Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
Minds earnest, conscience clear;
That fruit Spring's amplest hope may crown,
And every winged day
Make to our hearts more dear, more known,
The hope, the peace of May!
So cull the blossoms from the bough
Where birds so gayly sing;
We'll wreathe them for our queen's pure brow,
We'll wreathe them for our king.
CARADORI SINGING.
Let not the heart o'erladen hither fly,
Hoping in tears to vent its misery:
She soars not like the lark with eager cry,
Not hers the robin's notes of love and joy;
Nor, like the nightingale's love-descant, tells
Her song the truths of the heart's hidden wells.
Come, if thy soul be tranquil, and her voice
Shall bid the tranquil lake laugh and rejoice;
Shall lightly warble, flutter, hover, dance,
And charm thee by its sportive elegance.
A finished style the highest art has given,
And a fine organ she received from heaven:
But genius casts not here one living ray;
Thou shalt approve, admire, not weep, to-day.
LINES
IN ANSWER TO STANZAS CONTAINING SEVERAL PASSAGES OF DISTINGUISHED
BEAUTY, ADDRESSED TO ME BY----.
As by the wayside the worn traveller lies,
And finds no pillow for his aching brow,
Except the pack beneath whose weight he dies,--
If loving breezes from the far west blow,
Laden with perfume from those blissful bowers
Where gentle youth and hope once gilded all his hours,
As fans that loving breeze, tears spring again,
And cool the fever of his wearied brain.
Even so to me the soft romantic dream
Of one who still may sit at fancy's feet,
Where love and beauty yet are all the theme,
Where spheral concords find an echo meet.
To the ideal my vexed spirit turns,
But often for communion vainly burns.
Blest is that hour when breeze of poesy
From far the ancient fragrance wafts to me;
_This time_ thrice blest, because it came unsought,
"Sweet suppliance," and _dear_, because _unbought_.
INFLUENCE OF THE OUTWARD.
The sun, the moon, the waters, and the air,
The hopeful, holy, terrible, and fair;
Flower-alphabets, love-letters from the wave,
All mysteries which flutter, blow, skim, lave;
All that is ever-speaking, never spoken,
Spells that are ever breaking, never broken,--
Have played upon my soul, and every string
Confessed the touch which once could make it sing
Triumphal notes; and still, though changed the tone,
Though damp and jarring fall the lyre hath known,
It would, if fitly played, and all its deep notes wove
Into one tissue of belief and love,
Yield melodies for angel-audience meet,
And paeans fit creative power to greet.
O, injured lyre! thy golden frame is marred;
No garlands deck thee; no libations poured
Tell to the earth the triumphs of thy song;
No princely halls echo thy strains along;
But still the strings are there; and if at last they break,
Even in death some melody will make.
Mightst thou once more be strung, might yet the power be given,
To tell in numbers all thou hast of heaven!
But no! thy fragments scattered by the way,
To children given, help the childish play.
Be it thy pride to feel thy latest sigh
Could not forget the law of harmony,
Thou couldst not live for bliss--but thou for truth couldst die!
TO MISS R. B.[47]
A graceful fiction of the olden day
Tells us that, by a mighty master's sway,
A city rose, obedient to the lyre;
That his sweet strains rude matter could inspire
With zeal his harmony to emulate;
Thus to the spot where that sweet singer sat
The rocks advanced, in symmetry combined,
To form the palace and the temple joined.
The arts are sisters, and united all,
So architecture answered music's call.
In modern days such feats no more we see,
And matter dares 'gainst mind a rebel be;
The faith is gone such miracles which wrought;
Masons and carpenters must aid our thought;
The harp and voice in vain would try their skill
To raise a city on our hard-bound soil;
The rocks have lain asleep so many a year,
Nothing but gunpowder will make them stir;
I doubt if even for your voice would come
The smallest pebble from its sandy home;
But, if the minstrel can no more create,
For _building_, if he live a little late,
He wields a power of not inferior kind,
No longer rules o'er matter, but o'er mind.
And when a voice like yours its song doth pour,
If it can raise palace and tower no more,
It can each ugly fabric melt away,
Bidding the fancy fairer scenes portray;
Its soft and brilliant tones our thoughts can wing
To climes whence they congenial magic bring;
As by the sweet Italian voice is given
Dream of the radiance of Italia's heaven.
Whether in round, low notes the strain may swell,
As if some tale of woe or wrong to tell,
Or swift and light the upward notes are heard,
With the full carolling clearness of a bird,
The stream of sound untroubled flows along,
And no obstruction mars your finished song.
No stifled notes, no gasp, no ill-taught graces,
No vulgar trills in worst-selected places,
None of the miseries which haunt a land
Where all would learn what so few understand,
Afflict in hearing you; in you we find
The finest organ, and informed by mind.
