Spirituality

    Alas! alas! what impious hands are these?
    They have cut down my dark mysterious trees,
    Defied the brooding spell
    That sealed my sacred well,
    Broken my fathers' fixed and ancient bars,
    And on the mouldering shade
    Wherein my dead were laid
    Let in the cold clear aspect of the stars.

    Slumber hath held the grove for years untold:
    Is there no reverence for a peace so old?
    Is there no seemly awe
    For bronze-engraven law,
    For dust beatified and saintly name?
    When they shall see the shrine
    Princes have held divine,
    Will they not bow before the eternal flame?

    Vain! vain! the wind of heaven for ages long
    Hath whispered manhood, "Let thine arm be strong!
    Hew down and fling awa...

I

Beyond the years the answer lies,
Beyond where brood the grieving skies
And Night drops tears.
Where Faith rod-chastened smiles to rise
And doff its fears,
And carping Sorrow pines and dies--
Beyond the years.


II

Beyond the years the prayer for rest
Shall beat no more within the breast;
The darkness clears,
And Morn perched on the mountain's crest
Her form uprears--
The day that is to come is best,
Beyond the years.


III

Beyond the years the soul shall find
That endless peace for which it pined,
For light appears,
And to the eyes that still were blind
With blood and tears,
Their sight shall come all unconfined
Beyond the years.

My restless blood now lies a-quiver,
Knowing that always, exquisitely,
This April twilight on the river
Stirs anguish in the heart of me.

For the fast world in that rare glimmer
Puts on the witchery of a dream,
The straight grey buildings, richly dimmer,
The fiery windows, and the stream

With willows leaning quietly over,
The still ecstatic fading skies . . .
And all these, like a waiting lover,
Murmur and gleam, lift lustrous eyes,

Drift close to me, and sideways bending
Whisper delicious words.
But I
Stretch terrible hands, uncomprehending,
Shaken with love; and laugh; and cry.

My agony made the willows quiver;
I heard the knocking of my heart
Die loudly down the windless river,
I heard the pale skies fall apart,

My thoughts soar not as they ought to soar,
    Higher and higher on soul-lent wings;
But ever and often, and more and more
    They are dragged down earthward by little things,
By little troubles and little needs,
As a lark might be tangled among the weeds.

My purpose is not what it ought to be,
    Steady and fixed, like a star on high,
But more like a fisherman's light at sea;
    Hither and thither it seems to fly -
Sometimes feeble, and sometimes bright,
Then suddenly lost in the gloom of night.

My life is far from my dream of life -
    Calmly contented, serenely glad;
But, vexed and worried by daily strife,
    It is always troubled, and ofttimes sad -
And the heights I had thought I should reach one day
Grow dimmer and dimmer, and fart...

Amid my books I lived the hurrying years,
Disdaining kinship with my fellow man;
Alike to me were human smiles and tears,
I cared not whither Earth's great life-stream ran,
Till as I knelt before my mouldered shrine,
God made me look into a woman's eyes;
And I, who thought all earthly wisdom mine,
Knew in a moment that the eternal skies
Were measured but in inches, to the quest
That lay before me in that mystic gaze.
"Surely I have been errant: it is best
That I should tread, with men their human ways."
God took the teacher, ere the task was learned,
And to my lonely books again I turned.

Some starlit garden grey with dew,
Some chamber flushed with wine and fire,
What matters where, so I and you
Are worthy our desire?

Behind, a past that scolds and jeers
For ungirt loin and lamp unlit;
In front the unmanageable years,
The trap upon the pit;

Think on the shame of dreams for deeds,
The scandal of unnatural strife,
The slur upon immortal needs,
The treason done to life:

Arise! no more a living lie
And with me quicken and control
A memory that shall magnify
The universal Soul.

