100 Nor shall a pillow be under my head, Till I begin my vow to keep; Here on the rushes will I sleep, And perchance there may come a vision true Ere day create the world anew.' Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, Slumber fell like a cloud on him, And into his soul the vision flew.

II

The crows flapped over by twos and threes, In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 110 The little birds sang as if it were The one day of summer in all the year, And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees: The castle alone in the landscape lay Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray: 'Twas the proudest hall in the North Countree, And never its gates might opened be, Save to lord or lady of high degree; Summer besieged it on every side, But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 120 She could not scale the chilly wall, Though around it for leagues her pavilions tall Stretched left and right, Over the hills and out of sight; Green and broad was every tent, And out of each a murmur went Till the breeze fell off at night.

III

The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, And through the dark arch a charger sprang, Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 130 In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright It seemed the dark castle had gathered all Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall In his siege of three hundred summers long, And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, Had cast them forth: so, young and strong, And lightsome as a locust-leaf, Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail, To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail.

IV

It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 140 And morning in the young knight's heart; Only the castle moodily Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, And gloomed by itself apart; The season brimmed all other things up Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup.

V

As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate, He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; 150 The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl, And midway its leap his heart stood still Like a frozen waterfall; For this man, so foul and bent of stature, Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,— So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn.

VI

The leper raised not the gold from the dust: 'Better to me the poor man's crust, 160 Better the blessing of the poor, Though I turn me empty from his door; That is no true alms which the hand can hold; He gives only the worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty; But he who gives but a slender mite, And gives to that which is out of sight, That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through all and doth all unite,— The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 170 The heart outstretches its eager palms, For a god goes with it and makes it store To the soul that was starving in darkness before.'



PRELUDE TO PART SECOND

Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old; On open wold and hilltop bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 180 The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars As the lashes of light that trim the stars: He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 190 Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond drops, 200 That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one: No mortal builder's most rare device Could match this winter-palace of ice; 'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay In his depths serene through the summer day, Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost. 210

Within the hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 220 And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer.

But the wind without was eager and sharp, Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, And rattles and wrings The icy strings, Singing, in dreary monotone, A Christmas carol of its own, 230 Whose burden still, as he might guess, Was 'Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!' The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, And he sat in the gateway and saw all night The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, Through the window-slits of the castle old, Build out its piers of ruddy light Against the drift of the cold.

PART SECOND

I

There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 240 The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; The river was dumb and could not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun; A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth and sea.

II

Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 250 For another heir in his earldom sate; An old, bent man, worn out and frail, He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; Little he recked of his earldom's loss, No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross, But deep in his soul the sign he wore, The badge of the suffering and the poor.

III

Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, For it was just at the Christmas time; 260 So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, And sought for a shelter from cold and snow In the light and warmth of long-ago; He sees the snake-like caravan crawl O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, He can count the camels in the sun, As over the red-hot sands they pass To where, in its slender necklace of grass, The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 270 And with its own self like an infant played, And waved its signal of palms.

IV

'For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;' The happy camels may reach the spring, But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, That cowers beside him, a thing as lone And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas In the desolate horror of his disease.

V

And Sir Launfal said, 'I behold in thee 280 An image of Him who died on the tree; Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns, And to thy life were not denied The wounds in the hands and feet and side: Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; Behold, through him, I give to thee!'

VI

Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he Remembered in what a haughtier guise 290 He had flung an alms to leprosie, When he girt his young life up in gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. The heart within him was ashes and dust; He parted in twain his single crust, He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, And gave the leper to eat and drink. 'Twas a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 'Twas water out of a wooden bowl,— Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 300 And 'twas red wine he drank with his thirsty soul.

VII

As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, A light shone round about the place; The leper no longer crouched at his side, But stood before him glorified, Shining and tall and fair and straight As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,— Himself the Gate whereby men can Enter the temple of God in Man.

