Part 9

And so through faith and prayer Their powers were renewed, And hearts made strong to hew a world, And tame a solitude.

A type of revolution, Wrought from an iron plan, In the largest mold of liberty God cast the Puritan.

A better land they founded, That Freedom had for bride, The shackles of old despotism Struck from her limbs and side.

With faith within to guide them, And courage to perform, A nation, from a wilderness, They hewed with their strong arm.

For liberty to worship, And right to do and dare, They faced the savage and the storm With voices raised in prayer.

For God it was who summoned, And God it was who led, And God would not forsake the love That must be clothed and fed.

Great need had they of courage! Great need of faith had they! And, lacking these,--how otherwise For us had been this day!

THE NEW YEAR

Lift up thy torch, O Year, and let us see What Destiny Hath made thee heir to, at nativity!--

Doubt, some call Faith; and ancient Wrong and Might, Whom some name Right; And Darkness, that the purblind world calls Light.

Despair, with Hope’s brave form; and Hate, who goes In Friendship’s clothes; And Joy, the smiling mask of many woes.

Neglect, whom Merit serves; Lust, to whom, see, Love bends the knee; And Selfishness, who preacheth charity.

Vice, in whose dungeon Virtue lies in chains; And Cares and Pains, That on the throne of Pleasure hold their reigns.

Corruption, known as Honesty; and Fame That’s but a name; And Innocence, whose other name is Shame.

And Folly men call Wisdom here, forsooth; And, like a youth, Fair Falsehood, whom the many take for Truth.

Abundance, who hath Famine’s house in lease; And, high ’mid these, War, blood-black, on the spotless shrine of Peace.

Lift up thy torch, O Year! make clear our sight! Deep lies the night Around us, and God grants us little light!

THE POET OF THE SIERRAS

How shall I greet him--him who seems To me the greatest of our singers? As one who hears Sierra streams, And, gazing under arching fingers, Feels all the eagle feels that screams, The savage dreams, what time he lingers?

Son of the West, out of the West We heard thee sing,--who still allurest,-- That land where God sits manifest; That land where man stands freest, surest; That land, our wildest and our best, The grandest and the purest.

Wild hast thou sung,--as some strange bird,-- Of gold and men and peaks that glistened, Of seas and stars, and we have heard-- And one, whose soul cried out and listened, He sends his young, unworthy word To thee the Master’s hand hath christened

AMERICA

Behold her stand, with power thunder-lipped, And eagle-thoughts that soar above the storm Convulsing ledges of the mountain Wrong! Beside her Liberty, whose sword is tipped With lightning, towering a majestic form, Her voice like battle in a freedom song.

America, what hates may soil thy hands? What kingdoms face with insult thy bold brow? Oppressions brave the anger in thine eyes?-- Behind thee dies the darkness from the lands: Before thee mounts the glory of the Now: Around thee sit the sessions of the skies.

Thine is the land where Progress leans to heed The lessons taught of Heaven and of God, The golden texts of morning and of night: The science of thy soul hath taught thee speed! No precedent of Nations makes thee nod! Brow-bound with bolts, thy feet are shod with light.

America, beneath thy iron heel What Old World tyrannies, that crushed the poor, Writhe out their lives, abolished in their ire! Around thine arms, wrapped strong in fourfold steel, What Old World injuries have failed to moor Barques thou hast beaconed like a pillared fire!

Thou speakest, and Oppression’s mists divide; And gyves of Superstition and of Lust Fall shattered from the World; and Truth and Love Assume their places, beautiful in pride: And stars spring up around them from the dust, The dust of hopes long fallen from above.

Onward thou movest: where thy steps are bent The Earth is civilized: the desert plain Blossoms--is citied with vast industry.-- Behold! the pagan, Violence, is spent! His idol, Ignorance, is rent in twain Before thy splendor that makes all men free.

