Courage

At the unveiling of his statue.



Among their graven shapes to whom
Thy civic wreaths belong,
O city of his love, make room
For one whose gift was song.

Not his the soldier's sword to wield,
Nor his the helm of state,
Nor glory of the stricken field,
Nor triumph of debate.

In common ways, with common men,
He served his race and time
As well as if his clerkly pen
Had never danced to rhyme.

If, in the thronged and noisy mart,
The Muses found their son,
Could any say his tuneful art
A duty left undone?

He toiled and sang; and year by year
Men found their homes more sweet,
And through a tenderer atmosphere
Looked down the brick-walled street.

The Greek's wild onset gall Street knew;

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason...

I

When dusk falls cool as a rained-on rose,
And a tawny tower the twilight shows,
With the crescent moon, the silver moon, the curved
new moon in a space that glows,
A turret window that grows alight;
There is a path that my Fancy knows,
A glimmering, shimmering path of night,
That far as the Land of Faery goes.

II

And I follow the path, as Fancy leads,
Over the mountains, into the meads,
Where the firefly cities, the glowworm cities, the faery
cities are strung like beads,
Each city a twinkling star:
And I live a life of valorous deeds,
And march with the Faery King to war,
And ride with his knights on milk-white steeds.

III

Or it's there in the whirl of their life I sit,
Or dance in their houses with starligh...

The spirit of freedom is born of the mountains,
In gorge and in cañon it hovers and dwells;
Pervading the torrents and crystalline fountains,
    Which dash through the valleys and forest clad dells.

The spirit of freedom, so firm and impliant,
    Is borne on the breeze, whose invisible waves
Descend from the mountain peaks, stern and defiant--
    Created for freemen, but never for slaves.

CONCORD, 1838


I reached the middle of the mount
Up which the incarnate soul must climb,
And paused for them, and looked around,
With me who walked through space and time.

Five rosy boys with morning light
Had leaped from one fair mother's arms,
Fronted the sun with hope as bright,
And greeted God with childhood's psalms.

Knows he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?

In the long sunny afternoon
The plain was full of ghosts;
I wandered up, I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.

The winding Concord gleamed below,
Pouring as wide a flood
As when my brothers, long ago,
Came with me to the wood.

But they are gone,--the holy ...

Now much there is need of doing must not be done in haste;
    But slowly and with patience, as a jungle is changed to a town.
    But listen, my brothers, listen; it is not always so:
When a murderer's hand is lifted to kill, there is no time to waste;
    And the way to change his purpose is first to knock him down
    And teach him the law of kindness after you give him the blow.

The acorn you plant in the morning will not give shade at noon;
    And the thornless cactus must be bred by year on year of toil.
    But listen, my brothers, listen; it is not ever the way,
For the roots of the poison ivy plant you cannot pull too soon;
    If you would better your garden and make the most of your soil,
    Hurry and dig up the evil things and cast them out to-day.

The a...

Beguiled into forgetfulness of care
Due to the day's unfinished task; of pen
Or book regardless, and of that fair scene
In Nature's prodigality displayed
Before my window, oftentimes and long
I gaze upon a Portrait whose mild gleam
Of beauty never ceases to enrich
The common light; whose stillness charms the air,
Or seems to charm it, into like repose;
Whose silence, for the pleasure of the ear,
Surpasses sweetest music. There she sits
With emblematic purity attired
In a white vest, white as her marble neck
Is, and the pillar of the throat would be
But for the shadow by the drooping chin
Cast into that recess, the tender shade,
The shade and light, both there and everywhere,
And through the very atmosphere she breathes,
Broad, clear, and toned harmon...

'Twas now the noon of night, and all was still,
Except a hapless Rhymer and his quill.
In vain he calls each Muse in order down,
Like other females, these will sometimes frown;
He frets, be fumes, and ceasing to invoke
The Nine, in anguish'd accents thus he spoke:
Ah what avails it thus to waste my time,
To roll in Epic, or to rave in Rhyme?
What worth is some few partial readers' praise.
If ancient Virgins croaking 'censures' raise?
Where few attend, 'tis useless to indite;
Where few can read, 'tis folly sure to write;
Where none but girls and striplings dare admire,
And Critics rise in every country Squire -
But yet this last my candid Muse admits,
When Peers are Poets, Squires may well be Wits;
When schoolboys vent their amorous flames in verse,
Matron...

Out of the earth to rest or range
Perpetual in perpetual change,
The unknown passing through the strange.

Water and saltness held together
To tread the dust and stand the weather,
And plough the field and stretch the tether,

To pass the wine-cup and be witty,
Water the sands and build the city,
Slaughter like devils and have pity,

Be red with rage and pale with lust,
Make beauty come, make peace, make trust,
Water and saltness mixed with dust;

Drive over earth, swim under sea,
Fly in the eagle’s secrecy,
Guess where the hidden comets be;

Know all the deathy seeds that still
Queen Helen’s beauty, Caesar’s will,
And slay them even as they kill;

Fashion an altar for a rood,
Defile a continent with blood,
And...

And should she die, her grave should be
Upon the bare top of a sunny hill,
Among the moorlands of her own fair land,
Amid a ring of old and moss-grown stones
In gorse and heather all embosomed.
There should be no tall stone, no marble tomb
Above her gentle corse;--the ponderous pile
Would press too rudely on those fairy limbs.
The turf should lightly he, that marked her home.
A sacred spot it would be--every bird
That came to watch her lone grave should be holy.
The deer should browse around her undisturbed;
The whin bird by, her lonely nest should build
All fearless; for in life she loved to see
Happiness in all things--
And we would come on summer days
When all around was bright, and set us down
And think of all that lay beneath that turf
On which ...