VIII

His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, 310 And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, That mingle their softness and quiet in one With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; And the voice that was softer than silence said, 'Lo, it is I, be not afraid! In many climes, without avail, Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; Behold, it is here,—this cup which thou Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; This crust is my body broken for thee, 320 This water his blood that died on the tree; The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, In whatso we share with another's need; Not what we give, but what we share, For the gift without the giver is bare; Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.'

IX

Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound: 'The Grail in my castle here is found! Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 330 Let it be the spider's banquet hall; He must be fenced with stronger mail Who would seek and find the Holy Grail.'

X

The castle gate stands open now, And the wanderer is welcome to the hall As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough; No longer scowl the turrets tall, The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; When the first poor outcast went in at the door, She entered with him in disguise, And mastered the fortress by surprise; 341 There is no spot she loves so well on ground, She lingers and smiles there the whole year round; The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land Has hall and bower at his command; And there's no poor man in the North Countree But is lord of the earldom as much as he.



LETTER FROM BOSTON

December, 1846.

Dear M—— By way of saving time, I'll do this letter up in rhyme, Whose slim stream through four pages flows Ere one is packed with tight-screwed prose, Threading the tube of an epistle, Smooth as a child's breath through a whistle.

The great attraction now of all Is the 'Bazaar' at Faneuil Hall, Where swarm the anti-slavery folks As thick, dear Miller, as your jokes. 10 There's GARRISON, his features very Benign for an incendiary, Beaming forth sunshine through his glasses On the surrounding lads and lasses, (No bee could blither be, or brisker,)— A Pickwick somehow turned John Ziska, His bump of firmness swelling up Like a rye cupcake from its cup. And there, too, was his English tea-set, 19 Which in his ear a kind of flea set, His Uncle Samuel for its beauty Demanding sixty dollars duty, ('Twas natural Sam should serve his trunk ill; For G., you know, has cut his uncle,) Whereas, had he but once made tea in't, His uncle's ear had had the flea in't, There being not a cent of duty On any pot that ever drew tea.

There was MARIA CHAPMAN, too, With her swift eyes of clear steel-blue, 30 The coiled-up mainspring of the Fair, Originating everywhere The expansive force without a sound That whirls a hundred wheels around, Herself meanwhile as calm and still As the bare crown of Prospect Hill; A noble woman, brave and apt, Cumaean sibyl not more rapt, Who might, with those fair tresses shorn, The Maid of Orleans' casque have worn, 40 Herself the Joan of our Ark, For every shaft a shining mark.

And there, too, was ELIZA FOLLEN, Who scatters fruit-creating pollen Where'er a blossom she can find Hardy enough for Truth's north wind, Each several point of all her face Tremblingly bright with the inward grace, As if all motion gave it light Like phosphorescent seas at night.

There jokes our EDMUND, plainly son 51 Of him who bearded Jefferson, A non-resistant by conviction, But with a bump in contradiction, So that whene'er it gets a chance His pen delights to play the lance, And—you may doubt it, or believe it— Full at the head of Joshua Leavitt The very calumet he'd launch, And scourge him with the olive branch. 60 A master with the foils of wit, 'Tis natural he should love a hit; A gentleman, withal, and scholar, Only base things excite his choler, And then his satire's keen and thin As the lithe blade of Saladin. Good letters are a gift apart, And his are gems of Flemish art, True offspring of the fireside Muse, Not a rag-gathering of news 70 Like a new hopfield which is all poles, But of one blood with Horace Walpole's.

There, with cue hand behind his back, Stands PHILLIPS buttoned in a sack, Our Attic orator, our Chatham; Old fogies, when he lightens at 'em, Shrivel like leaves; to him 'tis granted Always to say the word that's wanted, So that he seems but speaking clearer The tiptop thought of every hearer; 80 Each flash his brooding heart lets fall Fires what's combustible in all, And sends the applauses bursting in Like an exploded magazine. His eloquence no frothy show, The gutter's street-polluted flow, No Mississippi's yellow flood Whose shoalness can't be seen for mud;— So simply clear, serenely deep, 89 So silent-strong its graceful sweep, None measures its unrippling force Who has not striven to stem its course; How fare their barques who think to play With smooth Niagara's mane of spray, Let Austin's total shipwreck say. He never spoke a word too much— Except of Story, or some such, Whom, though condemned by ethics strict, The heart refuses to convict.

