The golden sea its mirror spread
Beneath the golden skies,
And but a narrow strip between
Of land and shadow lies.
The cloud-like rocks, the rock-like clouds
Dissolved in glory float,
And midway of the radiant flood,
Hangs silently the boat.
The sea is but another sky,
The sky a sea as well,
And which is earth and which is heaven,
The eye can scarcely tell.
So when for us life’s evening hour,
Soft fading shall descend,
May glory, born of earth and heaven,
The earth and heaven blend.
Flooded with peace the spirits float,
With silent rapture glow,
Till where earth ends and heaven begins,
The soul shall scarcely know.
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR.
To the Children of Cambridge, who presented to me, on my
Seventy-second Birthday, February 27, 1879, this Chair, made from the
Wood of the Village Blacksmith’s Chestnut Tree.
Am I a king, that I should call my own
This splendid ebon throne?
Or by what reason, or what right divine,
Can I proclaim it mine?
Only, perhaps, by right divine of song
It may to me belong;
Only because the spreading chestnut tree
Of old was sung by me.
Well I remember it in all its prime,
When in the summer-time
The affluent foliage of its branches made
A cavern of cool shade.
There by the blacksmith’s forge beside the street
Its blossom white and sweet
Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
And murmured like a hive.
And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,
Tossed its great arms about,
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
Dropped to the ground beneath.
And now some fragments of its branches bare,
Shaped as a stately chair,
Have by my hearthstone found a home at last,
And whisper of the Past.
The Danish king could not in all his pride
Repel the ocean tide,
But seated in this chair, I can in rhyme
Roll back the tide of Time.
I see again, as one in vision sees,
The blossoms and the bees,
And hear the children’s voices shout and call,
And the brown chestnuts fall.
I see the smithy with its fires aglow,
I hear the bellows blow,
And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat
The iron white with heat!
And thus, dear children, have ye made for me
This day a jubilee,
And to my more than threescore years and ten
Brought back my youth again.
The heart hath its own memory, like the mind,
And in it are enshrined
The precious keepsakes, into which are wrought
The giver’s loving thought.
Only your love and your remembrance could
Give life to this dead wood,
And make these branches, leafless now so long,
Blossom again in song.
THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE.
Is it so far from thee
Thou canst no longer see
In the Chamber over the Gate
That old man desolate,
Weeping and wailing sore
For his son who is no more?
O Absalom, my son!
Is it so long ago
That cry of human woe
From the walled city came,
Calling on his dear name,
That it has died away
In the distance of to-day?
O Absalom, my son!
There is no far nor near,
There is neither there nor here,
There is neither soon nor late,
In that Chamber over the Gate,
Nor any long ago
To that cry of human woe,
O Absalom, my son!
From the ages that are past
The voice comes like a blast,
Over seas that wreck and drown,
Over tumult of traffic and town;
And from ages yet to be
Come the echoes back to me,
O Absalom, my son!
Somewhere at every hour
The watchman on the tower
Looks forth, and sees the fleet
Approach of the hurrying feet
Of messengers that bear
The tidings of despair.
O Absalom, my son!
He goes forth from the door,
Who shall return no more.
With him our joy departs;
The light goes out in our hearts;
In the Chamber over the Gate
We sit disconsolate.
O Absalom, my son!
That ’tis a common grief
Bringing but slight relief;
Ours is the bitterest loss,
Ours is the heaviest cross;
And for ever the cry will be,
“Would God I had died for thee
O Absalom, my son!”
THE FOUR LAKES OF MADISON.
Four limpid lakes—four Naiades
Or sylvan deities are these,
In flowing robes of azure dressed,
Four lovely handmaids that uphold
Their shining mirrors, rimmed with gold,
To the fair city in the West.
By day the coursers of the Sun
Drink of these waters as they run
Their swift diurnal round on high;
By night the constellations glow
Far down the hollow deeps below,
And glimmer in another sky.
Fair Lakes, serene and full of light,
Fair town, arrayed in robes of white,
How visionary ye appear!
All like a floating landscape seems
In cloud-land or the land of dreams
Bathed in a golden atmosphere.
THE SIFTING OF PETER.
A FOLK SONG.
“Behold, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat.”
—ST. LUKE XXII. 31.
In St. Luke’s Gospel we are told
How Peter in the days of old
Was sifted;
And now, though ages intervene,
Sin is the same, while time and scene
Are shifted.
Satan desires us, great and small,
As wheat, to sift us, and we all
Are tempted;
Not one, however rich or great,
Is by his station or estate
Exempted.
No house so safely guarded is
But he, by some device of his,
Can enter;
No heart hath armour so complete
But he can pierce with arrows fleet
Its centre.
For all at last the cock will crow
Who hear the warning voice, but go
Unheeding,
Till thrice and more they have denied
The Man of Sorrows, crucified
And bleeding.
One look of that pale suffering face
Will make us feel the deep disgrace
Of weakness;
We shall be sifted till the strength
Of self-conceit be changed at length
To meekness.
Wounds of the soul, though healed, will ache,
The reddening scars remain, and make
Confession;
Lost innocence returns no more;
We are not what we were before
Transgression.
But noble souls, through dust and heat,
Rise from disaster and defeat
The stronger,
And conscious still of the Divine
Within them, he on earth supine
No longer.
HELEN OF TYRE.
What phantom is this, that appears
Through the purple mists of the years
Itself but a mist like these?
A woman of cloud and of fire;
It is she; it is Helen of Tyre,
The town in the midst of the seas!
O Tyre! in thy crowded streets
The phantom appears and retreats,
And the Israelites, that sell
Thy lilies and lions of brass,
Look up as they see her pass,
And murmur “Jezebel!”
