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diff --git a/12841-0.txt b/12841-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b0ebce --- /dev/null +++ b/12841-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4012 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12841 *** + +John Marr and Other Poems + +By Herman Melville + +_With An Introductory Note By_ +HENRY CHAPIN + +MCMXXII + + + + +CONTENTS + + INTRODUCTORY NOTE + + JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS + JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS + BRIDEGROOM DICK + TOM DEADLIGHT + JACK ROY + + SEA PIECES + THE HAGLETS + THE AEOLIAN HARP + TO THE MASTER OF THE _METEOR_ + FAR OFF-SHORE + THE MAN-OF-WAR HAWK + THE FIGURE-HEAD + THE GOOD CRAFT _SNOW BIRD_ + OLD COUNSEL + THE TUFT OF KELP + THE MALDIVE SHARK + TO NED + CROSSING THE TROPICS + THE BERG + THE ENVIABLE ISLES + PEBBLES + + POEMS FROM TIMOLEON + LINES TRACED UNDER AN IMAGE OF AMOR THREATENING + THE NIGHT MARCH + THE RAVAGED VILLA + THE NEW ZEALOT TO THE SUN + MONODY + LONE FOUNTS + THE BENCH OF BOORS + ART + THE ENTHUSIAST + SHELLEY’S VISION + THE MARCHIONESS OF BRINVILLIERS + THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES + HERBA SANTA + OFF CAPE COLONNA + THE APPARITION + L’ENVOI + SUPPLEMENT + + POEMS FROM BATTLE PIECES + THE PORTENT + FROM THE CONFLICT OF CONVICTIONS + THE MARCH INTO VIRGINIA + BALL’S BLUFF + THE STONE FLEET + THE TEMERAIRE + A UTILITARIAN VIEW OF THE _MONITOR’S_ FIGHT + MALVERN HILL + STONEWALL JACKSON + THE HOUSE-TOP + CHATTANOOGA + ON THE PHOTOGRAPH OF A CORPS COMMANDER + THE SWAMP ANGEL + SHERIDAN AT CEDAR CREEK + IN THE PRISON PEN + THE COLLEGE COLONEL + THE MARTYR + REBEL COLOR-BEARERS AT SHILOH + AURORA BOREALIS + THE RELEASED REBEL PRISONER + “FORMERLY A SLAVE” + ON THE SLAIN COLLEGIANS + AMERICA + INSCRIPTION + THE FORTITUDE OF THE NORTH + THE MOUND BY THE LAKE + ON THE SLAIN AT CHICKAMAUGA + AN UNINSCRIBED MONUMENT + ON THE GRAVE OF A YOUNG CAVALRY OFFICER KILLED IN THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA + A REQUIEM + COMMEMORATIVE OF A NAVAL VICTORY + A MEDITATION + + POEMS FROM MARDI + WE FISH + INVOCATION + DIRGE + MARLENA + PIPE SONG + SONG OF YOOMY + GOLD + THE LAND OF LOVE + + POEMS FROM CLAREL + DIRGE + EPILOGUE + + + + +INTRODUCTORY NOTE + + +Melville’s verse printed for the most part privately in small editions +from middle life onward after his great prose work had been written, +taken as a whole, is of an amateurish and uneven quality. In it, +however, that loveable freshness of personality, which his +philosophical dejection never quenched, is everywhere in evidence. It +is clear that he did not set himself to master the poet’s art, yet +through the mask of conventional verse which often falls into doggerel, +the voice of a true poet is heard. In selecting the pieces for this +volume I have put in the vigorous sea verses of _John Marr_ in their +entirety and added those others from his _Battle Pieces_, _Timoleon,_ +etc., that best indicate the quality of their author’s personality. The +prose supplement to battle pieces has been included because it does so +much to explain the feeling of his war verse and further because it is +such a remarkably wise and clear commentary upon those confused and +troublous days of post-war reconstruction. H. C. + + + + +JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS + + + + +JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS + + +Since as in night’s deck-watch ye show, +Why, lads, so silent here to me, +Your watchmate of times long ago? +Once, for all the darkling sea, +You your voices raised how clearly, +Striking in when tempest sung; +Hoisting up the storm-sail cheerly, +_Life is storm—let storm!_ you rung. +Taking things as fated merely, +Childlike though the world ye spanned; +Nor holding unto life too dearly, +Ye who held your lives in hand— +Skimmers, who on oceans four +Petrels were, and larks ashore. + +O, not from memory lightly flung, +Forgot, like strains no more availing, +The heart to music haughtier strung; +Nay, frequent near me, never staleing, +Whose good feeling kept ye young. +Like tides that enter creek or stream, +Ye come, ye visit me, or seem +Swimming out from seas of faces, +Alien myriads memory traces, +To enfold me in a dream! + +I yearn as ye. But rafts that strain, +Parted, shall they lock again? +Twined we were, entwined, then riven, +Ever to new embracements driven, +Shifting gulf-weed of the main! +And how if one here shift no more, +Lodged by the flinging surge ashore? +Nor less, as now, in eve’s decline, +Your shadowy fellowship is mine. +Ye float around me, form and feature:— +Tattooings, ear-rings, love-locks curled; +Barbarians of man’s simpler nature, +Unworldly servers of the world. +Yea, present all, and dear to me, +Though shades, or scouring China’s sea. + +Whither, whither, merchant-sailors, +Whitherward now in roaring gales? +Competing still, ye huntsman-whalers, +In leviathan’s wake what boat prevails? +And man-of-war’s men, whereaway? +If now no dinned drum beat to quarters +On the wilds of midnight waters— +Foemen looming through the spray; +Do yet your gangway lanterns, streaming, +Vainly strive to pierce below, +When, tilted from the slant plank gleaming, +A brother you see to darkness go? + +But, gunmates lashed in shotted canvas, +If where long watch-below ye keep, +Never the shrill _“All hands up hammocks!”_ +Breaks the spell that charms your sleep, +And summoning trumps might vainly call, +And booming guns implore— +A beat, a heart-beat musters all, +One heart-beat at heart-core. +It musters. But to clasp, retain; +To see you at the halyards main— +To hear your chorus once again! + + + + +BRIDEGROOM DICK + + +1876 + + +Sunning ourselves in October on a day +Balmy as spring, though the year was in decay, +I lading my pipe, she stirring her tea, +My old woman she says to me, +“Feel ye, old man, how the season mellows?” +And why should I not, blessed heart alive, +Here mellowing myself, past sixty-five, +To think o’ the May-time o’ pennoned young fellows +This stripped old hulk here for years may survive. + +Ere yet, long ago, we were spliced, Bonny Blue, +(Silvery it gleams down the moon-glade o’ time, +Ah, sugar in the bowl and berries in the prime!) +Coxswain I o’ the Commodore’s crew,— +Under me the fellows that manned his fine gig, +Spinning him ashore, a king in full fig. +Chirrupy even when crosses rubbed me, +Bridegroom Dick lieutenants dubbed me. +Pleasant at a yarn, Bob o’ Linkum in a song, +Diligent in duty and nattily arrayed, +Favored I was, wife, and _fleeted_ right along; +And though but a tot for such a tall grade, +A high quartermaster at last I was made. + +All this, old lassie, you have heard before, +But you listen again for the sake e’en o’ me; +No babble stales o’ the good times o’ yore +To Joan, if Darby the babbler be. + +Babbler?—O’ what? Addled brains, they forget! +O—quartermaster I; yes, the signals set, +Hoisted the ensign, mended it when frayed, +Polished up the binnacle, minded the helm, +And prompt every order blithely obeyed. +To me would the officers say a word cheery— +Break through the starch o’ the quarter-deck realm; +His coxswain late, so the Commodore’s pet. +Ay, and in night-watches long and weary, +Bored nigh to death with the navy etiquette, +Yearning, too, for fun, some younker, a cadet, +Dropping for time each vain bumptious trick, +Boy-like would unbend to Bridegroom Dick. +But a limit there was—a check, d’ ye see: +Those fine young aristocrats knew their degree. + +Well, stationed aft where their lordships keep,— +Seldom _going_ forward excepting to sleep,— +I, boozing now on by-gone years, +My betters recall along with my peers. +Recall them? Wife, but I see them plain: +Alive, alert, every man stirs again. +Ay, and again on the lee-side pacing, +My spy-glass carrying, a truncheon in show, +Turning at the taffrail, my footsteps retracing, +Proud in my duty, again methinks I go. +And Dave, Dainty Dave, I mark where he stands, +Our trim sailing-master, to time the high-noon, +That thingumbob sextant perplexing eyes and hands, +Squinting at the sun, or twigging o’ the moon; +Then, touching his cap to Old Chock-a-Block +Commanding the quarter-deck,—“Sir, twelve o’clock.” + +Where sails he now, that trim sailing-master, +Slender, yes, as the ship’s sky-s’l pole? +Dimly I mind me of some sad disaster— +Dainty Dave was dropped from the navy-roll! +And ah, for old Lieutenant Chock-a-Block— +Fast, wife, chock-fast to death’s black dock! +Buffeted about the obstreperous ocean, +Fleeted his life, if lagged his promotion. +Little girl, they are all, all gone, I think, +Leaving Bridegroom Dick here with lids that wink. + +Where is Ap Catesby? The fights fought of yore +Famed him, and laced him with epaulets, and more. +But fame is a wake that after-wakes cross, +And the waters wallow all, and laugh + _Where’s the loss?_ +But John Bull’s bullet in his shoulder bearing +Ballasted Ap in his long sea-faring. +The middies they ducked to the man who had messed +With Decatur in the gun-room, or forward pressed +Fighting beside Perry, Hull, Porter, and the rest. + +Humped veteran o’ the Heart-o’-Oak war, +Moored long in haven where the old heroes are, +Never on _you_ did the iron-clads jar! +Your open deck when the boarder assailed, +The frank old heroic hand-to-hand then availed. + +But where’s Guert Gan? Still heads he the van? +As before Vera-Cruz, when he dashed splashing through +The blue rollers sunned, in his brave gold-and-blue, +And, ere his cutter in keel took the strand, +Aloft waved his sword on the hostile land! +Went up the cheering, the quick chanticleering; +All hands vying—all colors flying: +“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” and “Row, boys, row!” +“Hey, Starry Banner!” “Hi, Santa Anna!” +Old Scott’s young dash at Mexico. + +Fine forces o’ the land, fine forces o’ the sea, +Fleet, army, and flotilla—tell, heart o’ me, +Tell, if you can, whereaway now they be! + +But ah, how to speak of the hurricane unchained— +The Union’s strands parted in the hawser over-strained; +Our flag blown to shreds, anchors gone altogether— +The dashed fleet o’ States in Secession’s foul weather. + +Lost in the smother o’ that wide public stress, +In hearts, private hearts, what ties there were snapped! +Tell, Hal—vouch, Will, o’ the ward-room mess, +On you how the riving thunder-bolt clapped. +With a bead in your eye and beads in your glass, +And a grip o’ the flipper, it was part and pass: +“Hal, must it be: Well, if come indeed the shock, +To North or to South, let the victory cleave, +Vaunt it he may on his dung-hill the cock, +But _Uncle Sam’s_ eagle never crow will, believe.” + +Sentiment: ay, while suspended hung all, +Ere the guns against Sumter opened there the ball, +And partners were taken, and the red dance began, +War’s red dance o’ death!—Well, we, to a man, +We sailors o’ the North, wife, how could we lag?— +Strike with your kin, and you stick to the flag! +But to sailors o’ the South that easy way was barred. +To some, dame, believe (and I speak o’ what I know), +Wormwood the trial and the Uzzite’s black shard; +And the faithfuller the heart, the crueller the throe. +Duty? It pulled with more than one string, +This way and that, and anyhow a sting. +The flag and your kin, how be true unto both? +If either plight ye keep, then ye break the other troth. +But elect here they must, though the casuists were out; +Decide—hurry up—and throttle every doubt. + +Of all these thrills thrilled at keelson, and throes, +Little felt the shoddyites a-toasting o’ their toes; +In mart and bazar Lucre chuckled the huzza, +Coining the dollars in the bloody mint of war. + +But in men, gray knights o’ the Order o’ Scars, +And brave boys bound by vows unto Mars, +Nature grappled honor, intertwisting in the strife:— +But some cut the knot with a thoroughgoing knife. +For how when the drums beat? How in the fray +In Hampton Roads on the fine balmy day? + +There a lull, wife, befell—drop o’ silent in the din. +Let us enter that silence ere the belchings re-begin. +Through a ragged rift aslant in the cannonade’s smoke +An iron-clad reveals her repellent broadside +Bodily intact. But a frigate, all oak, +Shows honeycombed by shot, and her deck crimson-dyed. +And a trumpet from port of the iron-clad hails, +Summoning the other, whose flag never trails: +“Surrender that frigate, Will! Surrender, +Or I will sink her—_ram_, and end her!” + +’T was Hal. And Will, from the naked heart-o’-oak, +Will, the old messmate, minus trumpet, spoke, +Informally intrepid,—“Sink her, and be damned!”* [* Historic.] +Enough. Gathering way, the iron-clad _rammed_. +The frigate, heeling over, on the wave threw a dusk. +Not sharing in the slant, the clapper of her bell +The fixed metal struck—uinvoked struck the knell +Of the _Cumberland_ stillettoed by the _Merrimac’s_ tusk; +While, broken in the wound underneath the gun-deck, +Like a sword-fish’s blade in leviathan waylaid, +The tusk was left infixed in the fast-foundering wreck. +There, dungeoned in the cockpit, the wounded go down, +And the chaplain with them. But the surges uplift +The prone dead from deck, and for moment they drift +Washed with the swimmers, and the spent swimmers drown. +Nine fathom did she sink,—erect, though hid from light +Save her colors unsurrendered and spars that kept the height. + +Nay, pardon, old aunty! Wife, never let it fall, +That big started tear that hovers on the brim; +I forgot about your nephew and the _Merrimac’s_ ball; +No more then of her, since it summons up him. +But talk o’ fellows’ hearts in the wine’s genial cup:— +Trap them in the fate, jam them in the strait, +Guns speak their hearts then, and speak right up. +The troublous colic o’ intestine war +It sets the bowels o’ affection ajar. +But, lord, old dame, so spins the whizzing world, +A humming-top, ay, for the little boy-gods +Flogging it well with their smart little rods, +Tittering at time and the coil uncurled. + +Now, now, sweetheart, you sidle away, +No, never you like _that_ kind o’ _gay;_ +But sour if I get, giving truth her due, +Honey-sweet forever, wife, will Dick be to you! + +But avast with the War! ‘Why recall racking days +Since set up anew are the slip’s started stays? +Nor less, though the gale we have left behind, +Well may the heave o’ the sea remind. +It irks me now, as it troubled me then, +To think o’ the fate in the madness o’ men. +If Dick was with Farragut on the night-river, +When the boom-chain we burst in the fire-raft’s glare, +That blood-dyed the visage as red as the liver; +In the _Battle for the Bay_ too if Dick had a share, +And saw one aloft a-piloting the war— +Trumpet in the whirlwind, a Providence in place— +Our Admiral old whom the captains huzza, +Dick joys in the man nor brags about the race. + +But better, wife, I like to booze on the days +Ere the Old Order foundered in these very frays, +And tradition was lost and we learned strange ways. +Often I think on the brave cruises then; +Re-sailing them in memory, I hail the press o’ men +On the gunned promenade where rolling they go, +Ere the dog-watch expire and break up the show. +The Laced Caps I see between forward guns; +Away from the powder-room they puff the cigar; +“Three days more, hey, the donnas and the dons!” +“Your Zeres widow, will you hunt her up, Starr?” +The Laced Caps laugh, and the bright waves too; +Very jolly, very wicked, both sea and crew, +Nor heaven looks sour on either, I guess, +Nor Pecksniff he bosses the gods’ high mess. +Wistful ye peer, wife, concerned for my head, +And how best to get me betimes to my bed. + +But king o’ the club, the gayest golden spark, +Sailor o’ sailors, what sailor do I mark? +Tom Tight, Tom Tight, no fine fellow finer, +A cutwater nose, ay, a spirited soul; +But, bowsing away at the well-brewed bowl, +He never bowled back from that last voyage to China. + +Tom was lieutenant in the brig-o’-war famed +When an officer was hung for an arch-mutineer, +But a mystery cleaved, and the captain was blamed, +And a rumpus too raised, though his honor it was clear. +And Tom he would say, when the mousers would try him, +And with cup after cup o’ Burgundy ply him: +“Gentlemen, in vain with your wassail you beset, +For the more I tipple, the tighter do I get.” +No blabber, no, not even with the can— +True to himself and loyal to his clan. + +Tom blessed us starboard and d—d us larboard, +Right down from rail to the streak o’ the garboard. +Nor less, wife, we liked him.