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diff --git a/old/12841-h/12841-h.htm b/old/12841-h/12841-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dcec711 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12841-h/12841-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5112 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of John Marr and Other Poems, by Herman Melville</title> + +<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + </head> + <body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of John Marr and Other Poems, by Herman Melville</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: John Marr and Other Poems</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Herman Melville</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 7, 2004 [eBook #12841]<br /> +[Most recently updated: June 17, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Geoff Palmer</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN MARR AND OTHER POEMS ***</div> + +<h1>John Marr and Other Poems</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">By Herman Melville</h2> + +<h3><i>With An Introductory Note By</i><br/> +HENRY CHAPIN</h3> + +<h3>MCMXXII</h3> + +<hr /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">INTRODUCTORY NOTE</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02"><b>JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">BRIDEGROOM DICK</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">TOM DEADLIGHT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">JACK ROY</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07"><b>SEA PIECES</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">THE HAGLETS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">THE AEOLIAN HARP</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">TO THE MASTER OF THE <i>METEOR</i></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">FAR OFF-SHORE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">THE MAN-OF-WAR HAWK</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap13">THE FIGURE-HEAD</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap14">THE GOOD CRAFT <i>SNOW BIRD</i></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap15">OLD COUNSEL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap16">THE TUFT OF KELP</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap17">THE MALDIVE SHARK</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap18">TO NED</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap19">CROSSING THE TROPICS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap20">THE BERG</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap21">THE ENVIABLE ISLES</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap22">PEBBLES</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap23"><b>POEMS FROM TIMOLEON</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap24">LINES TRACED UNDER AN IMAGE OF AMOR THREATENING</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap25">THE NIGHT MARCH</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap26">THE RAVAGED VILLA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap27">THE NEW ZEALOT TO THE SUN</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap28">MONODY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap29">LONE FOUNTS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap30">THE BENCH OF BOORS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap31">ART</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap32">THE ENTHUSIAST</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap33">SHELLEY’S VISION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap34">THE MARCHIONESS OF BRINVILLIERS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap35">THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap36">HERBA SANTA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap37">OFF CAPE COLONNA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap38">THE APPARITION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap39">L’ENVOI</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap40">SUPPLEMENT</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap41"><b>POEMS FROM BATTLE PIECES</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap42">THE PORTENT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap43">FROM THE CONFLICT OF CONVICTIONS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap44">THE MARCH INTO VIRGINIA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap45">BALL’S BLUFF</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap46">THE STONE FLEET</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap47">THE TEMERAIRE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap48">A UTILITARIAN VIEW OF THE <i>MONITOR’S</i> FIGHT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap49">MALVERN HILL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap50">STONEWALL JACKSON</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap51">THE HOUSE-TOP</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap52">CHATTANOOGA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap53">ON THE PHOTOGRAPH OF A CORPS COMMANDER</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap54">THE SWAMP ANGEL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap55">SHERIDAN AT CEDAR CREEK</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap56">IN THE PRISON PEN</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap57">THE COLLEGE COLONEL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap58">THE MARTYR</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap59">REBEL COLOR-BEARERS AT SHILOH</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap60">AURORA BOREALIS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap61">THE RELEASED REBEL PRISONER</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap62">“FORMERLY A SLAVE”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap63">ON THE SLAIN COLLEGIANS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap64">AMERICA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap65">INSCRIPTION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap66">THE FORTITUDE OF THE NORTH</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap67">THE MOUND BY THE LAKE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap68">ON THE SLAIN AT CHICKAMAUGA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap69">AN UNINSCRIBED MONUMENT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap70">ON THE GRAVE OF A YOUNG CAVALRY OFFICER KILLED IN THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap71">A REQUIEM</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap72">COMMEMORATIVE OF A NAVAL VICTORY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap73">A MEDITATION</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap74"><b>POEMS FROM MARDI</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap75">WE FISH</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap76">INVOCATION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap77">DIRGE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap78">MARLENA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap79">PIPE SONG</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap80">SONG OF YOOMY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap81">GOLD</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap82">THE LAND OF LOVE</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap83"><b>POEMS FROM CLAREL</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap84">DIRGE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap85">EPILOGUE</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a> +INTRODUCTORY NOTE</h2> + +<p> +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 <i>John Marr</i> in their +entirety and added those others from his <i>Battle Pieces</i>, <i>Timoleon,</i> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a> +JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a> +JOHN MARR AND OTHER SAILORS</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Since as in night’s deck-watch ye show,<br/> +Why, lads, so silent here to me,<br/> +Your watchmate of times long ago?<br/> +Once, for all the darkling sea,<br/> +You your voices raised how clearly,<br/> +Striking in when tempest sung;<br/> +Hoisting up the storm-sail cheerly,<br/> +<i>Life is storm—let storm!</i> you rung.<br/> +Taking things as fated merely,<br/> +Childlike though the world ye spanned;<br/> +Nor holding unto life too dearly,<br/> +Ye who held your lives in hand—<br/> +Skimmers, who on oceans four<br/> +Petrels were, and larks ashore.<br/> +<br/> +O, not from memory lightly flung,<br/> +Forgot, like strains no more availing,<br/> +The heart to music haughtier strung;<br/> +Nay, frequent near me, never staleing,<br/> +Whose good feeling kept ye young.<br/> +Like tides that enter creek or stream,<br/> +Ye come, ye visit me, or seem<br/> +Swimming out from seas of faces,<br/> +Alien myriads memory traces,<br/> +To enfold me in a dream!<br/> +<br/> +I yearn as ye. But rafts that strain,<br/> +Parted, shall they lock again?<br/> +Twined we were, entwined, then riven,<br/> +Ever to new embracements driven,<br/> +Shifting gulf-weed of the main!<br/> +And how if one here shift no more,<br/> +Lodged by the flinging surge ashore?<br/> +Nor less, as now, in eve’s decline,<br/> +Your shadowy fellowship is mine.<br/> +Ye float around me, form and feature:—<br/> +Tattooings, ear-rings, love-locks curled;<br/> +Barbarians of man’s simpler nature,<br/> +Unworldly servers of the world.<br/> +Yea, present all, and dear to me,<br/> +Though shades, or scouring China’s sea.<br/> +<br/> +Whither, whither, merchant-sailors,<br/> +Whitherward now in roaring gales?<br/> +Competing still, ye huntsman-whalers,<br/> +In leviathan’s wake what boat prevails?<br/> +And man-of-war’s men, whereaway?<br/> +If now no dinned drum beat to quarters<br/> +On the wilds of midnight waters—<br/> +Foemen looming through the spray;<br/> +Do yet your gangway lanterns, streaming,<br/> +Vainly strive to pierce below,<br/> +When, tilted from the slant plank gleaming,<br/> +A brother you see to darkness go?<br/> +<br/> +But, gunmates lashed in shotted canvas,<br/> +If where long watch-below ye keep,<br/> +Never the shrill <i>“All hands up hammocks!”</i><br/> +Breaks the spell that charms your sleep,<br/> +And summoning trumps might vainly call,<br/> +And booming guns implore—<br/> +A beat, a heart-beat musters all,<br/> +One heart-beat at heart-core.<br/> +It musters. But to clasp, retain;<br/> +To see you at the halyards main—<br/> +To hear your chorus once again! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a> +BRIDEGROOM DICK</h2> + +<p class="center"> +1876 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Sunning ourselves in October on a day<br/> +Balmy as spring, though the year was in decay,<br/> +I lading my pipe, she stirring her tea,<br/> +My old woman she says to me,<br/> +“Feel ye, old man, how the season mellows?”<br/> +And why should I not, blessed heart alive,<br/> +Here mellowing myself, past sixty-five,<br/> +To think o’ the May-time o’ pennoned young fellows<br/> +This stripped old hulk here for years may survive.<br/> +<br/> +Ere yet, long ago, we were spliced, Bonny Blue,<br/> +(Silvery it gleams down the moon-glade o’ time,<br/> +Ah, sugar in the bowl and berries in the prime!)<br/> +Coxswain I o’ the Commodore’s crew,—<br/> +Under me the fellows that manned his fine gig,<br/> +Spinning him ashore, a king in full fig.<br/> +Chirrupy even when crosses rubbed me,<br/> +Bridegroom Dick lieutenants dubbed me.<br/> +Pleasant at a yarn, Bob o’ Linkum in a song,<br/> +Diligent in duty and nattily arrayed,<br/> +Favored I was, wife, and <i>fleeted</i> right along;<br/> +And though but a tot for such a tall grade,<br/> +A high quartermaster at last I was made.<br/> +<br/> +All this, old lassie, you have heard before,<br/> +But you listen again for the sake e’en o’ me;<br/> +No babble stales o’ the good times o’ yore<br/> +To Joan, if Darby the babbler be.<br/> +<br/> +Babbler?—O’ what? Addled brains, they forget!<br/> +O—quartermaster I; yes, the signals set,<br/> +Hoisted the ensign, mended it when frayed,<br/> +Polished up the binnacle, minded the helm,<br/> +And prompt every order blithely obeyed.<br/> +To me would the officers say a word cheery—<br/> +Break through the starch o’ the quarter-deck realm;<br/> +His coxswain late, so the Commodore’s pet.<br/> +Ay, and in night-watches long and weary,<br/> +Bored nigh to death with the navy etiquette,<br/> +Yearning, too, for fun, some younker, a cadet,<br/> +Dropping for time each vain bumptious trick,<br/> +Boy-like would unbend to Bridegroom Dick.<br/> +But a limit there was—a check, d’ ye see:<br/> +Those fine young aristocrats knew their degree.<br/> +<br/> +Well, stationed aft where their lordships keep,—<br/> +Seldom <i>going</i> forward excepting to sleep,—<br/> +I, boozing now on by-gone years,<br/> +My betters recall along with my peers.<br/> +Recall them? Wife, but I see them plain:<br/> +Alive, alert, every man stirs again.<br/> +Ay, and again on the lee-side pacing,<br/> +My spy-glass carrying, a truncheon in show,<br/> +Turning at the taffrail, my footsteps retracing,<br/> +Proud in my duty, again methinks I go.<br/> +And Dave, Dainty Dave, I mark where he stands,<br/> +Our trim sailing-master, to time the high-noon,<br/> +That thingumbob sextant perplexing eyes and hands,<br/> +Squinting at the sun, or twigging o’ the moon;<br/> +Then, touching his cap to Old Chock-a-Block<br/> +Commanding the quarter-deck,—“Sir, twelve o’clock.”<br/> +<br/> +Where sails he now, that trim sailing-master,<br/> +Slender, yes, as the ship’s sky-s’l pole?<br/> +Dimly I mind me of some sad disaster—<br/> +Dainty Dave was dropped from the navy-roll!<br/> +And ah, for old Lieutenant Chock-a-Block—<br/> +Fast, wife, chock-fast to death’s black dock!<br/> +Buffeted about the obstreperous ocean,<br/> +Fleeted his life, if lagged his promotion.<br/> +Little girl, they are all, all gone, I think,<br/> +Leaving Bridegroom Dick here with lids that wink.<br/> +<br/> +Where is Ap Catesby? The fights fought of yore<br/> +Famed him, and laced him with epaulets, and more.<br/> +But fame is a wake that after-wakes cross,<br/> +And the waters wallow all, and laugh<br/> + <i>Where’s the loss?</i><br/> +But John Bull’s bullet in his shoulder bearing<br/> +Ballasted Ap in his long sea-faring.<br/> +The middies they ducked to the man who had messed<br/> +With Decatur in the gun-room, or forward pressed<br/> +Fighting beside Perry, Hull, Porter, and the rest.<br/> +<br/> +Humped veteran o’ the Heart-o’-Oak war,<br/> +Moored long in haven where the old heroes are,<br/> +Never on <i>you</i> did the iron-clads jar!<br/> +Your open deck when the boarder assailed,<br/> +The frank old heroic hand-to-hand then availed.<br/> +<br/> +But where’s Guert Gan? Still heads he the van?<br/> +As before Vera-Cruz, when he dashed splashing through<br/> +The blue rollers sunned, in his brave gold-and-blue,<br/> +And, ere his cutter in keel took the strand,<br/> +Aloft waved his sword on the hostile land!<br/> +Went up the cheering, the quick chanticleering;<br/> +All hands vying—all colors flying:<br/> +“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” and “Row, boys, row!”<br/> +“Hey, Starry Banner!” “Hi, Santa Anna!”<br/> +Old Scott’s young dash at Mexico.<br/> +<br/> +Fine forces o’ the land, fine forces o’ the sea,<br/> +Fleet, army, and flotilla—tell, heart o’ me,<br/> +Tell, if you can, whereaway now they be!<br/> +<br/> +But ah, how to speak of the hurricane unchained—<br/> +The Union’s strands parted in the hawser over-strained;<br/> +Our flag blown to shreds, anchors gone altogether—<br/> +The dashed fleet o’ States in Secession’s foul weather.<br/> +<br/> +Lost in the smother o’ that wide public stress,<br/> +In hearts, private hearts, what ties there were snapped!<br/> +Tell, Hal—vouch, Will, o’ the ward-room mess,<br/> +On you how the riving thunder-bolt clapped.<br/> +With a bead in your eye and beads in your glass,<br/> +And a grip o’ the flipper, it was part and pass:<br/> +“Hal, must it be: Well, if come indeed the shock,<br/> +To North or to South, let the victory cleave,<br/> +Vaunt it he may on his dung-hill the cock,<br/> +But <i>Uncle Sam’s</i> eagle never crow will, believe.”<br/> +<br/> +Sentiment: ay, while suspended hung all,<br/> +Ere the guns against Sumter opened there the ball,<br/> +And partners were taken, and the red dance began,<br/> +War’s red dance o’ death!—Well, we, to a man,<br/> +We sailors o’ the North, wife, how could we lag?—<br/> +Strike with your kin, and you stick to the flag!<br/> +But to sailors o’ the South that easy way was barred.<br/> +To some, dame, believe (and I speak o’ what I know),<br/> +Wormwood the trial and the Uzzite’s black shard;<br/> +And the faithfuller the heart, the crueller the throe.