Beyond; a crater in each eye, 100 Sways brown, broad-shouldered PILLSBURY, Who tears up words like trees by the roots, A Theseus in stout cow-hide boots, The wager of eternal war Against that loathsome Minotaur To whom we sacrifice each year The best blood of our Athens here, (Dear M., pray brush up your Lempriere.) A terrible denouncer he, Old Sinai burns unquenchably 110 Upon his lips; he well might be a Hot-blazing soul from fierce Judea, Habakkuk, Ezra, or Hosea. His words are red hot iron searers, And nightmare-like he mounts his hearers, Spurring them like avenging Fate, or As Waterton his alligator.

Hard by, as calm as summer even, Smiles the reviled and pelted STEPHEN, The unappeasable Boanerges 120 To all the Churches and the Clergies, The grim savant who, to complete His own peculiar cabinet, Contrived to label 'mong his kicks One from the followers of Hicks; Who studied mineralogy Not with soft book upon the knee, But learned the properties of stones By contact sharp of flesh and bones, And made the experimentum crucis 130 With his own body's vital juices; A man with caoutchouc endurance, A perfect gem for life insurance, A kind of maddened John the Baptist, To whom the harshest word comes aptest, Who, struck by stone or brick ill-starred, Hurls back an epithet as hard, Which, deadlier than stone or brick, Has a propensity to stick. His oratory is like the scream 140 Of the iron-horse's frenzied steam Which warns the world to leave wide space For the black engine's swerveless race. Ye men with neckcloths white, I warn you— Habet a whole haymow in cornu.

A Judith, there, turned Quakeress, Sits ABBY in her modest dress, Serving a table quietly, As if that mild and downcast eye Flashed never, with its scorn intense, 150 More than Medea's eloquence. So the same force which shakes its dread Far-blazing blocks o'er AEtna's head, Along the wires in silence fares And messages of commerce bears. No nobler gift of heart and brain, No life more white from spot or stain, Was e'er on Freedom's altar laid Than hers, the simple Quaker maid.

These last three (leaving in the lurch 160 Some other themes) assault the Church, Who therefore writes them in her lists As Satan's limbs and atheists; For each sect has one argument Whereby the rest to hell are sent, Which serve them like the Graiae's tooth, Passed round in turn from mouth to mouth;— If any ism should arise, Then look on it with constable's eyes, 169 Tie round its neck a heavy athe-, And give it kittens' hydropathy. This trick with other (useful very) tricks Is laid to the Babylonian meretrix, But 'twas in vogue before her day Wherever priesthoods had their way, And Buddha's Popes with this struck dumb The followers of Fi and Fum.

Well, if the world, with prudent fear Pay God a seventh of the year, And as a Farmer, who would pack All his religion in one stack, 181 For this world works six days in seven And idles on the seventh for Heaven, Expecting, for his Sunday's sowing, In the next world to go a-mowing The crop of all his meeting-going;— If the poor Church, by power enticed, Finds none so infidel as Christ, Quite backward reads his Gospel meek, (As 'twere in Hebrew writ, not Greek,) 190 Fencing the gallows and the sword With conscripts drafted from his word, And makes one gate of Heaven so wide That the rich orthodox might ride Through on their camels, while the poor Squirm through the scant, unyielding door, Which, of the Gospel's straitest size, Is narrower than bead-needles' eyes, What wonder World and Church should call The true faith atheistical? 200

Yet, after all, 'twixt you and me, Dear Miller, I could never see That Sin's and Error's ugly smirch Stained the walls only of the Church; There are good priests, and men who take Freedom's torn cloak for lucre's sake; I can't believe the Church so strong, As some men do, for Right or Wrong, But, for this subject (long and vext) I must refer you to my next, 210 As also for a list exact Of goods with which the Hall was packed.



READER! walk up at once (it will soon be too late), and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate.

