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diff --git a/old/64148-0.txt b/old/64148-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 56023e2..0000000 --- a/old/64148-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3737 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Saga of the oak, and other poems, by William -H. Venable - -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 -www.gutenberg.org. 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. - -Title: Saga of the oak, and other poems - -Author: William H. Venable - -Release Date: December 27, 2020 [eBook #64148] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Charlene Taylor, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The Internet - Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAGA OF THE OAK, AND OTHER -POEMS *** - - [Illustration: _W. H. Venable._] - - - - - Saga of the Oak - AND OTHER POEMS - - BY - WILLIAM H. VENABLE - - [Illustration] - - NEW YORK - Dodd, Mead & Company - 1904 - - - Copyright, 1884, 1893, by W. H. VENABLE - Copyright, 1904, by DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY - - Published April, 1904 - - BURR PRINTING HOUSE - NEW YORK - - - - - _CONTENTS_ - - - PAGE - -SAGA OF THE OAK 1 - -A DIAMOND 8 - -MY CATBIRD 9 - -THE TUNES DAN HARRISON USED TO PLAY 12 - -FAIRYLAND 14 - -SUMMER LOVE 17 - -CLOVER HILL 19 - -THE WEDDING DEFERRED 21 - -TO THE LITTLE MIAMI RIVER 23 - -IMMORTAL BIRD SONG 25 - -HINCHMAN’S MILL 27 - -VICTOR 30 - -THE LAST FLIGHT 33 - -A GENTLE MAN 36 - -INVIOLATE 38 - -FAITH 40 - -PLATO 41 - -DANTE 42 - -WAGNER’S KAISER MARCH 43 - -DEFOE IN THE PILLORY 44 - -WE THE PEOPLE 46 - -EIGHTY-SEVEN 49 - -THE FOUNDERS OF OHIO 50 - -THE FOREST SONG 52 - -A BALLAD OF OLD KENTUCKY 54 - -JOHN FILSON 57 - -JOHNNY APPLESEED 62 - -WENDING WESTWARD 68 - -THE TEACHER’S DREAM 71 - -BY THEIR FRUITS 75 - -PESTALOZZI 76 - -“THERE IS NO CASTE IN BLOOD” 80 - -VIVA LA GUERRA 82 - -BATTLE CRY 84 - -EL EMPLAZADO 86 - -NATIONAL SONG 88 - -THE RIGHT OF MIGHT 90 - -JAMES E. MURDOCH 92 - -THE CONCORD SEER 95 - -THE POET OF CLOVERNOOK 97 - -THE GREENFIELD WIZARD 99 - -WILLIAM BAIRD OF RIDGEVILLE 100 - -LET’S SHAKE 104 - -A WELCOME TO BOZ 107 - -THE BOOK AUCTION 109 - -A GIFT ACKNOWLEDGED 111 - -THE OLD HOMESTEAD 113 - -JENNIE MOORE 115 - -ASHES 116 - -POSY 117 - -A SNOW BIRD 119 - -THE UPSET 121 - -THE SCHOOL GIRL 122 - -THE READERS 125 - -WAG 126 - -DONATELLO 129 - -GABRIEL OF SCHWARTZENWALD 131 - -COFFEA ARABICA 137 - -AN INDIA SHAWL 140 - -APOLOGY 141 - -UNRECONCILED 144 - -ANNIVERSARY 146 - -AMAUROTE 148 - - - - - _SAGA OF THE OAK_ - - - - - SAGA OF THE OAK. - - - Hoarsely to the midnight moon - Voiced the oak his rugged rune: - “Harken, sibyl Moon, to me; - Hear the saga of the Tree. - - “Thou, O queen of splendor, must - Pale and crumble back to dust; - Through slow eons diest thou,-- - Doomsday craves my vitals now. - - “I am scion of a line - Old, imperial, divine; - Earth produced my ancestor - Ere great Odin was, or Thor. - - “From the hursts of holy oak - Fateful gods of Asgard spoke; - In the consecrated shade - Bard and Druid sang and prayed. - - “Fostered in an oaken womb - Slept Trifingus, sword of doom; - Therewith woaded Caratak - Drave the steel-sarked Roman back. - - “Where, profaned by legioned foes, - In the shuddering forest rose - Mona’s altars flaming rud, - Britain drowned her woe in blood. - - “Then the dread decree of Norn - Sounded in the groves forlorn; - Vikings swooping from the North - Harried every scaur and forth. - - “Forests fell with crash and roar, - Masted galiots spurned the shore, - Dragon-breasted,--swum the meer, - Daring danger, scouting fear. - - “Hengist’s brood and Horsa’s kin, - Seed of Garmund, sons of Finn, - Dane and Saxon sail and sweep - Battling o’er the wrathful deep; - - “Hearts of oak! their valor gave - Right of might to rule the wave, - Gave to Nelson’s ocean war - Copenhagen, Trafalgar! - - “Bray of trumpet! roll of drum! - When shall Balder’s kingdom come? - Bitter sap shall when grow sweet - In the acorn at my feet? - - “Centuries do I stand here - Thinking thoughts profound and drear, - Dreaming solemn dreams sublime - Of the mysteries of Time. - - “Roots of mine do feed on graves; - I have eaten bones of braves; - In the ground the learnéd gnomes - Read to me their cryptic tomes. - - “Annals treasured in the air - All the past to me declare; - Every wind of heaven brings - Tribute for me on its wings. - - “Through my silence proud and lone - Whispers waft from the Unknown: - Musing eld hath second ken-- - Moon! the dead shall live again. - - “Sun-scorch have I borne, and pangs - From the gnaw of winter’s fangs; - Fought tornadoes, nor forsook - Roothold when the mountains shook. - - “Oft the zig-zag thunder hath - Struck me with his fiery scath,-- - To my core the havoc sped, - Yet I never bowed my head. - - “I am weary of the years; - Overthrown are all my peers, - Slain by steel or storm or flame,-- - I would perish too--the same. - - “Yet shall I a little space - Linger still in life’s embrace - Ere metempsychosing time - Drag me down to Niflheim. - - “Wherefore shun or summon fate? - Wisest they who sanely wait; - In my fiber nature saith, - Life is good and good is death. - - “Mated birds of procreant Spring - In my branches build and sing; - Grass is green and flowers bloom - Where I spread my golden gloom; - - “Happy children round me play; - Plighted lovers near me stray; - Insects chirping in the night - Thrill me with obscure delight; - - “Circling seasons as they run, - Couriers of the lavish sun, - Dower me with treasure lent - By each potent element; - - “Ministers to me the whole - Zonéd globe from pole to pole; - In my buds and blossoms beat - Pulses from the central heat;-- - - “Everything is part of me, - Firmament and moving sea; - I of all that is am part, - Stone and star and human heart. - - “Primal Cause etern, self-wrought, - Majesty transcending thought, - This my substance and my soul, - Origin, desire, and goal. - - “Through creation’s vasty range - Blows the winter blast of change; - Leaf-like from the Life-Tree whirled - World shall rot on ruined world. - - “Hail, inexorable hour - Fraught with clysmian wrack and stour - Welcome, transmutation’s course - And the cosmic rage of Force. - - “Yond the atomed universe - Now we gather, now disperse,-- - Unto darkling chaos tost, - Back from the chaos--nothing lost. - - “Forth abysmal voids of death - Resurrection issueth:-- - Flaming ether, quickened clod, - Bodying new forms of God. - - “Harken, Moon!--When I am gone, - I, re-born, shall burgeon on; - Out thine ashes shall arise - Other Thou, to ride the skies.” - - Spake no more the hoary oak; - No response the wan moon spoke; - But the poet who had heard - Pondered the Dodonian word. - - - - - A DIAMOND. - - - Upon the breast of senseless earth - This precious sparkling stone, - A jewel of Golconda’s worth, - In sovran beauty shone. - - My lady for a moment bore - The gem upon her brow, - A moment on her bosom wore:-- - ’Tis worth the Orient now. - - - - - MY CATBIRD. - - A CAPRICCIO. - - - Nightingale I never heard, - Nor the skylark, poet’s bird; - But there is an æther-winger - So surpasses every singer, - (Though unknown to lyric fame,) - That at morning, or at nooning, - When I hear his pipe a-tuning, - Down I fling Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth,-- - What are all their songs of birds worth? - All their soaring - Souls’ outpouring? - When my Mimus Carolinensis, - (That’s his Latin name,) - When my warbler wild commences - Song’s hilarious rhapsody, - Just to please himself and me! - Primo Cantante! - Scherzo! Andante! - Piano, pianissimo! - Presto, prestissimo! - Hark! are there nine birds or ninety and nine? - And now a miraculous gurgling gushes - Like nectar from Hebe’s Olympian bottle, - The laughter of tune from a rapturous throttle! - Such melody must be a hermit-thrush’s! - But that other caroler, nearer, - Outrivaling rivalry with clearer - Sweetness incredibly fine! - Is it oriole, redbird, or bluebird, - Or some strange, un-Auduboned new bird? - All one, sir, both this bird and that bird, - The whole flight are all the same catbird! - The whole visible and invisible choir you see - On one lithe twig of yon green tree. - Flitting, feathery Blondel! - Listen to his rondel! - To his lay romantical! - To his sacred canticle! - Hear him lilting, - See him tilting - His saucy head and tail, and fluttering - While uttering - All the difficult operas under the sun - Just for fun; - Or in tipsy revelry, - Or at love devilry, - Or, disdaining his divine gift and art, - Like an inimitable poet - Who captivates the world’s heart - And don’t know it. - Hear him lilt! - See him tilt! - Then suddenly he stops, - Peers about, flirts, hops, - As if looking where he might gather up - The wasted ecstasy just spilt - From the quivering cup - Of his bliss overrun. - Then, as in mockery of all - The tuneful spells that e’er did fall - From vocal pipe, or evermore shall rise, - He snarls, and mews, and flies. - - - - - THE TUNES DAN HARRISON USED TO PLAY. - - - Ofttimes when recollections throng - Serenely back from childhood years, - Awaking thoughts that slumbered long, - Compelling smiles or starting tears, - The music of a violin - Seems through my window floating in,-- - I think I hear from far away - The tunes Dan Harrison used to play. - - Dan Harrison! I see him there - Beside the roaring winter hearth, - Fiddling away all mundane care, - His genial face aglow with mirth; - And when he laid his bow aside, - “Well done! well done!” he cheerly cried; - Well done, well done, indeed were they, - The tunes Dan Harrison used to play. - - I do not know what tunes he played, - I cannot name one melody; - His instrument was never made - In old Cremona, o’er the sea; - Yet from its chords his raptured skill - Drew magic strains my soul to thrill, - Some ah so mournful, some so gay, - The tunes Dan Harrison used to play. - - I have been witness to the art - Of many a master of the bow, - But none have power to charm the heart - Like him I listened long ago; - Love stole on tiptoe through my trance - To welcome dream-eyed young Romance, - Responsive to the passioned sway - Of tunes Dan Harrison used to play. - - Now with the music, as it floats, - Seraphic harping faintly blends; - I catch amid the mingling notes - Familiar voices of old friends; - While choral echoes sweetly fall, - Of yearning love angelical, - And melt, like trembling tears, away, - In tunes Dan Harrison used to play. - - - - - FAIRYLAND. - - - A secret glen engirt by hills serene - Sleeps in rich gloom of summer boscage green; - Its dreamy dells, in solemn twilight hush, - Echo dulce warblings of the hermit-thrush; - Kist by young May, the windflower trembles there, - And frail dicentra breathes the dainty air; - The haunt beseems for elfin revels planned, - And so the children call it Fairyland. - - A silvern rill, loved by the watercress, - Winds purling through this drowsy