Chapter 2
E'en as Thou gildest gladdened joy, dear God, Give risen power to prayer; fan Thou the flame Of right with might; and midst the rod, And stern, dark shadows cast on Thy blest name, Lift Thou a patient love above earth's ire, Piercing the clouds with its triumphal spire.
While sacred song and loudest breath of praise Echo amid the hymning spheres of light,-- With heaven's lyres and angels' loving lays,-- Send to the loyal struggler for the right, Joy--not of time, nor yet by nature sown, But the celestial seed dropped from Love's throne.
Prolong the strain "Christ risen!" Sad sense, annoy No more the peace of Soul's sweet solitude! Deep loneness, tear-filled tones of distant joy, Depart! Glad Easter glows with gratitude-- Love's verdure veils the leaflet's wondrous birth-- Rich rays, rare footprints on the dust of earth.
Not life, the vassal of the changeful hour, Nor burdened bliss, but Truth and Love attest The solemn splendor of immortal power,-- The ever Christ, and glorified behest, Poured on the sense which deems no suffering vain That wipes away the sting of death--sin, pain.
Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., _April 18, 1900_.
_RESOLUTIONS FOR THE DAY_
To rise in the morning and drink in the view-- The home where I dwell in the vale, The blossoms whose fragrance and charms ever new Are scattered o'er hillside and dale;
To gaze on the sunbeams enkindling the sky-- A loftier life to invite-- A light that illumines my spiritual eye, And inspires my pen as I write;
To form resolutions, with strength from on high, Such physical laws to obey, As reason with appetite, pleasures deny, That health may my efforts repay;
To kneel at the altar of mercy and pray That pardon and grace, through His Son, May comfort my soul all the wearisome day, And cheer me with hope when 'tis done;
To daily remember my blessings and charge, And make this my humble request: Increase Thou my faith and my vision enlarge, And bless me with Christ's promised rest;
To hourly seek for deliverance strong From selfishness, sinfulness, dearth, From vanity, folly, and all that is wrong-- With ambition that binds us to earth;
To kindly pass over a wound, or a foe (And mem'ry but part us awhile), To breathe forth a prayer that His love I may know, Whose mercies my sorrows beguile,--
If these resolutions are acted up to, And faith spreads her pinions abroad, 'Twill be sweet when I ponder the days may be few That waft me away to my God.
Written in girlhood.
_O FOR THY WINGS, SWEET BIRD!_
O for thy wings, sweet bird! And soul of melody by being blest-- Like thee, my voice had stirred Some dear remembrance in a weary breast.
But whither wouldst thou rove, Bird of the airy wing, and fold thy plumes? In what dark leafy grove Wouldst chant thy vespers 'mid rich glooms?
Or sing thy love-lorn note-- In deeper solitude, where nymph or saint Has wooed some mystic spot, Divinely desolate the shrine to paint?
Yet wherefore ask thy doom? Blessed compared with me thou art-- Unto thy greenwood home Bearing no bitter memory at heart;
Wearing no earthly chain, Thou canst in azure bright soar far above; Nor pinest thou in vain O'er joys departed, unforgotten love.
O take me to thy bower! Beguile the lagging hours of weariness With strain which hath strange power To make me love thee as I love life less!
From mortal consciousness Which binds to earth--infirmity of woe! Or pining tenderness-- Whose streams will never dry or cease to flow;
An aching, voiceless void, Hushed in the heart whereunto none reply, And in the cringing crowd Companionless! Bird, bear me through the sky!
Written more than sixty years ago for the _New Hampshire Patriot_.
_COME THOU_
Come, in the minstrel's lay; When two hearts meet, And true hearts greet, And all is morn and May.
Come Thou! and now, anew, To thought and deed Give sober speed, Thy will to know, and do.
Stay! till the storms are o'er-- The cold blasts done, The reign of heaven begun, And Love, the evermore.
Be patient, waiting heart: Light, Love divine Is here, and thine; You therefore cannot part.
"The seasons come and go: Love, like the sea, Rolls on with thee,-- But knows no ebb and flow.
"Faith, hope, and tears, triune, Above the sod Find peace in God, And one eternal noon."
