Complete Prose Works Part 39

I.

Of olden time, when it came to pa.s.s That the beautiful G.o.d, Jesus, should finish his work on earth, Then went Judas, and sold the divine youth, And took pay for his body.

Curs'd was the deed, even before the sweat of the clutching hand grew dry; And darkness frown'd upon the seller of the like of G.o.d, Where, as though earth lifted her breast to throw him from her, and heaven refused him, He hung in the air, self-slaughter'd.

The cycles, with their long shadows, have stalk'd silently forward, Since those ancient days--many a pouch enwrapping meanwhile Its fee, like that paid for the son of Mary.

And still goes one, saying, "What will ye give me, and I will deliver this man unto you?"

And they make the covenant, and pay the pieces of silver.

II

Look forth, deliverer, Look forth, first-born of the dead, Over the tree-tops of Paradise; See thyself in yet continued bonds, Toilsome and poor, thou bear'st man's form again, Thou art reviled, scourged, put into prison, Hunted from the arrogant equality of the rest; With staves and swords throng the willing servants of authority, Again they surround thee, mad with devilish spite; Toward thee stretch the hands of a mult.i.tude, like vultures' talons, The meanest spit in thy face, they smite thee with their palms; Bruised, b.l.o.o.d.y, and pinion'd is thy body, More sorrowful than death is thy soul.

Witness of anguish, brother of slaves, Not with thy price closed the price of thine image: And still Iscariot plies his trade.

_April, 1843_.

PAUMANOK.

WOUNDED IN THE HOUSE OF FRIENDS

_"And one shall say unto him. What are these wounds in thy hands?

Then he shall answer Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends."--Zechariah, xiii. 6._

If thou art balk'd, O Freedom, The victory is not to thy manlier foes; From the house of friends comes the death stab.

Virginia, mother of greatness, Blush not for being also mother of slaves; You might have borne deeper slaves-- Doughfaces, crawlers, lice of humanity-- Terrific screamers of freedom, Who roar and bawl, and get hot i' the face, But were they not incapable of august crime, Would quench the hopes of ages for a drink-- Muck-worms, creeping flat to the ground, A dollar dearer to them than Christ's blessing; All loves, all hopes, less than the thought of gain, In life walking in that as in a shroud; Men whom the throes of heroes, Great deeds at which the G.o.ds might stand appal'd, The shriek of the drown'd, the appeal of women, The exulting laugh of untied empires, Would touch them never in the heart, But only in the pocket.

Hot-headed Carolina, Well may you curl your lip; With all your bondsmen, bless the destiny Which brings you no such breed as this.

Arise, young North!

Our elder blood flows in the veins of cowards: The gray-hair'd sneak, the blanch'd poltroon, The feign'd or real shiverer at tongues, That nursing babes need hardly cry the less for-- Are they to be our tokens always?

SAILING THE MISSISSIPPI AT MIDNIGHT

Vast and starless, the pall of heaven Laps on the trailing pall below; And forward, forward, in solemn darkness, As if to the sea of the lost we go.

Now drawn nigh the edge of the river, Weird-like creatures suddenly rise; Shapes that fade, dissolving outlines Baffle the gazer's straining eyes.

Towering upward and bending forward, Wild and wide their arms are thrown, Ready to pierce with forked fingers Him who touches their realm upon.

Tide of youth, thus thickly planted, While in the eddies onward you swim, Thus on the sh.o.r.e stands a phantom army, Lining forever the channel's rim.

Steady, helmsman! you guide the immortal; Many a wreck is beneath you piled, Many a brave yet unwary sailor Over these waters has been beguiled.

Nor is it the storm or the scowling midnight, Cold, or sickness, or fire's dismay-- Nor is it the reef, or treacherous quicksand, Will peril you most on your twisted way.

But when there comes a voluptuous languor, Soft the sunshine, silent the air, Bewitching your craft with safety and sweetness, Then, young pilot of life, beware.

NOVEMBER BOUGHS

OUR EMINENT VISITORS

_Past, Present and Future_

Welcome to them each and all! They do good--the deepest, widest, most needed good--though quite certainly not in the ways attempted--which have, at times, something irresistibly comic. What can be more farcical, for instance, than the sight of a worthy gentleman coming three or four thousand miles through wet and wind to speak complacently and at great length on matters of which he both entirely mistakes or knows nothing--before crowds of auditors equally complacent, and equally at fault?