wilderness, - Suckling the willow, snowy-corymbed haw, - Vain-flaunting redbud, indolent pawpaw, - Suave linden, and gay buckeye brimming free - His nectar cups to lure the drunken bee; - Aloof, in coats of pearl-green armor, stand - Three sycamores, to guard the Fairyland. - - The busy grapevine o’er the coppice weaves - A cunning mesh of interlacing leaves, - Whereon adventurous urchins clamber high, - With giddy shout saluting the blue sky; - Or loll in golden sunshine baptismal, - Inhaling balm of buds ambrosial, - And, by hilarious breezes rocked and fanned, - Through loops of verdure gaze from Fairyland. - - Ere dies on heaven’s breast the morning star, - All unsubstantial, visionary, far, - In opalescent vapor loom the glades, - Dawn-rosy domes, dim grottoes and arcades, - Of yon enchanted dingles of the fay; - Behold! transmuted in the sheen of day, - By aureolar rays of Iris spanned, - A bower of dewdrops, glitters Fairyland! - - When dusk descends, the eerie host delight - As twinkling fireflies to bestar the night; - Then melancholy tree-toads shrill the throat, - And chirring crickets chime an irksome note; - Flits the lean bat the timorous wren to fray; - The muffled screech-owl hurtles on his prey; - For evil wings a gruesome hour command, - Though holy stars keep watch o’er Fairyland. - - All demonkind, or wicked, null, or good, - Lurk in the hollows of the sprightful wood; - There murk fogs drop distillings of the sea; - The weird moon plies her midnight witchery; - Time slumbers there; there Love and Beauty sport; - And Death holds there his grim, fantastic court; - No ghost may blab, no mortal understand - The mystic wonders of our Fairyland. - - - - - SUMMER LOVE. - - - I know ’tis late, but let me stay, - For night is tenderer than day; - Sweet love, dear love, I cannot go, - Dear love, sweet love, I love thee so. - The birds in leafy hiding sleep; - Shrill katydids their vigil keep; - The woodbine breathes a fragrance rare - Upon the dewy languid air; - The fireflies twinkle in the vale, - The river looms in moonshine pale, - And look! a meteor’s dreamy light - Streams mystic down the solemn night! - Ah, life glides swift, like that still fire-- - How soon our throbbing joys expire; - Who can be sure the present kiss - Is not his last? Make all of this. - I know ’tis late, sweet love, I know, - Dear love, sweet love, I love thee so. - Fantastic mist obscurely fills - The hollows of Kentucky hills; - Heardst thou? I heard or fear I heard - Vague twitters of some wakeful bird; - The wingéd hours are swift indeed! - Why makes the jealous morn such speed? - This rose thou wearst may I not take - For passionate remembrance’ sake? - Press with thy lips its crimson heart; - Yes, blushing rose, we must depart; - A rose cannot return a kiss-- - I pay its due with this, and this; - The stars grow faint, they soon will die, - But love faints not nor fails.--Good-bye! - Unhappy joy--delicious pain-- - We part in love, we meet again! - Good-bye!--the morning dawns--I go, - Dear love, sweet love, I love thee so. - - - - - CLOVER HILL. - - - On the brow of Clover Hill - Stands a maiden gazing out - Through the purple twilight still, - Half in rapture, half in doubt; - In the heavens Venus glistens, - While the maiden looks and listens. - - On the brow of Clover Hill - Deeper gloaming shadows fall; - Moans the plaintive whippowill; - Lonesome is the cricket’s call; - In the heavens Venus glistens, - Far the maiden looks and listens. - - On the brow of Clover Hill - Lingering she fondly sighs; - Anxious fears her bosom fill, - Tears bedew her mournful eyes; - In the heavens Venus glistens, - Still the maiden looks and listens. - - Footsteps! hark! On Clover Hill! - Faring nearer and more near! - Hearts ecstatic throb and thrill! - “War is over! He is here!” - In the zenith Venus glistens, - Lovers kiss and Heaven listens. - - - - - THE WEDDING DEFERRED. - - - Complaining flow the waters slow - Along the valley green and low; - The lilies dight in virgin white - Float fragrant in the ardent light, - And to the gossip ripples say, - “It is the Day!--is’t not the Day? - When comes the bridal train this way?” - - Yon amethystine hill-top kist - By lingering enamored mist, - Hears in the sky warm zephyrs sigh - To wooing clouds that dally by; - The wandering whispers seem to say, - “Is’t not the Day?--it is the Day! - Why comes no bridal train this way?” - - Forlorn of mood, by love pursued, - A youth laments in solitude; - The brown dove’s eyes soft sympathize - With him and to her mate she cries, - “What can the glad espousals stay? - It is the Day!--is’t not the Day? - Yet comes no bridal train this way.” - - O laggard moon, arise full soon - And swim to night’s auspicious noon, - The star-sea ride and swiftly glide - From eventide to eventide,-- - Whirl through a month, that I may say - “It _is_ the Day! It _is_ the Day! - Now comes the bridal train this way!” - - - - - TO THE LITTLE MIAMI RIVER. - - - Romantic the rocky and fern-scented regions, - Miami, the grots where thy rambles begin, - By cedars and hemlocks, in evergreen legions, - With silence and twilight seclusion shut in. - - There darkling recesses in miniature mountains - Recall to my fancy the haunts of the gnome; - There fabled Undina might rise from the fountains, - Or sport in the waterfalls’ glistening foam. - - Now laughing in ripples and dancing the sedges, - Now fretting the minnows in eddy and whirl, - Now kissing the pebbles that sprinkle thy edges, - And laving the pearl and the mother-of-pearl; - - Glide, whispering now under sycamore shadow, - Now singing by hamlet and cottage and mill, - Now shimmering onward through flowery meadow, - Now glassing the image of foresty hill. - - The farm boy, as careless he follows the harrow - O’er lowlands which quicken and ripen the maize, - Reads oft in some token of stone,--axe or arrow, - The wars and the loves of unchronicled days. - - Then steals on the air with thy murmuring numbers - A moan of lament for a race and its lore,-- - A sigh for yon chieftain forgotten, who slumbers - Beneath the lone mound on thy emerald shore. - - - - - IMMORTAL BIRDSONG. - - - What though mine ear hath never heard - The wing’d voice of the sky? - Nor listened to the love-lorn bird - Whose plaints in darkness die? - - The poets improvise for me - Lark-notes that never fail, - And make more sweet than sound can be - The song of nightingale. - - From rapt Alastor’s lyric leaves - Joy’s flying carol springs! - On darkling pinion sorrow grieves - When Adonais sings. - - I list the lavrock warbling clear - In birks of bonny Doon; - The bulbul’s swooning voice I hear, - Beneath the Persian moon. - - I hear across the centuries - What Philomela sung, - In Attic groves, to Sophocles, - When Poesie was young. - - - - - HINCHMAN’S MILL. - - - Lonely by Miami stream, - Gray in twilight’s fading beam, - Spectral, desolate and still, - Smitten by the storms of years, - Ah! how changed to me appears - Yonder long-deserted mill. - - While the ruin I behold, - Mossy roof and gable old, - Shadowy mid obscuring trees, - Memory’s vision, quick and true, - Time’s long vista gazing through, - Unseen pictures dimly sees. - - Sees upon the garner floor - Wheat and maize in golden store,-- - Powdery whiteness everywhere,-- - Sees a miller short and stout - Whistling cheerfully about, - Making merry with his care. - - Pleased, he listens to the whirr - Of the swift-revolving burr, - Deeming brief each busy hour; - Like a stream of finest snow, - Sifting to the bin below, - Fall the tiny flakes of flour. - - Once my childish feet were led - Down some furtive way of dread, - Through yon broken floor to peer, - Where the fearful waters drift - In a current dark and swift, - Flying from the angry weir. - - Once, with timid step and soft, - Stealthily I climbed aloft, - Up and up the highest stair;-- - Iron cogs were rumbling round, - Every vague and awful sound - Mocked and mumbled at me there. - - Wonder if those wheels remain, - And would frighten me again? - Wonder if the miller’s dead? - Wonder if his ghost at night - Haunts the stairs, a phantom white? - Walks the loft with hollow tread? - - Spectral, desolate and still, - Stands the solitary mill, - Close beside the gliding stream: - Darkness overtakes the sun, - Suddenly the day is done, - And of Time and Death I dream. - - - - - VICTOR. - - - When June exhaled her rose-sweet breath - And earth in sunshine smiled, - Untimely came intrusive Death - And stole away our child. - - As some fast-fading star declines, - Dissolving in the sky; - As wastes the dewdrop while it shines, - So did our darling die. - - Ah, fairer than the violet frail, - Frost-slain on April’s breast, - And purer than the lily pale, - The babe’s unbreathing rest. - - Our eyes grew numb with tearless woe, - Prayer swooned upon the tongue, - As to his lips of smiling snow - Our anguished kisses clung. - - O hapless Victor, name of pride! - Dear hands, poor little feet! - No thorn ye found, no path ye tried;-- - O envious winding sheet! - - Most mournful change and utter loss! - Return, my child, return! - Or, angels, guide my faith across - The grave his state to learn. - - Oh, grant me from the vast unknown - Some breath of solacing! - The spirit! whither has it flown - On timorous alien wing? - - All silent is the cruel sky; - The saints no pity lend; - My lamentation and my cry - To heedless void ascend. - - My heart, my weeping, bleeding heart - Wails at the door of fate, - And faints in darkness and apart, - Bereft and desolate. - - I only find, wher’er I grope, - A cradle and a pall; - Find, at the gloomy verge of hope, - A grave--and that is all. - - An empty cradle and a lone - Small mound of chilly sod, - O’er which I bow and vainly moan - To move the heart of God. - - - - - THE LAST FLIGHT. - - - Lo, in my path - A frozen songbird lies, - A victim of the sky’s - Blind, elemental wrath. - - The stolid year - Shall not in me repress - The impulsive tenderness - That moves a pitying tear. - - Life’s flutter o’er, - Thy quavering heart, now still, - No more shall throb and thrill, - Shall love and fear no more. - - For thee in vain - Shall Spring array the woods, - In nest-safe neighborhoods:-- - Thou canst not build again. - - Did instinct fail - When, from the Boreal rack, - Athwart thy migrant track - Hurtled the ruthless gale? - - A cruel nest - The feather-mocking snows! - And ah, what gasping throes - Assailed thy dying breast! - - Wing-spent, alone, - Adrift from every mate, - Flung down by baffling fate, - Thou froze to the Unknown. - - How saith the Word? - Does He who governs all - Take notice of the fall - Forlorn, of thee, poor bird? - - And is it so - His awful love divine - Provides for me and mine - When frore the tempests blow? - - Mute traveler, say, - How fare we when we die, - And whither do we fly - Along the unseen way? - - Vain questionings - In death’s bleak eddy whirled! - What heeds the other world - My broken, bleeding wings? - - Is life no more? - Is