Oh, Thou hast heard my prayer; And I am blest! This is Thy high behest: Thou, here and _everywhere_.
_WISH AND ITEM_
To the editor of the _Item_, Lynn, Mass.
I hope the heart that's hungry For things above the floor, Will find within its portals An item rich in store;
That melancholy mortals Will count their mercies o'er, And learn that Truth and wisdom Have many items more;
That when a wrong is done us, It stirs no thought of strife; And Love becomes the substance, As item, of our life;
That every ragged urchin, With bare feet soiled or sore, Share God's most tender mercies,-- Find items at our door.
Then if we've done to others Some good ne'er told before, When angels shall repeat it, 'Twill be an item more.
_DEDICATION OF A TEMPERANCE HALL_
Author of all divine Gifts, lofty, pure, and free, Temperance and truth in song sublime An offering bring to Thee!
A temple, whose high dome Rose from a water-cup; And from its altar to Thy throne May we press on and up!
And she--last at the cross, First at the tomb, who waits-- Woman--will watch to cleanse from dross The cause she elevates.
Sons of the old Bay State, Work for our glorious cause! And be your waiting hearts elate, Since temperance makes your laws.
"Temples of Honor," all, "Social," or grand, or great, This blazoned, brilliant temperance hall To Thee we dedicate.
"Good Templars" one and all, Good "Sons," and daughters, too, We dedicate this temperance hall To God, to Truth, and you!
Lynn, Mass., _August 4, 1866_.
_LINES_
Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer.--_Moore._
Was that fold for the lambkin soft virtue's repose, Where the weary and earth-stricken lay down their woes,-- When the fountain and leaflet are frozen and sere, And the mountains more friendless,--their home is not here?
When the herd had forsaken, and left them to stray From the green sunny slopes of the woodland away; Where the music of waters had fled to the sea, And this life but one given to suffer and be?
Was it then thou didst call them to banish all pain, And the harpstring, just breaking, reecho again To a strain of enchantment that flowed as the wave, Where they waited to welcome the murmur it gave?
Oh, there's never a shadow where sunshine is not, And never the sunshine without a dark spot; Yet there's one will be victor, for glory and fame, Without heart to define them, were only a name!
Lynn, Mass., _February 19, 1868_.
_TO THE SUNDAY SCHOOL CHILDREN_
_Who sent me the picture depictive of Isaiah xi._
Jesus loves you! so does mother: Glad thy Eastertide: Loving God and one another, You in Him abide. Ours through Him who gave you to us,-- Gentle as the dove, Fondling e'en the lion furious, Leading kine with love.
Father, in Thy great heart hold them Ever thus as Thine! Shield and guide and guard them; and, when At some siren shrine They would lay their pure hearts' off'ring, Light with wisdom's ray-- Beacon beams--athwart the weakly, Rough or treacherous way.
Temper every trembling footfall, Till they gain at last-- Safe in Science, bright with glory-- Just the way Thou hast: Then, O tender Love and wisdom, Crown the lives thus blest With the guerdon of Thy bosom, Whereon they may rest!
Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., _April 3, 1899_.
_HOPE_
Tis borne on the zephyr at eventide's hour; It falls on the heart like the dew on the flower,-- An infinite essence from tropic to pole, The promise, the home, and the heaven of Soul.
Hope happifies life, at the altar or bower, And loosens the fetters of pride and of power; It comes through our tears, as the soft summer rain, To beautify, bless, and make joyful again.
The harp of the minstrel, the treasure of time; A rainbow of rapture, o'erarching, divine; The God-given mandate that speaks from above,-- No place for earth's idols, but hope thou, and love.
_TO ETTA_
Fair girl, thy rosebud heart rests warm Within life's summer bowers! Nor blasts of winter's angry storm, Nor April's changeful showers,
Its leaves have shed or bowed the stem; But gracefully it stands-- A gem in beauty's diadem, Unplucked by ruthless hands.
Thus may it ripen into bloom, Fresh as the fragrant sod, And yield its beauty and perfume An offering pure to God.
