Chapter 12

And well he loved to quit his home And, Calmuck, in his wagon roam To read new landscapes and old skies;-- But oh, to see his solar eyes Like meteors which chose their way And rived the dark like a new day! Not lazy grazing on all they saw, Each chimney-pot and cottage door, Farm-gear and village picket-fence, But, feeding on magnificence, They bounded to the horizon's edge And searched with the sun's privilege. Landward they reached the mountains old Where pastoral tribes their flocks infold, Saw rivers run seaward by cities high And the seas wash the low-hung sky; Saw the endless rack of the firmament And the sailing moon where the cloud was rent, And through man and woman and sea and star Saw the dance of Nature forward and far, Through worlds and races and terms and times Saw musical order and pairing rhymes.

II

The gods talk in the breath of the woods, They talk in the shaken pine, And fill the long reach of the old seashore With dialogue divine; And the poet who overhears Some random word they say Is the fated man of men Whom the ages must obey: One who having nectar drank Into blissful orgies sank; He takes no mark of night or day, He cannot go, he cannot stay, He would, yet would not, counsel keep, But, like a walker in his sleep With staring eye that seeth none, Ridiculously up and down Seeks how he may fitly tell The heart-o'erlading miracle.

Not yet, not yet, Impatient friend,-- A little while attend; Not yet I sing: but I must wait, My hand upon the silent string, Fully until the end. I see the coming light, I see the scattered gleams, Aloft, beneath, on left and right The stars' own ether beams; These are but seeds of days, Not yet a steadfast morn, An intermittent blaze, An embryo god unborn.

How all things sparkle, The dust is alive, To the birth they arrive: I snuff the breath of my morning afar, I see the pale lustres condense to a star: The fading colors fix, The vanishing are seen, And the world that shall be Twins the world that has been. I know the appointed hour, I greet my office well, Never faster, never slower Revolves the fatal wheel! The Fairest enchants me, The Mighty commands me, Saying, 'Stand in thy place; Up and eastward turn thy face; As mountains for the morning wait, Coming early, coming late, So thou attend the enriching Fate Which none can stay, and none accelerate. I am neither faint nor weary, Fill thy will, O faultless heart! Here from youth to age I tarry,-- Count it flight of bird or dart. My heart at the heart of things Heeds no longer lapse of time, Rushing ages moult their wings, Bathing in thy day sublime.

The sun set, but set not his hope:-- Stars rose, his faith was earlier up: Fixed on the enormous galaxy, Deeper and older seemed his eye, And matched his sufferance sublime The taciturnity of Time.

Beside his hut and shading oak, Thus to himself the poet spoke, 'I have supped to-night with gods, I will not go under a wooden roof: As I walked among the hills In the love which Nature fills, The great stars did not shine aloof, They hurried down from their deep abodes And hemmed me in their glittering troop.

'Divine Inviters! I accept The courtesy ye have shown and kept From ancient ages for the bard, To modulate With finer fate A fortune harsh and hard. With aim like yours I watch your course, Who never break your lawful dance By error or intemperance. O birds of ether without wings! O heavenly ships without a sail! O fire of fire! O best of things! O mariners who never fail! Sail swiftly through your amber vault, An animated law, a presence to exalt.'

Ah, happy if a sun or star Could chain the wheel of Fortune's car, And give to hold an even state, Neither dejected nor elate, That haply man upraised might keep The height of Fancy's far-eyed steep. In vain: the stars are glowing wheels, Giddy with motion Nature reels, Sun, moon, man, undulate and stream, The mountains flow, the solids seem, Change acts, reacts; back, forward hurled, And pause were palsy to the world.-- The morn is come: the starry crowds Are hid behind the thrice-piled clouds; The new day lowers, and equal odds Have changed not less the guest of gods; Discrowned and timid, thoughtless, worn, The child of genius sits forlorn: Between two sleeps a short day's stealth, 'Mid many ails a brittle health, A cripple of God, half true, half formed, And by great sparks Promethean warmed, Constrained by impotence to adjourn To infinite time his eager turn, His lot of action at the urn. He by false usage pinned about No breath therein, no passage out, Cast wishful glances at the stars And wishful saw the Ocean stream:-- 'Merge me in the brute universe, Or lift to a diviner dream!'

Beside him sat enduring love, Upon him noble eyes did rest, Which, for the Genius that there strove. The follies bore that it invest. They spoke not, for their earnest sense Outran the craft of eloquence.