death the final doom? - Or shall the soul replume - Her flight and sing and soar? - - Yea, surely, He - Who melts my love to tears - For this dead songster, hears - And pities mine and me. - - His love must know - Our sorrow, and will lift - Our numbed lives from the drift - Of death’s all-hushing snow. - - - - - A GENTLE MAN. - - - I knew a gentle Man;-- - Alas! his soul has flown; - Now that his tender heart is still, - Pale anguish haunts my own. - His eye, in pity’s tear, - Would often saintly swim; - He did to others as he would - That they should do to him. - - He suffered many things,-- - Renounced, forgave, forbore; - And sorrow’s crown of thorny stings, - Like Christ, he meekly wore; - At rural toils he strove; - In beauty, joy he sought; - His solace was in children’s words - And wise men’s pondered thought. - - He was both meek and brave, - Not haughty, and yet proud; - He daily died his soul to save, - And ne’er to Mammon bowed. - E’en as a little child - He entered Heaven’s Gate; - I caught his parting smile, which said, - “Be reconciled, and wait.” - - - - - INVIOLATE. - - - We took a walk in Winter woods, - My little lad and I,-- - The hills and hollows all were pearl, - And sapphire all the sky. - - Before guerilla winds we saw - The skurrying drift retreat; - We thought of budded roots that lay - Asleep beneath our feet. - - We spoke of how, last year, in May, - One sunny bank we found, - Where wind-flowers stood in fairy crowds, - To charm the gladdened ground. - - A subtle feeling checked the boy,-- - His small hand held me back, - With mute appeal that we should tread - The wood-path’s beaten track. - - “My child, ’tis pleasanter to break - New pathways as we go.” - He said, “I do not like to spoil - The beauty of the snow.” - - - - - FAITH. - - - The spreading circle of the known - That Science strives to bound with laws - Is but a glowing sparkle thrown - From God, the radiant central cause. - - His mystery is vaster far - Than knowledge is or e’er can be; - The wheel of Evolution’s car - Rolls onward through eternity. - - A stilly voice forever sounds - The lapses of our doubt between: - “Seek not to give Religion bounds, - Nor limit Faith by forces seen.” - - - - - PLATO. - - - Athenian prophet of the soaring mind! - What new lamp burns so brightly as his old? - He changed Philosophy from dross to gold - By poet’s alchemy; and he combined - Egypt and Ind and the Hellenic States - With all the knowledge Cadmus’ letters hold, - In Logic’s crucible to be refined; - He opened Speculation’s splendid gates - To Western ways where Science after trod; - A reign of sweeter Ethics he foretold, - Renouncing Zeus for a diviner God; - And, unaffrighted by the awful Fates, - In starry sandals of Religion shod, - From pagan darkness Plato led mankind. - - - - - DANTE. - - AFTER READING “PARADISO.” - - - His sacred Muse, on soaring rapture’s wings, - Aspired the radiant empyrean high, - And bore to earth the splendor of the sky! - Durante’s spirit to my senses brings - The excessive beauty of transcendent things - That thrill imagination’s ear and eye; - With joy I hear the blissful carolings - Of angel hosts in robes of dazzling white; - My soul partakes the poet’s ecstasy! - Through all my meditation and my prayer - Steals reminiscence of the Stream of Light, - And of the Rose unutterably fair,-- - And O! the threefold glory of The One, - The Love that moves the circling stars and sun! - - - - - WAGNER’S KAISER MARCH. - - TO THEODORE THOMAS. - - - What diapasons from the hush profound - Thy magic wand, O Master, summons forth - To laud imperial Kaiser, robed and crowned! - Hail! multitudinous music of the North! - Titanic Wagner’s soul informs the sound! - Ho! instruments triumphant, trump and drum, - And cymbal clanging where the troopers come! - The Gothic valor now is set to score; - I hear the tramp of Saxon thought unbound, - The victor’s cry, disdaining death or wound,-- - I hear the saber ring, the cannon roar! - This is the throbbing tune for Halfred’s rhyme, - The symphony of glorious war sublime, - Valhalla’s martial joy forevermore! - - - - - DEFOE IN THE PILLORY. - - - On to the Pillory, ho! - To punish bold Daniel Defoe! - Come on to the place - Of shame and disgrace! - Bring rose-garlands sweet - To cast at his feet! - Fill glasses! Fill, ho! - Here’s to Daniel Defoe! - - On to the Pillory, ho! - To punish bold Daniel Defoe! - His fate he has earned, - His book we have burned, - That its soul may fly forth, - East, west, south and north! - Blow, trumpeter, blow! - Here’s to Daniel Defoe! - - On to the Pillory, ho! - To punish bold Daniel Defoe! - Shout him greeting full loud! - Sing his praise to the crowd! - The sentries may swear, - But what do we care? - More roses we’ll throw! - Here’s to Daniel Defoe! - - On to the Pillory, ho! - To punish rogue Daniel Defoe! - Pelt him, maidens and men! - For he thinks with a pen, - And his thought is too free! - God bless him! See! See! - Fill glasses! Fill, ho! - Here’s to Daniel Defoe! - - - - - WE THE PEOPLE. - - - We the People, not the Crown, - Not the surplice nor the brand, - Noble’s crest nor schoolman’s gown, - Burse nor rostrum, grange nor town,-- - We the People rule our land. - - We the People, not the Few, - High nor low nor middle class, - High and low and middle too, - Freemen, he and I and you, - We the multitude, the mass. - - Dumb we plodded feudal years, - Goaded by the lash of scorn; - Groaning, wept a sea of tears; - Lo! at last our day appears, - Dawn of the millennial morn! - - Asia deemed our woe decreed, - Brahm nor Buddha heard our cry, - Europe heard with sullen heed, - Prince and Pontiff mocked our need, - Making Christ a bitter lie. - - Demagogue nor Demigod - Shall again control the World; - _Man_ awoke! disdained the rod, - Spurned the despot whip and prod, - To the dust his rider hurled. - - Man has come unto his own; - Broken are his bands and bars; - Faith’s futurity foreknown - Domes a sky of promise sown - Thick with happy-omened stars. - - Zealous, not iconoclast, - We would spare the ancient true; - Life in death is rooted fast; - And the fruitage of the Past - Is the Passing,--is the New. - - Azure blood and haughty crest, - Blazon of heraldic scroll, - Coin in coffer, star on breast,-- - These are good, but better, best, - Is the rank, the wealth, of soul. - - Earth grows better growing old, - Still by happier races trod; - Plato’s iron men are gold; - Large humanities unfold; - Evolution’s law is--God. - - We the People, We the State, - Subject, Sovereign, both in one, - Trust in Highest Potentate. - Trust, O World, in Us and wait. - God has willed our will be done. - - - - - EIGHTY-SEVEN. - - - As a mighty heart in a giant’s breast - With rhythmic beat - Sends marching from brain to feet - The crimson vigor of creative blood, - So, in the bosom of the brawny West, - So, in the stalwart breast of the Nation, - Throbs the Great Ordinance,--a heart, - A vital and organic part, - Propelling by its strong pulsation - The unremitting stream and flood - Of wholesome influences that give - Unto the body politic - The elements and virtues quick - Whereby Republics live. - - - - - THE FOUNDERS OF OHIO. - - APRIL, 1888. - - - The footsteps of a hundred years - Have echoed, since o’er Braddock’s Road - Bold Putnam and the Pioneers - Led History the way they strode. - - On wild Monongahela stream - They launched the Mayflower of the West, - A perfect State their civic dream, - A new New World their pilgrim quest. - - When April robed the Buckeye trees - Muskingum’s bosky shore they trod; - They pitched their tents and to the breeze - Flung freedom’s star-flag, thanking God. - - As glides the Oyo’s solemn flood - So fleeted their eventful years; - Resurgent in their children’s blood, - They still live on--the Pioneers. - - Their fame shrinks not to names and dates - On votive stone, the prey of time;-- - Behold where monumental States - Immortalize their lives sublime! - - - - - FOREST SONG. - - Read at the first meeting of the American Forestry Congress, in Music - Hall, Cincinnati, April 19, 1882. - - - A song for the beautiful trees! - A song for the forest grand, - The Garden of God’s own hand, - The pride of His centuries. - Hurrah! for the kingly oak, - For the maple, the sylvan queen, - For the lords of the emerald cloak, - For the ladies in golden green. - - For the beautiful trees a song! - The peers of a glorious realm, - The linden, the ash, and the elm, - The poplar stately and strong,-- - For the birch and the hemlock trim, - For the hickory staunch at core, - For the locust thorny and grim, - For the silvery sycamore. - - A song for the palm,--the pine, - And for every tree that grows, - From the desolate zone of snows - To the zone of the burning line; - Hurrah! for the warders proud - Of the mountainside and the vale, - That challenge the thunder-cloud, - And buffet the stormy gale. - - A song for the forest, aisled, - With its Gothic roof sublime, - The solemn temple of Time, - Where man becometh a child, - As he listens the anthem-roll - Of the voiceful winds that call, - In the solitude of his soul, - On the name of the All-in-All. - - So long as the rivers flow, - So long as the mountains rise, - May the foliage drink of the skies - And shelter the flowers below; - Hurrah! for the beautiful trees! - Hurrah! for the forest grand, - The pride of His centuries, - The Garden of God’s own hand. - - - - - A BALLAD OF OLD KENTUCKY. - - - Well, this is my story of Schoolmaster John, - And how, single-handed, he slew - A terrible monster, one May day, at dawn, - When our staunch old Kentucky was new. - - Full rude was the cabin, o’ershadowed by trees, - For the Lexington school-children made; - For, Cadmus forbid that the shrewd A-B-C’s - Be lost in the tanglewood shade! - - Alone sat the pedagogue, throned on a stool, - Entranced by poetical lore; - He waited and read, while the morning’s breath cool - Floated in through the wide-open door. - - Bent over a magical page of the tome - That Vergil--how long ago!