Sweet as the poetry of heaven, Bright as her evening star, Be all thy life in music given, While beauty fills each bar.
Lynn, Mass., _December 8, 1866_.
_NEVERMORE_
Are the dear days ever coming again, As sweetly they came of yore, Singing the olden and dainty refrain, Oh, ever and nevermore?
Ever to gladness and never to tears, Ever the gross world above; Never to toiling and never to fears, Ever to Truth and to Love?
Can the forever of happiness be Outside this ever of pain? Will the hereafter from suffering free The weary of body and brain?
Weary of sobbing, like some tired child Over the tears it has shed; Weary of sowing the wayside and wild, Watching the husbandman fled;
Nevermore reaping the harvest we deem, Evermore gathering in woe-- Say, are the sheaves and the gladness a dream, Or to the patient who sow?
Lynn, Mass., _September 3, 1871_.
_MEETING OF MY DEPARTED MOTHER AND HUSBAND_
Joy for thee, happy friend! thy bark is past The dangerous sea, and safely moored at last-- Beyond rough foam. Soft gales celestial, in sweet music bore-- Spirit emancipate for this far shore-- Thee to thy home.
"You've traveled long, and far from mortal joys, To Soul's diviner sense, that spurns such toys, Brave wrestler, lone. Now see thy ever-self; Life never fled; Man is not mortal, never of the dead: The dark unknown.
"When hope soared high, and joy was eagle-plumed, Thy pinions drooped; the flesh was weak, and doomed To pass away. But faith triumphant round thy death-couch shed Majestic forms; and radiant glory sped The dawning day.
"Intensely grand and glorious life's sphere,-- Beyond the shadow, infinite appear Life, Love divine,-- Where mortal yearnings come not, sighs are stilled, And home and peace and hearts are found and filled, Thine, ever thine.
"Bearest thou no tidings from our loved on earth, The toiler tireless for Truth's new birth All-unbeguiled? Our joy is gathered from her parting sigh: This hour looks on her heart with pitying eye,-- What of my child?"
"When, severed by death's dream, I woke to Life, She deemed I died, and could not know the strife At first to fill That waking with a love that steady turns To God; a hope that ever upward yearns, Bowed to His will.
"Years had passed o'er thy broken household band, When angels beckoned me to this bright land, With thee to meet. She that has wept o'er thee, kissed my cold brow, Rears the sad marble to our memory now, In lone retreat.
"By the remembrance of her loyal life, And parting prayer, I only know my wife, Thy child, shall come-- Where farewells cloud not o'er our ransomed rest-- Hither to reap, with all the crowned and blest, Of bliss the sum.
"When Love's rapt sense the heartstrings gently sweep With joy divinely fair, the high and deep, To call her home, She shall mount upward unto purer skies; We shall be waiting, in what glad surprise, Our spirits' own!"
_ISLE OF WIGHT_
On receiving a painting of the Isle.
Isle of beauty, thou art singing To my sense a sweet refrain; To my busy mem'ry bringing Scenes that I would see again.
Chief, the charm of thy reflecting, Is the moral that it brings; Nature, with the mind connecting, Gives the artist's fancy wings.
Soul, sublime 'mid human _debris_, Paints the limner's work, I ween, Art and Science, all unweary, Lighting up this mortal dream.
Work ill-done within the misty Mine of human thoughts, we see Soon abandoned when the Master Crowns life's Cliff for such as we.
Students wise, he maketh now thus Those who fish in waters deep, When the buried Master hails us From the shores afar, complete.
Art hath bathed this isthmus-lordling In a beauty strong and meek As the rock, whose upward tending Points the plane of power to seek.
Isle of beauty, thou art teaching Lessons long and grand, tonight, To my heart that would be bleaching To thy whiteness, Cliff of Wight.
_SPRING_
Come to thy bowers, sweet spring, And paint the gray, stark trees, The bud, the leaf and wing-- Bring with thee brush and breeze.
And soft thy shading lay On vale and woodland deep; With sunshine's lovely ray Light o'er the rugged steep.
More softly warm and weave The patient, timid grass, Till heard at silvery eve Poor robin's lonely mass.
