LONGING

Of all the myriad moods of mind That through the soul come thronging, Which one was e'er so dear, so kind, So beautiful as Longing? The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment, Before the Present poor and bare Can make its sneering comment.

Still, through our paltry stir and strife, Glows down the wished ideal, And Longing moulds in clay what Life Carves in the marble Real; To let the new life in, we know, Desire must ope the portal; Perhaps the longing to be so Helps make the soul immortal.

Longing is God's fresh heavenward will. With our poor earthward striving; We quench it that we may be still Content with merely living; But, would we learn that heart's full scope Which we are hourly wronging, Our lives must climb from hope to hope And realize our longing.

Ah! let us hope that to our praise Good God not only reckons The moments when we tread his ways, But when the spirit beckons,— That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought, Howe'er we fail in action.

ODE TO FRANCE

FEBRUARY, 1848

I

As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow, Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches In unwarned havoc on the roofs below, So grew and gathered through the silent years The madness of a People, wrong by wrong. There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears, No strength in suffering; but the Past was strong: The brute despair of trampled centuries Leaped up with one hoarse yell and snapped its bands, 10 Groped for its right with horny, callous hands, And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes. What wonder if those palms were all too hard For nice distinctions,—if that mænad throng— They whose thick atmosphere no bard Had shivered with the lightning of his song, Brutes with the memories and desires of men, Whose chronicles were writ with iron pen, In the crooked shoulder and the forehead low, Set wrong to balance wrong, 20 And physicked woe with woe?

II

They did as they were taught; not theirs the blame, If men who scattered firebrands reaped the flame: They trampled Peace beneath their savage feet, And by her golden tresses drew Mercy along the pavement of the street. O Freedom! Freedom! is thy morning-dew So gory red? Alas, thy light had ne'er Shone in upon the chaos of their lair! They reared to thee such symbol as they knew, 30 And worshipped it with flame and blood, A Vengeance, axe in hand, that stood Holding a tyrant's head up by the clotted hair.

III

What wrongs the Oppressor suffered, these we know; These have found piteous voice in song and prose; But for the Oppressed, their darkness and their woe, Their grinding centuries,—what Muse had those? Though hall and palace had nor eyes nor ears, Hardening a people's heart to senseless stone, Thou knewest them, O Earth, that drank their tears, 40 O Heaven, that heard their inarticulate moan! They noted down their fetters, link by link; Coarse was the hand that scrawled, and red the ink; Rude was their score, as suits unlettered men, Notched with a headsman's axe upon a block: What marvel if, when came the avenging shock, 'Twas Atë, not Urania, held the pen?

IV

With eye averted, and an anguished frown, Loathingly glides the Muse through scenes of strife, Where, like the heart of Vengeance up and down, 50 Throbs in its framework the blood-muffled knife; Slow are the steps of Freedom, but her feet Turn never backward: hers no bloody glare; Her light is calm, and innocent, and sweet, And where it enters there is no despair: Not first on palace and cathedral spire Quivers and gleams that unconsuming fire; While these stand black against her morning skies, The peasant sees it leap from peak to peak Along his hills; the craftsman's burning eyes 60 Own with cool tears its influence mother-meek; It lights the poet's heart up like a star; Ah! while the tyrant deemed it still afar, And twined with golden threads his futile snare. That swift, convicting glow all round him ran; 'Twas close beside him there, Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man.

V

O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit? A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weed Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no seed! 70 Could eighteen years strike down no deeper root? But now thy vulture eye was turned on Spain; A shout from Paris, and thy crown falls off, Thy race has ceased to reign, And thou become a fugitive and scoff: Slippery the feet that mount by stairs of gold, And weakest of all fences one of steel; Go and keep school again like him of old, The Syracusan tyrant;—thou mayst feel Royal amid a birch-swayed commonweal! 80

VI

Not long can he be ruler who allows His time to run before him; thou wast naught Soon as the strip of gold about thy brows Was no more emblem of the People's thought: Vain were thy bayonets against the foe Thou hadst to cope with; thou didst wage War not with Frenchmen merely;—no, Thy strife was with the Spirit of the Age, The invisible Spirit whose first breath divine 89 Scattered thy frail endeavor, And, like poor last year's leaves, whirled thee and thine Into the Dark forever!

