Thou Art No Longer Lonely in the World Pluck One of Those Precious Gems From Thy
THE Bang-up REMEMBRANCE
AND OTHER POEMS
THE GREAT REMEMBRANCE
AND OTHER POEMS
Function I
THE GREAT REMEMBRANCE
Read at the Annual Reunion of the Guild of the Army of the Potomac, Faneuil Hall, Boston, June 27, 1893.
Comrades, the circumvolve narrows, heads grow white,
As over again past the campsite-fire's flaring lite
We gather and clasp hands, equally we have done
These many, many years. Then long ago
A part nosotros were of all that glorious prove,—
Stood, side by side, 'neath the red battle-sunday,—
Then long ago we breathed war's thunderous jiff,
Knew the white fury of that life-in-decease,
So long ago that troubled joy, it seems
The valorous pageant might resolve to splendid dreams.
But no! Likewise deep 't is burned into the brain!
As well were lightning-scar by summer rain
Washed make clean away, when stroke on blinding stroke
Hath torn the rock, and riven the blackened oak.
How often as downward these peaceful streets we laissez passer
All vanishes salvage, lo! the rutted grass,
Wreckt caissons, frightened beasts, and, merciful God!
The piteous brunt of the ensanguined sod!
All the same not all terror doth the memory save
From war'south emblazonry and open up grave:
In glimpses, flashing like a meteor's lite,
A silent army marches through the nighttime;
The guidons flutter in a aureate valley
Where, at the noonday halt, the horsemen dally;
Or, wait! a thousand tents gleam through the black;
Or, now, where quick-congenital camp-fires flame and scissure,
From blaze to shade men stretch o'erwearied limbs,
Chant songs, or wake the hills with chorused hymns;
Or, ere the dawn makes stake the starry dark,
The peppery signals, spark on trailing spark,
Write on the silent sky their still command,
While the swell army moves, fatigued past a single mitt.
Then long ago information technology seems, so long ago,
Behold, our sons, grown men since those swell days,—
Born since the last articulate bugle ceased to accident
Its summons downwardly the valley; since the bays
Shook with the roar of fort and answering fleet,—
Our very children look into our optics
And notice foreign records, with a mute surprise;
As they some curious traveler might greet
Who kept far countries in his musing mind,
Beyond the weltering seas, the mountain-walls behind.
And yet it was this country and not some other,
Where blazed war's flame and rolled the battle-deject.
In all this state at that place was no home where blood brother,
Begetter, or son hurried non forth; where bowed
No broken-hearted woman when stake Expiry
Laid his cold finger on the loved i's jiff.
Like to a drama did the scene unroll—
Some night, majestic drama of the soul,
Wherein all strove as actors, hour by hr,
Yet breathless watched the whole swift, tragic play.
Faithful did each his little part essay,
Urged to an cease unknown by one all-knowing Power;
While if the drama pauses, now then,
On the huge phase, 't is for a moment merely—
Here at the center or in some vista lonely,
A single hero or a million men,
And with the tragic theme the world resounds again.
First, in the atrocious waiting came the shock,
The shame unbearable, the sacred flag assailed—
Assailed in liberty's name by those who freedom mock!
Ah, and so the adjuration, to stand up as stands the rock
'Gainst overflowing and tempest, lest that flag be trailed
And torn, or any star therefrom be lost—
The oath, murmured lonely, or where the crowd,
As by a wind of heaven swept and tost,
Passioned its soul to God, and strong men wept aloud.
Then sweet adieu; O biting-sweet good day;
O brave bye! Who were the bravest then,
Or they who went, or waited—women or men?
They who the cheers heard, or the funeral knell?
They who stept proudly to the rattling drum,
Inflamed past war'south divine delirium,
Or they who knew no mad joy of the fight,
And yet breathed on through waiting 24-hour interval and weeping night?
Good day and frontwards! O, to live it over,
The first wild middle-shell of heroic hours!
Forward, like mountain-torrents after showers!
Forrard to expiry, as to his helpmate the lover!
Frontward, till quick recoils the impetuous flood,
And ends the offset dread scene in terror and in blood!
Onward one time more than, through sun and shivering storm,—
A monstrous length with wavering bulk enorm,—
Wounded or striking, bringing claret or bleeding,
Onward, still on, the desperation unheeding!
Onward with declining heart, or courage loftier!
Onward through heat, and hunger, and dismay,
Turning the starry night to murderous day!
Onward, with hope appalled, again to strike, and dice!
So marched, so fought, so agonized, the hosts;
Battling through forests; rotting where slow crawls
The deathly swamp-stream; and similar pallid ghosts
Haunting the hospitals, and loathèd prison house-walls.
They knew what freedom was, and right to exhale
Make clean air who burrowed from the filth and seethe
Of foulest pens, only that dogs might runway,
And to the decease-pit drag their living corpses back.
O, would to Heaven some sights could fade from out
Articulate memory's all too melancholy page—
Fade and be gone forever! Let the shout
Of victory only linger, and the rage
And glory of battle over land and sea,
And all that noblest is in war's fierce pageantry.
Echoes of deeds immortal, O, awake!
Tremble to language, into music pause,
Till lyric retentiveness takes the old emotion,
And leaps from heart to centre the ancient thrill!
Tell of great deeds that yet the wide earth fill:
How first upon the amazèd waves of ocean
The black, infernal, deadly armored-ships
Together rushed, and all the earth stood however,
While a new word of state of war flare-up from those iron lips;
How up the rivers thundered the strong fleets;
How the great captains 'gainst each other dashed
Gigantic armies. What wild welcome meets
Some well-loved master who, ere those armies clashed,
Rides like a cyclone the embattled line,
Kindling the stricken ranks to bravery divine!
And, hark, at set of sun, the cheer that greets
Victorious news from far-off armies, flashed
From military camp to camp, with roar on answering roar,
Like bellowing waves that track the tempest down the shore.