<br/> +Duty? It pulled with more than one string,<br/> +This way and that, and anyhow a sting.<br/> +The flag and your kin, how be true unto both?<br/> +If either plight ye keep, then ye break the other troth.<br/> +But elect here they must, though the casuists were out;<br/> +Decide—hurry up—and throttle every doubt.<br/> +<br/> +Of all these thrills thrilled at keelson, and throes,<br/> +Little felt the shoddyites a-toasting o’ their toes;<br/> +In mart and bazar Lucre chuckled the huzza,<br/> +Coining the dollars in the bloody mint of war.<br/> +<br/> +But in men, gray knights o’ the Order o’ Scars,<br/> +And brave boys bound by vows unto Mars,<br/> +Nature grappled honor, intertwisting in the strife:—<br/> +But some cut the knot with a thoroughgoing knife.<br/> +For how when the drums beat? How in the fray<br/> +In Hampton Roads on the fine balmy day?<br/> +<br/> +There a lull, wife, befell—drop o’ silent in the din.<br/> +Let us enter that silence ere the belchings re-begin.<br/> +Through a ragged rift aslant in the cannonade’s smoke<br/> +An iron-clad reveals her repellent broadside<br/> +Bodily intact. But a frigate, all oak,<br/> +Shows honeycombed by shot, and her deck crimson-dyed.<br/> +And a trumpet from port of the iron-clad hails,<br/> +Summoning the other, whose flag never trails:<br/> +“Surrender that frigate, Will! Surrender,<br/> +Or I will sink her—<i>ram</i>, and end her!”<br/> +<br/> +’T was Hal. And Will, from the naked heart-o’-oak,<br/> +Will, the old messmate, minus trumpet, spoke,<br/> +Informally intrepid,—“Sink her, and be damned!”* [* Historic.]<br/> +Enough. Gathering way, the iron-clad <i>rammed</i>.<br/> +The frigate, heeling over, on the wave threw a dusk.<br/> +Not sharing in the slant, the clapper of her bell<br/> +The fixed metal struck—uinvoked struck the knell<br/> +Of the <i>Cumberland</i> stillettoed by the <i>Merrimac’s</i> tusk;<br/> +While, broken in the wound underneath the gun-deck,<br/> +Like a sword-fish’s blade in leviathan waylaid,<br/> +The tusk was left infixed in the fast-foundering wreck.<br/> +There, dungeoned in the cockpit, the wounded go down,<br/> +And the chaplain with them. But the surges uplift<br/> +The prone dead from deck, and for moment they drift<br/> +Washed with the swimmers, and the spent swimmers drown.<br/> +Nine fathom did she sink,—erect, though hid from light<br/> +Save her colors unsurrendered and spars that kept the height.<br/> +<br/> +Nay, pardon, old aunty! Wife, never let it fall,<br/> +That big started tear that hovers on the brim;<br/> +I forgot about your nephew and the <i>Merrimac’s</i> ball;<br/> +No more then of her, since it summons up him.<br/> +But talk o’ fellows’ hearts in the wine’s genial cup:—<br/> +Trap them in the fate, jam them in the strait,<br/> +Guns speak their hearts then, and speak right up.<br/> +The troublous colic o’ intestine war<br/> +It sets the bowels o’ affection ajar.<br/> +But, lord, old dame, so spins the whizzing world,<br/> +A humming-top, ay, for the little boy-gods<br/> +Flogging it well with their smart little rods,<br/> +Tittering at time and the coil uncurled.<br/> +<br/> +Now, now, sweetheart, you sidle away,<br/> +No, never you like <i>that</i> kind o’ <i>gay;</i><br/> +But sour if I get, giving truth her due,<br/> +Honey-sweet forever, wife, will Dick be to you!<br/> +<br/> +But avast with the War! ‘Why recall racking days<br/> +Since set up anew are the slip’s started stays?<br/> +Nor less, though the gale we have left behind,<br/> +Well may the heave o’ the sea remind.<br/> +It irks me now, as it troubled me then,<br/> +To think o’ the fate in the madness o’ men.<br/> +If Dick was with Farragut on the night-river,<br/> +When the boom-chain we burst in the fire-raft’s glare,<br/> +That blood-dyed the visage as red as the liver;<br/> +In the <i>Battle for the Bay</i> too if Dick had a share,<br/> +And saw one aloft a-piloting the war—<br/> +Trumpet in the whirlwind, a Providence in place—<br/> +Our Admiral old whom the captains huzza,<br/> +Dick joys in the man nor brags about the race.<br/> +<br/> +But better, wife, I like to booze on the days<br/> +Ere the Old Order foundered in these very frays,<br/> +And tradition was lost and we learned strange ways.<br/> +Often I think on the brave cruises then;<br/> +Re-sailing them in memory, I hail the press o’ men<br/> +On the gunned promenade where rolling they go,<br/> +Ere the dog-watch expire and break up the show.<br/> +The Laced Caps I see between forward guns;<br/> +Away from the powder-room they puff the cigar;<br/> +“Three days more, hey, the donnas and the dons!”<br/> +“Your Zeres widow, will you hunt her up, Starr?”<br/> +The Laced Caps laugh, and the bright waves too;<br/> +Very jolly, very wicked, both sea and crew,<br/> +Nor heaven looks sour on either, I guess,<br/> +Nor Pecksniff he bosses the gods’ high mess.<br/> +Wistful ye peer, wife, concerned for my head,<br/> +And how best to get me betimes to my bed.<br/> +<br/> +But king o’ the club, the gayest golden spark,<br/> +Sailor o’ sailors, what sailor do I mark?<br/> +Tom Tight, Tom Tight, no fine fellow finer,<br/> +A cutwater nose, ay, a spirited soul;<br/> +But, bowsing away at the well-brewed bowl,<br/> +He never bowled back from that last voyage to China.<br/> +<br/> +Tom was lieutenant in the brig-o’-war famed<br/> +When an officer was hung for an arch-mutineer,<br/> +But a mystery cleaved, and the captain was blamed,<br/> +And a rumpus too raised, though his honor it was clear.<br/> +And Tom he would say, when the mousers would try him,<br/> +And with cup after cup o’ Burgundy ply him:<br/> +“Gentlemen, in vain with your wassail you beset,<br/> +For the more I tipple, the tighter do I get.”<br/> +No blabber, no, not even with the can—<br/> +True to himself and loyal to his clan.<br/> +<br/> +Tom blessed us starboard and d—d us larboard,<br/> +Right down from rail to the streak o’ the garboard.<br/> +Nor less, wife, we liked him.—Tom was a man<br/> +In contrast queer with Chaplain Le Fan,<br/> +Who blessed us at morn, and at night yet again,<br/> +D—ning us only in decorous strain;<br/> +Preaching ’tween the guns—each cutlass in its place—<br/> +From text that averred old Adam a hard case.<br/> +I see him—Tom—on <i>horse-block</i> standing,<br/> +Trumpet at mouth, thrown up all amain,<br/> +An elephant’s bugle, vociferous demanding<br/> +Of topmen aloft in the hurricane of rain,<br/> +“Letting that sail there your faces flog?<br/> +Manhandle it, men, and you’ll get the good grog!”<br/> +O Tom, but he knew a blue-jacket’s ways,<br/> +And how a lieutenant may genially haze;<br/> +Only a sailor sailors heartily praise.<br/> +<br/> +Wife, where be all these chaps, I wonder?<br/> +Trumpets in the tempest, terrors in the fray,<br/> +Boomed their commands along the deck like thunder;<br/> +But silent is the sod, and thunder dies away.<br/> +But Captain Turret, <i>“Old Hemlock”</i> tall,<br/> +(A leaning tower when his tank brimmed all,)<br/> +Manoeuvre out alive from the war did he?<br/> +Or, too old for that, drift under the lee?<br/> +Kentuckian colossal, who, touching at Madeira,<br/> +The huge puncheon shipped o’ prime <i>Santa-Clara;</i><br/> +Then rocked along the deck so solemnly!<br/> +No whit the less though judicious was enough<br/> +In dealing with the Finn who made the great huff;<br/> +Our three-decker’s giant, a grand boatswain’s mate,<br/> +Manliest of men in his own natural senses;<br/> +But driven stark mad by the devil’s drugged stuff,<br/> +Storming all aboard from his run-ashore late,<br/> +Challenging to battle, vouchsafing no pretenses,<br/> +A reeling King Ogg, delirious in power,<br/> +The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to make cower.<br/> +“Put him in <i>brig</i> there!” said Lieutenant Marrot.<br/> +“Put him in <i>brig!</i>” back he mocked like a parrot;<br/> +“Try it, then!” swaying a fist like Thor’s sledge,<br/> +And making the pigmy constables hedge—<br/> +Ship’s corporals and the master-at-arms.<br/> +“In <i>brig</i> there, I say!”—They dally no more;<br/> +Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar,<br/> +Together they pounce on the formidable Finn,<br/> +Pinion and cripple and hustle him in.<br/> +Anon, under sentry, between twin guns,<br/> +He slides off in drowse, and the long night runs.<br/> +<br/> +Morning brings a summons. Whistling it calls,<br/> +Shrilled through the pipes of the boatswain’s four aids;<br/> +Trilled down the hatchways along the dusk halls:<br/> +<i>Muster to the Scourge!</i>—Dawn of doom and its blast!<br/> +As from cemeteries raised, sailors swarm before the mast,<br/> +Tumbling up the ladders from the ship’s nether shades.<br/> +<br/> +Keeping in the background and taking small part,<br/> +Lounging at their ease, indifferent in face,<br/> +Behold the trim marines uncompromised in heart;<br/> +Their Major, buttoned up, near the staff finds room—<br/> +The staff o’ lieutenants standing grouped in their place.<br/> +All the Laced Caps o’ the ward-room come,<br/> +The Chaplain among them, disciplined and dumb.<br/> +The blue-nosed boatswain, complexioned like slag,<br/> +Like a blue Monday lours—his implements in bag.<br/> +Executioners, his aids, a couple by him stand,<br/> +At a nod there the thongs to receive from his hand.<br/> +Never venturing a caveat whatever may betide,<br/> +Though functionally here on humanity’s side,<br/> +The grave Surgeon shows, like the formal physician<br/> +Attending the rack o’ the Spanish Inquisition.<br/> +<br/> +The angel o’ the “brig” brings his prisoner up;<br/> +Then, steadied by his old <i>Santa-Clara</i>, a sup,<br/> +Heading all erect, the ranged assizes there,<br/> +Lo, Captain Turret, and under starred bunting,<br/> +(A florid full face and fine silvered hair,)<br/> +Gigantic the yet greater giant confronting.<br/> +<br/> +Now the culprit he liked, as a tall captain can<br/> +A Titan subordinate and true <i>sailor-man;</i><br/> +And frequent he’d shown it—no worded advance,<br/> +But flattering the Finn with a well-timed glance.<br/> +But what of that now? In the martinet-mien<br/> +Read the <i>Articles of War</i>, heed the naval routine;<br/> +While, cut to the heart a dishonor there to win,<br/> +Restored to his senses, stood the Anak Finn;<br/> +In racked self-control the squeezed tears peeping,<br/> +Scalding the eye with repressed inkeeping.<br/> +Discipline must be; the scourge is deemed due.<br/> +But ah for the sickening and strange heart- benumbing,<br/> +Compassionate abasement in shipmates that view;<br/> +Such a grand champion shamed there succumbing!<br/> +“Brown, tie him up.”—The cord he brooked:<br/> +How else?—his arms spread apart—never threaping;<br/> +No, never he flinched, never sideways he looked,<br/> +Peeled to the waistband, the marble flesh creeping,<br/> +Lashed by the sleet the officious winds urge.<br/> +<br/> +In function his fellows their fellowship merge—<br/> +The twain standing nigh—the two boatswain’s mates,<br/> +Sailors of his grade, ay, and brothers of his mess.<br/> +With sharp thongs adroop the junior one awaits<br/> +The word to uplift.<br/> + “Untie him—so!<br/> +Submission is enough, Man, you may go.”<br/> +Then, promenading aft, brushing fat Purser Smart,<br/> +“Flog? Never meant it—hadn’t any heart.<br/> +Degrade that tall fellow? “—Such, wife, was he,<br/> +Old Captain Turret, who the brave wine could stow.<br/> +Magnanimous, you think?—But what does Dick see?<br/> +Apron to your eye! Why, never fell a blow;<br/> +Cheer up, old wifie, ’t was a long time ago.<br/> +<br/> +But where’s that sore one, crabbed and-severe,<br/> +Lieutenant Lon Lumbago, an arch scrutineer?<br/> +Call the roll to-day, would he answer—<i>Here!</i><br/> +When the <i>Blixum’s</i> fellows to quarters mustered<br/> +How he’d lurch along the lane of gun-crews clustered,<br/> +Testy as touchwood, to pry and to peer.<br/> +Jerking his sword underneath larboard arm,<br/> +He ground his worn grinders to keep himself calm.<br/> +Composed in his nerves, from the fidgets set free,<br/> +Tell, Sweet Wrinkles, alive now is he,<br/> +In Paradise a parlor where the even tempers be?<br/> +<br/> +Where’s Commander All-a-Tanto?<br/> +Where’s Orlop Bob singing up from below?<br/> +Where’s Rhyming Ned? has he spun his last canto?<br/> +Where’s Jewsharp Jim? Where’s Ringadoon Joe?<br/> +Ah, for the music over and done,<br/> +The band all dismissed save the droned trombone!<br/> +Where’s Glenn o’ the gun-room, who loved Hot-Scotch—<br/> +Glen, prompt and cool in a perilous watch?<br/> +Where’s flaxen-haired Phil? a gray lieutenant?<br/> +Or rubicund, flying a dignified pennant?<br/> +<br/> +But where sleeps his brother?—the cruise it was o’er,<br/> +But ah, for death’s grip that welcomed him ashore!<br/> +Where’s Sid, the cadet, so frank in his brag,<br/> +Whose toast was audacious—“<i>Here’s Sid, and Sid’s flag!</i>”<br/> +Like holiday-craft that have sunk unknown,<br/> +May a lark of a lad go lonely down?<br/> +Who takes the census under the sea?<br/> +Can others like old ensigns be,<br/> +Bunting I hoisted to flutter at the gaff—<br/> +Rags in end that once were flags<br/> +Gallant streaming from the staff?<br/> +<br/> +Such scurvy doom could the chances deal<br/> +To Top-Gallant Harry and Jack Genteel?<br/> +Lo, Genteel Jack in hurricane weather,<br/> +Shagged like a bear, like a red lion roaring;<br/> +But O, so fine in his chapeau and feather,<br/> +In port to the ladies never once <i>jawing;</i><br/> +All bland <i>politesse,</i> how urbane was he—<br/> +<i>“Oui, mademoiselle”—“Ma chère amie!”</i><br/> +<br/> +’T was Jack got up the ball at Naples,<br/> +Gay in the old <i>Ohio</i> glorious;<br/> +His hair was curled by the berth-deck barber,<br/> +Never you’d deemed him a cub of rude Boreas;<br/> +In tight little pumps, with the grand dames in rout,<br/> +A-flinging his shapely foot all about;<br/> +His watch-chain with love’s jeweled tokens abounding,<br/> +Curls ambrosial shaking out odors,<br/> +Waltzing along the batteries, astounding<br/> +The gunner glum and the grim-visaged loaders.<br/> +<br/> +Wife, where be all these blades, I wonder,<br/> +Pennoned fine fellows, so strong, so gay?<br/> +Never their colors with a dip dived under;<br/> +Have they hauled them down in a lack-lustre day,<br/> +Or beached their boats in the Far, Far Away?<br/> +Hither and thither, blown wide asunder,<br/> +Where’s this fleet, I wonder and wonder.<br/> +Slipt their cables, rattled their adieu,<br/> +(Whereaway pointing? to what rendezvous?)<br/> +Out of sight, out of mind, like the crack <i>Constitution,</i><br/> +And many a keel time never shall renew—<br/> +<i>Bon Homme Dick</i> o’ the buff Revolution,<br/> +The <i>Black Cockade</i> and the staunch <i>True-Blue.</i><br/> +<br/> +Doff hats to Decatur! But where is his blazon?<br/> +Must merited fame endure time’s wrong—<br/> +Glory’s ripe grape wizen up to a raisin?<br/> +Yes! for Nature teems, and the years are strong,<br/> +And who can keep the tally o’ the names that fleet along!<br/> +<br/> +But his frigate, wife, his bride? Would blacksmiths brown<br/> +Into smithereens smite the solid old renown?<br/> +Rivetting the bolts in the iron-clad’s shell,<br/> +Hark to the hammers with <i>a rat-tat-tat;</i><br/> +“Handier a <i>derby</i> than a laced cocked hat!<br/> +The <i>Monitor</i> was ugly, but she served us right well,<br/> +Better than the <i>Cumberland,</i> a beauty and the belle.”<br/> +<br/> +<i>Better than the Cumberland!</i>—Heart alive in me!<br/> +That battlemented hull, Tantallon o’ the sea,<br/> +Kicked in, as at Boston the taxed chests o’ tea!<br/> +Ay, spurned by the <i>ram,</i> once a tall, shapely craft,<br/> +But lopped by the Rebs to an iron-beaked raft—<br/> +A blacksmith’s unicorn in armor <i>cap-a-pie</i>.<br/> +<br/> +Under the water-line a <i>ram’s</i> blow is dealt:<br/> +And foul fall the knuckles that strike below the belt.<br/> +Nor brave the inventions that serve to replace<br/> +The openness of valor while dismantling the grace.<br/> +<br/> +Aloof from all this and the never-ending game,<br/> +Tantamount to teetering, plot and counterplot;<br/> +Impenetrable armor—all-perforating shot;<br/> +Aloof, bless God, ride the war-ships of old,<br/> +A grand fleet moored in the roadstead of fame;<br/> +Not submarine sneaks with <i>them</i> are enrolled;<br/> +Their long shadows dwarf us, their flags are as flame.<br/> +<br/> +Don’t fidget so, wife; an old man’s passion<br/> +Amounts to no more than this smoke that I puff;<br/> +There, there, now, buss me in good old fashion;<br/> +A died-down candle will flicker in the snuff.<br/> +<br/> +But one last thing let your old babbler say,<br/> +What Decatur’s coxswain said who was long ago hearsed,<br/> +“Take in your flying-kites, for there comes a lubber’s day<br/> +When gallant things will go, and the three-deckers first.”