--wrote, - He mused of Æneas and Dido and Rome, - When a tiger-cat sprang at his throat! - - Fight, fight! John McKinney, or perish! He fought! - Forgot was the Queen and her woe! - He uttered no cry; of the children he thought - As he grappled his terrible foe! - - Now which shall be victor, the brute or the man? - Hands battle against teeth and claws! - Survive the dread struggle the nature that can! - Savage might against letters and laws! - - The beast by the master was throttled and crushed - On his desk, while its fangs stung his side; - With the crimsoning rill from his pulses that gushed, - The leaves of his Vergil were dyed. - - Who fly to the rescue? Who scream with alarm? - Three scared little maidens! Then said - The schoolmaster, smiling, “No harm, dears, no harm! - I have caught you a wild-cat;--it’s dead.” - - And this is the story of pedagogue John - Of Kentucky, and how it befell - That, in the heroic old days that are gone, - He did what he had to do, well. - - God set him his task in the woods of the West - To teach and to tame what was wild; - To give his heart’s love and the blood of his breast - For the good of the pioneer’s child. - - No story of Theseus or Hercules strong - More beautiful is, nor so true; - The meed of devotion to duty is song: - Then pay John McKinney his due. - - - - - JOHN FILSON. - - Matthias Denman, Robert Patterson and John Filson laid out the town of - Losantiville, now the city of Cincinnati, in 1788. Filson, schoolmaster - and surveyor, went out to explore the woods between the Miamis, but - never returned. - - - John Filson was a pedagogue-- - A pioneer was he; - I know not what his nation was - Nor what his pedigree. - - Tradition’s scanty records tell - But little of the man, - Save that he to the frontier came - In immigration’s van. - - Perhaps with phantoms of reform - His busy fancy teemed, - Perhaps of new Utopias - Hesperian he dreamed. - - John Filson and companions bold - A frontier village planned, - In forest wild, on sloping hills, - By fair Ohio’s strand. - - John Filson from three languages - With pedant skill did frame - The novel word Losantiville - To be the new town’s name. - - Said Filson: “Comrades, hear my words: - Ere three-score years have flown - Our town will be a city vast.” - Loud laughed Bob Patterson. - - Still John exclaimed, with prophet-tongue, - “A city fair and proud, - The Queen of Cities in the West!” - Mat Denman laughed aloud. - - Deep in the wild and solemn woods - Unknown to white man’s track, - John Filson went, one autumn day, - But nevermore came back. - - He struggled through the solitude - The inland to explore, - And with romantic pleasure traced - Miami’s winding shore. - - Across his path the startled deer - Bounds to its shelter green; - He enters every lonely vale - And cavernous ravine. - - Too soon the murky twilight comes, - The boding night-winds moan; - Bewildered wanders Filson, lost, - Exhausted, and alone. - - By lurking foes his steps are dogged, - A yell his ear appalls! - A ghastly corpse, upon the ground, - A murdered man, he falls. - - The Indian, with instinctive hate, - In him a herald saw - Of coming hosts of pioneers, - The friends of light and law; - - In him beheld the champion - Of industries and arts, - The founder of encroaching roads - And great commercial marts; - - The spoiler of the hunting-ground, - The plower of the sod, - The builder of the Christian school - And of the house of God. - - And so the vengeful tomahawk - John Filson’s blood did spill,-- - The spirit of the pedagogue - No tomahawk could kill. - - John Filson had no sepulcher, - Except the wildwood dim; - The mournful voices of the air - Made requiem for him. - - The druid trees their waving arms - Uplifted o’er his head; - The moon a pallid veil of light - Upon his visage spread. - - The rain and sun of many years - Have worn his bones away, - And what he vaguely prophesied - We realize today. - - Losantiville, the prophet’s word, - The poet’s hope fulfils,-- - She sits a stately Queen to-day - Amid her royal hills! - - Then come, ye pedagogues, and join - To sing a grateful lay - For him, the martyr pioneer, - Who led for you the way. - - And may my simple ballad be - A monument to save - His name from blank oblivion, - Who never had a grave. - - - - - JOHNNY APPLESEED. - - A Ballad of the Old Northwest. - - - A midnight cry appalls the gloom, - The puncheon door is shaken: - “Awake! arouse! and flee the doom! - Man, woman, child, awaken! - - “Your sky shall glow with fiery beams - Before the morn breaks ruddy! - The scalpknife in the moonlight gleams, - Athirst for vengeance bloody!” - - Alarumed by the dreadful word - Some warning tongue thus utters, - The settler’s wife, like mother bird, - About her young ones flutters. - - Her first-born, rustling from a soft - Leaf-couch, the roof close under, - Glides down the ladder from the loft, - With eyes of dreamy wonder. - - The pioneer flings open wide - The cabin door, naught fearing; - The grim woods drowse on every side, - Around the lonely clearing. - - “Come in! come in! nor like an owl - Thus hoot your doleful humors; - What fiend possesses you, to howl - Such crazy, coward rumors?” - - The herald strode into the room; - That moment, through the ashes, - The back-log struggled into bloom - Of gold and crimson flashes. - - The glimmer lighted up a face, - And o’er a figure dartled, - So eerie, of so solemn grace, - The bluff backwoodsman startled. - - The brow was gathered to a frown, - The eyes were strangely glowing, - And, like a snow-fall drifting down, - The stormy beard went flowing. - - The tattered cloak that round him clung - Had warred with foulest weather; - Across his shoulders broad were flung - Brown saddlebags of leather. - - One pouch with hoarded seed was packed, - From Pennland cider-presses; - The other garnered book and tract - Within its creased recesses. - - A glance disdainful and austere, - Contemptuous of danger, - Cast he upon the pioneer, - Then spake the uncouth stranger: - - “Heed what the Lord’s anointed saith; - Hear one who would deliver - Your bodies and your souls from death; - List ye to John the Giver. - - “Thou trustful boy, in spirit wise - Beyond thy father’s measure, - Because of thy believing eyes - I share with thee my treasure. - - “Of precious seed this handful take; - Take next this Bible Holy: - In good soil sow both gifts, for sake - Of Him, the meek and lowly. - - “Farewell! I go!--the forest calls - My life to ceaseless labors; - Wherever danger’s shadow falls - I fly to save my neighbors. - - “I save; I neither curse nor slay; - I am a voice that crieth - In night and wilderness. Away! - Whoever doubteth, dieth!” - - The prophet vanished in the night, - Like some fleet ghost belated; - Then, awe-struck, fled with panic fright - The household, evil-fated. - - They hurried on with stumbling feet, - Foreboding ambuscado; - Bewildered hope told of retreat - In frontier palisado. - - But ere a mile of tangled maze - Their bleeding hands had broken, - Their home-roof set the dark ablaze, - Fulfilling doom forespoken. - - The savage death-whoop rent the air! - A howl of rage infernal! - The fugitives were in Thy care, - Almighty Power eternal! - - Unscathed by tomahawk or knife, - In bosky dingle nested, - The hunted pioneer, with wife - And babes, hid unmolested. - - The lad, when age his locks of gold - Had changed to silver glory, - Told grandchildren, as I have told, - This western wildwood story. - - Told how the fertile seeds had grown - To famous trees, and thriven; - And oft the Sacred Book was shown, - By that weird Pilgrim given. - - Remember Johnny Appleseed, - All ye who love the apple; - He served his kind by Word and Deed, - In God’s grand greenwood chapel. - - - - - WENDING WESTWARD. - - - A new star rose in Freedom’s sky - A hundred years ago; - It gleamed on Labor’s wistful eye, - With bright magnetic glow; - Hope and Courage whispered, Go, - Ye who toil and ye who wait! - Open swings the People’s gate! - Beyond the mountains and under the skies - Of the Wonderful West your Canaan lies:-- - On the banks of the Beautiful River, - By the shores of the Lakes of the North, - There fortune to each will deliver - His share of the teeming earth. - - Jocund voices called from the dark - Hesperian solitude, saying, Hark! - Harken, ye people! come from the East, - Come from the marge of the ocean, come! - Here in the Wilderness spread a feast; - This is the poor man’s welcome home. - - Hither with axe and plow; - (Carry the stripes and stars!) - Come with the faith and the vow - Of patriots wearing your scars - Like trophies, upon the victorious breast,-- - Noblemen! wend to the West! - Load your rude wagon with your scanty goods - And drive to the plentiful woods; - Your wheels as they rumble shall scare - The fleet-footed deer from the road, - And waken the sulky brown bear - In his long unmolested abode; - The Redman shall gaze in dumb fear - At the wain of the strange pioneer, - His barbarous eyes vainly spell - The capital letters which tell - That the White-foot is bound - For the good hunting-ground - Where the buffaloes dwell. - - To the Ohio Country, move on! - Bring your brain and your brawn - (Some books of the best, - Pack into the chest!) - Bring your wives and your sons, - Your maidens and lisping ones; - Your trust in God bring; - Choose a spot by a spring, - And build you a castle--a throne, - A palace of logs--but your own! - - Happy the new-born child - Nursed in the greenwood wild; - Though his cradle be only a trough, - Account him well off; - For born to the purple is he, - The proud royal robe of the Free! - For the latest time is the best, - And the happiest place is the West, - Where man shall establish anew - Things excellent, beautiful, true! - - - - - THE TEACHER’S DREAM. - - - The weary teacher sat alone, - While twilight gathered on: - And not a sound was heard around, - The boys and girls were gone. - - The weary teacher sat alone, - Unnerved and pale was he; - Bowed by a yoke of care he spoke - In sad soliloquy: - - “Another round, another round - Of labor thrown away, - Another chain of toil and pain - Dragged through a tedious day. - - “Of no avail is constant zeal, - Love’s sacrifice is loss, - The hopes of morn, so golden, turn, - Each evening, into dross. - - “I squander on a barren field - My strength, my life, my all; - The seeds I sow will never grow, - They perish where they fall.” - - He sighed, and low upon his hands - His aching brow he prest, - And like a spell upon him fell - A soothing sense of rest. - - Ere long he lifted drowsy eyes, - When, on his startled view, - The room by strange and sudden change - To vast proportions grew! - - It seemed a senate house, and one - Addressed a listening throng; - Each burning word all bosoms stirred, - Applause rose loud and long. - - The wildered teacher thought he knew - The speaker’s voice and look, - “And for his name,” said he, “the same - Is in my record-book.” - - The stately congress hall dissolved, - A church rose in its place, - Wherein there stood a man of God, - Dispensing words of grace. - - And though he heard the solemn voice, - And saw the beard of gray, - The teacher’s thought was strangely wrought - “My yearning heart to-day - - “Wept for this youth whose wayward will - Against persuasion strove, - Compelling force, love’s last resource, - To stablish laws of love.” - - The church, a phantasm, vanished soon; - What shadowy picture then? - In classic gloom of alcoved room - An author plied his pen. - - “My idlest lad!” the master said, - Filled with a new surprise, - “Shall I behold _his_ name enrolled - Among the great and wise?” - - The vision of a cottage home - Was now through tears descried: - A mother’s face illumed the place - Her influence sanctified. - - “A miracle! a miracle! - This matron well I know! - She was a wild and careless child - Not half an hour ago. - - “Now, when she to her children speaks - Of duty’s golden rule, - Her