He whom God had thus preferred,-- To whom sweet angels ministered, Saluted him each morn as brother, And bragged his virtues to each other,-- Alas! how were they so beguiled, And they so pure? He, foolish child, A facile, reckless, wandering will, Eager for good, not hating ill, Thanked Nature for each stroke she dealt; On his tense chords all strokes were felt, The good, the bad with equal zeal, He asked, he only asked, to feel. Timid, self-pleasing, sensitive, With Gods, with fools, content to live; Bended to fops who bent to him; Surface with surfaces did swim.

'Sorrow, sorrow!' the angels cried, 'Is this dear Nature's manly pride? Call hither thy mortal enemy, Make him glad thy fall to see! Yon waterflag, yon sighing osier, A drop can shake, a breath can fan; Maidens laugh and weep; Composure Is the pudency of man,'

Again by night the poet went From the lighted halls Beneath the darkling firmament To the seashore, to the old seawalls, Out shone a star beneath the cloud, The constellation glittered soon,-- You have no lapse; so have ye glowed But once in your dominion. And yet, dear stars, I know ye shine Only by needs and loves of mine; Light-loving, light-asking life in me Feeds those eternal lamps I see. And I to whom your light has spoken, I, pining to be one of you, I fall, my faith is broken, Ye scorn me from your deeps of blue. Or if perchance, ye orbs of Fate, Your ne'er averted glance Beams with a will compassionate On sons of time and chance, Then clothe these hands with power In just proportion, Nor plant immense designs Where equal means are none.'

CHORUS OF SPIRITS

Means, dear brother, ask them not; Soul's desire is means enow, Pure content is angel's lot, Thine own theatre art thou.

Gentler far than falls the snow In the woodwalks still and low Fell the lesson on his heart And woke the fear lest angels part.

POET

I see your forms with deep content, I know that ye are excellent, But will ye stay? I hear the rustle of wings, Ye meditate what to say Ere ye go to quit me for ever and aye.

SPIRITS

Brother, we are no phantom band; Brother, accept this fatal hand. Aches thine unbelieving heart With the fear that we must part? See, all we are rooted here By one thought to one same sphere; From thyself thou canst not flee,-- From thyself no more can we.

POET

Suns and stars their courses keep, But not angels of the deep: Day and night their turn observe, But the day of day may swerve. Is there warrant that the waves Of thought in their mysterious caves Will heap in me their highest tide, In me therewith beatified? Unsure the ebb and flood of thought, The moon comes back,--the Spirit not.

SPIRITS

Brother, sweeter is the Law Than all the grace Love ever saw; We are its suppliants. By it, we Draw the breath of Eternity; Serve thou it not for daily bread,-- Serve it for pain and fear and need. Love it, though it hide its light; By love behold the sun at night. If the Law should thee forget, More enamoured serve it yet; Though it hate thee, suffer long; Put the Spirit in the wrong; Brother, no decrepitude Chills the limbs of Time; As fleet his feet, his hands as good, His vision as sublime: On Nature's wheels there is no rust; Nor less on man's enchanted dust Beauty and Force alight.

FRAGMENTS ON THE POET AND THE POETIC GIFT

I

There are beggars in Iran and Araby, SAID was hungrier than all; Hafiz said he was a fly That came to every festival. He came a pilgrim to the Mosque On trail of camel and caravan, Knew every temple and kiosk Out from Mecca to Ispahan; Northward he went to the snowy hills, At court he sat in the grave Divan. His music was the south-wind's sigh, His lamp, the maiden's downcast eye, And ever the spell of beauty came And turned the drowsy world to flame. By lake and stream and gleaming hall And modest copse and the forest tall, Where'er he went, the magic guide Kept its place by the poet's side. Said melted the days like cups of pearl, Served high and low, the lord and the churl, Loved harebells nodding on a rock, A cabin hung with curling smoke, Ring of axe or hum of wheel Or gleam which use can paint on steel, And huts and tents; nor loved he less Stately lords in palaces, Princely women hard to please, Fenced by form and ceremony, Decked by courtly rites and dress And etiquette of gentilesse. But when the mate of the snow and wind, He left each civil scale behind: Him wood-gods fed with honey wild And of his memory beguiled. He loved to watch and wake When the wing of the south-wind whipt the lake And the glassy surface in ripples brake And fled in pretty frowns away Like the flitting boreal lights, Rippling roses in northern nights, Or like the thrill of Aeolian strings In which the sudden wind-god rings. In caves and hollow trees he crept And near the wolf and panther slept. He came to the green ocean's brim And saw the wheeling sea-birds skim, Summer and winter, o'er the wave, Like creatures of a skiey mould, Impassible to heat or cold. He stood before the tumbling main With joy too tense for sober brain; He shared the life of the element, The tie of blood and home was rent: As if in him the welkin walked, The winds took flesh, the mountains talked, And he the bard, a crystal soul Sphered and concentric with the whole.