Bid faithful swallows come And build their cozy nests, Where wind nor storm can numb Their downy little breasts.
Come at the sad heart's call, To empty summer bowers, Where still and dead are all The vernal songs and flowers.
It may be months or years Since joyous spring was there. O come to clouds and tears With light and song and prayer!
_JUNE_
Whence are thy wooings, gentle June? Thou hast a naiad's charm; Thy breezes scent the rose's breath; Old Time gives thee her palm. The lark's shrill song doth wake the dawn: The eve-bird's forest flute Gives back some maiden melody, Too pure for aught so mute.
The fairy-peopled world of flowers, Enraptured by thy spell, Looks love unto the laughing hours, Through woodland, grove, and dell; And soft thy footstep falls upon The verdant grass it weaves; To melting murmurs ye have stirred The timid, trembling leaves.
When sunshine beautifies the shower, As smiles through teardrops seen, Ask of its June, the long-hushed heart, What hath the record been? And thou wilt find that harmonies, In which the Soul hath part, Ne'er perish young, like things of earth, In records of the heart.
_RONDELET_
The flowers of June The gates of memory unbar: The flowers of June Such old-time harmonies retune, I fain would keep the gates ajar,-- So full of sweet enchantment are The flowers of June.
--_James T. White._
Who loves not June Is out of tune With love and God; The rose his rival reigns, The stars reject his pains, His home the clod!
And yet I trow, When sweet _rondeau_ Doth play a part, The curtain drops on June; Veiled is the modest moon-- Hushed is the heart.
_AUTUMN_
Quickly earth's jewels disappear; The turf, whereon I tread, Ere autumn blanch another year, May rest above my head.
Touched by the finger of decay Is every earthly love; For joy, to shun my weary way, Is registered above.
The languid brooklets yield their sighs, A requiem o'er the tomb Of sunny days and cloudless skies, Enhancing autumn's gloom.
The wild winds mutter, howl, and moan, To scare my woodland walk, And frightened fancy flees, to roam Where ghosts and goblins stalk.
The cricket's sharp, discordant scream Fills mortal sense with dread; More sorrowful it scarce could seem; It voices beauty fled.
Yet here, upon this faded sod,-- O happy hours and fleet,-- When songsters' matin hymns to God Are poured in strains so sweet,
My heart unbidden joins rehearse, I hope it's better made, When mingling with the universe, Beneath the maple's shade.
Written in girlhood, in a maple grove.
_ALPHABET AND BAYONET_
If fancy plumes aerial flight, Go fix thy restless mind On learning's lore and wisdom's might, And live to bless mankind. The sword is sheathed, 'tis freedom's hour, No despot bears misrule, Where knowledge plants the foot of power In our God-blessed free school.
Forth from this fount the streamlets flow, That widen in their course. Hero and sage arise to show Science the mighty source, And laud the land whose talents rock The cradle of her power, And wreaths are twined round Plymouth Rock, From erudition's bower.
Farther than feet of chamois fall, Free as the generous air, Strains nobler far than clarion call Wake freedom's welcome, where Minerva's silver sandals still Are loosed, and not effete; Where echoes still my day-dreams thrill, Woke by her fancied feet.
_THE COUNTRY-SEAT_
Wild spirit of song,--midst the zephyrs at play In bowers of beauty,--I bend to thy lay, And woo, while I worship in deep sylvan spot, The Muses' soft echoes to kindle the grot. Wake chords of my lyre, with musical kiss, To vibrate and tremble with accents of bliss.
Here morning peers out, from her crimson repose, On proud Prairie Queen and the modest Moss-rose; And vesper reclines--when the dewdrop is shed On the heart of the pink--in its odorous bed; But Flora has stolen the rainbow and sky, To sprinkle the flowers with exquisite dye.
Here fame-honored hickory rears his bold form, And bares a brave breast to the lightning and storm, While palm, bay, and laurel, in classical glee, Chase tulip, magnolia, and fragrant fringe-tree; And sturdy horse-chestnut for centuries hath given Its feathery blossom and branches to heaven.
