Complete Prose Works
As we drove back, saw the "School of Philosophy," but it was shut up,
and I would not have it open'd for me. Near by stopp'd at the house
of W.T. Harris, the Hegelian, who came out, and we had a pleasant chat
while I sat in the wagon. I shall not soon forget those Concord drives,
and especially that charming Sunday forenoon one with my friend Miss M.,
and the white ponies.
BOSTON COMMON--MORE OF EMERSON
_Oct. 10-13._--I spend a good deal of time on the Common, these
delicious days and nights--every mid-day from 11.30 to about 1--and
almost every sunset another hour. I know all the big trees, especially
the old elms along Tremont and Beacon streets, and have come to a
sociable silent understanding with most of them, in the sunlit air, (yet
crispy-cool enough,) as I saunter along the wide unpaved walks. Up
and down this breadth by Beacon street, between these same old elms,
I walk'd for two hours, of a bright sharp February mid-day twenty-one
years ago, with Emerson, then in his prime, keen, physically and
morally magnetic, arm'd at every point, and when he chose, wielding the
emotional just as well as the intellectual. During those two hours
he was the talker and I the listener. It was an argument-statement,
reconnoitring, review, attack, and pressing home, (like an army corps in
order, artillery, cavalry, infantry,) of all that could be said against
that part (and a main part) in the construction of my poems, "Children
of Adam." More precious than gold to me that dissertion--it afforded
me, ever after, this strange and paradoxical lesson; each point of E.'s
statement was unanswerable, no judge's charge ever more complete or
convincing, I could never hear the points better put--and then I felt
down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all,
and pursue my own way. "What have you to say then to such things?" said
E., pausing in conclusion. "Only that while I can't answer them at all,
I feel more settled than ever to adhere to my own theory, and exemplify
it," was my candid response. Whereupon we went and had a good dinner
at the American House. And thenceforward I never waver'd or was touch'd
with qualms, (as I confess I had been two or three times before.)
AN OSSIANIC NIGHT--DEAREST FRIENDS
_Nov., '81_.--Again back in Camden. As I cross the Delaware in long trips
tonight, between 9 and 11, the scene overhead is a peculiar one--swift
sheets of flitting vapor-gauze, follow'd by dense clouds throwing an
inky pall on everything. Then a spell of that transparent steel-gray
black sky I have noticed under similar circumstances, on which the moon
would beam for a few moments with calm lustre, throwing down a broad
dazzle of highway on the waters; then the mists careering again. All
silently, yet driven as if by the furies they sweep along, sometimes
quite thin, sometimes thicker--a real Ossianic night--amid the
whirl, absent or dead friends, the old, the past, somehow tenderly
suggested--while the Gael-strains chant themselves from the mists--"Be
thy soul blest, O Carril! in the midst of thy eddying winds. O that thou
wouldst come to my hall when I am alone by night! And thou dost come,
my friend. I hear often thy light hand on my harp, when it hangs on the
distant wall, and the feeble sound touches my ear. Why dost thou not
speak to me in my grief, and tell me when I shall behold my friends? But
thou passest away in thy murmuring blast; the wind whistles through the
gray hairs of Ossian."
But most of all, those changes of moon and sheets of hurrying vapor and
black clouds, with the sense of rapid action in weird silence, recall
the far-back Erse belief that such above were the preparations for
receiving the wraiths of just-slain warriors--["We sat that night in
Selma, round the strength of the shell. The wind was abroad in the oaks.
The spirit of the mountain roar'd. The blast came rustling through the
hall, and gently touch'd my harp. The sound was mournful and low, like
the song of the tomb. Fingal heard it the first. The crowded sighs of
his bosom rose. Some of my heroes are low, said the gray-hair'd king
of Morven. I hear the sound of death on the harp. Ossian, touch the
trembling string. Bid the sorrow rise, that their spirits may fly with
joy to Morven's woody hills. I touch'd the harp before the king; the
sound was mournful and low. Bend forward from your clouds, I said,
ghosts of my fathers! bend. Lay by the red terror of your course.
Receive the falling chief; whether he comes from a distant land, or
rises from the rolling sea. Let his robe of mist be near; his spear that
is form'd of a cloud. Place a half-extinguish'd meteor by his side, in
the form of a hero's sword. And oh! let his countenance be lovely, that
his friends may delight in his presence. Bend from your clouds, I said,
ghosts of my fathers, bend. Such was my song in Selma, to the lightly
trembling harp."]
How or why I know not, just at the moment, but I too muse and think of
my best friends in their distant homes--of William O'Connor, of
Maurice Bucke, of John Burroughs, and of Mrs. Gilchrist--friends of my
soul--stanchest friends of my other soul, my poems.
ONLY A NEW FERRY-BOAT
_Jan. 12, '82_.--Such a show as the Delaware presented an hour before
sundown yesterday evening, all along between Philadelphia and Camden,
is worth weaving into an item. It was full tide, a fair breeze from the
southwest, the water of a pale tawny color, and just enough motion to
make things frolicsome and lively. Add to these an approaching sunset
of unusual splendor, a broad tumble of clouds, with much golden haze and
profusion of beaming shaft and dazzle. In the midst of all, in the clear
drab of the afternoon light, there steam'd up the river the large,
new boat, "the Wenonah," as pretty an object as you could wish to see,
lightly and swiftly skimming along, all trim and white, cover'd with
flags, transparent red and blue, streaming out in the breeze. Only a new
ferry-boat, and yet in its fitness comparable with the prettiest product
of Nature's cunning, and rivaling it. High up in the transparent ether
gracefully balanced and circled four or five great sea hawks, while here
below, amid the pomp and picturesqueness of sky and river, swam this
creation of artificial beauty and motion and power, in its way no less
perfect.
