JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (continued 5)

BIBLIOLATRES. Bowing thyself in dust before a Book, And thinking the great God is thine alone, O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brook What gods the heathen carves in wood and stone, As if the Shepherd who from outer cold Leads all his shivering lambs to one sure fold Were careful for the fashion of his crook. There is no broken reed so poor and base, No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue, But he therewith the ravening wolf can chase, And guide his flock to springs and pastures new; Through ways unlooked for, and through many lands, Far from the rich folds built with human hands, The gracious footprints of his love I trace. And what art thou, own brother of the clod, That from his hand the crook wouldst snatch away And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod, To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day? Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew, That with thy idol-volume's covers two Wouldst make a jail to coop the living God? Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ-tones By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught, Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brains Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought, Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire, Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desire To weld anew the spirit's broken chains. God is not dumb, that he should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor; There towers the mountain of the Voice no less, Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends, Intent on manna still and mortal ends, Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore. Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone; Each age, each kindred adds a verse to it, Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud, Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.

BEAVER BROOK. Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, And, minuting the long day's loss, The cedar's shadow, slow and still, Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss. Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, The aspen's leaves are scarce astir, Only the little mill sends up Its busy, never-ceasing burr. Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems The road along the mill-pond's brink, From 'neath the arching barberry-stems, My footstep scares the shy chewink. Beneath a bony buttonwood The mill's red door lets forth the din; The whitened miller, dust-imbued, Flits past the square of dark within. No mountain torrent's strength is here; Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, And gently waits the miller's will. Swift slips Undine along the race Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round. The miller dreams not at what cost The quivering mill-stones hum and whirl, Nor how for every turn, are tost Armfuls of diamond and of pearl. But Summer cleared my happier eyes With drops of some celestial juice, To see how Beauty underlies For evermore each form of Use. And more: methought I saw that flood, Which now so dull and darkling steals, Thick, here and there, with human blood, To turn the world's laborious wheels. No more than doth the miller there, Shut in our several cells, do we Know with what waste of beauty rare Moves every day's machinery. Surely the wiser time shall come When this fine overplus of might, No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, Shall leap to music and to light. In that new childhood of the Earth Life of itself shall dance and play; Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make mirth, And labor meet delight half-way.

APPLEDORE. How looks Appledore in a storm? I have seen it when its crags seemed frantic, Butting against the maddened Atlantic, When surge after surge would heap enorme, Cliffs of Emerald topped with snow, That lifted and lifted and then let go A great white avalanche of thunder, A grinding, blinding, deafening ire Monadnock might have trembled under; And the island, whose rock-roots pierce below To where they are warmed with the central fire, You could feel its granite fibres racked, As it seemed to plunge with a shudder and thrill Right at the breast of the swooping hill, And to rise again, snorting a cataract Of rage-froth from every cranny and ledge, While the sea drew its breath in hoarse and deep, And the next vast breaker curled its edge, Gathering itself for a mighty leap. North, east, and south there are reefs and breakers, You would never dream of in smooth weather, That toss and gore the sea for acres, Bellowing and gnashing and snarling together; Look northward, where Duck Island lies, And over its crown you will see arise, Against a background of slaty skies, A row of pillars still and white That glimmer and then are out of sight, As if the moon should suddenly kiss, While you crossed the gusty desert by night, The long colonnades of Persepolis, And then as sudden a darkness should follow To gulp the whole scene at single swallow, The city's ghost, the drear, brown waste, And the string of camels, clumsy-paced:— Look southward for White Island light, The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide; There is first a half-mile of tumult and fight, Of dash and roar and tumble and fright, And surging bewilderment wild and wide, Where the breakers struggle left and right, Then a mile or more of rushing sea, And then the light-house slim and lone; And whenever the whole weight of ocean is thrown Full and fair on White Island head, A great mist-jotun you will see Lifting himself up silently High and huge o'er the light-house top, With hands of wavering spray outspread, Groping after the little tower, That seems to shrink, and shorten and cower, Till the monster's arms of a sudden drop, And silently and fruitlessly He sinks again into the sea. You, meanwhile, where drenched you stand, Awaken once more to the rush and roar And on the rock-point tighten your hand, As you turn and see a valley deep, That was not there a moment before, Suck rattling down between you and a heap Of toppling billow, whose instant fall Must sink the whole island once for all— Or watch the silenter, stealthier seas Feeling their way to you more and more; If they once should clutch you high as the knees They would whirl you down like a sprig of kelp, Beyond all reach of hope or help;— And such in a storm is Appledore.

DARA. When Persia's sceptre trembled in a hand Wilted by harem-heats, and all the land Was hovered over by those vulture ills That snuff decaying empire from afar, Then, with a nature balanced as a star, Dara arose, a shepherd of the hills. He, who had governed fleecy subjects well, Made his own village, by the self-same spell, Secure and peaceful as a guarded fold, Till, gathering strength by slow and wise degrees, Under his sway, to neighbor villages Order returned, and faith and justice old. Now, when it fortuned that a king more wise Endued the realm with brain and hands and eyes, He sought on every side men brave and just, And having heard the mountain-shepherd's praise, How he rendered the mould of elder days, To Dara gave a satrapy in trust. So Dara shepherded a province wide, Nor in his viceroy's sceptre took more pride Than in his crook before; but Envy finds More soil in cities than on mountains bare, And the frank sun of spirits clear and rare Breeds poisonous fogs in low and marish minds. Soon it was whispered at the royal ear That, though wise Dara's province, year by year, Like a great sponge, drew wealth and plenty up, Yet, when he squeezed it at the king's behest, Some golden drops, more rich than all the rest, Went to the filling of his private cup. For proof, they said that whereso'er he went A chest, beneath whose weight the camel bent, Went guarded, and no other eye had seen What was therein, save only Dara's own, Yet, when 'twas opened, all his tent was known To glow and lighten with heapt jewels' sheen. The king set forth for Dara's province straight, Where, as was fit, outside his city's gate The viceroy met him with a stately train; And there, with archers circled, close at hand, A camel with the chest was seen to stand, The king grew red, for thus the guilt was plain. "Open me now," he cried, "yon treasure-chest!" 'Twas done, and only a worn shepherd's vest Was found within; some blushed and hung the head, Not Dara; open as the sky's blue roof He stood, and "O, my lord, behold the proof That I was worthy of my trust!" he said. "For ruling men, lo! all the charm I had; My soul, in those coarse vestments ever clad, Still to the unstained past kept true and leal, Still on these plains could breathe her mountain air, And Fortune's heaviest gifts serenely bear, Which bend men from the truth, and make them reel. "To govern wisely I had shown small skill Were I not lord of simple Dara still; That sceptre kept, I cannot lose my way!" Strange dew in royal eyes grew round, and bright And thrilled the trembling lids; before 'twas night Two added provinces blest Dara's sway.

TO J. F. H. Nine years have slipped like hour-glass sand From life's fast-emptying globe away, Since last, dear friend, I clasped your hand, And lingered on the impoverished land, Watching the steamer down the bay. I held the keepsake which you gave, Until the dim smoke-pennon curled O'er the vague rim 'tween sky and wave, And closed the distance like a grave, Leaving me to the outer world; The old worn world of hurry and heat, The young, fresh world of thought and scope; While you, where silent surges fleet Toward far sky beaches still and sweet, Sunk wavering down the ocean-slope. Come back our ancient walks to tread, Old haunts of lost or scattered friends, Amid the Muses' factories red, Where song, and smoke, and laughter sped The nights to proctor-hunted ends. Our old familiars are not laid, Though snapped our wands and sunk our books, They beckon, not to be gainsaid, Where, round broad meads which mowers wade, Smooth Charles his steel-blue sickle crooks; Where, as the cloudbergs eastward blow, From glow to gloom the hillside shifts Its lakes of rye that surge and flow, Its plumps of orchard-trees arow, Its snowy white-weed's summer drifts. Or let us to Nantasket, there To wander idly as we list, Whether, on rocky hillocks bare, Sharp cedar-points, like breakers, tear The trailing fringes of gray mist. Or whether, under skies clear-blown, The heightening surfs with foamy din, Their breeze-caught forelocks backward blown Against old Neptune's yellow zone, Curl slow, and plunge forever in. For years thrice three, wise Horace said, A poem rare let silence bind; And love may ripen in the shade, Like ours, for nine long seasons laid In crypts and arches of the mind. That right Falernian friendship old Will we, to grace our feast, call up, And freely pour the juice of gold, That keeps life's pulses warm and bold, Till Death shall break the empty cup.

KOSSUTH. A race of nobles may die out, A royal line may leave no heir; Wise Nature sets no guards about Her pewter plate and wooden ware. But they fail not, the kinglier breed, Who starry diadems attain; To dungeon, axe, and stake succeed Heirs of the old heroic strain. The zeal of Nature never cools, Nor is she thwarted of her ends; When gapped and dulled her cheaper tools, Then she a saint and prophet spends. Land of the Magyars! though it be The tyrant may relink his chain, Already thine the victory, As the just Future measures gain. Thou hast succeeded, thou hast won The deathly travail's amplest worth; A nation's duty thou hast done, Giving a hero to our earth. And he, let come what will of woe, Has saved the land he strove to save; No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow, Can quench the voice shall haunt his grave. "I Kossuth am: O Future, thou That clear'st the just and blott'st the vile, O'er this small dust in reverence bow, Remembering, what I was erewhile. "I was the chosen trump wherethrough Our God sent forth awakening breath; Came chains? Came death? The strain He blew Sounds on, outliving chains and death."

TO LAMARTINE. 1848. I did not praise thee when the crowd, 'Witched with the moment's inspiration, Vexed thy still ether with hosannas loud, And stamped their dusty adoration; I but looked upward with the rest, And, when they shouted Greatest, whispered Best. They raised thee not, but rose to thee, Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging; So on some marble Phœbus the high sea Might leave his worthless sea-weed clinging, But pious hands, with reverent care, Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare. Now thou 'rt thy plain, grand self again, Thou art secure from panegyric,— Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain, And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric: This side the Blessed Isles, no tree Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee. Nor can blame cling to thee; the snow From swinish foot-prints takes no staining, But, leaving the gross soils of earth below, Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining, And unresenting falls again, To beautify the world with dews and rain. The highest duty to mere man vouchsafed Was laid on thee,—out of wild chaos, When the roused popular ocean foamed and chafed, And vulture War from his Imaus Snuffed blood, to summon homely Peace, And show that only order is release. To carve thy fullest thought, what though Time was not granted? Aye in history, Like that Dawn's face which baffled Angelo, Left shapeless, grander for its mystery, Thy great Design shall stand, and day Flood its blind front from Orients far away. Who says thy day is o'er? Control, My heart, that bitter first emotion; While men shall reverence the steadfast soul, The heart in silent self-devotion Breaking, the mild, heroic mien, Thou'lt need no prop of marble, Lamartine. If France reject thee, 'tis not thine, But her own, exile that she utters; Ideal France, the deathless, the divine, Will be where thy white pennon flutters, As once the nobler Athens went With Aristides into banishment. No fitting metewand hath To-day For measuring spirits of thy stature,— Only the Future can reach up to lay The laurel on that lofty nature,— Bard, who with some diviner art Has touched the bard's true lyre, a nation's heart. Swept by thy hand, the gladdened chords, Crashed now in discords fierce by others, Gave forth one note beyond all skill of words, And chimed together, We are brothers. O poem unsurpassed! it ran All round the world, unlocking man to man. France is too poor to pay alone The service of that ample spirit; Paltry seem low dictatorship and throne, If balanced with thy simple merit. They had to thee been rust and loss; Thy aim was higher,—thou hast climbed a Cross.

TO JOHN G. PALFREY. There are who triumph in a losing cause, Who can put on defeat, as 't were a wreath Unwithering in the adverse popular breath, Safe from the blasting demagogue's applause; 'Tis they who stand for Freedom and God's laws. And so stands Palfrey now, as Marvell stood, Loyal to Truth dethroned, nor could be wooed To trust the playful tiger's velvet paws: And if the second Charles brought in decay Of ancient virtue, if it well might wring Souls that had broadened 'neath a nobler day, To see a losel, marketable king Fearfully watering with his realm's best blood Cromwell's quenched bolts, that erst had cracked and flamed, Scaring, through all their depths of courtier mud, Europe's crowned bloodsuckers,—how more ashamed Ought we to be, who see Corruption's flood Still rise o'er last year's mark, to mine away Our brazen idols' feet of treacherous clay! O utter degradation! Freedom turned Slavery's vile bawd, to cozen and betray To the old lecher's clutch a maiden prey, If so a loathsome pander's fee be earned! And we are silent,—we who daily tread A soil sublime, at least, with heroes' graves!— Beckon no more, shades of the noble dead! Be dumb, ye heaven-touched lips of winds and waves! Or hope to rouse some Coptic dullard, hid Ages ago, wrapt stiffly, fold on fold, With cerements close, to wither in the cold Forever hushed, and sunless pyramid! Beauty and Truth, and all that these contain, Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet; We climb to them through years of sweat and pain; Without long struggle, none did e'er attain The downward look from Quiet's blissful seat: Though present loss may be the hero's part, Yet none can rob him of the victor heart Whereby the broad-realmed future is subdued, And Wrong, which now insults from triumph's car, Sending her vulture hope to raven far, Is made unwilling tributary of Good. O Mother State, how quenched thy Sinai fires! Is there none left of thy staunch Mayflower breed? No spark among the ashes of thy sires, Of Virtue's altar-flame the kindling seed? Are these thy great men, these that cringe and creep, And writhe through slimy ways to place and power?— How long, O Lord, before thy wrath shall reap Our frail-stemmed summer prosperings in their flower? O for one hour of that undaunted stock That went with Vane and Sydney to the block! O for a whiff of Naseby, that would sweep, With its stern Puritan besom, all this chaff From the Lord's threshing-floor! Yet more than half The victory is attained, when one or two, Through the fool's laughter and the traitor's scorn, Beside thy sepulchre can abide the morn, Crucified Truth, when thou shalt rise anew.

