Poems of James Russell Lowell Part 46

Far 'yond this narrow parapet of Time, With eyes uplift, the poet's soul should look Into the Endless Promise, nor should brook One prying doubt to shake his faith sublime; To him the earth is ever in her prime And dewiness of morning; he can see Good lying hid, from all eternity, Within the teeming womb of sin and crime; His soul should not be cramped by any bar, His n.o.bleness should be so G.o.d-like high, That his least deed is perfect as a star, His common look majestic as the sky, And all o'erflooded with a light from far, Undimmed by clouds of weak mortality.

XX.

TO M. O. S.

Mary, since first I knew thee, to this hour, My love hath deepened, with my wiser sense Of what in Woman is to reverence; Thy clear heart, fresh as e'er was forest-flower, Still opens more to me its beauteous dower;-- But let praise hush,--Love asks no evidence To prove itself well-placed; we know not whence It gleans the straws that thatch its humble bower: We can but say we found it in the heart, Spring of all sweetest thoughts, arch foe of blame, Sower of flowers in the dusty mart, Pure vestal of the poet's holy flame,-- This is enough, and we have done our part If we but keep it spotless as it came.

1842.

XXI.

Our love is not a fading, earthly flower: Its winged seed dropped down from Paradise, And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower, Doth momently to fresher beauty rise: To us the leafless autumn is not bare, Nor winter's rattling boughs lack l.u.s.ty green.

Our summer hearts make summer's fulness, where No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen: For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie, Love,--whose forgetfulness is beauty's death, Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I Into the infinite freedom openeth, And makes the body's dark and narrow grate The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's palace-gate.

1842.

XXII.

IN ABSENCE.

These rugged, wintry days I scarce could bear, Did I not know, that, in the early spring, When wild March winds upon their errands sing, Thou wouldst return, bursting on this still air, Like those same winds, when, startled from their lair, They hunt up violets, and free swift brooks, From icy cares, even as thy clear looks Bid my heart bloom, and sing, and break all care; When drops with welcome rain the April day, My flowers shall find their April in thine eyes, Save there the rain in dreamy clouds doth stay, As loath to fall out of those happy skies; Yet sure, my love, thou art most like to May, That comes with steady sun when April dies.

1843.

XXIII.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide The din of battle and of slaughter rose; He saw G.o.d stand upon the weaker side, That sank in seeming loss before its foes; Many there were who made great haste and sold Unto the cunning enemy their swords, He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold, And, underneath their soft and flowery words, Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went And humbly joined him to the weaker part, Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content So he could be the nearer to G.o.d's heart, And feel its solemn pulses sending blood Through all the wide-spread veins of endless good.

XXIV.

THE STREET.

They pa.s.s me by like shadows, crowds on crowds, Dim ghosts of men, that hover to and fro, Hugging their bodies round them, like thin shrouds Wherein their souls were buried long ago: They trampled on their youth, and faith, and love, They cast their hope of human-kind away, With Heaven's clear messages they madly strove, And conquered,--and their spirits turned to clay: Lo! how they wander round the world, their grave, Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed, Gibbering at living men, and idly rave, "We, only, truly live, but ye are dead."

Alas! poor fools, the anointed eye may trace A dead soul's epitaph in every face!

XXV.

I grieve not that ripe Knowledge takes away The charm that Nature to my childhood wore, For, with that insight, cometh, day by day, A greater bliss than wonder was before; The real doth not clip the poet's wings,-- To win the secret of a weed's plain heart Reveals some clue to spiritual things, And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art: Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes, Their beauty thrills him by an inward sense; He knows that outward seemings are but lies, Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, whence The soul that looks within for truth may guess The presence of some wondrous heavenliness.

XXVI.

TO J. R. GIDDINGS.

Giddings, far rougher names than thine have grown Smoother than honey on the lips of men; And thou shalt aye be honorably known, As one who bravely used his tongue and pen, As best befits a freeman,--even for those, To whom our Law's unblus.h.i.+ng front denies A right to plead against the life-long woes Which are the Negro's glimpse of Freedom's skies.

Fear nothing, and hope all things, as the Right Alone may do securely; every hour The thrones of Ignorance and ancient Night Lose somewhat of their long-usurped power, And Freedom's lightest word can make them s.h.i.+ver With a base dread that clings to them forever.

XXVII.

I thought our love at full, but I did err; Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not see That sorrow in our happy world must be Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter; But, as a mother feels her child first stir Under her heart, so felt I instantly Deep in my soul another bond to thee Thrill with that life we saw depart from her; O mother of our angel-child! twice dear!

Death knits as well as parts, and still, I wis, Her tender radiance shall enfold us here, Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss, Threads the void glooms of s.p.a.ce without a fear, To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss.

L'ENVOI.

Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not, In these three years, since I to thee inscribed, Mine own betrothed, the firstlings of my muse,-- Poor windfalls of unripe experience, Young buds plucked hastily by childish hands Not patient to await more full-blown flowers,-- At least it hath seen more of life and men, And pondered more, and grown a shade more sad, Yet with no loss of hope or settled trust In the benignness of that Providence, Which shapes from out our elements awry The grace and order that we wonder at, The mystic harmony of right and wrong, Both working out His wisdom and our good: A trust, Beloved, chiefly learned of thee, Who hast that gift of patient tenderness, The instinctive wisdom of a woman's heart.

They tell us that our land was made for song, With its huge rivers and sky-piercing peaks, Its sea-like lakes and mighty cataracts, Its forests vast and h.o.a.r, and prairies wide, And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes extinct.

But Poesy springs not from rocks and woods; Her womb and cradle are the human heart, And she can find a n.o.bler theme for song In the most loathsome man that blasts the sight, Than in the broad expanse of sea and sh.o.r.e Between the frozen deserts of the poles.

All nations have their message from on high, Each the messiah of some central thought, For the fulfilment and delight of Man: One has to teach that labor is divine; Another Freedom; and another Mind; And all, that G.o.d is open-eyed and just, The happy centre and calm heart of all.

Are, then, our woods, our mountains, and our streams, Needful to teach our poets how to sing?

O, maiden rare, far other thoughts were ours, When we have sat by ocean's foaming marge, And watched the waves leap roaring on the rocks, Than young Leander and his Hero had, Gazing from Sestos to the other sh.o.r.e.

The moon looks down and ocean wors.h.i.+ps her, Stars rise and set, and seasons come and go Even as they did in Homer's elder time, But we behold them not with Grecian eyes: Then they were types of beauty and of strength, But now of freedom, unconfined and pure, Subject alone to Order's higher law.

What cares the Russian serf or Southern slave Though we should speak as man spake never yet Of gleaming Hudson's broad magnificence, Or green Niagara's never-ending roar?

Our country hath a gospel of her own To preach and practise before all the world,-- The freedom and divinity of man, The glorious claims of human brotherhood,-- Which to pay n.o.bly, as a freeman should, Gains the sole wealth that will not fly away,-- And the soul's fealty to none but G.o.d.

These are realities, which make the shows Of outward Nature, be they ne'er so grand, Seem small, and worthless, and contemptible.

These are the mountain-summits for our bards, Which stretch far upward into heaven itself, And give such wide-spread and exulting view Of hope, and faith, and onward destiny, That shrunk Parna.s.sus to a molehill dwindles.

Our new Atlantis, like a morning-star, Silvers the murk face of slow-yielding Night, The herald of a fuller truth than yet Hath gleamed upon the upraised face of Man Since the earth glittered in her stainless prime,-- Of a more glorious sunrise than of old Drew wondrous melodies from Memnon huge, Yea, draws them still, though now he sits waist-deep In the engulfing flood of whirling sand, And looks across the wastes of endless gray, Sole wreck, where once his hundred-gated Thebes Pained with her mighty hum the calm, blue heaven.

Shall the dull stone pay grateful orisons, And we till noonday bar the splendor out, Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard hearts, Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice, And be content, though clad with angel-wings, Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to perch, In paltry cages of dead men's dead thoughts?

O, rather like the sky-lark, soar and sing, And let our gus.h.i.+ng songs befit the dawn And sunrise, and the yet unshaken dew Br.i.m.m.i.n.g the chalice of each full-blown hope, Whose blithe front turns to greet the growing day.

Never had poets such high call before, Never can poets hope for higher one, And, if they be but faithful to their trust, Earth will remember them with love and joy, And O, far better, G.o.d will not forget.

For he who settles Freedom's principles Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny; Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart, And his mere word makes despots tremble more Than ever Brutus with his dagger could.

Wait for no hints from waterfalls or woods, Nor dream that tales of red men, brute and fierce, Repay the finding of this Western World, Or needed half the globe to give them birth: Spirit supreme of Freedom! not for this Did great Columbus tame his eagle soul To jostle with the daws that perch in courts; Not for this, friendless, on an unknown sea, Coping with mad waves and more mutinous spirits, Battled he with the dreadful ache at heart Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of doubt, The hermit of that loneliest solitude, The silent desert of a great New Thought; Though loud Niagara were to-day struck dumb, Yet would this cataract of boiling life, Rush plunging on and on to endless deeps And utter thunder till the world shall cease,-- A thunder worthy of the poet's song, And which alone can fill it with true life.

The high evangel to our country granted Could make apostles, yea, with tongues of fire, Of hearts half-darkened back again to clay!

'Tis the soul only that is national, And he who pays true loyalty to that Alone can claim the wreath of patriotism.

Beloved! if I wander far and oft From that which I believe, and feel, and know, Thou wilt forgive, not with a sorrowing heart, But with a strengthened hope of better things; Knowing that I, though often blind and false To those I love, and O, more false than all Unto myself, have been most true to thee, And that whoso in one thing hath been true Can be as true in all. Therefore thy hope May yet not prove unfruitful, and thy love Meet, day by day, with less unworthy thanks Whether, as now, we journey hand in hand Or, parted in the body, yet are one In spirit and the love of holy things.

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL.

PRELUDE TO PART FIRST.