A FABLE FOR CRITICS;

OR, BETTER—

I like, as a thing that the reader's first fancy may strike, an old fashioned title-page, such as presents a tabular view of the volumes contents,—

A GLANCE AT A FEW OF OUR LITERARY PROGENIES

(Mrs. Malaprop's Word)

FROM THE TUB OF DIOGENES;

A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY,

THAT IS,

A SERIES OF JOKES

BY A WONDERFUL QUIZ

Who accompanies himself with a rub-a-dub-dub, full of spirit and grace, on the top of the tub.

SET FORTH IN

October, the 21st day, in the year '48.

G.P. PUTNAM, BROADWAY.

It being the commonest mode of procedure, I premise a few candid remarks

TO THE READER:—

This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come to that very conclusion, I asked their advice when 'twould make no confusion. For though (in the gentlest of ways) they had hinted it was scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it.

I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhymeywinged, with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously planned, digressions chance-hatched, like birds' eggs in the sand, and dawdlings to suit every whimsey's demand (always freeing the bird which I held In my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the tree),—it grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the old woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and laugh; and when, my strained arms with their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, they call it a bull.

Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that is neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a person whom nobody knows, some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than it is becoming to be, that I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in following wherever I wander at pleasure, that, in short, I take more than a young author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer way so like Mephistopheles, that the Public will doubt, as they grope through my rhythm, if in truth I am making fun of them or with them.

So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale of my book is already secured. For there is not a poet throughout the whole land but will purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond expectation of being amused in it, by seeing his betters cut up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are something like ten thousand bards in the nation, of that special variety whom the Review and Magazine critics call lofty and true, and about thirty thousand (this tribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termed full of promise and pleasing. The Public will see by a glance at this schedule, that they cannot expect me to be over-sedulous about courting them, since it seems I have got enough fuel made sure of for boiling my pot.

As for such of our poets as find not their names mentioned once in my pages, with praises or blames, let them SEND IN THEIR CARDS, without further DELAY, to my friend G.P. PUTNAM, Esquire, in Broadway, where a LIST will be kept with the strictest regard to the day and the hour of receiving the card. Then, taking them up as I chance to have time (that is, if their names can be twisted in rhyme), I will honestly give each his PROPER POSITION, at the rate of ONE AUTHOR to each NEW EDITION. Thus a PREMIUM is offered sufficiently HIGH (as the magazines say when they tell their best lie) to induce bards to CLUB their resources and buy the balance of every edition, until they have all of them fairly been run through the mill.

One word to such readers (judicious and wise) as read books with something behind the mere eyes, of whom in the country, perhaps, there are two, including myself, gentle reader, and you. All the characters sketched in this slight jeu d'esprit, though, it may be, they seem, here and there, rather free, and drawn from a somewhat too cynical standpoint, are meant to be faithful, for that is the grand point, and none but an owl would feel sore at a rub from a jester who tells you, without any subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes' tub.



A PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

Though it well may be reckoned, of all composition, the species at once most delightful and healthy, is a thing which an author, unless he be wealthy and willing to pay for that kind of delight, is not, in all instances, called on to write, though there are, it is said, who, their spirits to cheer, slip in a new title-page three times a year, and in this way snuff up an imaginary savor of that sweetest of dishes, the popular favor,—much as if a starved painter should fall to and treat the Ugolino inside to a picture of meat.

You remember (if not, pray turn, backward and look) that, in writing the preface which ushered my book, I treated you, excellent Public, not merely with a cool disregard, but downright cavalierly. Now I would not take back the least thing I then said, though I thereby could butter both sides of my bread, for I never could see that an author owed aught to the people he solaced, diverted, or taught; and, as for mere fame, I have long ago learned that the persons by whom it is finally earned are those with whom your verdict weighed not a pin, unsustained by the higher court sitting within.

But I wander from what I intended to say,—that you have, namely, shown such a liberal way of thinking, and so much aesthetic perception of anonymous worth in the handsome reception you gave to my book, spite of some private piques (having bought the first thousand in barely two weeks), that I think, past a doubt, if you measured the phiz of yours most devotedly, Wonderful Quiz, you would find that its vertical section was shorter, by an inch and two tenths, or 'twixt that and a quarter.