—Tom was a man +In contrast queer with Chaplain Le Fan, +Who blessed us at morn, and at night yet again, +D—ning us only in decorous strain; +Preaching ’tween the guns—each cutlass in its place— +From text that averred old Adam a hard case. +I see him—Tom—on _horse-block_ standing, +Trumpet at mouth, thrown up all amain, +An elephant’s bugle, vociferous demanding +Of topmen aloft in the hurricane of rain, +“Letting that sail there your faces flog? +Manhandle it, men, and you’ll get the good grog!” +O Tom, but he knew a blue-jacket’s ways, +And how a lieutenant may genially haze; +Only a sailor sailors heartily praise. + +Wife, where be all these chaps, I wonder? +Trumpets in the tempest, terrors in the fray, +Boomed their commands along the deck like thunder; +But silent is the sod, and thunder dies away. +But Captain Turret, _“Old Hemlock”_ tall, +(A leaning tower when his tank brimmed all,) +Manoeuvre out alive from the war did he? +Or, too old for that, drift under the lee? +Kentuckian colossal, who, touching at Madeira, +The huge puncheon shipped o’ prime _Santa-Clara;_ +Then rocked along the deck so solemnly! +No whit the less though judicious was enough +In dealing with the Finn who made the great huff; +Our three-decker’s giant, a grand boatswain’s mate, +Manliest of men in his own natural senses; +But driven stark mad by the devil’s drugged stuff, +Storming all aboard from his run-ashore late, +Challenging to battle, vouchsafing no pretenses, +A reeling King Ogg, delirious in power, +The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to make cower. +“Put him in _brig_ there!” said Lieutenant Marrot. +“Put him in _brig!_” back he mocked like a parrot; +“Try it, then!” swaying a fist like Thor’s sledge, +And making the pigmy constables hedge— +Ship’s corporals and the master-at-arms. +“In _brig_ there, I say!”—They dally no more; +Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar, +Together they pounce on the formidable Finn, +Pinion and cripple and hustle him in. +Anon, under sentry, between twin guns, +He slides off in drowse, and the long night runs. + +Morning brings a summons. Whistling it calls, +Shrilled through the pipes of the boatswain’s four aids; +Trilled down the hatchways along the dusk halls: +_Muster to the Scourge!_—Dawn of doom and its blast! +As from cemeteries raised, sailors swarm before the mast, +Tumbling up the ladders from the ship’s nether shades. + +Keeping in the background and taking small part, +Lounging at their ease, indifferent in face, +Behold the trim marines uncompromised in heart; +Their Major, buttoned up, near the staff finds room— +The staff o’ lieutenants standing grouped in their place. +All the Laced Caps o’ the ward-room come, +The Chaplain among them, disciplined and dumb. +The blue-nosed boatswain, complexioned like slag, +Like a blue Monday lours—his implements in bag. +Executioners, his aids, a couple by him stand, +At a nod there the thongs to receive from his hand. +Never venturing a caveat whatever may betide, +Though functionally here on humanity’s side, +The grave Surgeon shows, like the formal physician +Attending the rack o’ the Spanish Inquisition. + +The angel o’ the “brig” brings his prisoner up; +Then, steadied by his old _Santa-Clara_, a sup, +Heading all erect, the ranged assizes there, +Lo, Captain Turret, and under starred bunting, +(A florid full face and fine silvered hair,) +Gigantic the yet greater giant confronting. + +Now the culprit he liked, as a tall captain can +A Titan subordinate and true _sailor-man;_ +And frequent he’d shown it—no worded advance, +But flattering the Finn with a well-timed glance. +But what of that now? In the martinet-mien +Read the _Articles of War_, heed the naval routine; +While, cut to the heart a dishonor there to win, +Restored to his senses, stood the Anak Finn; +In racked self-control the squeezed tears peeping, +Scalding the eye with repressed inkeeping. +Discipline must be; the scourge is deemed due. +But ah for the sickening and strange heart- benumbing, +Compassionate abasement in shipmates that view; +Such a grand champion shamed there succumbing! +“Brown, tie him up.”—The cord he brooked: +How else?—his arms spread apart—never threaping; +No, never he flinched, never sideways he looked, +Peeled to the waistband, the marble flesh creeping, +Lashed by the sleet the officious winds urge. + +In function his fellows their fellowship merge— +The twain standing nigh—the two boatswain’s mates, +Sailors of his grade, ay, and brothers of his mess. +With sharp thongs adroop the junior one awaits +The word to uplift. + “Untie him—so! +Submission is enough, Man, you may go.” +Then, promenading aft, brushing fat Purser Smart, +“Flog? Never meant it—hadn’t any heart. +Degrade that tall fellow? “—Such, wife, was he, +Old Captain Turret, who the brave wine could stow. +Magnanimous, you think?—But what does Dick see? +Apron to your eye! Why, never fell a blow; +Cheer up, old wifie, ’t was a long time ago. + +But where’s that sore one, crabbed and-severe, +Lieutenant Lon Lumbago, an arch scrutineer? +Call the roll to-day, would he answer—_Here!_ +When the _Blixum’s_ fellows to quarters mustered +How he’d lurch along the lane of gun-crews clustered, +Testy as touchwood, to pry and to peer. +Jerking his sword underneath larboard arm, +He ground his worn grinders to keep himself calm. +Composed in his nerves, from the fidgets set free, +Tell, Sweet Wrinkles, alive now is he, +In Paradise a parlor where the even tempers be? + +Where’s Commander All-a-Tanto? +Where’s Orlop Bob singing up from below? +Where’s Rhyming Ned? has he spun his last canto? +Where’s Jewsharp Jim? Where’s Ringadoon Joe? +Ah, for the music over and done, +The band all dismissed save the droned trombone! +Where’s Glenn o’ the gun-room, who loved Hot-Scotch— +Glen, prompt and cool in a perilous watch? +Where’s flaxen-haired Phil? a gray lieutenant? +Or rubicund, flying a dignified pennant? + +But where sleeps his brother?—the cruise it was o’er, +But ah, for death’s grip that welcomed him ashore! +Where’s Sid, the cadet, so frank in his brag, +Whose toast was audacious—“_Here’s Sid, and Sid’s flag!_” +Like holiday-craft that have sunk unknown, +May a lark of a lad go lonely down? +Who takes the census under the sea? +Can others like old ensigns be, +Bunting I hoisted to flutter at the gaff— +Rags in end that once were flags +Gallant streaming from the staff? + +Such scurvy doom could the chances deal +To Top-Gallant Harry and Jack Genteel? +Lo, Genteel Jack in hurricane weather, +Shagged like a bear, like a red lion roaring; +But O, so fine in his chapeau and feather, +In port to the ladies never once _jawing;_ +All bland _politesse,_ how urbane was he— +_“Oui, mademoiselle”—“Ma chère amie!”_ + +’T was Jack got up the ball at Naples, +Gay in the old _Ohio_ glorious; +His hair was curled by the berth-deck barber, +Never you’d deemed him a cub of rude Boreas; +In tight little pumps, with the grand dames in rout, +A-flinging his shapely foot all about; +His watch-chain with love’s jeweled tokens abounding, +Curls ambrosial shaking out odors, +Waltzing along the batteries, astounding +The gunner glum and the grim-visaged loaders. + +Wife, where be all these blades, I wonder, +Pennoned fine fellows, so strong, so gay? +Never their colors with a dip dived under; +Have they hauled them down in a lack-lustre day, +Or beached their boats in the Far, Far Away? +Hither and thither, blown wide asunder, +Where’s this fleet, I wonder and wonder. +Slipt their cables, rattled their adieu, +(Whereaway pointing? to what rendezvous?) +Out of sight, out of mind, like the crack _Constitution,_ +And many a keel time never shall renew— +_Bon Homme Dick_ o’ the buff Revolution, +The _Black Cockade_ and the staunch _True-Blue._ + +Doff hats to Decatur! But where is his blazon? +Must merited fame endure time’s wrong— +Glory’s ripe grape wizen up to a raisin? +Yes! for Nature teems, and the years are strong, +And who can keep the tally o’ the names that fleet along! + +But his frigate, wife, his bride? Would blacksmiths brown +Into smithereens smite the solid old renown? +Rivetting the bolts in the iron-clad’s shell, +Hark to the hammers with _a rat-tat-tat;_ +“Handier a _derby_ than a laced cocked hat! +The _Monitor_ was ugly, but she served us right well, +Better than the _Cumberland,_ a beauty and the belle.” + +_Better than the Cumberland!_—Heart alive in me! +That battlemented hull, Tantallon o’ the sea, +Kicked in, as at Boston the taxed chests o’ tea! +Ay, spurned by the _ram,_ once a tall, shapely craft, +But lopped by the Rebs to an iron-beaked raft— +A blacksmith’s unicorn in armor _cap-a-pie_. + +Under the water-line a _ram’s_ blow is dealt: +And foul fall the knuckles that strike below the belt. +Nor brave the inventions that serve to replace +The openness of valor while dismantling the grace. + +Aloof from all this and the never-ending game, +Tantamount to teetering, plot and counterplot; +Impenetrable armor—all-perforating shot; +Aloof, bless God, ride the war-ships of old, +A grand fleet moored in the roadstead of fame; +Not submarine sneaks with _them_ are enrolled; +Their long shadows dwarf us, their flags are as flame. + +Don’t fidget so, wife; an old man’s passion +Amounts to no more than this smoke that I puff; +There, there, now, buss me in good old fashion; +A died-down candle will flicker in the snuff. + +But one last thing let your old babbler say, +What Decatur’s coxswain said who was long ago hearsed, +“Take in your flying-kites, for there comes a lubber’s day +When gallant things will go, and the three-deckers first.” + +My pipe is smoked out, and the grog runs slack; +But bowse away, wife, at your blessed Bohea; +This empty can here must needs solace me— +Nay, sweetheart, nay; I take that back; +Dick drinks from your eyes and he finds no lack! + + + + +TOM DEADLIGHT + + +During a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the Mediterranean, a +grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains of the forecastle, +dying at night in his hammock, swung in the sick-bay under the tiered +gun-decks of the British _Dreadnaught, 98,_ wandering in his mind, +though with glimpses of sanity, and starting up at whiles, sings by +snatches his good-bye and last injunctions to two messmates, his +watchers, one of whom fans the fevered tar with the flap of his old +sou’wester. Some names and phrases, with here and there a line, or part +of one; these, in his aberration, wrested into incoherency from their +original connection and import, he voluntarily derives, as he does the +measure, from a famous old sea-ditty, whose cadences, long rife, and +now humming in the collapsing brain, attune the last flutterings of +distempered thought. + +Farewell and adieu to you noble hearties,— + Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain, +For I’ve received orders for to sail for the Deadman, + But hope with the grand fleet to see you again. + +I have hove my ship to, with main-top-sail aback, boys; + I have hove my ship to, for the strike soundings clear— +The black scud a’flying; but, by God’s blessing, dam’ me, + Right up the Channel for the Deadman I’ll steer. + +I have worried through the waters that are called the Doldrums, + And growled at Sargasso that clogs while ye grope— +Blast my eyes, but the light-ship is hid by the mist, lads:— + _Flying Dutchman_—odds bobbs—off the Cape of Good Hope! + +But what’s this I feel that is fanning my cheek, Matt? + The white goney’s wing?—how she rolls!— ’t is the Cape!— +Give my kit to the mess, Jock, for kin none is mine, none; + And tell _Holy Joe_ to avast with the crape. + +Dead reckoning, says _Joe_, it won’t do to go by; + But they doused all the glims, Matt, in sky t’ other night. +Dead reckoning is good for to sail for the Deadman; + And Tom Deadlight he thinks it may reckon near right. + +The signal!—it streams for the grand fleet to anchor. + The captains—the trumpets—the hullabaloo! +Stand by for blue-blazes, and mind your shank-painters, + For the Lord High Admiral, he’s squinting at you! + +But give me my _tot_, Matt, before I roll over; + Jock, let’s have your flipper, it’s good for to feel; +And don’t sew me up without _baccy_ in mouth, boys, + And don’t blubber like lubbers when I turn up my keel. + + + + +JACK ROY + + +Kept up by relays of generations young +Never dies at halyards the blithe chorus sung; +While in sands, sounds, and seas where the storm-petrels cry, +Dropped mute around the globe, these halyard singers lie. +Short-lived the clippers for racing-cups that run, +And speeds in life’s career many a lavish mother’s-son. + +But thou, manly king o’ the old _Splendid’s_ crew, +The ribbons o’ thy hat still a-fluttering, should fly— +A challenge, and forever, nor the bravery should rue. +Only in a tussle for the starry flag high, +When ’tis piety to do, and privilege to die. +Then, only then, would heaven think to lop +Such a cedar as the captain o’ the _Splendid’s_ main-top: +A belted sea-gentleman; a gallant, off-hand +Mercutio indifferent in life’s gay command. +Magnanimous in humor; when the splintering shot fell, +“Tooth-picks a-plenty, lads; thank ’em with a shell!” + +Sang Larry o’ the _Cannakin,_ smuggler o’ the wine, +At mess between guns, lad in jovial recline: +“In Limbo our Jack he would chirrup up a cheer, +The martinet there find a chaffing mutineer; +From a thousand fathoms down under hatches o’ your Hades, +He’d ascend in love-ditty, kissing fingers to your ladies!” + +Never relishing the knave, though allowing for the menial, +Nor overmuch the king, Jack, nor prodigally genial. +Ashore on liberty he flashed in escapade, +Vaulting over life in its levelness of grade, +Like the dolphin off Africa in rainbow a-sweeping— +Arch iridescent shot from seas languid sleeping. + +Larking with thy life, if a joy but a toy, +Heroic in thy levity wert thou, Jack Roy. + + + + +SEA PIECES + + + + +THE HAGLETS + + +By chapel bare, with walls sea-beat +The lichened urns in wilds are lost +About a carved memorial stone +That shows, decayed and coral-mossed, +A form recumbent, swords at feet, +Trophies at head, and kelp for a winding-sheet. + +I invoke thy ghost, neglected fane, +Washed by the waters’ long lament; +I adjure the recumbent effigy +To tell the cenotaph’s intent— +Reveal why fagotted swords are at feet, +Why trophies appear and weeds are the winding-sheet. + +By open ports the Admiral sits, +And shares repose with guns that tell +Of power that smote the arm’d Plate Fleet +Whose sinking flag-ship’s colors fell; +But over the Admiral floats in light +His squadron’s flag, the red-cross Flag of the White. + +The eddying waters whirl astern, +The prow, a seedsman, sows the spray; +With bellying sails and buckling spars +The black hull leaves a Milky Way; +Her timbers thrill, her batteries roll, +She revelling speeds exulting with pennon at pole, + +But ah, for standards captive trailed +For all their scutcheoned castles’ pride— +Castilian towers that dominate Spain, +Naples, and either Ind beside; +Those haughty towers, armorial ones, +Rue the salute from the Admiral’s dens of guns. + +Ensigns and arms in trophy brave, +Braver for many a rent and scar, +The captor’s naval hall bedeck, +Spoil that insures an earldom’s star— +Toledoes great, grand draperies, too, +Spain’s steel and silk, and splendors from Peru. + +But crippled part in splintering fight, +The vanquished flying the victor’s flags, +With prize-crews, under convoy-guns, +Heavy the fleet from Opher drags— +The Admiral crowding sail ahead, +Foremost with news who foremost in conflict sped. + +But out from cloistral gallery dim, +In early night his glance is thrown; +He marks the vague reserve of heaven, +He feels the touch of ocean lone; +Then turns, in frame part undermined, +Nor notes the shadowing wings that fan behind. + +There, peaked and gray, three haglets fly, +And follow, follow fast in wake +Where slides the cabin-lustre shy, +And sharks from man a glamour take, +Seething along the line of light +In lane that endless rules the war-ship’s flight. + +The sea-fowl here, whose hearts none know, +They followed late the flag-ship quelled, +(As now the victor one) and long +Above her gurgling grave, shrill held +With screams their wheeling rites—then sped +Direct in silence where the victor led. + +Now winds less fleet, but fairer, blow, +A ripple laps the coppered side, +While phosphor sparks make ocean gleam, +Like camps lit up in triumph wide; +With lights and tinkling cymbals meet +Acclaiming seas the advancing conqueror greet. + +But who a flattering tide may trust, +Or favoring breeze, or aught in end?