Freedom

A shallow stream, from fountains
Deep in the Sandwich mountains,
Ran lake ward Bearcamp River;
And, between its flood-torn shores,
Sped by sail or urged by oars
No keel had vexed it ever.

Alone the dead trees yielding
To the dull axe Time is wielding,
The shy mink and the otter,
And golden leaves and red,
By countless autumns shed,
Had floated down its water.

From the gray rocks of Cape Ann,
Came a skilled seafaring man,
With his dory, to the right place;
Over hill and plain he brought her,
Where the boatless Beareamp water
Comes winding down from White-Face.

Quoth the skipper: “Ere she floats forth;
I’m sure my pretty boat’s worth,
At least, a name as pretty.”
On her painted side he wrote it,
And the flag that o...

    'Oh, were I a heliotrope,
    I would play poet,
    And blow a breeze of fragrance
    To you; and none should know it.


    'Your form like the stately elm
    When Phoebus gilds the morning ray;
    Your cheeks like the ocean bed
    That blooms a rose in May.


    'Your words are wise and bright,
    I bequeath them to you a legacy given;
    And when your spirit takes its flight,
    May it bloom aflower in heaven.


    'My tongue in flattering language spoke,
    And sweeter silence never broke
    in busiest street or loneliest glen.
    I take you with the flashes of my pen.


    'Consider the lilies, how they grow;
    They toil not, yet are fair,
    Gems and flowers and Solomon's seal.
 ...

In Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination
in Boyhood and Early Youth

Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days,
When vapours rolling down ...

        ROSH-HASHANAH, 5643.


Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled,
And naked branches point to frozen skies, -
When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold,
The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn
A sea of beauty and abundance lies,
    Then the new year is born.


Look where the mother of the months uplifts
In the green clearness of the unsunned West,
Her ivory horn of plenty, dropping gifts,
Cool, harvest-feeding dews, fine-winnowed light;
Tired labor with fruition, joy and rest
    Profusely to requite.


Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call
Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb
With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all.
The red, dark year is dead, the year just born
Leads on from anguis...

Though loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honied thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse
Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent bolder,
Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer?
I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!
And in thy valleys, Agiochook!
The jackals of the negro-holder.

The God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land
With little men;--
Small bat and wren
House in the oak...

Years of the modern! years of the unperform'd!
Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas;
I see not America only, I see not only Liberty's nation, but other nations preparing;
I see tremendous entrances and exits, I see new combinations, I see the solidarity of races;
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's stage;
(Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts suitable to them closed?)
I see Freedom, completely arm'd, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law on one side, and Peace on the other,
A stupendous Trio, all issuing forth against the idea of caste;
What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions;
I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old...

        Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter
        We drenched the altars of Love's sacred grove,
        Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after
        The launching of the colored moths of Love.
        Love's proper myrtle and his mother's zone
        We bound about our irreligious brows,
        And fettered him with garlands of our own,
        And spread a banquet in his frugal house.
        Not yet the god has spoken; but I fear
        Though we should break our bodies in his flame,
        And pour our blood upon his altar, here
        Henceforward is a grove without a name,
        A pasture to the shaggy goats of Pan,
        Whence flee forever a woman and a man.

Bright ball of flame that through the gloom of even
Silently takest thine aethereal way,
And with surpassing glory dimm'st each ray
Twinkling amid the dark blue depths of Heaven, -
Unlike the fire thou bearest, soon shalt thou
Fade like a meteor in surrounding gloom,
Whilst that, unquenchable, is doomed to glow
A watch-light by the patriot's lonely tomb;
A ray of courage to the oppressed and poor;
A spark, though gleaming on the hovel's hearth,
Which through the tyrant's gilded domes shall roar;
A beacon in the darkness of the Earth;
A sun which, o'er the renovated scene,
Shall dart like Truth where Falsehood yet has been.

From the depths of the waters that lighten and darken
With change everlasting of life and of death,
Where hardly by noon if the lulled ear hearken
It hears the sea’s as a tired child’s breath,
Where hardly by night if an eye dare scan it
The storm lets shipwreck be seen or heard,
As the reefs to the waves and the foam to the granite
Respond one merciless word,
Sheer seen and far, in the sea’s live heaven,
A seamew’s flight from the wild sweet land,
White-plumed with foam if the wind wake, seven
Black helms as of warriors that stir not stand.
From the depths that abide and the waves that environ
Seven rocks rear heads that the midnight masks,
And the strokes of the swords of the storm are as iron
On the steel of the wave-worn casques.
Be night’s dark word as th...

Past the despairing wail
And the bright banquets of the Elysian vale
Melt every care away!
Delight, that breathes and moves forever,
Glides through sweet fields like some sweet river!
Elysian life survey!
There, fresh with youth, o'er jocund meads,
His merry west-winds blithely leads
The ever-blooming May!
Through gold-woven dreams goes the dance of the hours,
In space without bounds swell the soul and its powers,
And truth, with no veil, gives her face to the day.
And joy to-day and joy to-morrow,
But wafts the airy soul aloft;
The very name is lost to sorrow,
And pain is rapture tuned more exquisitely soft.