II

The Dervish whined to Said, "Thou didst not tarry while I prayed. Beware the fire that Eblis burned," But Saadi coldly thus returned, "Once with manlike love and fear I gave thee for an hour my ear, I kept the sun and stars at bay, And love, for words thy tongue could say. I cannot sell my heaven again For all that rattles in thy brain."

III

Said Saadi, "When I stood before Hassan the camel-driver's door, I scorned the fame of Timour brave; Timour, to Hassan, was a slave. In every glance of Hassan's eye I read great years of victory, And I, who cower mean and small In the frequent interval When wisdom not with me resides, Worship Toil's wisdom that abides. I shunned his eyes, that faithful man's, I shunned the toiling Hassan's glance."

IV

The civil world will much forgive To bards who from its maxims live, But if, grown bold, the poet dare Bend his practice to his prayer And following his mighty heart Shame the times and live apart,-- _Vae solis!_ I found this, That of goods I could not miss If I fell within the line, Once a member, all was mine, Houses, banquets, gardens, fountains, Fortune's delectable mountains; But if I would walk alone, Was neither cloak nor crumb my own. And thus the high Muse treated me, Directly never greeted me, But when she spread her dearest spells, Feigned to speak to some one else. I was free to overhear, Or I might at will forbear; Yet mark me well, that idle word Thus at random overheard Was the symphony of spheres, And proverb of a thousand years, The light wherewith all planets shone, The livery all events put on, It fell in rain, it grew in grain, It put on flesh in friendly form, Frowned in my foe and growled in storm, It spoke in Tullius Cicero, In Milton and in Angelo: I travelled and found it at Rome; Eastward it filled all Heathendom And it lay on my hearth when I came home.

V

Mask thy wisdom with delight, Toy with the bow, yet hit the white, As Jelaleddin old and gray; He seemed to bask, to dream and play Without remoter hope or fear Than still to entertain his ear And pass the burning summer-time In the palm-grove with a rhyme; Heedless that each cunning word Tribes and ages overheard: Those idle catches told the laws Holding Nature to her cause.

God only knew how Saadi dined; Roses he ate, and drank the wind; He freelier breathed beside the pine, In cities he was low and mean; The mountain waters washed him clean And by the sea-waves he was strong; He heard their medicinal song, Asked no physician but the wave, No palace but his sea-beat cave.

Saadi held the Muse in awe, She was his mistress and his law; A twelvemonth he could silence hold, Nor ran to speak till she him told; He felt the flame, the fanning wings, Nor offered words till they were things, Glad when the solid mountain swims In music and uplifting hymns.

Charmed from fagot and from steel, Harvests grew upon his tongue, Past and future must reveal All their heart when Saadi sung; Sun and moon must fall amain Like sower's seeds into his brain, There quickened to be born again.

The free winds told him what they knew, Discoursed of fortune as they blew; Omens and signs that filled the air To him authentic witness bare; The birds brought auguries on their wings, And carolled undeceiving things Him to beckon, him to warn; Well might then the poet scorn To learn of scribe or courier Things writ in vaster character; And on his mind at dawn of day Soft shadows of the evening lay.

* * *

Pale genius roves alone, No scout can track his way, None credits him till he have shown His diamonds to the day.

Not his the feaster's wine, Nor land, nor gold, nor power, By want and pain God screeneth him Till his elected hour.

Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals:-- The sower scatters broad his seed, The wheat thou strew'st be souls.

I grieve that better souls than mine Docile read my measured line: High destined youths and holy maids Hallow these my orchard shades; Environ me and me baptize With light that streams from gracious eyes. I dare not be beloved and known, I ungrateful, I alone.