VII

Is here no triumph? Nay, what though The yellow blood of Trade meanwhile should pour Along its arteries a shrunken flow, And the idle canvas droop around the shore? These do not make a state, Nor keep it great; I think God made The earth for man, not trade; 100 And where each humblest human creature Can stand, no more suspicious or afraid, Erect and kingly in his right of nature, To heaven and earth knit with harmonious ties,— Where I behold the exultation Of manhood glowing in those eyes That had been dark for ages, Or only lit with bestial loves and rages, There I behold a Nation: The France which lies 110 Between the Pyrenees and Rhine Is the least part of France; I see her rather in the soul whose shine Burns through the craftsman's grimy countenance, In the new energy divine Of Toil's enfranchised glance.

VIII

And if it be a dream, If the great Future be the little Past 'Neath a new mask, which drops and shows at last The same weird, mocking face to balk and blast, 120 Yet, Muse, a gladder measure suits the theme, And the Tyrtæan harp Loves notes more resolute and sharp, Throbbing, as throbs the bosom, hot and fast: Such visions are of morning, Theirs is no vague forewarning, The dreams which nations dream come true. And shape the world anew; If this be a sleep, 129 Make it long, make it deep, O Father, who-sendest the harvests men reap! While Labor so sleepeth, His sorrow is gone, No longer he weepeth, But smileth and steepeth His thoughts in the dawn; He heareth Hope yonder Rain, lark-like, her fancies, His dreaming hands wander Mid heart's-ease and pansies; 140 ''Tis a dream! 'Tis a vision!' Shrieks Mammon aghast; 'The day's broad derision Will chase it at last; Ye are mad, ye have taken A slumbering kraken For firm land of the Past!' Ah! if he awaken, God shield us all then, 149 If this dream rudely shaken Shall cheat him again!

IX

Since first I heard our Northwind blow, Since first I saw Atlantic throw On our grim rocks his thunderous snow, I loved thee, Freedom; as a boy The rattle of thy shield at Marathon Did with a Grecian joy Through all my pulses run; But I have learned to love thee now Without the helm upon thy gleaming brow, 160 A maiden mild and undefiled Like her who bore the world's redeeming child; And surely never did thine altars glance With purer fires than now in France; While, in their clear white flashes, Wrong's shadow, backward cast, Waves cowering o'er the ashes Of the dead, blaspheming Past, O'er the shapes of fallen giants, His own unburied brood, 170 Whose dead hands clench defiance At the overpowering Good: And down the happy future runs a flood Of prophesying light; It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood, Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud Of Brotherhood and Right.

ANTI-APIS

Praisest Law, friend? We, too, love it much as they that love it best; 'Tis the deep, august foundation, whereon Peace and Justice rest; On the rock primeval, hidden in the Past its bases be, Block by block the endeavoring Ages built it up to what we see.

But dig down: the Old unbury; thou shalt find on every stone That each Age hath carved the symbol of what god to them was known, Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but the fairest that they knew; If their sight were dim and earthward, yet their hope and aim were true.

Surely as the unconscious needle feels the far-off loadstar draw, So strives every gracious nature to at-one itself with law; 10 And the elder Saints and Sages laid their pious framework right By a theocratic instinct covered from the people's sight.

As their gods were, so their laws were; Thor the strong could reave and steal, So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman's eager keel; But a new law came when Christ came, and not blameless, as before, Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our lives and faiths to Thor.

Law is holy: ay, but what law? Is there nothing more divine Than the patched-up broils of Congress, venal, full of meat and wine? Is there, say you, nothing higher? Naught, God save us! that transcends Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends? 20

Did Jehovah ask their counsel, or submit to them a plan, Ere He filled with loves, hopes, longings, this aspiring heart of man? For their edict does the soul wait, ere it swing round to the pole Of the true, the free, the God-willed, all that makes it be a soul?

Law is holy; but not your law, ye who keep the tablets whole While ye dash the Law to pieces, shatter it in life and soul; Bearing up the Ark is lightsome, golden Apis hid within, While we Levites share the offerings, richer by the people's sin.

Give to Cæsar what is Cæsar's? yes, but tell me, if you can, Is this superscription Cæsar's here upon our brother man? 30 Is not here some other's image, dark and sullied though it be, In this fellow-soul that worships, struggles Godward even as we?

It was not to such a future that the Mayflower's prow was turned, Not to such a faith the martyrs clung, exulting as they burned; Not by such laws are men fashioned, earnest, simple, valiant, great In the household virtues whereon rests the unconquerable state.

Ah! there is a higher gospel, overhead the God-roof springs, And each glad, obedient planet like a golden shuttle sings Through the web which Time is weaving in his never-resting loom, Weaving seasons many-colored, bringing prophecy to doom. 40

Think you Truth a farthing rushlight, to be pinched out when you will With your deft official fingers, and your politicians' skill? Is your God a wooden fetish, to be hidden out of sight That his block eyes may not see you do the thing that is not right?

