The American Spirit speaks:

If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, My Avatar.

Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.

The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve

His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.

Calm-eyed he scoffs at Sword and Crown,
Or, panic-blinded, stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;

Tune - "Jo Janet."



I.

    Husband, husband, cease your strife,
        Nor longer idly rave, sir;
    Tho' I am your wedded wife,
        Yet I am not your slave, sir.
    "One of two must still obey,
        Nancy, Nancy;
    Is it man or woman, say,
        My spouse, Nancy?"

II.

    If 'tis still the lordly word,
        Service and obedience;
    I'll desert my sov'reign lord,
        And so, good bye, allegiance!
    "Sad will I be, so bereft,
        Nancy, Nancy;
    Yet I'll try to make a shift,
        My spouse, Nancy."

III.

    My poor heart then break it must,
        My last hour I'm near it:
    When you lay me in the dust,
        Think, think, how you will...

    Ye men of wit and wealth, why all this sneering
    'Gainst poor Excisemen? give the cause a hearing;
    What are you, landlords' rent-rolls? teasing ledgers:
    What premiers, what? even monarchs' mighty gaugers:
    Nay, what are priests, those seeming godly wise men?
    What are they, pray, but spiritual Excisemen?

In these fair vales hath many a Tree
At Wordsworth's suit been spared;
And from the builder's hand this Stone,
For some rude beauty of its own,
Was rescued by the Bard:
So let it rest; and time will come
When here the tender-hearted
May heave a gentle sigh for him,
As one of the departed.

On Sunday mornings, freed from hard employ,
How oft I mark the mischievous young boy
With anxious haste his pole and lines provide,
For make-shifts oft crook'd pins to thread were tied;
And delve his knife with wishes ever warm
In rotten dunghills for the grub and worm,
The harmless treachery of his hooks to bait;
Tracking the dewy grass with many a mate,
To seek the brook that down the meadows glides,
Where the grey willow shadows by its sides,
Where flag and reed in wild disorder spread,
And bending bulrush bows its taper head;
And, just above the surface of the floods,
Where water-lilies mount their snowy buds,
On whose broad swimming leaves of glossy green
The shining dragon-fly is often seen;
Where hanging thorns, with roots wash'd bare, appear,
That...

    From Bindle's opera house in the village
    To Broadway is a great step.
    But I tried to take it, my ambition fired
    When sixteen years of age,
    Seeing "East Lynne," played here in the village
    By Ralph Barrett, the coming
    Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul.
    True, I trailed back home, a broken failure,
    When Ralph disappeared in New York,
    Leaving me alone in the city -
    But life broke him also.
    In all this place of silence
    There are no kindred spirits.
    How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos
    Of these quiet fields
    And read these words.

Nobody says: Ah, that is the place
Where chanced, in the hollow of years ago,
What none of the Three Towns cared to know
The birth of a little girl of grace -
The sweetest the house saw, first or last;
    Yet it was so
    On that day long past.

Nobody thinks: There, there she lay
In a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower,
And listened, just after the bedtime hour,
To the stammering chimes that used to play
The quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tune
    In Saint Andrew's tower
    Night, morn, and noon.

Nobody calls to mind that here
Upon Boterel Hill, where the carters skid,
With cheeks whose airy flush outbid
Fresh fruit in bloom, and free of fear,
She cantered down, as if she must fall
    (Though she never did),
    To...

In the hush of early even
The clouds came flocking over,
Till the last wind fell from heaven
And no bird cried.

Darkly the clouds were flocking,
Shadows moved and deepened,
Then paused; the poplar's rocking
Ceased; the light hung still

Like a painted thing, and deadly.
Then from the cloud's side flickered
Sharp lightning, thrusting madly
At the cowering fields.

Thrice the fierce cloud lighten'd,
Down the hill slow thunder trembled;
Day in her cave grew frightened,
Crept away, and died.

Tune - "Banks of Cree."


I.

    Here is the glen, and here the bower,
        All underneath the birchen shade;
    The village-bell has told the hour -
        O what can stay my lovely maid?

II.

    'Tis not Maria's whispering call;
        'Tis but the balmy-breathing gale,
    Mix'd with some warbler's dying fall,
        The dewy star of eve to hail.

III.

    It is Maria's voice I hear!
        So calls the woodlark in the grove,
    His little, faithful mate to cheer,
        At once 'tis music - and 'tis love.

IV.

    And art thou come? and art thou true?
        O welcome, dear to love and me!
    And let us all our vows renew
        Along the flow'ry banks of Cree.

Lady! the songs of Spring were in the grove
While I was shaping beds for winter flowers;
While I was planting green unfading bowers,
And shrubs--to hang upon the warm alcove,
And sheltering wall; and still, as Fancy wove
The dream, to time and nature's blended powers
I gave this paradise for winter hours,
A labyrinth, Lady! which your feet shall rove.
Yes! when the sun of life more feebly shines,
Becoming thoughts, I trust, of solemn gloom                        
Or of high gladness you shall hither bring;
And these perennial bowers and murmuring pines
Be gracious as the music and the bloom
And all the mighty ravishment of spring.

