The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 17

Scatter ashes on thy head, Tears of burning sorrow shed, Earth! and be by Pity led To Love's fold; Ere they block the very door With lean corpses of the poor, And will hush for naught but gore, Hunger and Cold!

THE LANDLORD

What boot your houses and your lands?

In spite of close-drawn deed and fence, Like water, twixt your cheated hands, They slip into the graveyard's sands, And mock your owners.h.i.+p's pretence.

How shall you speak to urge your right, Choked with that soil for which you l.u.s.t?

The bit of clay, for whose delight You grasp, is mortgaged, too; Death might Foreclose this very day in dust.

Fence as you please, this plain poor man, Whose only fields are in his wit, Who shapes the world, as best he can, According to G.o.d's higher plan, Owns you, and fences as is fit.

Though yours the rents, his incomes wax By right of eminent domain; From factory tall to woodman's axe, All things on earth must pay their tax, To feed his hungry heart and brain.

He takes you from your easy-chair, And what he plans that you must do; You sleep in down, eat dainty fare,-- He mounts his crazy garret-stair And starves, the landlord over you.

Feeding the clods your idlesse drains, You make more green six feet of soil; His fruitful word, like suns and rains, Partakes the seasons' bounteous pains, And toils to lighten human toil.

Your lands, with force or cunning got, Shrink to the measure of the grave; But Death himself abridges not The tenures of almighty thought, The t.i.tles of the wise and brave.

TO A PINE-TREE

Far up on Katahdin thou towerest, Purple-blue with the distance and vast; Like a cloud o'er the lowlands thou lowerest, That hangs poised on a lull in the blast, To its fall leaning awful.

In the storm, like a prophet o'er-maddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches, When whole mountains swoop valeward.

In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring From the city beneath him.

To the lumberer asleep 'neath thy glooming Thou dost sing of wild billows in motion, Till he longs to be swung mid their booming In the tents of the Arabs of ocean, Whose finned isles are their cattle.

For the gale s.n.a.t.c.hes thee for his lyre, With mad hand cras.h.i.+ng melody frantic, While he pours forth his mighty desire To leap down on the eager Atlantic, Whose arms stretch to his playmate.

The wild storm makes his lair in thy branches, Swooping thence on the continent under; Like a lion, crouched close on his haunches, There awaiteth his leap the fierce thunder, Growling low with impatience.

Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green glory, l.u.s.ty father of t.i.tans past number!

The snow-flakes alone make thee h.o.a.ry, Nestling close to thy branches in slumber, And thee mantling with silence.

Thou alone know'st the splendor of winter, Mid thy snow-silvered, hushed precipices, Hearing crags of green ice groan and splinter, And then plunge down the m.u.f.fled abysses In the quiet of midnight.

Thou alone know'st the glory of summer Gazing down on thy broad seas of forest, On thy subjects that send a proud murmur Up to thee, to their sachem, who towerest From thy bleak throne to heaven.

SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM, ADES

O wandering dim on the extremest edge Of G.o.d's bright providence, whose spirits sigh Drearily in you, like the winter sedge That s.h.i.+vers o'er the dead pool stiff and dry, A thin, sad voice, when the bold wind roars by From the clear North of Duty,-- Still by cracked arch and broken shaft I trace That here was once a shrine and holy place Of the supernal Beauty, A child's play-altar reared of stones and moss, With wilted flowers for offering laid across, Mute recognition of the all-ruling Grace.

How far are ye from the innocent, from those Whose hearts are as a little lane serene, Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with unbroke snows, Or in the summer blithe with lamb-cropped green, Save the one track, where naught more rude is seen Than the plump wain at even Bringing home four months' suns.h.i.+ne bound in sheaves!

How far are ye from those! yet who believes That ye can shut out heaven?

Your souls partake its influence, not in vain Nor all unconscious, as that silent lane Its drift of noiseless apple-blooms receives.

Looking within myself, I note how thin A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate, Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin; In my own heart I find the worst man's mate, And see not dimly the smooth-hinged gate That opes to those abysses Where ye grope darkly,--ye who never knew On your young hearts love's consecrating dew, Or felt a mother's kisses, Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled; Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue!

One band ye cannot break,--the force that clips And grasps your circles to the central light; Yours is the prodigal comet's long ellipse, Self-exiled to the farthest verge of night; Yet strives with you no less that inward might No sin hath e'er imbruted; The G.o.d in you the creed-dimmed eye eludes; The Law brooks not to have its solitudes By bigot feet polluted; Yet they who watch your G.o.d-compelled return May see your happy perihelion burn Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods.