<br/> +<br/> +My pipe is smoked out, and the grog runs slack;<br/> +But bowse away, wife, at your blessed Bohea;<br/> +This empty can here must needs solace me—<br/> +Nay, sweetheart, nay; I take that back;<br/> +Dick drinks from your eyes and he finds no lack! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a> +TOM DEADLIGHT</h2> + +<p> +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 +<i>Dreadnaught, 98,</i> 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. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Farewell and adieu to you noble hearties,—<br/> + Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain,<br/> +For I’ve received orders for to sail for the Deadman,<br/> + But hope with the grand fleet to see you again.<br/> +<br/> +I have hove my ship to, with main-top-sail aback, boys;<br/> + I have hove my ship to, for the strike soundings clear—<br/> +The black scud a’flying; but, by God’s blessing, dam’ me,<br/> + Right up the Channel for the Deadman I’ll steer.<br/> +<br/> +I have worried through the waters that are called the Doldrums,<br/> + And growled at Sargasso that clogs while ye grope—<br/> +Blast my eyes, but the light-ship is hid by the mist, lads:—<br/> + <i>Flying Dutchman</i>—odds bobbs—off the Cape of Good Hope!<br/> +<br/> +But what’s this I feel that is fanning my cheek, Matt?<br/> + The white goney’s wing?—how she rolls!— ’t is the Cape!—<br/> +Give my kit to the mess, Jock, for kin none is mine, none;<br/> + And tell <i>Holy Joe</i> to avast with the crape.<br/> +<br/> +Dead reckoning, says <i>Joe</i>, it won’t do to go by;<br/> + But they doused all the glims, Matt, in sky t’ other night.<br/> +Dead reckoning is good for to sail for the Deadman;<br/> + And Tom Deadlight he thinks it may reckon near right.<br/> +<br/> +The signal!—it streams for the grand fleet to anchor.<br/> + The captains—the trumpets—the hullabaloo!<br/> +Stand by for blue-blazes, and mind your shank-painters,<br/> + For the Lord High Admiral, he’s squinting at you!<br/> +<br/> +But give me my <i>tot</i>, Matt, before I roll over;<br/> + Jock, let’s have your flipper, it’s good for to feel;<br/> +And don’t sew me up without <i>baccy</i> in mouth, boys,<br/> + And don’t blubber like lubbers when I turn up my keel. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a> +JACK ROY</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Kept up by relays of generations young<br/> +Never dies at halyards the blithe chorus sung;<br/> +While in sands, sounds, and seas where the storm-petrels cry,<br/> +Dropped mute around the globe, these halyard singers lie.<br/> +Short-lived the clippers for racing-cups that run,<br/> +And speeds in life’s career many a lavish mother’s-son.<br/> +<br/> +But thou, manly king o’ the old <i>Splendid’s</i> crew,<br/> +The ribbons o’ thy hat still a-fluttering, should fly—<br/> +A challenge, and forever, nor the bravery should rue.<br/> +Only in a tussle for the starry flag high,<br/> +When ’tis piety to do, and privilege to die.<br/> +Then, only then, would heaven think to lop<br/> +Such a cedar as the captain o’ the <i>Splendid’s</i> main-top:<br/> +A belted sea-gentleman; a gallant, off-hand<br/> +Mercutio indifferent in life’s gay command.<br/> +Magnanimous in humor; when the splintering shot fell,<br/> +“Tooth-picks a-plenty, lads; thank ’em with a shell!”<br/> +<br/> +Sang Larry o’ the <i>Cannakin,</i> smuggler o’ the wine,<br/> +At mess between guns, lad in jovial recline:<br/> +“In Limbo our Jack he would chirrup up a cheer,<br/> +The martinet there find a chaffing mutineer;<br/> +From a thousand fathoms down under hatches o’ your Hades,<br/> +He’d ascend in love-ditty, kissing fingers to your ladies!”<br/> +<br/> +Never relishing the knave, though allowing for the menial,<br/> +Nor overmuch the king, Jack, nor prodigally genial.<br/> +Ashore on liberty he flashed in escapade,<br/> +Vaulting over life in its levelness of grade,<br/> +Like the dolphin off Africa in rainbow a-sweeping—<br/> +Arch iridescent shot from seas languid sleeping.<br/> +<br/> +Larking with thy life, if a joy but a toy,<br/> +Heroic in thy levity wert thou, Jack Roy. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a> +SEA PIECES</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a> +THE HAGLETS</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +By chapel bare, with walls sea-beat<br/> +The lichened urns in wilds are lost<br/> +About a carved memorial stone<br/> +That shows, decayed and coral-mossed,<br/> +A form recumbent, swords at feet,<br/> +Trophies at head, and kelp for a winding-sheet.<br/> +<br/> +I invoke thy ghost, neglected fane,<br/> +Washed by the waters’ long lament;<br/> +I adjure the recumbent effigy<br/> +To tell the cenotaph’s intent—<br/> +Reveal why fagotted swords are at feet,<br/> +Why trophies appear and weeds are the winding-sheet.<br/> +<br/> +By open ports the Admiral sits,<br/> +And shares repose with guns that tell<br/> +Of power that smote the arm’d Plate Fleet<br/> +Whose sinking flag-ship’s colors fell;<br/> +But over the Admiral floats in light<br/> +His squadron’s flag, the red-cross Flag of the White.<br/> +<br/> +The eddying waters whirl astern,<br/> +The prow, a seedsman, sows the spray;<br/> +With bellying sails and buckling spars<br/> +The black hull leaves a Milky Way;<br/> +Her timbers thrill, her batteries roll,<br/> +She revelling speeds exulting with pennon at pole,<br/> +<br/> +But ah, for standards captive trailed<br/> +For all their scutcheoned castles’ pride—<br/> +Castilian towers that dominate Spain,<br/> +Naples, and either Ind beside;<br/> +Those haughty towers, armorial ones,<br/> +Rue the salute from the Admiral’s dens of guns.<br/> +<br/> +Ensigns and arms in trophy brave,<br/> +Braver for many a rent and scar,<br/> +The captor’s naval hall bedeck,<br/> +Spoil that insures an earldom’s star—<br/> +Toledoes great, grand draperies, too,<br/> +Spain’s steel and silk, and splendors from Peru.<br/> +<br/> +But crippled part in splintering fight,<br/> +The vanquished flying the victor’s flags,<br/> +With prize-crews, under convoy-guns,<br/> +Heavy the fleet from Opher drags—<br/> +The Admiral crowding sail ahead,<br/> +Foremost with news who foremost in conflict sped.<br/> +<br/> +But out from cloistral gallery dim,<br/> +In early night his glance is thrown;<br/> +He marks the vague reserve of heaven,<br/> +He feels the touch of ocean lone;<br/> +Then turns, in frame part undermined,<br/> +Nor notes the shadowing wings that fan behind.<br/> +<br/> +There, peaked and gray, three haglets fly,<br/> +And follow, follow fast in wake<br/> +Where slides the cabin-lustre shy,<br/> +And sharks from man a glamour take,<br/> +Seething along the line of light<br/> +In lane that endless rules the war-ship’s flight.<br/> +<br/> +The sea-fowl here, whose hearts none know,<br/> +They followed late the flag-ship quelled,<br/> +(As now the victor one) and long<br/> +Above her gurgling grave, shrill held<br/> +With screams their wheeling rites—then sped<br/> +Direct in silence where the victor led.<br/> +<br/> +Now winds less fleet, but fairer, blow,<br/> +A ripple laps the coppered side,<br/> +While phosphor sparks make ocean gleam,<br/> +Like camps lit up in triumph wide;<br/> +With lights and tinkling cymbals meet<br/> +Acclaiming seas the advancing conqueror greet.<br/> +<br/> +But who a flattering tide may trust,<br/> +Or favoring breeze, or aught in end?—<br/> +Careening under startling blasts<br/> +The sheeted towers of sails impend;<br/> +While, gathering bale, behind is bred<br/> +A livid storm-bow, like a rainbow dead.<br/> +<br/> +At trumpet-call the topmen spring;<br/> +And, urged by after-call in stress,<br/> +Yet other tribes of tars ascend<br/> +The rigging’s howling wilderness;<br/> +But ere yard-ends alert they win,<br/> +Hell rules in heaven with hurricane-fire and din.<br/> +<br/> +The spars, athwart at spiry height,<br/> +Like quaking Lima’s crosses rock;<br/> +Like bees the clustering sailors cling<br/> +Against the shrouds, or take the shock<br/> +Flat on the swept yard-arms aslant,<br/> +Dipped like the wheeling condor’s pinions gaunt.<br/> +<br/> +A LULL! and tongues of languid flame<br/> +Lick every boom, and lambent show<br/> +Electric ’gainst each face aloft;<br/> +The herds of clouds with bellowings go:<br/> +The black ship rears—beset—harassed,<br/> +Then plunges far with luminous antlers vast.<br/> +<br/> +In trim betimes they turn from land,<br/> +Some shivered sails and spars they stow;<br/> +One watch, dismissed, they troll the can,<br/> +While loud the billow thumps the bow—<br/> +Vies with the fist that smites the board,<br/> +Obstreperous at each reveller’s jovial word.<br/> +<br/> +Of royal oak by storms confirmed,<br/> +The tested hull her lineage shows:<br/> +Vainly the plungings whelm her prow—<br/> +She rallies, rears, she sturdier grows:<br/> +Each shot-hole plugged, each storm-sail home,<br/> +With batteries housed she rams the watery dome.<br/> +<br/> +DIM seen adrift through driving scud,<br/> +The wan moon shows in plight forlorn;<br/> +Then, pinched in visage, fades and fades<br/> +Like to the faces drowned at morn,<br/> +When deeps engulfed the flag-ship’s crew,<br/> +And, shrilling round, the inscrutable haglets flew.<br/> +<br/> +And still they fly, nor now they cry,<br/> +But constant fan a second wake,<br/> +Unflagging pinions ply and ply,<br/> +Abreast their course intent they take;<br/> +Their silence marks a stable mood,<br/> +They patient keep their eager neighborhood.<br/> +<br/> +Plumed with a smoke, a confluent sea,<br/> +Heaved in a combing pyramid full,<br/> +Spent at its climax, in collapse<br/> +Down headlong thundering stuns the hull:<br/> +The trophy drops; but, reared again,<br/> +Shows Mars’ high-altar and contemns the main.<br/> +<br/> +REBUILT it stands, the brag of arms,<br/> +Transferred in site—no thought of where<br/> +The sensitive needle keeps its place,<br/> +And starts, disturbed, a quiverer there;<br/> +The helmsman rubs the clouded glass—<br/> +Peers in, but lets the trembling portent pass.<br/> +<br/> +Let pass as well his shipmates do<br/> +(Whose dream of power no tremors jar)<br/> +Fears for the fleet convoyed astern:<br/> +“Our flag they fly, they share our star;<br/> +Spain’s galleons great in hull are stout:<br/> +Manned by our men—like us they’ll ride it out.”<br/> +<br/> +Tonight’s the night that ends the week—<br/> +Ends day and week and month and year:<br/> +A fourfold imminent flickering time,<br/> +For now the midnight draws anear:<br/> +Eight bells! and passing-bells they be—<br/> +The Old year fades, the Old Year dies at sea.<br/> +<br/> +He launched them well. But shall the New<br/> +Redeem the pledge the Old Year made,<br/> +Or prove a self-asserting heir?<br/> +But healthy hearts few qualms invade:<br/> +By shot-chests grouped in bays ’tween guns<br/> +The gossips chat, the grizzled, sea-beat ones.<br/> +<br/> +And boyish dreams some graybeards blab:<br/> +“To sea, my lads, we go no more<br/> +Who share the Acapulco prize;<br/> +We’ll all night in, and bang the door;<br/> +Our ingots red shall yield us bliss:<br/> +Lads, golden years begin to-night with this!”<br/> +<br/> +Released from deck, yet waiting call,<br/> +Glazed caps and coats baptized in storm,<br/> +A watch of Laced Sleeves round the board<br/> +Draw near in heart to keep them warm:<br/> +“Sweethearts and wives!” clink, clink, they meet,<br/> +And, quaffing, dip in wine their beards of sleet.<br/> +“Ay, let the star-light stay withdrawn,<br/> +So here her hearth-light memory fling,<br/> +So in this wine-light cheer be born,<br/> +And honor’s fellowship weld our ring—<br/> +Honor! our Admiral’s aim foretold:<br/> +<br/> +<i>A tomb or a trophy,</i> and lo, ’t is a trophy and gold!”<br/> +But he, a unit, sole in rank,<br/> +Apart needs keep his lonely state,<br/> +The sentry at his guarded door<br/> +Mute as by vault the sculptured Fate;<br/> +Belted he sits in drowsy light,<br/> +And, hatted, nods—the Admiral of the White.<br/> +<br/> +He dozes, aged with watches passed—<br/> +Years, years of pacing to and fro;<br/> +He dozes, nor attends the stir<br/> +In bullioned standards rustling low,<br/> +Nor minds the blades whose secret thrill<br/> +Perverts overhead the magnet’s Polar will:—<br/> +<br/> +LESS heeds the shadowing three that play<br/> +And follow, follow fast in wake,<br/> +Untiring wing and lidless eye—<br/> +Abreast their course intent they take;<br/> +Or sigh or sing, they hold for good<br/> +The unvarying flight and fixed inveterate mood.<br/> +<br/> +In dream at last his dozings merge,<br/> +In dream he reaps his victor’s fruit;<br/> +The Flags-o’-the-Blue, the Flags-o’-the-Red,<br/> +Dipped flags of his country’s fleets salute<br/> +His Flag-o’-the-White in harbor proud—<br/> +But why should it blench? Why turn to a painted shroud?<br/> +<br/> +The hungry seas they hound the hull,<br/> +The sharks they dog the haglets’ flight;<br/> +With one consent the winds, the waves<br/> +In hunt with fins and wings unite,<br/> +While drear the harps in cordage sound<br/> +Remindful wails for old Armadas drowned.<br/> +<br/> +Ha—yonder! are they Northern Lights?<br/> +Or signals flashed to warn or ward?<br/> +Yea, signals lanced in breakers high;<br/> +But doom on warning follows hard:<br/> +While yet they veer in hope to shun,<br/> +They strike! and thumps of hull and heart are one.<br/> +<br/> +But beating hearts a drum-beat calls<br/> +And prompt the men to quarters go;<br/> +Discipline, curbing nature, rules—<br/> +Heroic makes who duty know:<br/> +They execute the trump’s command,<br/> +Or in peremptory places wait and stand.<br/> +<br/> +Yet cast about in blind amaze—<br/> +As through their watery shroud they peer:<br/> +“We tacked from land: then how betrayed?<br/> +Have currents swerved us—snared us here?”<br/> +None heed the blades that clash in place<br/> +Under lamps dashed down that lit the magnet’s case.<br/> +<br/> +Ah, what may live, who mighty swim,<br/> +Or boat-crew reach that shore forbid,<br/> +Or cable span? Must victors drown—<br/> +Perish, even as the vanquished did?<br/> +Man keeps from man the stifled moan;<br/> +They shouldering stand, yet each in heart how lone.<br/> +<br/> +Some heaven invoke; but rings of reefs<br/> +Prayer and despair alike deride<br/> +In dance of breakers forked or peaked,<br/> +Pale maniacs of the maddened tide;<br/> +While, strenuous yet some end to earn,<br/> +The haglets spin, though now no more astern.<br/> +<br/> +Like shuttles hurrying in the looms<br/> +Aloft through rigging frayed they ply—<br/> +Cross and recross—weave and inweave,<br/> +Then lock the web with clinching cry<br/> +Over the seas on seas that clasp<br/> +The weltering wreck where gurgling ends the gasp.<br/> +<br/> +Ah, for the Plate-Fleet trophy now,<br/> +The victor’s voucher, flags and arms;<br/> +Never they’ll hang in Abbey old<br/> +And take Time’s dust with holier palms;<br/> +Nor less content, in liquid night,<br/> +Their captor sleeps—the Admiral of the White.<br/> +<br/> +Imbedded deep with shells<br/> +And drifted treasure deep,<br/> +Forever he sinks deeper in<br/> +Unfathomable sleep—<br/> +His cannon round him thrown,<br/> +His sailors at his feet,<br/> +The wizard sea enchanting them<br/> +Where never haglets beat.<br/> +<br/> +On nights when meteors play<br/> +And light the breakers dance,<br/> +The Oreads from the caves<br/> +With silvery elves advance;<br/> +And up from ocean stream,<br/> +And down from heaven far,<br/> +The rays that blend in dream<br/> +The abysm and the star. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a> +THE AEOLIAN HARP</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>At The Surf Inn</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +List the harp in window wailing<br/> + Stirred by fitful gales from sea:<br/> +Shrieking up in mad crescendo—<br/> + Dying down in plaintive key!<br/> +<br/> +Listen: less a strain ideal<br/> +Than Ariel’s rendering of the Real.<br/> + What that Real is, let hint<br/> + A picture stamped in memory’s mint.<br/> +<br/> +Braced well up, with beams aslant,<br/> +Betwixt the continents sails the <i>Phocion,</i><br/> +For Baltimore bound from Alicant.<br/> +Blue breezy skies white fleeces fleck<br/> +Over the chill blue white-capped ocean:<br/> +From yard-arm comes—“Wreck ho, a wreck!”<br/> +<br/> +Dismasted and adrift,<br/> +Longtime a thing forsaken;<br/> +Overwashed by every wave<br/> +Like the slumbering kraken;<br/> +Heedless if the billow roar,<br/> +Oblivious of the lull,<br/> +Leagues and leagues from shoal or shore,<br/> +It swims—a levelled hull:<br/> +Bulwarks gone—a shaven wreck,<br/> +Nameless and a grass-green deck.<br/> +A lumberman: perchance, in hold<br/> +Prostrate pines with hemlocks rolled.<br/> +<br/> +It has drifted, waterlogged,<br/> +Till by trailing weeds beclogged:<br/> + Drifted, drifted, day by day,<br/> + Pilotless on pathless way.