Selections from American poetry Part 27

Fair wave the sunset gardens, The rosy signals fly; Her homestead beckons from the cloud, And love goes sailing by!

THE MAYFLOWERS

Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars, And nursed by winter gales, With petals of the sleeted spars, And leaves of frozen sails

What had she in those dreary hours, Within her ice-rimmed bay, In common with the wild-wood flowers, The first sweet smiles of May?

Yet, "G.o.d be praised!" the Pilgrim said, Who saw the blossoms peer Above the brown leaves, dry a.n.a.l dead "Behold our Mayflower here!"

"G.o.d wills it: here our rest shall be Our years of wandering o'er; For us the Mayflower of the sea, Shall spread her sails no more."

O sacred flowers of faith and hope, As sweetly now as then Ye bloom on many a birchen slope, In many a pine-dark glen.

Behind the sea-wall's rugged length, Unchanged, your, leaves unfold Like love behind the manly strength Of the brave hearts of old.

So live the fathers in their sons, Their st.u.r.dy faith be ours, And ours the love that overruns Its rocky strength with flowers.

The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day Its shadow round us draws; The Mayflower of his stormy bay, Our Freedom's struggling cause.

But warmer suns erelong shall bring To life the frozen sod; And, through dead leaves of hope, shall spring Afresh the flowers of Cod!

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

GOOD-BYE

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.

Long through thy weary crowds I roam; A river-ark on the ocean brine, Long I've been tossed like the driven foam; But now, proud world! I'm going home.

Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face; To Grandeur with his wise grimace; To upstart Wealth's averted eye; To supple Office, low and high; To crowded halls, to court and street; To frozen hearts and hasting feet; To those who go, and those who come; Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home.

I am going to my own hearth-stone, Bosomed in yon green hills alone,-- A secret nook in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies planned; Where arches green, the livelong day, Echo the blackbird's roundelay, And vulgar feet have never trod A spot that is sacred to thought and Cod.

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; And when I am stretched beneath the pines, Where the evening star so holy s.h.i.+nes, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man At the sophist schools and the learned clan; For what are they all, in their high conceit, Where man in the bush with G.o.d may meet?

EACH AND ALL

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland faun, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The s.e.xton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.

All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home, in his nest, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky;-- He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye.

The delicate sh.e.l.ls lay on the sh.o.r.e; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home, But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the sh.o.r.e With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

The lover watched his graceful maid, As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white choir.

At last she came to his hermitage, Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;-- The gay enchantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none.

Then I said, "I covet truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth:-- As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club-moss burrs; I inhaled the violet's breath; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird;-- Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

THE PROBLEM

I like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below,-- The canticles of love and woe The hand that rounded Peter's dome And groined the aisles of Christian Rome; Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from G.o.d he could not free; He budded better than he knew;-- The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?

Or how the fish outbuilt her sh.e.l.l, Painting with morn each annual cell?

Or how the sacred pine-tree adds To her old leaves new myriads?

Such and so grew these holy piles, Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone, And Morning opes with haste her lids To gaze upon the Pyramids; O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, As on its friends, with kindred eye; For out of Thought's interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air; And Nature gladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and With Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the gra.s.ses Art might obey, but not surpa.s.s.

The pa.s.sive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned; And the same power that reared the shrine Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

Ever the fiery Pentecost Girds with one flame the countless host, Trances the heart through chanting choirs, And through the priest the mind inspires.

The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken;

The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind.

One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost.

I know what say the fathers wise, The book itself before me lies, Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, And he who blent both in his line, The younger Golden Lips or mines, Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines.

His words are music in my ear, I see his cowled portrait dear; And yet, for all his faith could see, I would not the good bishop be.

THE RHODORA

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the Woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook, The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being Why thou went there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask, I never knew: But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.