TO THE PAST

Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls, O kingdom of the past!

There lie the bygone ages in their palls, Guarded by shadows vast; There all is hushed and breathless, Save when some image of old error falls Earth wors.h.i.+pped once as deathless.

There sits drear Egypt, mid beleaguering sands, Half woman and half beast, The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands 10 That once lit all the East; A dotard bleared and h.o.a.ry, There a.s.ser crouches o'er the blackened brands Of Asia's long-quenched glory.

Still as a city buried 'neath the sea Thy courts and temples stand; Idle as forms on wind-waved tapestry Of saints and heroes grand, Thy phantasms grope and s.h.i.+ver, Or watch the loose sh.o.r.es crumbling silently 20 Into Time's gnawing river.

t.i.tanic shapes with faces blank and dun, Of their old G.o.dhead lorn, Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun, Which they misdeem for morn; And yet the eternal sorrow In their unmonarched eyes says day is done Without the hope of morrow.

O realm of silence and of swart eclipse, The shapes that haunt thy gloom 30 Make signs to us and move their withered lips Across the gulf of doom; Yet all their sound and motion Bring no more freight to us than wraiths of s.h.i.+ps On the mirage's ocean.

And if sometimes a moaning wandereth From out thy desolate halls, If some grim shadow of thy living death Across our suns.h.i.+ne falls And scares the world to error, 40 The eternal life sends forth melodious breath To chase the misty terror.

Thy mighty clamors, wars, and world-noised deeds Are silent now in dust, Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds Beneath some sudden gust; Thy forms and creeds have vanished, Tossed out to wither like unsightly weeds From the world's garden banished.

Whatever of true life there was in thee 50 Leaps in our age's veins; Wield still thy bent and wrinkled empery, And shake thine idle chains;-- To thee thy dross is clinging, For us thy martyrs die, thy prophets see, Thy poets still are singing.

Here, mid the bleak waves of our strife and care, Float the green Fortunate Isles Where all thy hero-spirits dwell, and share Our martyrdoms and toils; 60 The present moves attended With all of brave and excellent and fair That made the old time splendid.

TO THE FUTURE

O Land of Promise! from what Pisgah's height Can I behold thy stretch of peaceful bowers, Thy golden harvests flowing out of sight, Thy nestled homes and sun-illumined towers?

Gazing upon the sunset's high-heaped gold, Its crags of opal and of chrysolite, Its deeps on deeps of glory, that unfold Still brightening abysses, And blazing precipices, Whence but a scanty leap it seems to heaven, 10 Sometimes a glimpse is given Of thy more gorgeous realm, thy more unstinted blisses.

O Land of Quiet! to thy sh.o.r.e the surf Of the perturbed Present rolls and sleeps; Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy turf And lure out blossoms; to thy bosom leaps, As to a mother's, the o'erwearied heart, Hearing far off and dim the toiling mart, The hurrying feet, the curses without number, And, circled with the glow Elysian 20 Of thine exulting vision, Out of its very cares wooes charms for peace and slumber.

To thee the earth lifts up her fettered hands And cries for vengeance; with a pitying smile Thou blessest her, and she forgets her bands, And her old woe-worn face a little while Grows young and n.o.ble; unto thee the Oppressor Looks, and is dumb with awe; The eternal law, Which makes the crime its own blindfold redresser, 30 Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding, And he can see the grim-eyed Doom From out the trembling gloom Its silent-footed steeds towards his palace goading.

What promises hast thou for Poets' eyes, A-weary of the turmoil and the wrong!

To all their hopes what overjoyed replies!

What undreamed ecstasies for blissful song!

Thy happy plains no war-trump's brawling clangor Disturbs, and fools the poor to hate the poor; 40 The humble glares not on the high with anger; Love leaves no grudge at less, no greed for more; In vain strives Self the G.o.dlike sense to smother; From the soul's deeps It throbs and leaps; The n.o.ble 'neath foul rags beholds his long-lost brother.

To thee the Martyr looketh, and his fires Unlock their fangs and leave his spirit free; To thee the Poet mid his toil aspires, And grief and hunger climb about his knee, 50 Welcome as children; thou upholdest The lone Inventor by his demon haunted; The Prophet cries to thee when hearts are coldest, And gazing o'er the midnight's bleak abyss, Sees the drowsed soul awaken at thy kiss, And stretch its happy arms and leap up disenchanted.