<br/> +It has drifted till each plank<br/> +Is oozy as the oyster-bank:<br/> + Drifted, drifted, night by night,<br/> + Craft that never shows a light;<br/> +Nor ever, to prevent worse knell,<br/> +Tolls in fog the warning bell.<br/> +<br/> +From collision never shrinking,<br/> +Drive what may through darksome smother;<br/> +Saturate, but never sinking,<br/> +Fatal only to the <i>other!</i><br/> + Deadlier than the sunken reef<br/> +Since still the snare it shifteth,<br/> + Torpid in dumb ambuscade<br/> +Waylayingly it drifteth.<br/> +<br/> +O, the sailors—O, the sails!<br/> +O, the lost crews never heard of!<br/> +Well the harp of Ariel wails<br/> +Thought that tongue can tell no word of! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a> +TO THE MASTER OF THE <i>METEOR</i></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Lonesome on earth’s loneliest deep,<br/> +Sailor! who dost thy vigil keep—<br/> +Off the Cape of Storms dost musing sweep<br/> +Over monstrous waves that curl and comb;<br/> +Of thee we think when here from brink<br/> +We blow the mead in bubbling foam.<br/> +<br/> +Of thee we think, in a ring we link;<br/> +To the shearer of ocean’s fleece we drink,<br/> +And the <i>Meteor</i> rolling home. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a> +FAR OFF-SHORE</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Look, the raft, a signal flying,<br/> + Thin—a shred;<br/> +None upon the lashed spars lying,<br/> + Quick or dead.<br/> +<br/> +Cries the sea-fowl, hovering over,<br/> + “Crew, the crew?”<br/> +And the billow, reckless, rover,<br/> + Sweeps anew! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a> +THE MAN-OF-WAR HAWK</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Yon black man-of-war-hawk that wheels in the light<br/> +O’er the black ship’s white sky-s’l, sunned cloud to the sight,<br/> +Have we low-flyers wings to ascend to his height?<br/> +No arrow can reach him; nor thought can attain<br/> +To the placid supreme in the sweep of his reign. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap13"></a> +THE FIGURE-HEAD</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +The <i>Charles-and-Emma</i> seaward sped,<br/> +(Named from the carven pair at prow,)<br/> +He so smart, and a curly head,<br/> +She tricked forth as a bride knows how:<br/> + Pretty stem for the port, I trow!<br/> +<br/> +But iron-rust and alum-spray<br/> +And chafing gear, and sun and dew<br/> +Vexed this lad and lassie gay,<br/> +Tears in their eyes, salt tears nor few;<br/> + And the hug relaxed with the failing glue.<br/> +<br/> +But came in end a dismal night,<br/> +With creaking beams and ribs that groan,<br/> +A black lee-shore and waters white:<br/> +Dropped on the reef, the pair lie prone:<br/> + O, the breakers dance, but the winds they moan! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap14"></a> +THE GOOD CRAFT <i>SNOW BIRD</i></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Strenuous need that head-wind be<br/> + From purposed voyage that drives at last<br/> +The ship, sharp-braced and dogged still,<br/> + Beating up against the blast.<br/> +<br/> +Brigs that figs for market gather,<br/> + Homeward-bound upon the stretch,<br/> +Encounter oft this uglier weather<br/> + Yet in end their port they fetch.<br/> +<br/> +Mark yon craft from sunny Smyrna<br/> + Glazed with ice in Boston Bay;<br/> +Out they toss the fig-drums cheerly,<br/> + Livelier for the frosty ray.<br/> +<br/> +What if sleet off-shore assailed her,<br/> + What though ice yet plate her yards;<br/> +In wintry port not less she renders<br/> + Summer’s gift with warm regards!<br/> +<br/> +And, look, the underwriters’ man,<br/> + Timely, when the stevedore’s done,<br/> +Puts on his <i>specs</i> to pry and scan,<br/> +And sets her down—<i>A, No. 1.</i><br/> +<br/> +Bravo, master! Bravo, brig!<br/> + For slanting snows out of the West<br/> +Never the <i>Snow-Bird</i> cares one fig;<br/> + And foul winds steady her, though a pest. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap15"></a> +OLD COUNSEL</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Of The Young Master of a Wrecked California Clipper</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Come out of the Golden Gate,<br/> + Go round the Horn with streamers,<br/> +Carry royals early and late;<br/> +But, brother, be not over-elate—<br/> + <i>All hands save ship!</i> has startled dreamers. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap16"></a> +THE TUFT OF KELP</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +All dripping in tangles green,<br/> + Cast up by a lonely sea<br/> +If purer for that, O Weed,<br/> + Bitterer, too, are ye? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap17"></a> +THE MALDIVE SHARK</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +About the Shark, phlegmatical one,<br/> +Pale sot of the Maldive sea,<br/> +The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,<br/> +How alert in attendance be.<br/> +From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw<br/> +They have nothing of harm to dread,<br/> +But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank<br/> +Or before his Gorgonian head:<br/> +Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth<br/> +In white triple tiers of glittering gates,<br/> +And there find a haven when peril’s abroad,<br/> +An asylum in jaws of the Fates!<br/> +They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,<br/> +Yet never partake of the treat—<br/> +Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,<br/> +Pale ravener of horrible meat. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap18"></a> +TO NED</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Where is the world we roved, Ned Bunn?<br/> + Hollows thereof lay rich in shade<br/> +By voyagers old inviolate thrown<br/> + Ere Paul Pry cruised with Pelf and Trade.<br/> +To us old lads some thoughts come home<br/> +Who roamed a world young lads no more shall roam.<br/> +<br/> +Nor less the satiate year impends<br/> + When, wearying of routine-resorts,<br/> +The pleasure-hunter shall break loose,<br/> + Ned, for our Pantheistic ports:—<br/> +Marquesas and glenned isles that be<br/> +Authentic Edens in a Pagan sea.<br/> +<br/> +The charm of scenes untried shall lure,<br/> +And, Ned, a legend urge the flight—<br/> +The Typee-truants under stars<br/> +Unknown to Shakespere’s <i>Midsummer-Night;</i><br/> +And man, if lost to Saturn’s Age,<br/> +Yet feeling life no Syrian pilgrimage.<br/> +<br/> +But, tell, shall he, the tourist, find<br/> + Our isles the same in violet-glow<br/> +Enamoring us what years and years—<br/> + Ah, Ned, what years and years ago!<br/> +Well, Adam advances, smart in pace,<br/> +But scarce by violets that advance you trace.<br/> +<br/> +But we, in anchor-watches calm,<br/> + The Indian Psyche’s languor won,<br/> +And, musing, breathed primeval balm<br/> + From Edens ere yet overrun;<br/> +Marvelling mild if mortal twice,<br/> +Here and hereafter, touch a Paradise. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap19"></a> +CROSSING THE TROPICS</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>From “The Saya-y-Manto.”</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +While now the Pole Star sinks from sight<br/> + The Southern Cross it climbs the sky;<br/> +But losing thee, my love, my light,<br/> +O bride but for one bridal night,<br/> + The loss no rising joys supply.<br/> +<br/> +Love, love, the Trade Winds urge abaft,<br/> +And thee, from thee, they steadfast waft.<br/> +<br/> +By day the blue and silver sea<br/> + And chime of waters blandly fanned—<br/> +Nor these, nor Gama’s stars to me<br/> +May yield delight since still for thee<br/> + I long as Gama longed for land.<br/> +<br/> +I yearn, I yearn, reverting turn,<br/> +My heart it streams in wake astern<br/> +When, cut by slanting sleet, we swoop<br/> + Where raves the world’s inverted year,<br/> +If roses all your porch shall loop,<br/> +Not less your heart for me will droop<br/> + Doubling the world’s last outpost drear.<br/> +<br/> +O love, O love, these oceans vast:<br/> +Love, love, it is as death were past! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap20"></a> +THE BERG</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>A Dream</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +I saw a ship of martial build<br/> +(Her standards set, her brave apparel on)<br/> +Directed as by madness mere<br/> +Against a stolid iceberg steer,<br/> +Nor budge it, though the infatuate ship went down.<br/> +The impact made huge ice-cubes fall<br/> +Sullen, in tons that crashed the deck;<br/> +But that one avalanche was all<br/> +No other movement save the foundering wreck.<br/> +<br/> +Along the spurs of ridges pale,<br/> +Not any slenderest shaft and frail,<br/> +A prism over glass—green gorges lone,<br/> +Toppled; nor lace of traceries fine,<br/> +Nor pendant drops in grot or mine<br/> +Were jarred, when the stunned ship went down.<br/> +Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled<br/> +Circling one snow-flanked peak afar,<br/> +But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed<br/> +And crystal beaches, felt no jar.<br/> +No thrill transmitted stirred the lock<br/> +Of jack-straw needle-ice at base;<br/> +Towers undermined by waves—the block<br/> +Atilt impending—kept their place.<br/> +Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges<br/> +Slipt never, when by loftier edges<br/> +Through very inertia overthrown,<br/> +The impetuous ship in bafflement went down.<br/> +Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast,<br/> +With mortal damps self-overcast;<br/> +Exhaling still thy dankish breath—<br/> +Adrift dissolving, bound for death;<br/> +Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one—<br/> +A lumbering lubbard loitering slow,<br/> +Impingers rue thee and go down,<br/> +Sounding thy precipice below,<br/> +Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls<br/> +Along thy dense stolidity of walls. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap21"></a> +THE ENVIABLE ISLES</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>From “Rammon.”</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Through storms you reach them and from storms are free.<br/> + Afar descried, the foremost drear in hue,<br/> +But, nearer, green; and, on the marge, the sea<br/> + Makes thunder low and mist of rainbowed dew.<br/> +<br/> +But, inland, where the sleep that folds the hills<br/> +A dreamier sleep, the trance of God, instills—<br/> + On uplands hazed, in wandering airs aswoon,<br/> +Slow-swaying palms salute love’s cypress tree<br/> + Adown in vale where pebbly runlets croon<br/> +A song to lull all sorrow and all glee.<br/> +<br/> +Sweet-fern and moss in many a glade are here.<br/> + Where, strewn in flocks, what cheek-flushed myriads lie<br/> +Dimpling in dream—unconscious slumberers mere,<br/> + While billows endless round the beaches die. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap22"></a> +PEBBLES</h2> + +<p class="center"> +I +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Though the Clerk of the Weather insist,<br/> + And lay down the weather-law,<br/> +Pintado and gannet they wist<br/> +That the winds blow whither they list<br/> + In tempest or flaw. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +II +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Old are the creeds, but stale the schools,<br/> + Revamped as the mode may veer,<br/> +But Orm from the schools to the beaches strays<br/> +And, finding a Conch hoar with time, he delays<br/> + And reverent lifts it to ear.<br/> +That Voice, pitched in far monotone,<br/> + Shall it swerve? shall it deviate ever?<br/> +The Seas have inspired it, and Truth—<br/> + Truth, varying from sameness never. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +III +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +In hollows of the liquid hills<br/> + Where the long Blue Ridges run,<br/> +The flattery of no echo thrills,<br/> + For echo the seas have none;<br/> +Nor aught that gives man back man’s strain—<br/> +The hope of his heart, the dream in his brain. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +IV +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +On ocean where the embattled fleets repair,<br/> +Man, suffering inflictor, sails on sufferance there. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +V +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Implacable I, the old Implacable Sea:<br/> + Implacable most when most I smile serene—<br/> +Pleased, not appeased, by myriad wrecks in me. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +VI +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Curled in the comb of yon billow Andean,<br/> + Is it the Dragon’s heaven-challenging crest?<br/> +Elemental mad ramping of ravening waters—<br/> + Yet Christ on the Mount, and the dove in her nest! +</p> + +<p class="center"> +VII +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Healed of my hurt, I laud the inhuman Sea—<br/> +Yea, bless the Angels Four that there convene;<br/> +For healed I am ever by their pitiless breath<br/> +Distilled in wholesome dew named rosmarine. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap23"></a> +POEMS FROM TIMOLEON</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap24"></a> +LINES TRACED UNDER AN IMAGE OF AMOR THREATENING</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Fear me, virgin whosoever<br/> +Taking pride from love exempt,<br/> + Fear me, slighted. Never, never<br/> +Brave me, nor my fury tempt:<br/> +Downy wings, but wroth they beat<br/> +Tempest even in reason’s seat. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap25"></a> +THE NIGHT MARCH</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +With banners furled and clarions mute,<br/> + An army passes in the night;<br/> +And beaming spears and helms salute<br/> + The dark with bright.<br/> +<br/> +In silence deep the legions stream,<br/> + With open ranks, in order true;<br/> +Over boundless plains they stream and gleam—<br/> + No chief in view!<br/> +<br/> +Afar, in twinkling distance lost,<br/> + (So legends tell) he lonely wends<br/> +And back through all that shining host<br/> + His mandate sends. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap26"></a> +THE RAVAGED VILLA</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +In shards the sylvan vases lie,<br/> + Their links of dance undone,<br/> +And brambles wither by thy brim,<br/> + Choked fountain of the sun!<br/> +The spider in the laurel spins,<br/> + The weed exiles the flower:<br/> +And, flung to kiln, Apollo’s bust<br/> + Makes lime for Mammon’s tower. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap27"></a> +THE NEW ZEALOT TO THE SUN</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Persian, you rise<br/> +Aflame from climes of sacrifice<br/> + Where adulators sue,<br/> +And prostrate man, with brow abased,<br/> +Adheres to rites whose tenor traced<br/> + All worship hitherto.<br/> +<br/> + Arch type of sway,<br/> +Meetly your over-ruling ray<br/> + You fling from Asia’s plain,<br/> +Whence flashed the javelins abroad<br/> +Of many a wild incursive horde<br/> + Led by some shepherd Cain.<br/> +<br/> + Mid terrors dinned<br/> +Gods too came conquerors from your Ind,<br/> + The book of Brahma throve;<br/> +They came like to the scythed car,<br/> +Westward they rolled their empire far,<br/> + Of night their purple wove.<br/> +<br/> + Chemist, you breed<br/> +In orient climes each sorcerous weed<br/> + That energizes dream—<br/> +Transmitted, spread in myths and creeds,<br/> +Houris and hells, delirious screeds<br/> + And Calvin’s last extreme.<br/> +<br/> + What though your light<br/> +In time’s first dawn compelled the flight<br/> + Of Chaos’ startled clan,<br/> +Shall never all your darted spears<br/> +Disperse worse Anarchs, frauds and fears,<br/> + Sprung from these weeds to man?<br/> +<br/> + But Science yet<br/> +An effluence ampler shall beget,<br/> + And power beyond your play—<br/> +Shall quell the shades you fail to rout,<br/> +Yea, searching every secret out<br/> + Elucidate your ray. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap28"></a> +MONODY</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +To have known him, to have loved him<br/> + After loneness long;<br/> +And then to be estranged in life,<br/> + And neither in the wrong;<br/> +And now for death to set his seal—<br/> + Ease me, a little ease, my song!<br/> +<br/> +By wintry hills his hermit-mound<br/> + The sheeted snow-drifts drape,<br/> +And houseless there the snow-bird flits<br/> + Beneath the fir-trees’ crape:<br/> +Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine<br/> + That hid the shyest grape. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap29"></a> +LONE FOUNTS</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Though fast youth’s glorious fable flies,<br/> +View not the world with worldling’s eyes;<br/> +Nor turn with weather of the time.