lips repeat, in accents sweet, - My words to her at school.” - - Dim on the teacher’s brain returned - The humble school-room old; - Upon the wall did darkness fall, - The evening air was cold. - - “A dream!” the sleeper, waking, said, - Then paced along the floor, - And, whistling low and soft and slow, - He locked the school-house door. - - His musing heart was reconciled - To love’s divine delays: - “The bread forth cast returns at last, - Lo, after many days!” - - - - - BY THEIR FRUITS. - - - Above the clash of counter creeds - These gospel accents swell: - Whoever doeth righteous deeds - Hath read his Bible well. - - Like fragrant blooms of lavish spring - Are adoration’s vows; - The tree that pleases God will bring - Fair fruitage on its boughs. - - - - - PESTALOZZI. - - For the 150th anniversary of the birthday of Pestalozzi, celebrated in - Cincinnati, January 13, 1896. - - - Through vasty shades of savage Occident - The Ohio groped what time the man I sing - Took first quick draught of that free element - That thrills Swiss life, and felt the quivering - Of Alpine light which welcomed him to earth. - In Zurich then was born--sublime event-- - A man-child in whose soul new gospels waited birth. - - The world is ever plastic in the hand - Of humble saviours fearless of the cross: - One self-forgetting hero may command - And mould the future, scorning present loss: - Meek Pestalozzi, herding in his mind - Helvetia’s strayling little children, planned - By their salvation surely to redeem mankind. - - Much hope, more love possessed him, but most grief; - His heart, a mourner, sobbed o’er common woe: - Did the Almighty slumber or seem deaf - To wails ascending from His poor below? - Nay, Heaven remembers every bitter tear, - Yet mundane ills must seek on earth relief; - Lo, the Divine hath found a human volunteer. - - By sad Lucern arose the children’s cry, - The shelterless, the poor, the innocent; - The man of Zurich spake: “They must not die: - War cast them out, but I by Peace am sent - To father them and mother them and feed - Their bodies and their spirits; need have I - None other than to share their utmost dolorous need. - - “Oh, better never to be born at all - Than live forlorn, the victim of neglect! - To fall from brotherhood is lowest fall. - Lift up the low! bid man’s soul stand erect! - On Education found the Church and State. - I send through Europe my imploring call: - Millennial blessings round the Kindergarten wait! - - “Unfold what is within! Develop! Make - Full, fragrant efflorescence of the soul! - Let bloom the brain and call the heart awake! - Nothing repress; expand the being, whole, - Complete and perfect under nature’s awe, - Our dear Schoolmistress.” Thus prophetic spake - A voice of faith, forecharged with evolution’s law. - - Thus the reformer’s zealous wisdom taught: - Thus, sometime, plead with Bonaparte austere, - Who, scorning prophecy in soaring thought - Of self, flung answer with a royal sneer: - “We can’t be troubled with the A-B-C!” - Vain Emperor! the sword with which he fought - Made slaves which battling alphabets set free. - - The culture-captain had his marshals, too, - Ritter and Froebel and a legion more; - They proselyted nations, old and new, - They set their banners fair on every shore; - A million teachers follow in the way - The martyr opened to the good and true; - Our children bask in beam of Pestalozzi’s day. - - He deemed his lavish life of no avail, - Dim was his prospect of the Promised Land; - But even then when faith and hope did fail, - The seed, wide scattered from his weary hand, - Was springing, waving, bursting into flower; - For grain of truth is waft on every gale - And sinks in every soil its root of deathless power. - - He fell in conflict, but the field was won; - First Democrat of Culture! Thinker brave! - Hail, Switzerland, proud mother of such son, - Heap laurel garlands on his honored grave! - In flowers hide its consecrated sod! - Time writes his shining epitaph: “Well done!” - And Science vindicates his confidence in God. - - - - - “THERE IS NO CASTE IN BLOOD.” - - - In Gunga’s vale is heard - Siddhartha’s sacred word; - Thrill, heart of Hindustan! - Good tidings! Man is _Man_. - The Sudra’s eyes grow dim - With tears, for unto him - Thus spake Siddhartha good, - “There is no caste in blood.” - - Take comfort, humble soul! - The ages hopeward roll; - Time grows compassionate; - Thou art not doomed by Fate; - Religion shall prevail;-- - Hail! blessed Buddha! hail! - Proclaim thy message good, - “There is no caste in blood.” - - Ye plains of Ind, rejoice - At Love’s sweet-sounding voice! - Ye heights of Himalay - Gleam bright for joy to-day! - The truth to Buddha sent - New lights the Orient, - Presaging all men good: - “There is no caste in blood.” - - - - - VIVA LA GUERRA. - - April 23, 1898. - - - Viva la Guerra! - That is Spain’s cry; - This our reply: - Viva la Guerra! - - Saber clash saber! - Scath visit scath! - Wrath answer wrath! - Saber clash saber. - - Army front army! - People or crown, - Which shall go down? - Army face army. - - Navy meet navy, - Strong versus strong; - Right against wrong; - Navy dares navy. - - Cannon to cannon, - Powder and ball! - God over all! - Cannon to cannon. - - Viva la Guerra! - Mars against Thor! - Beautiful War! - Viva la Guerra! - - - - - BATTLE CRY. - - May 1, 1898. - - - The loud drums are rolling, the mad trumpets blow! - To battle! the war is begun and we go - To humble the pride of an arrogant foe! - - _The ensign and standard which wave for the Crown - Of Castile and Aragon--trample them down! - Granada and Leon and haughty Navarre - Shall lower their banner to Cuba’s lone star!_ - - Now under Old Glory, the Blue and the Gray - United march shoulder to shoulder away, - To meet the Hidalgos in furious fray. - - With musket and haversack ready are we - To tramp the globe over, to sweep every sea, - From isles of dead Philip to Florida’s Key. - - We think of the Maine and our hot bosoms swell - With rage of love’s sorrow, which vengeance must quell, - And then we are ready to storm gates of Hell. - - Our flag streams aloft by the tempest unfurled! - We strike for a Continent;--nay, for the World! - Mene, Tekel, Upharsin! the thunder is hurled! - - _The ensign and standard which wave for the Crown - Of Castile and Aragon--trample them down! - Granada and Leon and haughty Navarre - Shall lower their banner to Cuba’s lone star!_ - - - - - EL EMPLAZADO. - - - El Emplazado, the Summoned, the Doomed One, - Spain whom the nations denounce and abhor, - Robe thy dismay in the black sanbenito, - Come to the frowning tribunal of war. - - Curst were thy minions, their roster and scutcheon, - Alvas, Alfonsos, archarchons of hate; - Pillared on bigotry, pride, and extortion, - Topples to ruin thy mansion of state. - - Violence, Cruelty, Intrigue, and Treason, - These the false courtiers who flattered thy throne; - Empires, thy sisters, forbode thee disaster, - Even thy children their mother disown. - - Suppliant Cuba, thy daughter forsaken, - Famished and bleeding and buffeted sore, - Ghastly from gashes and stabs of thy rancor, - Binds up her wounds at an alien door. - - Courts and corregidors erst at thy bidding - Banished or butchered Moresco and Jew; - Ghosts from all Christendom, shades of the Martyrs - Flock from the sepulcher thee to pursue. - - Wrath of retributive justice o’ertakes thee: - Brand of time’s malison blisters thy brow: - Armed cabelleros and crowned kings of Bourbon, - All are unable to succor thee now. - - El Emplazado, the Summoned, the Doomed One! - God’s Inquisition condemns thee today! - Earth-shaking cannon-bolts thunder thy sentence,-- - Heaven re-echoes the auto de fe. - - - - - NATIONAL SONG. - - Dedicated to the Business Men’s Club of Cincinnati, May 13, 1903. - - - America, my own! - Thy spacious grandeurs rise - Faming the proudest zone - Pavilioned by the skies; - Day’s flying glory breaks - Thy vales and mountains o’er, - And gilds thy streams and lakes - From ocean shore to shore. - - Praised be thy wood and wold, - Thy corn and wine and flocks, - The yellow blood of gold - Drained from thy cañon rocks; - Thy trains that shake the land, - Thy ships that plow the main, - Triumphant cities grand - Roaring with noise of gain. - - Earth’s races look to Thee: - The peoples of the world - Thy risen splendors see - And thy wide flag unfurled; - Thy sons, in peace or war, - That emblem who behold, - Bless every shining star, - Cheer every streaming fold! - - Float high, O gallant flag, - O’er Carib Isles of palm, - O’er bleak Alaskan crag, - O’er far-off lone Guam; - Where Mauna Loa pours - Black thunder from the deeps; - O’er Mindanao’s shores, - O’er Luzon’s coral steeps. - - Float high, and be the sign - Of love and brotherhood,-- - The pledge, by right divine - Of Power, to do good; - For aye and everywhere, - On continent and wave, - Armipotent to dare, - Imperial to save! - - - - - RIGHT OF MIGHT. - - - I do enlist me in the cause of man, - The old, dear cause of liberty for all, - The hope of history since bards began - To sing inspired heroic battle-call. - - The precious purchase of ten thousand years, - The slow-won gains hard held at awful cost - Of toil and thought and grief and blood and tears-- - Shall these be stolen from the world, and lost? - - These to retain, must force, perforce, alas, - Lift up her banners and her thunders hurl: - Then, when the reign of cruelty shall pass, - Dare Charity her fighting ensign furl. - - Where rings no song for freedom, none are free; - Where gleams no sword for justice, justice dies; - Where gates of hell prevail, then must it be - The Powers of Darkness storm the very skies. - - The Prince of Gentleness, did He not bring - A brand, lest violence on earth prevail? - He preached, He prayed. And poets needs must sing - War against wrong, or Christ himself must fail. - - - - - JAMES E. MURDOCH. - - On His Eightieth Birthday. - - - Four-score! That gallant stripling? No! - That passion-breathing Romeo, - Who climbed, last night, the garden wall, - Mocked by Mercutio’s madcap call! - - Four-score? What, he? Charles Surface? Nay; - He is as young as blooming May; - You do but jest; I know him well-- - Who can forget wild Mirabel? - - Whatever the costume, forsooth, - The same inimitable youth! - Marked you the sables Hamlet wore, - Dark-plumed, in moonlit Elsinore? - - Gray locks? Believe the joke who can! - They “make him up” to play “old man”; - Pluck off the wig! Crow’s feet erase! - And recognize wag Murdoch’s face! - - Nay;--sober Time his card holds high, - And, swearing figures will not lie, - Adds up the years and proves the date: - See, in the ten’s place, here, an eight. - - So be it; Chronos, go thy ways; - Our friend grows old and full of days; - His frame may bend to Time’s control, - But Time is servant to his soul. - - His drama on the world’s wide stage, - Now in the last calm scene, old age, - Has been throughout legitimate, - In motive true, performance great. - - Whoever