— +Careening under startling blasts +The sheeted towers of sails impend; +While, gathering bale, behind is bred +A livid storm-bow, like a rainbow dead. + +At trumpet-call the topmen spring; +And, urged by after-call in stress, +Yet other tribes of tars ascend +The rigging’s howling wilderness; +But ere yard-ends alert they win, +Hell rules in heaven with hurricane-fire and din. + +The spars, athwart at spiry height, +Like quaking Lima’s crosses rock; +Like bees the clustering sailors cling +Against the shrouds, or take the shock +Flat on the swept yard-arms aslant, +Dipped like the wheeling condor’s pinions gaunt. + +A LULL! and tongues of languid flame +Lick every boom, and lambent show +Electric ’gainst each face aloft; +The herds of clouds with bellowings go: +The black ship rears—beset—harassed, +Then plunges far with luminous antlers vast. + +In trim betimes they turn from land, +Some shivered sails and spars they stow; +One watch, dismissed, they troll the can, +While loud the billow thumps the bow— +Vies with the fist that smites the board, +Obstreperous at each reveller’s jovial word. + +Of royal oak by storms confirmed, +The tested hull her lineage shows: +Vainly the plungings whelm her prow— +She rallies, rears, she sturdier grows: +Each shot-hole plugged, each storm-sail home, +With batteries housed she rams the watery dome. + +DIM seen adrift through driving scud, +The wan moon shows in plight forlorn; +Then, pinched in visage, fades and fades +Like to the faces drowned at morn, +When deeps engulfed the flag-ship’s crew, +And, shrilling round, the inscrutable haglets flew. + +And still they fly, nor now they cry, +But constant fan a second wake, +Unflagging pinions ply and ply, +Abreast their course intent they take; +Their silence marks a stable mood, +They patient keep their eager neighborhood. + +Plumed with a smoke, a confluent sea, +Heaved in a combing pyramid full, +Spent at its climax, in collapse +Down headlong thundering stuns the hull: +The trophy drops; but, reared again, +Shows Mars’ high-altar and contemns the main. + +REBUILT it stands, the brag of arms, +Transferred in site—no thought of where +The sensitive needle keeps its place, +And starts, disturbed, a quiverer there; +The helmsman rubs the clouded glass— +Peers in, but lets the trembling portent pass. + +Let pass as well his shipmates do +(Whose dream of power no tremors jar) +Fears for the fleet convoyed astern: +“Our flag they fly, they share our star; +Spain’s galleons great in hull are stout: +Manned by our men—like us they’ll ride it out.” + +Tonight’s the night that ends the week— +Ends day and week and month and year: +A fourfold imminent flickering time, +For now the midnight draws anear: +Eight bells! and passing-bells they be— +The Old year fades, the Old Year dies at sea. + +He launched them well. But shall the New +Redeem the pledge the Old Year made, +Or prove a self-asserting heir? +But healthy hearts few qualms invade: +By shot-chests grouped in bays ’tween guns +The gossips chat, the grizzled, sea-beat ones. + +And boyish dreams some graybeards blab: +“To sea, my lads, we go no more +Who share the Acapulco prize; +We’ll all night in, and bang the door; +Our ingots red shall yield us bliss: +Lads, golden years begin to-night with this!” + +Released from deck, yet waiting call, +Glazed caps and coats baptized in storm, +A watch of Laced Sleeves round the board +Draw near in heart to keep them warm: +“Sweethearts and wives!” clink, clink, they meet, +And, quaffing, dip in wine their beards of sleet. +“Ay, let the star-light stay withdrawn, +So here her hearth-light memory fling, +So in this wine-light cheer be born, +And honor’s fellowship weld our ring— +Honor! our Admiral’s aim foretold: + +_A tomb or a trophy,_ and lo, ’t is a trophy and gold!” +But he, a unit, sole in rank, +Apart needs keep his lonely state, +The sentry at his guarded door +Mute as by vault the sculptured Fate; +Belted he sits in drowsy light, +And, hatted, nods—the Admiral of the White. + +He dozes, aged with watches passed— +Years, years of pacing to and fro; +He dozes, nor attends the stir +In bullioned standards rustling low, +Nor minds the blades whose secret thrill +Perverts overhead the magnet’s Polar will:— + +LESS heeds the shadowing three that play +And follow, follow fast in wake, +Untiring wing and lidless eye— +Abreast their course intent they take; +Or sigh or sing, they hold for good +The unvarying flight and fixed inveterate mood. + +In dream at last his dozings merge, +In dream he reaps his victor’s fruit; +The Flags-o’-the-Blue, the Flags-o’-the-Red, +Dipped flags of his country’s fleets salute +His Flag-o’-the-White in harbor proud— +But why should it blench? Why turn to a painted shroud? + +The hungry seas they hound the hull, +The sharks they dog the haglets’ flight; +With one consent the winds, the waves +In hunt with fins and wings unite, +While drear the harps in cordage sound +Remindful wails for old Armadas drowned. + +Ha—yonder! are they Northern Lights? +Or signals flashed to warn or ward? +Yea, signals lanced in breakers high; +But doom on warning follows hard: +While yet they veer in hope to shun, +They strike! and thumps of hull and heart are one. + +But beating hearts a drum-beat calls +And prompt the men to quarters go; +Discipline, curbing nature, rules— +Heroic makes who duty know: +They execute the trump’s command, +Or in peremptory places wait and stand. + +Yet cast about in blind amaze— +As through their watery shroud they peer: +“We tacked from land: then how betrayed? +Have currents swerved us—snared us here?” +None heed the blades that clash in place +Under lamps dashed down that lit the magnet’s case. + +Ah, what may live, who mighty swim, +Or boat-crew reach that shore forbid, +Or cable span? Must victors drown— +Perish, even as the vanquished did? +Man keeps from man the stifled moan; +They shouldering stand, yet each in heart how lone. + +Some heaven invoke; but rings of reefs +Prayer and despair alike deride +In dance of breakers forked or peaked, +Pale maniacs of the maddened tide; +While, strenuous yet some end to earn, +The haglets spin, though now no more astern. + +Like shuttles hurrying in the looms +Aloft through rigging frayed they ply— +Cross and recross—weave and inweave, +Then lock the web with clinching cry +Over the seas on seas that clasp +The weltering wreck where gurgling ends the gasp. + +Ah, for the Plate-Fleet trophy now, +The victor’s voucher, flags and arms; +Never they’ll hang in Abbey old +And take Time’s dust with holier palms; +Nor less content, in liquid night, +Their captor sleeps—the Admiral of the White. + +Imbedded deep with shells +And drifted treasure deep, +Forever he sinks deeper in +Unfathomable sleep— +His cannon round him thrown, +His sailors at his feet, +The wizard sea enchanting them +Where never haglets beat. + +On nights when meteors play +And light the breakers dance, +The Oreads from the caves +With silvery elves advance; +And up from ocean stream, +And down from heaven far, +The rays that blend in dream +The abysm and the star. + + + + +THE AEOLIAN HARP + + +_At The Surf Inn_ + + +List the harp in window wailing + Stirred by fitful gales from sea: +Shrieking up in mad crescendo— + Dying down in plaintive key! + +Listen: less a strain ideal +Than Ariel’s rendering of the Real. + What that Real is, let hint + A picture stamped in memory’s mint. + +Braced well up, with beams aslant, +Betwixt the continents sails the _Phocion,_ +For Baltimore bound from Alicant. +Blue breezy skies white fleeces fleck +Over the chill blue white-capped ocean: +From yard-arm comes—“Wreck ho, a wreck!” + +Dismasted and adrift, +Longtime a thing forsaken; +Overwashed by every wave +Like the slumbering kraken; +Heedless if the billow roar, +Oblivious of the lull, +Leagues and leagues from shoal or shore, +It swims—a levelled hull: +Bulwarks gone—a shaven wreck, +Nameless and a grass-green deck. +A lumberman: perchance, in hold +Prostrate pines with hemlocks rolled. + +It has drifted, waterlogged, +Till by trailing weeds beclogged: + Drifted, drifted, day by day, + Pilotless on pathless way. +It has drifted till each plank +Is oozy as the oyster-bank: + Drifted, drifted, night by night, + Craft that never shows a light; +Nor ever, to prevent worse knell, +Tolls in fog the warning bell. + +From collision never shrinking, +Drive what may through darksome smother; +Saturate, but never sinking, +Fatal only to the _other!_ + Deadlier than the sunken reef +Since still the snare it shifteth, + Torpid in dumb ambuscade +Waylayingly it drifteth. + +O, the sailors—O, the sails! +O, the lost crews never heard of! +Well the harp of Ariel wails +Thought that tongue can tell no word of! + + + + +TO THE MASTER OF THE _METEOR_ + + +Lonesome on earth’s loneliest deep, +Sailor! who dost thy vigil keep— +Off the Cape of Storms dost musing sweep +Over monstrous waves that curl and comb; +Of thee we think when here from brink +We blow the mead in bubbling foam. + +Of thee we think, in a ring we link; +To the shearer of ocean’s fleece we drink, +And the _Meteor_ rolling home. + + + + +FAR OFF-SHORE + + +Look, the raft, a signal flying, + Thin—a shred; +None upon the lashed spars lying, + Quick or dead. + +Cries the sea-fowl, hovering over, + “Crew, the crew?” +And the billow, reckless, rover, + Sweeps anew! + + + + +THE MAN-OF-WAR HAWK + + +Yon black man-of-war-hawk that wheels in the light +O’er the black ship’s white sky-s’l, sunned cloud to the sight, +Have we low-flyers wings to ascend to his height? +No arrow can reach him; nor thought can attain +To the placid supreme in the sweep of his reign. + + + + +THE FIGURE-HEAD + + +The _Charles-and-Emma_ seaward sped, +(Named from the carven pair at prow,) +He so smart, and a curly head, +She tricked forth as a bride knows how: + Pretty stem for the port, I trow! + +But iron-rust and alum-spray +And chafing gear, and sun and dew +Vexed this lad and lassie gay, +Tears in their eyes, salt tears nor few; + And the hug relaxed with the failing glue. + +But came in end a dismal night, +With creaking beams and ribs that groan, +A black lee-shore and waters white: +Dropped on the reef, the pair lie prone: + O, the breakers dance, but the winds they moan! + + + + +THE GOOD CRAFT _SNOW BIRD_ + + +Strenuous need that head-wind be + From purposed voyage that drives at last +The ship, sharp-braced and dogged still, + Beating up against the blast. + +Brigs that figs for market gather, + Homeward-bound upon the stretch, +Encounter oft this uglier weather + Yet in end their port they fetch. + +Mark yon craft from sunny Smyrna + Glazed with ice in Boston Bay; +Out they toss the fig-drums cheerly, + Livelier for the frosty ray. + +What if sleet off-shore assailed her, + What though ice yet plate her yards; +In wintry port not less she renders + Summer’s gift with warm regards! + +And, look, the underwriters’ man, + Timely, when the stevedore’s done, +Puts on his _specs_ to pry and scan, +And sets her down—_A, No. 1._ + +Bravo, master! Bravo, brig! + For slanting snows out of the West +Never the _Snow-Bird_ cares one fig; + And foul winds steady her, though a pest. + + + + +OLD COUNSEL + + +_Of The Young Master of a Wrecked California Clipper_ + + +Come out of the Golden Gate, + Go round the Horn with streamers, +Carry royals early and late; +But, brother, be not over-elate— + _All hands save ship!_ has startled dreamers. + + + + +THE TUFT OF KELP + + +All dripping in tangles green, + Cast up by a lonely sea +If purer for that, O Weed, + Bitterer, too, are ye? + + + + +THE MALDIVE SHARK + + +About the Shark, phlegmatical one, +Pale sot of the Maldive sea, +The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim, +How alert in attendance be. +From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw +They have nothing of harm to dread, +But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank +Or before his Gorgonian head: +Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth +In white triple tiers of glittering gates, +And there find a haven when peril’s abroad, +An asylum in jaws of the Fates! +They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey, +Yet never partake of the treat— +Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull, +Pale ravener of horrible meat. + + + + +TO NED + + +Where is the world we roved, Ned Bunn? + Hollows thereof lay rich in shade +By voyagers old inviolate thrown + Ere Paul Pry cruised with Pelf and Trade. +To us old lads some thoughts come home +Who roamed a world young lads no more shall roam. + +Nor less the satiate year impends + When, wearying of routine-resorts, +The pleasure-hunter shall break loose, + Ned, for our Pantheistic ports:— +Marquesas and glenned isles that be +Authentic Edens in a Pagan sea. + +The charm of scenes untried shall lure, +And, Ned, a legend urge the flight— +The Typee-truants under stars +Unknown to Shakespere’s _Midsummer-Night;_ +And man, if lost to Saturn’s Age, +Yet feeling life no Syrian pilgrimage. + +But, tell, shall he, the tourist, find + Our isles the same in violet-glow +Enamoring us what years and years— + Ah, Ned, what years and years ago! +Well, Adam advances, smart in pace, +But scarce by violets that advance you trace. + +But we, in anchor-watches calm, + The Indian Psyche’s languor won, +And, musing, breathed primeval balm + From Edens ere yet overrun; +Marvelling mild if mortal twice, +Here and hereafter, touch a Paradise. + + + + +CROSSING THE TROPICS + + +_From “The Saya-y-Manto.”