Part 3

Just as the "Jubilate" in threaded whisper dies, "Open it! open it, lady!" the little maiden cries, (For she thought 't was a singing creature caged in a box she heard,) "Open it! open it, lady! and let me see the _bird!_"

MIDSUMMER

HERE! sweep these foolish leaves away, I will not crush my brains to-day! Look! are the southern curtains drawn? Fetch me a fan, and so begone!

Not that,--the palm-tree's rustling leaf Brought from a parching coral-reef Its breath is heated;--I would swing The broad gray plumes,--the eagle's wing.

I hate these roses' feverish blood! Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud, A long-stemmed lily from the lake, Cold as a coiling water-snake.

Rain me sweet odors on the air, And wheel me up my Indian chair, And spread some book not overwise Flat out before my sleepy eyes.

Who knows it not,--this dead recoil Of weary fibres stretched with toil,-- The pulse that flutters faint and low When Summer's seething breezes blow!

O Nature! bare thy loving breast, And give thy child one hour of rest,-- One little hour to lie unseen Beneath thy scarf of leafy green!

So, curtained by a singing pine, Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine, Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay In sweeter music dies away.

DE SAUTY

AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ECLOGUE

The first messages received through the submarine cable were sent by an electrical expert, a mysterious personage who signed himself De Sauty.

Professor Blue-Nose

PROFESSOR TELL me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal! Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you, Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder, Holding talk with nations?

Is there a De Sauty ambulant on Tellus, Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in nightcap, Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature Three times daily patent?

Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal? Or is he a _mythus_,--ancient word for "humbug"-- Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed Romulus and Remus?

Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty? Or a living product of galvanic action, Like the acarus bred in Crosse's flint-solution? Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal!

BLUE-NOSE Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger, Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster! Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me, Thou shall hear them answered.

When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable, At the polar focus of the wire electric Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us Called himself "DE SAUTY."

As the small opossum held in pouch maternal Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia, So the unknown stranger held the wire electric, Sucking in the current.

When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger,-- Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy,-- And from time to time, in sharp articulation, Said, "All right! DE SAUTY."

From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples, Till the land was filled with loud reverberations Of "_All right_ DE SAUTY."

When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger,-- Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker,-- Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odor Of disintegration.

Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead, Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence, Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended, There was no De Sauty.

Nothing but a cloud of elements organic, C. O. H. N. Ferrum, Chlor. Flu. Sil. Potassa, Cale. Sod. Phosph. Mag. Sulphur, Mang. (?) Alumin. (?) Cuprum, (?) Such as man is made of.

Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished! There is no De Sauty now there is no current! Give us a new cable, then again we'll hear him Cry, "All right! DE SAUTY."

POEMS FROM THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE

1871-1872

HOMESICK IN HEAVEN

THE DIVINE VOICE Go seek thine earth-born sisters,--thus the Voice That all obey,--the sad and silent three; These only, while the hosts of Heaven rejoice, Smile never; ask them what their sorrows be;

And when the secret of their griefs they tell, Look on them with thy mild, half-human eyes; Say what thou wast on earth; thou knowest well; So shall they cease from unavailing sighs.

THE ANGEL Why thus, apart,--the swift-winged herald spake,-- Sit ye with silent lips and unstrung lyres While the trisagion's blending chords awake In shouts of joy from all the heavenly choirs?

FIRST SPIRIT Chide not thy sisters,--thus the answer came;-- Children of earth, our half-weaned nature clings To earth's fond memories, and her whispered name Untunes our quivering lips, our saddened strings;

For there we loved, and where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts, Though o'er us shine the jasper-lighted dome:-- The chain may lengthen, but it never parts!

Sometimes a sunlit sphere comes rolling by, And then we softly whisper,--can it be? And leaning toward the silvery orb, we try To hear the music of its murmuring sea;

To catch, perchance, some flashing glimpse of green, Or breathe some wild-wood fragrance, wafted through The opening gates of pearl, that fold between The blinding splendors and the changeless blue.

