The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 21

Though yet your valleys skulk in night, In G.o.d's ripe fields the day is cried, And reapers, with their sickles bright, Troop, singing, down the mountain-side: Come up, and feel what health there is In the frank Dawn's delighted eyes, As, bending with a pitying kiss, The night-shed tears of Earth she dries!

The Lord wants reapers: oh, mount up, Before night comes, and says, 'Too late!'

Stay not for taking scrip or cup, The Master hungers while ye wait; 'Tis from these heights alone your eyes The advancing spears of day can see, That o'er the eastern hill-tops rise, To break your long captivity.

II

Lone watcher on the mountain-height, It is right precious to behold The first long surf of climbing light Flood all the thirsty east with gold; But we, who in the shadow sit, Know also when the day is nigh, Seeing thy s.h.i.+ning forehead lit With his inspiring prophecy.

Thou hast thine office; we have ours; G.o.d lacks not early service here, But what are thine eleventh hours He counts with us for morning cheer; Our day, for Him, is long enough, And when He giveth work to do, The bruised reed is amply tough To pierce the s.h.i.+eld of error, through.

But not the less do thou aspire Light's earlier messages to preach; Keep back no syllable of fire, Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech.

Yet G.o.d deems not thine aeried sight More worthy than our twilight dim; For meek Obedience, too, is Light, And following that is finding Him.

THE CAPTIVE

It was past the hour of trysting, But she lingered for him still; Like a child, the eager streamlet Leaped and laughed adown the hill, Happy to be free at twilight From its toiling at the mill.

Then the great moon on a sudden Ominous, and red as blood, Startling as a new creation, O'er the eastern hilltop stood, Casting deep and deeper shadows Through the mystery of the wood.

Dread closed fast and vague about her, And her thoughts turned fearfully To her heart, if there some shelter From the silence there might be, Like bare cedars leaning inland From the blighting of the sea.

Yet he came not, and the stillness Dampened round her like a tomb; She could feel cold eyes of spirits Looking on her through the gloom, She could hear the groping footsteps Of some blind, gigantic doom.

Suddenly the silence wavered Like a light mist in the wind, For a voice broke gently through it, Felt like suns.h.i.+ne by the blind, And the dread, like mist in suns.h.i.+ne, Furled serenely from her mind.

'Once my love, my love forever, Flesh or spirit, still the same, If I failed at time of trysting, Deem then not my faith to blame; I, alas, was made a captive, As from Holy Land I came.

'On a green spot in the desert, Gleaming like an emerald star, Where a palm-tree, in lone silence, Yearning for its mate afar, Droops above a silver runnel, Slender as a scimitar,

'There thou'lt find the humble postern To the castle of my foe; If thy love burn clear and faithful, Strike the gateway, green and low, Ask to enter, and the warder Surely will not say thee no.'

Slept again the aspen silence, But her loneliness was o'er; Bound her soul a motherly patience Clasped its arms forevermore; From her heart ebbed back the sorrow, Leaving smooth the golden sh.o.r.e.

Donned she now the pilgrim scallop, Took the pilgrim staff in hand; Like a cloud-shade flitting eastward, Wandered she o'er sea and land; And her footsteps in the desert Fell like cool rain on the sand.

Soon, beneath the palm-tree's shadow, Knelt she at the postern low; And thereat she knocked full gently, Fearing much the warder's no; All her heart stood still and listened, As the door swung backward slow.

There she saw no surly warder With an eye like bolt and bar; Through her soul a sense of music Throbbed, and, like a guardian Lar, On the threshold stood an angel, Bright and silent as a star.

Fairest seemed he of G.o.d's seraphs, And her spirit, lily-wise, Opened when he turned upon her The deep welcome of his eyes, Sending upward to that sunlight All its dew for sacrifice.

Then she heard a voice come onward Singing with a rapture new, As Eve heard the songs in Eden, Dropping earthward with the dew; Well she knew the happy singer, Well the happy song she knew.