But importantly tell of that one 60 minutes of all
When threatening war rolled highest its full tide,
Even to the perilous northern mountain-side
Where Heaven should bid our good crusade rise or fall.
Tell of that hour, for never in all the earth
Was braver army 'gainst a braver hurled.
To both the victory, all unawares,
Beyond all dreams of losing or of winning;
For the new land which at present is ours and theirs,
Had on that topmost day its glorious kickoff.
They who charged up that drenched and desperate gradient
Were heroes all—and looked in heroes' eyes!
Ah! heroes never heroes did despise!
That solar day had Strife its bloodiest bourn and scope;
Above the shaken hills and sulphurous skies
Peace lifted upwardly her mournful head and smiled on Hope.
Rushed the great drama on its tragic way
Swift to the happy stop from that tremendous mean solar day.
Happy, indeed, could retention lose her power
And yield to joy alone the glad, triumphant hour;
Happy if every aching middle could shun
Remembrance of the unreturning i;
If at the Grand Review, when mile on mile
And day on day the marching columns past,
Darkened not o'er the earth the shadow vast
Of his foul murder—he the free from guile,
Lamentable-hearted, loving, and honey, and wise,
Who ruled with sinewy hands and dreaming eyes.
What soul that lived then who remembers not
The hour, the landscape, ah! the very spot,—
Hateful for aye,—where news that he was slain
Struck like a hammer on the dazèd brain!
Then long agone it was, so long ago,
All, all have past; the terror and the splendor
Have turned like yester-evening'due south stormy glow
Into a dusk memory strange and tender.
How beautiful it seems, what lordly sights,
What deeds sublime, what wondrous days and nights,
What love of comrades, ay, what quickened breath,
When first we knew that, startled, quailing, nonetheless
We likewise, even we, along the blazing hill,
Nosotros, with the best, could face and conquer death!
Glorious all these, but these all less than naught
To the i passion of those days divine,
Love of the land our own hearts' blood had bought—
Our state, our own land, yours and mine,
So known, and then sternly loved, get-go in our lives.
Ah! loved we not our children, sisters, wives?
Simply our own state, this was more than than they,—
Our wives, our children, this,—our hope, our love
For all nearly honey, but more than—the dawning day
Of freedom for the globe, the hope higher up
All promise for the pitiful race of homo. For where,
In what more lovely world, 'neath skies more than fair,
If freedom hither should fail, could it find soil and air?
In this one thought, one passion,—whate'er fate
All the same may befall,—one moment we were bang-up!
I moment in life's cursory, perplexèd hour
We climbed the hight of existence, and the power
That falls alone on those who love their kind
A moment fabricated us one with the Eternal Mind.
One moment, ah! not so, love Country! Chiliad
Art nevertheless our passion; still to thee we bow
In love supreme! Fairer than east'er before
Art thou to-mean solar day, from gilt shore to shore
The home of freemen. Not ane stain doth cling
At present to thy banner. Argosies of war
On thy imperial rivers bravely fling
Flags of the nations, but no message bring
Save of peace only; while, behold, from far
The Old World comes to greet thy natal star
That with the circling century returns,
And in the Western heavens with fourfold beauty burns.
Land that we beloved! Thou Futurity of the World!
M refuge of the noble centre opprest!
O, never be thy shining paradigm hurled
From its high place in the doting breast
Of him who worships thee with jealous honey!
Keep m thy starry forehead as the dove
All white, and to the eternal Dawn inclined!
Thou art not for thyself merely for flesh,
And to despair of thee were to despair
Of human, of homo's high destiny, of God!
Of thee should man despair, the journey trod
Upwards, through unknown eons, stair on stair,
By this our race, with bleeding feet and slow,
Were merely the pathway to a darker woe
Than still was visioned by the heavy heart
Of prophet. To despair of thee! Ah, no!
For thou thyself art Hope, Hope of the World grand art!
Comrades belovèd, see, the burn burns low,
And darkness thickens. Soon shall our brief function
On earth forever end, and we shall go
To join the unseen ranks; nor will we swerve
Or fearfulness, when to the silent, bully reserve
At final we ordered—are as one by 1
Our Captains accept been called, their labors washed,
To residue and wait in the Celestial Field.
Ay, year past yr, we to the dead did yield
Our bravest. Them we followed to the tomb
Sorrowing; for they were worthy of our love—
High-souled and generous, loving peace above
War and its glories: therefore lives no gloom
In this our sorrow; rather pride, and praise,
And gratitude, and retention of old days.
A piffling while and these tired easily will stop
To lift obedient or in war or peace—
Faithful we trust in peace as in one case in war;
And on the ringlet of peace some triumphs are
Noble every bit battles won; tho' less resounds
The fame, as deep and bitter are the wounds.
But at present the fire burns low, and we must sleep
Erelong, while other eyes than ours the vigil keep.
And after we are gone, to other eyes
That watch beneath shall come up, in starry skies,
A fairer dawn, whereon in fiery light
The Eternal Captain shall his signals write;
And shaken from residue, and gazing at that sign,
On shall the mighty Nation move, led by a paw divine.
PART II
"THE WHITE CITY"
(THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION)
I
Hellenic republic was; Greece is no more.
Temple and town
Have crumbled downwardly;
Time is the fire that hath consumed them all.
Statue and wall
In ruin strew the universal floor.
II
Greece lives, but Greece no more!
Its ashes brood
The undying seed
Blown w till, in Rome's imperial towers,
Athens reflowers;
Still due west—lo, a veiled and virgin shore!
III
Say not, "Greece is no more."
Through the clear morn
On low-cal winds borne
Her white-winged soul sinks on the New World's breast.
Ah! happy West—
Greece flowers anew, and all her temples soar!
IV
One bright hour, and so no more
Shall to the skies
These columns rise.
Simply tho' art's blossom shall fade, once more the seed
Onward shall speed,
Quickening the land from lake to ocean's roar.
5
Art lives, tho' Hellenic republic may never
From the ancient mold
As once of onetime
Exhale to heaven the inimitable bloom;
Even so from that tomb
Beauty walks along to low-cal the globe forever!