You have watched a child playing—in those wondrous years when belief is not bound to the eyes and the ears, and the vision divine is so clear and unmarred, that each baker of pies in the dirt is a bard? Give a knife and a shingle, he fits out a fleet, and, on that little mud-puddle over the street, his fancy, in purest good faith, will make sail round the globe with a puff of his breath for a gale, will visit, in barely ten minutes, all climes, and do the Columbus-feat hundreds of times. Or, suppose the young poet fresh stored with delights from that Bible of childhood, the Arabian Nights, he will turn to a crony and cry, 'Jack, let's play that I am a Genius!' Jacky straightway makes Aladdin's lamp out of a stone, and, for hours, they enjoy each his own supernatural powers. This is all very pretty and pleasant, but then suppose our two urchins, have grown into men, and both have turned authors,—one says to his brother, 'Let's play we're the American somethings or other,—say Homer or Sophocles, Goethe or Scott (only let them be big enough, no matter what). Come, you shall be Byron or Pope, which you choose: I'll be Coleridge, and both shall write mutual reviews.' So they both (as mere strangers) before many days send each other a cord of anonymous bays. Each piling his epithets, smiles in his sleeve to see what his friend can be made to believe; each, reading the other's unbiased review, thinks—Here's pretty high praise, but no more than my due. Well, we laugh at them both, and yet make no great fuss when the same farce is acted to benefit us. Even I, who, it asked, scarce a month since, what Fudge meant, should have answered, the dear Public's critical judgment, begin to think sharp-witted Horace spoke sooth when he said that the Public sometimes hit the truth.

In reading these lines, you perhaps have a vision of a person in pretty good health and condition; and yet, since I put forth my primary edition, I have been crushed, scorched, withered, used up and put down (by Smith with the cordial assistance of Brown), in all, if you put any faith in my rhymes, to the number of ninety-five several times, and, while I am writing,—I tremble to think of it, for I may at this moment be just on the brink of it,—Molybdostom, angry at being omitted, has begun a critique,—am I not to be pitied?[1]

Now I shall not crush them since, indeed, for that matter, no pressure I know of could render them flatter; nor wither, nor scorch them,—no action of fire could make either them or their articles drier; nor waste time in putting them down—I am thinking not their own self-inflation will keep them from sinking; for there's this contradiction about the whole bevy,—though without the least weight, they are awfully heavy. No, my dear honest bore, surdo fabulam narras, they are no more to me than a rat in the arras. I can walk with the Doctor, get facts from the Don, or draw out the Lambish quintessence of John, and feel nothing more than a half-comic sorrow, to think that they all will be lying to-morrow tossed carelessly up on the waste-paper shelves, and forgotten by all but their half-dozen selves. Once snug in my attic, my fire in a roar, I leave the whole pack of them outside the door. With Hakluyt or Purchas I wander away to the black northern seas or barbaric Cathay; get fou with O'Shanter, and sober me then with that builder of brick-kilnish dramas, rare Ben; snuff Herbert, as holy as a flower on a grave; with Fletcher wax tender, o'er Chapman grow brave; with Marlowe or Kyd take a fine poet-rave; in Very, most Hebrew of Saxons, find peace; with Lycidas welter on vext Irish seas; with Webster grow wild, and climb earthward again, down by mystical Browne's Jacob's-ladder-like brain, to that spiritual Pepys (Cotton's version) Montaigne; find a new depth in Wordsworth, undreamed of before, that marvel, a poet divine who can bore. Or, out of my study, the scholar thrown off, Nature holds up her shield 'gainst the sneer and the scoff; the landscape, forever consoling and kind, pours her wine and her oil on the smarts of the mind. The waterfall, scattering its vanishing gems; the tall grove of hemlocks, with moss on their stems, like plashes of sunlight; the pond in the woods, where no foot but mine and the bittern's intrudes, where pitcher-plants purple and gentians hard by recall to September the blue of June's sky; these are all my kind neighbors, and leave me no wish to say aught to you all, my poor critics, but—pish! I've buried the hatchet: I'm twisting an allumette out of one of you now, and relighting my calumet. In your private capacities, come when you please, I will give you my hand and a fresh pipe apiece.