But the Destinies think not so; to their judgment-chamber lone Comes no noise of popular clamor, there Fame's trumpet is not blown; Your majorities they reck not; that you grant, but then you say That you differ with them somewhat,—which is stronger, you or they?

Patient are they as the insects that build islands in the deep; They hurl not the bolted thunder, but their silent way they keep; 50 Where they have been that we know; where empires towered that were not just; Lo! the skulking wild fox scratches in a little heap of dust.

A PARABLE

Said Christ our Lord, 'I will go and see How the men, my brethren, believe in me.' He passed not again through the gate of birth, But made himself known to the children of earth.

Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and kings, 'Behold, now, the Giver of all good things; Go to, let us welcome with pomp and state Him who alone is mighty and great.'

With carpets of gold the ground they spread Wherever the Son of Man should tread, And in palace-chambers lofty and rare They lodged him, and served him with kingly fare.

Great organs surged through arches dim Their jubilant floods in praise of him; And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall, He saw his own image high over all.

But still, wherever his steps they led, The Lord in sorrow bent down his head, And from under the heavy foundation-stones, The son of Mary heard bitter groans.

And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall, He marked great fissures that rent the wall, And opened wider and yet more wide As the living foundation heaved and sighed.

'Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, On the bodies and souls of living men? And think ye that building shall endure, Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?

'With gates of silver and bars of gold Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold; I have heard the dropping of their tears In heaven these eighteen hundred years.'

'O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt, We build but as our fathers built; Behold thine images, how they stand, Sovereign and sole, through all our land.

'Our task is hard,—with sword and flame To hold thine earth forever the same, And with sharp crooks of steel to keep Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep.'

Then Christ sought out an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin Pushed from her faintly want and sin.

These set he in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garment-hem, For fear of defilement, 'Lo, here,' said he, 'The images ye have made of me!'

ODE

WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE COCHITUATE WATER INTO THE CITY OF BOSTON

My name is Water: I have sped Through strange, dark ways, untried before, By pure desire of friendship led, Cochituate's ambassador; He sends four royal gifts by me: Long life, health, peace, and purity.

I'm Ceres' cup-bearer; I pour, For flowers and fruits and all their kin, Her crystal vintage, from of yore Stored in old Earth's selectest bin, Flora's Falernian ripe, since God The wine-press of the deluge trod.

In that far isle whence, iron-willed, The New World's sires their bark unmoored, The fairies' acorn-cups I filled Upon the toadstool's silver board, And, 'neath Herne's oak, for Shakespeare's sight, Strewed moss and grass with diamonds bright.

No fairies in the Mayflower came, And, lightsome as I sparkle here, For Mother Bay State, busy dame, I've toiled and drudged this many a year, Throbbed in her engines' iron veins, Twirled myriad spindles for her gains.

I, too, can weave: the warp I set Through which the sun his shuttle throws, And, bright as Noah saw it, yet For you the arching rainbow glows, A sight in Paradise denied To unfallen Adam and his bride.

When Winter held me in his grip, You seized and sent me o'er the wave, Ungrateful! in a prison-ship; But I forgive, not long a slave, For, soon as summer south-winds blew, Homeward I fled, disguised as dew.

For countless services I'm fit, Of use, of pleasure, and of gain, But lightly from all bonds I flit, Nor lose my mirth, nor feel a stain; From mill and wash-tub I escape, And take in heaven my proper shape.

So, free myself, to-day, elate I come from far o'er hill and mead, And here, Cochituate's envoy, wait To be your blithesome Ganymede, And brim your cups with nectar true That never will make slaves of you.

LINES

SUGGESTED BY THE GRAVES OF TWO ENGLISH SOLDIERS ON CONCORD BATTLE-GROUND

The same good blood that now refills The dotard Orient's shrunken veins, The same whose vigor westward thrills, Bursting Nevada's silver chains, Poured here upon the April grass, Freckled with red the herbage new; On reeled the battle's trampling mass, Back to the ash the bluebird flew.

Poured here in vain;—that sturdy blood Was meant to make the earth more green, But in a higher, gentler mood Than broke this April noon serene; Two graves are here: to mark the place, At head and foot, an unhewn stone, O'er which the herald lichens trace The blazon of Oblivion.

These men were brave enough, and true To the hired soldier's bull-dog creed; What brought them here they never knew, They fought as suits the English breed: They came three thousand miles, and died, To keep the Past upon its throne: Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, Their English mother made her moan.

The turf that covers them no thrill Sends up to fire the heart and brain; No stronger purpose nerves the will, No hope renews its youth again: From farm to farm the Concord glides, And trails my fancy with its flow; O'erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides, Twinned in the river's heaven below.