thus fulfils his part - Achieves the uttermost of art; - Who thus the scene of life has trod - Pleases the Manager--his God. - - Or soon or late, _exeunt_ all-- - The bell will ring, the curtain fall, - And we, the actors, put away - The masking garments of the play. - - When we from off the boards have passed, - And every light is out at last, - We’ll leave the theater and go - Where real life replaces show. - - Play out the play! and be content - To wait for that supreme event; - Dear Murdoch! master, father, friend,-- - Star on! still bright’ning to the end! - - - - - THE CONCORD SEER. - - - The Transcendentalist--he now transcends - The cloud of death to join exalted friends. - The Saadi of the West, the Saint, the Sage, - The north-sprung Plato of an un-Greek age, - Hath changed his habitation, and his ghost - Takes note authentic of the unknown coast. - Ah, joy serene! there doth he recognize - Congenial souls foreknown “polite and wise”:-- - Two bards were first to hail his risen wraith, - One sang the Psalm of Life, one that of Death; - Then mystic Hawthorne took his willing hand, - As Vergil Dante’s in the Shadow Land; - Now haply doth his converse reconcile - Momentous discords with redeemed Carlyle; - Perhaps in Soul’s consortable domain - He meets the shade of erudite Montaigne; - Or German-Grecian Goethe shows the way - To Fields Elysian where the Ancients stray;-- - By some celestial brook of lucent flow, - Where plane-trees with immortal verdure grow, - May sit, discoursing calm philosophies, - The Concord Seer, with argute Socrates. - - - - - THE POET OF CLOVERNOOK. - - Read at the Celebration of Alice Cary’s birthday, - to the children of the Public Schools of - Cincinnati, April 26, 1880. - - - A poet born, not made, - By Nature taught, she knew, - And, knowing, still obeyed - The Beautiful, the True. - - Hers was the seeing eye, - The sympathetic heart, - The subtle art whereby - Lone genius summons art. - - She caught the primal charm - Of every rural scene,-- - Of river, cottage, farm, - Blue sky, and woodland green. - - Baptized in Sorrow’s stream, - She sang, how sweetly well, - Of true Love’s tender dream, - And Death’s pale asphodel. - - Her pensive muse has fled - From hill and meadow-brook; - No more her footsteps tread - Thy paths, fair Clovernook. - - No more may she behold - The dew-crowned Summer morn - On wings of sunrise gold - Fly o’er the bending corn. - - No more her mournful gaze - Shall seek the twilight sky, - When parting Autumn days - Flush hectic ere they die. - - Nor note of joyous bird, - Nor April’s fragrant breath, - Nor tear, nor loving word, - May break the spell of Death. - - Sleep on! and take thy rest, - In Greenwood by the sea! - Dear Poet of the West, - Thy West remembers thee. - - - - - THE GREENFIELD WIZARD. - - (J. W. R.) - - - Two things there are in heaven above - And earth below--the greater, Love, - The lesser, Death--and therefor grew - Heart’s-ease and rosemary and rue - And myrrh and moly, magic plants; - These, and a common rose or two - Besprent with Indiana dew, - My wizard gathers from their haunts; - Distils the balmy, subtle juice - To make a spell of potent use; - Filters a seeming simple wine - Nectared with some drops most rare-- - (How he finds the tinct or where, - Not the critics can divine!) - Whoso gives the wine his lips, - Sipping smiles, and laughing sips; - But, before he drinks it up, - Tears have trickled in the cup. - - - - - WILLIAM BAIRD OF RIDGEVILLE. - - - Now who is the delightfulest - Old soldier that shakes hands with you? - The genial host, the welcome guest, - The teeming brain, the bosom true, - The soul of song and merry jest? - The prince of all good fellows, who? - “Why, William Baird of Ridgeville!” - - Whenever meets the G. A. R., - Through rain or dust he hies to town; - He gladdens the excursion car, - And, as his regiment tramps down - The gala street, you hear afar - The marching measure, “Old John Brown,” - From William Baird of Ridgeville. - - Then all the casements open wide, - A thousand flags are shaken free, - The balconies on either side - Are loud with shouts of jubilee, - And thrilling maidens wave with pride - Their kerchiefs, laughing, crying: “See! - That’s William Baird of Ridgeville!” - - All children feel his gracious charm,-- - Of gentle birth, or sprung of churls; - From hut and mansion, street and farm, - Troop eager round him lads and girls; - The baby leaves its mother’s arm - To ride the shoulder, pull the curls - Of William Baird of Ridgeville. - - The fools in flock from William fly, - Like fluttered sparrows from a hawk; - The women hover warmly nigh, - Like bees around a lily-stalk,-- - Enchanted by the sparkling eye - And by the spiced and nectared talk - Of William Baird of Ridgeville. - - Yet Bill is not a ladies’ man; - He consorts with “the boys”;--he jokes-- - This front-faced, sturdy veteran-- - With common and uncommon folks; - He’s not the least a Puritan:-- - Sometimes he drinks, and daily smokes - His briar-pipe, at Ridgeville. - - Wit’s gold is minted in his brain - And glitters from his lavish tongue: - The gravest deacon frowns in vain - To quench the laughter; old and young - Report the brilliant quips that rain - Like scattered pearls at random flung - By William Baird of Ridgeville. - - No wight can counterfeit or steal - What unpremeditated art - Gives him to improvise, to feel, - To waken in the answering heart; - What they from learning’s pride conceal, - The Muses uninvoked impart - To William Baird of Ridgeville. - - An unambitious soul hath Bill; - The man is modest as a maid; - Down at the foot of fortune’s hill - His genius bides in calm and shade; - He reads his Shakespeare, dreams his fill; - A scythe he swings or plies a spade,-- - Bold Captain Baird of Ridgeville. - - Nor wife nor child his arms enfold; - No, no--he is a bachelor; - Yet, in his bosom aches an old - Deep wound which antedates the war; - He mourns--so is the secret told-- - His dear, dead sweetheart, Eleanor;-- - True William Baird of Ridgeville. - - Bill’s time must come some day, to die! - Then like a soldier he’ll be found, - Nor fear the bullet’s whizzing cry, - Nor dread the final trumpet’s sound. - If I be breathing then, may I - Be with him on that battleground, - To kiss his lips and say good-bye - To William Baird of Ridgeville. - - - - - LET’S SHAKE. - - Impromptu. - - - You thought you would take me, you say, by surprise! - You rascal! I knew you the moment my eyes - Lit on your old phiz, and I couldn’t mistake - Your voice nor your motions. How are you? - Let’s shake! - - Train late? But you got here? Now why did you wire - Me not to expect you, you measureless liar? - Come up to my den, and by jolly! we’ll make - A night of it--where is your luggage? - Let’s shake! - - Say, how have you been? Let me look in your face; - Have you won, have you lost, in the strenuous race? - Have you knocked the persimmons and taken the cake? - No? Here’s a small wallet--we’ll share it-- - Let’s shake! - - You may bank on my heart,--it is truer than gold; - Hot, hotter it grows as the world waxes cold; - Through flood and through flame I would go for your sake, - That’s so, Bill, you grizzly old humbug, - Let’s shake! - - You’re married, I dare say, or leastwise, in love? - Speak out, for you know we are like hand and glove; - I used to think you and Belle Esmond would wed;-- - Yes, yes, as I wrote you, the baby is dead;-- - I feared for awhile that my wife’s heart must break; - Your hand, dear old comrade--don’t mind me,-- - Let’s shake! - - God bless you! I’m awfully glad you are here, - You must not make fun of this womanish tear; - He was only a baby, scarce two Aprils old, - But, William, I tell you they do get a hold - Of the heartstrings, these babies, and, since ours went, - Why, somehow or other, we’re not quite content - With this planet;--but when all our miseries here - Are over, I hope we may strike a new sphere - Up yonder, where hearts never hunger nor ache;-- - You’ll get there, I reckon, if I do? - Let’s shake! - - - - - A WELCOME TO BOZ. - - Impromptu. - - - In immortal Weller’s name, - By Micawber’s deathless fame, - By the flogging wreaked on Squeers, - By Job Trotter’s fluent tears, - By the beadle Bumble’s fate - At the hands of vixen mate, - By the famous Pickwick Club, - By the dream of Gabriel Grubb, - In the name of Snodgrass’ muse, - Tupman’s amorous interviews, - Winkle’s ludicrous mishaps, - And the fat boy’s countless naps, - By Ben Allen and Bob Sawyer, - By Miss Sally Brass, the lawyer, - In the name of Newman Noggs, - River Thames and London fogs, - Richard Swiveller’s excess, - Feasting with the Marchioness, - By Jack Bunsby’s oracles, - By the chime of Christmas bells, - By the cricket on the hearth, - Scrooge’s frown and Crotchit’s mirth, - By spread tables and good cheer, - Wayside inns and pots of beer, - Hostess plump and jolly host, - Coaches for the country post, - Chambermaid in love with Boots, - Toodles, Traddles, Tapley, Toots, - Jarley, Varden, Mister Dick, - Susan Nipper, Mistress Chick, - Snevellicci, Lilyvick, - Mantalini’s predilections - To transfer his “dem” affections, - Podsnap, Pecksniff, Chuzzlewit, - Quilp and Simon Tappertit, - Weg and Boffin, Smike and Paul, - Nell and Jenny Wren and all,-- - Be not Sairy Gamp forgot,-- - No, nor Peggotty and Trot,-- - By poor Barnaby and Grip, - Dora, Flora, Di and Gip, - Perrybingle, Pinch and Pip-- - Welcome, long-expected guest, - Welcome, Dickens, to the West. - - 1867. - - - - - THE BOOK AUCTION. - - - “How much am I bid?” said the spry auctioneer, - “For the lays of a well-known bard?” - The bard, incog, who was hovering near, - Glanced up, and his breath came hard. - - “I am offered a dime! Just think of it, gents! - For these ‘Songs of the Dewy Dawn’! - Are you all done bidding? Ten! ten cents-- - Ten cents--and--going--and--gone! - - “You don’t know elegant books from trash!” - Joked the jubilant auctioneer; - The dubious author bit his mustache, - And felt confoundedly queer. - - “A beautiful copy of Shakespeare’s pomes! - How much am I bid? Look alive! - A right nice work to embellish your homes; - Five cents! Sold to cash, for five!” - - The incog singer twinkled his eye - And inwardly said with a thrill: - “American poetry doesn’t sell high, - But I’d hate to go cheap as old Bill.” - - - - - A GIFT ACKNOWLEDGED. - - February 19, 1881. - - - Your Winter gift of bud and bloom - Took nature by surprise; - ’Twas sudden Summer in my room, - And April in my eyes. - - The kindly mist a moment stole - The flowers from my view, - But lo! they blossomed in my soul, - Where love their fragrance knew. - - Fair embassy! their smiles I greet, - Camellia, pink and rose; - I understand the message sweet - Their gentle hearts enclose. - - Their winsome beauty gladdens me - With this immortal truth: - No age can quite unhappy be - That still remembers youth. - - Dear boys! companions! friends sincere! - More warm and true than men, - I thank you most because my