THE VANISHING Metropolis
I
Enraptured memory, and all ye powers of being,
To new life waken! Stamp the vision articulate
On the soul's inmost substance. O, permit seeing
Be more than seeing; permit the entrancèd ear
Take deep these surging sounds, inweaved with low-cal
Of unimagined radiance; allow the intense
Illumined loveliness that thrills the night
Strike in the human center some deeper sense!
So shall these domes that meet heaven's curvèd blue,
And yon long, white, regal pillar,
And many-columned peristyle, endue
The mind with beauty that shall never fade;
Tho' all too shortly to dark oblivion wending—
Reared in one happy 60 minutes to know as swift an ending.
II
Thou shalt of all the cities of the globe
Famed for their grandeur, evermore endure
Imperishably and all alone impearled
In the earth'south living thought, the one virtually certain
Of love undying and of endless praise
For dazzler only—master of all thy kind;
Immortal, even because of thy brief days;
Thou cloud-built, fairy city of the mind!
Hither human being doth pluck from the full tree of life
The latest, lordliest flower of earthly art;
This doth he exhale, while resting from his strife,
This presses he against his weary middle;
Then, wakening from his dream inside a dream,
He flings the faded flower on Time's downwards-rushing stream.
III
O, never as here in the eternal years
Hath burst to blossom man's free and soaring spirit,
Joyous, untrammeled, all untouched by tears
And the dark weight of woe it doth inherit.
Never so swift the mind's imaginings
Caught sculptured grade, and color. Never before,—
Salve where the soul beats unembodied wings
'Gainst viewless skies,—was such enchanted shore
Jeweled with ivory palaces like these:
Past day a phenomenon, a dream by night;
Yet real as beauty is, and as the seas
Whose waves glance dorsum nifty lines of glittering light
When million lamps, and coronets of burn down,
And fountains every bit of flame, to the brilliant stars aspire.
Iv
Glide, magic boat, from out the green lagoon,
'Neath the night bridge, into this smiting glow
And unthought glory. Even the glistening moon
Hangs in the nearer splendor. Let not get
The scene, my soul, till always 't is thine own!
This is Art'due south citadel and crown. How still
The innumerous multitudes from every zone,
That watch and heed; while each centre doth fill
With joyous tears unwept. Now solemn strains
Of brazen music give the waiting soul
Voice and a sigh—information technology other oral communication disdains,
Here where the visual sense faints to its goal!
Ah, silent multitudes, ye are a office
Of the wise architect's supreme and glorious fine art!
V
O joy almost too high for saddened mortal!
O ecstasy envisioned! 1000 shouldst be
Lasting every bit g art lovely; every bit immortal
Equally through all fourth dimension the matchless thought of thee!
Yet would nosotros miss, then, the sweet, piercing pain
Of thy inconstancy! Could we but banish
This haunting pang, ah, then thou wouldst not reign
I with the aureate sunset that doth vanish
Through myriad lingering tints down melting skies;
Nor the stake mystery of the New World flower
That blooms once only, then forever dies—
Pouring a century's wealth on one dear hr.
So vanish, Metropolis of Dream, and be no more;
Soon shall this fair Globe's self be lost on the unknown shore.
THE TOWER OF FLAME
(THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, JULY x, 1893)
Here for the world to see men brought their fairest,
Whatever of dazzler is in all the earth;
The priceless flower of fine art, the loveliest, rarest,
Here past our inland ocean came to glorious nascency.
Yet on this solar day of doom a foreign new splendor
Shed its celestial low-cal on all men'southward optics:
Blossom of the hero-soul,—consummate, tender,—
That from the belfry of flame sprang to the eternal skies.
LOWELL
I
From the shade of the elms that murmured above thy birth
And the pines that sheltered thy life and shadowed the cease,
'Neath the white-blueish skies thee to thy rest we bore,—
'Neath the summer skies 1000 didst love, 'mid the songs of thy birds,
By thy childhood's stream, 'neath the grass and the flowers k knewest,
Most the grave of the singer whose name with thine own is enlaureled,
By the side of the dauntless who live in thy deathless song,—
Here all that was mortal of thee nosotros left, with our tears,
With our honey, and our grief that could not be quenched or abated;
For fifty-fifty the part that was mortal, sweet friend and companion!
That face, and that figure of beauty, and flashing eye
Which in youth shone forth similar a god'southward 'mid bottom men,
And in gray-haired, strenuous age still glowed and lustered,—
These, too, were love to us,—blame united states not, soaring spirit!
These, also, were honey, and at present we shall never behold them,
Nor always shall experience the quick clasp of thy welcoming paw.
Two
But non for ourselves alone are we spent in grieving,
For the stricken State we mourn whose calorie-free is darkened,
Whose soul in sorrow went forth in the night-time with thine.
Lover and laureate one thousand of the wide New World,
Whose pines, and prairies, and people, and teeming soil,
Where was shaken of old the seed of the freedom of men,
Grand didst beloved as a strong man loveth the maiden he woos,—
Not the woman he toys with, and sings to, and, passing, forgets,—
Whom he woos, whom he wins, whom he weds; his passion, his pride;
Who no shadow of wrong shall endure, who shall stand in his sight
Pure as the sky of the evil her foeman may threat,
Save by word or by thought of her own in her whiteness untouched
And wounded alone of the lightning her spirit engenders.
III
Take of thy grief new strength, new life, O Land!
Weep no more he is lost, but rejoice and exist glad forever
That thy lover who died was born, for thy pleasure, thy glory—
While his love and his fame lite ever thy climbing path.
August 14, 1891.
THE SILENCE OF TENNYSON
When that peachy shade into the silence vast
Through thinking silence past;
When he, our century's soul and vocalisation, was husht,
Nosotros who,—appalled, bowed, crusht,—
Inside the holy moonlight of his death
Waited the parting breath;
Ah, not in vocal
Might nosotros our grief prolong.
