Freedom

    "I am doing no good!" said a little rill,
As it rippled along at the foot of a hill,
"I am doing no good with my babbling here,
No one is listening, - no one is near!"

    "'No good! - no good!'" said a violet blue,
As it shook from its petals the sparkling dew,
And opened its wondering, azure eyes
To the soft, clear light of the morning skies.

    "'No good?'" - said a willow tree, bending low
To kiss the rivulet, "say not so!
Daily and hourly I draw from thee
The grace and beauty that dwell with me!"
And the rustling reeds in the marge that stood
Reproachfully murmured - "'no good! - no good!'"
    "'No good,' indeed!" - cried a dainty bird,
And she sprang from her nest as the sound she heard,
And fluttered her wings o'er the sorrowing stream...

A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude,
Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,
With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,
By all the world contributed freedom's and law's and thrift's society,
The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time's accumulations,
To justify the past.

Rank Poverty! dost thou my joys assail,
And with thy threat'nings fright me from my rest?
I once had thoughts, that with a Bloomfield's tale,
And leisure hours, I surely should be blest;
But now I find the sadly-alter'd scene,
From these few days I fondly thought my own,
Hoping to spend them private and alone,
But, lo! thy troop of spectres intervene:
Want shows his face, with Idleness between,
Next Shame's approaching step, that hates the throng,
Comes sneaking on, with Sloth that fetters strong.
Are these the joys my leisure hours must glean?
Then I decline:--but know where'er we meet,
Ye ne'er shall drive me from the Muses' seat.

How thick the shades of evening close!
How pale the sky with weight of snows!
Haste, light the tapers, urge the fire,
And bid the joyless day retire.
Alas, in vain I try within
To brighten the dejected scene,
While rouz'd by grief these fiery pains
Tear the frail texture of my veins;
While winter's voice, that storms around,
And yon deep death-bell's groaning sound
Renew my mind's oppressive gloom,
Till starting horror shakes the room.

Is there in nature no kind power
To sooth affliction's lonely hour?
To blunt the edge of dire disease,
And teach these wintry shades to please?
Come, Cheerfulness, triumphant fair,
Shine through the hovering cloud of care:
O sweet of language, mild of mien,
O virtue's friend and pleasure's queen,
Asswag...

I tread the paths of earlier times
Where all my steps were set to rhymes.

I gaze on scenes I used to see
When dreaming of a vague To be.

I walk in ways made bright of old
By hopes youth-limned in hues of gold.

But lo! those hopes of future bliss
Seem dull beside the joy that IS.

My noonday skies are far more bright
Than those dreamed of in morning's light,

And life gives me more joys to hold
Than all it promised me of old.

    Thou hast taken the light of many suns,
    And they are sealed in the prison-house of gloom.
    Even as candle-flames
    Hast thou taken the souls of men,
    With winds from out a hollow place;
    They are hid in the abyss as in a sea,
    And the gulfs are over them
    As the weight of many peaks,
    As the depth of many seas;
    Thy shields are between them and the light;
    They are past its burden and bitterness;
    The spears of the day shall not touch them,
    The chains of the sun shall not hale them forth.

    Many men there were,
    In the days that are now of thy realm,
    That thou hast sealed with the seal of many deeps;
    Their feet were as eagles' wings in the quest of Truth -
    Aye, mightily they desired her face,...

    Four little chests all in a row,
    Dim with dust, and worn by time,
    All fashioned and filled, long ago,
    By children now in their prime.
    Four little keys hung side by side,
    With faded ribbons, brave and gay
    When fastened there, with childish pride,
    Long ago, on a rainy day.
    Four little names, one on each lid,
    Carved out by a boyish hand,
    And underneath there lieth hid
    Histories of the happy band
    Once playing here, and pausing oft
    To hear the sweet refrain,
    That came and went on the roof aloft,
    In the falling summer rain.


    "Meg" on the first lid, smooth and fair.
    I look in with loving eyes,
    For folded here, with well-known care,
    A goodly gathering lies,
 ...

The world was husht, the moon above
    Sailed thro' ether slowly,
When near the casement of my love,
    Thus I whispered lowly,--
"Awake, awake, how canst thou sleep?
    "The field I seek to-morrow
"Is one where man hath fame to reap,
    "And woman gleans but sorrow."

"Let battle's field be what it may.
    Thus spoke a voice replying,
"Think not thy love, while thou'rt away,
    "Will sit here idly sighing.
"No--woman's soul, if not for fame,
    "For love can brave all danger!
Then forth from out the casement came
    A plumed and armed stranger.

A stranger? No; 'twas she, the maid,
    Herself before me beaming,
With casque arrayed and falchion blade
    Beneath her girdle gleaming!
Close side by side, in freedom's fight,...

(Written for THE PORTFOLIO SOCIETY, October 1861.)


The yellow poplar-leaves came down
And like a carpet lay,
No waftings were in the sunny air
To flutter them away;
And he stepped on blithe and debonair
That warm October day.

"The boy," saith he, "hath got his own,
But sore has been the fight,
For ere his life began the strife
That ceased but yesternight;
For the will," he said, "the kinsfolk read,
And read it not aright.