_ + + +While now the Pole Star sinks from sight + The Southern Cross it climbs the sky; +But losing thee, my love, my light, +O bride but for one bridal night, + The loss no rising joys supply. + +Love, love, the Trade Winds urge abaft, +And thee, from thee, they steadfast waft. + +By day the blue and silver sea + And chime of waters blandly fanned— +Nor these, nor Gama’s stars to me +May yield delight since still for thee + I long as Gama longed for land. + +I yearn, I yearn, reverting turn, +My heart it streams in wake astern +When, cut by slanting sleet, we swoop + Where raves the world’s inverted year, +If roses all your porch shall loop, +Not less your heart for me will droop + Doubling the world’s last outpost drear. + +O love, O love, these oceans vast: +Love, love, it is as death were past! + + + + +THE BERG + + +_A Dream_ + + +I saw a ship of martial build +(Her standards set, her brave apparel on) +Directed as by madness mere +Against a stolid iceberg steer, +Nor budge it, though the infatuate ship went down. +The impact made huge ice-cubes fall +Sullen, in tons that crashed the deck; +But that one avalanche was all +No other movement save the foundering wreck. + +Along the spurs of ridges pale, +Not any slenderest shaft and frail, +A prism over glass—green gorges lone, +Toppled; nor lace of traceries fine, +Nor pendant drops in grot or mine +Were jarred, when the stunned ship went down. +Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled +Circling one snow-flanked peak afar, +But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed +And crystal beaches, felt no jar. +No thrill transmitted stirred the lock +Of jack-straw needle-ice at base; +Towers undermined by waves—the block +Atilt impending—kept their place. +Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges +Slipt never, when by loftier edges +Through very inertia overthrown, +The impetuous ship in bafflement went down. +Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast, +With mortal damps self-overcast; +Exhaling still thy dankish breath— +Adrift dissolving, bound for death; +Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one— +A lumbering lubbard loitering slow, +Impingers rue thee and go down, +Sounding thy precipice below, +Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls +Along thy dense stolidity of walls. + + + + +THE ENVIABLE ISLES + + +_From “Rammon.”_ + + +Through storms you reach them and from storms are free. + Afar descried, the foremost drear in hue, +But, nearer, green; and, on the marge, the sea + Makes thunder low and mist of rainbowed dew. + +But, inland, where the sleep that folds the hills +A dreamier sleep, the trance of God, instills— + On uplands hazed, in wandering airs aswoon, +Slow-swaying palms salute love’s cypress tree + Adown in vale where pebbly runlets croon +A song to lull all sorrow and all glee. + +Sweet-fern and moss in many a glade are here. + Where, strewn in flocks, what cheek-flushed myriads lie +Dimpling in dream—unconscious slumberers mere, + While billows endless round the beaches die. + + + + +PEBBLES + + +I + + +Though the Clerk of the Weather insist, + And lay down the weather-law, +Pintado and gannet they wist +That the winds blow whither they list + In tempest or flaw. + + +II + + +Old are the creeds, but stale the schools, + Revamped as the mode may veer, +But Orm from the schools to the beaches strays +And, finding a Conch hoar with time, he delays + And reverent lifts it to ear. +That Voice, pitched in far monotone, + Shall it swerve? shall it deviate ever? +The Seas have inspired it, and Truth— + Truth, varying from sameness never. + + +III + + +In hollows of the liquid hills + Where the long Blue Ridges run, +The flattery of no echo thrills, + For echo the seas have none; +Nor aught that gives man back man’s strain— +The hope of his heart, the dream in his brain. + + +IV + + +On ocean where the embattled fleets repair, +Man, suffering inflictor, sails on sufferance there. + + +V + + +Implacable I, the old Implacable Sea: + Implacable most when most I smile serene— +Pleased, not appeased, by myriad wrecks in me. + + +VI + + +Curled in the comb of yon billow Andean, + Is it the Dragon’s heaven-challenging crest? +Elemental mad ramping of ravening waters— + Yet Christ on the Mount, and the dove in her nest! + + +VII + + +Healed of my hurt, I laud the inhuman Sea— +Yea, bless the Angels Four that there convene; +For healed I am ever by their pitiless breath +Distilled in wholesome dew named rosmarine. + + + + +POEMS FROM TIMOLEON + + + + +LINES TRACED UNDER AN IMAGE OF AMOR THREATENING + + +Fear me, virgin whosoever +Taking pride from love exempt, + Fear me, slighted. Never, never +Brave me, nor my fury tempt: +Downy wings, but wroth they beat +Tempest even in reason’s seat. + + + + +THE NIGHT MARCH + + +With banners furled and clarions mute, + An army passes in the night; +And beaming spears and helms salute + The dark with bright. + +In silence deep the legions stream, + With open ranks, in order true; +Over boundless plains they stream and gleam— + No chief in view! + +Afar, in twinkling distance lost, + (So legends tell) he lonely wends +And back through all that shining host + His mandate sends. + + + + +THE RAVAGED VILLA + + +In shards the sylvan vases lie, + Their links of dance undone, +And brambles wither by thy brim, + Choked fountain of the sun! +The spider in the laurel spins, + The weed exiles the flower: +And, flung to kiln, Apollo’s bust + Makes lime for Mammon’s tower. + + + + +THE NEW ZEALOT TO THE SUN + + +Persian, you rise +Aflame from climes of sacrifice + Where adulators sue, +And prostrate man, with brow abased, +Adheres to rites whose tenor traced + All worship hitherto. + + Arch type of sway, +Meetly your over-ruling ray + You fling from Asia’s plain, +Whence flashed the javelins abroad +Of many a wild incursive horde + Led by some shepherd Cain. + + Mid terrors dinned +Gods too came conquerors from your Ind, + The book of Brahma throve; +They came like to the scythed car, +Westward they rolled their empire far, + Of night their purple wove. + + Chemist, you breed +In orient climes each sorcerous weed + That energizes dream— +Transmitted, spread in myths and creeds, +Houris and hells, delirious screeds + And Calvin’s last extreme. + + What though your light +In time’s first dawn compelled the flight + Of Chaos’ startled clan, +Shall never all your darted spears +Disperse worse Anarchs, frauds and fears, + Sprung from these weeds to man? + + But Science yet +An effluence ampler shall beget, + And power beyond your play— +Shall quell the shades you fail to rout, +Yea, searching every secret out + Elucidate your ray. + + + + +MONODY + + +To have known him, to have loved him + After loneness long; +And then to be estranged in life, + And neither in the wrong; +And now for death to set his seal— + Ease me, a little ease, my song! + +By wintry hills his hermit-mound + The sheeted snow-drifts drape, +And houseless there the snow-bird flits + Beneath the fir-trees’ crape: +Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine + That hid the shyest grape. + + + + +LONE FOUNTS + + +Though fast youth’s glorious fable flies, +View not the world with worldling’s eyes; +Nor turn with weather of the time. +Foreclose the coming of surprise: +Stand where Posterity shall stand; +Stand where the Ancients stood before, +And, dipping in lone founts thy hand, +Drink of the never-varying lore: +Wise once, and wise thence evermore. + + + + +THE BENCH OF BOORS + + +In bed I muse on Tenier’s boors, +Embrowned and beery losels all; + A wakeful brain + Elaborates pain: +Within low doors the slugs of boors +Laze and yawn and doze again. + +In dreams they doze, the drowsy boors, +Their hazy hovel warm and small: + Thought’s ampler bound + But chill is found: +Within low doors the basking boors +Snugly hug the ember-mound. + +Sleepless, I see the slumberous boors +Their blurred eyes blink, their eyelids fall: + Thought’s eager sight + Aches—overbright! +Within low doors the boozy boors +Cat-naps take in pipe-bowl light. + + + + +ART + + +In placid hours well-pleased we dream +Of many a brave unbodied scheme. +But form to lend, pulsed life create, +What unlike things must meet and mate: +A flame to melt—a wind to freeze; +Sad patience—joyous energies; +Humility—yet pride and scorn; +Instinct and study; love and hate; +Audacity—reverence. These must mate, +And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart, +To wrestle with the angel—Art. + + + + +THE ENTHUSIAST + + +_“Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him.”_ + + +Shall hearts that beat no base retreat + In youth’s magnanimous years— +Ignoble hold it, if discreet + When interest tames to fears; +Shall spirits that worship light + Perfidious deem its sacred glow, + Recant, and trudge where worldlings go, +Conform and own them right? + +Shall Time with creeping influence cold + Unnerve and cow? the heart +Pine for the heartless ones enrolled + With palterers of the mart? +Shall faith abjure her skies, + Or pale probation blench her down + To shrink from Truth so still, so lone +Mid loud gregarious lies? + +Each burning boat in Caesar’s rear, + Flames—No return through me! +So put the torch to ties though dear, + If ties but tempters be. +Nor cringe if come the night: + Walk through the cloud to meet the pall, + Though light forsake thee, never fall +From fealty to light. + + + + +SHELLEY’S VISION + + +Wandering late by morning seas + When my heart with pain was low— +Hate the censor pelted me— + Deject I saw my shadow go. + +In elf-caprice of bitter tone +I too would pelt the pelted one: +At my shadow I cast a stone. + +When lo, upon that sun-lit ground + I saw the quivering phantom take +The likeness of St. Stephen crowned: + Then did self-reverence awake. + + + + +THE MARCHIONESS OF BRINVILLIERS + + +He toned the sprightly beam of morning + With twilight meek of tender eve, +Brightness interfused with softness, + Light and shade did weave: +And gave to candor equal place +With mystery starred in open skies; +And, floating all in sweetness, made + Her fathomless mild eyes. + + + + +THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES + + +While faith forecasts millennial years + Spite Europe’s embattled lines, +Back to the Past one glance be cast— + The Age of the Antonines! +O summit of fate, O zenith of time +When a pagan gentleman reigned, +And the olive was nailed to the inn of the world +Nor the peace of the just was feigned. + A halcyon Age, afar it shines, + Solstice of Man and the Antonines. + +Hymns to the nations’ friendly gods +Went up from the fellowly shrines, +No demagogue beat the pulpit-drum + In the Age of the Antonines! +The sting was not dreamed to be taken from death, +No Paradise pledged or sought, +But they reasoned of fate at the flowing feast, +Nor stifled the fluent thought, + We sham, we shuffle while faith declines— + They were frank in the Age of the Antonines. + +Orders and ranks they kept degree, +Few felt how the parvenu pines, +No law-maker took the lawless one’s fee + In the Age of the Antonines! +Under law made will the world reposed +And the ruler’s right confessed, +For the heavens elected the Emperor then, +The foremost of men the best. + Ah, might we read in America’s signs + The Age restored of the Antonines. + + + + +HERBA SANTA + + +I + + +After long wars when comes release +Not olive wands proclaiming peace + Can import dearer share +Than stems of Herba Santa hazed + In autumn’s Indian air. +Of moods they breathe that care disarm, +They pledge us lenitive and calm. + + +II + + +Shall code or creed a lure afford +To win all selves to Love’s accord? +When Love ordained a supper divine + For the wide world of man, +What bickerings o’er his gracious wine! + Then strange new feuds began. + +Effectual more in lowlier way, + Pacific Herb, thy sensuous plea +The bristling clans of Adam sway + At least to fellowship in thee! +Before thine altar tribal flags are furled, +Fain wouldst thou make one hearthstone of the world. + + +III + + +To scythe, to sceptre, pen and hod— + Yea, sodden laborers dumb; +To brains overplied, to feet that plod, +In solace of the _Truce of God_ + The Calumet has come! + + +IV + + +Ah for the world ere Raleigh’s find + Never that knew this suasive balm +That helps when Gilead’s fails to heal, + Helps by an interserted charm. + +Insinuous thou that through the nerve + Windest the soul, and so canst win +Some from repinings, some from sin, + The Church’s aim thou dost subserve. + +The ruffled fag fordone with care + And brooding, God would ease this pain: +Him soothest thou and smoothest down + Till some content return again. + +Even ruffians feel thy influence breed + Saint Martin’s summer in the mind, +They feel this last evangel plead, +As did the first, apart from creed, + Be peaceful, man—be kind! + + +V + + +Rejected once on higher plain, +O Love supreme, to come again + Can this be thine? +Again to come, and win us too + In likeness of a weed +That as a god didst vainly woo, + As man more vainly bleed? + + +VI + + +Forbear, my soul! and in thine Eastern chamber + Rehearse the dream that brings the long release: +Through jasmine sweet and talismanic amber + Inhaling Herba Santa in the passive Pipe of Peace. + + + + +OFF CAPE COLONNA + + +Aloof they crown the foreland lone, + From aloft they loftier rise— +Fair columns, in the aureole rolled + From sunned Greek seas and skies. +They wax, sublimed to fancy’s view, +A god-like group against the blue. + +Over much like gods! Serene they saw + The wolf-waves board the deck, +And headlong hull of Falconer, + And many a deadlier wreck. + + + + +THE APPARITION + + +_The Parthenon uplifted on its rock first challenging the view on the +approach to Athens._ + + +Abrupt the supernatural Cross, + Vivid in startled air, +Smote the Emperor Constantine +And turned his soul’s allegiance there. + +With other power appealing down, + Trophy of Adam’s best! +If cynic minds you scarce convert, +You try them, shake them, or molest. + +Diogenes, that honest heart, + Lived ere your date began; +Thee had he seen, he might have swerved +In mood nor barked so much at Man. + + + + +L’ENVOI + + +_The Return of the Sire de Nesle._ +A.D. 16 + + +My towers at last! These rovings end, +Their thirst is slaked in larger dearth: +The yearning infinite recoils, + For terrible is earth. + +Kaf thrusts his snouted crags through fog: +Araxes swells beyond his span, +And knowledge poured by pilgrimage + Overflows the banks of man. + +But thou, my stay, thy lasting love +One lonely good, let this but be! +Weary to view the wide world’s swarm, + But blest to fold but thee. + + + + +SUPPLEMENT + + +Were I fastidiously anxious for the symmetry of this book, it would +close with the notes. But the times are such that patriotism—not free +from solicitude—urges a claim overriding all literary scruples. + +It is more than a year since the memorable surrender, but events have +not yet rounded themselves into completion. Not justly can we complain +of this. There has been an upheaval affecting the basis of things; to +altered circumstances complicated adaptations are to be made; there are +difficulties great and novel. But is Reason still waiting for Passion +to spend itself? We have sung of the soldiers and sailors, but who +shall hymn the politicians? + +In view of the infinite desirableness of Re-establishment, and +considering that, so far as feeling is concerned, it depends not mainly +on the temper in which the South regards the North, but rather +conversely; one who never was a blind adherent feels constrained to +submit some thoughts, counting on the indulgence of his countrymen. + +And, first, it may be said that, if among the feelings and opinions +growing immediately out of a great civil convulsion, there are any +which time shall modify or do away, they are presumably those of a less +temperate and charitable cast. + +There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, +or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political +trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered because not +partisan. Yet the work of Reconstruction, if admitted to be feasible at +all, demands little but common sense and Christian charity. Little but +these? These