DEATH OF LONGFELLOW
_Camden, April, '82_.--I have just return'd from an old forest haunt,
where I love to go occasionally away from parlors, pavements, and the
newspapers and magazines--and where, of a clear forenoon, deep in the
shade of pines and cedars and a tangle of old laurel-trees and vines,
the news of Longfellow's death first reach'd me. For want of anything
better, let me lightly twine a sprig of the sweet ground-ivy trailing so
plentifully through the dead leaves at my feet, with reflections of that
half hour alone, there in the silence, and lay it as my contribution on
the dead bard's grave.
Longfellow in his voluminous works seems to me not only to be eminent
in the style and forms of poetical expression that mark the present age,
(an idiosyncrasy, almost a sickness, of verbal melody,) but to bring
what is always dearest as poetry to the general human heart and taste,
and probably must be so in the nature of things. He is certainly the
sort of bard and counteractant most needed for our materialistic,
self-assertive, money-worshipping, Anglo-Saxon races, and especially for
the present age in America--an age tyrannically regulated with reference
to the manufacturer, the merchant, the financier, the politician and
the day workman--for whom and among whom he comes as the poet of melody,
courtesy, deference--poet of the mellow twilight of the past in
Italy, Germany, Spain, and in Northern Europe--poet of all sympathetic
gentleness--and universal poet of women and young people. I should have
to think long if I were ask'd to name the man who has done more, and in
more valuable directions, for America.
I doubt if there ever was before such a fine intuitive judge and
selecter of poems. His translations of many German and Scandinavian
pieces are said to be better than the vernaculars. He does not urge or
lash. His influence is like good drink or air. He is not tepid either,
but always vital, with flavor, motion, grace. He strikes a splendid
average, and does not sing exceptional passions, or humanity's jagged
escapades. He is not revolutionary, brings nothing offensive or new,
does not deal hard blows. On the contrary, his songs soothe and heal, or
if they excite, it is a healthy and agreeable excitement. His very
anger is gentle, is at second hand, (as in the "Quadroon Girl" and the
"Witnesses.")
There is no undue element of pensiveness in Longfellow's strains. Even
in the early translation, the Manrique, the movement is as of strong
and steady wind or tide, holding up and buoying. Death is not avoided
through his many themes, but there is something almost winning in his
original verses and renderings on that dread subject--as, closing "the
Happiest Land" dispute,
And then the landlord's daughter
Up to heaven rais'd her hand,
And said, "Ye may no more contend,
There lies the happiest land."
To the ungracious complaint-charge of his want of racy nativity and
special originality, I shall only say that America and the world may
well be reverently thankful--can never be thankful enough--for any such
singing-bird vouchsafed out of the centuries, without asking that the
notes be different from those of other songsters; adding what I have
heard Longfellow himself say, that ere the New World can be worthily
original, and announce herself and her own heroes, she must be well
saturated with the originality of others, and respectfully consider the
heroes that lived before Agamemnon.
STARTING NEWSPAPERS
_Reminiscences (From the "Camden Courier")_. As I sat taking my evening
sail across the Delaware in the staunch ferry-boat "Beverly," a night or
two ago, I was join'd by two young reporter friends. "I have a message
for you," said one of them; "the C. folks told me to say they would like
a piece sign'd by your name, to go in their first number. Can you do
it for them?" "I guess so," said I; "what might it be about?" "Well,
anything on newspapers, or perhaps what you've done yourself, starting
them." And off the boys went, for we had reach'd the Philadelphia side.
The hour was fine and mild, the bright half-moon shining; Venus, with
excess of splendor, just setting in the west, and the great Scorpion
rearing its length more than half up in the southeast. As I cross'd
leisurely for an hour in the pleasant night-scene, my young friend's
words brought up quite a string of reminiscences.
I commenced when I was but a boy of eleven or twelve writing sentimental
bits for the old "Long Island Patriot," in Brooklyn; this was about
1832. Soon after, I had a piece or two in George P. Morris's then
celebrated and fashionable "Mirror," of New York city. I remember
with what half-suppress'd excitement I used to watch for the big, fat,
red-faced, slow-moving, very old English carrier who distributed the
"Mirror" in Brooklyn; and when I got one, opening and cutting the leaves
with trembling fingers. How it made my heart double-beat to see _my
piece_ on the pretty white paper, in nice type.
My first real venture was the "Long Islander," in my own beautiful
town of Huntington, in 1839. I was about twenty years old. I had been
teaching country school for two or three years in various parts of
Suffolk and Queens counties, but liked printing; had been at it while
a lad, learn'd the trade of compositor, and was encouraged to start a
paper in the region where I was born. I went to New York, bought a press
and types, hired some little help, but did most of the work myself,