Forward leaped she o'er the threshold, Eager as a glancing surf; Fell from her the spirit's languor, Fell from her the body's scurf; 'Neath the palm next day some Arabs Found a corpse upon the turf.

THE BIRCH-TREE

Rippling through thy branches goes the suns.h.i.+ne, Among thy leaves that palpitate forever; Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned, The soul once of some tremulous inland river, Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever!

While all the forest, witched with slumberous moons.h.i.+ne, Holds up its leaves in happy, happy stillness, Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands, And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence.

On the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, Dripping round thy slim white stem, whose shadow Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet, Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Naiad.

Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience, And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping.

Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences; Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets Sprinkle their gathered suns.h.i.+ne o'er my senses, And Nature gives me all her summer confidences.

Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble, Thou sympathizest still; wild and unquiet, I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river, Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and by it My heart is floated down into the land of quiet.

AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH

I sat one evening in my room, In that sweet hour of twilight When blended thoughts, half light, half gloom, Throng through the spirit's skylight; The flames by fits curled round the bars, Or up the chimney crinkled, While embers dropped like falling stars, And in the ashes tinkled.

I sat, and mused; the fire burned low, And, o'er my senses stealing, 10 Crept something of the ruddy glow That bloomed on wall and ceiling; My pictures (they are very few, The heads of ancient wise men) Smoothed down their knotted fronts, and grew As rosy as excis.e.m.e.n.

My antique high-backed Spanish chair Felt thrills through wood and leather, That had been strangers since whilere, Mid Andaluslan heather, 20 The oak that built its st.u.r.dy frame His happy arms stretched over The ox whose fortunate hide became The bottom's polished cover.

It came out in that famous bark, That brought our sires intrepid, Capacious as another ark For furniture decrepit; For, as that saved of bird and beast A pair for propagation, 30 So has the seed of these increased And furnished half the nation.

Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats; But those slant precipices Of ice the northern voyager meets Less slippery are than this is; To cling therein would pa.s.s the wit Of royal man or woman, And whatsoe'er can stay in it Is more or less than human. 40

I offer to all bores this perch, Dear well-intentioned people With heads as void as week-day church, Tongues longer than the steeple; To folks with missions, whose gaunt eyes See golden ages rising,-- Salt of the earth! in what queer Guys Thou'rt fond of crystallizing!

My wonder, then, was not unmixed With merciful suggestion, 50 When, as my roving eyes grew fixed Upon the chair in question, I saw its trembling arms enclose A figure grim and rusty, Whose doublet plain and plainer hose Were something worn and dusty.

Now even such men as Nature forms Merely to fill the street with, Once turned to ghosts by hungry worms, 59 Are serious things to meet with; Your penitent spirits are no jokes, And, though I'm not averse to A quiet shade, even they are folks One cares not to speak first to.

Who knows, thought I, but he has come, By Charon kindly ferried, To tell me of a mighty sum Behind my wainscot buried?

There is a buccaneerish air About that garb outlandish-- 70 Just then the ghost drew up his chair And said, 'My name is Standish.

'I come from Plymouth, deadly bored With toasts, and songs, and speeches, As long and flat as my old sword, As threadbare as my breeches: _They_ understand us Pilgrims! they, Smooth men with rosy faces.

Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away, And varnish in their places! 80

'We had some toughness in our grain, The eye to rightly see us is Not just the one that lights the brain Of drawing-room Tyrtaeuses: _They_ talk about their Pilgrim blood, Their birthright high and holy!

A mountain-stream that ends in mud Methinks is melancholy.

'He had stiff knees, the Puritan, That were not good at bending; The homespun dignity of man 91 He thought was worth defending; He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, His country's shame forgotten, Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er, When all within was rotten.

'These loud ancestral boasts of yours, How can they else than vex us?

Where were your dinner orators When slavery grasped at Texas? 100 Dumb on his knees was every one That now is bold as Caesar; Mere pegs to hang an office on Such stalwart men as these are.'

'Good sir,' I said, 'you seem much stirred; The sacred compromises'-- 'Now G.o.d confound the dastard word!