<br/> +Foreclose the coming of surprise:<br/> +Stand where Posterity shall stand;<br/> +Stand where the Ancients stood before,<br/> +And, dipping in lone founts thy hand,<br/> +Drink of the never-varying lore:<br/> +Wise once, and wise thence evermore. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap30"></a> +THE BENCH OF BOORS</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +In bed I muse on Tenier’s boors,<br/> +Embrowned and beery losels all;<br/> + A wakeful brain<br/> + Elaborates pain:<br/> +Within low doors the slugs of boors<br/> +Laze and yawn and doze again.<br/> +<br/> +In dreams they doze, the drowsy boors,<br/> +Their hazy hovel warm and small:<br/> + Thought’s ampler bound<br/> + But chill is found:<br/> +Within low doors the basking boors<br/> +Snugly hug the ember-mound.<br/> +<br/> +Sleepless, I see the slumberous boors<br/> +Their blurred eyes blink, their eyelids fall:<br/> + Thought’s eager sight<br/> + Aches—overbright!<br/> +Within low doors the boozy boors<br/> +Cat-naps take in pipe-bowl light. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap31"></a> +ART</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +In placid hours well-pleased we dream<br/> +Of many a brave unbodied scheme.<br/> +But form to lend, pulsed life create,<br/> +What unlike things must meet and mate:<br/> +A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;<br/> +Sad patience—joyous energies;<br/> +Humility—yet pride and scorn;<br/> +Instinct and study; love and hate;<br/> +Audacity—reverence. These must mate,<br/> +And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,<br/> +To wrestle with the angel—Art. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap32"></a> +THE ENTHUSIAST</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>“Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him.”</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Shall hearts that beat no base retreat<br/> + In youth’s magnanimous years—<br/> +Ignoble hold it, if discreet<br/> + When interest tames to fears;<br/> +Shall spirits that worship light<br/> + Perfidious deem its sacred glow,<br/> + Recant, and trudge where worldlings go,<br/> +Conform and own them right?<br/> +<br/> +Shall Time with creeping influence cold<br/> + Unnerve and cow? the heart<br/> +Pine for the heartless ones enrolled<br/> + With palterers of the mart?<br/> +Shall faith abjure her skies,<br/> + Or pale probation blench her down<br/> + To shrink from Truth so still, so lone<br/> +Mid loud gregarious lies?<br/> +<br/> +Each burning boat in Caesar’s rear,<br/> + Flames—No return through me!<br/> +So put the torch to ties though dear,<br/> + If ties but tempters be.<br/> +Nor cringe if come the night:<br/> + Walk through the cloud to meet the pall,<br/> + Though light forsake thee, never fall<br/> +From fealty to light. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap33"></a> +SHELLEY’S VISION</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Wandering late by morning seas<br/> + When my heart with pain was low—<br/> +Hate the censor pelted me—<br/> + Deject I saw my shadow go.<br/> +<br/> +In elf-caprice of bitter tone<br/> +I too would pelt the pelted one:<br/> +At my shadow I cast a stone.<br/> +<br/> +When lo, upon that sun-lit ground<br/> + I saw the quivering phantom take<br/> +The likeness of St. Stephen crowned:<br/> + Then did self-reverence awake. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap34"></a> +THE MARCHIONESS OF BRINVILLIERS</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +He toned the sprightly beam of morning<br/> + With twilight meek of tender eve,<br/> +Brightness interfused with softness,<br/> + Light and shade did weave:<br/> +And gave to candor equal place<br/> +With mystery starred in open skies;<br/> +And, floating all in sweetness, made<br/> + Her fathomless mild eyes. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap35"></a> +THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +While faith forecasts millennial years<br/> + Spite Europe’s embattled lines,<br/> +Back to the Past one glance be cast—<br/> + The Age of the Antonines!<br/> +O summit of fate, O zenith of time<br/> +When a pagan gentleman reigned,<br/> +And the olive was nailed to the inn of the world<br/> +Nor the peace of the just was feigned.<br/> + A halcyon Age, afar it shines,<br/> + Solstice of Man and the Antonines.<br/> +<br/> +Hymns to the nations’ friendly gods<br/> +Went up from the fellowly shrines,<br/> +No demagogue beat the pulpit-drum<br/> + In the Age of the Antonines!<br/> +The sting was not dreamed to be taken from death,<br/> +No Paradise pledged or sought,<br/> +But they reasoned of fate at the flowing feast,<br/> +Nor stifled the fluent thought,<br/> + We sham, we shuffle while faith declines—<br/> + They were frank in the Age of the Antonines.<br/> +<br/> +Orders and ranks they kept degree,<br/> +Few felt how the parvenu pines,<br/> +No law-maker took the lawless one’s fee<br/> + In the Age of the Antonines!<br/> +Under law made will the world reposed<br/> +And the ruler’s right confessed,<br/> +For the heavens elected the Emperor then,<br/> +The foremost of men the best.<br/> + Ah, might we read in America’s signs<br/> + The Age restored of the Antonines. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap36"></a> +HERBA SANTA</h2> + +<p class="center"> +I +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +After long wars when comes release<br/> +Not olive wands proclaiming peace<br/> + Can import dearer share<br/> +Than stems of Herba Santa hazed<br/> + In autumn’s Indian air.<br/> +Of moods they breathe that care disarm,<br/> +They pledge us lenitive and calm. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +II +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Shall code or creed a lure afford<br/> +To win all selves to Love’s accord?<br/> +When Love ordained a supper divine<br/> + For the wide world of man,<br/> +What bickerings o’er his gracious wine!<br/> + Then strange new feuds began.<br/> +<br/> +Effectual more in lowlier way,<br/> + Pacific Herb, thy sensuous plea<br/> +The bristling clans of Adam sway<br/> + At least to fellowship in thee!<br/> +Before thine altar tribal flags are furled,<br/> +Fain wouldst thou make one hearthstone of the world. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +III +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +To scythe, to sceptre, pen and hod—<br/> + Yea, sodden laborers dumb;<br/> +To brains overplied, to feet that plod,<br/> +In solace of the <i>Truce of God</i><br/> + The Calumet has come! +</p> + +<p class="center"> +IV +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Ah for the world ere Raleigh’s find<br/> + Never that knew this suasive balm<br/> +That helps when Gilead’s fails to heal,<br/> + Helps by an interserted charm.<br/> +<br/> +Insinuous thou that through the nerve<br/> + Windest the soul, and so canst win<br/> +Some from repinings, some from sin,<br/> + The Church’s aim thou dost subserve.<br/> +<br/> +The ruffled fag fordone with care<br/> + And brooding, God would ease this pain:<br/> +Him soothest thou and smoothest down<br/> + Till some content return again.<br/> +<br/> +Even ruffians feel thy influence breed<br/> + Saint Martin’s summer in the mind,<br/> +They feel this last evangel plead,<br/> +As did the first, apart from creed,<br/> + Be peaceful, man—be kind! +</p> + +<p class="center"> +V +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Rejected once on higher plain,<br/> +O Love supreme, to come again<br/> + Can this be thine?<br/> +Again to come, and win us too<br/> + In likeness of a weed<br/> +That as a god didst vainly woo,<br/> + As man more vainly bleed? +</p> + +<p class="center"> +VI +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Forbear, my soul! and in thine Eastern chamber<br/> + Rehearse the dream that brings the long release:<br/> +Through jasmine sweet and talismanic amber<br/> + Inhaling Herba Santa in the passive Pipe of Peace. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap37"></a> +OFF CAPE COLONNA</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Aloof they crown the foreland lone,<br/> + From aloft they loftier rise—<br/> +Fair columns, in the aureole rolled<br/> + From sunned Greek seas and skies.<br/> +They wax, sublimed to fancy’s view,<br/> +A god-like group against the blue.<br/> +<br/> +Over much like gods! Serene they saw<br/> + The wolf-waves board the deck,<br/> +And headlong hull of Falconer,<br/> + And many a deadlier wreck. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap38"></a> +THE APPARITION</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>The Parthenon uplifted on its rock first challenging the view on the +approach to Athens.</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Abrupt the supernatural Cross,<br/> + Vivid in startled air,<br/> +Smote the Emperor Constantine<br/> +And turned his soul’s allegiance there.<br/> +<br/> +With other power appealing down,<br/> + Trophy of Adam’s best!<br/> +If cynic minds you scarce convert,<br/> +You try them, shake them, or molest.<br/> +<br/> +Diogenes, that honest heart,<br/> + Lived ere your date began;<br/> +Thee had he seen, he might have swerved<br/> +In mood nor barked so much at Man. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap39"></a> +L’ENVOI</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>The Return of the Sire de Nesle.</i><br/> +A.D. 16 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +My towers at last! These rovings end,<br/> +Their thirst is slaked in larger dearth:<br/> +The yearning infinite recoils,<br/> + For terrible is earth.<br/> +<br/> +Kaf thrusts his snouted crags through fog:<br/> +Araxes swells beyond his span,<br/> +And knowledge poured by pilgrimage<br/> + Overflows the banks of man.<br/> +<br/> +But thou, my stay, thy lasting love<br/> +One lonely good, let this but be!<br/> +Weary to view the wide world’s swarm,<br/> + But blest to fold but thee. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap40"></a> +SUPPLEMENT</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap41"></a> +POEMS FROM BATTLE PIECES</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap42"></a> +THE PORTENT</h2> + +<p class="center"> +1859 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Hanging from the beam,<br/> + Slowly swaying (such the law),<br/> +Gaunt the shadow on your green,<br/> + Shenandoah!<br/> +The cut is on the crown<br/> +(Lo, John Brown),<br/> +And the stabs shall heal no more.<br/> +<br/> +Hidden in the cap<br/> + Is the anguish none can draw;<br/> +So your future veils its face,<br/> + Shenandoah!<br/> +But the streaming beard is shown<br/> +(Weird John Brown),<br/> +The meteor of the war. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap43"></a> +FROM THE CONFLICT OF CONVICTIONS</h2> + +<p class="center"> +1860-1 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +The Ancient of Days forever is young,<br/> + Forever the scheme of Nature thrives;<br/> +I know a wind in purpose strong—<br/> + It spins <i>against</i> the way it drives.<br/> +What if the gulfs their slimed foundations bare?<br/> +So deep must the stones be hurled<br/> +Whereon the throes of ages rear<br/> +The final empire and the happier world.<br/> +<br/> + Power unanointed may come—<br/> +Dominion (unsought by the free)<br/> + And the Iron Dome,<br/> +Stronger for stress and strain,<br/> +Fling her huge shadow athwart the main;<br/> +But the Founders’ dream shall flee.<br/> +Age after age has been,<br/> +(From man’s changeless heart their way they win);<br/> +And death be busy with all who strive—<br/> +Death, with silent negative.<br/> +<br/> + <i>Yea and Nay—</i><br/> + <i>Each hath his say;</i><br/> + <i>But God He keeps the middle way.</i><br/> + <i>None was by</i><br/> + <i>When He spread the sky;</i><br/> + <i>Wisdom is vain, and prophecy.</i> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap44"></a> +THE MARCH INTO VIRGINIA</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Ending in the First Manassas</i><br/> +July, 1861 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Did all the lets and bars appear<br/> + To every just or larger end,<br/> +Whence should come the trust and cheer?<br/> + Youth must its ignorant impulse lend—<br/> +Age finds place in the rear.<br/> + All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,<br/> +The champions and enthusiasts of the state:<br/> + Turbid ardors and vain joys<br/> + Not barrenly abate—<br/> + Stimulants to the power mature,<br/> + Preparatives of fate.<br/> +<br/> +Who here forecasteth the event?<br/> +What heart but spurns at precedent<br/> +And warnings of the wise,<br/> +Contemned foreclosures of surprise?<br/> +The banners play, the bugles call,<br/> +The air is blue and prodigal.<br/> + No berrying party, pleasure-wooed,<br/> +No picnic party in the May,<br/> +Ever went less loth than they<br/> + Into that leafy neighborhood.<br/> +In Bacchic glee they file toward Fate,<br/> +Moloch’s uninitiate;<br/> +Expectancy, and glad surmise<br/> +Of battle’s unknown mysteries.<br/> +All they feel is this: ’t is glory,<br/> +A rapture sharp, though transitory,<br/> +Yet lasting in belaureled story.<br/> +So they gayly go to fight,<br/> +Chatting left and laughing right.<br/> +<br/> +But some who this blithe mood present,<br/> + As on in lightsome files they fare,<br/> +Shall die experienced ere three days are spent—<br/> + Perish, enlightened by the vollied glare;<br/> +Or shame survive, and, like to adamant,<br/> + The throe of Second Manassas share. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap45"></a> +BALL’S BLUFF</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>A Reverie</i><br/> +October, 1861 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +One noonday, at my window in the town,<br/> + I saw a sight—saddest that eyes can see—<br/> + Young soldiers marching lustily<br/> + Unto the wars,<br/> +With fifes, and flags in mottoed pageantry;<br/> + While all the porches, walks, and doors<br/> +Were rich with ladies cheering royally.<br/> +<br/> +They moved like Juny morning on the wave,<br/> + Their hearts were fresh as clover in its prime<br/> + (It was the breezy summer time),<br/> + Life throbbed so strong,<br/> +How should they dream that Death in a rosy clime<br/> + Would come to thin their shining throng?<br/> +Youth feels immortal, like the gods sublime.<br/> +<br/> +Weeks passed; and at my window, leaving bed,<br/> + By night I mused, of easeful sleep bereft,<br/> + On those ‘brave boys (Ah War! thy theft);<br/> + Some marching feet<br/> +Found pause at last by cliffs Potomac cleft;<br/> + Wakeful I mused, while in the street<br/> +Far footfalls died away till none were left. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap46"></a> +THE STONE FLEET</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>An Old Sailor’s Lament</i><br/> +December, 1861 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +I have a feeling for those ships,<br/> + Each worn and ancient one,<br/> +With great bluff bows, and broad in the beam:<br/> + Ay, it was unkindly done.<br/> + But so they serve the Obsolete—<br/> + Even so, Stone Fleet!<br/> +<br/> +You’ll say I’m doting; do you think<br/> + I scudded round the Horn in one—<br/> +The <i>Tenedos,</i> a glorious<br/> + Good old craft as ever run—<br/> + Sunk (how all unmeet!)<br/> + With the Old Stone Fleet.<br/> +<br/> +An India ship of fame was she,<br/> + Spices and shawls and fans she bore;<br/> +A whaler when the wrinkles came—<br/> + Turned off! till, spent and poor,<br/> + Her bones were sold (escheat)!<br/> + Ah! Stone Fleet.<br/> +<br/> +Four were erst patrician keels<br/> + (Names attest what families be),<br/> +The <i>Kensington,</i> and <i>Richmond</i> too,<br/> + <i>Leonidas,</i> and <i>Lee</i>:<br/> + But now they have their seat<br/> + With the Old Stone Fleet.<br/> +<br/> +To scuttle them—a pirate deed—<br/> + Sack them, and dismast;<br/> +They sunk so slow, they died so hard,<br/> + But gurgling dropped at last.<br/> + Their ghosts in gales repeat<br/> + <i>Woe’s us, Stone Fleet!</i><br/> +<br/> +And all for naught. The waters pass—<br/> + Currents will have their way;<br/> +Nature is nobody’s ally; ’tis well;<br/> + The harbor is bettered—will stay.<br/> + A failure, and complete,<br/> + Was your Old Stone Fleet. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap47"></a> +THE TEMERAIRE</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Supposed to have been suggested to an Englishman of the old order by the +fight of the Monitor and Merrimac</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +The gloomy hulls in armor grim,<br/> + Like clouds o’er moors have met,<br/> +And prove that oak, and iron, and man<br/> + Are tough in fibre yet.