Part 7

“By this time Obed had his wits thawed out, And, looking at the other half in doubt, Took off his fox-skin cap to scratch his head, Donned it again, and drawled forth, 'Mean he’s dead?' 'Jesso; he’s dead and t’other _d_ that follers With folks that never love a thing but dollars. He pulled up stakes last evening, fair and square, And ever since there’s been a row Down There. The minute the old chap arrived, you see, Comes the Boss-devil to him, and says he, “What are you good at? Little enough, I fear; We callilate to make folks useful here.” “Well,” says old Bitters, “I expect I can Scale a fair load of wood with e’er a man.” “Wood we don’t deal in; but perhaps you’ll suit, Because we buy our brimstone by the foot: Here, take this measurin'-rod, as smooth as sin, And keep a reckonin' of what loads comes in. You’ll not want business, for we need a lot To keep the Yankees that you send us hot; At firin' up they’re barely half as spry As Spaniards or Italians, though they’re dry; At first we have to let the draught on stronger, But, heat ’em through, they seem to hold it longer.”

“'Bitters he took the rod, and pretty soon A teamster comes, whistling an ex-psalm tune. A likelier chap you wouldn’t ask to see, No different, but his limp, from you or me'-- 'No different, Perez! Don’t your memory fail? Why, where in thunder was his horns and tail?' 'They’re only worn by some old-fashioned pokes; They mostly aim at looking just like folks. Sech things are scarce as queues and top-boots here; ’Twould spoil their usefulness to look too queer. Ef you could always know ’em when they come, They’d get no purchase on you: now be mum. On come the teamster, smart as Davy Crockett, Jinglin' the red-hot coppers in his pocket, And clost behind, ('twas gold-dust, you’d ha' sworn,) A load of sulphur yallower’n seed-corn; To see it wasted as it is Down There Would make a Friction-Match Co. tear its hair! “Hold on!” says Bitters, “stop right where you be; You can’t go in athout a pass from me.” “All right,” says t’other, “only step round smart; I must be home by noon-time with the cart.” Bitters goes round it sharp-eyed as a rat, Then with a scrap of paper on his hat Pretends to cipher. “By the public staff, That load scarce rises twelve foot and a half.” “There’s fourteen foot and over,” says the driver, “Worth twenty dollars, ef it’s worth a stiver; Good fourth-proof brimstone, that’ll make ’em squirm,-- I leave it to the Headman of the Firm; After we masure it, we always lay Some on to allow for settlin' by the way. Imp and full-grown, I’ve carted sulphur here, And given fair satisfaction, thirty year.” With that they fell to quarrellin' so loud That in five minutes they had drawed a crowd, And afore long the Boss, who heard the row, Comes elbowin' in with “What’s to pay here now?” Both parties heard, the measurin'-rod he takes, And of the load a careful survey makes. “Sence I’ve bossed the business here,” says he, “No fairer load was ever seen by me.” Then, turnin' to the Deacon, “You mean cus, None of your old Quompegan tricks with us! They won’t do here: we’re plain old-fashioned folks, And don’t quite understand that kind o' jokes. I know this teamster, and his pa afore him, And the hard-working Mrs. D. that bore him; He wouldn’t soil his conscience with a lie, Though he might get the custom-house thereby. Here, constable, take Bitters by the queue, And clap him into furnace ninety-two, And try this brimstone on him; if he’s bright, He’ll find the masure honest afore night. He isn’t worth his fuel, and I’ll bet The parish oven has to take him yet!”’

“This is my tale, heard twenty years ago From Uncle Reuben, as the logs burned low, Touching the walls and ceiling with that bloom That makes a rose’s calyx of a room. I could not give his language, wherethrough ran The gamy flavor of the bookless man Who shapes a word before the fancy cools, As lonely Crusoe improvised his tools. I liked the tale,--’twas like so many told By Rutebeuf and his brother Trouvères bold; Nor were the hearers much unlike to theirs, Men unsophisticate, rude-nerved as bears. Ezra is gone and his large-hearted kind, The landlords of the hospitable mind; Good Warriner of Springfield was the last; An inn is now a vision of the past; One yet-surviving host my mind recalls,-- You’ll find him if you go to Trenton Falls.”

THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC POETRY.

When wise Minerva still was young And just the least romantic, Soon after from Jove’s head she flung That preternatural antic, ’Tis said, to keep from idleness Or flirting, those twin curses, She spent her leisure, more or less, In writing po----, no, verses.

