Poems of James Russell Lowell Part 36

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 silence, 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.

Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, Dripping about 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 Dryad.

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, 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 Andalusian heather, The oak that made 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, 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.

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, 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, 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---- 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!

"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 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?

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!

My gall thereat arises: Northward it hath this sense alone, That you, your conscience blinding, Shall bow your fool's nose to the stone, When slavery feels like grinding.

"'Tis shame to see such painted sticks In Vane's and Winthrop's places, To see your spirit of Seventy-six Drag humbly in the traces, With slavery's lash upon her back, And herds of office-holders To shout applause, as, with a crack, It peels her patient shoulders.

"_We_ forefathers to such a rout!-- No, by my faith in G.o.d's word!"

Half rose the ghost, and half drew out The ghost of his old broadsword, Then thrust it slowly back again, And said, with reverent gesture, "No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain The hem of thy white vesture.

"I feel the soul in me draw near The mount of prophesying; In this bleak wilderness I hear A John the Baptist crying; Far in the east I see upleap The streaks of first forewarning, And they who sowed the light shall reap The golden sheaves of morning.

"Child of our travail and our woe, Light in our day of sorrow, Through my rapt spirit I foreknow The glory of thy morrow; I hear great steps, that through the shade Draw nigher still and nigher, And voices call like that which bade The prophet come up higher."

I looked, no form mine eyes could find, I heard the red c.o.c.k crowing, And through my window-c.h.i.n.ks the wind A dismal tune was blowing; Thought I, My neighbor Buckingham Hath somewhat in him gritty, Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham, And he will print my ditty.

ON THE CAPTURE OF CERTAIN FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WAs.h.i.+NGTON.

Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can, The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man; Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these!

I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest; And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame, 'Tis but my Bay-State dialect,--our fathers spake the same!

Shame on the costly mockery of piling stone on stone To those who won our liberty, the heroes dead and gone, While we look coldly on, and see law-s.h.i.+elded ruffians slay The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day!

Are we pledged to craven silence? O fling it to the wind, The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind,-- That makes us cringe and temporize, and dumbly stand at rest, While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast!

Though we break our fathers' promise, we have n.o.bler duties first; The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed; Man is more than Const.i.tutions; better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to G.o.d!

We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more, To the sympathies that G.o.d hath set within our spirit's core;-- Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.

He's true to G.o.d who's true to man; wherever wrong is done, To the humblest and the weakest, neath the all-beholding sun, That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race.

G.o.d works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being free With parallels of lat.i.tude, with mountain-range or sea.

Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will, From soul to soul o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill.

Chain down your slaves with ignorance, ye cannot keep apart, With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart: When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay-State's iron sh.o.r.e, The word went forth that slavery should one day be no more.

Out from the land of bondage 'tis decreed our slaves shall go, And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh; If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore, Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore.

'Tis ours to save our brethren, with peace and love to win Their darkened hearts from error, ere they harden it to sin; But if before his duty man with listless spirit stands, Ere long the Great Avenger takes the work from out his hands.