“THE FATHERS OF OUR FATHERS”

_Written February 24, 1898, on reading the latest news concerning the battleship Maine, blown up in Havana Harbor, February fifteenth._

I

The fathers of our fathers, they were men!-- What are we who now stand idle while we see our seamen slain? Who behold our flag dishonored, and still pause! Are we blind to her duplicity, the treachery of Spain? To the rights, she scorns, of nations and their laws? Let us rise, a mighty people, let us wipe away the stain! Shall we wait till she defile us for a cause?-- The fathers of our fathers, they were men!

II

The fathers of our fathers, they were men!-- Had they nursed delay as we do? had they sat thus deaf and dumb, With these cowards compromising year by year? Never hearing what they should hear, never saying what should come, While the courteous mask of Spain still hid a sneer! No! such news had ’roused their natures like a rolling battle-drum-- God of Earth! and God of Battles! do we fear?-- The fathers of our fathers, they were men!

III

The fathers of our fathers, they were men!-- What are we who are so cautious, never venturing too far! Shall we, at the cost of honor, still keep peace? While we see the thousands starving and the struggling Cuban star, And the outraged form of Freedom on her knees! Let our long, steel ocean-bloodhounds, adamantine dogs of war, Sweep the yellow Spanish panther from the seas!-- The fathers of our fathers, they were men!

MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN

I

Behold! we have gathered together our battleships near and afar; Their decks, they are cleared for action; their guns, they are shotted for war: From the East to the West there is hurry; in the North and the South a peal Of hammers in fort and shipyard, and the clamor and clang of steel; And the roar and the rush of engines, and clanking of derrick and crane-- Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the balance of God, O Spain!

II

Behold! I have stood on the mountains, and this was writ in the sky:-- “She is weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the balance God holds on high!” The balance he once weighed Babylon, the Mother of Harlots, in: One scale holds thy pride and thy power and empire, begotten of sin; Heavy with woe and torture, the crimes of a thousand years, Mortared and welded together with fire and blood and tears: In the other, for justice and mercy, a blade with never a stain, Is laid the Sword of Liberty, and the balance dips, O Spain!

III

Summon thy vessels together! great is thy need for these!-- Cristobal Colon, Vizcaya, Oquendo, and Maria Terese-- Let them be strong and many, for a vision I had by night, That the ancient wrongs thou hast done the world came howling to the fight: From the New-World’s shores they gathered, Inca and Aztec slain, To the Cuban shot but yesterday, and our own dead seamen, Spain!

IV

Summon thy ships together, gather a mighty fleet! For a strong, young Nation is arming, that never hath known defeat. Summon thy ships together, there by thy blood-stained sands! For a shadowy army gathers with manacled feet and hands; A shadowy host of sorrows and shames, too black to tell, That reach, with their horrible wounds, for thee to drag thee down to Hell: A myriad phantoms and spectres, thou warrest against in vain-- Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the balance of God, O Spain!

May, 1898.

UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES

I

High on the world did our fathers of old, Under the Stars and Stripes, Blazon the name that we now must uphold, Under the Stars and Stripes. Vast in the past they have builded an arch, Over which Freedom has lighted her torch-- Follow it! follow it! come, let us march Under the Stars and Stripes!

II

We in whose bodies the blood of these runs, Under the Stars and Stripes, We will acquit us as sons of their sons, Under the Stars and Stripes. Ever for justice, our heel upon wrong, We in the might of our vengeance thrice strong-- Rally together! come marching along Under the Stars and Stripes!

III

Out of our strength and a nation’s great need, Under the Stars and Stripes, Heroes again as of old we shall breed, Under the Stars and Stripes. Broad to the winds be our banner unfurled! Straight from our guns let defiance be hurled! God on our side, we will battle the world, Under the Stars and Stripes!

May, 1898.

OUR CAUSE

I

Lord God, who mad’st Spain’s vessels melt Before the flame our squadrons dealt, And Santiago’s mountain belt Rock near and far With thunder of our ships of steel, Keep us still humble! help us kneel In prayer with hearts as great to heal, As strong in war!