Silence alone, O golden spirit fled!
Silence alone could mourn that silence dread.
ON THE DEATH OF A Bang-up Human
PHILLIPS BROOKS
When from this mortal scene
A great soul passes to the vast unknown,
Let non in hopeless grief the spirit groan.
Decease comes to all, the mighty and the mean.
If past that expiry the whole world suffer loss,
This be the proof (and lighter thus our cross),
That he for whom the world doth sorely grieve
Greatly hath blessed mankind in that he once did live.
Then, at the parting breath
Let men praise Life, nor idly blame nighttime Death.
A HERO OF PEACE
IN Memory OF ROBERT ROSS: SHOT MARCH 6, 1894
" No bugle on the blast
Calls warriors face up to face;
Grim battle being forever past,
Gone is the hero-race."
Ah, no! at that place is no peace!
If freedom shall live,
Never may freemen dare to stop
Their dearest, their life to requite.
Unto the patriot'southward centre
The silent summons comes;
Not braver he who does his part
To the sound of beating drums.
And thou who gavest youth,
And life, and all nigh honey;
Sweet soul, impassionate of truth,
White on thy murdered bier!—
Thy deed, thy engagement, thy proper name
Are wreathed with deathless flowers.
Thy fate shall be the guiding flame
That lights to nobler hours.
WASHINGTON AT TRENTON
THE Boxing MONUMENT, Oct nineteen, 1893
Since ancient Time began,
Always on some corking soul God laid an space brunt—
The weight of all this world, the hopes of man.
Conflict and hurting, and fame immortal are his guerdon!
And this the unfaltering token
Of him, the Deliverer—what tho' tempests beat out,
Tho' all else neglect, tho' bravest ranks be broken,
He stands unscared, alone, nor ever knows defeat.
Such was that homo of men;
And if are praised all virtues, every fame
About noble, highest, purest—then, ah! then,
Upleaps in every heart the name none needs to proper noun.
Ye who defeated, 'whelmed,
Beguile the sacred cause, let become the trust;
Sleep, weary, while the vessel drifts unhelmed;
Here see in triumph rising the hero from the grit!
All ye who fight forlorn
'Gainst fate and failure; ye who proudly cope
With evil high enthroned; all ye who scorn
Life from Dishonor'south hand, here take new center of hope.
Here know how Victory borrows
For the brave soul a front end as of disaster,
And from the bannered East what glorious morrows
For all the blackness of the night speed surer, faster.
Know by this pillared sign
For what cursory while the powers of earth and hell
Can war against the spirit of truth divine,
Or can against the heroic heart of human prevail.
FAME
Fame is an honest thing,
It is deceivèd non;
It passes by the palace gates
Where the crowned usurper waits,
Enters the peasant-poet's cot
And cries: "K art the king!"
A MONUMENT By SAINT-GAUDENS
This is not Death, nor Sorrow, nor sad Hope;
Nor Residual that follows strife. But, O, more dread!
'T is Life, for all its agony serene;
Immortal, and unmournful, and content.
A MEMORY OF RUBINSTEIN
He of the ocean is, its thunderous waves
Repeat his music; while far downwardly the shore
Mad laughter hurries—a white, blowing spume.
I hear once more in retention that wild storm;
The winds of heaven go rushing round the earth,
And broods above the rage i sphinx-like face.
PADEREWSKI
I
If songs were perfume, color, wild want;
If poet's words were burn down
That burned to blood in purple-pulsing veins;
If with a bird-like thrill the moments throbbed to hours;
If summertime's rains
Turned drib by drop to shy, sweet, maiden flowers;
If God made flowers with low-cal and music in them,
And saddened hearts could win them;
If loosened petals touched the ground
With a caressing sound;
If love's eyes uttered word
No listening lover eastward'er before had heard;
If silent thoughts spake with a bugle'southward voice;
If flame passed into song and cried, "Rejoice! Rejoice!"
If words could picture life's, hope's, sky's eclipse
When the final kiss has fallen on dying eyes and lips;
If all of mortal woe
Struck on i centre with breathless accident on blow;
If melody were tears, and tears were starry gleams
That shone in evening's amethystine dreams;
Ah, yes, if notes were stars, each star a different hue,
Trembling to earth in dew;
Or if the boreal pulsings, rose and white,
Made a purple music in the night;
If all the orbs lost in the light of day
In the deep, silent blue began their harps to play;
And when in frightening skies the lightnings flashed
And storm-clouds crashed,
If every stroke of low-cal and sound were but excess of beauty;
If human syllables could east'er refashion
That fierce electric passion;
If other fine art could lucifer (every bit were the poet's duty)
The grieving, and the rapture, and the thunder
Of that keen hour of wonder,—
That light as if of heaven, that blackness as of hell,—
How the bang-up main plays then might I dare to tell.
II
How the bully master plays! And was it he
Or some disbodied spirit which had rushed
From silence into singing; and had crushed
Into 1 startled hour a life'southward felicity,
And highest bliss of cognition—that all pain, grief, incorrect,
Plough at the concluding to beauty and to vocal!
HANDEL'S LARGO
When the great organs, answering each to each,
Joined with the violin'southward angelic speech,
Then did it seem that all the heavenly host
Gave praise to Begetter, Son, and Holy Ghost:
We saw the archangels through the ether winging;
We heard their souls become forth in solemn singing;
"Praise, praise to God," they sang, "through endless days,
Praise to the Eternal One, and naught merely praise";
And as they sang the spirits of the dying
Were upward borne from lips that ceased their sighing;
And dying was non death, simply deeper living—
Living, and prayer, and praising and thanksgiving!
THE STAIRWAY
By this stairway narrow, steep,
Thou shalt climb from vocal to slumber;
From sleep to dream and song once more;—
Sleep well, sweet friend, sleep well, dream deep!
THE Role player
Glorious that ancient art!—
In thine own form to show the fire and fashion
Of every age and clime, of every passion
That dwells in man's deep heart!