Dear Anna,—Between friend and friend
Prose answers every common end;
Serves, in a plain and homely way,
To express the occurrence of the day;
Our health, the weather, and the news;
What walks we take, what books we choose;
And all the floating thoughts we find
Upon the surface of the mind.
But when a poet takes the pen,
Far more alive than other men,
He feels a gentle tingling come
Down to his finger and his thumb,
Derived from nature’s noblest part,
The centre of a glowing heart:
And this is what the world, who knows
No flights above the pitch of prose,
His more sublime vagaries slighting,
Denominates an itch for writing.
No wonder I, who scribble rhyme
To catch the triflers of the time,
And tell them truths divine and clear,
Which, c...

I have seen things that charmed the heart to rest:
Faint moonlight on the towers of ancient towns,
Flattering the soul to dream of old renowns;
The first clear silver on the mountain crest
Where the lone eagle by his chilly nest
Called the lone soul to brood serenely free;
Still pools of sunlight shimmering in the sea,
Calm after storm, wherein the storm seemed blest.

But here a peace deeper than peace is furled,
Enshrined and chaliced from the changeful hour;
The snow is still, yet lives in its own light.
Here is the peace which brooded day and night,
Before the heart of man with its wild power
Had ever spurned or trampled the great world.

The skies are blue above my head,
    The prairie green below,
And flickering o'er the tufted grass
    The shifting shadows go,
Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds
    Fleck white the tranquil skies,
Black javelins darting where aloft
    The whirring pheasant flies.

A glimmering plain in drowsy trance
    The dim horizon bounds,
Where all the air is resonant
    With sleepy summer sounds, -
The life that sings among the flowers,
    The lisping of the breeze,
The hot cicala's sultry cry,
    The murmurous dream of bees.

The butterfly - a flying flower -
    Wheels swift in flashing rings,
And flutters round his quiet kin,
    With brave flame-mottled wings.
The wild Pinks burst in crimson fire
    The Phlox' bright c...

I.

Along Crane River's sunny slopes
Blew warm the winds of May,
And over Naumkeag's ancient oaks
The green outgrew the gray.

The grass was green on Rial-side,
The early birds at will
Waked up the violet in its dell,
The wind-flower on its hill.

"Where go you, in your Sunday coat,
Son Andrew, tell me, pray."
For striped perch in Wenham Lake
I go to fish to-day."

"Unharmed of thee in Wenham Lake
The mottled perch shall be
A blue-eyed witch sits on the bank
And weaves her net for thee.

"She weaves her golden hair; she sings
Her spell-song low and faint;
The wickedest witch in Salem jail
Is to that girl a saint."

"Nay, mother, hold thy cruel tongue;
God knows," the young man cried,
"He never ma...

Enough of climbing toil! Ambition treads
Here, as 'mid busier scenes, ground steep and rough,
Or slippery even to peril! and each step,
As we for most uncertain recompence
Mount toward the empire of the fickle clouds,
Each weary step, dwarfing the world below,
Induces, for its old familiar sights,
Unacceptable feelings of contempt,
With wonder mixed that Man could e'er be tied,
In anxious bondage, to such nice array
And formal fellowship of petty things!
Oh! 'tis the 'heart' that magnifies this life,
Making a truth and beauty of her own;
And moss-grown alleys, circumscribing shades,
And gurgling rills, assist her in the work
More efficaciously than realms outspread,
As in a map, before the adventurer's gaze
Ocean and Earth contending for regard.
The ...

I have been across the bridges of the years.
    Wet with tears
Were the ties on which I trod, going back
    Down the track
To the valley where I left, 'neath skies of Truth,
    My lost youth.

As I went, I dropped my burdens, one and all -
    Let them fall;
All my sorrows, all my wrinkles, all my care,
    My white hair,
I laid down, like some lone pilgrim's heavy pack,
    By the track.

As I neared the happy valley with light feet,
    My heart beat
To the rhythm of a song I used to know
    Long ago,
And my spirits gushed and bubbled like a fountain
    Down a mountain.

On the border of that valley I found you,
    Tried and true;
And we wandered through the golden Summer-Land
    Hand in hand.
And my pulses...