THE ANGEL Nay, sister, nay! a single healing leaf Plucked from the bough of yon twelve-fruited tree Would soothe such anguish,--deeper stabbing grief Has pierced thy throbbing heart--

THE FIRST SPIRIT Ah, woe is me! I from my clinging babe was rudely torn; His tender lips a loveless bosom pressed; Can I forget him in my life new born? Oh that my darling lay upon my breast!

THE ANGEL And thou?--

THE SECOND SPIRIT I was a fair and youthful bride, The kiss of love still burns upon my cheek, He whom I worshipped, ever at my side,-- Him through the spirit realm in vain I seek.

Sweet faces turn their beaming eyes on mine; Ah! not in these the wished-for look I read; Still for that one dear human smile I pine; _Thou and none other!_--is the lover's creed.

THE ANGEL And whence thy sadness in a world of bliss Where never parting comes, nor mourner's tear? Art thou, too, dreaming of a mortal's kiss Amid the seraphs of the heavenly sphere?

THE THIRD SPIRIT Nay, tax not me with passion's wasting fire; When the swift message set my spirit free, Blind, helpless, lone, I left my gray-haired sire; My friends were many, he had none save me.

I left him, orphaned, in the starless night; Alas, for him no cheerful morning's dawn I wear the ransomed spirit's robe of white, Yet still I hear him moaning, _She is gone!_

THE ANGEL Ye know me not, sweet sisters?--All in vain Ye seek your lost ones in the shapes they wore; The flower once opened may not bud again, The fruit once fallen finds the stem no more.

Child, lover, sire,--yea, all things loved below,-- Fair pictures damasked on a vapor's fold,-- Fade like the roseate flush, the golden glow, When the bright curtain of the day is rolled.

I was the babe that slumbered on thy breast. And, sister, mine the lips that called thee bride. Mine were the silvered locks thy hand caressed, That faithful hand, my faltering footstep's guide!

Each changing form, frail vesture of decay, The soul unclad forgets it once hath worn, Stained with the travel of the weary day, And shamed with rents from every wayside thorn.

To lie, an infant, in thy fond embrace,-- To come with love's warm kisses back to thee,-- To show thine eyes thy gray-haired father's face, Not Heaven itself could grant; this may not be!

Then spread your folded wings, and leave to earth The dust once breathing ye have mourned so long, Till Love, new risen, owns his heavenly birth, And sorrow's discords sweeten into song!

FANTASIA

THE YOUNG GIRL'S POEM

KISS mine eyelids, beauteous Morn, Blushing into life new-born! Lend me violets for my hair, And thy russet robe to wear, And thy ring of rosiest hue Set in drops of diamond dew!

Kiss my cheek, thou noontide ray, From my Love so far away Let thy splendor streaming down Turn its pallid lilies brown, Till its darkening shades reveal Where his passion pressed its seal!

Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light, Kiss my lips a soft good-night! Westward sinks thy golden car; Leave me but the evening star, And my solace that shall be, Borrowing all its light from thee!

AUNT TABITHA

THE YOUNG GIRL'S POEM

WHATEVER I do, and whatever I say, Aunt Tabitha tells me that is n't the way; When she was a girl (forty summers ago) Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so.

Dear aunt! If I only would take her advice! But I like my own way, and I find it so nice And besides, I forget half the things I am told; But they all will come back to me--when I am old.

If a youth passes by, it may happen, no doubt, He may chance to look in as I chance to look out; She would never endure an impertinent stare,-- It is horrid, she says, and I must n't sit there.

A walk in the moonlight has pleasures, I own, But it is n't quite safe to be walking alone; So I take a lad's arm,--just for safety, you know,-- But Aunt Tabitha tells me they did n't do so.

How wicked we are, and how good they were then! They kept at arm's length those detestable men; What an era of virtue she lived in!--But stay-- Were the men all such rogues in Aunt Tabitha's day?