are much. + +Some of us are concerned because as yet the South shows no penitence. +But what exactly do we mean by this? Since down to the close of the war +she never confessed any for braving it, the only penitence now left her +is that which springs solely from the sense of discomfiture; and since +this evidently would be a contrition hypocritical, it would be unworthy +in us to demand it. Certain it is that penitence, in the sense of +voluntary humiliation, will never be displayed. Nor does this afford +just ground for unreserved condemnation. It is enough, for all +practical purposes, if the South have been taught by the terrors of +civil war to feel that Secession, like Slavery, is against Destiny; +that both now lie buried in one grave; that her fate is linked with +ours; and that together we comprise the Nation. + +The clouds of heroes who battled for the Union it is needless to +eulogize here. But how of the soldiers on the other side? And when of a +free community we name the soldiers, we thereby name the people. It was +in subserviency to the slave-interest that Secession was plotted; but +it was under the plea, plausibly urged, that certain inestimable rights +guaranteed by the Constitution were directly menaced, that the people +of the South were cajoled into revolution. Through the arts of the +conspirators and the perversity of fortune, the most sensitive love of +liberty was entrapped into the support of a war whose implied end was +the erecting in our advanced century of an Anglo-American empire based +upon the systematic degradation of man. + +Spite this clinging reproach, however, signal military virtues and +achievements have conferred upon the Confederate arms historic fame, +and upon certain of the commanders a renown extending beyond the sea—a +renown which we of the North could not suppress, even if we would. In +personal character, also, not a few of the military leaders of the +South enforce forbearance; the memory of others the North refrains from +disparaging; and some, with more or less of reluctance, she can +respect. Posterity, sympathizing with our convictions, but removed from +our passions, may perhaps go farther here. If George IV could, out of +the graceful instinct of a gentleman, raise an honorable monument in +the great fane of Christendom over the remains of the enemy of his +dynasty, Charles Edward, the invader of England and victor in the rout +of Preston Pans—upon whose head the king’s ancestor but one reign +removed had set a price—is it probable that the granchildren of General +Grant will pursue with rancor, or slur by sour neglect, the memory of +Stonewall Jackson? + +But the South herself is not wanting in recent histories and +biographies which record the deeds of her chieftains—writings freely +published at the North by loyal houses, widely read here, and with a +deep though saddened interest. By students of the war such works are +hailed as welcome accessories, and tending to the completeness of the +record. + +Supposing a happy issue out of present perplexities, then, in the +generation next to come, Southerners there will be yielding allegiance +to the Union, feeling all their interests bound up in it, and yet +cherishing unrebuked that kind of feeling for the memory of the +soldiers of the fallen Confederacy that Burns, Scott, and the Ettrick +Shepherd felt for the memory of the gallant clansmen ruined through +their fidelity to the Stuarts—a feeling whose passion was tempered by +the poetry imbuing it, and which in no wise affected their loyalty to +the Georges, and which, it may be added, indirectly contributed +excellent things to literature. But, setting this view aside, +dishonorable would it be in the South were she willing to abandon to +shame the memory of brave men who with signal personal +disinterestedness warred in her behalf, though from motives, as we +believe, so deplorably astray. + +Patriotism is not baseness, neither is it inhumanity. The mourners who +this summer bear flowers to the mounds of the Virginian and Georgian +dead are, in their domestic bereavement and proud affection, as sacred +in the eye of Heaven as are those who go with similar offerings of +tender grief and love into the cemeteries of our Northern martyrs. And +yet, in one aspect, how needless to point the contrast. + +Cherishing such sentiments, it will hardly occasion surprise that, in +looking over the battle-pieces in the foregoing collection, I have been +tempted to withdraw or modify some of them, fearful lest in presenting, +though but dramatically and by way of poetic record, the passions and +epithets of civil war, I might be contributing to a bitterness which +every sensible American must wish at an end. So, too, with the emotion +of victory as reproduced on some pages, and particularly toward the +close. It should not be construed into an exultation misapplied—an +exultation as ungenerous as unwise, and made to minister, however +indirectly, to that kind of censoriousness too apt to be produced in +certain natures by success after trying reverses. Zeal is not of +necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with +poetry or patriotism. + +There are excesses which marked the conflict, most of which are perhaps +inseparable from a civil strife so intense and prolonged, and involving +warfare in some border countries new and imperfectly civilized. +Barbarities also there were, for which the Southern people collectively +can hardly be held responsible, though perpetrated by ruffians in their +name. But surely other qualities—exalted ones—courage and fortitude +matchless, were likewise displayed, and largely; and justly may these +be held the characteristic traits, and not the former. + +In this view, what Northern writer, however patriotic, but must revolt +from acting on paper a part any way akin to that of the live dog to the +dead lion; and yet it is right to rejoice for our triumphs, so far as +it may justly imply an advance for our whole country and for humanity. + +Let it be held no reproach to any one that he pleads for reasonable +consideration for our late enemies, now stricken down and unavoidably +debarred, for the time, from speaking through authorized agencies for +themselves. Nothing has been urged here in the foolish hope of +conciliating those men—few in number, we trust—who have resolved never +to be reconciled to the Union. On such hearts everything is thrown away +except it be religious commiseration, and the sincerest. Yet let them +call to mind that unhappy Secessionist, not a military man, who with +impious alacrity fired the first shot of the Civil War at Sumter, and a +little more than four years afterward fired the last one into his heart +at Richmond. + +Noble was the gesture into which patriotic passion surprised the people +in a utilitarian time and country; yet the glory of the war falls short +of its pathos—a pathos which now at last ought to disarm all animosity. + +How many and earnest thoughts still rise, and how hard to repress them. +We feel what past years have been, and years, unretarded years, shall +come. May we all have moderation; may we all show candor. Though, +perhaps, nothing could ultimately have averted the strife, and though +to treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes, +nevertheless, let us not cover up or try to extenuate what, humanly +speaking, is the truth—namely, that those unfraternal denunciations, +continued through years, and which at last inflamed to deeds that ended +in bloodshed, were reciprocal; and that, had the preponderating +strength and the prospect of its unlimited increase lain on the other +side, on ours might have lain those actions which now in our late +opponents we stigmatize under the name of Rebellion. As frankly let us +own—what it would be unbecoming to parade were foreigners concerned— +that our triumph was won not more by skill and bravery than by superior +resources and crushing numbers; that it was a triumph, too, over a +people for years politically misled by designing men, and also by some +honestly-erring men, who from their position could not have been +otherwise than broadly influential; a people who, though, indeed, they +sought to perpetuate the curse of slavery, and even extend it, were not +the authors of it, but (less fortunate, not less righteous than we), +were the fated inheritors; a people who, having a like origin with +ourselves, share essentially in whatever worthy qualities we may +possess. No one can add to the lasting reproach which hopeless defeat +has now cast upon Secession by withholding the recognition of these +verities. + +Surely we ought to take it to heart that that kind of pacification, +based upon principles operating equally all over the land, which lovers +of their country yearn for, and which our arms, though signally +triumphant, did not bring about, and which lawmaking, however anxious, +or energetic, or repressive, never by itself can achieve, may yet be +largely aided by generosity of sentiment public and private. Some +revisionary legislation and adaptive is indispensable; but with this +should harmoniously work another kind of prudence, not unallied with +entire magnanimity. Benevolence and policy—Christianity and +Machiavelli—dissuade from penal severities toward the subdued. +Abstinence here is as obligatory as considerate care for our +unfortunate fellowmen late in bonds, and, if observed, would equally +prove to be wise forecast. The great qualities of the South, those +attested in the War, we can perilously alienate, or we may make them +nationally available at need. + +The blacks, in their infant pupilage to freedom, appeal to the +sympathies of every humane mind. The paternal guardianship which for +the interval government exercises over them was prompted equally by +duty and benevolence. Yet such kindliness should not be allowed to +exclude kindliness to communities who stand nearer to us in nature. For +the future of the freed slaves we may well be concerned; but the future +of the whole country, involving the future of the blacks, urges a +paramount claim upon our anxiety. Effective benignity, like the Nile, +is not narrow in its bounty, and true policy is always broad. To be +sure, it is vain to seek to glide, with moulded words, over the +difficulties of the situation. And for them who are neither partisans, +nor enthusiasts, nor theorists, nor cynics, there are some doubts not +readily to be solved. And there are fears. Why is not the cessation of +war now at length attended with the settled calm of peace? Wherefore in +a clear sky do we still turn our eyes toward the South as the +Neapolitan, months after the eruption, turns his toward Vesuvius? Do we +dread lest the repose may be deceptive? In the recent convulsion has +the crater but shifted Let us revere that sacred uncertainty which +forever impends over men and nations. Those of us who always abhorred +slavery as an atheistical iniquity, gladly we join in the exulting +chorus of humanity over its downfall. But we should remember that +emancipation was accomplished not by deliberate legislation; only +through agonized violence could so mighty a result be effected. In our +natural solicitude to confirm the benefit of liberty to the blacks, let +us forbear from measures of dubious constitutional rightfulness toward +our white countrymen—measures of a nature to provoke, among other of +the last evils, exterminating hatred of race toward race. In +imagination let us place ourselves in the unprecedented position of the +Southerners—their position as regards the millions of ignorant +manumitted slaves in their midst, for whom some of us now claim the +suffrage. Let us be Christians toward our fellow-whites, as well as +philanthropists toward the blacks, our fellow-men. In all things, and +toward all, we are enjoined to do as we would be done by. Nor should we +forget that benevolent desires, after passing a certain point, can not +undertake their own fulfillment without incurring the risk of evils +beyond those sought to be remedied. Something may well be left to the +graduated care of future legislation, and to heaven. In one point of +view the co-existence of the two races in the South, whether the negro +be bond or free, seems (even as it did to Abraham Lincoln) a grave +evil. Emancipation has ridded the country of the reproach, but not +wholly of the calamity. Especially in the present transition period for +both races in the South, more or less of trouble may not unreasonably +be anticipated; but let us not hereafter be too swift to charge the +blame exclusively in any one quarter. With certain evils men must be +more or less patient. Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may +in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however +originally alien. + +But, so far as immediate measures looking toward permanent Re- +establishment are concerned, no consideration should tempt us to +pervert the national victory into oppression for the vanquished. Should +plausible promise of eventual good, or a deceptive or spurious sense of +duty, lead us to essay this, count we must on serious consequences, not +the least of which would be divisions among the Northern adherents of +the Union. Assuredly, if any honest Catos there be who thus far have +gone with us, no longer will they do so, but oppose us, and as +resolutely as hitherto they have supported. But this path of thought +leads toward those waters of bitterness from which one can only turn +aside and be silent. + +But supposing Re-establishment so far advanced that the Southern seats +in Congress are occupied, and by men qualified in accordance with those +cardinal principles of representative government which hitherto have +prevailed in the land—what then? Why, the Congressmen elected by the +people of the South will—represent the people of the South. This may +seem a flat conclusion; but, in view of the last five years, may there +not be latent significance in it? What will be the temper of those +Southern members? and, confronted by them, what will be the mood of our +own representatives? In private life true reconciliation seldom follows +a violent quarrel; but, if subsequent intercourse be unavoidable, nice +observances and mutual are indispensable to the prevention of a new +rupture. Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and +true friends are punctilious equals. On the floor of Congress North and +South are to come together after a passionate duel, in which the South, +though proving her valor, has been made to bite the dust. Upon +differences in debate shall acrimonious recriminations be exchanged? +Shall censorious superiority assumed by one section provoke defiant +self-assertion on the other? Shall Manassas and Chickamauga be retorted +for Chattanooga and Richmond? Under the supposition that the full +Congress will be composed of gentlemen, all this is impossible. Yet, if +otherwise, it needs no prophet of Israel to foretell the end. The +maintenance of Congressional decency in the future will rest mainly +with the North. Rightly will more forbearance be required from the +North than the South, for the North is victor. + +But some there are who may deem these latter thoughts inapplicable, and +for this reason: Since the test-oath operatively excludes from Congress +all who in any way participated in Secession, therefore none but +Southerners wholly in harmony with the North are eligible to seats. +This is true for the time being. But the oath is alterable; and in the +wonted fluctuations of parties not improbably it will undergo +alteration, assuming such a form, perhaps, as not to bar the admission +into the National Legislature of men who represent the populations +lately in revolt. Such a result would involve no violation of the +principles of democratic government. Not readily can one perceive how +the political existence of the millions of late Secessionists can +permanently be ignored by this Republic. The years of the war tried our +devotion to the Union; the time of peace may test the sincerity of our +faith in democracy. + +In no spirit of opposition, not by way of challenge, is anything here +thrown out. These thoughts are sincere ones; they seem natural— +inevitable. Here and there they must have suggested themselves to many +thoughtful patriots. And, if they be just thoughts, ere long they must +have that weight with the public which already they have had with +individuals. + +For that heroic band—those children of the furnace who, in regions like +Texas and Tennessee, maintained their fidelity through terrible +trials—we of the North felt for them, and profoundly we honor them. Yet +passionate sympathy, with resentments so close as to be almost domestic +in their bitterness, would hardly in the present juncture tend to +discreet legislation. Were the Unionists and Secessionists but as +Guelphs and Ghibellines? If not, then far be it from a great nation now +to act in the spirit that animated a triumphant town-faction in the +Middle Ages. But crowding thoughts must at last be checked; and, in +times like the present, one who desires to be impartially just in the +expression of his views, moves as among sword-points presented on every +side. + +Let us pray that the terrible historic tragedy of our time may not have +been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through +terror and pity; and may fulfillment verify in the end those +expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity. + + + + +POEMS FROM BATTLE PIECES + + + + +THE PORTENT + + +1859 + + +Hanging from the beam, + Slowly swaying (such the law), +Gaunt the shadow on your green, + Shenandoah! +The cut is on the crown +(Lo, John Brown), +And the stabs shall heal no more. + +Hidden in the cap + Is the anguish none can draw; +So your future veils its face, + Shenandoah! +But the streaming beard is shown +(Weird John Brown), +The meteor of the war. + + + + +FROM THE CONFLICT OF CONVICTIONS + + +1860-1 + + +The Ancient of Days forever is young, + Forever the scheme of Nature thrives; +I know a wind in purpose strong— + It spins _against_ the way it drives. +What if the gulfs their slimed foundations bare? +So deep must the stones be hurled +Whereon the throes of ages rear +The final empire and the happier world. + + Power unanointed may come— +Dominion (unsought by the free) + And the Iron Dome, +Stronger for stress and strain, +Fling her huge shadow athwart the main; +But the Founders’ dream shall flee. +Age after age has been, +(From man’s changeless heart their way they win); +And death be busy with all who strive— +Death, with silent negative. + + _Yea and Nay—_ + _Each hath his say;_ + _But God He keeps the middle way._ + _None was by_ + _When He spread the sky;_ + _Wisdom is vain, and prophecy._ + + + + +THE MARCH INTO VIRGINIA + + +_Ending in the First Manassas_ +July, 1861 + + +Did all the lets and bars appear + To every just or larger end, +Whence should come the trust and cheer? + Youth must its ignorant impulse lend— +Age finds place in the rear. + All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys, +The champions and enthusiasts of the state: + Turbid ardors and vain joys + Not barrenly abate— + Stimulants to the power mature, + Preparatives of fate. + +Who here forecasteth the event? +What heart but spurns at precedent +And warnings of the wise, +Contemned foreclosures of surprise? +The banners play, the bugles call, +The air is blue and prodigal. + No berrying party, pleasure-wooed, +No picnic party in the May, +Ever went less loth than they + Into that leafy neighborhood. +In Bacchic glee they file toward Fate, +Moloch’s uninitiate; +Expectancy, and glad surmise +Of battle’s unknown mysteries. +All they feel is this: ’t is glory, +A rapture sharp, though transitory, +Yet lasting in belaureled story. +So they gayly go to fight, +Chatting left and laughing right. + +But some who this blithe mood present, + As on in lightsome files they fare, +Shall die experienced ere three days are spent— + Perish, enlightened by the vollied glare; +Or shame survive, and, like to adamant, + The throe of Second Manassas share. + + + + +BALL’S BLUFF + + +_A Reverie_ +October, 1861 + + +One noonday, at my window in the town, + I saw a sight—saddest that eyes can see— + Young soldiers marching lustily + Unto the wars, +With fifes, and flags in mottoed pageantry; + While all the porches, walks, and doors +Were rich with ladies cheering royally. + +They moved like Juny morning on the wave, + Their hearts were fresh as clover in its prime + (It was the breezy summer time), + Life throbbed so strong, +How should they dream that Death in a rosy clime + Would come to thin their shining throng? +Youth feels immortal, like the gods sublime. + +Weeks passed; and at my window, leaving bed, + By night I mused, of easeful sleep bereft, + On those ‘brave boys (Ah War! thy theft); + Some marching feet +Found pause at last by cliffs Potomac cleft; + Wakeful I mused, while in the street +Far footfalls died away till none were left. + + + + +THE STONE FLEET + + +_An Old Sailor’s Lament_ +December, 1861 + + +I have a feeling for those ships, + Each worn and ancient one, +With great bluff bows, and broad in the beam: + Ay, it was unkindly done. + But so they serve the Obsolete— + Even so, Stone Fleet! + +You’ll say I’m doting; do you think + I scudded round the Horn in one— +The _Tenedos,_ a glorious + Good old craft as ever run— + Sunk (how all unmeet!) + With the Old Stone Fleet. + +An India ship of fame was she, + Spices and shawls and fans she bore; +A whaler when the wrinkles came— + Turned off! till, spent and poor, + Her bones were sold (escheat)! + Ah! Stone Fleet. + +Four were erst patrician keels + (Names attest what families be), +The _Kensington,_ and _Richmond_ too, + _Leonidas,_ and _Lee_: + But now they have their seat + With the Old Stone Fleet. + +To scuttle them—a pirate deed— + Sack them, and dismast; +They sunk so slow, they died so hard, + But gurgling dropped at last. + Their ghosts in gales repeat + _Woe’s us, Stone Fleet!_ + +And all for naught. The waters pass— + Currents will have their way; +Nature is nobody’s ally; ’tis well; + The harbor is bettered—will stay. + A failure, and complete, + Was your Old Stone Fleet. + + + + +THE TEMERAIRE + + +_Supposed to have been suggested to an Englishman of the old order by +the fight of the Monitor and Merrimac_ + + +The gloomy hulls in armor grim, + Like clouds o’er moors have met, +And prove that oak, and iron, and man + Are tough in fibre yet. + +But Splendors wane. The sea-fight yields + No front of old display; +The garniture, emblazonment, + And heraldry all decay. + +Towering afar in parting light, + The fleets like Albion’s forelands shine— +The full-sailed fleets, the shrouded show + Of Ships-of-the-Line. + + The fighting _Temeraire,_ + Built of a thousand trees, + Lunging out her lightnings, + And beetling o’er the seas— + O Ship, how brave and fair, + That fought so oft and well, + +On open decks you manned the gun Armorial. +What cheerings did you share, + Impulsive in the van, +When down upon leagued France and Spain + We English ran— +The freshet at your bowsprit + Like the foam upon the can. +Bickering, your colors + Licked up the Spanish air, +You flapped with flames of battle-flags— + Your challenge, _Temeraire!_ +The rear ones of our fleet + They yearned to share your place, +Still vying with the Victory +Throughout that earnest race— +The Victory, whose Admiral, + With orders nobly won, +Shone in the globe of the battle glow— + The angel in that sun. +Parallel in story, + Lo, the stately pair, +As late in grapple ranging, + The foe between them there— +When four great hulls lay tiered, +And the fiery tempest cleared, +And your prizes twain appeared, _Temeraire!_ + +But Trafalgar is over now, + The quarter-deck undone; +The carved and castled navies fire + Their evening-gun. +O, Titan _Temeraire,_ + Your stern-lights fade away; +Your bulwarks to the years must yield, + And heart-of-oak decay. +A pigmy steam-tug tows you, + Gigantic, to the shore— +Dismantled of your guns and spars, + And sweeping wings of war. +The rivets clinch the iron clads, + Men learn a deadlier lore; +But Fame has nailed your battle-flags— + Your ghost it sails before: +O, the navies old and oaken, + O, the _Temeraire_ no more! + + + + +A UTILITARIAN VIEW OF THE _MONITOR’S_ FIGHT + + +Plain be the phrase, yet apt the verse, + More ponderous than nimble; +For since grimed War here laid aside +His Orient pomp, ’twould ill befit + Overmuch to ply + The rhyme’s barbaric cymbal. + +Hail to victory without the gaud + Of glory; zeal that needs no fans +Of banners; plain mechanic power +Plied cogently in War now placed— + Where War belongs— + Among the trades and artisans. + +Yet this was battle, and intense— + Beyond the strife of fleets heroic; +Deadlier, closer, calm ’mid storm; +No passion; all went on by crank, + Pivot, and screw, + And calculations of caloric. + +Needless to dwell; the story’s known. + The ringing of those plates on plates +Still ringeth round the world— +The clangor of that blacksmiths’ fray. + The anvil-din + Resounds this message from the Fates: + +War shall yet be, and to the end; + But war-paint shows the streaks of weather; +War yet shall be, but warriors +Are now but operatives; War’s made + Less grand than Peace, + And a singe runs through lace and feather. + + + + +MALVERN HILL + + +July, 1862 + + +Ye elms that wave on Malvern Hill + In prime of morn and May, +Recall ye how McClellan’s men + Here stood at bay? +While deep within yon forest dim + Our rigid comrades lay— +Some with the cartridge in their mouth, +Others with fixed arms lifted South— + Invoking so— +The cypress glades? Ah wilds of woe! + +The spires of Richmond, late beheld +Through rifts in musket-haze, +Were closed from view in clouds of dust + On leaf-walled ways, +Where streamed our wagons in caravan; + And the Seven Nights and Days +Of march and fast, retreat and fight, +Pinched our grimed faces to ghastly plight— + Does the elm wood +Recall the haggard beards of blood? + +The battle-smoked flag, with stars eclipsed, + We followed (it never fell!)— +In silence husbanded our strength— + Received their yell; +Till on this slope we patient turned + With cannon ordered well; +Reverse we proved was not defeat; +But ah, the sod what thousands meet!— + Does Malvern Wood +Bethink itself, and muse and brood? + _We elms of Malvern Hill_ + _Remember everything;_ + _But sap the twig will fill:_ + _Wag the world how it will,_ + _Leaves must be green in Spring._ + + + + +STONEWALL JACKSON + + +_Mortally wounded at Chancellorsville_ +May, 1863 + + +The Man who fiercest charged in fight, + Whose sword and prayer were long— + Stonewall! + Even him who stoutly stood for Wrong, +How can we praise? Yet coming days + Shall not forget him with this song. + +Dead is the Man whose Cause is dead, + Vainly he died and set his seal— + Stonewall! + Earnest in error, as we feel; +True to the thing he deemed was due, + True as John Brown or steel. + +Relentlessly he routed us; + But _we_ relent, for he is low— + Stonewall! + Justly his fame we outlaw; so +We drop a tear on the bold Virginian’s bier, + Because no wreath we owe. + + + + +THE HOUSE-TOP + + +July, 1863 +_A Night Piece_ + + +No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air +And binds the brain—a dense oppression, such +As tawny tigers feel in matted shades, +Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage. +Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads +Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by. +Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf +Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot. +Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought, +Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there. +The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats +And rats of the wharves. All civil charms +And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— +Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway +Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve, +And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature. +Hail to the low dull rumble, dull and dead, +And ponderous drag that shakes the wall. +Wise Draco comes, deep in the midnight roll +Of black artillery; he comes, though late; +In code corroborating Calvin’s creed +And cynic tyrannies of honest kings; +He comes, nor parlies; and the Town, redeemed, +Gives thanks devout; nor, being thankful, heeds +The grimy slur on the Republic’s faith implied, +Which holds that Man is naturally good, +And—more—is Nature’s Roman, never to be scourged. + + + + +CHATTANOOGA + + +November, 1863 + + +A kindling impulse seized the host + Inspired by heaven’s elastic air; +Their hearts outran their General’s plan, + Though Grant commanded there— + Grant, who without reserve can dare; +And, “Well, go on and do your will,” + He said, and measured the mountain then: +So master-riders fling the rein— + But you must know your men. + +On yester-morn in grayish mist, + Armies like ghosts on hills had fought, +And rolled from the cloud their thunders loud + The Cumberlands far had caught: + To-day the sunlit steeps are sought. +Grant stood on cliffs whence all was plain, + And smoked as one who feels no cares; +But mastered nervousness intense +Alone such calmness wears. + +The summit-cannon plunge their flame + Sheer down the primal wall, +But up and up each linking troop + In stretching festoons crawl— + Nor fire a shot. Such men appall +The foe, though brave. He, from the brink, + Looks far along the breadth of slope, +And sees two miles of dark dots creep, + And knows they mean the cope. + +He sees them creep. Yet here and there + Half hid ’mid leafless groves they go; +As men who ply through traceries high + Of turreted marbles show— + So dwindle these to eyes below. +But fronting shot and flanking shell + Sliver and rive the inwoven ways; +High tops of oaks and high hearts fall, + But never the climbing stays. + +From right to left, from left to right + They roll the rallying cheer— +Vie with each other, brother with brother, + Who shall the first appear— + What color-bearer with colors clear +In sharp relief, like sky-drawn Grant, + Whose cigar must now be near the stump— +While in solicitude his back + Heaps slowly to a hump. + +Near and more near; till now the flags + Run like a catching flame; +And one flares highest, to peril nighest— + _He_ means to make a name: + Salvos! they give him his fame. +The staff is caught, and next the rush, + And then the leap where death has led; +Flag answered flag along the crest, + And swarms of rebels fled. + +But some who gained the envied Alp, + And—eager, ardent, earnest there— +Dropped into Death’s wide-open arms, + Quelled on the wing like eagles struck in air— + Forever they slumber young and fair, +The smile upon them as they died; + Their end attained, that end a height: +Life was to these a dream fulfilled, + And death a starry night. + + + + +ON THE PHOTOGRAPH OF A CORPS COMMANDER + + +Ay, man is manly. Here you see + The warrior-carriage of the head, +And brave dilation of the frame; + And lighting all, the soul that led +In Spottsylvania’s charge to victory, + Which justifies his fame. + +A cheering picture. It is good + To look upon a Chief like this, +In whom the spirit moulds the form. + Here favoring Nature, oft remiss, +With eagle mien expressive has endued + A