TO W. L. GARRISON. "Some time afterward, it was reported to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all colors."—Letter of H. G. Otis. In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young man; The place was dark, unfurnitured, and mean;— Yet there the freedom of a race began. Help came but slowly; surely no man yet Put lever to the heavy world with less: What need of help? He knew how types were set, He had a dauntless spirit, and a press. Such earnest natures are the fiery pith, The compact nucleus round which systems grow! Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith, And whirls impregnate with the central glow. O Truth! O Freedom! how are ye still born In the rude stable, in the manger nursed! What humble hands unbar those gates of morn Through which the splendors of the New Day burst! What! shall one monk, scarce known beyond his cell, Front Rome's far-reaching bolts, and scorn her frown? Brave Luther answered Yes; that thunder's swell Rocked Europe, and discharmed the triple crown. Whatever can be known of earth we know, Sneered Europe's wise men, in their snail-shells curled; No! said one man in Genoa, and that No Out of the dark created this New World. Who is it will not dare himself to trust? Who is it hath not strength to stand alone? Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward must? He and his works, like sand, from earth are blown. Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here! See one straightforward conscience put in pawn To win a world; see the obedient sphere By bravery's simple gravitation drawn! Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old, And by the Present's lips repeated still, In our own single manhood to be bold, Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will? We stride the river daily at its spring, Nor, in our childish thoughtlessness, foresee What myriad vassal streams shall tribute bring, How like an equal it shall greet the sea. O small beginnings, ye are great and strong, Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain! Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong, Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain.

ON THE DEATH OF C. T. TORREY. Woe worth the hour when it is crime To plead the poor dumb bondman's cause, When all that makes the heart sublime, The glorious throbs that conquer time, Are traitors to our cruel laws! He strove among God's suffering poor One gleam of brotherhood to send; The dungeon oped its hungry door To give the truth one martyr more, Then shut,—and here behold the end! O Mother State! when this was done, No pitying throe thy bosom gave; Silent thou saw'st the death-shroud spun, And now thou givest to thy son The stranger's charity—a grave. Must it be thus forever? No! The hand of God sows not in vain; Long sleeps the darkling seed below, The seasons come, and change, and go, And all the fields are deep with grain. Although our brother lie asleep, Man's heart still struggles, still aspires; His grave shall quiver yet, while deep Through the brave Bay State's pulses leap Her ancient energies and fires. When hours like this the senses' gush Have stilled, and left the spirit room, It hears amid the eternal hush The swooping pinions' dreadful rush, That brings the vengeance and the doom;— Not man's brute vengeance, such as rends What rivets man to man apart,— God doth not so bring round his ends, But waits the ripened time, and sends His mercy to the oppressor's heart.

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF DR. CHANNING. I do not come to weep above thy pall, And mourn the dying-out of noble powers; The poet's clearer eye should see, in all Earth's seeming woe, the seed of Heaven's flowers. Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep Of everlasting Soul her strength abides, From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap, Through Nature's veins her strength, undying, tides. Peace is more strong than war, and gentleness, Where force were vain, makes conquest o'er the wave; And love lives on and hath a power to bless, When they who loved are hidden in the grave. The sculptured marble brags of death-strewn fields, And Glory's epitaph is writ in blood; But Alexander now to Plato yields, Clarkson will stand where Wellington hath stood. I watch the circle of the eternal years, And read forever in the storied page One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears,— One onward step of Truth from age to age. The poor are crushed; the tyrants link their chain; The poet sings through narrow dungeon-grates; Man's hope lies quenched;—and, lo! with steadfast gain Freedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates. Men slay the prophets; fagot, rack, and cross Make up the groaning record of the past; But Evil's triumphs are her endless loss, And sovereign Beauty wins the soul at last. No power can die that ever wrought for Truth; Thereby a law of Nature it became, And lives unwithered in its sinewy youth, When he who called it forth is but a name. Therefore I cannot think thee wholly gone; The better part of thee is with us still; Thy soul its hampering clay aside hath thrown, And only freer wrestles with the Ill. Thou livest in the life of all good things; What words thou spak'st for Freedom shall not die; Thou sleepest not, for now thy Love hath wings To soar where hence thy Hope could hardly fly. And often, from that other world, on this Some gleams from great souls gone before may shine, To shed on struggling hearts a clearer bliss, And clothe the Right with lustre more divine. Thou art not idle: in thy higher sphere Thy spirit bends itself to loving tasks, And strength, to perfect what it dreamed of here Is all the crown and glory that it asks. For sure, in Heaven's wide chambers, there is room For love and pity, and for helpful deeds; Else were our summons thither but a doom To life more vain than this in clayey weeds. From off the starry mountain peak of song, Thy spirit shows me, in the coming time, An earth unwithered by the foot of wrong, A race revering its own soul sublime. What wars, what martyrdoms, what crimes, may come, Thou knowest not, nor I; but God will lead The prodigal soul from want and sorrow home, And Eden ope her gates to Adam's seed. Farewell! good man, good angel now! this hand Soon, like thine own, shall lose its cunning, too; Soon shall this soul, like thine, bewildered stand, Then leap to thread the free, unfathomed blue: When that day comes, O, may this hand grow cold, Busy, like thine, for Freedom and the Right; O, may this soul, like thine, be ever bold To face dark Slavery's encroaching blight! This laurel-leaf I cast upon thy bier; Let worthier hands than these thy wreath entwine; Upon thy hearse I shed no useless tear,— For us weep rather thou in calm divine. 1842.

TO THE MEMORY OF HOOD. Another star 'neath Time's horizon dropped, To gleam o'er unknown lands and seas; Another heart that beat for freedom stopped,— What mournful words are these! O Love Divine, that claspest our tired earth, And lullest it upon thy heart, Thou knowest how much a gentle soul is worth To teach men what thou art! His was a spirit that to all thy poor Was kind as slumber after pain: Why ope so soon thy heaven-deep Quiet's door And call him home again? Freedom needs all her poets: it is they Who give her aspirations wings, And to the wiser law of music sway Her wild imaginings. Yet thou hast called him, nor art thou unkind, O Love Divine, for 'tis thy will That gracious natures leave their love behind To work for Freedom still. Let laurelled marbles weigh on other tombs, Let anthems peal for other dead, Rustling the bannered depth of minster-glooms With their exulting spread. His epitaph shall mock the short-lived stone, No lichen shall its lines efface, He needs these few and simple lines alone To mark his resting-place:— "Here lies a Poet. Stranger, if to thee His claim to memory be obscure, If thou wouldst learn how truly great was he, Go, ask it of the poor."