If the men were so wicked, I 'll ask my papa How he dared to propose to my darling mamma; Was he like the rest of them? Goodness! Who knows? And what shall I say, if a wretch should propose?

I am thinking if Aunt knew so little of sin, What a wonder Aunt Tabitha's aunt must have been! And her grand-aunt--it scares me--how shockingly sad That we girls of to-day are so frightfully bad!

A martyr will save us, and nothing else can; Let me perish--to rescue some wretched young man! Though when to the altar a victim I go, Aunt Tabitha 'll tell me she never did so.

WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS

FROM THE YOUNG ASTRONOMER'S POEM

I.

AMBITION

ANOTHER clouded night; the stars are hid, The orb that waits my search is hid with them. Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year, To plant my ladder and to gain the round That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame, Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won? Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust; But the fair garland whose undying green Not time can change, nor wrath of gods or men!

With quickened heart-beats I shall hear tongues That speak my praise; but better far the sense That in the unshaped ages, buried deep In the dark mines of unaccomplished time Yet to be stamped with morning's royal die And coined in golden days,--in those dim years I shall be reckoned with the undying dead, My name emblazoned on the fiery arch, Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade. Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds, Sages of race unborn in accents new Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old, Whose glories kindle through the midnight sky Here glows the God of Battles; this recalls The Lord of Ocean, and yon far-off sphere The Sire of Him who gave his ancient name To the dim planet with the wondrous rings; Here flames the Queen of Beauty's silver lamp, And there the moon-girt orb of mighty Jove; But this, unseen through all earth's ions past, A youth who watched beneath the western star Sought in the darkness, found, and shewed to men; Linked with his name thenceforth and evermore So shall that name be syllabled anew In all the tongues of all the tribes of men: I that have been through immemorial years Dust in the dust of my forgotten time Shall live in accents shaped of blood-warm breath, Yea, rise in mortal semblance, newly born In shining stone, in undecaying bronze, And stand on high, and look serenely down On the new race that calls the earth its own.

Is this a cloud, that, blown athwart my soul, Wears a false seeming of the pearly stain Where worlds beyond the world their mingling rays Blend in soft white,--a cloud that, born of earth, Would cheat the soul that looks for light from heaven? Must every coral-insect leave his sign On each poor grain he lent to build the reef, As Babel's builders stamped their sunburnt clay, Or deem his patient service all in vain? What if another sit beneath the shade Of the broad elm I planted by the way,-- What if another heed the beacon light I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel,-- Have I not done my task and served my kind? Nay, rather act thy part, unnamed, unknown, And let Fame blow her trumpet through the world With noisy wind to swell a fool's renown, Joined with some truth he stumbled blindly o'er, Or coupled with some single shining deed That in the great account of all his days Will stand alone upon the bankrupt sheet His pitying angel shows the clerk of Heaven. The noblest service comes from nameless hands, And the best servant does his work unseen. Who found the seeds of fire and made them shoot, Fed by his breath, in buds and flowers of flame? Who forged in roaring flames the ponderous stone, And shaped the moulded metal to his need? Who gave the dragging car its rolling wheel, And tamed the steed that whirls its circling round? All these have left their work and not their names,-- Why should I murmur at a fate like theirs? This is the heavenly light; the pearly stain Was but a wind-cloud drifting o'er the stars!

II.

REGRETS

BRIEF glimpses of the bright celestial spheres, False lights, false shadows, vague, uncertain gleams, Pale vaporous mists, wan streaks of lurid flame, The climbing of the upward-sailing cloud, The sinking of the downward-falling star,-- All these are pictures of the changing moods Borne through the midnight stillness of my soul.