II

When turret booms to turret; when The steam goes up of battle, then Lord God, we pray Thee, keep our men Till all is o’er: Should pride of conquest then mislead Our House and Senate, Lord, we plead Keep Thou our cause as clean of greed As ’twas before.

III

And when the batteries there of Spain, From shore and headland, hurricane Their roaring sleet and crashing rain Of shell and shot; When drums beat up and bugles blow, And rank on rank we face the foe, In life and death, in joy and woe, Forget us not.

IV

Not for ourselves we pray to Thee; But for the cause of liberty, Lord God!--Let old Oppression see How o’er her coasts Our Eagle’s fierce, majestic form Soars through the lightning and the storm Beneath thy all protecting arm, Lord God of Hosts!

July 4th, 1898.

AFTERWORD

_The old enthusiasms Are dead, quite dead, in me; Dead the aspiring spasms Of art and poesy, That opened magic chasms, Once, of wild mystery, In youth’s rich Araby, Aladdin-wondrous chasms._

_The longing and the care Are mine; and, helplessly, The heartache and despair For what can never be. More than my mortal share Of sad mortality, It seems, God gives to me, More than my mortal share._

_O world! O time! O fate! Remorseless trinity! Let not your wheel abate Its iron rotary!-- Turn round! nor make me wait, Bound to it neck and knee, Hope’s final agony!-- Turn round! nor make me wait._

POEMS OF FOREST AND FIELD PROEM

_They took him into confidence--each oak Of the far forest: and all day he sat Hearing of Nature from an autocrat, An oak--so old, Dodona might have spoke Its infant oracles through it; that, part Of the oracular beauty of the gods, Yet irresponsible, down in its heart Still felt the rapture of their periods._

_They took him into confidence--the skies; And all night long he lay beneath one star, Hearing of God.... One that was chorister At Earth’s first morning; that beheld fierce eyes Of rebel angels, and the birth of Hell; Whom God set over Eden and o’er them, The Two, as destiny; that did foretell How Christ lay born at far-off Bethlehem._

THE HYLAS

I

I heard the hylas in the bottomlands Piping a reed-note in the praise of Spring: The South-wind brought the music on its wing, As ’t were a hundred strands Of guttural gold smitten of elfin hands; Or of sonorous silver, struck by bands, Anviled within the earth, Of laboring gnomes shaping some gem of worth. Sounds that seemed to bid The wildflowers wake; Unclose each dewy lid, And starrily shake Sleep from their airy eyes Beneath the loam, And, robed in dædal dyes, Frail as the fluttering foam, In countless myriads rise. And in my city home I, too, who heard Their reedy word, Awoke, and, with my soul, went forth to roam.

II

And under glimpses of the cloud-white sky My soul and I Beheld her seated, Spring among the woods With bright attendants, Two radiant maidens, The Wind and Sun: one robed in cadence, And one in white resplendence, Working wild wonders with the solitudes. And thus it was, So it seemed to me, Where she sat apart Fondling a bee, By some strange art, As in a glass, Down in her heart My eyes could see What would come to pass:-- How in each tree, Each blade of grass,-- Dead though it seemed,-- Still lived and dreamed Life and perfume, Color and bloom, Housed from the North Like golden mirth, That she with jubilation would bring forth, Astonishing Earth.

III

And thus it was I knew That though the trees were barren of all buds, And all the woods Of blossoms now, still, still their hoods And heads of blue and gold, And pink and pearl lay hidden in the mould; And in a day or two, When Spring’s fair feet came twinkling through The trees, their gold and blue, And pearl and pink in countless bands would rise, Invading all these ways With loveliness; and to the skies, In radiant rapture raise The fragile sweetness of a thousand eyes. When every foot of soil would boast An ambuscade Of blossoms; each green rood parade Its flowery host; And every acre of the woods, With little bird-like beaks of leaves and buds, Brag of its beauty; making bankrupts of Our hearts of praise, and beggar us of love.