'Turn, gentle hermit of the dale,
And guide my lonely way,
To where yon taper cheers the vale
With hospitable ray.

'For here, forlorn and lost I tread,
With fainting steps and slow;
Where wilds immeasurably spread,
Seem length'ning as I go.'

'Forbear, my son,' the hermit cries,
'To tempt the dangerous gloom;
For yonder faithless phantom flies
To lure thee to thy doom.

'Here to the houseless child of want
My door is open still;
And though my portion is but scant,
I give it with good will.

'Then turn to-night, and freely share
Whate'er my cell bestows;
My rushy couch, and frugal fare,
My blessing and repose.

'No flocks that range the valley free
To slaughter I condemn:
Taught by that power that pities m...

"Shall it be Peace?
A voice within me cried and would not cease,--
'One man could do it if he would but dare.'"
(From "Policeman X" in "Bees in Amber.")


He did not dare!
His swelling pride laid wait
On opportunity, then dropped the mask
And tempted Fate, cast loaded dice,--and lost;
Nor recked the cost of losing.

"Their souls are mine.
Their lives were in thy hand;--
Of thee I do require them!"

The Voice, so stern and sad, thrilled my heart's core
And shook me where I stood.
Sharper than sharpest sword, it fell on him
Who stood defiant, muffle-cloaked and helmed,
With eyes that burned, impatient to be gone.

"The fetor of thy grim burnt offerings
Comes up to me in clouds of bitterness.
Thy fell undoings crucify afres...

Still towards the steep Parnassian way
The moon-led pilgrims wend,
Ah, who of all that start to-day
Shall ever reach the end?

Year after year a dream-fed band
That scorn the vales below,
And scorn the fatness of the land
To win those heights of snow, -

Leave barns and kine and flocks behind,
And count their fortune fair,
If they a dozen leaves may bind
Of laurel in their hair.

Like us, dear Poet, once you trod
That sweet moon-smitten way,
With mouth of silver sought the god
All night and all the day;

Sought singing, till in rosy fire
The white Apollo came,
And touched your brow, and wreathed your lyre,
And named you by his name;

And led you, loving, by the hand
To those grave laurelled bowers,
Where k...

It was in the early morning
    Of life, and of hope to me,
I sat on a grassy hillside
    Of the Isle beyond the sea,
Erin's skies of changeful beauty
    Were bending over me.

The landscape, emerald tinted,
    Lying smiling in the sun,
The grass with daisies sprinkled,
    And with shamrocks over run,
The Maine water flashed and dimpled,
    Still flowing softly on.

The lark in the blue above me,
    A tiny speck in the sky,
Rained down from its bosom's fulness
    A shower of melody,
Dropping through the golden sunlight,
    And sweetly rippling by

Afar in the sunny distance,
    O'er the river's further brim,
Like a stern old Norman warder,
    Stood the castle tall and grim,
And, nearer a grassy ruin,
...

A Suggestion From Hogarth.


One knows the scene so well,--a touch,
A word, brings back again
That room, not garnished overmuch,
In gusty Drury Lane;

The empty safe, the child that cries,
The kittens on the coat,
The good-wife with her patient eyes,
The milkmaid's tuneless throat;

And last, in that mute woe sublime,
The luckless verseman's air:
The "Bysshe," the foolscap and the rhyme,--
The Rhyme ... that is not there!

Poor Bard! to dream the verse inspired--
With dews Castalian wet--
Is built from cold abstractions squired
By "Bysshe," his epithet!

Ah! when she comes, the glad-eyed Muse,
No step upon the stair
Betrays the guest that none refuse,--
She takes us unaware;

And tips with fire our ly...

How shall she know the worship we would do her?
The walls are high, and she is very far.
How shall the woman's message reach unto her
Above the tumult of the packed bazaar?
Free wind of March, against the lattice blowing,
Bear thou our thanks, lest she depart unknowing.

Go forth across the fields we may not roam in,
Go forth beyond the trees that rim the city,
To whatsoe'er fair place she hath her home in,
Who dowered us with walth of love and pity.
Out of our shadow pass, and seek her singing,
"I have no gifts but Love alone for bringing."

Say that we be a feeble folk who greet her,
But old in grief, and very wise in tears;
Say that we, being desolate, entreat her
That she forget us not in after years;
For we have seen the light, and it were griev...

Far hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching over a grave, an ancient, sorrowful mother,
Once a queen - now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,
Her old white hair drooping dishevel'd round her shoulders;
At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
Long silent - she too long silent - mourning her shrouded hope and heir;
Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love.

Yet a word, ancient mother;
You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground, with forehead between your knees;
O you need not sit there, veil'd in your old white hair, so dishevel'd;
For know you, the one you mourn is not in that grave;
It was an illusion - the heir, the son you love, was not really dead;
The Lord is not dead - he is risen again, young and strong, in anot...

Under the orchard boughs,
    That drop red leaves like coals into the grass.
        The golden arrows of the sunset fall;
        And on the vine-hung wall
Great purple clusters in delicious drowse,
Beakers of chrysolite and amethyst,
Yet by the sun unkissed,
    Lean down to all the wooing lips that pass,
Brimful of red, red wine
Sweet as brown peasants glean along the castled Rhine

All sights and sounds are of the Autumn weather;
    The urchin rock'ng in the trees
        Shakes silver laughter with the apples down,--
    And wading to the knees
        Among the stubble and the husks so brown,
The oxen keeping every patient step together,
Bring in the creaking wain,
High-piled with yellow maize and sheaves of rustling grain.

While i...