Here am I, bound upon this pillared rock, Prey to the vulture of a vast desire That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands And steal a moment's freedom from the beak, The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes; Then comes the false enchantress, with her song;

"Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee, Unchanging as the belt Orion wears, Bright as the jewels of the seven-starred Crown, The spangled stream of Berenice's hair!" And so she twines the fetters with the flowers Around my yielding limbs, and the fierce bird Stoops to his quarry,--then to feed his rage Of ravening hunger I must drain my blood And let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding night Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek, And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes. All for a line in some unheeded scroll; All for a stone that tells to gaping clowns, "Here lies a restless wretch beneath a clod Where squats the jealous nightmare men call Fame!"

I marvel not at him who scorns his kind And thinks not sadly of the time foretold When the old hulk we tread shall be a wreck, A slag, a cinder drifting through the sky Without its crew of fools! We live too long, And even so are not content to die, But load the mould that covers up our bones With stones that stand like beggars by the road And show death's grievous wound and ask for tears; Write our great books to teach men who we are, Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phrase The secrets of our lives, and plead and pray For alms of memory with the after time, Those few swift seasons while the earth shall wear Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold And the moist life of all that breathes shall die; Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise, Would have us deem, before its growing mass, Pelted with star-dust, stoned with meteor-balls, Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Man and his works and all that stirred itself Of its own motion, in the fiery glow Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb Shines a new sun for earths that shall be born.

I am as old as Egypt to myself, Brother to them that squared the pyramids By the same stars I watch. I read the page Where every letter is a glittering world, With them who looked from Shinar's clay-built towers, Ere yet the wanderer of the Midland sea Had missed the fallen sister of the seven. I dwell in spaces vague, remote, unknown, Save to the silent few, who, leaving earth, Quit all communion with their living time. I lose myself in that ethereal void, Till I have tired my wings and long to fill My breast with denser air, to stand, to walk With eyes not raised above my fellow-men. Sick of my unwalled, solitary realm, I ask to change the myriad lifeless worlds I visit as mine own for one poor patch Of this dull spheroid and a little breath To shape in word or deed to serve my kind. Was ever giant's dungeon dug so deep, Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong, Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught The false wife mingles for the trusting fool, As he whose willing victim is himself, Digs, forges, mingles, for his captive soul?

III.

SYMPATHIES

THE snows that glittered on the disk of Mars Have melted, and the planet's fiery orb Rolls in the crimson summer of its year; But what to me the summer or the snow Of worlds that throb with life in forms unknown, If life indeed be theirs; I heed not these. My heart is simply human; all my care For them whose dust is fashioned like mine own; These ache with cold and hunger, live in pain, And shake with fear of worlds more full of woe; There may be others worthier of my love, But such I know not save through these I know.

There are two veils of language, hid beneath Whose sheltering folds, we dare to be ourselves; And not that other self which nods and smiles And babbles in our name; the one is Prayer, Lending its licensed freedom to the tongue That tells our sorrows and our sins to Heaven; The other, Verse, that throws its spangled web Around our naked speech and makes it bold. I, whose best prayer is silence; sitting dumb In the great temple where I nightly serve Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim The poet's franchise, though I may not hope To wear his garland; hear me while I tell My story in such form as poets use, But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind Sighs and then slumbers, wakes and sighs again.

Thou Vision, floating in the breathless air Between me and the fairest of the stars, I tell my lonely thoughts as unto thee. Look not for marvels of the scholar's pen In my rude measure; I can only show A slender-margined, unillumined page, And trust its meaning to the flattering eye That reads it in the gracious light of love. Ah, wouldst thou clothe thyself in breathing shape And nestle at my side, my voice should lend Whate'er my verse may lack of tender rhythm To make thee listen.

I have stood entranced When, with her fingers wandering o'er the keys, The white enchantress with the golden hair Breathed all her soul through some unvalued rhyme; Some flower of song that long had lost its bloom; Lo! its dead summer kindled as she sang! The sweet contralto, like the ringdove's coo, Thrilled it with brooding, fond, caressing tones, And the pale minstrel's passion lived again, Tearful and trembling as a dewy rose The wind has shaken till it fills the air With light and fragrance. Such the wondrous charm A song can borrow when the bosom throbs That lends it breath.