"His cause was argued in the court
Before his christening day,
And counsel was heard, and judge demurred,
And bitter waxed the fray;
Brother with brother spake no word
When they met in the way.

"Against each one did each contend,
And all against the heir.
I would not bend, for I knew the ...

High on his Patmos of the Southern Seas
Our northern dreamer sleeps,
Strange stars above him, and above his grave
Strange leaves and wings their tropic splendours wave,
While, far beneath, mile after shimmering mile,
The great Pacific, with its faery deeps,
Smiles all day long its silken secret smile.

Son of a race nomadic, finding still
Its home in regions furthest from its home,
Ranging untired the borders of the world,
And resting but to roam;
Loved of his land, and making all his boast
The birthright of the blood from which he came,
Heir to those lights that guard the Scottish coast,
And caring only for a filial fame;
Proud, if a poet, he was Scotsman most,
And bore a Scottish name.

Death, that long sought our poet, finds at last,
Dea...

I.

    Now spring has clad the grove in green,
        And strew'd the lea wi' flowers:
    The furrow'd waving corn is seen
        Rejoice in fostering showers;
    While ilka thing in nature join
        Their sorrows to forego,
    O why thus all alone are mine
        The weary steps of woe?

II.

    The trout within yon wimpling burn
        Glides swift, a silver dart,
    And safe beneath the shady thorn
        Defies the angler's art:
    My life was ance that careless stream,
        That wanton trout was I;
    But love, wi' unrelenting beam,
        Has scorch'd my fountains dry.

III.

    The little flow'ret's peaceful lot,
        In yonder cliff that grows,
    Which, save the linnet's flight...

You are no longer young,
Nor are you very old.
There are homes where those belong.
You know you do not fit
When you observe the cold
Stares of those who sit

In bath-chairs or the park
(A stick, then, at their side)
Or find yourself in the dark
And see the lovers who,
In love and in their stride,
Don't even notice you.

This is a time to begin
Your life. It could be new.
The sheer not fitting in
With the old who envy you
And the young who want to win,
Not knowing false from true,

Means you have liberty
Denied to their extremes.
At last now you can be
What the old cannot recall
And the young long for in dreams,
Yet still include them all.

June, 1865

Armies he's seen--the herds of war,
But never such swarms of men
As now in the Nineveh of the North--
How mad the Rebellion then!

And yet but dimly he divines
The depth of that deceit,
And superstitution of vast pride
Humbled to such defeat.

Seductive shone the Chiefs in arms--
His steel the nearest magnet drew;
Wreathed with its kind, the Gulf-weed drives--
'Tis Nature's wrong they rue.

His face is hidden in his beard,
But his heart peers out at eye--
And such a heart! like a mountain-pool
Where no man passes by.

He thinks of Hill--a brave soul gone;
And Ashby dead in pale disdain;
And Stuart with the Rupert-plume,
Whose blue eye never shall laugh again.

He hears the drum; he sees our boy...

        After the fierce midsummer all ablaze
    Has burned itself to ashes, and expires
    In the intensity of its own fires,
        There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days,
        Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze.
    So after Love has led us, till he tires
    Of his own throes and torments and desires,
        Comes large-eyed friendship: with a restful gaze
        He beckons us to follow, and across
    Cool, verdant vales we wander free from care.
    Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?
        Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?
    We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;
    And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete.

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

An old sweetheart of mine! - Is this her presence here with me,
Or but a vain creation of a lover's memory?
A fair, illusive vision that would vanish into air
Dared I even touch the silence with the whisper of a prayer?

Nay, let me then believe in all the blended false and true -
The semblance of the OLD love and the substance of the NEW, -
The THEN of changeless sunny days - the NOW of shower and shine -
But Love forever smiling - as that old sweetheart of mine.

This ever-restful sense of HOME, though shouts ring in the hall. -
The easy chair - the old book-shelves and prints along the wall;
The rare HABANAS in their box, or gaunt church-warden-stem
That often wags, above the jar, derisively at them.

As one who cons at evening o'er an album, all alone,
And...

I came to the churchyard where pretty Joy lies
    On a morning in April, a rare sunny day;
Such bloom rose around, and so many birds' cries
    That I sang for delight as I followed the way.

I sang for delight in the ripening of spring,
    For dandelions even were suns come to earth;
Not a moment went by but a new lark took wing
    To wait on the season with melody's mirth.

Love-making birds were my mates all the road,
    And who would wish surer delight for the eye
Than to see pairing goldfinches gleaming abroad
    Or yellowhammers sunning on paling and sty?

And stocks in the almswomen's garden were blown,
    With rich Easter roses each side of the door;
The lazy white owls in the glade cool and lone
    Paid calls on their cousins in the e...

Who knows what days I answer for to-day:
    Giving the bud I give the flower.    I bow
    This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.

Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,
    Give one repose to pain I know not now,
    One leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.

Oh, rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.
    I fold to-day at altars far apart
Hands trembling with what toils?    In their retreat
    I seal my love to-be, my folded art.
I light the tapers at my head and feet,
    And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.