I. TO A. C. L. Through suffering and sorrow thou hast passed To show us what a woman true may be: They have not taken sympathy from thee, Nor made thee any other than thou wast, Save as some tree, which, in a sudden blast, Sheddeth those blossoms, that are weakly grown, Upon the air, but keepeth every one Whose strength gives warrant of good fruit at last So thou hast shed some blooms of gayety, But never one of steadfast cheerfulness; Nor hath thy knowledge of adversity Robbed thee of any faith in happiness, But rather cleared thy inner eyes to see How many simple ways there are to bless. 1840. II. What were I, Love, if I were stripped of thee, If thine eyes shut me out whereby I live, Thou, who unto my calmer soul dost give Knowledge, and Truth, and holy Mystery, Wherein Truth mainly lies for those who see Beyond the earthly and the fugitive, Who in the grandeur of the soul believe, And only in the Infinite are free? Without thee I were naked, bleak, and bare As yon dead cedar on the sea-cliff's brow; And Nature's teachings, which come to me now, Common and beautiful as light and air, Would be as fruitless as a stream which still Slips through the wheel of some old ruined mill. 1841. III. I would not have this perfect love of ours Grow from a single root, a single stem, Bearing no goodly fruit, but only flowers That idly hide life's iron diadem: It should grow alway like that eastern tree Whose limbs take root and spread forth constantly; That love for one, from which there doth not spring Wide love for all, it is but a worthless thing. Not in another world, as poets prate, Dwell we apart above the tide of things, High floating o'er earth's clouds on faery wings; But our pure love doth ever elevate Into a holy bond of brotherhood All earthly things, making them pure and good. 1840. IV. "For this true nobleness I seek in vain, In woman and in man I find it not; I almost weary of my earthly lot, My life-springs are dried up with burning pain." Thou find'st it not? I pray thee look again, Look inward through the depths of thine own soul. How is it with thee? Art thou sound and whole? Doth narrow search show thee no earthly stain? Be noble! and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping, but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own: Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes, Then will pure light around thy path be shed, And thou wilt never more be sad and lone. 1840. V. TO THE SPIRIT OF KEATS. Great soul, thou sittest with me in my room, Uplifting me with thy vast, quiet eyes, On whose full orbs, with kindly lustre, lies The twilight warmth of ruddy ember-gloom: Thy clear, strong tones will oft bring sudden bloom Of hope secure, to him who lonely cries, Wrestling with the young poet's agonies, Neglect and scorn, which seem a certain doom: Yes! the few words which, like great thunderdrops, Thy large heart down to earth shook doubtfully, Thrilled by the inward lightning of its might, Serene and pure, like gushing joy of light, Shall track the eternal chords of Destiny, After the moon-led pulse of ocean stops. 1841. VI. Great Truths are portions of the soul of man; Great souls are portions of Eternity; Each drop of blood that e'er through true heart ran With lofty message, ran for thee and me; For God's law, since the starry song began, Hath been, and still for evermore must be, That every deed which shall outlast Time's span Must goad the soul to be erect and free; Slave is no word of deathless lineage sprung,— Too many noble souls have thought and died, Too many mighty poets have lived and sung, And our good Saxon, from lips purified With martyr-fire, throughout the world hath rung Too long to have God's holy cause denied. 1841. VII. I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden leap From being's sea, like the isle-seeming Kraken, With whose great rise the ocean all is shaken And a heart-tremble quivers through the deep; Give me that growth which some perchance deem sleep, Wherewith the steadfast coral-stems uprise, Which, by the toil of gathering energies, Their upward way into clear sunshine keep, Until, by Heaven's sweetest influences, Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of green Into a pleasant island in the seas, Where, mid tall palms, the cane-roofed home is seen, And wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour, Hearing the leaves and loving God's dear power. 1841. VIII. TO M. W. ON HER BIRTHDAY. Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, The morning stars their ancient music make, And, joyful, once again their song awake, Long silent now with melancholy scorn; And thou, not mindless of so blest a morn, By no least deed its harmony shalt break, But shalt to that high chime thy footsteps take, Through life's most darksome passes unforlorn; Therefore from thy pure faith thou shalt not fall, Therefore shalt thou be ever fair and free, And in thine every motion musical As summer air, majestic as the sea, A mystery to those who creep and crawl Through Time, and part it from Eternity. 1841. IX. My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die; Albeit I ask no fairer life than this, Whose numbering-clock is still thy gentle kiss, While Time and Peace with hands enlockèd fly,— Yet care I not where in Eternity We live and love, well knowing that there is No backward step for those who feel the bliss Of Faith as their most lofty yearnings high: Love hath so purified my being's core, Meseems I scarcely should be startled, even, To find, some morn, that thou hadst gone before; Since, with thy love, this knowledge too was given, Which each calm day doth strengthen more and more, That they who love are but one step from Heaven. 1841. X. I cannot think that thou shouldst pass away, Whose life to mine is an eternal law, A piece of nature that can have no flaw, A new and certain sunrise every day; But, if thou art to be another ray About the Sun of Life, and art to live Free from all of thee that was fugitive, The debt of Love I will more fully pay, Not downcast with the thought of thee so high, But rather raised to be a nobler man, And more divine in my humanity, As knowing that the waiting eyes which scan My life are lighted by a purer being, And ask meek, calm-browed deeds, with it agreeing. 1841. XI. There never yet was flower fair in vain, Let classic poets rhyme it as they will; The seasons toil that it may blow again, And summer's heart doth feel its every ill; Nor is a true soul ever born for naught; Wherever any such hath lived and died, There hath been something for true freedom wrought, Some bulwark levelled on the evil side: Toil on, then, Greatness! thou art in the right, However narrow souls may call thee wrong; Be as thou wouldst be in thine own clear sight, And so thou wilt in all the world's ere long; For worldlings cannot, struggle as they may, From man's great soul one great thought hide away. 1841. XII. SUB PONDERE CRESCIT. The hope of Truth grows stronger, day by day; I hear the soul of Man around me waking, Like a great sea, its frozen fetters breaking, And flinging up to heaven its sunlit spray, Tossing huge continents in scornful play, And crushing them, with din of grinding thunder, That makes old emptinesses stare in wonder; The memory of a glory passed away Lingers in every heart, as, in the shell, Resounds the bygone freedom of the sea, And, every hour new signs of promise tell That the great soul shall once again be free, For high, and yet more high, the murmurs swell Of inward strife for truth and liberty. 1841. XIII. Belovèd, in the noisy city here, The thought of thee can make all turmoil cease; Around my spirit, folds thy spirit clear Its still, soft arms, and circles it with peace; There is no room for any doubt or fear In souls so overfilled with love's increase, There is no memory of the bygone year But growth in heart's and spirit's perfect ease; How hath our love, half nebulous at first, Rounded itself into a full-orbed sun! How have our lives and wills (as haply erst They were, ere this forgetfulness begun,) Through all their earthly distantness outburst, And melted, like two rays of light, in one! 1842. XIV. ON READING WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS IN DEFENCE OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. As the broad ocean endlessly upheaveth, With the majestic beating of his heart, The mighty tides, whereof its rightful part Each sea-wide bay and little weed receiveth,— So, through his soul who earnestly believeth, Life from the universal Heart doth flow, Whereby some conquest of the eternal Woe, By instinct of God's nature, he achieveth: A fuller pulse of this all-powerful beauty Into the poet's gulf-like heart doth tide, And he more keenly feels the glorious duty Of serving Truth, despised and crucified,— Happy, unknowing sect or creed, to rest And feel God flow forever through his breast. 1842. XV. THE SAME CONTINUED. Once hardly in a cycle blossometh A flower-like soul ripe with the seeds of song, A spirit fore-ordained to cope with wrong, Whose divine thoughts are natural as breath, Who the old Darkness thickly scattereth With starry words, that shoot prevailing light Into the deeps, and wither, with the blight Of serene Truth, the coward heart of Death: Woe, if such spirit thwart its errand high, And mock with lies the longing soul of man! Yet one age longer must true Culture lie, Soothing her bitter fetters as she can, Until new messages of love outstart At the next beating of the infinite Heart. XVI. THE SAME CONTINUED. The love of all things springs from love of one; Wider the soul's horizon hourly grows, And over it with fuller glory flows The sky-like spirit of God; a hope begun In doubt and darkness 'neath a fairer sun Cometh to fruitage, if it be of Truth; And to the law of meekness, faith, and ruth, By inward sympathy, shall all be won: This thou shouldst know, who, from the painted feature Of shifting Fashion, couldst thy brethren turn Unto the love of ever-youthful Nature, And of a beauty fadeless and eterne; And always 'tis the saddest sight to see An old man faithless in Humanity. XVII. THE SAME CONTINUED. A poet cannot strive for despotism; His harp falls shattered; for it still must be The instinct of great spirits to be free, And the sworn foes of cunning barbarism: He, who has deepest searched the wide abysm Of that life-giving Soul which men call fate, Knows that to put more faith in lies and hate Than truth and love is the true atheism: Upward the soul forever turns her eyes; The next hour always shames the hour before; One beauty, at its highest, prophesies That by whose side it shall seem mean and poor; No God-like thing knows aught of less and less, But widens to the boundless Perfectness. XVIII. THE SAME CONTINUED. Therefore think not the Past is wise alone, For Yesterday knows nothing of the Best, And thou shalt love it only as the nest Whence glory-wingèd things to Heaven have flown: To the great Soul alone are all things known; Present and future are to her as past, While she in glorious madness doth forecast That perfect bud, which seems a flower full-blown To each new Prophet, and yet always opes Fuller and fuller with each day and hour, Heartening the soul with odor of fresh hopes, And longings high, and gushings of wide power, Yet never is or shall be fully blown Save in the forethought of the Eternal One. XIX. THE SAME CONCLUDED. Far 'yond this narrow parapet of Time, With eyes uplift, the poet's soul should look Into the Endless Promise, nor should brook One prying doubt to shake his faith sublime; To him the earth is ever in her prime And dewiness of morning; he can see Good lying hid, from all eternity, Within the teeming womb of sin and crime; His soul should not be cramped by any bar, His nobleness should be so God-like high, That his least deed is perfect as a star, His common look majestic as the sky, And all o'erflooded with a light from far, Undimmed by clouds of weak mortality. XX. TO M. O. S. Mary, since first I knew thee, to this hour, My love hath deepened, with my wiser sense Of what in Woman is to reverence; Thy clear heart, fresh as e'er was forest-flower, Still opens more to me its beauteous dower;— But let praise hush,—Love asks no evidence To prove itself well-placed; we know not whence It gleans the straws that thatch its humble bower: We can but say we found it in the heart, Spring of all sweetest thoughts, arch foe of blame, Sower of flowers in the dusty mart, Pure vestal of the poet's holy flame,— This is enough, and we have done our part If we but keep it spotless as it came. 1842. XXI. Our love is not a fading, earthly flower: Its wingèd seed dropped down from Paradise, And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower, Doth momently to fresher beauty rise: To us the leafless autumn is not bare, Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green. Our summer hearts make summer's fulness, where No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen: For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie, Love,—whose forgetfulness is beauty's death, Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I Into the infinite freedom openeth, And makes the body's dark and narrow grate The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's palace-gate. 1842. XXII. IN ABSENCE. These rugged, wintry days I scarce could bear, Did I not know, that, in the early spring, When wild March winds upon their errands sing, Thou wouldst return, bursting on this still air, Like those same winds, when, startled from their lair, They hunt up violets, and free swift brooks, From icy cares, even as thy clear looks Bid my heart bloom, and sing, and break all care; When drops with welcome rain the April day, My flowers shall find their April in thine eyes, Save there the rain in dreamy clouds doth stay, As loath to fall out of those happy skies; Yet sure, my love, thou art most like to May, That comes with steady sun when April dies. 1843. XXIII. WENDELL PHILLIPS. He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide The din of battle and of slaughter rose; He saw God stand upon the weaker side, That sank in seeming loss before its foes; Many there were who made great haste and sold Unto the cunning enemy their swords, He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold, And, underneath their soft and flowery words, Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went And humbly joined him to the weaker part, Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content So he could be the nearer to God's heart, And feel its solemn pulses sending blood Through all the wide-spread veins of endless good. XXIV. THE STREET. They pass me by like shadows, crowds on crowds, Dim ghosts of men, that hover to and fro, Hugging their bodies round them, like thin shrouds Wherein their souls were buried long ago: They trampled on their youth, and faith, and love, They cast their hope of human-kind away, With Heaven's clear messages they madly strove, And conquered,—and their spirits turned to clay: Lo! how they wander round the world, their grave, Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed, Gibbering at living men, and idly rave, "We, only, truly live, but ye are dead." Alas! poor fools, the anointed eye may trace A dead soul's epitaph in every face! XXV. I grieve not that ripe Knowledge takes away The charm that Nature to my childhood wore, For, with that insight, cometh, day by day, A greater bliss than wonder was before; The real doth not clip the poet's wings,— To win the secret of a weed's plain heart Reveals some clue to spiritual things, And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art: Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes, Their beauty thrills him by an inward sense; He knows that outward seemings are but lies, Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, whence The soul that looks within for truth may guess The presence of some wondrous heavenliness. XXVI. TO J. R. GIDDINGS. Giddings, far rougher names than thine have grown Smoother than honey on the lips of men; And thou shalt aye be honorably known, As one who bravely used his tongue and pen, As best befits a freeman,—even for those, To whom our Law's unblushing front denies A right to plead against the life-long woes Which are the Negro's glimpse of Freedom's skies. Fear nothing, and hope all things, as the Right Alone may do securely; every hour The thrones of Ignorance and ancient Night Lose somewhat of their long-usurpèd power, And Freedom's lightest word can make them shiver With a base dread that clings to them forever. XXVII. I thought our love at full, but I did err; Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not see That sorrow in our happy world must be Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter; But, as a mother feels her child first stir Under her heart, so felt I instantly Deep in my soul another bond to thee Thrill with that life we saw depart from her; O mother of our angel-child! twice dear! Death knits as well as parts, and still, I wis, Her tender radiance shall enfold us here, Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss, Threads the void glooms of space without a fear, To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss.

L'ENVOI. Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not, In these three years, since I to thee inscribed, Mine own betrothed, the firstlings of my muse,— Poor windfalls of unripe experience, Young buds plucked hastily by childish hands Not patient to await more full-blown flowers,— At least it hath seen more of life and men, And pondered more, and grown a shade more sad, Yet with no loss of hope or settled trust In the benignness of that Providence, Which shapes from out our elements awry The grace and order that we wonder at, The mystic harmony of right and wrong, Both working out His wisdom and our good: A trust, Beloved, chiefly learned of thee, Who hast that gift of patient tenderness, The instinctive wisdom of a woman's heart. They tell us that our land was made for song, With its huge rivers and sky-piercing peaks, Its sea-like lakes and mighty cataracts, Its forests vast and hoar, and prairies wide, And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes extinct. But Poesy springs not from rocks and woods; Her womb and cradle are the human heart, And she can find a nobler theme for song In the most loathsome man that blasts the sight, Than in the broad expanse of sea and shore Between the frozen deserts of the poles. All nations have their message from on high, Each the messiah of some central thought, For the fulfilment and delight of Man: One has to teach that labor is divine; Another Freedom; and another Mind; And all, that God is open-eyed and just, The happy centre and calm heart of all. Are, then, our woods, our mountains, and our streams, Needful to teach our poets how to sing? O, maiden rare, far other thoughts were ours, When we have sat by ocean's foaming marge, And watched the waves leap roaring on the rocks, Than young Leander and his Hero had, Gazing from Sestos to the other shore. The moon looks down and ocean worships her, Stars rise and set, and seasons come and go Even as they did in Homer's elder time, But we behold them not with Grecian eyes: Then they were types of beauty and of strength, But now of freedom, unconfined and pure, Subject alone to Order's higher law. What cares the Russian serf or Southern slave Though we should speak as man spake never yet Of gleaming Hudson's broad magnificence, Or green Niagara's never-ending roar? Our country hath a gospel of her own To preach and practise before all the world,— The freedom and divinity of man, The glorious claims of human brotherhood,— Which to pay nobly, as a freeman should, Gains the sole wealth that will not fly away,— And the soul's fealty to none but God. These are realities, which make the shows Of outward Nature, be they ne'er so grand, Seem small, and worthless, and contemptible. These are the mountain-summits for our bards, Which stretch far upward into heaven itself, And give such wide-spread and exulting view Of hope, and faith, and onward destiny, That shrunk Parnassus to a molehill dwindles. Our new Atlantis, like a morning-star, Silvers the murk face of slow-yielding Night, The herald of a fuller truth than yet Hath gleamed upon the upraisèd face of Man Since the earth glittered in her stainless prime,— Of a more glorious sunrise than of old Drew wondrous melodies from Memnon huge, Yea, draws them still, though now he sits waist-deep In the engulfing flood of whirling sand, And looks across the wastes of endless gray, Sole wreck, where once his hundred-gated Thebes Pained with her mighty hum the calm, blue heaven. Shall the dull stone pay grateful orisons, And we till noonday bar the splendor out, Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard hearts, Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice, And be content, though clad with angel-wings, Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to perch, In paltry cages of dead men's dead thoughts? O, rather like the sky-lark, soar and sing, And let our gushing songs befit the dawn And sunrise, and the yet unshaken dew Brimming the chalice of each full-blown hope, Whose blithe front turns to greet the growing day. Never had poets such high call before, Never can poets hope for higher one, And, if they be but faithful to their trust, Earth will remember them with love and joy, And O, far better, God will not forget. For he who settles Freedom's principles Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny; Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart, And his mere word makes despots tremble more Than ever Brutus with his dagger could. Wait for no hints from waterfalls or woods, Nor dream that tales of red men, brute and fierce, Repay the finding of this Western World, Or needed half the globe to give them birth: Spirit supreme of Freedom! not for this Did great Columbus tame his eagle soul To jostle with the daws that perch in courts; Not for this, friendless, on an unknown sea, Coping with mad waves and more mutinous spirits, Battled he with the dreadful ache at heart Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of doubt, The hermit of that loneliest solitude, The silent desert of a great New Thought; Though loud Niagara were to-day struck dumb, Yet would this cataract of boiling life, Rush plunging on and on to endless deeps And utter thunder till the world shall cease,— A thunder worthy of the poet's song, And which alone can fill it with true life. The high evangel to our country granted Could make apostles, yea, with tongues of fire, Of hearts half-darkened back again to clay! 'Tis the soul only that is national, And he who pays true loyalty to that Alone can claim the wreath of patriotism. Beloved! if I wander far and oft From that which I believe, and feel, and know, Thou wilt forgive, not with a sorrowing heart, But with a strengthened hope of better things; Knowing that I, though often blind and false To those I love, and O, more false than all Unto myself, have been most true to thee, And that whoso in one thing hath been true Can be as true in all. Therefore thy hope May yet not prove unfruitful, and thy love Meet, day by day, with less unworthy thanks Whether, as now, we journey hand in hand Or, parted in the body, yet are one In spirit and the love of holy things.

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL. PRELUDE TO PART FIRST. Over his keys the musing organist, Beginning doubtfully and far away, First lets his fingers wander as they list, And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay: Then, as the touch of his loved instrument Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent Along the wavering vista of his dream. * * * * * Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie, Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not. Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives, Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite; And to our age's drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea. Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; At the devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking: 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking, No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays: Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,— In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near, That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,— And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing! Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; Everything is happy now, Everything is upward striving; 'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,— 'Tis the natural way of living: Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes the season's youth, And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow?

