Poems of James Russell Lowell Part 31

HUNGER AND COLD.

Sisters two, all praise to you, With your faces pinched and blue; To the poor man you've been true From of old: You can speak the keenest word, You are sure of being heard, From the point you're never stirred, Hunger and Cold!

Let sleek statesmen temporize; Palsied are their s.h.i.+fts and lies When they meet your bloodshot eyes, Grim and bold; Policy you set at naught, In their traps you'll not be caught, You're too honest to be bought, Hunger and Cold!

Bolt and bar the palace-door; While the ma.s.s of men are poor, Naked truth grows more and more Uncontrolled; You had never yet, I guess, Any praise for bashfulness, You can visit sans court-dress, Hunger and Cold!

While the music fell and rose, And the dance reeled to its close, Where her round of costly woes Fas.h.i.+on strolled, I beheld with shuddering fear Wolves' eyes through the windows peer; Little dream they you are near, Hunger and Cold!

When the toiler's heart you clutch, Conscience is not valued much, He recks not a b.l.o.o.d.y s.m.u.tch On his gold: Everything to you defers, You are potent reasoners, At your whisper Treason stirs, Hunger and Cold!

Rude comparisons you draw, Words refuse to sate your maw, Your gaunt limbs the cobweb law Cannot hold: You 're not clogged with foolish pride, But can seize a right denied; Somehow G.o.d is on your side, Hunger and Cold!

You respect no h.o.a.ry wrong More for having triumphed long; Its past victims, haggard throng, From the mould You unbury: swords and spears Weaker are than poor men's tears, Weaker than your silent years, Hunger and Cold!

Let them guard both hall and bower; Through the window you will glower, Patient till your reckoning hour Shall be tolled: Cheeks are pale, but hands are red, Guiltless blood may chance be shed, But ye must and will be fed, Hunger and Cold!

G.o.d has plans man must not spoil, Some were made to starve and toil, Some to share the wine and oil, We are told: Devil's theories are these, Stifling hope and love and peace, Framed your hideous l.u.s.ts to please, Hunger and Cold!

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!

1844.

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'ermaddened, 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, Preying 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 night-shade 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 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 Into Time's gnawing river.