Player, play well, not meanly,
Thy part in life, equally on the mimic stage!
From highest thought is born art'due south noblest rage:
Live, act, end all, serenely!
THE STRICKEN Histrion
When at life'due south last the stricken player lies,
When throng before his darkened, dreaming eyes
His soul'southward companions, which more existent then—
The human comrades, the alive women and men
Of the large world he knew, or the ideal
Imagined creatures his own art made real;
Wherein he poured his spirit's very being,
His soul and body? Are those dim eyes seeing
Himself as one of Shakespeare's men? Are maids
And queens he wooed, the kings he was, or knew
Upon the tragic stage, are these the shades
That now his visionary hours pursue,
Bellboy on his passing? Heed virtually!
What breathed murmurs 'scape those pallid lips
To which the nations hearkened, ere the eclipse
Of all that brightness? Now lean close and hear;
Ah, see that look, sweeter than when he smiled
Upon the applauding world, while she draws near
And hears a dear phonation whisper: "Child, my Child!"
AN Autumn DIRGE
(E. F. H.)
I
O ease my centre, sad vocal, O ease my heart!
In all this autumn pageantry no part
Hath sorrow! Woods, and fields, and meadows glow
With jeweled colors. All lonely I go
Amid the poignant dazzler of the twelvemonth,
Too heavy-hearted for one easeful tear.
For she who loved this fall splendor,
These flaming marsh-flowers, oak-leaves rich and tender,—
And who in loving all, made all to me more than dear,—
No more is here;
No more, no more is here!
Pitiful vocal, O, bring some thought
With music from some happy retention caught!
No light for me in all the lovely twenty-four hour period
Those eyes being shut that first did pb the way
'Neath these great pines whose green vault hides the sky,
And downwardly the rock-strewn shore where the white body of water-birds weep!
2
All fades merely those immature, happy hours,
And in my soul over again the old joy flowers.
It flowers once more simply to bring new pain;
For all in vain,
O song! thou singest in my grieving eye!
Thou hast no fine art
To bring over again the grin I loved then well,
The vocalisation that like a bell
Sounded all moods of sorrow and of laughter,
And the dear presence that in childhood's earliest thought,
And all the vivid or darkened days thereafter,
Into my life a saddened sweetness brought—
Something of mother and of sister dearest,
A friendship far above
The ties that bind and loosen as we tread
The throngèd pleasures of life'due south afterward days.
Sweet maiden soul, I cannot praise
Only mourn thee, mourn thee, to the shadows fled.
II
Shadows, O nevermore!
For when past forth thy spirit information technology did seem
As if against the black a golden door
Were opened and a gleam
From the eternal Light fell on thy face
And made a visible glory in the place.
Ah, well I know
Whatever be the source from whence we flow,
Whate'er the power begot these hearts of ours,—
As the great earth brings along the summer flowers,—
That ability is good, is God, and in her dying room
Humaned itself to sense and lightened all the gloom.
ELEONORA DUSE
If ever flashed upon this mortal scene
A soul unsheathèd, a pale, trembling flame,
That suffered every gust, and even so did cling
With fire unquenchable—information technology is thine own,
Grand creative person of the real! Unto thee
No mirth of life is secret; just, sugariness soul,
With what sure fine art thou picturest homo woe!
How natural tears to those Italian eyes—
Shadowing in untold depths whatever grief Familiar is to mortals!
Rock's the song-soil, truly
(And so sang one bard of ability);
Therefore our poet duly
Built on this rock his tower;
And therefore in his singing
We breathe the salty morning;
We hear the storm-bong ringing,
The "siren'southward" piercing warning,
The sea-winds roaring, sighing,
The long waves rising, falling;
We hear the herons calling,
The clashing waves replying.
AT NIAGARA
I
There at the chasm's edge behold her lean
Trembling as, 'neath the charm,
A wild bird lifts no wing to 'scape from impairment;
Her very soul drawn to the glittering, greenish,
Smooth, lustrous, awful, lovely curve of peril;
While far below the bending bounding main of beryl
Thunder and tumult—whence a billowy spray
Enclouds the day.
Ii
What dream is hers? No dream hath wrought that spell!
The long waves rise and sink;
Pity that virgin soul on passion's brink,
Confronting Fate,—swift, unescapable,—
Fate, which of nature is the intent and core,
And dark and strong as the steep river's pour,
Brutal every bit love, and wild as dearest's first buss!
Ah, God! the abyss!
THE Kid-GARDEN
In the child-garden buds and blows
A blossom lovelier than the rose.
If all the flowers of all the globe
In one garden broke to nascency,
Not the fairest of the fair
Could with this sweetness bloom compare;
Nor would all their shining be
Peer to its lone bravery.
Fairer than the rose, I say?
Fairer than the sun-brilliant mean solar day
In whose rays all glories show,
All beauty is, all blossoms blow;
While beside it deeply polish
Blooms that take its light divine:
The perilous sugariness flower of Hope
Here its hiding eyes doth ope,
And Gentleness doth near uphold
Its healing leaves and centre of golden;
Here tender fingers push the seed
Of Knowledge; pluck the poisonous weed;
Hither blossoms Joy one singing 60 minutes,
And hither of Love the immortal bloom.
What this blossom, fragrant, tender,
That outbeams the rose's splendor—
Purer is, more tinct with lite
Than the lily'southward flame of white?
Of beauty hath this flower the whole,
And its name—the Human Soul!
THE CHRIST-Child
A PICTURE By FRANK VINCENT DU MOND
Washed is the 24-hour interval of care.
Into the shadowy room
Flows the pure evening calorie-free,
To stem the gathering gloom,
The lily'due south flame illume,
And the bowed heads brand vivid
The heads bowed depression in prayer.
Run into how the level rays
Through the white garments pour
Of the holy child, who stands,
With angle brow, to implore
Grace on the toilers' store;
O, encounter those sinless hands!
Behold, the Christ-child prays!