Ever find me dim regards, Love of ladies, love of bards, Marked forbearance, compliments, Tokens of benevolence. What then, can I love myself? Fame is profitless as pelf, A good in Nature not allowed They love me, as I love a cloud Sailing falsely in the sphere, Hated mist if it come near.

For thought, and not praise; Thought is the wages For which I sell days, Will gladly sell ages And willing grow old Deaf, and dumb, and blind, and cold, Melting matter into dreams, Panoramas which I saw And whatever glows or seems Into substance, into Law.

For Fancy's gift Can mountains lift; The Muse can knit What is past, what is done, With the web that's just begun; Making free with time and size, Dwindles here, there magnifies, Swells a rain-drop to a tun; So to repeat No word or feat Crowds in a day the sum of ages, And blushing Love outwits the sages.

Try the might the Muse affords And the balm of thoughtful words; Bring music to the desolate; Hang roses on the stony fate.

But over all his crowning grace, Wherefor thanks God his daily praise, Is the purging of his eye To see the people of the sky: From blue mount and headland dim Friendly hands stretch forth to him, Him they beckon, him advise Of heavenlier prosperities And a more excelling grace And a truer bosom-glow Than the wine-fed feasters know. They turn his heart from lovely maids, And make the darlings of the earth Swainish, coarse and nothing worth: Teach him gladly to postpone Pleasures to another stage Beyond the scope of human age, Freely as task at eve undone Waits unblamed to-morrow's sun.

By thoughts I lead Bards to say what nations need; What imports, what irks and what behooves, Framed afar as Fates and Loves.

And as the light divides the dark Through with living swords, So shall thou pierce the distant age With adamantine words.

I framed his tongue to music, I armed his hand with skill, I moulded his face to beauty And his heart the throne of Will.

For every God Obeys the hymn, obeys the ode.

For art, for music over-thrilled, The wine-cup shakes, the wine is spilled.

Hold of the Maker, not the Made; Sit with the Cause, or grim or glad.

That book is good Which puts me in a working mood. Unless to Thought is added Will, Apollo is an imbecile. What parts, what gems, what colors shine,-- Ah, but I miss the grand design.

Like vaulters in a circus round Who leap from horse to horse, but never touch the ground.

For Genius made his cabin wide, And Love led Gods therein to bide.

The atom displaces all atoms beside, And Genius unspheres all souls that abide.

To transmute crime to wisdom, so to stem The vice of Japhet by the thought of Shem.

He could condense cerulean ether Into the very best sole-leather.

Forbore the ant-hill, shunned to tread, In mercy, on one little head.

I have no brothers and no peers, And the dearest interferes: When I would spend a lonely day, Sun and moon are in my way.

The brook sings on, but sings in vain Wanting the echo in my brain.

He planted where the deluge ploughed. His hired hands were wind and cloud; His eyes detect the Gods concealed In the hummock of the field.

For what need I of book or priest, Or sibyl from the mummied East, When every star is Bethlehem star? I count as many as there are Cinquefoils or violets in the grass, So many saints and saviors, So many high behaviors Salute the bard who is alive And only sees what he doth give.

Coin the day-dawn into lines In which its proper splendor shines; Coin the moonlight into verse Which all its marvel shall rehearse, Chasing with words fast-flowing things; nor try To plant thy shrivelled pedantry On the shoulders of the sky.

Ah, not to me those dreams belong! A better voice peals through my song.

The Muse's hill by Fear is guarded, A bolder foot is still rewarded.

His instant thought a poet spoke, And filled the age his fame; An inch of ground the lightning strook But lit the sky with flame.

If bright the sun, he tarries, All day his song is heard; And when he goes he carries No more baggage than a bird.

The Asmodean feat is mine, To spin my sand-heap into twine.

Slighted Minerva's learnèd tongue, But leaped with joy when on the wind The shell of Clio rung.

FRAGMENTS ON NATURE AND LIFE

NATURE

The patient Pan, Drunken with nectar, Sleeps or feigns slumber, Drowsily humming Music to the march of time. This poor tooting, creaking cricket, Pan, half asleep, rolling over His great body in the grass, Tooting, creaking, Feigns to sleep, sleeping never; 'T is his manner, Well he knows his own affair, Piling mountain chains of phlegm On the nervous brain of man, As he holds down central fires Under Alps and Andes cold; Haply else we could not live, Life would be too wild an ode.