<br/> +<br/> +But Splendors wane. The sea-fight yields<br/> + No front of old display;<br/> +The garniture, emblazonment,<br/> + And heraldry all decay.<br/> +<br/> +Towering afar in parting light,<br/> + The fleets like Albion’s forelands shine—<br/> +The full-sailed fleets, the shrouded show<br/> + Of Ships-of-the-Line.<br/> +<br/> + The fighting <i>Temeraire,</i><br/> + Built of a thousand trees,<br/> + Lunging out her lightnings,<br/> + And beetling o’er the seas—<br/> + O Ship, how brave and fair,<br/> + That fought so oft and well,<br/> +<br/> +On open decks you manned the gun Armorial.<br/> +What cheerings did you share,<br/> + Impulsive in the van,<br/> +When down upon leagued France and Spain<br/> + We English ran—<br/> +The freshet at your bowsprit<br/> + Like the foam upon the can.<br/> +Bickering, your colors<br/> + Licked up the Spanish air,<br/> +You flapped with flames of battle-flags—<br/> + Your challenge, <i>Temeraire!</i><br/> +The rear ones of our fleet<br/> + They yearned to share your place,<br/> +Still vying with the Victory<br/> +Throughout that earnest race—<br/> +The Victory, whose Admiral,<br/> + With orders nobly won,<br/> +Shone in the globe of the battle glow—<br/> + The angel in that sun.<br/> +Parallel in story,<br/> + Lo, the stately pair,<br/> +As late in grapple ranging,<br/> + The foe between them there—<br/> +When four great hulls lay tiered,<br/> +And the fiery tempest cleared,<br/> +And your prizes twain appeared, <i>Temeraire!</i><br/> +<br/> +But Trafalgar is over now,<br/> + The quarter-deck undone;<br/> +The carved and castled navies fire<br/> + Their evening-gun.<br/> +O, Titan <i>Temeraire,</i><br/> + Your stern-lights fade away;<br/> +Your bulwarks to the years must yield,<br/> + And heart-of-oak decay.<br/> +A pigmy steam-tug tows you,<br/> + Gigantic, to the shore—<br/> +Dismantled of your guns and spars,<br/> + And sweeping wings of war.<br/> +The rivets clinch the iron clads,<br/> + Men learn a deadlier lore;<br/> +But Fame has nailed your battle-flags—<br/> + Your ghost it sails before:<br/> +O, the navies old and oaken,<br/> + O, the <i>Temeraire</i> no more! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap48"></a> +A UTILITARIAN VIEW OF THE <i>MONITOR’S</i> FIGHT</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Plain be the phrase, yet apt the verse,<br/> + More ponderous than nimble;<br/> +For since grimed War here laid aside<br/> +His Orient pomp, ’twould ill befit<br/> + Overmuch to ply<br/> + The rhyme’s barbaric cymbal.<br/> +<br/> +Hail to victory without the gaud<br/> + Of glory; zeal that needs no fans<br/> +Of banners; plain mechanic power<br/> +Plied cogently in War now placed—<br/> + Where War belongs—<br/> + Among the trades and artisans.<br/> +<br/> +Yet this was battle, and intense—<br/> + Beyond the strife of fleets heroic;<br/> +Deadlier, closer, calm ’mid storm;<br/> +No passion; all went on by crank,<br/> + Pivot, and screw,<br/> + And calculations of caloric.<br/> +<br/> +Needless to dwell; the story’s known.<br/> + The ringing of those plates on plates<br/> +Still ringeth round the world—<br/> +The clangor of that blacksmiths’ fray.<br/> + The anvil-din<br/> + Resounds this message from the Fates:<br/> +<br/> +War shall yet be, and to the end;<br/> + But war-paint shows the streaks of weather;<br/> +War yet shall be, but warriors<br/> +Are now but operatives; War’s made<br/> + Less grand than Peace,<br/> + And a singe runs through lace and feather. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap49"></a> +MALVERN HILL</h2> + +<p class="center"> +July, 1862 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Ye elms that wave on Malvern Hill<br/> + In prime of morn and May,<br/> +Recall ye how McClellan’s men<br/> + Here stood at bay?<br/> +While deep within yon forest dim<br/> + Our rigid comrades lay—<br/> +Some with the cartridge in their mouth,<br/> +Others with fixed arms lifted South—<br/> + Invoking so—<br/> +The cypress glades? Ah wilds of woe!<br/> +<br/> +The spires of Richmond, late beheld<br/> +Through rifts in musket-haze,<br/> +Were closed from view in clouds of dust<br/> + On leaf-walled ways,<br/> +Where streamed our wagons in caravan;<br/> + And the Seven Nights and Days<br/> +Of march and fast, retreat and fight,<br/> +Pinched our grimed faces to ghastly plight—<br/> + Does the elm wood<br/> +Recall the haggard beards of blood?<br/> +<br/> +The battle-smoked flag, with stars eclipsed,<br/> + We followed (it never fell!)—<br/> +In silence husbanded our strength—<br/> + Received their yell;<br/> +Till on this slope we patient turned<br/> + With cannon ordered well;<br/> +Reverse we proved was not defeat;<br/> +But ah, the sod what thousands meet!—<br/> + Does Malvern Wood<br/> +Bethink itself, and muse and brood?<br/> + <i>We elms of Malvern Hill</i><br/> + <i>Remember everything;</i><br/> + <i>But sap the twig will fill:</i><br/> + <i>Wag the world how it will,</i><br/> + <i>Leaves must be green in Spring.</i> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap50"></a> +STONEWALL JACKSON</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Mortally wounded at Chancellorsville</i><br/> +May, 1863 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +The Man who fiercest charged in fight,<br/> + Whose sword and prayer were long—<br/> + Stonewall!<br/> + Even him who stoutly stood for Wrong,<br/> +How can we praise? Yet coming days<br/> + Shall not forget him with this song.<br/> +<br/> +Dead is the Man whose Cause is dead,<br/> + Vainly he died and set his seal—<br/> + Stonewall!<br/> + Earnest in error, as we feel;<br/> +True to the thing he deemed was due,<br/> + True as John Brown or steel.<br/> +<br/> +Relentlessly he routed us;<br/> + But <i>we</i> relent, for he is low—<br/> + Stonewall!<br/> + Justly his fame we outlaw; so<br/> +We drop a tear on the bold Virginian’s bier,<br/> + Because no wreath we owe. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap51"></a> +THE HOUSE-TOP</h2> + +<p class="center"> +July, 1863<br/> +<i>A Night Piece</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air<br/> +And binds the brain—a dense oppression, such<br/> +As tawny tigers feel in matted shades,<br/> +Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage.<br/> +Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads<br/> +Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by.<br/> +Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf<br/> +Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot.<br/> +Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought,<br/> +Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there.<br/> +The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats<br/> +And rats of the wharves. All civil charms<br/> +And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe—<br/> +Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway<br/> +Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve,<br/> +And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.<br/> +Hail to the low dull rumble, dull and dead,<br/> +And ponderous drag that shakes the wall.<br/> +Wise Draco comes, deep in the midnight roll<br/> +Of black artillery; he comes, though late;<br/> +In code corroborating Calvin’s creed<br/> +And cynic tyrannies of honest kings;<br/> +He comes, nor parlies; and the Town, redeemed,<br/> +Gives thanks devout; nor, being thankful, heeds<br/> +The grimy slur on the Republic’s faith implied,<br/> +Which holds that Man is naturally good,<br/> +And—more—is Nature’s Roman, never to be scourged. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap52"></a> +CHATTANOOGA</h2> + +<p class="center"> +November, 1863 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +A kindling impulse seized the host<br/> + Inspired by heaven’s elastic air;<br/> +Their hearts outran their General’s plan,<br/> + Though Grant commanded there—<br/> + Grant, who without reserve can dare;<br/> +And, “Well, go on and do your will,”<br/> + He said, and measured the mountain then:<br/> +So master-riders fling the rein—<br/> + But you must know your men.<br/> +<br/> +On yester-morn in grayish mist,<br/> + Armies like ghosts on hills had fought,<br/> +And rolled from the cloud their thunders loud<br/> + The Cumberlands far had caught:<br/> + To-day the sunlit steeps are sought.<br/> +Grant stood on cliffs whence all was plain,<br/> + And smoked as one who feels no cares;<br/> +But mastered nervousness intense<br/> +Alone such calmness wears.<br/> +<br/> +The summit-cannon plunge their flame<br/> + Sheer down the primal wall,<br/> +But up and up each linking troop<br/> + In stretching festoons crawl—<br/> + Nor fire a shot. Such men appall<br/> +The foe, though brave. He, from the brink,<br/> + Looks far along the breadth of slope,<br/> +And sees two miles of dark dots creep,<br/> + And knows they mean the cope.<br/> +<br/> +He sees them creep. Yet here and there<br/> + Half hid ’mid leafless groves they go;<br/> +As men who ply through traceries high<br/> + Of turreted marbles show—<br/> + So dwindle these to eyes below.<br/> +But fronting shot and flanking shell<br/> + Sliver and rive the inwoven ways;<br/> +High tops of oaks and high hearts fall,<br/> + But never the climbing stays.<br/> +<br/> +From right to left, from left to right<br/> + They roll the rallying cheer—<br/> +Vie with each other, brother with brother,<br/> + Who shall the first appear—<br/> + What color-bearer with colors clear<br/> +In sharp relief, like sky-drawn Grant,<br/> + Whose cigar must now be near the stump—<br/> +While in solicitude his back<br/> + Heaps slowly to a hump.<br/> +<br/> +Near and more near; till now the flags<br/> + Run like a catching flame;<br/> +And one flares highest, to peril nighest—<br/> + <i>He</i> means to make a name:<br/> + Salvos! they give him his fame.<br/> +The staff is caught, and next the rush,<br/> + And then the leap where death has led;<br/> +Flag answered flag along the crest,<br/> + And swarms of rebels fled.<br/> +<br/> +But some who gained the envied Alp,<br/> + And—eager, ardent, earnest there—<br/> +Dropped into Death’s wide-open arms,<br/> + Quelled on the wing like eagles struck in air—<br/> + Forever they slumber young and fair,<br/> +The smile upon them as they died;<br/> + Their end attained, that end a height:<br/> +Life was to these a dream fulfilled,<br/> + And death a starry night. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap53"></a> +ON THE PHOTOGRAPH OF A CORPS COMMANDER</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Ay, man is manly. Here you see<br/> + The warrior-carriage of the head,<br/> +And brave dilation of the frame;<br/> + And lighting all, the soul that led<br/> +In Spottsylvania’s charge to victory,<br/> + Which justifies his fame.<br/> +<br/> +A cheering picture. It is good<br/> + To look upon a Chief like this,<br/> +In whom the spirit moulds the form.<br/> + Here favoring Nature, oft remiss,<br/> +With eagle mien expressive has endued<br/> + A man to kindle strains that warm.<br/> +<br/> +Trace back his lineage, and his sires,<br/> + Yeoman or noble, you shall find<br/> +Enrolled with men of Agincourt,<br/> + Heroes who shared great Harry’s mind.<br/> +Down to us come the knightly Norman fires,<br/> + And front the Templars bore.<br/> +<br/> +Nothing can lift the heart of man<br/> + Like manhood in a fellow-man.<br/> +The thought of heaven’s great King afar<br/> +But humbles us—too weak to scan;<br/> +But manly greatness men can span,<br/> + And feel the bonds that draw. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap54"></a> +THE SWAMP ANGEL</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +There is a coal-black Angel<br/> + With a thick Afric lip,<br/> +And he dwells (like the hunted and harried)<br/> + In a swamp where the green frogs dip.<br/> +But his face is against a City<br/> + Which is over a bay of the sea,<br/> +And he breathes with a breath that is blastment,<br/> + And dooms by a far decree.<br/> +<br/> +By night there is fear in the City,<br/> + Through the darkness a star soareth on;<br/> +There’s a scream that screams up to the zenith,<br/> + Then the poise of a meteor lone—<br/> +Lighting far the pale fright of the faces,<br/> + And downward the coming is seen;<br/> +Then the rush, and the burst, and the havoc,<br/> + And wails and shrieks between.<br/> +<br/> +It comes like the thief in the gloaming;<br/> + It comes, and none may foretell<br/> +The place of the coming—the glaring;<br/> + They live in a sleepless spell<br/> +That wizens, and withers, and whitens;<br/> + It ages the young, and the bloom<br/> +Of the maiden is ashes of roses—<br/> + The Swamp Angel broods in his gloom.<br/> +<br/> +Swift is his messengers’ going,<br/> + But slowly he saps their halls,<br/> +As if by delay deluding.<br/> + They move from their crumbling walls<br/> +Farther and farther away;<br/> + But the Angel sends after and after,<br/> +By night with the flame of his ray—<br/> + By night with the voice of his screaming—<br/> +Sends after them, stone by stone,<br/> + And farther walls fall, farther portals,<br/> +And weed follows weed through the Town.<br/> +<br/> +Is this the proud City? the scorner<br/> + Which never would yield the ground?<br/> +Which mocked at the coal-black Angel?<br/> + The cup of despair goes round.<br/> +Vainly he calls upon Michael<br/> + (The white man’s seraph was he,)<br/> +For Michael has fled from his tower<br/> + To the Angel over the sea.<br/> +Who weeps for the woeful City<br/> + Let him weep for our guilty kind;<br/> +Who joys at her wild despairing—<br/> +Christ, the Forgiver, convert his mind. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap55"></a> +SHERIDAN AT CEDAR CREEK</h2> + +<p class="center"> +October, 1864 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Shoe the steed with silver<br/> + That bore him to the fray,<br/> +When he heard the guns at dawning—<br/> + Miles away;<br/> +When he heard them calling, calling—<br/> + Mount! nor stay:<br/> + Quick, or all is lost;<br/> + They’ve surprised and stormed the post,<br/> + They push your routed host—<br/> +Gallop! retrieve the day.<br/> +<br/> +House the horse in ermine—<br/> + For the foam-flake blew<br/> +White through the red October;<br/> + He thundered into view;<br/> +They cheered him in the looming.<br/> + Horseman and horse they knew.<br/> + The turn of the tide began,<br/> + The rally of bugles ran,<br/> + He swung his hat in the van;<br/> +The electric hoof-spark flew.<br/> +<br/> +Wreathe the steed and lead him—<br/> + For the charge he led<br/> +Touched and turned the cypress<br/> + Into amaranths for the head<br/> +Of Philip, king of riders,<br/> + Who raised them from the dead.<br/> + The camp (at dawning lost),<br/> + By eve, recovered—forced,<br/> + Rang with laughter of the host<br/> +At belated Early fled.<br/> +<br/> +Shroud the horse in sable—<br/> + For the mounds they heap!<br/> +There is firing in the Valley,<br/> + And yet no strife they keep;<br/> +It is the parting volley,<br/> + It is the pathos deep.<br/> + There is glory for the brave<br/> + Who lead, and nobly save,<br/> + But no knowledge in the grave<br/> +Where the nameless followers sleep. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap56"></a> +IN THE PRISON PEN</h2> + +<p class="center"> +1864 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Listless he eyes the palisades<br/> + And sentries in the glare;<br/> +’Tis barren as a pelican-beach<br/> + But his world is ended there.<br/> +<br/> +Nothing to do; and vacant hands<br/> + Bring on the idiot-pain;<br/> +He tries to think—to recollect,<br/> + But the blur is on his brain.<br/> +<br/> +Around him swarm the plaining ghosts<br/> + Like those on Virgil’s shore—<br/> +A wilderness of faces dim,<br/> + And pale ones gashed and hoar.<br/> +<br/> +A smiting sun. No shed, no tree;<br/> + He totters to his lair—<br/> +A den that sick hands dug in earth<br/> + Ere famine wasted there,<br/> +<br/> +Or, dropping in his place, he swoons,<br/> + Walled in by throngs that press,<br/> +Till forth from the throngs they bear him dead—<br/> + Dead in his meagreness. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap57"></a> +THE COLLEGE COLONEL</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +He rides at their head;<br/> + A crutch by his saddle just slants in view,<br/> +One slung arm is in splints, you see,<br/> + Yet he guides his strong steed—how coldly too.<br/> +<br/> +He brings his regiment home—<br/> + Not as they filed two years before,<br/> +But a remnant half-tattered, and battered, and worn,<br/> +Like castaway sailors, who—stunned<br/> + By the surf’s loud roar,<br/> + Their mates dragged back and seen no more—<br/> +Again and again breast the surge,<br/> + And at last crawl, spent, to shore.<br/> +<br/> +A still rigidity and pale—<br/> + An Indian aloofness lones his brow;<br/> +He has lived a thousand years<br/> +Compressed in battle’s pains and prayers,<br/> + Marches and watches slow.