Wait, wait, ye lingering rays,
Stand yet, O Globe and Sun,
Draw near, thou Soul of God—
This is the suffering one!
Already the fashion is begun
The piercèd Savior trod;
And now the Christ-child prays,
The holy Christ-child prays.
A Kid
Her voice was like the vocal of birds;
Her eyes were similar the stars;
Her little waving hands were like
Bird's wings that trounce the bars.
And when those waving easily were still,—
Her soul had fled away,—
The music faded from the air,
The color from the twenty-four hour period.
TWO VALLEYS
Yes, 't is a glorious sight,
This valley, that mountain hight.
The river plunges and roars
Similar the loud sea on its shores
What time in waves enorm
Breaks the gigantic storm.
The wooded mount doth climb
To a thought intense, sublime.
The glory of all I feel;
But my center, my middle, will steal
Down the journeying of years,
Through the lands of laughter and tears,
Far back to the to the lowest degree of valleys
Where a slow brook curves and dallies,
Where a boy, in the twilight gleam,
Walks solitary with his dream.
ON THE BAY
This watery vague how vast! This misty earth,
Seen from this center where the ferry plies,—
It plies, but seems to poise in heart air,—
Soft greyness below gray heavens, and in the west
A rose-gray memory of the sunken sun;
And, where gray water touches grayer heaven,
A band of darker greyness prickt out with lights—
A diamond-twinkling circlet bounding all;
And where the statue looms, a quenchless star;
And where the lighthouse, a red, pulsing flame;
While the nifty bridge its starry diadem
Lifts through the gray, itself in gray lost!
WASHINGTON Foursquare
This is the finish of the boondocks that I love the all-time.
O, lovely the hour of calorie-free from the burning w—
Of calorie-free that lingers and fades in the shadowy square
Where the solemn fountain lifts a shaft in the air
To grab the skyey colors, and fling them down
In a wild-wood torrent that drowns the noise of the town.
And lovely the hour of the still and dreamy nighttime
When, lifted confronting the blue, stands the curvation of white
With ane clear planet above; and the sickle moon,
In bend reversed from the arch's marble circular,
Silvers the sapphire sky. At present soon, ah, before long,
Shall the city square exist turned to holy basis,
Through the calorie-free of the moon and the stars and the glowing bloom,—
The Cross of Lite,—that looms from the sacred tower.
THE CITY
O, dear is the vocal of the pino
When the current of air of the nighttime-time blows,
And dear is the murmuring river
That distant through my childhood flows;
And soft is the raindrop's beat
And the fountain's lyric play,
But to me no music is half so sweet
As the thunder of Broadway!
Stream of the living globe
Where dash the billows of strife!—
One plunge in the mighty torrent
Is a year of tamer life!
Urban center of glorious days,
Of hope, and labor, and mirth,
With room, and to spare, on thy splendid trophy
For the ships of all the earth!
A RHYME OF TYRINGHAM
Down in the meadow and up on the hight
The breezes are blowing the willows white.
In the elms and maples the robins call,
And the peachy black crow sails over all
In Tyringham, Tyringham Valley.
The river winds through the trees and the brake
And the meadow-grass like a shining snake;
And low in the summer and loud in the spring
The rapids and reaches murmur and sing
In Tyringham, Tyringham Valley.
In the shadowy pools the trout are shy,
So creep to the banking company and cast the fly!
What thrills and tremors the tense cords stir
When the trout it strikes with a tug and a whir
In Tyringham, Tyringham Valley!
At night of the day the mist spreads white,
Like a magic lake in the glimmering lite;
Or the winds from the meadow the white mists blow,
And the fireflies glitter,—a sky below,—
In Tyringham, Tyringham Valley.
And O, in the windy days of the autumn
The maples and elms are scarlet all,
And the world that was green is gold and red,
And with huskings and cider they 're late to bed
In Tyringham, Tyringham Valley.
Now squirrel and partridge and hawk and hare
And wildcat and woodchuck and fox beware!
The three days' hunt is waxing warm
For the Count Up Dinner at Riverside Farm
In Tyringham, Tyringham Valley.
The meadow-ice will be freezing soon,
And and then for a skate past the light of the moon.
So pile the wood on the hearth, my boy!
Winter is coming! I wish you joy
By the light of the hearth and the moon, my boy,
In Tyringham, Tyringham Valley.
ELSIE
" Do you love me?" Elsie asked,
And her rose-foliage dimples masked
'Neath a pleading look, the while
On her pouting lips a smiling
Hovered, yet was out of sight
Like a star that's hid at dark
By a filmy, flying cloud.
"Practise y'all honey me?" deficient aloud
Lovely Cousin Elsie said.
"Why no answer, Cousin Ed?
Do you detest me, then, or why
From Your Highness no reply?"
So the chiding witch ran on:
"In a moment I'll be gone;
Then besides late, Sir No Gallant!
Quick! I'll tell my precious aunt
That you beloved me not," she cries,
"That you hate me and despise."
Wink the great, greyness, long-lashed eyes;
Half in earnest at present the girl;
Downwardly the pretty corners whorl
Of the tiny oral fissure, and lo!
From those eyes 2 tearlets flow;—
Merely two kisses, and they go!
Similar a sunburst subsequently showers,
Like white calorie-free upon the flowers,
At present again the dimples show.
But she could not sympathise
Why so long the respond waited
For the loved and not the hated,
While he held that fiddling paw,
And like a bird she sang and said,—
Half in hostage, half in fun,—
"Do you beloved me, Solemn One?
Do y'all love me, Cousin Ed?
Exercise you love me? Do you honey me?
Love me, dear me, Cousin Ed?"
INDIRECTION
I saw non the leaf
But its shadow trembling, trembling downward.
I faced to northward, to my grief,
When from the southern heaven a crimson falling star lit the star-dark town.
I saw not naked Love
Lean from his porphyry throne to a higher place
And bear upon her heart to flame,
Nevertheless on her forehead I saw the swift, sweet, virgin shame.