But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs, Proud of thy birth and neighbor's right, Where sleep the heroic villagers Borne red and stiff from Concord fight; Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun, Or Seth, as ebbed the life away, What earthquake rifts would shoot and run World-wide from that short April fray?

What then? With heart and hand they wrought, According to their village light; 'Twas for the Future that they fought, Their rustic faith in what was right. Upon earth's tragic stage they burst Unsummoned, in the humble sock; Theirs the fifth act; the curtain first Rose long ago on Charles's block.

Their graves have voices; if they threw Dice charged with fates beyond their ken, Yet to their instincts they were true, And had the genius to be men. Fine privilege of Freedom's host, Of humblest soldiers for the Right!— Age after age ye hold your post, Your graves send courage forth, and might.

TO——

We, too, have autumns, when our leaves Drop loosely through the dampened air, When all our good seems bound in sheaves, And we stand reaped and bare.

Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go; At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow.

But each day brings less summer cheer, Crimps more our ineffectual spring, And something earlier every year Our singing birds take wing.

As less the olden glow abides, And less the chillier heart aspires, With drift-wood beached in past spring-tides We light our sullen fires.

By the pinched rushlight's starving beam We cower and strain our wasted sight, To stitch youth's shroud up, seam by seam, In the long arctic night.

It was not so—we once were young When Spring, to womanly Summer turning, Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung, In the red sunrise burning.

We trusted then, aspired, believed That earth could be remade to-morrow; Ah, why be ever undeceived? Why give up faith for sorrow?

O thou, whose days are yet all spring, Faith, blighted one, is past retrieving; Experience is a dumb, dead thing; The victory's in believing.

FREEDOM

Are we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be That thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringest Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea, Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom flingest, As on an altar,—can it be that ye Have wasted inspiration on dead ears, Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains? The people's heart is like a harp for years Hung where some petrifying torrent rains Its slow-incrusting spray: the stiffened chords 10 Faint and more faint make answer to the tears That drip upon them: idle are all words: Only a golden plectrum wakes the tone Deep buried 'neath that ever-thickening stone.

We are not free: doth Freedom, then, consist In musing with our faces toward the Past, While petty cares and crawling interests twist Their spider-threads about us, which at last Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind In formal narrowness heart, soul and mind? 20 Freedom is re-created year by year, In hearts wide open on the Godward side, In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, In minds that sway the future like a tide. He broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes; She chooses men for her august abodes, Building them fair and fronting to the dawn; Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few Light footprints, leading mornward through the dew: Before the day had risen, she was gone. 30

And we must follow: swiftly runs she on, And, if our steps should slacken in despair, Half turns her face, half smiles through golden hair, Forever yielding, never wholly won: That is not love which pauses in the race Two close-linked names on fleeting sand to trace; Freedom gained yesterday is no more ours; Men gather but dry seeds of last year's flowers; Still there's a charm uugranted, still a grace, Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained, 40 Makes us Possession's languid hand let fall; 'Tis but a fragment of ourselves is gained, The Future brings us more, but never all.

And, as the finder of some unknown realm, Mounting a summit whence he thinks to see On either side of him the imprisoning sea, Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelm The valley-land, peak after snowy peak Stretch out of sight, each like a silver helm Beneath its plume of smoke, sublime and bleak, 50 And what he thought an island finds to be A continent to him first oped,—so we Can from our height of Freedom look along A boundless future, ours if we be strong; Or if we shrink, better remount our ships And, fleeing God's express design, trace back The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet-track To Europe entering her blood-red eclipse.

* * * * *

Therefore of Europe now I will not doubt, For the broad foreheads surely win the day, 60 And brains, not crowns or soul-gelt armies, weigh In Fortune's scales: such dust she brushes out. Most gracious are the conquests of the Word, Gradual and silent as a flower's increase, And the best guide from old to new is Peace— Yet, Freedom, than canst sanctify the sword!

Bravely to do whate'er the time demands, Whether with pen or sword, and not to flinch, This is the task that fits heroic hands; So are Truth's boundaries widened inch by inch. 70

I do not love the Peace which tyrants make; The calm she breeds let the sword's lightning break! It is the tyrants who have beaten out Ploughshares and pruning-hooks to spears and swords, And shall I pause and moralize and doubt? Whose veins run water let him mete his words! Each fetter sundered is the whole world's gain! And rather than humanity remain A pearl beneath the feet of Austrian swine, Welcome to me whatever breaks a chain. 80 That surely is of God, and all divine!

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 the 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 unloosed 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-tone 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 and 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 millstones 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 Forevermore 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 halfway.