<br/> +<br/> +There are welcoming shouts, and flags;<br/> + Old men off hat to the Boy,<br/> +Wreaths from gay balconies fall at his feet,<br/> +But to <i>him</i>—there comes alloy.<br/> +<br/> +It is not that a leg is lost,<br/> + It is not that an arm is maimed,<br/> +It is not that the fever has racked—<br/> + Self he has long disclaimed.<br/> +<br/> +But all through the Seven Days’ Fight,<br/> + And deep in the Wilderness grim,<br/> +And in the field-hospital tent,<br/> + And Petersburg crater, and dim<br/> +Lean brooding in Libby, there came—<br/> + Ah heaven!—what <i>truth</i> to him. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap58"></a> +THE MARTYR</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Indicative of the passion of the people on the 15th of April, 1865</i><br/> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Good Friday was the day<br/> + Of the prodigy and crime,<br/> +When they killed him in his pity,<br/> + When they killed him in his prime<br/> +Of clemency and calm—<br/> + When with yearning he was filled<br/> + To redeem the evil-willed,<br/> +And, though conqueror, be kind;<br/> + But they killed him in his kindness,<br/> + In their madness and their blindness,<br/> +And they killed him from behind.<br/> +<br/> + There is sobbing of the strong,<br/> + And a pall upon the land;<br/> + But the People in their weeping<br/> + Bare the iron hand;<br/> + Beware the People weeping<br/> + When they bare the iron hand.<br/> +<br/> +He lieth in his blood—<br/> + The father in his face;<br/> +They have killed him, the Forgiver—<br/> + The Avenger takes his place,<br/> +The Avenger wisely stern,<br/> + Who in righteousness shall do<br/> + What the heavens call him to,<br/> +And the parricides remand;<br/> + For they killed him in his kindness,<br/> + In their madness and their blindness,<br/> +And his blood is on their hand.<br/> +<br/> + There is sobbing of the strong,<br/> + And a pall upon the land;<br/> + But the People in their weeping<br/> + Bare the iron hand:<br/> + Beware the People weeping<br/> + When they bare the iron hand. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap59"></a> +REBEL COLOR-BEARERS AT SHILOH</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>A plea against the vindictive cry raised by civilians shortly after the +surrender at Appomattox</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +The color-bearers facing death<br/> +White in the whirling sulphurous wreath,<br/> + Stand boldly out before the line;<br/> +Right and left their glances go,<br/> +Proud of each other, glorying in their show;<br/> +Their battle-flags about them blow,<br/> + And fold them as in flame divine:<br/> +Such living robes are only seen<br/> +Round martyrs burning on the green—<br/> +And martyrs for the Wrong have been.<br/> +<br/> +Perish their Cause! but mark the men—<br/> +Mark the planted statues, then<br/> +Draw trigger on them if you can.<br/> +<br/> +The leader of a patriot-band<br/> +Even so could view rebels who so could stand;<br/> + And this when peril pressed him sore,<br/> +Left aidless in the shivered front of war—<br/> + Skulkers behind, defiant foes before,<br/> +And fighting with a broken brand.<br/> +The challenge in that courage rare—<br/> +Courage defenseless, proudly bare—<br/> +Never could tempt him; he could dare<br/> +Strike up the leveled rifle there.<br/> +<br/> +Sunday at Shiloh, and the day<br/> +When Stonewall charged—McClellan’s crimson May,<br/> +And Chickamauga’s wave of death,<br/> +And of the Wilderness the cypress wreath—<br/> + All these have passed away.<br/> +The life in the veins of Treason lags,<br/> +Her daring color-bearers drop their flags,<br/> + And yield. <i>Now</i> shall we fire?<br/> + Can poor spite be?<br/> + Shall nobleness in victory less aspire<br/> + Than in reverse? Spare Spleen her ire,<br/> + And think how Grant met Lee. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap60"></a> +AURORA BOREALIS</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Commemorative of the Dissolution of armies at the Peace</i><br/> +May, 1865 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +What power disbands the Northern Lights<br/> + After their steely play?<br/> +The lonely watcher feels an awe<br/> + Of Nature’s sway,<br/> + As when appearing,<br/> + He marked their flashed uprearing<br/> + In the cold gloom—<br/> + Retreatings and advancings,<br/> +(Like dallyings of doom),<br/> + Transitions and enhancings,<br/> + And bloody ray.<br/> +<br/> +The phantom-host has faded quite,<br/> + Splendor and Terror gone<br/> +Portent or promise—and gives way<br/> + To pale, meek Dawn;<br/> + The coming, going,<br/> + Alike in wonder showing—<br/> + Alike the God,<br/> + Decreeing and commanding<br/> +The million blades that glowed,<br/> + The muster and disbanding—<br/> + Midnight and Morn. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap61"></a> +THE RELEASED REBEL PRISONER</h2> + +<p class="center"> +June, 1865 +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Armies he’s seen—the herds of war,<br/> + But never such swarms of men<br/> +As now in the Nineveh of the North—<br/> + How mad the Rebellion then!<br/> +<br/> +And yet but dimly he divines<br/> + The depth of that deceit,<br/> +And superstitution of vast pride<br/> + Humbled to such defeat.<br/> +<br/> +Seductive shone the Chiefs in arms—<br/> + His steel the nearest magnet drew;<br/> +Wreathed with its kind, the Gulf-weed drives—<br/> + ’Tis Nature’s wrong they rue.<br/> +<br/> +His face is hidden in his beard,<br/> + But his heart peers out at eye—<br/> +And such a heart! like a mountain-pool<br/> + Where no man passes by.<br/> +<br/> +He thinks of Hill—a brave soul gone;<br/> + And Ashby dead in pale disdain;<br/> +And Stuart with the Rupert-plume,<br/> + Whose blue eye never shall laugh again.<br/> +<br/> +He hears the drum; he sees our boys<br/> +From his wasted fields return;<br/> +Ladies feast them on strawberries,<br/> + And even to kiss them yearn.<br/> +<br/> +He marks them bronzed, in soldier-trim,<br/> + The rifle proudly borne;<br/> +They bear it for an heirloom home,<br/> + And he—disarmed—jail-worn.<br/> +<br/> +Home, home—his heart is full of it;<br/> + But home he never shall see,<br/> +Even should he stand upon the spot:<br/> + ’Tis gone!—where his brothers be.<br/> +<br/> +The cypress-moss from tree to tree<br/> + Hangs in his Southern land;<br/> +As weird, from thought to thought of his<br/> + Run memories hand in hand.<br/> +<br/> +And so he lingers—lingers on<br/> + In the City of the Foe—<br/> +His cousins and his countrymen<br/> + Who see him listless go. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap62"></a> +“FORMERLY A SLAVE”</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>An idealized Portrait, by E. Vedder, in the Spring Exhibition of the +National Academy, 1865</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +The sufferance of her race is shown,<br/> + And retrospect of life,<br/> +Which now too late deliverance dawns upon;<br/> + Yet is she not at strife.<br/> +<br/> +Her children’s children they shall know<br/> + The good withheld from her;<br/> +And so her reverie takes prophetic cheer—<br/> + In spirit she sees the stir.<br/> +<br/> +Far down the depth of thousand years,<br/> + And marks the revel shine;<br/> +Her dusky face is lit with sober light,<br/> + Sibylline, yet benign. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap63"></a> +ON THE SLAIN COLLEGIANS</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Youth is the time when hearts are large,<br/> + And stirring wars<br/> +Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn<br/> + To the blade it draws.<br/> +If woman incite, and duty show<br/> + (Though made the mask of Cain),<br/> +Or whether it be Truth’s sacred cause,<br/> + Who can aloof remain<br/> +That shares youth’s ardor, uncooled by the snow<br/> + Of wisdom or sordid gain?<br/> +<br/> +The liberal arts and nurture sweet<br/> + Which give his gentleness to man—<br/> + Train him to honor, lend him grace<br/> +Through bright examples meet—<br/> +That culture which makes never wan<br/> +With underminings deep, but holds<br/> + The surface still, its fitting place,<br/> + And so gives sunniness to the face<br/> +And bravery to the heart; what troops<br/> + Of generous boys in happiness thus bred—<br/> + Saturnians through life’s Tempe led,<br/> +Went from the North and came from the South,<br/> +With golden mottoes in the mouth,<br/> + To lie down midway on a bloody bed.<br/> +<br/> +Woe for the homes of the North,<br/> +And woe for the seats of the South:<br/> +All who felt life’s spring in prime,<br/> +And were swept by the wind of their place and time—<br/> + All lavish hearts, on whichever side,<br/> +Of birth urbane or courage high,<br/> +Armed them for the stirring wars—<br/> + Armed them—some to die.<br/> + Apollo-like in pride.<br/> +Each would slay his Python—caught<br/> +The maxims in his temple taught—<br/> + Aflame with sympathies whose blaze<br/> +Perforce enwrapped him—social laws,<br/> + Friendship and kin, and by-gone days—<br/> +Vows, kisses—every heart unmoors,<br/> +And launches into the seas of wars.<br/> +What could they else—North or South?<br/> +Each went forth with blessings given<br/> +By priests and mothers in the name of Heaven;<br/> + And honor in both was chief.<br/> +Warred one for Right, and one for Wrong?<br/> +So be it; but they both were young—<br/> +Each grape to his cluster clung,<br/> +All their elegies are sung.<br/> +The anguish of maternal hearts<br/> + Must search for balm divine;<br/> +But well the striplings bore their fated parts<br/> + (The heavens all parts assign)—<br/> +Never felt life’s care or cloy.<br/> +Each bloomed and died an unabated Boy;<br/> +Nor dreamed what death was—thought it mere<br/> +Sliding into some vernal sphere.<br/> +They knew the joy, but leaped the grief,<br/> +Like plants that flower ere comes the leaf—<br/> +Which storms lay low in kindly doom,<br/> +And kill them in their flush of bloom. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap64"></a> +AMERICA</h2> + +<p class="center"> +I +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Where the wings of a sunny Dome expand<br/> +I saw a Banner in gladsome air—<br/> +Starry, like Berenice’s Hair—<br/> +Afloat in broadened bravery there;<br/> +With undulating long-drawn flow,<br/> +As tolled Brazilian billows go<br/> +Voluminously o’er the Line.<br/> +The Land reposed in peace below;<br/> + The children in their glee<br/> +Were folded to the exulting heart<br/> + Of young Maternity. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +II +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Later, and it streamed in fight<br/> + When tempest mingled with the fray,<br/> +And over the spear-point of the shaft<br/> + I saw the ambiguous lightning play.<br/> +Valor with Valor strove, and died:<br/> +Fierce was Despair, and cruel was Pride;<br/> +And the lorn Mother speechless stood,<br/> +Pale at the fury of her brood. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +III +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Yet later, and the silk did wind<br/> + Her fair cold form;<br/> +Little availed the shining shroud,<br/> + Though ruddy in hue, to cheer or warm.<br/> +A watcher looked upon her low, and said—<br/> +She sleeps, but sleeps, she is not dead.<br/> + But in that sleeps contortion showed<br/> +The terror of the vision there—<br/> + A silent vision unavowed,<br/> +Revealing earth’s foundation bare,<br/> + And Gorgon in her hidden place.<br/> +It was a thing of fear to see<br/> + So foul a dream upon so fair a face,<br/> +And the dreamer lying in that starry shroud. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +IV +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +But from the trance she sudden broke—<br/> + The trance, or death into promoted life;<br/> +At her feet a shivered yoke,<br/> +And in her aspect turned to heaven<br/> + No trace of passion or of strife—<br/> +A clear calm look. It spake of pain,<br/> +But such as purifies from stain—<br/> +Sharp pangs that never come again—<br/> + And triumph repressed by knowledge meet,<br/> +Power dedicate, and hope grown wise,<br/> + And youth matured for age’s seat—<br/> +Law on her brow and empire in her eyes.<br/> + So she, with graver air and lifted flag;<br/> +While the shadow, chased by light,<br/> +Fled along the far-drawn height,<br/> + And left her on the crag. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap65"></a> +INSCRIPTION</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>For Graves at Pea Ridge, Arkansas</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Let none misgive we died amiss<br/> + When here we strove in furious fight:<br/> +Furious it was; nathless was this<br/> + Better than tranquil plight,<br/> +And tame surrender of the Cause<br/> +Hallowed by hearts and by the laws.<br/> + We here who warred for Man and Right,<br/> +The choice of warring never laid with us.<br/> + There we were ruled by the traitor’s choice.<br/> + Nor long we stood to trim and poise,<br/> +But marched and fell—victorious! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap66"></a> +THE FORTITUDE OF THE NORTH</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Under the Disaster of the Second Manassas</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +They take no shame for dark defeat<br/> + While prizing yet each victory won,<br/> +Who fight for the Right through all retreat,<br/> + Nor pause until their work is done.<br/> +The Cape-of-Storms is proof to every throe;<br/> + Vainly against that foreland beat<br/> +Wild winds aloft and wilder waves below:<br/> +The black cliffs gleam through rents in sleet<br/> +When the livid Antarctic storm-clouds glow. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap67"></a> +THE MOUND BY THE LAKE</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +The grass shall never forget this grave.<br/> +When homeward footing it in the sun<br/> + After the weary ride by rail,<br/> +The stripling soldiers passed her door,<br/> + Wounded perchance, or wan and pale,<br/> +She left her household work undone—<br/> +Duly the wayside table spread,<br/> + With evergreens shaded, to regale<br/> +Each travel-spent and grateful one.<br/> +So warm her heart—childless—unwed,<br/> +Who like a mother comforted. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap68"></a> +ON THE SLAIN AT CHICKAMAUGA</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Happy are they and charmed in life<br/> + Who through long wars arrive unscarred<br/> +At peace. To such the wreath be given,<br/> +If they unfalteringly have striven—<br/> + In honor, as in limb, unmarred.<br/> +Let cheerful praise be rife,<br/> + And let them live their years at ease,<br/> +Musing on brothers who victorious died—<br/> + Loved mates whose memory shall ever please.<br/> +<br/> +And yet mischance is honorable too—<br/> + Seeming defeat in conflict justified<br/> +Whose end to closing eyes is hid from view.<br/> +The will, that never can relent—<br/> +The aim, survivor of the bafflement,<br/> + Make this memorial due. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap69"></a> +AN UNINSCRIBED MONUMENT</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>On one of the Battle-fields of the Wilderness</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Silence and solitude may hint<br/> + (Whose home is in yon piney wood)<br/> +What I, though tableted, could never tell—<br/> +The din which here befell,<br/> + And striving of the multitude.<br/> +The iron cones and spheres of death<br/> + Set round me in their rust,<br/> + These, too, if just,<br/> +Shall speak with more than animated breath.<br/> + Thou who beholdest, if thy thought,<br/> +Not narrowed down to personal cheer,<br/> +Take in the import of the quiet here—<br/> + The after-quiet—the calm full fraught;<br/> +Thou too wilt silent stand—<br/> +Silent as I, and lonesome as the land. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap70"></a> +ON THE GRAVE OF A YOUNG CAVALRY OFFICER KILLED IN THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Beauty and youth, with manners sweet, and friends—<br/> + Gold, yet a mind not unenriched had he<br/> +Whom here low violets veil from eyes.<br/> + But all these gifts transcended be:<br/> +His happier fortune in this mound you see. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap71"></a> +A REQUIEM</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>For Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +When, after storms that woodlands rue,<br/> + To valleys comes atoning dawn,<br/> +The robins blithe their orchard-sports renew;<br/> + And meadow-larks, no more withdrawn<br/> +Caroling fly in the languid blue;<br/> +The while, from many a hid recess,<br/> +Alert to partake the blessedness,<br/> +The pouring mites their airy dance pursue.