man to kindle strains that warm. + +Trace back his lineage, and his sires, + Yeoman or noble, you shall find +Enrolled with men of Agincourt, + Heroes who shared great Harry’s mind. +Down to us come the knightly Norman fires, + And front the Templars bore. + +Nothing can lift the heart of man + Like manhood in a fellow-man. +The thought of heaven’s great King afar +But humbles us—too weak to scan; +But manly greatness men can span, + And feel the bonds that draw. + + + + +THE SWAMP ANGEL + + +There is a coal-black Angel + With a thick Afric lip, +And he dwells (like the hunted and harried) + In a swamp where the green frogs dip. +But his face is against a City + Which is over a bay of the sea, +And he breathes with a breath that is blastment, + And dooms by a far decree. + +By night there is fear in the City, + Through the darkness a star soareth on; +There’s a scream that screams up to the zenith, + Then the poise of a meteor lone— +Lighting far the pale fright of the faces, + And downward the coming is seen; +Then the rush, and the burst, and the havoc, + And wails and shrieks between. + +It comes like the thief in the gloaming; + It comes, and none may foretell +The place of the coming—the glaring; + They live in a sleepless spell +That wizens, and withers, and whitens; + It ages the young, and the bloom +Of the maiden is ashes of roses— + The Swamp Angel broods in his gloom. + +Swift is his messengers’ going, + But slowly he saps their halls, +As if by delay deluding. + They move from their crumbling walls +Farther and farther away; + But the Angel sends after and after, +By night with the flame of his ray— + By night with the voice of his screaming— +Sends after them, stone by stone, + And farther walls fall, farther portals, +And weed follows weed through the Town. + +Is this the proud City? the scorner + Which never would yield the ground? +Which mocked at the coal-black Angel? + The cup of despair goes round. +Vainly he calls upon Michael + (The white man’s seraph was he,) +For Michael has fled from his tower + To the Angel over the sea. +Who weeps for the woeful City + Let him weep for our guilty kind; +Who joys at her wild despairing— +Christ, the Forgiver, convert his mind. + + + + +SHERIDAN AT CEDAR CREEK + + +October, 1864 + + +Shoe the steed with silver + That bore him to the fray, +When he heard the guns at dawning— + Miles away; +When he heard them calling, calling— + Mount! nor stay: + Quick, or all is lost; + They’ve surprised and stormed the post, + They push your routed host— +Gallop! retrieve the day. + +House the horse in ermine— + For the foam-flake blew +White through the red October; + He thundered into view; +They cheered him in the looming. + Horseman and horse they knew. + The turn of the tide began, + The rally of bugles ran, + He swung his hat in the van; +The electric hoof-spark flew. + +Wreathe the steed and lead him— + For the charge he led +Touched and turned the cypress + Into amaranths for the head +Of Philip, king of riders, + Who raised them from the dead. + The camp (at dawning lost), + By eve, recovered—forced, + Rang with laughter of the host +At belated Early fled. + +Shroud the horse in sable— + For the mounds they heap! +There is firing in the Valley, + And yet no strife they keep; +It is the parting volley, + It is the pathos deep. + There is glory for the brave + Who lead, and nobly save, + But no knowledge in the grave +Where the nameless followers sleep. + + + + +IN THE PRISON PEN + + +1864 + + +Listless he eyes the palisades + And sentries in the glare; +’Tis barren as a pelican-beach + But his world is ended there. + +Nothing to do; and vacant hands + Bring on the idiot-pain; +He tries to think—to recollect, + But the blur is on his brain. + +Around him swarm the plaining ghosts + Like those on Virgil’s shore— +A wilderness of faces dim, + And pale ones gashed and hoar. + +A smiting sun. No shed, no tree; + He totters to his lair— +A den that sick hands dug in earth + Ere famine wasted there, + +Or, dropping in his place, he swoons, + Walled in by throngs that press, +Till forth from the throngs they bear him dead— + Dead in his meagreness. + + + + +THE COLLEGE COLONEL + + +He rides at their head; + A crutch by his saddle just slants in view, +One slung arm is in splints, you see, + Yet he guides his strong steed—how coldly too. + +He brings his regiment home— + Not as they filed two years before, +But a remnant half-tattered, and battered, and worn, +Like castaway sailors, who—stunned + By the surf’s loud roar, + Their mates dragged back and seen no more— +Again and again breast the surge, + And at last crawl, spent, to shore. + +A still rigidity and pale— + An Indian aloofness lones his brow; +He has lived a thousand years +Compressed in battle’s pains and prayers, + Marches and watches slow. + +There are welcoming shouts, and flags; + Old men off hat to the Boy, +Wreaths from gay balconies fall at his feet, +But to _him_—there comes alloy. + +It is not that a leg is lost, + It is not that an arm is maimed, +It is not that the fever has racked— + Self he has long disclaimed. + +But all through the Seven Days’ Fight, + And deep in the Wilderness grim, +And in the field-hospital tent, + And Petersburg crater, and dim +Lean brooding in Libby, there came— + Ah heaven!—what _truth_ to him. + + + + +THE MARTYR + + +_Indicative of the passion of the people on the 15th of April, 1865_ + + +Good Friday was the day + Of the prodigy and crime, +When they killed him in his pity, + When they killed him in his prime +Of clemency and calm— + When with yearning he was filled + To redeem the evil-willed, +And, though conqueror, be kind; + But they killed him in his kindness, + In their madness and their blindness, +And they killed him from behind. + + There is sobbing of the strong, + And a pall upon the land; + But the People in their weeping + Bare the iron hand; + Beware the People weeping + When they bare the iron hand. + +He lieth in his blood— + The father in his face; +They have killed him, the Forgiver— + The Avenger takes his place, +The Avenger wisely stern, + Who in righteousness shall do + What the heavens call him to, +And the parricides remand; + For they killed him in his kindness, + In their madness and their blindness, +And his blood is on their hand. + + There is sobbing of the strong, + And a pall upon the land; + But the People in their weeping + Bare the iron hand: + Beware the People weeping + When they bare the iron hand. + + + + +REBEL COLOR-BEARERS AT SHILOH + + +_A plea against the vindictive cry raised by civilians shortly after +the surrender at Appomattox_ + + +The color-bearers facing death +White in the whirling sulphurous wreath, + Stand boldly out before the line; +Right and left their glances go, +Proud of each other, glorying in their show; +Their battle-flags about them blow, + And fold them as in flame divine: +Such living robes are only seen +Round martyrs burning on the green— +And martyrs for the Wrong have been. + +Perish their Cause! but mark the men— +Mark the planted statues, then +Draw trigger on them if you can. + +The leader of a patriot-band +Even so could view rebels who so could stand; + And this when peril pressed him sore, +Left aidless in the shivered front of war— + Skulkers behind, defiant foes before, +And fighting with a broken brand. +The challenge in that courage rare— +Courage defenseless, proudly bare— +Never could tempt him; he could dare +Strike up the leveled rifle there. + +Sunday at Shiloh, and the day +When Stonewall charged—McClellan’s crimson May, +And Chickamauga’s wave of death, +And of the Wilderness the cypress wreath— + All these have passed away. +The life in the veins of Treason lags, +Her daring color-bearers drop their flags, + And yield. _Now_ shall we fire? + Can poor spite be? + Shall nobleness in victory less aspire + Than in reverse? Spare Spleen her ire, + And think how Grant met Lee. + + + + +AURORA BOREALIS + + +_Commemorative of the Dissolution of armies at the Peace_ +May, 1865 + + +What power disbands the Northern Lights + After their steely play? +The lonely watcher feels an awe + Of Nature’s sway, + As when appearing, + He marked their flashed uprearing + In the cold gloom— + Retreatings and advancings, +(Like dallyings of doom), + Transitions and enhancings, + And bloody ray. + +The phantom-host has faded quite, + Splendor and Terror gone +Portent or promise—and gives way + To pale, meek Dawn; + The coming, going, + Alike in wonder showing— + Alike the God, + Decreeing and commanding +The million blades that glowed, + The muster and disbanding— + Midnight and Morn. + + + + +THE RELEASED REBEL PRISONER + + +June, 1865 + + +Armies he’s seen—the herds of war, + But never such swarms of men +As now in the Nineveh of the North— + How mad the Rebellion then! + +And yet but dimly he divines + The depth of that deceit, +And superstitution of vast pride + Humbled to such defeat. + +Seductive shone the Chiefs in arms— + His steel the nearest magnet drew; +Wreathed with its kind, the Gulf-weed drives— + ’Tis Nature’s wrong they rue. + +His face is hidden in his beard, + But his heart peers out at eye— +And such a heart! like a mountain-pool + Where no man passes by. + +He thinks of Hill—a brave soul gone; + And Ashby dead in pale disdain; +And Stuart with the Rupert-plume, + Whose blue eye never shall laugh again. + +He hears the drum; he sees our boys +From his wasted fields return; +Ladies feast them on strawberries, + And even to kiss them yearn. + +He marks them bronzed, in soldier-trim, + The rifle proudly borne; +They bear it for an heirloom home, + And he—disarmed—jail-worn. + +Home, home—his heart is full of it; + But home he never shall see, +Even should he stand upon the spot: + ’Tis gone!—where his brothers be. + +The cypress-moss from tree to tree + Hangs in his Southern land; +As weird, from thought to thought of his + Run memories hand in hand. + +And so he lingers—lingers on + In the City of the Foe— +His cousins and his countrymen + Who see him listless go. + + + + +“FORMERLY A SLAVE” + + +_An idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the Spring Exhibition of the +National Academy, 1865_ + + +The sufferance of her race is shown, + And retrospect of life, +Which now too late deliverance dawns upon; + Yet is she not at strife. + +Her children’s children they shall know + The good withheld from her; +And so her reverie takes prophetic cheer— + In spirit she sees the stir. + +Far down the depth of thousand years, + And marks the revel shine; +Her dusky face is lit with sober light, + Sibylline, yet benign. + + + + +ON THE SLAIN COLLEGIANS + + +Youth is the time when hearts are large, + And stirring wars +Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn + To the blade it draws. +If woman incite, and duty show + (Though made the mask of Cain), +Or whether it be Truth’s sacred cause, + Who can aloof remain +That shares youth’s ardor, uncooled by the snow + Of wisdom or sordid gain? + +The liberal arts and nurture sweet + Which give his gentleness to man— + Train him to honor, lend him grace +Through bright examples meet— +That culture which makes never wan +With underminings deep, but holds + The surface still, its fitting place, + And so gives sunniness to the face +And bravery to the heart; what troops + Of generous boys in happiness thus bred— + Saturnians through life’s Tempe led, +Went from the North and came from the South, +With golden mottoes in the mouth, + To lie down midway on a bloody bed. + +Woe for the homes of the North, +And woe for the seats of the South: +All who felt life’s spring in prime, +And were swept by the wind of their place and time— + All lavish hearts, on whichever side, +Of birth urbane or courage high, +Armed them for the stirring wars— + Armed them—some to die. + Apollo-like in pride. +Each would slay his Python—caught +The maxims in his temple taught— + Aflame with sympathies whose blaze +Perforce enwrapped him—social laws, + Friendship and kin, and by-gone days— +Vows, kisses—every heart unmoors, +And launches into the seas of wars. +What could they else—North or South? +Each went forth with blessings given +By priests and mothers in the name of Heaven; + And honor in both was chief. +Warred one for Right, and one for Wrong? +So be it; but they both were young— +Each grape to his cluster clung, +All their elegies are sung. +The anguish of maternal hearts + Must search for balm divine; +But well the striplings bore their fated parts + (The heavens all parts assign)— +Never felt life’s care or cloy. +Each bloomed and died an unabated Boy; +Nor dreamed what death was—thought it mere +Sliding into some vernal sphere. +They knew the joy, but leaped the grief, +Like plants that flower ere comes the leaf— +Which storms lay low in kindly doom, +And kill them in their flush of bloom. + + + + +AMERICA + + +I + + +Where the wings of a sunny Dome expand +I saw a Banner in gladsome air— +Starry, like Berenice’s Hair— +Afloat in broadened bravery there; +With undulating long-drawn flow, +As tolled Brazilian billows go +Voluminously o’er the Line. +The Land reposed in peace below; + The children in their glee +Were folded to the exulting heart + Of young Maternity. + + +II + + +Later, and it streamed in fight + When tempest mingled with the fray, +And over the spear-point of the shaft + I saw the ambiguous lightning play. +Valor with Valor strove, and died: +Fierce was Despair, and cruel was Pride; +And the lorn Mother speechless stood, +Pale at the fury of her brood. + + +III + + +Yet later, and the silk did wind + Her fair cold form; +Little availed the shining shroud, + Though ruddy in hue, to cheer or warm. +A watcher looked upon her low, and said— +She sleeps, but sleeps, she is not dead. + But in that sleeps contortion showed +The terror of the vision there— + A silent vision unavowed, +Revealing earth’s foundation bare, + And Gorgon in her hidden place. +It was a thing of fear to see + So foul a dream upon so fair a face, +And the dreamer lying in that starry shroud. + + +IV + + +But from the trance she sudden broke— + The trance, or death into promoted life; +At her feet a shivered yoke, +And in her aspect turned to heaven + No trace of passion or of strife— +A clear calm look. It spake of pain, +But such as purifies from stain— +Sharp pangs that never come again— + And triumph repressed by knowledge meet, +Power dedicate, and hope grown wise, + And youth matured for age’s seat— +Law on her brow and empire in her eyes. + So she, with graver air and lifted flag; +While the shadow, chased by light, +Fled along the far-drawn height, + And left her on the crag. + + + + +INSCRIPTION + + +_For Graves at Pea Ridge, Arkansas_ + + +Let none misgive we died amiss + When here we strove in furious fight: +Furious it was; nathless was this + Better than tranquil plight, +And tame surrender of the Cause +Hallowed by hearts and by the laws. + We here who warred for Man and Right, +The choice of warring never laid with us. + There we were ruled by the traitor’s choice. + Nor long we stood to trim and poise, +But marched and fell—victorious! + + + + +THE FORTITUDE OF THE NORTH + + +_Under the Disaster of the Second Manassas_ + + +They take no shame for dark defeat + While prizing yet each victory won, +Who fight for the Right through all retreat, + Nor pause until their work is done. +The Cape-of-Storms is proof to every throe; + Vainly against that foreland beat +Wild winds aloft and wilder waves below: +The black cliffs gleam through rents in sleet +When the livid Antarctic storm-clouds glow. + + + + +THE MOUND BY THE LAKE + + +The grass shall never forget this grave. +When homeward footing it in the sun + After the weary ride by rail, +The stripling soldiers passed