Here is life! Here is youth! Here the poet's world-wish,-- Cool waters at play with the gold-gleaming fish; While cactus a mellower glory receives From light colored softly by blossom and leaves; And nestling alder is whispering low, In lap of the pear-tree, with musical flow.[1]
Dark sentinel hedgerow is guarding repose, Midst grotto and songlet and streamlet that flows Where beauty and perfume from buds burst away, And ope their closed cells to the bright, laughing day; Yet, dwellers in Eden, earth yields you her tear,-- Oft plucked for the banquet, but laid on the bier.
Earth's beauty and glory delude as the shrine Or fount of real joy and of visions divine; But hope, as the eaglet that spurneth the sod, May soar above matter, to fasten on God, And freely adore all His spirit hath made, Where rapture and radiance and glory ne'er fade.
Oh, give me the spot where affection may dwell In sacred communion with home's magic spell! Where flowers of feeling are fragrant and fair, And those we most love find a happiness rare; But clouds are a presage,--they darken my lay: This life is a shadow, and hastens away.
[1] An alder growing from the bent branch of a pear-tree.
_TO ELLEN._ "_SING ME THAT SONG!_"
Sing me that song! My spirit is sad, Life's pulses move fitful and slow; A meeting with loved ones in dreams I have had, Whose robes were as spotless as snow: A phantom of joy, it fled with the light, And left but a parting in air. My soul is enchained to life's dreary night, O sing me "Sweet hour of prayer"!
Ah, sleep, twin sister of death and of night! My thoughts 'neath thy drap'ry still lie. Alas! that from dreams so boundless and bright We waken to life's dreary sigh. Those moments most sweet are fleetest alway, For love claspeth earth's raptures not long, Till darkness and death like mist melt away, To rise to a seraph's new song.
O'er ocean or Alps, the stranger who roams But gathers a wreath for his bier; For life hath its music in low minor tones, And _man_ is the cause of its tear. But drops of pure nectar our brimming cup fill, When we walk by that murmuring stream; Or when, like the thrill of that mountain rill, Your songs float in memory's dream.
Sweet spirit of love, at soft eventide Wake gently the chords of her lyre, And whisper of one who sat by her side To join with the neighboring choir; And tell how that heart is silent and sad, No melody sweeps o'er its strings! 'Tis breaking alone, but a young heart and glad-- Might cheer it, perchance, when she sings.
Lynn, Mass., _August 25, 1866_.
_LINES, ON VISITING PINE GROVE CEMETERY_
Ah, why should the brief bliss of life's little day Grow cold in this spot as the spiritless clay, And thought be at work with the long-buried hours, And tears be bedewing these fresh-smiling flowers!
Ah, wherefore the memory of dear ones deemed dead Should bow thee, as winds bow the tall willow's head! Beside you they walk while you weep, and but pass From your sight as the shade o'er the dark wavy grass.
The cypress may mourn with her evergreen tears, And, like the blue hyacinth, change not with years; Yea, flowers of feeling may blossom above, To yield earth the fragrance of goodness and love;
So one heart is left me--she breathes in my ear, "I'm living to bless thee; for this are we here." And when this sweet pledge to my lone heart was given, Earth held but this joy, or this happiness heaven!
Here the rock and the sea and the tall waving pine Enchant deep the senses,--subduing, sublime; Yet stronger than these is the spell that hath power To sweep o'er the heartstrings in memory's hour.
Of the past 'tis the talisman, when _we three met_, When the star of our friendship arose not to set; And pure as its rising, and bright as the star, Be its course through our heavens, whether near or afar.
Lynn, Mass., _August 24, 1865_.
_A VERSE_
_Mother's New Year Gift to the Little Children_
Father-Mother God, Loving me,-- Guard me when I sleep; Guide my little feet Up to Thee.
_To the Big Children_
Father-Mother good, lovingly Thee I seek,-- Patient, meek, In the way Thou hast,-- Be it slow or fast, Up to Thee.
_TRUTH_
Beyond the clouds, away In the dim distance, lay A bright and golden shower At sunset's radiant hour,-- Like to the soul's glad immortality, Making this life divine, Making its waters wine, Giving the glory that eye cannot see.