<br/> + So, after ocean’s ghastly gales,<br/> +When laughing light of hoyden morning breaks,<br/> + Every finny hider wakes—<br/> + From vaults profound swims up with glittering scales;<br/> + Through the delightsome sea he sails,<br/> +With shoals of shining tiny things<br/> +Frolic on every wave that flings<br/> + Against the prow its showery spray;<br/> +All creatures joying in the morn,<br/> +Save them forever from joyance torn,<br/> + Whose bark was lost where now the dolphins play;<br/> +Save them that by the fabled shore,<br/> + Down the pale stream are washed away,<br/> +Far to the reef of bones are borne;<br/> + And never revisits them the light,<br/> +Nor sight of long-sought land and pilot more;<br/> + Nor heed they now the lone bird’s flight<br/> +Round the lone spar where mid-sea surges pour. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap72"></a> +COMMEMORATIVE OF A NAVAL VICTORY</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Sailors there are of the gentlest breed,<br/> + Yet strong, like every goodly thing;<br/> +The discipline of arms refines,<br/> + And the wave gives tempering.<br/> + The damasked blade its beam can fling;<br/> +It lends the last grave grace:<br/> +The hawk, the hound, and sworded nobleman<br/> + In Titian’s picture for a king,<br/> +Are of hunter or warrior race.<br/> +<br/> +In social halls a favored guest<br/> + In years that follow victory won,<br/> +How sweet to feel your festal fame<br/> + In woman’s glance instinctive thrown:<br/> + Repose is yours—your deed is known,<br/> +It musks the amber wine;<br/> +It lives, and sheds a light from storied days<br/> + Rich as October sunsets brown,<br/> +Which make the barren place to shine.<br/> +<br/> +But seldom the laurel wreath is seen<br/> + Unmixed with pensive pansies dark;<br/> +There’s a light and a shadow on every man<br/> + Who at last attains his lifted mark—<br/> + Nursing through night the ethereal spark.<br/> +Elate he never can be;<br/> +He feels that spirit which glad had hailed his worth,<br/> + Sleep in oblivion.—The shark<br/> +Glides white through the phosphorus sea. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap73"></a> +A MEDITATION</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +How often in the years that close,<br/> + When truce had stilled the sieging gun,<br/> +The soldiers, mounting on their works,<br/> + With mutual curious glance have run<br/> +From face to face along the fronting show,<br/> +And kinsman spied, or friend—even in a foe.<br/> +<br/> +What thoughts conflicting then were shared,<br/> + While sacred tenderness perforce<br/> +Welled from the heart and wet the eye;<br/> + And something of a strange remorse<br/> +Rebelled against the sanctioned sin of blood,<br/> +And Christian wars of natural brotherhood.<br/> +<br/> +Then stirred the god within the breast—<br/> + The witness that is man’s at birth;<br/> +A deep misgiving undermined<br/> + Each plea and subterfuge of earth;<br/> +They felt in that rapt pause, with warning rife,<br/> +Horror and anguish for the civil strife.<br/> +<br/> +Of North or South they reeked not then,<br/> + Warm passion cursed the cause of war:<br/> +Can Africa pay back this blood<br/> + Spilt on Potomac’s shore?<br/> +Yet doubts, as pangs, were vain the strife to stay,<br/> +And hands that fain had clasped again could slay.<br/> +<br/> +How frequent in the camp was seen<br/> + The herald from the hostile one,<br/> +A guest and frank companion there<br/> + When the proud formal talk was done;<br/> +The pipe of peace was smoked even ’mid the war,<br/> +And fields in Mexico again fought o’er.<br/> +<br/> +In Western battle long they lay<br/> + So near opposed in trench or pit,<br/> +That foeman unto foeman called<br/> + As men who screened in tavern sit:<br/> +“You bravely fight” each to the other said—<br/> +“Toss us a biscuit!” o’er the wall it sped.<br/> +<br/> +And pale on those same slopes, a boy—<br/> + A stormer, bled in noon-day glare;<br/> +No aid the Blue-coats then could bring,<br/> + He cried to them who nearest were,<br/> +And out there came ’mid howling shot and shell<br/> +A daring foe who him befriended well.<br/> +<br/> +Mark the great Captains on both sides,<br/> + The soldiers with the broad renown—<br/> +They all were messmates on the Hudson’s marge,<br/> + Beneath one roof they laid them down;<br/> +And, free from hate in many an after pass,<br/> +Strove as in school-boy rivalry of the class.<br/> +<br/> +A darker side there is; but doubt<br/> + In Nature’s charity hovers there:<br/> +If men for new agreement yearn,<br/> + Then old upbraiding best forbear:<br/> +“The South’s the sinner!” Well, so let it be;<br/> +But shall the North sin worse, and stand the Pharisee?<br/> +<br/> +O, now that brave men yield the sword,<br/> + Mine be the manful soldier-view;<br/> +By how much more they boldly warred,<br/> + By so much more is mercy due:<br/> +When Vicksburg fell, and the moody files marched out,<br/> +Silent the victors stood, scorning to raise a shout. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap74"></a> +POEMS FROM MARDI</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap75"></a> +WE FISH</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +We fish, we fish, we merrily swim,<br/> +We care not for friend nor for foe.<br/> + Our fins are stout,<br/> + Our tails are out,<br/> +As through the seas we go.<br/> +<br/> +Fish, Fish, we are fish with red gills;<br/> + Naught disturbs us, our blood is at zero:<br/> +We are buoyant because of our bags,<br/> + Being many, each fish is a hero.<br/> +We care not what is it, this life<br/> + That we follow, this phantom unknown;<br/> +To swim, it’s exceedingly pleasant,—<br/> + So swim away, making a foam.<br/> +This strange looking thing by our side,<br/> + Not for safety, around it we flee:—<br/> +Its shadow’s so shady, that’s all,—<br/> + We only swim under its lee.<br/> +And as for the eels there above,<br/> + And as for the fowls of the air,<br/> +We care not for them nor their ways,<br/> + As we cheerily glide afar!<br/> +<br/> +We fish, we fish, we merrily swim,<br/> +We care not for friend nor for foe:<br/> + Our fins are stout,<br/> + Our tails are out,<br/> +As through the seas we go. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap76"></a> +INVOCATION</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Ha, ha, gods and kings; fill high, one and all;<br/> +Drink, drink! shout and drink! mad respond to the call!<br/> +Fill fast, and fill full; ’gainst the goblet ne’er sin;<br/> +Quaff there, at high tide, to the uttermost rim:—<br/> + Flood-tide, and soul-tide to the brim!<br/> +<br/> +Who with wine in him fears? who thinks of his cares?<br/> +Who sighs to be wise, when wine in him flares?<br/> +Water sinks down below, in currents full slow;<br/> +But wine mounts on high with its genial glow:—<br/> + Welling up, till the brain overflow!<br/> +<br/> +As the spheres, with a roll, some fiery of soul,<br/> +Others golden, with music, revolve round the pole;<br/> +So let our cups, radiant with many hued wines,<br/> +Round and round in groups circle, our Zodiac’s Signs:—<br/> + Round reeling, and ringing their chimes!<br/> +<br/> +Then drink, gods and kings; wine merriment brings;<br/> +It bounds through the veins; there, jubilant sings.<br/> +Let it ebb, then, and flow; wine never grows dim;<br/> +Drain down that bright tide at the foam beaded rim:—<br/> + Fill up, every cup, to the brim! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap77"></a> +DIRGE</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +We drop our dead in the sea,<br/> + The bottomless, bottomless sea;<br/> +Each bubble a hollow sigh,<br/> + As it sinks forever and aye.<br/> +<br/> +We drop our dead in the sea,—<br/> + The dead reek not of aught;<br/> +We drop our dead in the sea,—<br/> + The sea ne’er gives it a thought.<br/> +<br/> +Sink, sink, oh corpse, still sink,<br/> + Far down in the bottomless sea,<br/> +Where the unknown forms do prowl,<br/> + Down, down in the bottomless sea.<br/> +<br/> +’Tis night above, and night all round,<br/> + And night will it be with thee;<br/> +As thou sinkest, and sinkest for aye,<br/> + Deeper down in the bottomless sea. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap78"></a> +MARLENA</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Far off in the sea is Marlena,<br/> +A land of shades and streams,<br/> +A land of many delights,<br/> +Dark and bold, thy shores, Marlena;<br/> +But green, and timorous, thy soft knolls,<br/> +Crouching behind the woodlands.<br/> +All shady thy hills; all gleaming thy springs,<br/> +Like eyes in the earth looking at you.<br/> +How charming thy haunts, Marlena!—<br/> +Oh, the waters that flow through Onimoo;<br/> +Oh, the leaves that rustle through Ponoo:<br/> +Oh, the roses that blossom in Tarma.<br/> +Come, and see the valley of Vina:<br/> +How sweet, how sweet, the Isles from Hina:<br/> +’Tis aye afternoon of the full, full moon,<br/> +And ever the season of fruit,<br/> +And ever the hour of flowers,<br/> +And never the time of rains and gales,<br/> +All in and about Marlena.<br/> +Soft sigh the boughs in the stilly air,<br/> +Soft lap the beach the billows there;<br/> +And in the woods or by the streams,<br/> +You needs must nod in the Land of Dreams. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap79"></a> +PIPE SONG</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Care is all stuff:—<br/> + Puff! Puff!<br/> +To puff is enough:—<br/> + Puff! Puff<br/> +More musky than snuff,<br/> +And warm is a puff:—<br/> + Puff! Puff<br/> +Here we sit mid our puffs,<br/> +Like old lords in their ruffs,<br/> +Snug as bears in their muffs:—<br/> + Puff! Puff<br/> +Then puff, puff, puff,<br/> +For care is all stuff,<br/> +Puffed off in a puff—<br/> + Puff! Puff! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap80"></a> +SONG OF YOOMY</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Departed the pride, and the glory of Mardi:<br/> +The vaunt of her isles sleeps deep in the sea,<br/> + That rolls o’er his corse with a hush,<br/> + His warriors bend over their spears,<br/> + His sisters gaze upward and mourn.<br/> + Weep, weep, for Adondo is dead!<br/> + The sun has gone down in a shower;<br/> + Buried in clouds the face of the moon;<br/> +Tears stand in the eyes of the starry skies,<br/> + And stand in the eyes of the flowers;<br/> +And streams of tears are the trickling brooks,<br/> + Coursing adown the mountains.—<br/> + Departed the pride, and the glory of Mardi:<br/> + The vaunt of her isles sleeps deep in the sea.<br/> +Fast falls the small rain on its bosom that sobs,—<br/> + Not showers of rain, but the tears of Oro. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap81"></a> +GOLD</h2> + +<p class="poem"> + We rovers bold,<br/> + To the land of Gold,<br/> +Over the bowling billows are gliding:<br/> + Eager to toil,<br/> + For the golden spoil,<br/> +And every hardship biding.<br/> + See! See!<br/> +Before our prows’ resistless dashes<br/> +The gold-fish fly in golden flashes!<br/> + ’Neath a sun of gold,<br/> + We rovers bold,<br/> +On the golden land are gaining;<br/> + And every night,<br/> + We steer aright,<br/> +By golden stars unwaning!<br/> +All fires burn a golden glare:<br/> +No locks so bright as golden hair!<br/> + All orange groves have golden gushings;<br/> + All mornings dawn with golden flushings!<br/> +In a shower of gold, say fables old,<br/> +A maiden was won by the god of gold!<br/> + In golden goblets wine is beaming:<br/> + On golden couches kings are dreaming!<br/> + The Golden Rule dries many tears!<br/> + The Golden Number rules the spheres!<br/> +Gold, gold it is, that sways the nations:<br/> +Gold! gold! the center of all rotations!<br/> + On golden axles worlds are turning:<br/> + With phosphorescence seas are burning!<br/> + All fire-flies flame with golden gleamings!<br/> + Gold-hunters’ hearts with golden dreamings!<br/> + With golden arrows kings are slain:<br/> + With gold we’ll buy a freeman’s name!<br/> +In toilsome trades, for scanty earnings,<br/> +At home we’ve slaved, with stifled yearnings:<br/> +No light! no hope! Oh, heavy woe!<br/> +When nights fled fast, and days dragged slow.<br/> + But joyful now, with eager eye,<br/> + Fast to the Promised Land we fly:<br/> + Where in deep mines,<br/> + The treasure shines;<br/> + Or down in beds of golden streams,<br/> + The gold-flakes glance in golden gleams!<br/> + How we long to sift,<br/> + That yellow drift!<br/> + Rivers! Rivers! cease your goings!<br/> + Sand-bars! rise, and stay the tide!<br/> + ’Till we’ve gained the golden flowing;<br/> + And in the golden haven ride! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap82"></a> +THE LAND OF LOVE</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Hail! voyagers, hail!<br/> +Whence e’er ye come, where’er ye rove,<br/> + No calmer strand,<br/> + No sweeter land,<br/> +Will e’er ye view, than the Land of Love!<br/> +<br/> + Hail! voyagers, hail!<br/> +To these, our shores, soft gales invite:<br/> + The palm plumes wave,<br/> + The billows lave,<br/> +And hither point fix’d stars of light!<br/> +<br/> + Hail! voyagers, hail!<br/> +Think not our groves wide brood with gloom;<br/> + In this, our isle,<br/> + Bright flowers smile:<br/> +Full urns, rose-heaped, these valleys bloom.<br/> +<br/> + Hail! voyagers, hail!<br/> +Be not deceived; renounce vain things;<br/> + Ye may not find<br/> + A tranquil mind,<br/> +Though hence ye sail with swiftest wings.<br/> +<br/> + Hail! voyagers, hail!<br/> +Time flies full fast; life soon is o’er;<br/> + And ye may mourn,<br/> + That hither borne,<br/> +Ye left behind our pleasant shore. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap83"></a> +POEMS FROM CLAREL</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap84"></a> +DIRGE</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Stay, Death, Not mine the Christus-wand<br/> +Wherewith to charge thee and command:<br/> +I plead. Most gently hold the hand<br/> +Of her thou leadest far away;<br/> +Fear thou to let her naked feet<br/> +Tread ashes—but let mosses sweet<br/> +Her footing tempt, where’er ye stray.<br/> +Shun Orcus; win the moonlit land<br/> +Belulled—the silent meadows lone,<br/> +Where never any leaf is blown<br/> +From lily-stem in Azrael’s hand.<br/> +There, till her love rejoin her lowly<br/> +(Pensive, a shade, but all her own)<br/> +On honey feed her, wild and holy;<br/> +Or trance her with thy choicest charm.<br/> +And if, ere yet the lover’s free,<br/> +Some added dusk thy rule decree—<br/> +That shadow only let it be<br/> +Thrown in the moon-glade by the palm. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap85"></a> +EPILOGUE</h2> + +<p class="center"> +<i>If Luther’s day expand to Darwin’s year,</i><br/> +<i>Shall that exclude the hope—foreclose the fear?</i> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Unmoved by all the claims our times avow,<br/> +The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade;<br/> +And comes Despair, whom not her calm may cow,<br/> +And coldly on that adamantine brow<br/> +Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade.<br/> +But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns)<br/> +With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust,<br/> +Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns<br/> +The sign o’ the cross—<i>the spirit above the dust!</i><br/> +<br/> + Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate—<br/> +The harps of heaven and dreary gongs of hell;<br/> +Science the feud can only aggravate—<br/> +No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell:<br/> +The running battle of the star and clod<br/> +Shall run forever—if there be no God.<br/> +<br/> + Degrees we know, unknown in days before;<br/> +The light is greater, hence the shadow more;<br/> +And tantalized and apprehensive Man<br/> +Appealing—Wherefore ripen us to pain?<br/> +Seems there the spokesman of dumb Nature’s train.<br/> +<br/> + But through such strange illusions have they passed<br/> +Who in life’s pilgrimage have baffled striven—<br/> +Even death may prove unreal at the last,<br/> +And stoics be astounded into heaven.<br/> +<br/> + Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned—<br/> +Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind;<br/> +That like the crocus budding through the snow—<br/> +That like a swimmer rising from the deep—<br/> +That like a burning secret which doth go<br/> +Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep;<br/> +Emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea,<br/> +And prove that death but routs life into victory. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN MARR AND OTHER POEMS ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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