How nice they were! to rhyme with _far_ A kind _star_ did not tarry; The metre, too, was regular As schoolboy’s dot and carry; And full they were of pious plums, So extra-super-moral,-- For sucking Virtue’s tender gums Most tooth-enticing coral.

A clean, fair copy she prepares, Makes sure of moods and tenses, With her own hand,--for prudence spares A man-(or woman-)-uensis; Complete, and tied with ribbons proud, She hinted soon how cosy a Treat it would be to read them loud After next day’s Ambrosia.

The Gods thought not it would amuse So much as Homer’s Odyssees, But could not very well refuse The properest of Goddesses; So all sat round in attitudes Of various dejection, As with a _hem!_ the queen of prudes Began her grave prelection.

At the first pause Zeus said, “Well sung!-- I mean--ask Phœbus,--_he_ knows.” Says Phœbus, “Zounds! a wolf’s among Admetus’s merinos! Fine! very fine! but I must go; They stand in need of me there; Excuse me!” snatched his stick, and so Plunged down the gladdened ether.

With the next gap, Mars said, “For me Don’t wait,--naught could be finer, But I’m engaged at half past three,-- A fight in Asia Minor!” Then Venus lisped, “I’m sorely tried, These duty-calls are vip’rous; But I _must_ go; I have a bride To see about in Cyprus.”

Then Bacchus,--“I must say good bye, Although my peace it jeopards; I meet a man at four, to try A well-broke pair of leopards.” His words woke Hermes. “Ah!” he said, “I _so_ love moral theses!” Then winked at Hebe, who turned red, And smoothed her apron’s creases.

Just then Zeus snored,--the Eagle drew His head the wing from under; Zeus snored,--o’er startled Greece there flew The many-volumed thunder. Some augurs counted nine, some, ten; Some said ’twas war, some, famine, And all, that other-minded men Would get a precious----.

Proud Pallas sighed, “It will not do; Against the Muse I’ve sinned, oh!” And her torn rhymes sent flying through Olympus’s back window. Then, packing up a peplus clean, She took the shortest path thence, And opened, with a mind serene, A Sunday-school in Athens.

The verses? Some in ocean swilled, Killed every fish that bit to ’em; Some Galen caught, and, when distilled, Found morphine the residuum; But some that rotted on the earth Sprang up again in copies, And gave two strong narcotics birth, Didactic verse and poppies.

Years after, when a poet asked The Goddess’s opinion, As one whose soul its wings had tasked In Art’s clear-aired dominion, “Discriminate,” she said, “betimes; The Muse is unforgiving; Put all your beauty in your rhymes, Your morals in your living.”

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.

Don’t believe in the Flying Dutchman? I’ve known the fellow for years; My button I’ve wrenched from his clutch, man: I shudder whenever he nears!

He’s a Rip van Winkle skipper, A Wandering Jew of the sea, Who sails his bedevilled old clipper In the wind’s eye, straight as a bee.

Back topsails! you can’t escape him; The man-ropes stretch with his weight, And the queerest old toggeries drape him, The Lord knows how long out of date!

Like a long-disembodied idea, (A kind of ghost plentiful now,) He stands there; you fancy you see a Coeval of Teniers or Douw.

He greets you; would have you take letters: You scan the addresses with dread, While he mutters his _donners_ and _wetters_,-- They’re all from the dead to the dead!

You seem taking time for reflection, But the heart fills your throat with a jam, As you spell in each faded direction An ominous ending in _dam_.

Am I tagging my rhymes to a legend? That were changing green turtle to mock: No, thank you! I’ve found out which wedge-end Is meant for the head of a block.

The fellow I have in my mind’s eye Plays the old Skipper’s part here on shore, And sticks like a burr, till he finds I Have got just the gauge of his bore.

This postman ’twixt one ghost and t’other, With last dates that smell of the mould, I have met him (O man and brother, Forgive me!) in azure and gold.

In the pulpit I’ve known of his preaching, Out of hearing behind the time, Some statement of Balaam’s impeaching, Giving Eve a due sense of her crime.

I have seen him some poor ancient thrashing Into something (God save us!) more dry, With the Water of Life itself washing The life out of earth, sea, and sky.

O dread fellow-mortal, get newer Despatches to carry, or none! We’re as quick as the Greek and the Jew were At knowing a loaf from a stone.