Part First. I. "My golden spurs now bring to me, And bring to me my richest mail, For to-morrow I go over land and sea In search of the Holy Grail; Shall never a bed for me be spread, Nor shall a pillow be under my head, Till I begin my vow to keep; Here on the rushes will I sleep, And perchance there may come a vision true Ere day create the world anew." Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, Slumber fell like a cloud on him, And into his soul the vision flew. II. The crows flapped over by twos and threes, In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, The little birds sang as if it were The one day of summer in all the year, And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees, The castle alone in the landscape lay Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray; 'Twas the proudest hall in the North Countree, And never its gates might opened be, Save to lord or lady of high degree; Summer besieged it on every side, But the churlish stone her assaults defied; She could not scale the chilly wall, Though round it for leagues her pavilions tall Stretched left and right, Over the hills and out of sight; Green and broad was every tent, And out of each a murmur went Till the breeze fell off at night. III. The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, And through the dark arch a charger sprang, Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright It seemed the dark castle had gathered all Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall In his siege of three hundred summers long, And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, Had cast them forth: so, young and strong, And lightsome as a locust-leaf, Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail, To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. IV. It was morning on hill and stream and tree, And morning in the young knight's heart; Only the castle moodily Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, And gloomed by itself apart; The season brimmed all other things up Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. V. As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate, He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl, And midway its leap his heart stood still Like a frozen waterfall; For this man, so foul and bent of stature, Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,— So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. VI. The leper raised not the gold from the dust: "Better to me the poor man's crust, Better the blessing of the poor, Though I turn me empty from his door; That is no true alms which the hand can hold; He gives nothing but worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty; But he who gives a slender mite, And gives to that which is out of sight, That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through all and doth all unite,— The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, The heart outstretches its eager palms, For a god goes with it and makes it store To the soul that was starving in darkness before." PRELUDE TO PART SECOND. Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old; On open wold and hill-top bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars As the lashes of light that trim the stars: He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond drops, That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one: No mortal builder's most rare device Could match this winter-palace of ice; 'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay In his depths serene through the summer day, Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost. Within the hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind; And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer. But the wind without was eager and sharp, Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, And rattles and wrings The icy strings, Singing, in dreary monotone, A Christmas carol of its own, Whose burden still, as he might guess, Was—"Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, And he sat in the gateway and saw all night The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, Through the window-slits of the castle old, Build out its piers of ruddy light Against the drift of the cold. Part Second. I. There was never a leaf on bush or tree, The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; The river was numb and could not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun; A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun. Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth and sea. II. Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, For another heir in his earldom sate; An old, bent man, worn out and frail, He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; Little he recked of his earldom's loss, No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross, But deep in his soul the sign he wore, The badge of the suffering and the poor. III. Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare Was idle mail 'gainst the barbèd air, For it was just at the Christmas time; So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, And sought for a shelter from cold and snow In the light and warmth of long-ago; He sees the snake-like caravan crawl O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, He can count the camels in the sun, As over the red-hot sands they pass To where, in its slender necklace of grass, The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, And with its own self like an infant played, And waved its signal of palms. IV. "For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;"— The happy camels may reach the spring, But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, That cowers beside him, a thing as lone And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas In the desolate horror of his disease. V. And Sir Launfal said,—"I behold in thee An image of Him who died on the tree; Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,— Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns,— And to thy life were not denied The wounds in the hands and feet and side: Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; Behold, through him, I give to thee!" VI. Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he Remembered in what a haughtier guise He had flung an alms to leprosie, When he girt his young life up in gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. The heart within him was ashes and dust; He parted in twain his single crust, He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, And gave the leper to eat and drink, 'Twas a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 'Twas water out of a wooden bowl,— Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, And 'twas red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. VII. As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, A light shone round about the place; The leper no longer crouched at his side, But stood before him glorified, Shining and tall and fair and straight As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,— Himself the Gate whereby men can Enter the temple of God in Man. VIII. His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, Which mingle their softness and quiet in one With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; And the voice that was calmer than silence said, "Lo, it is I, be not afraid! In many climes, without avail, Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; Behold it is here,—this cup which thou Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; This crust is my body broken for thee, This water His blood that died on the tree; The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, In whatso we share with another's need; Not what we give, but what we share,— For the gift without the giver is bare; Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,— Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." IX. Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound:— "The Grail in my castle here is found! Hang my idle armor up on the wall, Let it be the spider's banquet hall; He must be fenced with stronger mail Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." X. The castle gate stands open now, And the wanderer is welcome to the hall As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough; No longer scowl the turrets tall, The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; When the first poor outcast went in at the door, She entered with him in disguise, And mastered the fortress by surprise; There is no spot she loves so well on ground, She lingers and smiles there the whole year round; The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land Has hall and bower at his command; And there's no poor man in the North Countree But is lord of the earldom as much as he.