Yet welcome and thanks, we say, to those visitors we have, and have had, from abroad among us--and may the procession continue! We have had d.i.c.kens and Thackeray, Froude, Herbert Spencer, Oscar Wilde, Lord Coleridge--soldiers, savants, poets--and now Matthew Arnold and Irving the actor. Some have come to make money--some for a "good time"--some to help us along and give us advice--and some undoubtedly to investigate, _bona fide_, this great problem, democratic America, looming upon the world with such c.u.mulative power through a hundred years, now with the evident intention (since the secession war) to stay, and take a leading hand, for many a century to come, in civilization's and humanity's eternal game. But alas! that very investigation--the method of that investigation--is where the deficit most surely and helplessly comes in.

Let not Lord Coleridge and Mr. Arnold (to say nothing of the ill.u.s.trious actor) imagine that when they have met and survey'd the etiquettical gatherings of our wealthy, distinguish'd and sure-to-be-put-forward-on-such-occasions citizens (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, &c., have certain stereotyped strings of them, continually lined and paraded like the lists of dishes at hotel tables--you are sure to get the same over and over again--it is very amusing)--and the bowing and introducing, the receptions at the swell clubs, the eating and drinking and praising and praising back--and the next "day riding about Central Park, or doing the" Public Inst.i.tutions "--and so pa.s.sing through, one after another, the full-dress coteries of the Atlantic cities, all grammatical and cultured and correct, with the toned-down manners of the gentlemen, and the kid-gloves, and luncheons and finger-gla.s.ses--Let not our eminent visitors, we say, suppose that, by means of these experiences, they have "seen America," or captur'd any distinctive clew or purport thereof. Not a bit of it. Of the pulse-beats that lie within and vitalize this Commonweal to-day--of the hard-pan purports and idiosyncrasies pursued faithfully and triumphantly by its bulk of men North and South, generation after generation, superficially unconscious of their own aims, yet none the less pressing onward with deathless intuition--those coteries do not furnish the faintest scintilla. In the Old World the best flavor and significance of a race may possibly need to be look'd for in its "upper cla.s.ses," its gentries, its court, its _etat major_. In the United States the rule is revers'd.

Besides (and a point, this, perhaps deepest of all,) the special marks of our grouping and design are not going to be understood in a hurry.

The lesson and scanning right on the ground are difficult; I was going to say they are impossible to foreigners--but I have occasionally found the clearest appreciation of all, coming from far-off quarters. Surely nothing could be more apt, not only for our eminent visitors present and to come, but for home study, than the following editorial criticism of the London _Times_ on Mr. Froude's visits and lectures here a few years ago, and the culminating dinner given at Delmonico's, with its brilliant array of guests:

"We read the list," says the _Times_, "of those who a.s.sembled to do honor to Mr. Froude: there were Mr. Emerson, Mr. Beecher, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Bryant; we add the names of those who sent letters of regret that they could not attend in person--Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Whittier. They are names which are well known--almost as well known and as much honor'd in England as in America; and yet what must we say in the end? The American people outside this a.s.semblage of writers is something vaster and greater than they, singly or together, can comprehend. It cannot be said of any or all of them that they can speak for their nation. We who look on at this distance are able perhaps on that account to see the more clearly that there are qualities of the American people which find no representation, no voice, among these their spokesmen. And what is true of them is true of the English cla.s.s of whom Mr. Froude may be said to be the amba.s.sador. Mr. Froude is master of a charming style. He has the gift of grace and the gift of sympathy. Taking any single character as the subject of his study, he may succeed after a very short time in so comprehending its workings as to be able to present a living figure to the intelligence and memory of his readers. But the movements of a nation, the, _voiceless purpose of a people which cannot put its own thoughts into words, yet acts upon them in each successive generation_--these things do not lie within his grasp.... The functions of literature such as he represents are limited in their action; the influence he can wield is artificial and restricted, and, while he and his hearers please and are pleas'd with pleasant periods, his great ma.s.s of national life will flow around them unmov'd in its tides by action as powerless as that of the dwellers by the sh.o.r.e to direct the currents of the ocean."

A thought, here, that needs to be echoed, expanded, permanently treasur'd by our literary cla.s.ses and educators. (The gestation, the youth, the knitting preparations, are now over, and it is full time for definite purpose, result.) How few think of it, though it is the impetus and background of our whole Nationality and popular life. In the present brief memorandum I very likely for the first time awake "the intelligent reader" to the idea and inquiry whether there isn't such a thing as the distinctive genius of our democratic New World, universal, immanent, bringing to a head the best experience of the past--not specially literary or intellectual--not merely "good," (in the Sunday School and Temperance Society sense,)-some invisible spine and great sympathetic to these States, resident only in the average people, in their practical life, in their physiology, in their emotions, in their nebulous yet fiery patriotism, in the armies (both sides) through the whole secession war--an ident.i.ty and character which indeed so far "finds no voice among their spokesmen."