And as, in that same fable I have quoted,
It is of that town-making artist noted,
That, where he leaned his lyre upon a stone,
The stone stole somewhat of that lovely tone,
And afterwards each untaught passer-by,
By touching it, could rouse the melody,--
Even thus a heart once by your music thrilled,
An ear which your delightful voice has filled,
In memory a talisman have found
To repel many a dull, harsh, after-sound;
And, as the music lingered in the stone,
After the minstrel and the lyre were gone,
Even so my thoughts and wishes, turned to sweetness,
Lend to the heavy hours unwonted fleetness;
And common objects, calling up the tone,
I caught from you, wake beauty not their own.
SISTRUM.[48]
Triune, shaping, restless power,
Life-flow from life's natal hour,
No music chords are in thy sound;
By some thou'rt but a rattle found;
Yet, without thy ceaseless motion,
To ice would turn their dead devotion.
Life-flow of my natal hour,
I will not weary of thy power,
Till in the changes of thy sound
A chord's three parts distinct are found.
I will faithful move with thee,
God-ordered, self-fed energy.
Nature in eternity.
IMPERFECT THOUGHTS.
The peasant boy watches the midnight sky;
He sees the meteor dropping from on high;
He hastens whither the bright guest hath flown,
And finds--a mass of black, unseemly stone.
Disdainful, disappointed, turns he home.
If a philosopher that way had come,
He would have seized the waif with great delight,
And honored it as an aerolite.
But truly it would need a Cuvier's mind
High meaning in _my_ meteors to find.
Well, in my museum there is room to spare--
I'll let them stay till Cuvier goes there!
SADNESS.
Lonely lady, tell me why
That abandonment of eye?
Life is full, and nature fair;
How canst thou dream of dull despair?
Life is full and nature fair;
A dull folly is despair;
But the heart lies still and tame
For want of what it may not claim.
Lady, chide that foolish heart,
And bid it act a nobler part;
The love thou couldst be bid resign
Never could be worthy thine.
O, I know, and knew it well,
How unworthy was the spell
In its silken band to bind
My heaven-born, heaven-seeking mind.
Thou lonely moon, thou knowest well
Why I yielded to the spell;
Just so thou didst condescend
Thy own precept to offend.
When wondering nymphs thee questioned why
That abandonment of eye,
Crying, "Dian,[49] heaven's queen,
What can that trembling eyelash mean?"
Waning, over ocean's breast,
Thou didst strive to hide unrest
From the question of their eyes,
Unseeing in their dull surprise.
Thy Endymion had grown old;
Thy only love was marred with cold;
No longer to the secret cave
Thy ray could pierce, and answer have.
No more to thee, no more, no more,
Till thy circling life be o'er,
A mutual heart shall be a home,
Of weary wishes happy tomb.
No more, no more--O words which sever
Hearts from their hopes, to part forever!
They can believe it never!
LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM.[50]
Some names there are at sight of which will rise
Visions of triumph to the dullest eyes;
They breathe of garlands from a grateful race,
They tell of victory o'er all that's base;
To write them eagles might their plumage give,
And granite rocks should yield, that they may live.
Others there are at sight of which will rise
Visions of beauty to all loving eyes,
Of radiant sweetness, or of gentle grace,
The poesy of manner or of face,
Spell of intense, if not of widest power;
The strong the ages rule; the fair, the hour.
And there are names at sight of which will rise
Visions of goodness to the mourner's eyes;
They tell of generosity untired,
Which gave to others all the heart desired;
Of Virtue's _uncomplaining_ sacrifice,
And holy hopes which sought their native skies.
If I could hope that at my name would rise
Visions like these, before those gentle eyes,
How gladly would I place it in the shrine
Where many honored names are linked with thine,
And know, if lone and far my pathway lies,
My name is living 'mid the good and wise.
It must not be, for now I know too well
That those to whom my name has aught to tell
O'er baffled efforts would lament or blame.
Who heeds a breaking reed?--a sinking flame?
Best wishes and kind thoughts I give to thee,
But mine, indeed, an _empty name_ would be.
TO S. C.
Our friend has likened thee to the sweet fern,
Which with no flower salutes the ardent day,
Yet, as the wanderer pursues his way,
While the dews fall, and hues of sunset burn,
Sheds forth a fragrance from the deep green brake,
Sweeter than the rich scents that gardens make.
Like thee, the fern loves well the hallowed shade
Of trees that quietly aspire on high;
Amid such groves was consecration made
Of vestals, tranquil as the vestal sky.
Like thee, the fern doth better love to hide
Beneath the leaf the treasure of its seed,
Than to display it, with an idle pride,
To any but the careful gatherer's heed--
A treasure known to philosophic ken,
Garnered in nature, asking nought of men;
Nay, can invisible the wearer make,
Who would unnoted in life's game partake.
But I will liken thee to the sweet bay,
Which I first learned, in the Cohasset woods,
To name upon a sweet and pensive day
Passed in their ministering solitudes.
I had grown weary of the anthem high
Of the full waves, cheering the patient rocks;
I had grown weary of the sob and sigh
Of the dull ebb, after emotion's shocks;
My eye was weary of the glittering blue
And the unbroken horizontal line;
My mind was weary, tempted to pursue
The circling waters in their wide design,