Till the couriers of God fail in duty, We sha’n’t ask a mummy for news, Nor sate the soul’s hunger for beauty With your drawings from casts of a Muse.

CREDIDIMUS JOVEM REGNARE.

O days endeared to every Muse, When nobody had any Views, Nor, while the cloudscape of his mind By every breeze was new designed, Insisted all the world should see Camels or whales where none there be! O happy days, when men received From sire to son what all believed, And left the other world in bliss, Too busy with bedevilling this!

Beset by doubts of every breed In the last bastion of my creed, With shot and shell for Sabbath-chime, I watch the storming-party climb, Panting (their prey in easy reach), To pour triumphant through the breach In walls that shed like snowflakes tons Of missiles from old-fashioned guns, But crumble ’neath the storm that pours All day and night from bigger bores. There, as I hopeless watch and wait The last life-crushing coil of Fate, Despair finds solace in the praise Of those serene dawn-rosy days Ere microscopes had made us heirs To large estates of doubts and snares, By proving that the title-deeds, Once all-sufficient for men’s needs, Are palimpsests that scarce disguise The tracings of still earlier lies, Themselves as surely written o’er An older fib erased before.

So from these days I fly to those That in the landlocked Past repose, Where no rude wind of doctrine shakes From bloom-flushed boughs untimely flakes; Where morning’s eyes see nothing strange, No crude perplexity of change, And morrows trip along their ways Secure as happy yesterdays. Then there were rulers who could trace Through heroes up to gods their race, Pledged to fair fame and noble use By veins from Odin filled or Zeus, And under bonds to keep divine The praise of a celestial line. Then priests could pile the altar’s sods, With whom gods spake as they with gods, And everywhere from haunted earth Broke springs of wonder, that had birth In depths divine beyond the ken And fatal scrutiny of men; Then hills and groves and streams and seas Thrilled with immortal presences, Not too ethereal for the scope Of human passion’s dream or hope.

Now Pan at last is surely dead, And King No-Credit reigns instead, Whose officers, morosely strict, Poor Fancy’s tenantry evict, Chase the last Genius from the door, And nothing dances any more. Nothing? Ah, yes, our tables do, Drumming the Old One’s own tattoo, And, if the oracles are dumb, Have we not mediums? Why be glum?

Fly thither? Why, the very air Is full of hindrance and despair! Fly thither? But I cannot fly; My doubts enmesh me if I try,-- Each lilliputian, but, combined, Potent a giant’s limbs to bind. This world and that are growing dark; A huge interrogation mark, The Devil’s crook episcopal, Still borne before him since the Fall, Blackens with its ill-omened sign The old blue heaven of faith benign. Whence? Whither? Wherefore? How? Which? Why? All ask at once, all wait reply. Men feel old systems cracking under ’em; Life saddens to a mere conundrum Which once Religion solved, but she Has lost--has Science found?--the key.

What was snow-bearded Odin, trow, The mighty hunter long ago, Whose horn and hounds the peasant hears Still when the Northlights shake their spears? Science hath answers twain, I’ve heard; Choose which you will, nor hope a third; Whichever box the truth be stowed in, There’s not a sliver left of Odin. Either he was a pinchbrowed thing, With scarcely wit a stone to fling, A creature both in size and shape Nearer than we are to the ape, Who hung sublime with brat and spouse By tail prehensile from the boughs, And, happier than his maimed descendants, The culture-curtailed independents, Could pluck his cherries with both paws, And stuff with both his big-boned jaws; Or else the core his name enveloped Was from a solar myth developed, Which, hunted to its primal shoot, Takes refuge in a Sanskrit root, Thereby to instant death explaining The little poetry remaining.

Try it with Zeus, ’tis just the same; The thing evades, we hug a name; Nay, scarcely that,--perhaps a vapor Born of some atmospheric caper. All Lempriere’s fables blur together In cloudy symbols of the weather, And Aphrodite rose from frothy seas But to illustrate such hypotheses. With years enough behind his back, Lincoln will take the selfsame track, And prove, hulled fairly to the cob, A mere vagary of Old Prob. Give the right man a solar myth, And he’ll confute the sun therewith.

They make things admirably plain, But one hard question _will_ remain: If one hypothesis you lose, Another in its place you choose, But, your faith gone, O man and brother, Whose shop shall furnish you another? One that will wash, I mean, and wear, And wrap us warmly from despair? While they are clearing up our puzzles, And clapping prophylactic muzzles On the Actæon’s hounds that sniff Our devious track through But and If, Would they’d explain away the Devil And other facts that won’t keep level, But rise beneath our feet or fail, A reeling ship’s deck in a gale!