IV

Here, when the snow was flying, And barren boughs were sighing, In icy January, I stood, like some gray tree, lonely and solitary. Now every spine and splinter Of wood, washed clean of winter, By hill and canyon Makes of itself an intimate companion, A confidant, who whispers me the dreams That haunt its heart, and clothe it as with gleams. And lonely now no more I walk the mossy floor Of woodlands where each bourgeoning leaf is matched, Mated with music; triumphed o’er Of building love and nestling song just hatched.

V

Washed of the early rains, And rosed with ruddy stains, The boughs and branches now make ready for Their raiment green of leaves and musk and myrrh.-- As if to greet her pomp, The heralds of her state, As ’t were with many a silvery trump, The birds are singing, singing, And all the world’s elate, As o’er the hills, as ’twere from Heaven’s gate, With garments, dewy-clinging, Comes Spring, around whose way the budded woods are ringing With redbird and with bluebird and with thrush; While, overhead, on happy wings is swinging The swallow through the heaven’s azure hush: And wren and sparrow, vireo and crow Are busy with their nests, or high or low, In every tree, it seems, and every bush. The loamy odor of the turfy heat, Breathed warm from every field and wood-retreat, Is as if spirits passed on flowery feet:-- That indescribable Aroma of the woods one knows so well, Reminding one of sylvan presences, Clad on with lichen and with moss, That haunt and trail across The woods’ dim dales and dells; their airy essences Of racy nard and musk Rapping at gummy husk And honeyed sheath of every leaf and flower That open to their knock, each at the appointed hour:-- And, lo! Where’er they go, Behold a miracle Too beautiful to tell!-- Where late the woods were bare The red-bud shakes its hair Of flowering flame; the dogwood and the haw Voluble with bees dazzle with pearl the shaw; And the broad maple crimsons, sunset-red, Through firmaments of forest overhead: And of its boughs the wild-crab makes a lair, A rosy cloud of blossoms, for the bees, Bewildered there, To traffic in; lulling itself with these. And in the whispering woods The wild-flower multitudes Rise, star, and bell, and bugle, all amort To everything save their own loveliness And the soft wind’s caress,-- The wind that tip-toes through them:--liverwort, Spring-beauty, windflower and the bleeding-heart, And bloodroot, holding low Its cups of stainless snow; Sorrel and trillium and the twin-leaf, too, Twinkling, like stars, through dew: And patches, as it were, of saffron skies, Ranunculus; and golden eyes Of adder’s-tongue; and mines, It seems, of grottoed gold, the poppy-celandines; And, sapphire-spilled, Bluets and violets, Dark pansy-violets and columbines, With rainy radiance filled; And many more whose names my mind forgets, But not my heart: The Nations of the Flowers, making gay In every place and part, With pomp and pageantry Of absolute Beauty, all the worlds of woods, In congregated multitudes, Assembled where Unearthly colors all the oaks put on, Velvet and silk and vair, Vermeil and mauve and fawn, Dim and auroral as the hues of dawn.

WIND AND CLOUD

_A March Voluntary_

I

Winds that cavern heaven and the clouds And canyon with cerulean blue,-- Great rifts down which the stormy sunlight crowds Like some bright seraph, who, Mailed in intensity of silver mail, Flashes his splendor over hill and vale,-- Now tramp, tremendous, the loud forest through: Or now, like mighty runners in a race, That swing, long pace to pace, Sweep round the hills, fresh as, at dawn’s first start, They swept, dew-dripping, from The crystal-crimson ruby of her heart, Shouting the dim world dumb. And with their passage the gray and green Of the earth’s washed clean; And the cleansing breath of their might is wings And warm aroma we know as Spring’s, And sap and strength to her bourgeonings.