Here the pilgrim reposes the world-weary limb,
And forgets in the shadow, cool-breathing and dim,
The load he shall bear never more;

        I wonder can this be the world it was
        At sunset? I remember the sky fell
        Green as pale meadows, at the long street-ends,
        But overhead the smoke-wrack hugged the roofs
        As if to shut the city from God's eyes
        Till dawn should quench the laughter and the lights.
        Beneath the gas flare stolid faces passed,
        Too dull for sin; old loosened lips set hard
        To drain the stale lees from the cup of sense;
        Or if a young face yearned from out the mist
        Made by its own bright hair, the eyes were wan
        With desolate fore-knowledge of the end.
        My life lay waste about me: as I walked,
        From the gross dark of unfrequented streets
        The face of my own youth peered forth at me,

That which Grecian art created,
Let the Frank, with joy elated,
Bear to Seine's triumphant strand,
And in his museums glorious
Show the trophies all-victorious
To his wondering fatherland.

They to him are silent ever,
Into life's fresh circle never
From their pedestals come down.
He alone e'er holds the Muses
Through whose breast their power diffuses,
To the Vandal they're but stone!

And you are the poet, and so you want
Something what is it? a theme, a fancy?
Something or other the Muse won’t grant
To your old poetical necromancy;
Why, one half you poets you can’t deny
Don’t know the Muse when you chance to meet her,
But sit in your attics and mope and sigh
For a faineant goddess to drop from the sky,
When flesh and blood may be standing by
Quite at your service, should you but greet her.

What if I told you my own romance?
Women are poets, if you so take them,
One third poet, the rest what chance
Of man and marriage may choose to make them.
Give me ten minutes before you go,
Here at the window we’ll sit together,
Watching the currents that ebb and flow;
Watching the world as it drifts below
Up the hot Avenue’s dusty glow:<...

Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.

I have heard that on a day
Mine host’s sign-board flew away,
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer’s old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new old sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac.

Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field...

The Sky Line.

Like black fangs in a cruel ogre's jaw
    The grim piles lift against the sunset sky;
Down drops the night, and shuts the horrid maw--
    I listen, breathless, but there comes no cry.


Defeat.

He sits and looks into the west
    Where twilight gathers, wan and gray,
A knight who quit the Golden Quest,
    And flung Excalibur away.


To an Amazon.

O! twain in spirit, we shall know
    Thy like no more, so fierce, so mild,
One breast shorn clean to rest the bow,
    One milk-full for thy warrior child.


The Old Mother.

Life is like an old mother whom trouble and toil
Have sufficed the best part of her nature to spoil,
Whom her children, the Passions, so ...

I do not count the hours I spend
In wandering by the sea;
The forest is my loyal friend,
Like God it useth me.

In plains that room for shadows make
Of skirting hills to lie,
Bound in by streams which give and take
Their colors from the sky;

Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
Or down the oaken glade,
O what have I to do with time?
For this the day was made.

Cities of mortals woe-begone
Fantastic care derides,
But in the serious landscape lone
Stern benefit abides.

Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy,
And merry is only a mask of sad,
But, sober on a fund of joy,
The woods at heart are glad.

There the great Planter plants
Of fruitful worlds the grain,
And with a million spells enchants
The souls that walk...

    In this, the City of my Discontent,
    Sometimes there comes a whisper from the grass,
    "Romance, Romance - is here.    No Hindu town
    Is quite so strange.    No Citadel of Brass
    By Sinbad found, held half such love and hate;
    No picture-palace in a picture-book
    Such webs of Friendship, Beauty, Greed and Fate!"

    In this, the City of my Discontent,
    Down from the sky, up from the smoking deep
    Wild legends new and old burn round my bed
    While trees and grass and men are wrapped in sleep.
    Angels come down, with Christmas in their hearts,
    Gentle, whimsical, laughing, heaven-sent;
    And, for a day, fair Peace have given me
    In this, the City of my Discontent!

[1]


Oh tidings of freedom! oh accents of hope!
    Waft, waft them, ye zephyrs, to Erin's blue sea,
And refresh with their sounds every son of the Pope,
    From Dingle-a-cooch to far Donaghadee.

"If mutely the slave will endure and obey,
    "Nor clanking his fetters nor breathing his pains,
"His masters perhaps at some far distant day
    "May think (tender tyrants!) of loosening his chains."

Wise "if" and "perhaps!"--precious salve for our wounds,
    If he who would rule thus o'er manacled mutes,
Could check the free spring-tide of Mind that resounds,
    Even now at his feet, like the sea at Canute's.

But, no, 'tis in vain--the grand impulse is given--
    Man knows his high Charter, and knowing will cla...