God vanished long ago, iwis, A mere subjective synthesis; A doll, stuffed out with hopes and fears, Too homely for us pretty dears, Who want one that conviction carries, Last make of London or of Paris. He gone, I felt a moment’s spasm, But calmed myself with Protoplasm, A finer name, and, what is more, As enigmatic as before; Greek, too, and sure to fill with ease Minds caught in the Symplegades Of soul and sense, life’s two conditions, Each baffled with its own omniscience. The men who labor to revise Our Bibles will, I hope, be wise, And print it without foolish qualms Instead of God in David’s psalms: Noll had been more effective far Could he have shouted at Dunbar, “Rise, Protoplasm!” No dourest Scot Had waited for another shot.

And yet I frankly must confess A secret unforgivingness, And shudder at the saving chrism Whose best New Birth is Pessimism; My soul--I mean the bit of phosphorus That fills the place of what that was for us-- Can’t bid its inward bores defiance With the new nursery-tales of science. What profits me, though doubt by doubt, As nail by nail, be driven out, When every new one, like the last, Still holds my coffin-lid as fast? Would I find thought a moment’s truce, Give me the young world’s Mother Goose, With life and joy in every limb, The chimney-corner tales of Grimm!

Our dear and admirable Huxley Cannot explain to me why ducks lay, Or, rather, how into their eggs Blunder potential wings and legs With will to move them and decide Whether in air or lymph to glide. Who gets a hair’s-breadth on by showing That Something Else set all agoing? Farther and farther back we push From Moses and his burning bush; Cry, “Art Thou there?” Above, below, All nature mutters _yes_ and _no_! ’Tis the old answer: we’re agreed Being from Being must proceed, Life be Life’s source. I might as well Obey the meeting-house’s bell, And listen while Old Hundred pours Forth through the summer-opened doors, From old and young. I hear it yet, Swelled by bass-viol and clarinet, While the gray minister, with face Radiant, let loose his noble bass. If Heaven it reached not, yet its roll Waked all the echoes of the soul, And in it many a life found wings To soar away from sordid things. Church gone and singers too, the song Sings to me voiceless all night long, Till my soul beckons me afar, Glowing and trembling like a star. Will any scientific touch With my worn strings achieve as much?

I don’t object, not I, to know My sires were monkeys, if ’twas so; I touch my ear’s collusive tip And own the poor-relationship. That apes of various shapes and sizes Contained their germs that all the prizes Of senate, pulpit, camp, and bar win May give us hopes that sweeten Darwin. Who knows but from our loins may spring (Long hence) some winged sweet-throated thing As much superior to us As we to Cynocephalus?

This is consoling, but, alas, It wipes no dimness from the glass Where I am flattening my poor nose, In hope to see beyond my toes. Though I accept my pedigree, Yet where, pray tell me, is the key That should unlock a private door To the Great Mystery, such no more? Each offers his, but one nor all Are much persuasive with the wall That rises now, as long ago, Between I wonder and I know, Nor will vouchsafe a pin-hole peep At the veiled Isis in its keep. Where is no door, I but produce My key to find it of no use. Yet better keep it, after all, Since Nature’s economical, And who can tell but some fine day (If it occur to her) she may, In her good-will to you and me, _Make_ door and lock to match the key?

TEMPORA MUTANTUR.