As I ran through the leaves of my poor little book, to take a fond author's first tremulous look, it was quite an excitement to hunt the errata, sprawled in as birds' tracks are in some kinds of strata (only these made things crookeder). Fancy an heir that a father had seen born well-featured and fair, turning suddenly wry-nosed, club-footed, squint-eyed, hair-lipped, wapper-jawed, carrot-haired, from a pride become an aversion,—my case was yet worse. A club-foot (by way of a change) in a verse, I might have forgiven, an o's being wry, a limp in an e, or a cock in an i,—but to have the sweet babe of my brain served in pi! I am not queasy-stomached, but such a Thyestean banquet as that was quite out of the question.

In the edition now issued no pains are neglected, and my verses, as orators say, stand corrected. Yet some blunders remain of the public's own make, which I wish to correct for my personal sake. For instance, a character drawn in pure fun and condensing the traits of a dozen in one, has been, as I hear, by some persons applied to a good friend of mine, whom to stab in the side, as we walked along chatting and joking together, would not be my way. I can hardly tell whether a question will ever arise in which he and I should by any strange fortune agree, but meanwhile my esteem for him grows as I know him, and, though not the best judge on earth of a poem, he knows what it is he is saying and why, and is honest and fearless, two good points which I have not found so rife I can easily smother my love for them, whether on my side or t'other.

For my other anonymi, you may be sure that I know what is meant by a caricature, and what by a portrait. There are those who think it is capital fun to be spattering their ink on quiet, unquarrelsome folk, but the minute the game changes sides and the others begin it, they see something savage and horrible in it. As for me I respect neither women nor men for their gender, nor own any sex in a pen. I choose just to hint to some causeless unfriends that, as far as I know, there are always two ends (and one of them heaviest, too) to a staff, and two parties also to every good laugh.



A FABLE FOR CRITICS

Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade, Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made, For the god being one day too warm in his wooing, She took to the tree to escape his pursuing; Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk; And, though 'twas a step into which he had driven her, He somehow or other had never forgiven her; Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, Something bitter to chew when he'd play the Byronic, 10 And I can't count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her. 'My case is like Dido's,' he sometimes remarked; 'When I last saw my love, she was fairly embarked In a laurel, as she thought—but (ah, how Fate mocks!) She has found it by this time a very bad box; Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it,— You're not always sure of your game when you've treed it. Just conceive such a change taking place in one's mistress! What romance would be left?—who can flatter or kiss trees? 20 And, for mercy's sake, how could one keep up a dialogue With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a log,— Not to say that the thought would forever intrude That you've less chance to win her the more she is wood? Ah! it went to my heart, and the memory still grieves, To see those loved graces all taking their leaves; Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting but now, As they left me forever, each making its bough! If her tongue had a tang sometimes more than was right, Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite.' 30

Now, Daphne—before she was happily treeified— Over all other blossoms the lily had deified, And when she expected the god on a visit ('Twas before he had made his intentions explicit), Some buds she arranged with a vast deal of care, To look as if artlessly twined in her hair, Where they seemed, as he said, when he paid his addresses, Like the day breaking through, the long night of her tresses; So whenever he wished to be quite irresistible, Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table 40 (I feared me at first that the rhyme was untwistable, Though I might have lugged in an allusion to Cristabel),— He would take up a lily, and gloomily look in it, As I shall at the——, when they cut up my book in it.