"AH, Be Non FALSE"
Ah, be not simulated, sweet Splendor!
Be truthful, be good;
Be wise equally thou art tender;
Be all that Dazzler should.
Not lightly be thy citadel subdued;
Not ignobly, not untimely.
Take praise in solemn mood;
Take love sublimely.
THE Respond
Through starry infinite two angels dreamed their flight,
'Mid worlds and thoughts of worlds, through day and night.
Then one spake forth whose voice was like the flower
That blossoms in the fragrant midnight 60 minutes.
This white-browed affections of the other asked:
"Of all the essences that ever basked
In the eternal presence; of all things,
All thoughts, all joys, all dreads, all sorrowings
Amid the unimaginable vast—
Being, or shall exist, or forever past—
Profound with dark, or hid in endless light—
Which of all these most deep and infinite?"
Then did the elder speak, the while he turned
On him who asked clear optics that slowly burned
The spirit through, similar to a living coal:
"No depth at that place is so deep as woman's soul."
HOW Expiry MAY MAKE A MAN
Decease is a lamentable plight,
Information technology bringeth unto man
Cease of all delight.
Notwithstanding many a woeful wight
Only dying can
Quit him like a homo.
Dawdling, drawling, silly,
Maundering, scarce a man;
Driven willy-nilly;
When he's dying will he
Run equally in one case he ran,
Or quit him like a human being?
Vile from out the wrack
Crawls he less than man;
Cowering in his track
Beaten, broken, blackness;
Curse him if you tin—
Death may make him man.
In life the wretch did nothing
Worthy of a human;
Now past Death he's caught,
What a modify is wrought!
Whom the globe did ban
Quits life like a man.
Braced stiff confronting the wall,
Behold, at terminal, a man.
Lost—life and honor, all!
At Expiry's quick touch and call
See, the chicken can
Quit him like a man.
"CAME TO A Chief OF Song"
Came to a master of song
And the human centre
One who had followed him long
And worshiped his art;
I whom the poet'due south singing
Had lured from death,
Joy to the crusht soul bringing
And heaven's breath;
Came to him one time in an hour
Of terror and stress,
And cried, "M lone hast power
To save me and bless;
One thousand alone, pure heart and free,
Canst pluck from disaster,
If to a wretch like me
1000 wilt stoop, O chief!"
Answered the bard with shame,
And sorrow and trembling:
"Was I false, was my song to blame?
Was my art dissembling?
I of all mortals the saddest,
The quickest to fall,
And vocal of mine highest and gladdest
Repentance all!"
BARDS
Some from books resound their rhymes—
Set them ringing with a faint,
Sorrowful, and sugariness, and quaint
Memory of the olden times,
Like the sound of evening chimes.
Some go wandering on their way
Through the forest, past the herds,
Laughing maidens, singing birds;
On their sylvan lutes they play—
Danceth by the lyric Day!
Bards in that location be the deep heaven nether
Who in high, authentic verse
Mysteries and moods rehearse
With a phonation like Sinai'south thunder,
Chanting to a earth of wonder.
And those have sung whose melody,
Drawn from out the living heart
With a quick, unfaltering art,
Hath power to make the listener cry:
"God in heaven! Information technology is I."
MERIDIAN
Henceforth earlier these feet
Sinks the downwards way;
A little while to greet
The lite and life of twenty-four hours,
Then night'southward slow fall
Ends all.
Now forward, heart elate,
Tho' steep the pathway slope.
Time yet for love and detest,
Joy, and joy's comrade, hope,
Ere nighttime's slow fall
Ends all.
Still the warm sky is blue,
No chip the sunlight mars;
'Twixt hills the sea gleams through;
With twilight come up the stars;
And night's slow fall
Ends all.
In the cool-animate night
The starry sky is deep.
However on through glimmering light
Till nosotros lie downwardly to sleep;
So let night's fall
End all.
EVENING IN TYRINGHAM VALLEY
What domes and pinnacles of mist and burn down
Are builded in yon spacious realms of low-cal
All silently, as did the walls aspire
Templing the ark of God by 24-hour interval and dark!
Noiseless and swift, from darkening ridge to ridge,
Through purple air that deepens downward the solar day,
Over the valley springs a shadowy bridge.
The evening star's groovy, solitary ray
Makes more intense the silence, and the glad,
Unmelancholy, restful, twilight gloom—
So total of tenderness, that fifty-fifty the sad
Remembrances that haunt the soul take bloom
Like that on yonder mount.
Now the bars
Of sunset all fire blackness; the solar day doth fail,
And the skies whiten with the eternal stars.
O, let thy spirit stay with me, sweet vale!
PART Three
A Calendar week'S Calendar
I—NEW YEAR
Each New year's day is a leaf of our love's rose;
It falls, merely quick some other rose-leafage grows.
So is the bloom from twelvemonth to twelvemonth the same,
But richer, for the dead leaves feed its flame.
Two—A NEW SOUL
To come across the rose of morning time boring unfold
Each wondrous petal to that heart of gold;
To see from out the dark, unknowing dark
A new soul dawn with such undreamed-of light,
And slowly all its loveliness and splendor
Cascade forth as stately music pours, magnificently tender!
3—"Continue PURE THY SOUL"
Go on pure thy soul!
Then shalt chiliad take the whole
Of delight;
So, without a pang,
Thine shall be all of beauty whereof the poet sang—
The perfume, and the pageant, the melody, the mirth
Of the gilded twenty-four hour period, and the starry dark;
Of sky, and of earth.
O, keep pure thy soul!
Four—"THY MIND IS LIKE A CRYSTAL BROOK
Thy mind is like a crystal brook
Wherein clean creatures alive at ease,
In sun-bright waves or shady nook.
Birds sing above it,
The warm-breathed cattle love it,
It doth sugariness childhood please.
Accurst be he past whom it were undone,
Or affair or thought whose presence
The birds and beasts would loathly shun,
Would make its crystal waters foully run,
And bulldoze sweetness childhood from its pleasance.