II

My brow I bare To the cool, clean air, That blows from the crests of the clouds that roll, Pearl-piled and berged as floes of Northern Seas, Banked gray and thunder-low Big in the heaven’s peace; Clouds, borne from nowhere that we know, With nowhere for their goal; With here and there a silvery glow Of sunlight chasming deeps of sombre snow, Great gulfs that overflow With sky, a sapphire-blue, Or opal, sapphire-kissed, Wide-welled and deep and swiftly rifting through Stratas of streaming mist;-- Each opening like a pool, Serene, cerule, Set round with crag-like clouds ’mid which its eye gleams cool.

III

What blue is bluer than the bluebird’s blue!-- ’T is as if heaven itself sat on its wings; As if the sky in miniature it bore The fields and forests through, Bringing the very heaven to our door; The daybreak of its back soft-wedded to The sunset-auburn of its throat that sings.-- The dithyrambics of the wind and rain Strive to, but can not, drown its strain: Again, and yet again I hear it where the maples tassel red, And blossoms of the crab round out o’erhead, And catkins make the willow-brake A gossamer blur around the lake That lately was a stream, A little stream locked in its icy dream.

IV

Invisible crystals of aërial ring, Against the wind I hear the bluebird fling Its notes; and where the oak’s mauve leaves uncurl I catch the skyey glitter of its wing; Its wing that lures me, like some magic charm, Far in the woods And shadowy solitudes: And where the purple hills stretch under purple and pearl Of clouds that sweep and swirl, Its music seems to take material form; A form that beckons with cerulean arm And bids me see and follow, Where, in the violet hollow, There at the wood’s far turn, On starry moss and fern, She shimmers, glimmering like a rainbowed shower, The Spirit of Spring, Diaphanous-limbed, who stands With honeysuckle hands Sowing the earth with many a firstling flower, Footed with fragrance of their blossoming, And clad in heaven as is the bluebird’s wing.

V

The tumult and the booming of the trees, Shaken with shoutings of the winds of March-- No mightier music have I heard than these,-- The rocking and the rushing of the trees, The organ-thunder of the forest’s arch. And in the wind their columned trunks become, Each one, a mighty pendulum, Swayed to and fro as if in time To some vast song, some roaring rhyme, Wind-shouted from sonorous hill to hill. The woods are never still: The dead leaves frenzy by, Innumerable and frantic as the dance That whirled its madness once beneath the sky In ancient Greece,--like withered Corybants: And I am caught and carried with their rush, Their countless panic--borne away, A brother to the wind, through the deep gray Of the old beech-wood, where the wild March-day Sits dreaming, filling all the boisterous hush With murmurous laughter and swift smiles of sun; Conspiring in its heart and plotting how To load with leaves and blossoms every bough, And whispering to itself, “Now Spring’s begun! And soon her flowers shall golden through these leaves!-- Away, ye sightless things and sere! Make room for that which shall appear! The glory and the gladness of the year; The loveliness my eye alone perceives,-- Still hidden there beneath the covering leaves,-- My song shall waken!--flowers, that this floor Of whispering woodland soon shall carpet o’er For my sweet sisters’ feet to tread upon, Months kinder than myself, the stern and strong, Tempestuous-loving one, Whose soul is full of wild, tumultuous song, And whose rough hand now thrusts itself among The dead leaves; groping for the flowers that lie Huddled beneath, each like a sleep-closed eye: Gold adder’s-tongue and pink Oxalis; snow-pale bloodroot blooms; May-apple hoods, that parasol the brink, Screening their moons, of the slim woodland-stream: And the wild iris; trillium,--white as stars,-- And bluebells, dream on dream: With harsh hand groping in the glooms, I grasp their slenderness and shake Their lovely eyes awake, Dispelling from their souls the sleep that mars; With heart-disturbing jars Clasping their forms, and with rude finger-tips, Through the dark rain that drips Lifting them shrinking to my stormy lips.

VI