Lo! steadfast and serene,
In patient pause between
The seen and the unseen,
    What gentle zephyrs fan
Your silken silver hair, -
And what diviner air
Breathes round you like a prayer,
    Old Man?

Can you, in nearer view
Of Glory, pierce the blue
Of happy Heaven through;
    And, listening mutely, can
Your senses, dull to us,
Hear Angel-voices thus,
In chorus glorious -
    Old Man?

In your reposeful gaze
The dusk of Autumn days
Is blent with April haze,
    As when of old began
The bursting of the bud
Of rosy babyhood -
When all the world was good,
    Old Man.

And yet I find a sly
Little twinkle in your eye;
And your whisperingly shy
    Little laugh is simply an
Internal shout o...

The wind it blew cold, and the ice was thick,
Deeper and deeper the snowdrifts grew;
A young mother lay in her cottage, sick, -
Her needs were many, her comforts few.
Clasped to her breast was a newborn child,
Unknowing, unmindful of weal or woe;
And away, far away, in the tempest wild,
Was a husband and father, kneedeep in the snow.
All on a Christmas morning, long ago.

The lamp burned low, and the fire was dead,
And the snow sifted in through each crevice and crack:
As she tossed and turned in her lowly bed,
And murmured, "Good Lord, bring my husband back."
The clocks in the city had told the hour
With a single stroke, for young was the day
But no swelling note from the loftiest tower,
Could reach that lone cot where a mother lay.
All on a Christm...

O the old wall here! How I could pass
Life in a long midsummer day,
My feet confined to a plot of grass,
My eyes from a wall not once away!

And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe
Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:
Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loath,
In lappets of tangle they laugh between.

Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?
Why tremble the sprays? What life o'erbrims
The body, the house no eye can probe,
Divined, as beneath a robe, the limbs?

And there again! But my heart may guess
Who tripped behind; and she sang, perhaps:
So the old wall throbbed, and it's life's excess
Died out and away in the leafy wraps.

Wall upon wall are between us: life
And song should away from heart to heart!
I prison-bird, with...

Darkness succeeds to twilight:
Through lattice and through skylight
The stars no doubt, if one looked out,
Might be observed to shine:
And sitting by the embers
I elevate my members
On a stray chair, and then and there
Commence a Valentine.

Yea! by St. Valentinus,
Emma shall not be minus
What all young ladies, whate'er their grade is,
Expect to-day no doubt:
Emma the fair, the stately -
Whom I beheld so lately,
Smiling beneath the snow-white wreath
Which told that she was "out."

Wherefore fly to her, swallow,
And mention that I'd "follow,"
And "pipe and trill," et cetera, till
I died, had I but wings:
Say the North's "true and tender,"
The South an old offender;
And hint in fact, with your well-known tact,
All kin...

Fickle Summer's fled away,
    Shall we see her face again?
    Hearken to the weeping rain,
Never sunbeam greets the day.

More inconstant than the May,
    She cares nothing for our pain,
    Nor will hear the birds complain
In their bowers that once were gay.

Summer, Summer, come once more,
    Drive the shadows from the field,
            All thy radiance round thee fling,
Be our lady as of yore;
    Then the earth her fruits shall yield,
            Then the morning stars shall sing.

How many times must I jingle my little bells
And kiss your ugly forehead, shabby substitute?
How many, 0 my quiver, spears and bolts to lose
Trying to hit the target, nature's mystic self?

We will wear out our souls concocting subtle schemes,
And we'll be wrecking heavy armatures we've done
Before we gaze upon the great and wondrous One,
For whom we've often sobbed, wracked by the devil's dreams!

But some have never known their Idol face to face
These poor, accursed sculptors, marked by their disgrace,
Who go to beat themselves about the breast and brow,

Have only but a hope, strange sombre Capitol!
It is that Death, a new and hovering sun, will find
A way to bring to bloom the flowers of their minds!

Long I followed happy guides,
I could never reach their sides;
Their step is forth, and, ere the day
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Keen my sense, my heart was young,
Right good-will my sinews strung,
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
On and away, their hasting feet
Make the morning proud and sweet;
Flowers they strew,--I catch the scent;
Or tone of silver instrument
Leaves on the wind melodious trace;
Yet I could never see their face.
On eastern hills I see their smokes,
Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
I met many travellers
Who the road had surely kept;
They saw not my fine revellers,--
These had crossed them while they slept.
Some had heard their fair report,
In the country or the court.
Fleete...

Should painter attach to a fair human head
The thick, turgid neck of a stallion,
Or depict a spruce lass with the tail of a bass,
I am sure you would guy the rapscallion.

Believe me, dear Pisos, that just such a freak
Is the crude and preposterous poem
Which merely abounds in a torrent of sounds,
With no depth of reason below 'em.

'T is all very well to give license to art,--
The wisdom of license defend I;
But the line should be drawn at the fripperish spawn
Of a mere cacoethes scribendi.

It is too much the fashion to strain at effects,--
Yes, that's what's the matter with Hannah!
Our popular taste, by the tyros debased,
Paints each barnyard a grove of Diana!

Should a patron require you to paint a marine,
Would you work in ...