A FABLE FOR CRITICS. Phœbus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade, Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made, For the god being one day too warm in his wooing, She took to the tree to escape his pursuing; Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk; And, though 'twas a step into which he had driven her, He somehow or other had never forgiven her; Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, Something bitter to chew when he'd play the Byronic, And I can't count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over, By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her. "My case is like Dido's," he sometimes remark'd, "When I last saw my love, she was fairly embark'd, In a laurel, as she thought—but (ah how Fate mocks!) She has found it by this time a very bad box; Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it, —You're not always sure of your game when you've treed it. Just conceive such a change taking place in one's mistress! What romance would be left?—who can flatter or kiss trees? And for mercy's sake, how could one keep up a dialogue With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a log,— Not to say that the thought would forever intrude That you've less chance to win her the more she is wood? Ah! it went to my heart, and the memory still grieves, To see those loved graces all taking their leaves; Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting but now, As they left me forever, each making its bough! If her tongue had a tang sometimes more than was right, Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite." Now, Daphne,—before she was happily treeified,— Over all other blossoms the lily had deified, And when she expected the god on a visit, ('Twas before he had made his intentions explicit,) Some buds she arranged with a vast deal of care, To look as if artlessly twined in her hair, Where they seemed, as he said, when he paid his addresses, Like the day breaking through the long night of her tresses; So whenever he wished to be quite irresistible, Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table, (I feared me at first that the rhyme was untwistable, Though I might have lugged in an allusion to Cristabel,)— He would take up a lily, and gloomily look in it, As I shall at the ——, when they cut up my book in it. Well, here, after all the bad rhyme I've been spinning, I've got back at last to my story's beginning: Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his mistress, As dull as a volume of old Chester mysteries, Or as those puzzling specimens, which, in old histories, We read of his verses—the Oracles, namely,— (I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them tamely, For one might bet safely whatever he has to risk, They were laid at his door by some ancient Miss Asterisk, And so dull that the men who retailed them out-doors Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores,)— First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is Would induce a moustache, for you know he's imberbis; Then he shuddered to think how his youthful position Was assailed by the age of his son the physician; At some poems he glanced, had been sent to him lately, And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly. "Mehercle! I'd make such proceedings felonious,— Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius? Look well to your seat, 'tis like taking an airing On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing; It leads one, 'tis true, through the primitive forest, Grand natural features—but, then, one has no rest; You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance, When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence,— Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any?" —Here the laurel-leaves murmured the name of poor Daphne. "O, weep with me, Daphne," he sighed, "for you know it's A terrible thing to be pestered with poets! But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good, She never will cry till she's out of the wood! What wouldn't I give if I never had known of her? 'Twere a kind of relief had I something to groan over; If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over, I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philosopher, And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the loss of her. One needs something tangible, though to begin on— A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin on; What boots all your grist? it can never be ground Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round, (Or, if 'tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor, And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well wet afore, Or lug in some stuff about water 'so dreamily,'— It is not a metaphor, though, 'tis a simile;) A lily, perhaps, would set my mill agoing, For just at this season, I think, they are blowing, Here, somebody, fetch one, not very far hence They're in bloom by the score, 'tis but climbing a fence; There's a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his Whole garden, from one end to t'other, with lilies; A very good plan, were it not for satiety, One longs for a weed here and there, for variety; Though a weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes." Now there happened to be among Phœbus's followers, A gentleman, one of the omnivorous swallowers, Who bolt every book that comes out of the press, Without the least question of larger or less, Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of their head,— For reading new books is like eating new bread, One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps he Is brought to death's door of a mental dyspepsy. On a previous stage of existence, our Hero Had ridden outside, with the glass below zero; He had been, 'tis a fact you may safely rely on, Of a very old stock a most eminent scion,— A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses ply on, Who stretch the new boots Earth's unwilling to try on, Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts keep their eye on, Whose hair's in the mortar of every new Zion, Who, when whistles are dear, go directly and buy one, Who think slavery a crime that we must not say fie on, Who hunt, if they e'er hunt at all, with the lion, (Though they hunt lions also, whenever they spy one,) Who contrive to make every good fortune a wry one, And at last choose the hard bed of honor to die on, Whose pedigree traced to earth's earliest years, Is longer than anything else but their ears;— In short, he was sent into life with the wrong key, He unlocked the door, and stept forth a poor donkey. Though kicked and abused by his bipedal betters, Yet he filled no mean place in the kingdom of letters; Far happier than many a literary hack, He bore only paper-mill rags on his back; (For it makes a vast difference which side the mill One expends on the paper his labor and skill;) So, when his soul waited a new transmigration, And Destiny balanced 'twixt this and that station, Not having much time to expend upon bothers, Remembering he'd had some connection with authors, And considering his four legs had grown paralytic,— She set him on two, and he came forth a critic. Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure he took In any amusement but tearing a book; For him there was no intermediate stage, From babyhood up to straight-laced middle age; There were years when he didn't wear coat-tails behind, But a boy he could never be rightly defined; Like the Irish Good Folk, though in length scarce a span, From the womb he came gravely, a little old man; While other boys' trousers demanded the toil Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of soil, Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly, loamy, He sat in the corner and read Viri Romæ. He never was known to unbend or to revel once In base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the devil once; He was just one of those who excite the benevolence Of your old prigs who sound the soul's depths with a ledger, And are on the lookout for some young men to "edger cate," as they call it, who won't be too costly, And who'll afterward take to the ministry mostly; Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious, Always keep on good terms with each mater-familias Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred a year; Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful conditions, Either preach through their noses, or go upon missions. In this way our hero got safely to college, Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge; A reading-machine, always wound up and going, He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing, Appeared in a gown, and a vest of black satin, To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin, That Tully could never have made out a word in it, (Though himself was the model the author preferred in it,) And grasping the parchment which gave him in fee, All the mystic and-so-forths contained in A. B., He was launched (life is always compared to a sea,) With just enough learning, and skill for the using it, To prove he'd a brain, by forever confusing it. So worthy Saint Benedict, piously burning With the holiest zeal against secular learning, Nesciensque scienter, as writers express it, Indoctusque sapienter â Româ recessit. 'Twould be endless to tell you the things that he knew, All separate facts, undeniably true, But with him or each other they'd nothing to do; No power of combining, arranging, discerning, Digested the masses he learned into learning; There was one thing in life he had practical knowledge for, (And this, you will think, he need scarce go to college for,) Not a deed would he do, nor a word would he utter, Till he'd weighed its relations to plain bread and butter. When he left Alma Mater, he practised his wits In compiling the journals' historical bits,— Of shops broken open, men falling in fits, Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printers, And cold spells, the coldest for many past winters,— Then, rising by industry, knack, and address, Got notices up for an unbiassed press, With a mind so wellpoised, it seemed equally made for Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be paid for; From this point his progress was rapid and sure, To the post of a regular heavy reviewer. And here I must say he wrote excellent articles On the Hebraic points, or the force of Greek particles, They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for; And nobody read that which nobody cared for; If any old book reached a fiftieth edition, He could fill forty pages with safe erudition, He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules, And his very old nothings pleased very old fools; But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart, And you put him at sea without compass or chart,— His blunders aspired to the rank of an art; For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him, Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him, So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him, Carving new forms of truth out of Nature's old granite, New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier's planet, Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must create In the soul of their critic the measure and weight, Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace, To compute their own judge, and assign him his place, Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it, And, reporting each circumstance just as he found it, Without the least malice,—his record would be Profoundly æsthetic as that of a flea, Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our sakes, Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes, Or, borne by an Arab guide, ventured to render a General view of the ruins of Denderah. As I said, he was never precisely unkind, The defect in his brain was just absence of mind; If he boasted, 'twas simply that he was self-made, A position which I, for one, never gainsaid, My respect for my Maker supposing a skill In his works which our hero would answer but ill; And I trust that the mould which he used may be cracked, or he Made bold by success, may enlarge his phylactery, And set up a kind of a man-manufactory, An event which I shudder to think about, seeing That Man is a moral, accountable being. He meant well enough, but was still in the way As a dunce always is, let him be where he may; Indeed, they appear to come into existence To impede other folks with their awkward assistance; If you set up a dunce on the very North pole, All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul, He'd manage to get betwixt somebody's shins, And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins, To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice, All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice; Or, if he found nobody else there to pother, Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other, For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions. A terrible fellow to meet in society, Not the toast that he buttered was ever so dry at tea; There he'd sit at the table and stir in his sugar, Crouching close for a spring, all the while, like a cougar; Be sure of your facts, of your measures and weights, Of your time—he's as fond as an Arab of dates;— You'll be telling, perhaps, in your comical way, Of something you've seen in the course of the day; And, just as you're tapering out the conclusion, You venture an ill-fated classic allusion,— The girls have all got their laughs ready, when, whack! The cougar comes down on your thunderstruck back! You had left out a comma,—your Greek's put in joint, And pointed at cost of your story's whole point. In the course of the evening, you venture on certain Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain; You tell her your heart can be likened to one flower, "And that, oh most charming of women, 's the sunflower, Which turns"—here a clear nasal voice, to your terror, From outside the curtain, says "that's all an error." As for him, he's—no matter, he never grew tender, Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender, Shaping somebody's sweet features out of cigar smoke, (Though he'd willingly grant you that such doings are smoke;) All women he damns with mutabile semper, And if ever he felt something like love's distemper, 'Twas towards a young lady who spoke ancient Mexican, And assisted her father in making a lexicon; Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius, Or something of that sort,—but, no more to bore ye With character-painting, I'll turn to my story. Now, Apollo, who finds it convenient sometimes To get his court clear of the makers of rhymes, The genus, I think it is called, irritabile, Every one of whom thinks himself treated most shabbily, And nurses a—what is it?—immedicabile, Which keeps him at boiling-point, hot for a quarrel, As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than sorrel, If any poor devil but look at a laurel;— Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting, (Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse had a quieting Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta,) Kept our hero at hand, who, by means of a bray, Which he gave to the life, drove the rabble away; And if that wouldn't do, he was sure to succeed, If he took his review out and offered to read; Or, failing in plans of this milder description, He would ask for their aid to get up a subscription, Considering that authorship wasn't a rich craft, To print the "American drama of Witchcraft." "Stay, I'll read you a scene,"—but he hardly began, Ere Apollo shrieked "Help!" and the authors all ran: And once, when these purgatives acted with less spirit, And the desperate case asked a remedy desperate, He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle, As calmly as if 'twere a nine-barrelled pistol, And threatened them all with the judgment to come, Of "A wandering Star's first impressions of Rome." "Stop! stop!" with their hands o'er their ears screamed the Muses, "He may go off and murder himself, if he chooses, 'Twas a means self-defence only sanctioned his trying, 'Tis mere massacre now that the enemy's flying; If he's forced to 't again, and we happen to be there, Give us each a large handkerchief soaked in strong ether." I call this a "Fable for Critics"; you think it's More like a display of my rhythmical trinkets; My plot, like an icicle, 's slender and slippery, Every moment more slender, and likely to slip awry, And the reader unwilling in loco desipere, Is free to jump over as much of my frippery As he fancies, and, if he's a provident skipper, he May have an Odyssean sway of the gales, And get safe into port, ere his patience all fails; Moreover, although 'tis a slender return For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn, And, if you have manfully struggled thus far with me, You may e'en twist me up, and just light your cigar with me: If too angry for that, you can tear me in pieces, And my membra disjecta consign to the breezes, A fate like great Ratzau's, whom one of those bores, Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis Quatorze, Describes, (the first verse somehow ends with victoire,) As dispersant partout et ses membres et sa gloire; Or, if I were over-desirous of earning A repute among noodles for classical learning, I could pick you a score of allusions, I wis; As new as the jests of Didaskalos tis; Better still, I could make out a good solid list From recondite authors who do not exist,— But that would be naughty: at least, I could twist Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris;— But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that, (A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat,) After saying whate'er he could possibly think of,— I simply will state that I pause on the brink of A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion, So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied, Just conceive how much harder your teeth you'd have gritted, An 't were not for the dulness I've kindly omitted. I'd apologize here for my many digressions, Were it not that I'm certain to trip into fresh ones, ('Tis so hard to escape if you get in their mesh once;) Just reflect, if you please, how 'tis said by Horatius, That Mæonides nods now and then, and, my gracious! It certainly does look a little bit ominous When he gets under way with ton d'apameibomenos. (Here a something occurs which I'll just clap a rhyme to, And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time to,— Any author a nap like Van Winkle's may take, If he only contrive to keep readers awake, But he'll very soon find himself laid on the shelf, If they fall a nodding when he nods himself.) Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I— When Phœbus expressed his desire for a lily, Our hero, whose homœopathic sagacity With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity, Set off for the garden as fast as the wind, (Or, to take a comparison more to my mind, As a sound politician leaves conscience behind,) And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps O'er his principles, when something else turns up trumps. He was gone a long time, and Apollo meanwhile, Went over some sonnets of his with a file, For of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it; It should reach with one impulse the end of its course, And for one final blow collect all of its force; Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend With a wave-like up-gathering to burst at the end;— So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink, He was killing the time, when up walked Mr. ——; At a few steps behind him, a small man in glasses, Went dodging about, muttering "murderers! asses!" From out of his pocket a paper he'd take, With the proud look of martyrdom tied to its stake, And, reading a squib at himself, he'd say, "Here I see 'Gainst American letters a bloody conspiracy, They are all by my personal enemies written; I must post an anonymous letter to Britain, And show that this gall is the merest suggestion Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question, For, on this side the water, 'tis prudent to pull O'er the eyes of the public their national wool, By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull, All American authors who have more or less Of that anti-American humbug—success, While in private we're always embracing the knees Of some twopenny editor over the seas, And licking his critical shoes, for you know 'tis The whole aim of our lives to get one English notice; My American puffs I would willingly burn all, (They're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal,) To get but a kick from a transmarine journal!" So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner As if they were plums, and himself were Jack Horner, He came cautiously on, peeping round every corner, And into each hole where a weasel might pass in, Expecting the knife of some critic assassin, Who stabs to the heart with a caricature, Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure, Yet done with a dagger-o'-type, whose vile portraits Disperse all one's good, and condense all one's poor traits. Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching, And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching,— "Good day, Mr. ——, I'm happy to meet With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, Who through Grub-street the soul of a gentleman carries,— What news from that suburb of London and Paris Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopolize The credit of being the New World's metropolis?" "Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack, Who thinks every national author a poor one, That isn't a copy of something that's foreign, And assaults the American Dick—" "Nay, 'tis clear That your Damon there's fond of a flea in his ear, And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click; Why, I honestly think, if some fool in Japan Should turn up his nose at the 'Poems on Man,' Your friend there by some inward instinct would know it, Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it; As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet; Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after column, Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn, By way of displaying his critical crosses, And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis, His broadsides resulting (and this there's no doubt of,) In successively sinking the craft they're fired out of. Now nobody knows when an author is hit, If he don't have a public hysterical fit; Let him only keep close in his snug garret's dim ether, And nobody 'd think of his critics—or him either; If an author have any least fibre of worth in him, Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him, All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban, One word that's in tune with the nature of man." "Well, perhaps so; meanwhile I have brought you a book, Into which if you'll just have the goodness to look, You may feel so delighted, (when you have got through it,) As to think it not unworth your while to review it, And I think I can promise your thoughts, if you do, A place in the next Democratic Review." "The most thankless of gods you must surely have thought me, For this is the forty-fourth copy you've brought me, I have given them away, or at least I have tried, But I've forty-two left, standing all side by side, (The man who accepted that one copy, died,)— From one end of a shelf to the other they reach, 'With the author's respects' neatly written in each. The publisher, sure, will proclaim a Te Deum, When he hears of that order the British Museum Has sent for one set of what books were first printed In America, little or big,—for 'tis hinted That this is the first truly tangible hope he Has ever had raised for the sale of a copy. I've thought very often 't would be a good thing In all public collections of books, if a wing Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands, Marked Literature suited to desolate islands, And filled with such books as could never be read Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread,— Such books as one's wrecked on in small country-taverns, Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns, Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented, As the climax of woe, would to Job have presented, Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are few so Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe; And since the philanthropists just now are banging And gibbeting all who're in favor of hanging,— (Though Cheever has proved that the Bible and Altar Were let down from Heaven at the end of a halter, And that vital religion would dull and grow callous, Unrefreshed, now and then, with a sniff of the gallows,)— And folks are beginning to think it looks odd, To choke a poor scamp for the glory of God; And that He who esteems the Virginia reel A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal, And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery Than crushing His African children with slavery,— Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillion Are mounted for hell on the Devil's own pillion, Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows, Approaches the heart through the door of the toes,— That He, I was saying, whose judgments are stored For such as take steps in despite of his word, Should look with delight on the agonized prancing Of a wretch who has not the least ground for his dancing, While the State, standing by, sings a verse from the Psalter About offering to God on his favorite halter, And, when the legs droop from their twitching divergence, Sells the clothes to a Jew, and the corpse to the surgeons;— "Now, instead of all this, I think I can direct you all To a criminal code both humane and effectual;— I propose to shut up every doer of wrong With these desperate books, for such term, short or long, As by statute in such cases made and provided, Shall be by your wise legislators decided; Thus:—Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler, At hard labor for life on the works of Miss ——; Petty thieves, kept from flagranter crimes by their fears, Shall peruse Yankee Doodle a blank term of years,— That American Punch, like the English, no doubt— Just the sugar and lemons and spirit left out. "But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold, and leads on The flocks whom he first plucks alive, and then feeds on,— A loud-cackling swarm, in whose feathers warm-drest, He goes for as perfect a—swan, as the rest. "There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, Is some of it pr—— No, 'tis not even prose; I'm speaking of metres; some poems have welled From those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been excelled; They 're not epics, but that doesn't matter a pin, In creating, the only hard thing 's to begin; A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak, If you've once found the way, you've achieved the grand stroke; In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter; Now it is not one thing nor another alone Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, The something pervading, uniting the whole, The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, So that just in removing this trifle or that, you Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue; Roots, wood, bark, and leaves, singly perfect may be, But, clapt hodge-podge together, they don't make a tree. "But, to come back to Emerson, (whom by the way, I believe we left waiting,)—his is, we may say, A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange; He seems, to my thinking, (although I'm afraid The comparison must, long ere this, have been made,) A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist; All admire, and yet scarcely six converts he's got To I don't (nor they either) exactly know what; For though he builds glorious temples, 'tis odd He leaves never a doorway to get in a god. 'Tis refreshing to old-fashioned people like me, To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, In whose mind all creation is duly respected As parts of himself—just a little projected; And who's willing to worship the stars and the sun, A convert to—nothing but Emerson. So perfect a balance there is in his head, That he talks of things sometimes as if they were dead; Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that sort, He looks at as merely ideas; in short, As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, Of such vast extent that our earth's a mere dab in it; Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion, With the quiet precision of science he'll sort 'em, But you can't help suspecting the whole a post mortem. "There are persons, mole-blind to the soul's make and style, Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and Carlyle; To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer, Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the rarer; He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier, If C.'s as original, E.'s more peculiar; That he's more of a man you might say of the one, Of the other he's more of an Emerson; C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb,— E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim; The one's two-thirds Norseman, the other half Greek, Where the one's most abounding, the other's to seek; C.'s generals require to be seen in the mass,— E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass; C. gives nature and God his own fits of the blues, And rims common-sense things with mystical hues,— E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, And looks coolly around him with sharp common sense; C. shows you how every-day matters unite With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night,— While E., in a plain, preternatural way, Makes mysteries matters of mere every day; C. draws all his characters quite à la Fuseli,— He don't sketch their bundles of muscles and thews illy, But he paints with a brush so untamed and profuse, They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews; E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe, And a colorless outline, but full, round, and clear;— To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords The design of a white marble statue in words. C. labors to get at the centre, and then Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men; E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted, And, given himself, has whatever is wanted. "He has imitators in scores, who omit No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,— Who go carefully o'er the sky-blue of his brain, And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again; If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is Because their shoals mirror his mists and obscurities, As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for a minute, While a cloud that floats o'er is reflected within it. "There comes ——, for instance; to see him 's rare sport, Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully short; How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face, To keep step with the mystagogue's natural pace He follows as close as a stick to a rocket, His fingers exploring the prophet's each pocket. Fie, for shame, brother bard; with good fruit of your own, Can't you let neighbor Emerson's orchards alone? Besides, 'tis no use, you'll not find e'en a core,— —— has picked up all the windfalls before. They might strip every tree, and E. never would catch 'em, His Hesperides have no rude dragon to watch 'em; When they send him a dishfull, and ask him to try 'em, He never suspects how the sly rogues came by 'em; He wonders why 'tis there are none such his trees on, And thinks 'em the best he has tasted this season. "Yonder, calm as a cloud, Alcott stalks in a dream, And fancies himself in thy groves, Academe, With the Parthenon nigh, and the olive-trees o'er him, And never a fact to perplex him or bore him, With a snug room at Plato's, when night comes, to walk to, And people from morning till midnight to talk to, And from midnight till morning, nor snore in their listening;— So he muses, his face with the joy of it glistening, For his highest conceit of a happiest state is Where they'd live upon acorns, and hear him talk gratis; And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked better— Each sentence hangs perfectly poised to a letter; He seems piling words, but there's royal dust hid In the heart of each sky-piercing pyramid. While he talks he is great, but goes out like a taper, If you shut him up closely with pen, ink, and paper; Yet his fingers itch for 'em from morning till night, And he thinks he does wrong if he don't always write; In this, as in all things, a lamb among men, He goes to sure death when he goes to his pen. "Close behind him is Brownson, his mouth very full With attempting to gulp a Gregorian bull; Who contrives, spite of that, to pour out as he goes A stream of transparent and forcible prose; He shifts quite about, then proceeds to expound That 'tis merely the earth, not himself, that turns round, And wishes it clearly impressed on your mind, That the weather-cock rules and not follows the wind; Proving first, then as deftly confuting each side, With no doctrine pleased that's not somewhere denied, He lays the denier away on the shelf, And then—down beside him lies gravely himself. He's the Salt River boatman, who always stands willing To convey friend or foe without charging a shilling, And so fond of the trip that, when leisure's to spare, He'll row himself up, if he can't get a fare. The worst of it is, that his logic's so strong, That of two sides he commonly chooses the wrong; If there is only one, why, he'll split it in two, And first pummel this half, then that, black and blue. That white 's white needs no proof, but it takes a deep fellow To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow. He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve,— When it reaches your lips there's naught left to believe But a few silly- (syllo-, I mean,) -gisms that squat 'em Like tadpoles, o'erjoyed with the mud at the bottom. "There is Willis, so natty and jaunty and gay, Who says his best things in so foppish a way, With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em, That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em; Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose, Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose! His prose had a natural grace of its own, And enough of it, too, if he'd let it alone; But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets tired, And is forced to forgive where he might have admired; Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced, It runs like a stream with a musical waste, And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep;— 'Tis not deep as a river, but who'd have it deep? In a country where scarcely a village is found That has not its author sublime and profound, For some one to be slightly shoal is a duty, And Willis's shallowness makes half his beauty. His prose winds along with a blithe, gurgling error, And reflects all of Heaven it can see in its mirror; 'Tis a narrowish strip, but it is not an artifice,— 'Tis the true out-of-doors with its genuine hearty phiz; It is Nature herself, and there's something in that, Since most brains reflect but the crown of a hat. No volume I know to read under a tree, More truly delicious than his A l' Abri, With the shadows of leaves flowing over your book, Like ripple-shades netting the bed of a brook; With June coming softly your shoulder to look over, Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your book over, And Nature to criticise still as you read,— The page that bears that is a rare one indeed. "He's so innate a cockney, that had he been born Where plain bare-skin 's the only full-dress that is worn, He'd have given his own such an air that you'd say 'T had been made by a tailor to lounge in Broadway. His nature's a glass of champagne with the foam on 't, As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont; So his best things are done in the flush of the moment, If he wait, all is spoiled; he may stir it and shake it, But, the fixed air once gone, he can never re-make it. He might be a marvel of easy delightfulness, If he would not sometimes leave the r out of sprightfulness; And he ought to let Scripture alone—'tis self-slaughter, For nobody likes inspiration-and-water. He'd have been just the fellow to sup at the Mermaid, Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid, His wit running up as Canary ran down,— The topmost bright bubble on the wave of The Town. "Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man Whom the Church undertook to put under her ban,— (The Church of Socinus, I mean)—his opinions Being So-(ultra)-cinian, they shocked the Socinians; They believed—faith I'm puzzled—I think I may call Their belief a believing in nothing at all, Or something of that sort; I know they all went For a general union of total dissent: He went a step farther; without cough or hem, He frankly avowed he believed not in them; And, before he could be jumbled up or prevented From their orthodox kind of dissent he dissented. There was heresy here, you perceive, for the right Of privately judging means simply that light Has been granted to me, for deciding on you, And in happier times, before Atheism grew, The deed contained clauses for cooking you too. Now at Xerxes and Knut we all laugh, yet our foot With the same wave is wet that mocked Xerxes and Knut; And we all entertain a sincere private notion, That our Thus far! will have a great weight with the ocean. 'Twas so with our liberal Christians: they bore With sincerest conviction their chairs to the shore; They brandished their worn theological birches, Bade natural progress keep out of the Churches, And expected the lines they had drawn to prevail With the fast-rising tide to keep out of their pale; They had formerly dammed the Pontifical See, And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P.; But he turned up his nose at their murmuring and shamming, And cared (shall I say?) not a d— for their damming; So they first read him out of their church, and next minute Turned round and declared he had never been in it. But the ban was too small or the man was too big, For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig; (He don't look like a man who would stay treated shabbily, Sophroniscus' son's head o'er the features of Rabelais;)— He bangs and bethwacks them,—their backs he salutes With the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the roots; His sermons with satire are plenteously verjuiced, And he talks in one breath of Confutzee, Cass, Zerduscht, Jack Robinson, Peter the Hermit, Strap, Dathan, Cush, Pitt, (not the bottomless, that he's no faith in,) Pan, Pillicock, Shakspeare, Paul, Toots, Monsieur Tonson, Aldebaran, Alcander, Ben Khorat, Ben Jonson, Thoth, Richter, Joe Smith, Father Paul, Judah Monis, Musæus, Muretus, hem,—μ Scorpionis, Maccabee, Maccaboy, Mac—Mac—ah! Machiavelli, Condorcet, Count d'Orsay, Conder, Say, Ganganelli, Orion, O'Connell, the Chevalier D'O, (See the Memoirs of Sully) τὸ πᾶν, the great toe Of the statue of Jupiter, now made to pass For that of Jew Peter by good Romish brass,— (You may add for yourselves, for I find it a bore, All the names you have ever, or not, heard before, And when you've done that—why, invent a few more.) His hearers can't tell you on Sunday beforehand, If in that day's discourse they'll be Bibled or Koraned, For he's seized the idea (by his martyrdom fired,) That all men (not orthodox) may be inspired; Yet tho' wisdom profane with his creed he may weave in, He makes it quite clear what he doesn't believe in, While some, who decry him, think all Kingdom Come Is a sort of a, kind of a, species of Hum, Of which, as it were, so to speak, not a crumb Would be left, if we didn't keep carefully mum, And, to make a clean breast, that 'tis perfectly plain That all kinds of wisdom are somewhat profane; Now P.'s creed than this may be lighter or darker, But in one thing, 'tis clear, he has faith, namely—Parker; And this is what makes him the crowd-drawing preacher, There's a background of god to each hard-working feature, Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest: There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest, If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least, His gestures all downright and same, if you will, As of brown-fisted Hobnail in hoeing a drill, But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke, Like the blows of a lumberer felling an oak, You forget the man wholly, you're thankful to meet With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street, And to hear, you're not over-particular whence, Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's sense. "There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation, (There's no doubt that he stands in supreme iceolation,) Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on,— He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on: Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has 'em, But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, Like being stirred up with the very North Pole. "He is very nice reading in summer, but inter Nos, we don't want extra freezing in winter; Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is, When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices. But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him, He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities,— To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite. If you're one who in loco (add foco here) desipis, You will get of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece; But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice, And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain, If you only could palm yourself off for a mountain. Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning, Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth Is worth near as much as your whole tuneful herd's worth. No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant; But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client, By attempting to stretch him up into a giant: If you choose to compare him, I think there are two per- sons fit for a parallel—Thomson and Cowper;^[C] I don't mean exactly,—there's something of each, There's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach; Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of craziness Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness, And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet, Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot,— A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on The heart which strives vainly to burst off a button,— A brain which, without being slow or mechanic, Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic; He's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten, And the advantage that Wordsworth before him has written. "But, my dear little bardlings, don't prick up your ears, Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers; If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say There is nothing in that which is grand, in its way; He is almost the one of your poets that knows How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose; If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar His thought's modest fulness by going too far; 'Twould be well if your authors should all make a trial Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial, And measure their writings by Hesiod's staff, Which teaches that all have less value than half. "There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart, And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect, Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing; And his failures arise, (though perhaps he don't know it,) From the very same cause that has made him a poet,— A fervor of mind which knows no separation 'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration, As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing If 'twere I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing; Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection, While, borne with the rush of the metre along, The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, Content with the whirl and delirium of song; Then his grammar's not always correct, nor his rhymes, And he's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes, Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats, And can ne'er be repeated again any more Than they could have been carefully plotted before: Like old what's-his-name there at the battle of Hastings, (Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bastings,) Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights For reform and whatever they call human rights, Both singing and striking in front of the war And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor; Anne haec, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks, Vestis filii tui, O, leather-clad Fox? Can that be thy son, in the battle's mid din, Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in To the brain of the tough old Goliah of sin, With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly's spring Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling? "All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard, Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave When to look but a protest in silence was brave; All honor and praise to the women and men Who spoke out for the dumb and the down-trodden then! I need not to name them, already for each I see History preparing the statue and niche; They were harsh, but shall you be so shocked at hard words Who have beaten your pruning-hooks up into swords, Whose rewards and hurrahs men are surer to gain By the reaping of men and of women than grain? Why should you stand aghast at their fierce wordy war, if You scalp one another for Bank or for Tariff? Your calling them cut-throats and knaves all day long Don't prove that the use of hard language is wrong; While the World's heart beats quicker to think of such men As signed Tyranny's doom with a bloody steel-pen, While on Fourth-of-Julys beardless orators fright one With hints at Harmodius and Aristogeiton, You need not look shy at your sisters and brothers Who stab with sharp words for the freedom of others;— No, a wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal and true Who, for the sake of the many, dared stand with the few, Not of blood-spattered laurel for enemies braved, But of broad, peaceful oak-leaves for citizens saved! "Here comes Dana, abstractedly loitering along Involved in a paulo-post-future of song, Who'll be going to write what'll never be written Till the Muse, ere he thinks of it, gives him the mitten,— Who is so well aware of how things should be done, That his own works displease him before they're begun,— Who so well all that makes up good poetry knows That the best of his poems is written in prose; All saddled and bridled stood Pegasus waiting, He was booted and spurred, but he loitered debating, In a very grave question his soul was immersed,— Which foot in the stirrup he ought to put first; And, while this point and that he judicially dwelt on, He, somehow or other, had written Paul Felton, Whose beauties or faults, whichsoever you see there, You'll allow only genius could hit upon either. That he once was the Idle Man none will deplore, But I fear he will never be anything more; The ocean of song heaves and glitters before him, The depth and the vastness and longing sweep o'er him, He knows every breaker and shoal on the chart, He has the Coast Pilot and so on by heart, Yet he spends his whole life, like the man in the fable, In learning to swim on his library-table. "There swaggers John Neal, who has wasted in Maine The sinews and chords of his pugilist brain, Who might have been poet, but that, in its stead, he Preferred to believe that he was so already; Too hasty to wait till Art's ripe fruit should drop, He must pelt down an unripe and colicky crop; Who took to the law, and had this sterling plea for it, It required him to quarrel, and paid him a fee for it; A man who's made less than he might have, because He always has thought himself more than he was,— Who, with very good natural gifts as a bard, Broke the strings of his lyre out by striking too hard, And cracked half the notes of a truly fine voice, Because song drew less instant attention than noise. Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise, That he goes the farthest who goes far enough, And that all beyond that is just bother and stuff. No vain man matures, he makes too much new wood; His blooms are too thick for the fruit to be good; 'Tis the modest man ripens, 'tis he that achieves, Just what's needed of sunshine and shade he receives; Grapes, to mellow, require the cool dark of their leaves; Neal wants balance; he throws his mind always too far, Whisking out flocks of comets, but never a star; He has so much muscle, and loves so to show it, That he strips himself naked to prove he's a poet, And, to show he could leap Art's wide ditch, if he tried, Jumps clean o'er it, and into the hedge t'other side. He has strength, but there's nothing about him in keeping; One gets surelier onward by walking than leaping; He has used his own sinews himself to distress, And had done vastly more had he done vastly less; In letters, too soon is as bad as too late, Could he only have waited he might have been great, But he plumped into Helicon up to the waist, And muddied the stream ere he took his first taste. "There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, So earnest, so graceful, so solid, so fleet, Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet; 'Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood, With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood, Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe, With a single anemone trembly and rathe; His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek, That a suitable parallel sets one to seek,— He's a John Bunyan Fouqué, a Puritan Tieck; When nature was shaping him, clay was not granted For making so full-sized a man as she wanted, So, to fill out her model, a little she spared From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, And she could not have hit a more excellent plan For making him fully and perfectly man. The success of her scheme gave her so much delight, That she tried it again, shortly after, in Dwight; Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay, She sang to her work in her sweet childish way, And found, when she'd put the last touch to his soul, That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole. "Here's Cooper, who's written six volumes to show He's as good as a lord: well, let's grant that he's so; If a person prefer that description of praise, Why, a coronet's certainly cheaper than bays; But he need take no pains to convince us he's not (As his enemies say) the American Scott. Choose any twelve men, and let C. read aloud That one of his novels of which he's most proud, And I'd lay any bet that, without ever quitting Their box, they'd be all, to a man, for acquitting. He has drawn you one character, though, that is new, One wildflower he's plucked that is wet with the dew Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing not to mince, He has done naught but copy it ill ever since; His Indians, with proper respect be it said, Are just Natty Bumpo daubed over with red, And his very Long Toms are the same useful Nat, Rigged up in duck pants and a sou'-wester hat, (Though once in a Coffin, a good chance was found To have slipt the old fellow away underground.) All his other men-figures are clothes upon sticks, The dernière chemise of a man in a fix, (As a captain besieged, when his garrison's small, Sets up caps upon poles to be seen o'er the wall;) And the women he draws from one model don't vary, All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie. When a character's wanted, he goes to the task As a cooper would do in composing a cask; He picks out the staves, of their qualities heedful, Just hoops them together as tight as is needful, And, if the best fortune should crown the attempt, he Has made at the most something wooden and empty. "Don't suppose I would underrate Cooper's abilities, If I thought you'd do that, I should feel very ill at ease; The men who have given to one character life And objective existence, are not very rife, You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers, Without overrunning the bounds of your fingers, And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker Than Adams the parson or Primrose the vicar. "There is one thing in Cooper I like, too, and that is That on manners he lectures his countrymen gratis, Not precisely so either, because, for a rarity, He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity. Now he may overcharge his American pictures, But you'll grant there's a good deal of truth in his strictures; And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak, Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store, Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower. "There are truths you Americans need to be told, And it never'll refute them to swagger and scold; John Bull, looking o'er the Atlantic, in choler At your aptness for trade, says you worship the dollar; But to scorn such i-dollar-try's what very few do, And John goes to that church as often as you do. No matter what John says, don't try to outcrow him, 'Tis enough to go quietly on and outgrow him; Like most fathers, Bull hates to see Number one Displacing himself in the mind of his son, And detests the same faults in himself he'd neglected When he sees them again in his child's glass reflected; To love one another you're too like by half, If he is a bull, you 're a pretty stout calf, And tear your own pasture for naught but to show What a nice pair of horns you're beginning to grow. "There are one or two things I should just like to hint, For you don't often get the truth told you in print. The most of you (this is what strikes all beholders) Have a mental and physical stoop in the shoulders; Though you ought to be free as the winds and the waves, You've the gait and the manners of runaway slaves; Tho' you brag of your New World, you don't half believe in it, And as much of the Old as is possible weave in it; Your goddess of freedom, a tight, buxom girl, With lips like a cherry and teeth like a pearl, With eyes bold as Herè's, and hair floating free, And full of the sun as the spray of the sea, Who can sing at a husking or romp at a shearing, Who can trip through the forests alone without fearing, Who can drive home the cows with a song through the grass, Keeps glancing aside into Europe's cracked glass, Hides her red hands in gloves, pinches up her lithe waist, And makes herself wretched with transmarine taste; She loses her fresh country charm when she takes Any mirror except her own rivers and lakes. "You steal Englishmen's books and think Englishmen's thought, With their salt on her tail your wild eagle is caught; Your literature suits its each whisper and motion To what will be thought of it over the ocean; The cast clothes of Europe your statesmanship tries And mumbles again the old blarneys and lies;— Forget Europe wholly, your veins throb with blood, To which the dull current in hers is but mud; Let her sneer, let her say your experiment fails, In her voice there's a tremble e'en now while she rails, And your shore will soon be in the nature of things Covered thick with gilt driftwood of runaway kings, Where alone, as it were in a Longfellow's Waif, Her fugitive pieces will find themselves safe. O, my friends, thank your God, if you have one, that he 'Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf of a sea, Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright as your pines, By the scale of a hemisphere shape your designs, Be true to yourselves and this new nineteenth age, As a statue by Powers, or a picture by Page, Plough, sail, forge, build, carve, paint, all things make new, To your own New-World instincts contrive to be true, Keep your ears open wide to the Future's first call, Be whatever you will, but yourselves first of all, Stand fronting the dawn on Toil's heaven-scaling peaks, And become my new race of more practical Greeks.— Hem! your likeness at present, I shudder to tell o't, Is that you have your slaves, and the Greek had his helot." Here a gentleman present, who had in his attic More pepper than brains, shrieked—"The man's a fanatic, I'm a capital tailor with warm tar and feathers, And will make him a suit that'll serve in all weathers; But we'll argue the point first, I'm willing to reason't, Palaver before condemnation's but decent, So, through my humble person, Humanity begs Of the friends of true freedom a loan of bad eggs." But Apollo let one such a look of his show forth As when ἤϊε νυκτὶ ἐοικώς, and so forth, And the gentleman somehow slunk out of the way, But, as he was going, gained courage to say,— "At slavery in the abstract my whole soul rebels, I am as strongly opposed to't as any one else." "Ay, no doubt, but whenever I've happened to meet With a wrong or a crime, it is always concrete," Answered Phœbus severely; then turning to us, "The mistake of such fellows as just made the fuss Is only in taking a great busy nation For a part of their pitiful cotton-plantation.— But there comes Miranda, Zeus! where shall I flee to? She has such a penchant for bothering me too! She always keeps asking if I don't observe a Particular likeness 'twixt her and Minerva; She tells me my efforts in verse are quite clever;— She's been travelling now, and will be worse than ever; One would think, though, a sharp-sighted noter she'd be Of all that's worth mentioning over the sea, For a woman must surely see well, if she try, The whole of whose being's a capital I: She will take an old notion, and make it her own, By saying it o'er in her Sibylline tone, Or persuade you 'tis something tremendously deep, By repeating it so as to put you to sleep; And she well may defy any mortal to see through it, When once she has mixed up her infinite me through it. There is one thing she owns in her own single right, It is native and genuine—namely, her spite: Though, when acting as censor, she privately blows A censer of vanity 'neath her own nose." Here Miranda came up, and said, "Phœbus, you know That the infinite Soul has its infinite woe, As I ought to know, having lived cheek by jowl Since the day I was born, with the infinite Soul; I myself introduced, I myself, I alone, To my Land's better life authors solely my own, Who the sad heart of earth on their shoulders have taken, Whose works sound a depth by Life's quiet unshaken, Such as Shakspeare, for instance, the Bible, and Bacon, Not to mention my own works; Time's nadir is fleet, And, as for myself, I'm quite out of conceit"— "Quite out of conceit! I'm enchanted to hear it," Cried Apollo aside, "Who'd have thought she was near it? To be sure one is apt to exhaust those commodities He uses too fast, yet in this case as odd it is As if Neptune should say to his turbots and whitings, 'I'm as much out of salt as Miranda's own writings,' (Which, as she in her own happy manner has said, Sound a depth, for 'tis one of the functions of lead.) She often has asked me if I could not find A place somewhere near me that suited her mind; I know but a single one vacant, which she, With her rare talent that way, would fit to a T. And it would not imply any pause or cessation In the work she esteems her peculiar vocation,— She may enter on duty to-day, if she chooses, And remain Tiring-woman for life to the Muses." Miranda meanwhile has succeeded in driving Up into a corner, in spite of their striving, A small flock of terrified victims, and there, With an I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air And a tone which, at least to my fancy, appears Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears, Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise, For 'tis dotted as thick as a peacock's with I's.) Apropos of Miranda, I'll rest on my oars And drift through a trifling digression on bores, For, though not wearing ear-rings in more majorum, Our ears are kept bored just as if we still wore 'em. There was one feudal custom worth keeping, at least, Roasted bores made a part of each well-ordered feast, And of all quiet pleasures the very ne plus Was in hunting wild bores as the tame ones hunt us. Archæologians, I know, who have personal fears Of this wise application of hounds and of spears, Have tried to make out, with a zeal more than wonted, 'Twas a kind of wild swine that our ancestors hunted; But I'll never believe that the age which has strewn Europe o'er with cathedrals, and otherwise shown That it knew what was what, could by chance not have known, (Spending, too, its chief time with its buff on, no doubt,) Which beast 'twould improve the world most to thin out. I divide bores myself, in the manner of rifles, Into two great divisions, regardless of trifles;— There's your smooth-bore and screw-bore, who do not much vary In the weight of cold lead they respectively carry. The smooth-bore is one in whose essence the mind Not a corner nor cranny to cling by can find; You feel as in nightmares sometimes, when you slip Down a steep slated roof where there's nothing to grip, You slide and you slide, the blank horror increases, You had rather by far be at once smashed to pieces, You fancy a whirlpool below white and frothing, And finally drop off and light upon—nothing. The screw-bore has twists in him, faint predilections For going just wrong in the tritest directions; When he's wrong he is flat, when he's right he can't show it, He'll tell you what Snooks said about the new poet,^[D] Or how Fogrum was outraged by Tennyson's Princess; He has spent all his spare time and intellect since his Birth in perusing, on each art and science, Just the books in which no one puts any reliance, And though nemo, we're told, horis omnibus sapit, The rule will not fit him, however you shape it, For he has a perennial foison of sappiness; He has just enough force to spoil half your day's happiness, And to make him a sort of mosquito to be with, But just not enough to dispute or agree with. These sketches I made (not to be too explicit) From two honest fellows who made me a visit, And broke, like the tale of the Bear and the Fiddle, My reflections on Halleck short off by the middle, I shall not now go into the subject more deeply, For I notice that some of my readers look sleep'ly, I will barely remark that, 'mongst civilized nations, There's none that displays more exemplary patience Under all sorts of boring, at all sorts of hours, From all sorts of desperate persons, than ours. Not to speak of our papers, our State legislatures, And other such trials for sensitive natures, Just look for a moment at Congress,—appalled, My fancy shrinks back from the phantom it called; Why, there's scarcely a member unworthy to frown 'Neath what Fourier nicknames, the Boreal crown; Only think what that infinite bore-pow'r could do If applied with a utilitarian view; Suppose, for example, we shipped it with care To Sahara's great desert and let it bore there, If they held one short session and did nothing else, They'd fill the whole waste with Artesian wells. But 'tis time now with pen phonographic to follow Through some more of his sketches our laughing Apollo:— "There comes Harry Franco, and, as he draws near, You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer; One half of him contradicts t'other, his wont Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt; His manner's as hard as his feelings are tender, And a sortie he'll make when he means to surrender; He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest, When he seems to be joking, be sure he's in earnest; He has common sense in a way that's uncommon, Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman, Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke, Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-outer, Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her, Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art, Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart, And though not a poet, yet all must admire In his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar. "There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge, Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, In a way to make people of common-sense damn metres, Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind, Who—but hey-day! What's this? Messieurs Mathews and Poe, You mustn't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so, Does it make a man worse that his character's such As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much? Why, there is not a bard at this moment alive More willing than he that his fellows should thrive, While you are abusing him thus, even now He would help either one of you out of a slough; You may say that he's smooth and all that till you're hoarse, But remember that elegance also is force; After polishing granite as much as you will, The heart keeps its tough old persistency still; Deduct all you can that still keeps you at bay,— Why, he'll live till men weary of Collins and Gray. I'm not over-fond of Greek metres in English, To me rhyme's a gain, so it be not too jinglish, And your modern hexameter verses are no more Like Greek ones than sleek Mr. Pope is like Homer; As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon is, So, compared to your moderns, sounds old Melesigenes; I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps, o'tis That I've heard the old blind man recite his own rhapsodies, And my ear with that music impregnate may be, Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of the sea, Or as one can't bear Strauss when his nature is cloven To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven; But, set that aside, and 'tis truth that I speak, Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek, I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline. That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art, 'Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife As quiet and chaste as the author's own life. "There comes Philothea, her face all a-glow, She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe And can't tell which pleases her most, to relieve His want, or his story to hear and believe; No doubt against many deep griefs she prevails, For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales; She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food, And that talking draws off from the heart its black blood, So she'll listen with patience and let you unfold Your bundle of rags as 'twere pure cloth of gold, Which, indeed, it all turns to as soon as she's touched it, And, (to borrow a phrase from the nursery,) muched it, She has such a musical taste, she will go Any distance to hear one who draws a long bow; She will swallow a wonder by mere might and main And thinks it geometry's fault if she's fain To consider things flat, inasmuch as they're plain; Facts