So from the poet's lips His verse sounds doubly sweet, for none like him Feels every cadence of its wave-like flow; He lives the passion over, while he reads, That shook him as he sang his lofty strain, And pours his life through each resounding line, As ocean, when the stormy winds are hushed, Still rolls and thunders through his billowy caves.

IV.

MASTER AND SCHOLAR

LET me retrace the record of the years That made me what I am. A man most wise, But overworn with toil and bent with age, Sought me to be his scholar,-me, run wild From books and teachers,-kindled in my soul The love of knowledge; led me to his tower, Showed me the wonders of the midnight realm His hollow sceptre ruled, or seemed to rule, Taught me the mighty secrets of the spheres, Trained me to find the glimmering specks of light Beyond the unaided sense, and on my chart To string them one by one, in order due, As on a rosary a saint his beads. I was his only scholar; I became The echo to his thought; whate'er he knew Was mine for asking; so from year to year W e wrought together, till there came a time When I, the learner, was the master half Of the twinned being in the dome-crowned tower.

Minds roll in paths like planets; they revolve, This in a larger, that a narrower ring, But round they come at last to that same phase, That selfsame light and shade they showed before. I learned his annual and his monthly tale, His weekly axiom and his daily phrase, I felt them coming in the laden air, And watched them laboring up to vocal breath, Even as the first-born at his father's board Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest Is on its way, by some mysterious sign Forewarned, the click before the striking bell.

He shrivelled as I spread my growing leaves, Till trust and reverence changed to pitying care; He lived for me in what he once had been, But I for him, a shadow, a defence, The guardian of his fame, his guide, his staff, Leaned on so long he fell if left alone. I was his eye, his ear, his cunning hand, Love was my spur and longing after fame, But his the goading thorn of sleepless age That sees its shortening span, its lengthening shades, That clutches what it may with eager grasp, And drops at last with empty, outstretched hands. All this he dreamed not. He would sit him down Thinking to work his problems as of old, And find the star he thought so plain a blur, The columned figures labyrinthine wilds Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls That vexed him with their riddles; he would strive And struggle for a while, and then his eye Would lose its light, and over all his mind The cold gray mist would settle; and erelong The darkness fell, and I was left alone.

V.

ALONE

ALONE! no climber of an Alpine cliff, No Arctic venturer on the waveless sea, Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth To watch the silent worlds that crowd the sky. Alone! And as the shepherd leaves his flock To feed upon the hillside, he meanwhile Finds converse in the warblings of the pipe Himself has fashioned for his vacant hour, So have I grown companion to myself, And to the wandering spirits of the air That smile and whisper round us in our dreams. Thus have I learned to search if I may know The whence and why of all beneath the stars And all beyond them, and to weigh my life As in a balance,--poising good and ill Against each other,--asking of the Power That flung me forth among the whirling worlds, If I am heir to any inborn right, Or only as an atom of the dust That every wind may blow where'er it will.

VI.

QUESTIONING

I AM not humble; I was shown my place, Clad in such robes as Nature had at hand; Took what she gave, not chose; I know no shame, No fear for being simply what I am. I am not proud, I hold my every breath At Nature's mercy. I am as a babe Borne in a giant's arms, he knows not where; Each several heart-beat, counted like the coin A miser reckons, is a special gift As from an unseen hand; if that withhold Its bounty for a moment, I am left A clod upon the earth to which I fall.

Something I find in me that well might claim The love of beings in a sphere above This doubtful twilight world of right and wrong; Something that shows me of the self-same clay That creeps or swims or flies in humblest form. Had I been asked, before I left my bed Of shapeless dust, what clothing I would wear, I would have said, More angel and less worm; But for their sake who are even such as I, Of the same mingled blood, I would not choose To hate that meaner portion of myself Which makes me brother to the least of men.