Then another phantom is seen
At her side, in a grey gabardine,
With beard that floats to his waist;
It is Simon Magus, the Seer;
He speaks, and she pauses to hear
The words he utters in haste.
He says: “From this evil fame,
From this life of sorrow and shame,
I will lift thee and make thee mine!
Thou hast been Queen Candace,
And Helen of Troy, and shalt be
The Intelligence Divine!”
Oh, sweet as the breath of morn,
To the fallen and forlorn
Are whispered words of praise;
For the famished heart believes
The falsehood that tempts and deceives,
And the promise that betrays.
So she follows from land to land
The wizard’s beckoning hand,
As a leaf is blown by the gust,
Till she vanishes into night!
O reader, stoop down and write
With thy finger in the dust.
O town in the midst of the seas,
With thy rafts of cedar trees,
Thy merchandise and thy ships,
Thou, too, art become as nought,
A phantom, a shadow, a thought,
A name upon men’s lips.
THE IRON PEN
MADE FROM A FETTER OF BONNIVARD, THE PRISONER OF CHILLON; THE HANDLE OF
WOOD FROM THE FRIGATE “CONSTITUTION,” AND BOUND WITH A CIRCLET OF GOLD,
INSET WITH THREE PRECIOUS STONES FROM SIBERIA, CEYLON, AND MAINE.
I thought this Pen would arise
From the casket where it lies—
Of itself would arise, and write
My thanks and my surprise.
When you gave it me under the pines,
I dreamed these gems from the mines
Of Siberia, Ceylon, and Maine
Would glimmer as thoughts in the lines;
That this iron link from the chain
Of Bonnivard might retain
Some verse of the Poet who sang
Of the prisoner and his pain;
That this wood from the frigate’s mast
Might write me a rhyme at last,
As it used to write on the sky
The song of the sea and the blast.
But motionless as I wait,
Like a Bishop lying in state
Lies the Pen, with its mitre of gold,
And its jewels inviolate.
Then I must speak, and say
That the light of that summer day
In the garden under the pines
Shall not fade and pass away.
I shall see you standing there,
Caressed by the fragrant air,
With the shadow on your face,
And the sunshine on your hair.
I shall hear the sweet low tone
Of a voice before unknown,
Saying, “This is from me to you—
From me, and to you alone.”
And in words not idle and vain
I shall answer, and thank you again
For the gift, and the grace of the gift,
O beautiful Helen of Maine!
And for ever this gift will be
As a blessing from you to me,
As a drop of the dew of your youth
On the leaves of an aged tree.
THE POET AND HIS SONGS.
As the birds come in the spring,
We know not from where;
As the stars come at evening
From the depths of the air;
As the rain comes from the cloud,
And the brook from the ground;
As suddenly, low or loud,
Out of silence a sound;
As the grape comes to the vine,
The fruit to the tree;
As the wind comes to the pine,
And the tide to the sea;
As come the white sails of ships
O’er the ocean’s verge;
As comes the smile to the lips;
The foam to the surge;
So come to the Poet his songs,
All hitherward blown
From the misty land, that belongs
To the vast Unknown.
His, and not his, are the lays
He sings;—and their fame
Is his, and not his;—and the praise
And the pride of a name.
For voices pursue him by day,
And haunt him by night,
And he listens, and needs must obey,
When the angel says: “Write!”
ROBERT BURNS.
I see amid the fields of Ayr
A ploughman, who in foul or fair
Sings at his task,
So clear we know not if it is
The laverock’s song we hear or his,
Nor care to ask.
For him the ploughing of those fields
A more ethereal harvest yields
Than sheaves of grain:
Songs flush with purple bloom the rye;
The plover’s call, the curlew’s cry,
Sing in his brain.
Touched by his hand, the wayside weed
Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed
Beside the stream
Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass
And heather, where his footsteps pass,
The brighter seem.
He sings of love, whose flame illumes
The darkness of lone cottage rooms;
He feels the force,
The treacherous under-tow and stress,
Of wayward passions, and no less
The keen remorse.
At moments, wrestling with his fate,
His voice is harsh, but not with hate;
The brushwood hung
Above the tavern door lets fall
Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall,
Upon his tongue.
But still the burden of his song
Is love of right, disdain of wrong;
Its master chords
Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood;
Its discords but an interlude
Between the words.
And then to die so young, and leave
Unfinished what he might achieve!
Yet better sure
Is this than wandering up and down,
An old man, in a country town,
Infirm and poor.
For now he haunts his native land
As an immortal youth; his hand
Guides every plough;
He sits beside each ingle-nook;
His voice is in each rushing brook,
Each rustling bough.
His presence haunts this room to-night,
A form of mingled mist and light,
From that far coast.
Welcome beneath this roof of mine!
Welcome! this vacant chair is thine,
Dear guest and ghost!
BAYARD TAYLOR.
Dead he lay among his books!
The peace of God was in his looks.
As the statues in the gloom
Watch o’er Maximilian’s tomb,
So those volumes from their shelves
Watched him silent as themselves.
Ah! his hand will never more
Turn their storied pages o’er,
Never more his lips repeat
Songs of theirs, however sweet.
Let the lifeless body rest!
He is gone who was its guest;
Gone, as travellers haste to leave
An inn, nor tarry until eve.
Traveller! in what realms afar
In what planet, in what star,
In what vast, aërial space
Shines the light upon thy face?
In what gardens of delight
Rest thy weary feet to-night?
Poet! thou whose latest verse
Was a garland on thy hearse;
Thou hast sung, with organ tone,
In Deukalion’s life thine own;
On the ruins of the past
Blooms the perfect flower at last.
Friend! but yesterday the bells
Rang for thee their loud farewells;
And to-day they toll for thee,
Lying dead beyond the sea;
Lying dead among thy books,
The peace of God in all thy looks!