I said I stood upon thy grave,
My Mother State, when last the moon
Of blossoms clomb the skies of June.
And, scattering ashes on my head,
I wore, undreaming of relief,
The sackcloth of thy shame and grief.
Again that moon of blossoms shines
On leaf and flower and folded wing,
And thou hast risen with the spring!
Once more thy strong maternal arms
Are round about thy children flung,
A lioness that guards her young!
No threat is on thy closëd lips,
But in thine eye a power to smite
The mad wolf backward from its light.
Southward the baffled robber's track
Henceforth runs only; hereaway,
The fell lycanthrope finds no prey.
Henceforth, within thy sacred gates,
His first low howl shall downward draw
The thunder of thy righteous law.
Not min...

Is then the final page before me spread,
Nor further outlet left to mind or heart?
Presumptuous Book! too forward to be read,
How can I give thee licence to depart?
One tribute more: unbidden feelings start
Forth from their coverts; slighted objects rise;
My spirit is the scene of such wild art
As on Parnassus rules, when lightning flies,
Visibly leading on the thunder's harmonies.

All that I saw returns upon my view,
All that I heard comes back upon my ear,
All that I felt this moment doth renew;
And where the foot with no unmanly fear
Recoiled--and wings alone could travel--there
I move at ease; and meet contending themes
That press upon me, crossing the career
Of recollections vivid as the dreams
Of midnight, cities, plains, forests, and mighty s...

Light silken curtain, colorless and soft,
Dreamlike before me floating! what abides
    Behind thy pearly veil's
    Opaque, mysterious woof?


Where sleek red kine, and dappled, crunch day-long
Thick, luscious blades and purple clover-heads,
    Nigh me I still can mark
    Cool fields of beaded grass.


No more; for on the rim of the globed world
I seem to stand and stare at nothingness.
    But songs of unseen birds
    And tranquil roll of waves


Bring sweet assurance of continuous life
Beyond this silvery cloud.    Fantastic dreams,
    Of tissue subtler still
    Than the wreathed fog, arise,


And cheat my brain with airy vanishings
And mystic glories of the world beyond.
    A whole enchanted town

Passa per gli occhi.


Swift through the eyes unto the heart within
        All lovely forms that thrall our spirit stray;
        So smooth and broad and open is the way
        That thousands and not hundreds enter in
Of every age and sex: whence I begin,
        Burdened with griefs, but more with dull dismay,
        To fear; nor find mid all their bright array
        One that with full content my heart may win.
If mortal beauty be the food of love,
        It came not with the soul from heaven, and thus
        That love itself must be a mortal fire:
But if love reach to nobler hopes above,
        Thy love shall scorn me not nor dread desire
        That seeks a carnal prey assailing us.

In a flowered dell the Lady Venus stood,
Amazed with sorrow. Down the morning one
Far golden horn in the gold of trees and sun
Rang out; and held; and died. . . . She thought the wood
Grew quieter. Wing, and leaf, and pool of light
Forgot to dance. Dumb lay the unfalling stream;
Life one eternal instant rose in dream
Clear out of time, poised on a golden height. . . .

Till a swift terror broke the abrupt hour.
The gold waves purled amidst the green above her;
And a bird sang. With one sharp-taken breath,
By sunlit branches and unshaken flower,
The immortal limbs flashed to the human lover,
And the immortal eyes to look on death.

Time sets his footprints on our little Earth,
    And, walk he ne'er so softly, some sweet thing
Falls 'neath each foot-fall, crush'd amid its mirth,
    Tracking the course of Life's short wandering,
With fallen remnants of its mortal part,
    Freeing the soul, but weighing down the heart.

Thou flower of Love! thou little treasury
    Of gentleness, and purity, and grace!
What hidden virtue hath Death reft from thee--
    What unseen essence melted into space?
For now thou liest like a sinless child,
    Whom God hath homeward to his bosom smiled.

The dew-shower fell on thee, the sunbeam play'd,
    As Life is ever made of smiles and tears;
And ofttimes has the breeze of summer sway'd,
    And with its mellow music mock'd thy fears;
But now, O wo...