Well, here, after all the bad rhyme I've been spinning, I've got back at last to my story's beginning: Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his mistress, As dull as a volume of old Chester mysteries, Or as those puzzling specimens which, in old histories, We read of his verses—the Oracles, namely,— 50 (I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them tamely, For one might bet safely whatever he has to risk, They were laid at his door by some ancient Miss Asterisk, And so dull that the men who retailed them out-doors Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores,—) First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is Would induce a mustache, for you know he's imberbis; Then he shuddered to think how his youthful position Was assailed by the age of his son the physician; At some poems he glanced, had been sent to him lately, 60 And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly; 'Mehercle! I'd make such proceeding felonious,— Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius? Look well to your seat, 'tis like taking an airing On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing; It leads one, 'tis true, through the primitive forest, Grand natural features, but then one has no rest; You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance, When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence,— Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any?' 70 —Here the laurel leaves murmured the name of poor Daphne.

'Oh, weep with me, Daphne,' he sighed, 'for you know it's A terrible thing to be pestered with poets! But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good, She never will cry till she's out of the wood! What wouldn't I give if I never had known of her? 'Twere a kind of relief had I something to groan over: If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over, I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philosopher, And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the loss of her. 80 One needs something tangible, though, to begin on,— A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin on; What boots all your grist? it can never be ground Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round; (Or, if 'tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor, And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well wet afore, Or lug in some stuff about water "so dreamily,"— It is not a metaphor, though, 'tis a simile); A lily, perhaps, would set my mill a-going, For just at this season, I think, they are blowing. 90 Here, somebody, fetch one; not very far hence They're in bloom by the score, 'tis but climbing a fence; There's a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his Whole garden, from one end to t'other, with lilies; A very good plan, were it not for satiety, One longs for a weed here and there, for variety; Though a weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.'

Now there happened to be among Phoebus's followers, A gentleman, one of the omnivorous swallowers, 100 Who bolt every book that comes out of the press, Without the least question of larger or less, Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of their head,— For reading new books is like eating new bread, One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps he Is brought to death's door of a mental dyspepsy. On a previous stage of existence, our Hero Had ridden outside, with the glass below zero; He had been, 'tis a fact you may safely rely on, Of a very old stock a most eminent scion,— 110 A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses ply on, Who stretch the new boots Earth's unwilling to try on, Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts keep their eye on, Whose hair's in the mortar of every new Zion, Who, when whistles are dear, go directly and buy one, Who think slavery a crime that we must not say fie on, Who hunt, if they e'er hunt at all, with the lion (Though they hunt lions also, whenever they spy one), Who contrive to make every good fortune a wry one, And at last choose the hard bed of honor to die on, 120 Whose pedigree, traced to earth's earliest years, Is longer than anything else but their ears,— In short, he was sent into life with the wrong key, He unlocked the door, and stept forth a poor donkey. Though kicked and abused by his bipedal betters Yet he filled no mean place in the kingdom of letters; Far happier than many a literary hack, He bore only paper-mill rags on his back (For It makes a vast difference which side the mill One expends on the paper his labor and skill); 130 So, when his soul waited a new transmigration, And Destiny balanced 'twixt this and that station, Not having much time to expend upon bothers, Remembering he'd had some connection with authors, And considering his four legs had grown paralytic,— She set him on two, and he came forth a critic.

Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure he took In any amusement but tearing a book; For him there was no intermediate stage From babyhood up to straight-laced middle age; 140 There were years when he didn't wear coat-tails behind, But a boy he could never be rightly defined; like the Irish Good Folk, though in length scarce a span, From the womb he came gravely, a little old man; While other boys' trousers demanded the toil Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of soil, Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly, loamy, He sat in the corner and read Viri Romae. He never was known to unbend or to revel once In base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the devil once; 150 He was just one of those who excite the benevolence Of your old prigs who sound the soul's depths with a ledger, And are on the lookout for some young men to 'edger- cate,' as they call it, who won't be too costly, And who'll afterward take to the ministry mostly; Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious, Always keep on good terms with each mater-familias Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred a year: Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful conditions, 160 Either preach through their noses, or go upon missions.