5—"ONE DEED MAY MAR A LIFE"
1 human activity may mar a life,
And 1 tin can get in;
Concord firm thy will for strife,
Lest a quick blow intermission it!
Fifty-fifty now from far on viewless wing
Hither speeds the nameless affair
Shall put thy spirit to the examination.
Haply or e'er yon sinking sun
Shall drib behind the purple West
All will be lost—or won!
Six—THE UNKNOWN
How strange to expect upon the life beyond
Our homo cognizance with so deep awe
And haunting dread; a sense as of remorse,
A looking-for of judgment, a great weight
Of things unknown to happen! We who alive
Blindly from 60 minutes to hr in very midst
Of mysteries; of shapeless, irresolute glooms;
Of nameless terrors; problems vast and black;
Of airy whims, slight fantasies, and flights
That lead to unimaginable woe:
The unweighed word cloying the life of love;
One clod of earth outblotting all the stars;
Some hush-hush, nighttime inheritance of volition,
And the scared soul plunges to conscious doom!
Yard who hast wisdom, fear not Death, only Life!
VII—IRREVOCABLE
Would the gods might requite
Another field for human strife;
Man must alive 1 life
Ere he learns to live.
—Ah, friend, in thy deep grave,
What now can alter, what at present can save?
"Because THE ROSE MUST FADE"
Because the rose must fade,
Shall I not dear the rose?
Because the summer shade
Passes when winter blows,
Shall I not remainder me there
In the absurd air?
Considering the sunset heaven
Makes music in my soul,
Only to fail and die,
Shall I non take the whole
Of beauty that information technology gives
While nonetheless it lives?
Because the sweet of youth
Doth vanish all too soon,
Shall I forget, forsooth,
To larn its lingering tune;
My joy to memorize
In those young optics?
If, like the summer flower
That blooms—a fragrant death,
Keen music hath no power
To alive beyond its jiff,
So of this flood of vocal
Let me drink long!
Ah, yep, because the rose
Fades like the sunset skies;
Because rude winter blows
All bare, and music dies—
Therefore, now is to me
Eternity!
"FADES THE ROSE"
Fades the rose; the year grows onetime;
The tale is told;
Youth doth depart—
Only stays the heart.
Ah, no! if stays the heart,
Youth can ne'er depart,
Nor the sweet tale be told—
Never the rose fade, nor the twelvemonth grow old.
THE WINTRY Middle
On the distressing wintertime trees
The dead, cherry leaves remain,
Tho' to and fro the bleak winds blow,
And falls the freezing rain.
And so to the wintry middle
Clings colour of the by,
While through dead leaves shudders and grieves
The melancholy blast.
HAST K HEARD THE NIGHTINGALE?
Yes, I take heard the nightingale.
As in nighttime woods I wandered,
And dreamed and pondered,
A vocalisation past by all fire
And passion and desire;
I rather felt than heard
The song of that alone bird;
Yep, I have heard the nightingale.
Yep, I have heard the nightingale.
I heard it, and I followed;
The warm dark swallowed
This soul and trunk of mine,
Every bit burning thirst takes wine,
While on and on I prest
Shut to that singing chest;
Yes, I have heard the nightingale.
Yeah, I have heard the nightingale.
Well doth each throbbing ember
The flame remember;
And I, how quick that audio
Turned drops from a deep wound!
How this middle was the thorn
Which pierced that breast forlorn!
Yep, I have heard the nightingale.
"IN THAT DREAD, DREAMED-OF HOUR"
In that dread, dreamed-of 60 minutes
When in her heart love's rose flames into bloom,
'T is never, never aye,
But no, no, no, whate'er the startled eyes confess.
Her frail denial at last
Swept clean abroad like burnt leaves in the smash,
No longer no, no, no!
Only aye, forever yes, while love'southward red rose doth blow.
"ROSE-DARK THE SOLEMN SUNSET"
Rose-dark the solemn sunset
That holds my thought of thee;
With one star in the heavens
And one star in the sea.
On high no lamp is lighted,
Nor where the long waves menstruation,
Salvage the 1 star of evening
And the shadow star below.
Low-cal of my Life! the darkness
Comes with the twilight dream;
G art the brilliant star shining,
I merely the shadowy gleam.
"WINDS TO THE SILENT MORN"
Winds to the silent morn;
Waves to the ocean;
Phonation to the song unsung;
Song to emotion;
Calorie-free to the golden bloom;
Bird to the tree;
Dear to the heart of dear,
And I to thee!
Dawn to the darkened world;
Hope to the morrow;
Music to passion; and
Weeping to sorrow;
Love to the heart that longs;
Moon to the sea;
Sky to the earthborn soul,
And thousand to me.
THE UNRETURNING
I
Silent, silent are the unreturning!
What tho' word may reach to them, and yearning,
Never through the stillness of the night,
Never in the daytime or the dark
Comes the long-lost vox, or smile of light;
Lifts no hand from sea or sunken bark.
Silent, silent are the unreturning!
II
Silent, silent are the unreturning!
Silent they?—or are we undiscerning?
Kid, my child! is this thy answering vox
Murmuring far down the mountain lone?
Evening's smile, that whispers: "Centre, rejoice!"
Female parent mine! is this thy very own?
Nay! nay! Silent are the unreturning;
Silent, silent are the unreturning!
Ii YEARS
O, that was the year the last of those earlier thee;
All my world till then but dark before the dawn.
If then I had died, O, never had I known thee,
Never had beheld thee; I who won, who own thee;
Who chose thee, who sing thee, crown thee, and adore thee;
O, expiry it were indeed to die before that dawn!
This was the year when first I did behold thee,
Grand who on my darkness dawned with lyric light.
This the golden hour when first thy lover found thee,
Followed and beguiled thee, and with his singing bound thee;
When all the world with music rang to drown thee and enfold thee—
Thou who turned the darkness to vocal, and love, and light!
Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_poems_of_Richard_Watson_Gilder/The_Great_Remembrance
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