with her are accomplished, as Frenchmen would say, They will prove all she wishes them to—either way, And, as fact lies on this side or that, we must try, If we're seeking the truth, to find where it don't lie; I was telling her once of a marvellous aloe That for thousands of years had looked spindling and sallow, And, though nursed by the fruitfullest powers of mud, Had never vouchsafed e'en so much as a bud, Till its owner remarked, (as a sailor, you know, Often will in a calm,) that it never would blow, For he wished to exhibit the plant, and designed That its blowing should help him in raising the wind; At last it was told him that if he should water Its roots with the blood of his unmarried daughter, (Who was born, as her mother, a Calvinist said, With a Baxter's effectual caul on her head,) It would blow as the obstinate breeze did when by a Like decree of her father died Iphigenia; At first he declared he himself would be blowed Ere his conscience with such a foul crime he would load, But the thought, coming oft, grew less dark than before, And he mused, as each creditor knocked at his door, If this were but done they would dun me no more; I told Philothea his struggles and doubts, And how he considered the ins and the outs Of the visions he had, and the dreadful dyspepsy, How he went to the seer that lives at Po'keepsie, How the seer advised him to sleep on it first And to read his big volume in case of the worst, And further advised he should pay him five dollars For writing Dum, Dum, on his wristbands and collars; Three years and ten days these dark words he had studied When the daughter was missed, and the aloe had budded; I told how he watched it grow large and more large, And wondered how much for the show he should charge,— She had listened with utter indifference to this, till I told how it bloomed, and discharging its pistil With an aim the Eumenides dictated, shot The botanical filicide dead on the spot; It had blown, but he reaped not his horrible gains, For it blew with such force as to blow out his brains, And the crime was blown also, because on the wad, Which was paper, was writ 'Visitation of God,' As well as a thrilling account of the deed Which the coroner kindly allowed me to read. "Well, my friend took this story up just, to be sure, As one might a poor foundling that's laid at one's door; She combed it and washed it and clothed it and fed it, And as if 't were her own child most tenderly bred it, Laid the scene (of the legend, I mean,) far away a- -mong the green vales underneath Himalaya. And by artist-like touches, laid on here and there, Made the whole thing so touching, I frankly declare I have read it all thrice, and, perhaps I am weak, But I found every time there were tears on my cheek. "The pole, science tells us, the magnet controls, But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles, And folks with a mission that nobody knows, Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose; She can fill up the carets in such, make their scope Converge to some focus of rational hope, And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall Can transmute into honey,—but this is not all; Not only for those she has solace, oh, say, Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human, To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman, Hast thou not found one shore where those tired drooping feet Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat The soothed head in silence reposing could hear The chimes of far childhood throb back on the ear? Ah, there's many a beam from the fountain of day That to reach us unclouded, must pass, on its way, Through the soul of a woman, and hers is wide ope To the influence of Heaven as the blue eyes of Hope; Yes, a great soul is hers, one that dares to go in To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of sin, And to bring into each, or to find there some line Of the never completely out-trampled divine; If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then, 'Tis but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen, As, after old Nile has subsided, his plain Overflows with a second broad deluge of grain; What a wealth would it bring to the narrow and sour Could they be as a Child but for one little hour! "What! Irving? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain, You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain, And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were there Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair; Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching,— I shan't run directly against my own preaching, And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes, Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes; But allow me to speak what I honestly feel,— To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill, With the whole of that partnership's stock and good will, Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell, The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it well, Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain That only the finest and clearest remain, Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves, And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving A name either English or Yankee,—just Irving. "There goes,—but stet nominis umbra,—his name You'll be glad enough, some day or other, to claim, And will all crowd about him and swear that you knew him If some English hack-critic should chance to review him. The old porcos ante ne projiciatis Margaritas, for him you have verified gratis; What matters his name? Why, it may be Sylvester, Judd, Junior, or Junius, Ulysses, or Nestor, For aught I know or care; 'tis enough that I look On the author of 'Margaret,' the first Yankee book With the soul of Down East in 't, and things farther East, As far as the threshold of morning, at least, Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true, Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new. 'T has a smack of pine woods, of bare field and bleak hill Such as only the breed of the Mayflower could till; The Puritan's shown in it, tough to the core, Such as prayed, smiting Agag on red Marston Moor; With an unwilling humor, half-choked by the drouth In brown hollows about the inhospitable mouth; With a soul full of poetry, though it has qualms About finding a happiness out of the Psalms; Full of tenderness, too, though it shrinks in the dark, Hamadryad-like, under the coarse, shaggy bark; That sees visions, knows wrestlings of God with the Will, And has its own Sinais and thunderings still." Here,—"Forgive me, Apollo," I cried, "while I pour My heart out to my birthplace: O, loved more and more Dear Baystate, from whose rocky bosom thy sons Should suck milk, strong-will-giving, brave, such as runs In the veins of old Graylock,—who is it that dares Call thee peddler, a soul wrapt in bank-books and shares? It is false! She's a Poet. I see, as I write, Along the far railroad the steam-snake glide white, The cataract-throb of her mill-hearts I hear, The swift strokes of trip-hammers weary my ear, Sledges ring upon anvils, through logs the saw screams, Blocks swing to their place, beetles drive home the beams:— It is songs such as these that she croons to the din Of her fast-flying shuttles, year out and year in, While from earth's farthest corner there comes not a breeze But wafts her the buzz of her gold-gleaning bees: What tho' those horn hands have as yet found small time For painting and sculpture and music and rhyme? These will come in due order, the need that prest sorest Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the forest, To bridle and harness the rivers, the steam, Making that whirl her mill-wheels, this tug in her team, To vassalize old tyrant Winter, and make Him delve surlily for her on river and lake;— When this New World was parted, she strove not to shirk Her lot in the heirdom, the tough, silent Work, The hero-share ever, from Herakles down To Odin, the Earth's iron sceptre and crown; Yes, thou dear, noble Mother! if ever men's praise Could be claimed for creating heroical lays, Thou hast won it; if ever the laurel divine Crowned the Maker and Builder, that glory is thine! Thy songs are right epic, they tell how this rude Rock-rib of our earth here was tamed and subdued; Thou hast written them plain on the face of the planet In brave, deathless letters of iron and granite; Thou hast printed them deep for all time; they are set From the same runic type-fount and alphabet With thy stout Berkshire hills and the arms of thy Bay,— They are staves from the burly old Mayflower lay. If the drones of the Old World, in querulous ease, Ask thy Art and thy Letters, point proudly to these, Or, if they deny these are Letters and Art, Toil on with the same old invincible heart; Thou art rearing the pedestal broad-based and grand Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall stand, And creating, through labors undaunted and long, The theme for all Sculpture and Painting and Song! "But my good mother Baystate wants no praise of mine, She learned from her mother a precept divine About something that butters no parsnips, her forte In another direction lies, work is her sport, (Though she'll curtsey and set her cap straight, that she will, If you talk about Plymouth and one Bunker's hill.) Dear, notable goodwife! by this time of night, Her hearth is swept clean, and her fire burning bright, And she sits in a chair (of home plan and make) rocking, Musing much, all the while, as she darns on a stocking, Whether turkeys will come pretty high next Thanksgiving, Whether flour'll be so dear, for, as sure as she's living, She will use rye-and-injun then, whether the pig By this time ain't got pretty tolerable big, And whether to sell it outright will be best, Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt down the rest,— At this minute, she'd swop all my verses, ah, cruel! For the last patent stove that is saving of fuel; So I'll just let Apollo go on, for his phiz Shows I've kept him awaiting too long as it is." "If our friend, there, who seems a reporter, is done With his burst of emotion, why, I will go on," Said Apollo; some smiled, and, indeed, I must own There was something sarcastic, perhaps, in his tone:— "There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit; A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit The electrical tingles of hit after hit; In long poems 'tis painful sometimes and invites A thought of the way the new Telegraph writes, Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully, And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'ning. He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre, But many admire it, the English pentameter, And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse, With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse, Nor e'er achieved aught in 't so worthy of praise As the tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise. You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon;— Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on, Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes. His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes That are trodden upon are your own or your foes'. "There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme, He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders, The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching; His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem, At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem. "There goes Halleck, whose Fanny's a pseudo Don Juan, With the wickedness out that gave salt to the true one, He's a wit, though, I hear, of the very first order, And once made a pun on the words soft Recorder; More than this, he's a very great poet, I'm told, And has had his works published in crimson and gold, With something they call 'Illustrations,' to wit, Like those with which Chapman obscured Holy Writ,^[E] Which are said to illustrate, because, as I view it, Like lucus a non, they precisely don't do it; Let a man who can write what himself understands Keep clear, if he can, of designing men's hands, Who bury the sense, if there's any worth having, And then very honestly call it engraving. But, to quit badinage, which there isn't much wit in, Halleck's better, I doubt not, than all he has written; In his verse a clear glimpse you will frequently find, If not of a great, of a fortunate mind, Which contrives to be true to its natural loves In a world of back-offices, ledgers, and stoves. When his heart breaks away from the brokers and banks, And kneels in its own private shrine to give thanks, There's a genial manliness in him that earns Our sincerest respect, (read, for instance, his 'Burns,') And we can't but regret (seek excuse where we may) That so much of a man has been peddled away. "But what's that? a mass-meeting? No, there come in lots The American Disraelis, Bulwers, and Scotts, And in short the American everything-elses, Each charging the others with envies and jealousies;— By the way, 'tis a fact that displays what profusions Of all kinds of greatness bless free institutions, That while the Old World has produced barely eight Of such poets as all men agree to call great, And of other great characters hardly a score, (One might safely say less than that rather than more,) With you every year a whole crop is begotten, They're as much of a staple as corn is, or cotton; Why, there's scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties That has not brought forth its own Miltons and Dantes; I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Shelleys, Two Raphaels, six Titians, (I think) one Apelles, Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens, One (but that one is plenty) American Dickens, A whole flock of Lambs, any number of Tennysons,— In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons, He may feel pretty certain that one out of twain Will be some very great person over again. There is one inconvenience in all this which lies In the fact that by contrast we estimate size,^[F] And, where there are none except Titans, great stature Is only a simple proceeding of nature. What puff the strained sails of your praise shall you furl at, if The calmest degree that you know is superlative? At Rome, all whom Charon took into his wherry must, As a matter of course, be well issimused and errimused, A Greek, too, could feel, while in that famous boat he tost, That his friends would take care he was ιστοςed and ωτατοςed, And formerly we, as through graveyards we past, Thought the world went from bad to worse fearfully fast; Let us glance for a moment, 'tis well worth the pains, And note what an average graveyard contains. There lie levellers levelled, duns done up themselves, There are booksellers finally laid on their shelves, Horizontally there lie upright politicians, Dose-a-dose with their patients sleep faultless physicians, There are slave-drivers quietly whipt underground, There bookbinders, done up in boards, are fast bound, There card-players wait till the last trump be played, There all the choice spirits get finally laid, There the babe that's unborn is supplied with a berth, There men without legs get their six feet of earth, There lawyers repose, each wrapt up in his case, There seekers of office are sure of a place, There defendant and plaintiff get equally cast, There shoemakers quietly stick to the last, There brokers at length become silent as stocks, There stage-drivers sleep without quitting their box, And so forth and so forth and so forth and so on, With this kind of stuff one might endlessly go on; To come to the point, I may safely assert you Will find in each yard every cardinal virtue;^[G] Each has six truest patriots: four discoverers of ether, Who never had thought on't nor mentioned it either: Ten poets, the greatest who ever wrote rhyme: Two hundred and forty first men of their time: One person whose portrait just gave the least hint Its original had a most horrible squint: One critic, most (what do they call it?) reflective, Who never had used the phrase ob- or subjective; Forty fathers of Freedom, of whom twenty bred Their sons for the rice-swamps, at so much a head, And their daughters for—faugh! thirty mothers of Gracchi: Non-resistants who gave many a spiritual black eye: Eight true friends of their kind, one of whom was a jailer: Four captains almost as astounding as Taylor: Two dozen of Italy's exiles who shoot us his Kaisership daily, stern pen-and-ink Brutuses, Who, in Yankee back-parlors, with crucified smile,^[H] Mount serenely their country's funereal pile: Ninety-nine Irish heroes, ferocious rebellers 'Gainst the Saxon in cis-marine garrets and cellars, Who shake their dread fists o'er the sea and all that,— As long as a copper drops into the hat: Nine hundred Teutonic republicans stark From Vaterland's battles just won—in the Park, Who the happy profession of martyrdom take Whenever it gives them a chance at a steak: Sixty-two second Washingtons: two or three Jacksons: And so many everythings else that it racks one's Poor memory too much to continue the list, Especially now they no longer exist;— I would merely observe that you've taken to giving The puffs that belong to the dead to the living, And that somehow your trump-of-contemporary-doom's tones Is tuned after old dedications and tombstones."— Here the critic came in and a thistle presented^[I]— From a frown to a smile the god's features relented, As he stared at his envoy, who, swelling with pride, To the god's asking look, nothing daunted, replied, "You're surprised, I suppose, I was absent so long But your godship respecting the lilies was wrong; I hunted the garden from one end to t' other, And got no reward but vexation and bother, Till, tossed out with weeds in a corner to wither, This one lily I found and made haste to bring hither." "Did he think I had given him a book to review? I ought to have known what the fellow would do," Muttered Phœbus aside, "for a thistle will pass Beyond doubt for the queen of all flowers with an ass; He has chosen in just the same way as he'd choose His specimens out of the books he reviews; And now, as this offers an excellent text, I'll give 'em some brief hints on criticism next." So, musing a moment, he turned to the crowd, And, clearing his voice, spoke as follows aloud:— "My friends, in the happier days of the muse, We were luckily free from such things as reviews, Then naught came between with its fog to make clearer The heart of the poet to that of his hearer; Then the poet brought heaven to the people, and they Felt that they, too, were poets in hearing his lay; Then the poet was prophet, the past in his soul Pre-created the future, both parts of one whole; Then for him there was nothing too great or too small, For one natural deity sanctified all; Then the bard owned no clipper and meter of moods Save the spirit of silence that hovers and broods O'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers and woods He asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the clods, His soul soared and sang to an audience of gods. 'Twas for them that he measured the thought and the line, And shaped for their vision the perfect design, With as glorious a foresight, a balance as true, As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue; Then a glory and greatness invested man's heart, The universal, which now stands estranged and apart, In the free individual moulded, was Art; Then the forms of the Artist seemed thrilled with desire For something as yet unattained, fuller, higher, As once with her lips, lifted hands, and eyes listening, And her whole upward soul in her countenance glistening, Eurydice stood—like a beacon unfired, Which, once touch'd with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired—; And waited with answering kindle to mark The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark. Then painting, song, sculpture, did more than relieve The need that men feel to create and believe, And as, in all beauty, who listens with love, Hears these words oft repeated—'beyond and above,' So these seemed to be but the visible sign Of the grasp of the soul after things more divine; They were ladders the Artist erected to climb O'er the narrow horizon of space and of time, And we see there the footsteps by which men had gained To the one rapturous glimpse of the never-attained, As shepherds could erst sometimes trace in the sod The last spurning print of a sky-cleaving god. "But now, on the poet's dis-privacied moods With do this and do that the pert critic intrudes; While he thinks he's been barely fulfilling his duty To interpret 'twixt men and their own sense of beauty, And has striven, while others sought honor or pelf, To make his kind happy as he was himself, He finds he's been guilty of horrid offences In all kinds of moods, numbers, genders, and tenses; He's been ob and subjective, what Kettle calls Pot, Precisely, at all events, what he ought not, You have done this, says one judge; done that, says another; You should have done this, grumbles one; that, says t' other; Never mind what he touches, one shrieks out Taboo! And while he is wondering what he shall do, Since each suggests opposite topics for song, They all shout together you're right! and you're wrong! "Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can't write, can surely review, Can set up a small booth as critic and sell us his Petty conceit and his pettier jealousies; Thus a lawyer's apprentice, just out of his teens, Will do for the Jeffrey of six magazines; Having read Johnson's lives of the poets half through, There's nothing on earth he's not competent to; He reviews with as much nonchalance as he whistles,— He goes through a book and just picks out the thistles, It matters not whether he blame or commend, If he's bad as a foe, he's far worse as a friend; Let an author but write what's above his poor scope, And he'll go to work gravely and twist up a rope, And, inviting the world to see punishment done, Hang himself up to bleach in the wind and the sun; 'Tis delightful to see, when a man comes along Who has anything in him peculiar and strong, Every cockboat that swims clear its fierce (pop) gundeck at him And make as he passes its ludicrous Peck at him,"— Here Miranda came up and began, "As to that,"— Apollo at once seized his gloves, cane, and hat, And, seeing the place getting rapidly cleared, I, too, snatched my notes and forthwith disappeared.