In this way our Hero got safely to college, Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge; A reading-machine, always wound up and going, He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing, Appeared in a gown, with black waistcoat of satin, To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin That Tully could never have made out a word in it (Though himself was the model the author preferred in it), And grasping the parchment which gave him in fee 170 All the mystic and-so-forths contained in A.B., He was launched (life is always compared to a sea) With just enough learning, and skill for the using it, To prove he'd a brain, by forever confusing it. So worthy St. Benedict, piously burning With the holiest zeal against secular learning, Nesciensque scienter, as writers express it, Indoctusque sapienter a Roma recessit.

'Twould be endless to tell you the things that he knew, Each a separate fact, undeniably true, 180 But with him or each other they'd nothing to do; No power of combining, arranging, discerning, Digested the masses he learned into learning; There was one thing in life he had practical knowledge for (And this, you will think, he need scarce go to college for),— Not a deed would he do, nor a word would he utter, Till he'd weighed its relations to plain bread and butter. When he left Alma Mater, he practised his wits In compiling the journals' historical bits,— Of shops broken open, men falling in fits, 190 Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printers, And cold spells, the coldest for many past winters,— Then, rising by industry, knack, and address, Got notices up for an unbiased press, With a mind so well poised, it seemed equally made for Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be paid for: From this point his progress was rapid and sure, To the post of a regular heavy reviewer.

And here I must say he wrote excellent articles On Hebraical points, or the force of Greek particles; 200 They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for, And nobody read that which nobody cared for; If any old book reached a fiftieth edition, He could fill forty pages with safe erudition: He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules, And his very old nothings pleased very old fools; But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart, And you put him at sea without compass or chart,— His blunders aspired to the rank of an art; For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him, 210 Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him, So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him, Carving new forms of truth out of Nature's old granite, New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier's planet, Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must create In the soul of their critic the measure and weight, Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace, To compute their own judge, and assign him his place, Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it, And, reporting each circumstance just as he found it, 220 Without the least malice,—his record would be Profoundly aesthetic as that of a flea, Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print for our sakes, Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes, Or, lodged by an Arab guide, ventured to render a Comprehensive account of the ruins at Denderah.

As I said, he was never precisely unkind. The defect in his brain was just absence of mind; If he boasted, 'twas simply that he was self-made, A position which I, for one, never gainsaid, 230 My respect for my Maker supposing a skill In his works which our Hero would answer but ill; And I trust that the mould which he used may be cracked, or he, Made bold by success, may enlarge his phylactery, And set up a kind of a man-manufactory,— An event which I shudder to think about, seeing That Man is a moral, accountable being.

He meant well enough, but was still in the way, As dunces still are, let them be where they may; Indeed, they appear to come into existence 240 To impede other folks with their awkward assistance; If you set up a dunce on the very North pole All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul, He'd manage to get betwixt somebody's shins, And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins, To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice, All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice; Or, if he found nobody else there to pother, Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other, For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, 250 Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.

A terrible fellow to meet in society, Not the toast that he buttered was ever so dry at tea; There he'd sit at the table and stir in his sugar, Crouching close for a spring, all the while, like a cougar; Be sure of your facts, of your measures and weights, Of your time,—he's as fond as an Arab of dates; You'll be telling, perhaps, in your comical way, Of something you've seen in the course of the day; And, just as you're tapering out the conclusion, 260 You venture an ill-fated classic allusion,— The girls have all got their laughs ready, when, whack! The cougar comes down on your thunderstruck back! You had left out a comma,—your Greek's put in joint, And pointed at cost of your story's whole point. In the course of the evening, you find chance for certain Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain: You tell her your heart can be likened to one flower, 'And that, O most charming of women, 's the sunflower, Which turns'—here a clear nasal voice, to your terror, 270 From outside the curtain, says, 'That's all an error.' As for him, he's—no matter, he never grew tender, Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender, Shaping somebody's sweet features out of cigar smoke (Though he'd willingly grant you that such doings are smoke); All women he damns with mutabile semper, And if ever he felt something like love's distemper, 'Twas tow'rds a young lady who spoke ancient Mexican, And assisted her father in making a lexicon; Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious 280 About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius, Or something of that sort,—but, no more to bore ye With character-painting, I'll turn to my story.