tear - Made me a boy again. - - - - - THE OLD HOMESTEAD. - - - Enshrined among roses - The Homestead reposes - With vines mantled o’er; - Ground-ivy and clover - Are running all over - The stone at the door. - - Pinks, lilies, are blowing, - Blue violets showing - Gold hearts to the June; - Bees going and coming - Keep evermore humming - Their Hyblean tune. - - ’Twas here that I wasted - Youth’s flower and tasted - Love’s first honey-dew; - A boy here I slumbered, - By care unencumbered, - Long, balmy nights through. - - The wood-birds each morning - Gave musical warning - For shadows to fly; - Their rhapsody choral - Foretold the auroral - First flush of the sky. - - With rising emotion - Akin to devotion - The scene I behold;-- - With fond recollections - Of tender affections - Too sweet to be told. - - - - - JENNIE MOORE. - - - The morning air is richly rife - With southern soft perfumes; - Yon orchard glows with sudden blush - Of mingled buds and blooms; - The madrigals of wooing birds - Awaken amorous Spring, - And “Jennie Moore, sweet Jennie Moore” - Is all the song they sing. - - Glad Yalobusha’s rippling waves - Repeat the darling name; - The zephyr lost among the pines - Dies murmuring the same; - And when the hush of twilight steals - Along the dreamy shore, - The blissful silence to my heart - Keeps singing “Jennie Moore.” - - - - - ASHES. - - - The fire of love is dead. - No spark of living red - The cold, gray ashes show. - Be still! thy sighing breath-- - Can it requicken death? - Nay, hope not, dream not so. - Ah, no, no, no! - - - - - POSY. - - - Laura is the first to seek - Rime of March in wildwood bleak; - First to mourn the aster’s death, - Withered by November’s breath; - Every glade and glen she knows - Where the coy spring-beauty grows, - Searches sunny slope and dell - For the pearl or golden bell - Of the quivering addertongue - By the wandering zephyr swung; - She and April, comrades boon, - Hail the early-crowned puccoon; - In the dingle lone she sees - Tremulous anemones; - From the breast of June she takes - Columbines and plumy brakes; - Not a daisy she’ll forget, - Nor the humblest violet. - Lilies proud, on stately stalks, - Bow to greet her where she walks; - Roses to her pathway lean, - Queens saluting lovelier queen, - Emulous to win her eyes, - Rivals for self-sacrifice; - Blesséd they whom she shall choose - Though their fragrant lives they lose! - Joyful the elected flower - Which may triumph one brief hour, - Mingled with the clustered few, - Musical in form and hue! - Thus sweet notes that singly please - Join in chordant melodies! - So do gathered fancies twine - Graceful in the rhythmic line;-- - Like a perfect lyric lay - Laura’s exquisite bouquet. - - - - - A SNOW BIRD. - - - Beside the curbstone, in gusty whirl - Of dust and snow-drift, stood a little girl; - The piteous tears ran down her baby face; - In dumb despair she stood, nor moved a pace, - Her flying curls and fluttering short dress - Pathetic signals of forlorn distress; - Her fondling hands, all purple with the cold, - Unto her breast a china doll did hold. - “What is the matter, dear, why do you cry?” - Her chill-cramped lips made dolefullest reply: - “I am so cold, and I don’t know the way.” - That was the most her helplessness could say. - - Ere long, before a laughing, ruddy flame, - She smiled through tears and shyly told her name; - I led the strayling to her mother’s door, - And in she flew,--I never saw her more. - Yet oftentimes, when Winter scoffs the sun, - She is my bosom’s guest, that timid one; - She steals into my heart and sobbing stands, - A naked doll in her caressing hands; - I see her shiver and I hear her say, - “I am so cold, and I don’t know the way.” - - - - - THE UPSET. - - - Enforced pursuit of silver eagles fleet - Gave early haste to my reluctant feet, - And so it chanced I hurried--I and Care-- - At sunrise down a city thoroughfare; - But by the grace of some directing fay - I met a sight that gladdened me all day. - - I saw a beer-plump Saxon--Bacchus’ son-- - His red, round face the symbol of slow fun; - Unconscious he of all ’twixt sky and earth - Except one soul-engrossing cause of mirth: - He dragged a painted sled, and, perched thereon, - Sat snug a three-years’ maiden, bright as dawn, - And happy as the sparrows chirping round, - Crumb-hunting near her on the snowy ground. - A sudden turn! a laughing cry, and lo! - The sled upsets, and Mädchen prints the snow. - She laughs; I laugh; loud ha-ha’s Bacchus’ son;-- - Then gravely he,--“By yolly! dot vas fun.” - - - - - THE SCHOOL GIRL. - - - From some sweet home the morning train - Brings to the city, - Five days a week, in sun or rain, - Returning like a song’s refrain, - A school girl pretty. - - A violet’s unaffected grace - Is dainty miss’s, - Yet, in her shy, expressive face, - The touch of urban arts I trace, - And artifices. - - No one but she and Heaven knows - Of what she’s thinking; - It may be either books or beaux, - Fine scholarship or stylish clothes, - Per cents or prinking. - - How happy must the household be - This morn who kissed her; - Not every one can make so free; - Who sees her, inly wishes she - Were his own sister. - - How favored is the book she cons, - The slate she uses, - The hat she lightly doffs and dons, - The orient sunshade that she owns, - The desk she chooses. - - Is she familiar with the wars - Of Julius Caesar? - Do crucibles, and Leyden jars, - And Browning, and the moons of Mars, - And Euclid, please her? - - She studies music, I opine; - O day of knowledge! - And other mysteries divine - Of imitation or design, - Taught in the college. - - A charm attends her everywhere, - A sense of beauty; - Care smiles to see her free of care; - The hard heart loves her unaware; - Age pays her duty. - - Her innocence is panoply, - Her weakness, power; - The earth her guardian, and the sky; - God’s every star is her ally, - And every flower. - - - - - THE READERS. - - - Come hither, my ten years’ maiden; - O’er what do you ponder so much? - “I am reading in Tanglewood Stories, - The tale of the Golden Touch.” - - Ah! Hattie, my flax-haired darling, - How buried in study you seem. - “I am reading in Tales from Shakespeare, - Of Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream.” - - And there on the sofa is Mayo; - My laddie, what pleases you so? - “This picture and fable in Æsop,-- - See here,--of the Pitcher and Crow.” - - Come hither, my dream-eyed baby, - You’re falling asleep on the floor! - “I’m reading in Sing Song, papa,-- - I wish you would read me some more.” - - - - - WAG. - - Obiit, February 7, 1878. - - - He was only a dog, and a mongrel at that, - And worthless and troublesome, lazy and fat,-- - Was Wag, who died yesterday night; - Yet now that his barking forever is o’er, - And his caudal appendage can waggle no more, - His elegy I will indite. - - ’Twas seldom authority mastered his will; - He always was noisy when bid to be still; - He slumbered while danger was near; - He ran after chickens against all command; - When ordered to “sick” he would heedlessly stand; - His principal passion was fear. - - From morning till night he would dig in the ground - To get at a rabbit, but, when it was found, - In terror he took to his heels; - But there was one duty he never did shun, - From that naught could drive him, to that he would run: - Wag never neglected his meals. - - The tax that I paid the police on his poll, - A dollar a year, I begrudged in my soul, - For Wag I thought dear at a cent; - And once, in my hardness, I gloomily said, - “I wish that the no-account puppy were dead!” - But now he _is_ dead, I repent. - - Wag came from Kentucky, a waif, bundled up - And packed in a basket, a charity pup,-- - In pity we warmed him and fed; - The only return that his nature could give - For preserving his life, was serenely to live, - Content with his board and his bed. - - He was kind to the dogs upon Tusculum Hill; - He followed them all with fraternal good will, - From coach dog to commonest cur; - He was grateful to _people_ who treated him right, - And for his young mistress he even would fight, - But not lose his dinner for her. - - I miss his black body curled up and asleep, - I miss his contortions, his bark, and his leap, - And the sound of his gnawing at bones; - The very same night that the Pope died at Rome, - Poor Wag, all alone, in the wash-house at home, - Yielded up his last shivering moans. - - And when to the children, next morning, I said, - As they sat at the table, “Yes, Wag--he is dead,” - There was not a dry eye in the room; - And Auntie began, with remorse, to recall - How lately she’d driven deceased from the hall, - With scoldings and blows of a broom. - - Now Wag is asleep near an apple-tree old, - And a dog-rose shall blossom above his dear mold, - And there shall a tablet be set; - For though but a dog, and a mongrel at that, - And worthless, and idle, and lazy, and fat,-- - Poor Wag was _our_ dog, and a pet. - - - - - DONATELLO. - - - Who will capture Donatello? - Roving cat! - Fierce, ungovernable fellow; - Musical as Leporello,-- - Sharp and flat! - Terrible in a duello. - - Ragamuffin, have you met a - Felis fat? - Ancestored in gay Valetta, - Where brown dames in black faldetta, - Walk and chat-- - Hot his blood as flame of Ætna. - - Beautiful, romantic, splendid - Autocrat! - To the forest, unattended, - Daring Donatello wended: - Owl and bat, - Weasel, mole, and mink, he rended. - - Savage wildwood his unbounded - Habitat; - By no man or mastiff hounded, - By the midnight mirk surrounded-- - Think of that! - Oft his caterwaul he sounded. - - Freedom to the gallant fellow. - Exeat! - Victor in each fierce duello, - Midnight, madcap Leporello! - Roving cat! - Graceless, graceful Donatello! - - - - - GABRIEL OF SCHWARTZENWALD. - - - Rhyme, and ring the changes well, - Sing the song of Gabriel, - Gabriel of Schwartzenwald. - - Lo, a voice delusive called - From the Ohio’s crooked vale, - Saying, “Sail and sail and sail - Over the sea and hither away, - Westering to the Land of Play; - Happy region of Do-as-you-please, - Where the guilders grow on trees, - Where the peasants all are kings - And there be no underlings.” - - Gabriel, the idle dreamer, - Heard the Utopian voice alluring; - Sought a sail-ship,--not a steamer; - Soon the vessel leaves her mooring, - Veers and tacks to Occident, - Bears him o’er the crinkled sea; - Never soul so indolent - Lounged upon a deck as he. - With the vagrant breeze he glides - Over sun-lit, moon-lit tides, - Skims to port and shore; - Spins along the shining rail, - Sleeps into Ohio’s vale,-- - Wakes--the journey o’er. - Not an idler Gabriel sees, - Not a kreutzer on the trees; - Every bretzel must be bought; - Naught is proffered him for naught. - ’Tis the Region of Unrest, - Busy, toiling, moiling West! - - All the peasant kings he found - Building houses, tilling ground. - Gabriel of Schwartzenwald - From his dream is disenthralled; - Transatlantic, far away, - Eastward looms the