The world turns mild; democracy, they say, Rounds the sharp knobs of character away, And no great harm, unless at grave expense Of what needs edge of proof, the moral sense; For man or race is on the downward path Whose fibre grows too soft for honest wrath, And there’s a subtle influence that springs From words to modify our sense of things. A plain distinction grows obscure of late: Man, if he will, may pardon; but the State Forgets its function if not fixed as Fate. So thought our sires: a hundred years ago, If men were knaves, why, people called them so, And crime could see the prison-portal bend Its brow severe at no long vista’s end. In those days for plain things plain words would serve; Men had not learned, to admire the graceful swerve Wherewith the Æsthetic Nature’s genial mood Makes public duty slope to private good; No muddled conscience raised the saving doubt; A soldier proved unworthy was drummed out, An officer cashiered, a civil servant (No matter though his piety were fervent) Disgracefully dismissed, and through the land Each bore for life a stigma from the brand Whose far-heard hiss made others more averse To take the facile step from bad to worse. The Ten Commandments had a meaning then, Felt in their bones by least considerate men, Because behind them Public Conscience stood, And without wincing made their mandates good. But now that “Statesmanship” is just a way To dodge the primal curse and make it pay, Since office means a kind of patent drill To force an entrance to the Nation’s till, And peculation something rather less Risky than if you spelt it with an _s_; Now that to steal by law is grown an art, Whom rogues the sires, their milder sons call smart, And “slightly irregular” dilutes the shame Of what had once a somewhat blunter name, With generous curve we draw the moral line: Our swindlers are permitted to resign; Their guilt is wrapped in deferential names, And twenty sympathize for one that blames. Add national disgrace to private crime, Confront mankind with brazen front sublime, Steal but enough, the world is unsevere,-- Tweed is a statesman, Fisk a financier; Invent a mine, and be--the Lord knows what; Secure, at any rate, with what you’ve got. The public servant who has stolen or lied, If called on, may resign with honest pride: As unjust favor put him in, why doubt Disfavor as unjust has turned him out? Even if indicted, what is that but fudge To him who counted-in the elective judge? Whitewashed, he quits the politician’s strife At ease in mind, with pockets filled for life: His “lady” glares with gems whose vulgar blaze The poor man through his heightened taxes pays, Himself content if one huge Kohinoor Bulge from a shirt-front ampler than before, But not too candid, lest it haply tend To rouse suspicion of the People’s Friend. A public meeting, treated at his cost, Resolves him back more virtue than he lost; With character regilt he counts his gains; What’s gone was air, the solid good remains; For what is good, except what friend and foe Seem quite unanimous in thinking so, The stocks and bonds which, in our age of loans, Replace the stupid pagan’s stocks and stones? With choker white, wherein no cynic eye Dares see idealized a hempen tie, At parish-meetings he conducts in prayer, And pays for missions to be sent elsewhere; On ’Change respected, to his friends endeared, Add but a Sunday-school-class, he’s revered, And his too early tomb will not be dumb To point a moral for our youth to come. 1872.

IN THE HALF-WAY HOUSE.

I.

At twenty we fancied the blest Middle Ages A spirited cross of romantic and grand, All templars and minstrels and ladies and pages, And love and adventure in Outre-Mer land; But ah, where the youth dreamed of building a minster, The man takes a pew and sits reckoning his pelf, And the Graces wear fronts, the Muse thins to a spinster, When Middle-Age stares from one’s glass at oneself!

II.

Do you twit me with days when I had an Ideal, And saw the sear future through spectacles green? Then find me some charm, while I look round and see all These fat friends of forty, shall keep me nineteen; Should we go on pining for chaplets of laurel Who’ve paid a perruquier for mending our thatch, Or, our feet swathed in baize, with our Fate pick a quarrel, If, instead of cheap bay-leaves, she sent a dear scratch?

III.

We called it our Eden, that small patent-baker, When life was half moonshine and half Mary Jane; But the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker!-- Did Adam have duns and slip down a back-lane? Nay, after the Fall did the modiste keep coming With last styles of fig-leaf to Madam Eve’s bower? Did Jubal, or whoever taught the girls thrumming, Make the patriarchs deaf at a dollar the hour?

IV.

As I think what I was, I sigh _Desunt nonnulla_! Years are creditors Sheridan’s self could not bilk; But then, as my boy says, “What right has a fullah To ask for the cream, when himself spilt the milk?” Perhaps when you’re older, my lad, you’ll discover The secret with which Auld Lang Syne there is gilt,-- Superstition of old man, maid, poet, and lover,-- That cream rises thickest on milk that was spilt!

V.

We sailed for the moon, but, in sad disillusion, Snug under Point Comfort are glad to make fast, And strive (sans our glasses) to make a confusion ’Twixt our rind of green cheese and the moon of the past. Ah, Might-have-been, Could-have-been, Would-have-been! rascals, He’s a genius or fool whom ye cheat at two-score, And the man whose boy-promise was likened to Pascal’s Is thankful at forty they don’t call him bore!

VI.

With what fumes of fame was each confident pate full! How rates of insurance should rise on the Charles! And which of us now would not feel wisely grateful, If his rhymes sold as fast as the Emblems of Quarles? E’en if won, what’s the good of Life’s medals and prizes? The rapture’s in what never was or is gone; That we missed them makes Helens of plain Ann Elizys, For the goose of To-day still is Memory’s swan.

VII.