her door, + Wounded perchance, or wan and pale, +She left her household work undone— +Duly the wayside table spread, + With evergreens shaded, to regale +Each travel-spent and grateful one. +So warm her heart—childless—unwed, +Who like a mother comforted. + + + + +ON THE SLAIN AT CHICKAMAUGA + + +Happy are they and charmed in life + Who through long wars arrive unscarred +At peace. To such the wreath be given, +If they unfalteringly have striven— + In honor, as in limb, unmarred. +Let cheerful praise be rife, + And let them live their years at ease, +Musing on brothers who victorious died— + Loved mates whose memory shall ever please. + +And yet mischance is honorable too— + Seeming defeat in conflict justified +Whose end to closing eyes is hid from view. +The will, that never can relent— +The aim, survivor of the bafflement, + Make this memorial due. + + + + +AN UNINSCRIBED MONUMENT + + +_On one of the Battle-fields of the Wilderness_ + + +Silence and solitude may hint + (Whose home is in yon piney wood) +What I, though tableted, could never tell— +The din which here befell, + And striving of the multitude. +The iron cones and spheres of death + Set round me in their rust, + These, too, if just, +Shall speak with more than animated breath. + Thou who beholdest, if thy thought, +Not narrowed down to personal cheer, +Take in the import of the quiet here— + The after-quiet—the calm full fraught; +Thou too wilt silent stand— +Silent as I, and lonesome as the land. + + + + +ON THE GRAVE OF A YOUNG CAVALRY OFFICER KILLED IN THE VALLEY OF +VIRGINIA + + +Beauty and youth, with manners sweet, and friends— + Gold, yet a mind not unenriched had he +Whom here low violets veil from eyes. + But all these gifts transcended be: +His happier fortune in this mound you see. + + + + +A REQUIEM + + +_For Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports_ + + +When, after storms that woodlands rue, + To valleys comes atoning dawn, +The robins blithe their orchard-sports renew; + And meadow-larks, no more withdrawn +Caroling fly in the languid blue; +The while, from many a hid recess, +Alert to partake the blessedness, +The pouring mites their airy dance pursue. + So, after ocean’s ghastly gales, +When laughing light of hoyden morning breaks, + Every finny hider wakes— + From vaults profound swims up with glittering scales; + Through the delightsome sea he sails, +With shoals of shining tiny things +Frolic on every wave that flings + Against the prow its showery spray; +All creatures joying in the morn, +Save them forever from joyance torn, + Whose bark was lost where now the dolphins play; +Save them that by the fabled shore, + Down the pale stream are washed away, +Far to the reef of bones are borne; + And never revisits them the light, +Nor sight of long-sought land and pilot more; + Nor heed they now the lone bird’s flight +Round the lone spar where mid-sea surges pour. + + + + +COMMEMORATIVE OF A NAVAL VICTORY + + +Sailors there are of the gentlest breed, + Yet strong, like every goodly thing; +The discipline of arms refines, + And the wave gives tempering. + The damasked blade its beam can fling; +It lends the last grave grace: +The hawk, the hound, and sworded nobleman + In Titian’s picture for a king, +Are of hunter or warrior race. + +In social halls a favored guest + In years that follow victory won, +How sweet to feel your festal fame + In woman’s glance instinctive thrown: + Repose is yours—your deed is known, +It musks the amber wine; +It lives, and sheds a light from storied days + Rich as October sunsets brown, +Which make the barren place to shine. + +But seldom the laurel wreath is seen + Unmixed with pensive pansies dark; +There’s a light and a shadow on every man + Who at last attains his lifted mark— + Nursing through night the ethereal spark. +Elate he never can be; +He feels that spirit which glad had hailed his worth, + Sleep in oblivion.—The shark +Glides white through the phosphorus sea. + + + + +A MEDITATION + + +How often in the years that close, + When truce had stilled the sieging gun, +The soldiers, mounting on their works, + With mutual curious glance have run +From face to face along the fronting show, +And kinsman spied, or friend—even in a foe. + +What thoughts conflicting then were shared, + While sacred tenderness perforce +Welled from the heart and wet the eye; + And something of a strange remorse +Rebelled against the sanctioned sin of blood, +And Christian wars of natural brotherhood. + +Then stirred the god within the breast— + The witness that is man’s at birth; +A deep misgiving undermined + Each plea and subterfuge of earth; +They felt in that rapt pause, with warning rife, +Horror and anguish for the civil strife. + +Of North or South they reeked not then, + Warm passion cursed the cause of war: +Can Africa pay back this blood + Spilt on Potomac’s shore? +Yet doubts, as pangs, were vain the strife to stay, +And hands that fain had clasped again could slay. + +How frequent in the camp was seen + The herald from the hostile one, +A guest and frank companion there + When the proud formal talk was done; +The pipe of peace was smoked even ’mid the war, +And fields in Mexico again fought o’er. + +In Western battle long they lay + So near opposed in trench or pit, +That foeman unto foeman called + As men who screened in tavern sit: +“You bravely fight” each to the other said— +“Toss us a biscuit!” o’er the wall it sped. + +And pale on those same slopes, a boy— + A stormer, bled in noon-day glare; +No aid the Blue-coats then could bring, + He cried to them who nearest were, +And out there came ’mid howling shot and shell +A daring foe who him befriended well. + +Mark the great Captains on both sides, + The soldiers with the broad renown— +They all were messmates on the Hudson’s marge, + Beneath one roof they laid them down; +And, free from hate in many an after pass, +Strove as in school-boy rivalry of the class. + +A darker side there is; but doubt + In Nature’s charity hovers there: +If men for new agreement yearn, + Then old upbraiding best forbear: +“The South’s the sinner!” Well, so let it be; +But shall the North sin worse, and stand the Pharisee? + +O, now that brave men yield the sword, + Mine be the manful soldier-view; +By how much more they boldly warred, + By so much more is mercy due: +When Vicksburg fell, and the moody files marched out, +Silent the victors stood, scorning to raise a shout. + + + + +POEMS FROM MARDI + + + + +WE FISH + + +We fish, we fish, we merrily swim, +We care not for friend nor for foe. + Our fins are stout, + Our tails are out, +As through the seas we go. + +Fish, Fish, we are fish with red gills; + Naught disturbs us, our blood is at zero: +We are buoyant because of our bags, + Being many, each fish is a hero. +We care not what is it, this life + That we follow, this phantom unknown; +To swim, it’s exceedingly pleasant,— + So swim away, making a foam. +This strange looking thing by our side, + Not for safety, around it we flee:— +Its shadow’s so shady, that’s all,— + We only swim under its lee. +And as for the eels there above, + And as for the fowls of the air, +We care not for them nor their ways, + As we cheerily glide afar! + +We fish, we fish, we merrily swim, +We care not for friend nor for foe: + Our fins are stout, + Our tails are out, +As through the seas we go. + + + + +INVOCATION + + +Ha, ha, gods and kings; fill high, one and all; +Drink, drink! shout and drink! mad respond to the call! +Fill fast, and fill full; ’gainst the goblet ne’er sin; +Quaff there, at high tide, to the uttermost rim:— + Flood-tide, and soul-tide to the brim! + +Who with wine in him fears? who thinks of his cares? +Who sighs to be wise, when wine in him flares? +Water sinks down below, in currents full slow; +But wine mounts on high with its genial glow:— + Welling up, till the brain overflow! + +As the spheres, with a roll, some fiery of soul, +Others golden, with music, revolve round the pole; +So let our cups, radiant with many hued wines, +Round and round in groups circle, our Zodiac’s Signs:— + Round reeling, and ringing their chimes! + +Then drink, gods and kings; wine merriment brings; +It bounds through the veins; there, jubilant sings. +Let it ebb, then, and flow; wine never grows dim; +Drain down that bright tide at the foam beaded rim:— + Fill up, every cup, to the brim! + + + + +DIRGE + + +We drop our dead in the sea, + The bottomless, bottomless sea; +Each bubble a hollow sigh, + As it sinks forever and aye. + +We drop our dead in the sea,— + The dead reek not of aught; +We drop our dead in the sea,— + The sea ne’er gives it a thought. + +Sink, sink, oh corpse, still sink, + Far down in the bottomless sea, +Where the unknown forms do prowl, + Down, down in the bottomless sea. + +’Tis night above, and night all round, + And night will it be with thee; +As thou sinkest, and sinkest for aye, + Deeper down in the bottomless sea. + + + + +MARLENA + + +Far off in the sea is Marlena, +A land of shades and streams, +A land of many delights, +Dark and bold, thy shores, Marlena; +But green, and timorous, thy soft knolls, +Crouching behind the woodlands. +All shady thy hills; all gleaming thy springs, +Like eyes in the earth looking at you. +How charming thy haunts, Marlena!— +Oh, the waters that flow through Onimoo; +Oh, the leaves that rustle through Ponoo: +Oh, the roses that blossom in Tarma. +Come, and see the valley of Vina: +How sweet, how sweet, the Isles from Hina: +’Tis aye afternoon of the full, full moon, +And ever the season of fruit, +And ever the hour of flowers, +And never the time of rains and gales, +All in and about Marlena. +Soft sigh the boughs in the stilly air, +Soft lap the beach the billows there; +And in the woods or by the streams, +You needs must nod in the Land of Dreams. + + + + +PIPE SONG + + +Care is all stuff:— + Puff! Puff! +To puff is enough:— + Puff! Puff +More musky than snuff, +And warm is a puff:— + Puff! Puff +Here we sit mid our puffs, +Like old lords in their ruffs, +Snug as bears in their muffs:— + Puff! Puff +Then puff, puff, puff, +For care is all stuff, +Puffed off in a puff— + Puff! Puff! + + + + +SONG OF YOOMY + + +Departed the pride, and the glory of Mardi: +The vaunt of her isles sleeps deep in the sea, + That rolls o’er his corse with a hush, + His warriors bend over their spears, + His sisters gaze upward and mourn. + Weep, weep, for Adondo is dead! + The sun has gone down in a shower; + Buried in clouds the face of the moon; +Tears stand in the eyes of the starry skies, + And stand in the eyes of the flowers; +And streams of tears are the trickling brooks, + Coursing adown the mountains.— + Departed the pride, and the glory of Mardi: + The vaunt of her isles sleeps deep in the sea. +Fast falls the small rain on its bosom that sobs,— + Not showers of rain, but the tears of Oro. + + + + +GOLD + + + We rovers bold, + To the land of Gold, +Over the bowling billows are gliding: + Eager to toil, + For the golden spoil, +And every hardship biding. + See! See! +Before our prows’ resistless dashes +The gold-fish fly in golden flashes! + ’Neath a sun of gold, + We rovers bold, +On the golden land are gaining; + And every night, + We steer aright, +By golden stars unwaning! +All fires burn a golden glare: +No locks so bright as golden hair! + All orange groves have golden gushings; + All mornings dawn with golden flushings! +In a shower of gold, say fables old, +A maiden was won by the god of gold! + In golden goblets wine is beaming: + On golden couches kings are dreaming! + The Golden Rule dries many tears! + The Golden Number rules the spheres! +Gold, gold it is, that sways the nations: +Gold! gold! the center of all rotations! + On golden axles worlds are turning: + With phosphorescence seas are burning! + All fire-flies flame with golden gleamings! + Gold-hunters’ hearts with golden dreamings! + With golden arrows kings are slain: + With gold we’ll buy a freeman’s name! +In toilsome trades, for scanty earnings, +At home we’ve slaved, with stifled yearnings: +No light! no hope! Oh, heavy woe! +When nights fled fast, and days dragged slow. + But joyful now, with eager eye, + Fast to the Promised Land we fly: + Where in deep mines, + The treasure shines; + Or down in beds of golden streams, + The gold-flakes glance in golden gleams! + How we long to sift, + That yellow drift! + Rivers! Rivers! cease your goings! + Sand-bars! rise, and stay the tide! + ’Till we’ve gained the golden flowing; + And in the golden haven ride! + + + + +THE LAND OF LOVE + + +Hail! voyagers, hail! +Whence e’er ye come, where’er ye rove, + No calmer strand, + No sweeter land, +Will e’er ye view, than the Land of Love! + + Hail! voyagers, hail! +To these, our shores, soft gales invite: + The palm plumes wave, + The billows lave, +And hither point fix’d stars of light! + + Hail! voyagers, hail! +Think not our groves wide brood with gloom; + In this, our isle, + Bright flowers smile: +Full urns, rose-heaped, these valleys bloom. + + Hail! voyagers, hail! +Be not deceived; renounce vain things; + Ye may not find + A tranquil mind, +Though hence ye sail with swiftest wings. + + Hail! voyagers, hail! +Time flies full fast; life soon is o’er; + And ye may mourn, + That hither borne, +Ye left behind our pleasant shore. + + + + +POEMS FROM CLAREL + + + + +DIRGE + + +Stay, Death, Not mine the Christus-wand +Wherewith to charge thee and command: +I plead. Most gently hold the hand +Of her thou leadest far away; +Fear thou to let her naked feet +Tread ashes—but let mosses sweet +Her footing tempt, where’er ye stray. +Shun Orcus; win the moonlit land +Belulled—the silent meadows lone, +Where never any leaf is blown +From lily-stem in Azrael’s hand. +There, till her love rejoin her lowly +(Pensive, a shade, but all her own) +On honey feed her, wild and holy; +Or trance her with thy choicest charm. +And if, ere yet the lover’s free, +Some added dusk thy rule decree— +That shadow only let it be +Thrown in the moon-glade by the palm. + + + + +EPILOGUE + + +_If Luther’s day expand to Darwin’s year,_ +_Shall that exclude the hope—foreclose the fear?_ + + +Unmoved by all the claims our times avow, +The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade; +And comes Despair, whom not her calm may cow, +And coldly on that adamantine brow +Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade. +But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns) +With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust, +Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns +The sign o’ the cross—_the spirit above the dust!_ + + Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate— +The harps of heaven and dreary gongs of hell; +Science the feud can only aggravate— +No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell: +The running battle of the star and clod +Shall run forever—if there be no God. + + Degrees we know, unknown in days before; +The light is greater, hence the shadow more; +And tantalized and apprehensive Man +Appealing—Wherefore ripen us to pain? +Seems there the spokesman of dumb Nature’s train. + + But through such strange illusions have they passed +Who in life’s pilgrimage have baffled striven— +Even death may prove unreal at the last, +And stoics be astounded into heaven. + + Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned— +Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind; +That like the crocus budding through the snow— +That like a swimmer rising from the deep— +That like a burning secret which doth go +Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep; +Emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea, +And prove that death but routs life into victory. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12841 *** |