Come search the wood for flowers,-- Wild tea and wild pea, Grapevine and succory, Coreopsis And liatris, Flaunting in their bowers; Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern and agrimony; Forest full of essences Fit for fairy presences, Peppermint and sassafras, Sweet fern, mint and vernal grass, Panax, black birch, sugar maple, Sweet and scent for Dian's table, Elder-blow, sarsaparilla, Wild rose, lily, dry vanilla,-- Spices in the plants that run To bring their first fruits to the sun. Earliest heats that follow frore Nervèd leaf of hellebore, Sweet willow, checkerberry red, With its savory leaf for bread. Silver birch and black With the selfsame spice Found in polygala root and rind, Sassafras, fern, benzöine, Mouse-ear, cowslip, wintergreen, Which by aroma may compel The frost to spare, what scents so well.

Where the fungus broad and red Lifts its head, Like poisoned loaf of elfin bread, Where the aster grew With the social goldenrod, In a chapel, which the dew Made beautiful for God:-- O what would Nature say? She spared no speech to-day: The fungus and the bulrush spoke, Answered the pine-tree and the oak, The wizard South blew down the glen, Filled the straits and filled the wide, Each maple leaf turned up its silver side. All things shine in his smoky ray, And all we see are pictures high; Many a high hillside, While oaks of pride Climb to their tops, And boys run out upon their leafy ropes. The maple street In the houseless wood, Voices followed after, Every shrub and grape leaf Rang with fairy laughter. I have heard them fall Like the strain of all King Oberon's minstrelsy. Would hear the everlasting And know the only strong? You must worship fasting, You must listen long. Words of the air Which birds of the air Carry aloft, below, around, To the isles of the deep, To the snow-capped steep, To the thundercloud.

For Nature, true and like in every place, Will hint her secret in a garden patch, Or in lone corners of a doleful heath, As in the Andes watched by fleets at sea, Or the sky-piercing horns of Himmaleh; And, when I would recall the scenes I dreamed On Adirondac steeps, I know Small need have I of Turner or Daguerre, Assured to find the token once again In silver lakes that unexhausted gleam And peaceful woods beside my cottage door.

What all the books of ages paint, I have. What prayers and dreams of youthful genius feign, I daily dwell in, and am not so blind But I can see the elastic tent of day Belike has wider hospitality Than my few needs exhaust, and bids me read The quaint devices on its mornings gay. Yet Nature will not be in full possessed, And they who truliest love her, heralds are And harbingers of a majestic race, Who, having more absorbed, more largely yield, And walk on earth as the sun walks in the sphere.

But never yet the man was found Who could the mystery expound, Though Adam, born when oaks were young, Endured, the Bible says, as long; But when at last the patriarch died The Gordian noose was still untied. He left, though goodly centuries old, Meek Nature's secret still untold.

Atom from atom yawns as far As moon from earth, or star from star.

When all their blooms the meadows flaunt To deck the morning of the year, Why tinge thy lustres jubilant With forecast or with fear?

Teach me your mood, O patient stars! Who climb each night the ancient sky, Leaving on space no shade, no scars, No trace of age, no fear to die.

The sun athwart the cloud thought it no sin To use my land to put his rainbows in.

For joy and beauty planted it, With faerie gardens cheered, And boding Fancy haunted it With men and women weird.

What central flowing forces, say, Make up thy splendor, matchless day?

Day by day for her darlings to her much she added more; In her hundred-gated Thebes every chamber was a door, A door to something grander,--loftier walls, and vaster floor.

She paints with white and red the moors To draw the nations out of doors.

A score of airy miles will smooth Rough Monadnoc to a gem.

THE EARTH

Our eyeless bark sails free Though with boom and spar Andes, Alp or Himmalee, Strikes never moon or star.

THE HEAVENS

Wisp and meteor nightly falling, But the Stars of God remain.

TRANSITION

See yonder leafless trees against the sky, How they diffuse themselves into the air, And, ever subdividing, separate Limbs into branches, branches into twigs. As if they loved the element, and hasted To dissipate their being into it.

Parks and ponds are good by day; I do not delight In black acres of the night, Nor my unseasoned step disturbs The sleeps of trees or dreams of herbs.

In Walden wood the chickadee Runs round the pine and maple tree Intent on insect slaughter: O tufted entomologist! Devour as many as you list, Then drink in Walden water.

The low December vault in June be lifted high, And largest clouds be flakes of down in that enormous sky.

THE GARDEN