To my mind America, vast and fruitful as it appears to-day, is even yet, for its most important results, entirely in the tentative state; its very formation-stir and whirling trials and essays more splendid and picturesque, to my thinking, than the accomplish'd growths and shows of other lands, through European history, or Greece, or all the past.

Surely a New World literature, worthy the name, is not to be, if it ever comes, some fiction, or fancy, or bit of sentimentalism or polish'd work merely by itself, or in abstraction. So long as such literature is no born branch and offshoot of the Nationality, rooted and grown from its roots, and fibred with its fibre, it can never answer any deep call or perennial need. Perhaps the untaught Republic is wiser than its teachers. The best literature is always a result of something far greater than itself--not the hero, but the portrait of the hero. Before there can be recorded history or poem there must be the transaction.

Beyond the old masterpieces, the Iliad, the interminable Hindu epics, the Greek tragedies, even the Bible itself, range the immense facts of what must have preceded them, their _sine qua non_--the veritable poems and masterpieces, of which, grand as they are, the word-statements are but shreds and cartoons.

For to-day and the States, I think the vividest, rapidest, most stupendous processes ever known, ever perform'd by man or nation, on the largest scales and in countless varieties, are now and here presented.

Not as our poets and preachers are always conventionally putting it--but quite different. Some colossal foundry, the flaming of the fire, the melted metal, the pounding trip-hammers, the surging crowds of workmen shifting from point to point, the murky shadows, the rolling haze, the discord, the crudeness, the deafening din, the disorder, the dross and clouds of dust, the waste and extravagance of material, the shafts of darted sunshine through the vast open roof-scuttles aloft-the mighty castings, many of them not yet fitted, perhaps delay'd long, yet each in its due time, with definite place and use and meaning--Such, more like, is a symbol of America.

After all of which, returning to our starting-point, we reiterate, and in the whole Land's name, a welcome to our eminent guests. Visits like theirs, and hospitalities, and hand-shaking, and face meeting face, and the distant brought near--what divine solvents they are! Travel, reciprocity, "interviewing," intercommunion of lands--what are they but Democracy's and the highest Law's best aids? O that our own country--that every land in the world--could annually, continually, receive the poets, thinkers, scientists, even the official magnates, of other lands, as honor'd guests. O that the United States, especially the West, could have had a good long visit and explorative jaunt, from the n.o.ble and melancholy Tourgueneff, before he died--or from Victor Hugo--or Thomas Carlyle. Castelar, Tennyson, any of the two or three great Parisian essayists--were they and we to come face to face, how is it possible but that the right understanding would ensue?

THE BIBLE AS POETRY

I suppose one cannot at this day say anything new, from a literary point of view, about those autochthonic bequests of Asia--the Hebrew Bible, the mighty Hindu epics, and a hundred lesser but typical works; (not now definitely including the Iliad--though that work was certainly of Asiatic genesis, as Homer himself was--considerations which seem curiously ignored.) But will there ever be a time or place--ever a student, however modern, of the grand art, to whom those compositions will not afford profounder lessons than all else of their kind in the garnerage of the past? Could there be any more opportune suggestion, to the current popular writer and reader of verse, what the office of poet was in primeval times--and is yet capable of being, anew, adjusted entirely to the modern?

All the poems of Orientalism, with the Old and New Testaments at the centre, tend to deep and wide, (I don't know but the deepest and widest,) psychological development--with little, or nothing at all, of the mere esthetic, the princ.i.p.al verse-requirement of our day. Very late, but unerringly, comes to every capable student the perception that it is not in beauty, it is not in art, it is not even in science, that the profoundest laws of the case have their eternal sway and outcropping.

In his discourse on "Hebrew Poets" De Sola Mendes said: "The fundamental feature of Judaism, of the Hebrew nationality, was religion; its poetry was naturally religious. Its subjects, G.o.d and Providence, the covenants with Israel, G.o.d in Nature, and as reveal'd, G.o.d the Creator and Governor, Nature in her majesty and beauty, inspired hymns and odes to Nature's G.o.d. And then the checker'd history of the nation furnish'd allusions, ill.u.s.trations, and subjects for epic display--the glory of the sanctuary, the offerings, the splendid ritual, the Holy City, and lov'd Palestine with its pleasant valleys and wild tracts." Dr. Mendes said "that rhyming was not a characteristic of Hebrew poetry at all.

Metre was not a necessary mark of poetry. Great poets discarded it; the early Jewish poets knew it not." Compared with the famed epics of Greece, and lesser ones since, the spinal supports of the Bible are simple and meagre. All its history, biography, narratives, &c., are as beads, strung on and indicating the eternal thread of the Deific purpose and power. Yet with only deepest faith for impetus, and such Deific purpose for palpable or impalpable theme, it often transcends the masterpieces of h.e.l.las, and all masterpieces.