Land of Play. - - Like the lily, like the daisy, - Lolling Gabriel was lazy; - Clownish were his clumsy paces, - Ludicrous his slow grimaces; - Ill-defined the thoughts he spoke, - Like the wreathed tobacco smoke - From his meerschaum upward shed - Curling round his shaggy head. - Little could he understand:-- - “Vish I vas in Faderland, - Nicht is goot for notings here - Only shust das lager-bier.” - - Easily he wept or smiled, - Easily was he beguiled; - Rill-like, shallow, o’er his mind, - Ran affections swift and kind; - Secretly he shared his meat - With a lame cur on the street; - “Vonce I had a hund,” said he, - “Vat vas very freund to me; - Ya, mein Herr, dat hund vas mine; - Vish I heard him barkin’ here; - Vish I had a glass goot bier, - Oder flash von German wein.” - - Hard by Mineami Bayou, - Where the gadding breezes cool - Loiter up from the Ohio, - Gabriel, at sink of sun, - Throned upon a wooden stool, - Fondled his accordion. - Then the ragged urchins round, - And their brown-legged sisters, maybe, - Lugging each a flax-haired baby,-- - Sometimes, too, the weary mothers, - Yea, and I, and lingering others, - By sad, dulcet quaverings won, - Gathered near to catch the sound; - O’er the hill the risen moon - Paused to hear the mellow tune; - All too sadly, all too soon, - Gabriel would cease to play, - Light his pipe and puff away. - “Vas a Fräulein,”--mumbled he; - “Vish I vas to-night not hier; - Not America for me,-- - Only shust das lager-bier.” - “Play a waltz now, Gabriel!” “Nein, - Rhine wein ist der beste wein.” - - Gabriel did sigh and sadden - For the linden shades of Baden, - For the glooms of Schwartzenwald; - So a homesick brief he scrawled - To his mother, her to tell - That he was not strong or well. - (Of the Fräulein wrote he not,-- - Haply Gabriel forgot.) - Soon the doting mother old,-- - Four-score were her years and three,-- - Sent the lout a purse of gold, - With the summons--“Come to me! - Komm zu mir, mein Sohn, geschwind, - Komm zu mir, mein liebes Kind.” - - From the Ohio’s crooked vale, - Flying fast by rail and sail, - Home to Schwartzenwald away, - Eastward to the Land of Play, - Gabriel of Schwartzenwald - Followed the mother-tongue that called - From the fatherland in tearful tone, - “Komm, Gabriel, mein lieber Sohn!” - Followed the mother-voice and the call - Of the nameless Fräulein, short or tall, - And the coaxing lisp of the linden leaves, - And the bark of a dog forlorn that grieves - For an absent master; the gurgle, too, - Of bottled grape-juice and foamy brew, - And the tweedle-dee of the fiddle gay - That leads to the dance on a holiday;-- - Followed his dreams and his memories, - Whirled with the sleeping speed of wheels, - Flew on the eager wings of the breeze, - Doubting of naught that his foolish heart feels, - Sure that the country of Do-as-you-please, - If any such ever is found upon earth, - Is the home of our mother, the land of our birth. - - - - - COFFEA ARABICA. - - - More entrancing than aroma - From the Hindu sacred soma, - Comes a fragrant - Essence vagrant - Floating up - From my quaint Zumpango cup, - Incense rare, - Evanescent steam ascending, - Curling, wavering, fading, blending, - Vanishing in viewless air. - Let me sip and dream and sing - Musing many an idle thing, - Let me sing and dream and sip - Making many an fancied trip - Far away and far away - Over ocean, gulf and bay - To islands whence the spicy wind - Breathes languor on the tropic sea, - To sultry strands of teeming Ind, - To coasts of torrid Araby, - To realms no Boreal breath may chill, - Like rich Brazil, - Or Jabal’s clouded hill on hill, - Or warm Bulgosa’s valley low, - To zones where Summer splendors glow, - Where seasons never come or go, - Where coffee trees perpetual blow. - - While I drowse and dream and sip, - Sailing, sailing slides a ship - Over the glittering sea, - Measuring leagues of night and day, - Bearing and bringing to me, - Bringing from far away, away, - The pale green magical berry, - The seed of the virtuous cherry, - The bean of the blossom divine! - Bringing from over the brine, - Bringing from Demarara, - From balsamy San Pará, - Bringing from Trans-Sahara, - From hoard of the Grand Bashaw, - Or redolent chests of Menelek, - An Abyssinian cargo - Richer than freight of Argo, - Treasured in garners under the deck, - Bringing and bearing for me - The gift of the coffee tree! - Better than blood of the Spanish vine, - Or ruddy or amber wine of the Rhine; - Bearing the bean of the blessed tree! - Better than bousa or sake fine, - Or sampan loads of oolong tea, - Souchong, twankay, or bohea,-- - Bringing the virtuous bean divine, - The coffee-tree cherry, - The magical berry, - More entrancing than aroma - From the Hindu sacred soma. - - - - - AN INDIA SHAWL. - - - This dainty shawl an Eastern shuttle wove, - Where Ravee stream winds sunward from Cashmere; - By nimble gold ’twas borne around the sphere - For one who gave it me in friendly love. - To rival nature’s hues the weaver strove, - For beauty’s sake and not barbaric show; - Behold, commingled here, elusive glow - The brilliant, innocent dyes of field and grove. - This silk soft web was never merchandise; - A charm of peerless art proclaims it rare,-- - A sumptuous robe that Majesty would prize, - And India’s British Empress well might wear; - ’Tis mine for thee within whose beaming eyes - I see love’s India, O my queenly Fair! - - - - - APOLOGY. - - - Full well my loyal heart remembers - The vow of rapture’s lavish tongue, - For thee to smother grief’s Decembers - In joy’s June roses and make over - The world;--how easily, fond lover, - Could I when life and hope were young. - - When troth-plight had begemmed thy finger - Unhappiness should cease to be; - No shape of care near thee should linger; - Exultant, I, thy love to guerdon, - Would weep thy tears and bear thy burden, - Yea, purchase thy Gethsemane. - - For thee should hemlock turn to honey, - Thy hand, unhurt, the thorn might hold, - Darkness should light thee, and the sunny - Celestial days, triumphal, singing - Around the globe, should bless thee, bringing - Anew to earth the Age of Gold. - - Thy beauty and thy grace to glory, - Would I inweave thy golden name - In shining weft of song and story; - Would I, on love’s heroic mission, - Ascend the sunned peak of ambition - To pluck the Alpine flower, fame. - - O season of delirious passion! - What knew or recked my spirit then - Of deeds in less transcendent fashion - Than youth’s high drama realizes - In visions, dreams, and enterprises, - That lift to godhood mortal men! - - Naught is impossible to Heaven, - Nor to the puissance of youth! - Imagination’s quickening leaven - Works in the pulsing brain and being - Till every sense hath second-seeing - And all that should be true is truth. - - O glorious falsehood and illusion! - Call not the lover’s transports lies: - The white light of his heart in fusion - Makes visible the far ideal, - Only the low earth is unreal, - Secure the lover walks the skies. - - I trod with thee the starry spaces, - I told the only tale I knew; - We dwelt in spirit, not in places, - And, if the promises then spoken,-- - Be witness, O my God!--were broken, - The promising was heavenly true. - - - - - UNRECONCILED. - - - When winter’s loom of cloud - Weaves robes of snow - To wrap the hills in shroud, - My meditations go - Where shuddering tempests blow - Above a little grave. - - When spring’s pale wild-flowers wake - Where sunbeams play, - Must not my full heart break? - Birds, blossoms, come with May,-- - Would that, some happy day, - My child could come again. - - When air-built cloud-fleets sail - Blue summer’s sky, - And violets exhale - Their fragrant souls and die, - My soul lifts Rachel’s cry, - For, oh! the child is not. - - Most mournful time of all - Is when the leaf - Fades, withering to its fall, - Ending its term so brief, - Like him, my joy, my grief, - Lost in the senseless grave. - - The new moons come and go, - Stars rise and set, - Time’s healing waters flow - Across my wound, and yet - Grief cannot pay love’s debt;-- - Love’s solace is to mourn. - - - - - ANNIVERSARY. - - - This is your birthday, dearest? Dearest wife, - Fond sweetheart of my youth and of my prime, - Lover and friend and comrade, in whose life - I live unconscious of the flight of time! - - Three-score? and must we grant it so? Why, then - Thank Heaven we have tasted life thus long, - For life is rich, and shall grow sweeter when - Like mellowing wine age renders it less strong. - - We shall grow old together, count the years, - Welcome each sunrise and each setting sun; - Together laugh our laugh or weep our tears, - Wait, act and suffer, till the sands be run. - - I owned Golconda and the Coast of Pearl, - Being a boy--it was but yesterday; - One shared my fortune, giving hers--one girl-- - Whither, my darling, fled youth’s dream away? - - Where are the morning and the wealth of spring? - Gone with the air-built castle--vanished, gone! - The dew of youth went sunward, and the wing - Is broken now that soared at golden dawn. - - It is too late for riches, land and gold; - Too late to pluck the flaming rose of power; - My hands have bled to gather what they hold-- - Buds of dead hope--ambition’s phantom flower. - - Yet all I am I dedicate to you, - As on our spousal morning, Love, and bring - This heart-born offering to pledge anew, - In Autumn song, the promises of Spring. - - - - - AMAUROTE. - - - Safe in towery Amaurote - Now I dwell; - From the tumbling sea my boat, - Like a bell of foam afloat, - Up Anyder’s refluent stream - Voyaged well; - And I woke unto a dream - Realized in realm remote - Of Utopia. - - Whiles my eudæmonian guide - Thrummed her lyre, - Charmful o’er the billows wide, - In the distance I espied - Gleam of opalescent dome, - Golden spire; - Then my soul foreknew its home - Far beyond the roaring tide, - In Utopia! - - All was sooth as poets old - Gave renown; - All that seers and sages told, - Fabling of an Age of Gold;-- - Towery Amaurote was there, - Blissful town! - Far away from everywhere, - Flushed with rosy light, behold! - In Utopia. - - Visioned splendor reared from naught - Rose sublime; - Art and Beauty thither brought - All Imagination taught - Of the mystery of Man - And of Time; - Wisdom, smiling on the plan, - Bade the wonderwork be wrought, - In Utopia! - - Have I eaten of the lote - So its spell - Laps and lulls me to devote - Hours Lethean, far remote - From the dreadful things that be? - Nay, I dwell - Where o’er dream-deeps Poesie - Sang me, in a foam-bell boat, - To Utopia. - - - THE END - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAGA OF THE OAK, AND OTHER POEMS *** - -***** This file should be named 64148-0.txt or 64148-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - https://www.gutenberg.org/6/4/1/4/64148/ - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -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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