Evolution of Expression Volume Ii Part 9

I.

Here are old trees--tall oaks and gnarled pines-- That stream with gray-green mosses; here the ground Was never trenched by spade, and flowers spring up Unsown, and die ungathered.

II.

It is sweet To linger here, among the flitting birds And leaping squirrels, wandering brooks, and winds That shake the leaves, and scatter as they pa.s.s, A fragrance from the cedars, thickly set With pale blue berries. In these peaceful shades-- Peaceful, unpruned, immeasurably old-- My thoughts go up the long, dim path of years, Back to the earliest days of liberty.

III.

O Freedom, thou art not, as poets dream, A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs, And wavy tresses, gushing from the cap With which the Roman master crowned his slave When he took off the gyves. A bearded man, Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailed hand Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow, Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred With tokens of old wars; thy ma.s.sive limbs Are strong with struggling.

IV.

Power at thee has launched His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee; They could not quench the life thou hast from Heaven.

Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep, And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires, Have forged thy chain; yet while he deems thee bound, The links are shivered, and the prison walls Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth, As springs the flame above a burning pile And shoutest to the nations, who return Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies.

V.

Thy birthright was not given by human hands; Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields, While yet our race was few, thou sat'st with him, To tend the quiet flock, and watch the stars, And teach the reed to utter simple airs.

Thou, by his side, amid the tangled wood, Didst war upon the panther and the wolf, His only foes; and thou with him didst draw The earliest furrows on the mountain-side, Soft with the deluge.

VI.

Tyranny himself, Thy enemy, although of reverend look, h.o.a.ry with many years, and far obeyed, Is later born than thou; and as he meets The grave defiance of thine elder eye, The usurper trembles in his fastnesses.

VII.

O, not yet Mayst thou unbrace thy corselet, nor lay by Thy sword; nor yet, O Freedom, close thy lids In slumber; for thine enemy never sleeps, And thou must watch and combat till the day Of the new earth and heaven.

VIII.

But wouldst thou rest Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men, These old and friendly solitudes invite Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees Were young upon the unviolated earth, And yet the moss-stains on the rock were new, Beheld thy glorious childhood, and rejoiced.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY.

FROM A SPEECH BEFORE THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF FRANCE, 1789.

1. I hear much said of patriotism, appeals to patriotism, transports of patriotism. Gentlemen, why prost.i.tute this n.o.ble world? Is it so very magnanimous to give up a part of your income in order to save your whole property? This is very simple arithmetic; and he that hesitates, deserves contempt rather than indignation.

2. Yes, gentlemen, it is to your immediate self-interest, to your most familiar notions of prudence and policy that I now appeal. I say not to you now, as heretofore, beware how you give the world the first example of an a.s.sembled nation untrue to the public faith.

3. I ask you not, as heretofore, what right you have to freedom, or what means of maintaining it, if, at your first step in administration, you outdo in baseness all the old and corrupt governments. I tell you, that unless you prevent this catastrophe, you will all be involved in the general ruin; and that you are yourselves the persons most deeply interested in making the sacrifices which the government demands of you.

4. I exhort you, then, most earnestly, to vote these extraordinary supplies; and G.o.d grant they may prove sufficient! Vote, then, I beseech you; for, even if you doubt the expediency of the means, you know perfectly well that the supplies are necessary, and that you are incapable of raising them in any other way. Vote them at once, for the crisis does not admit of delay; and, if it occurs, we must be responsible for the consequences.

5. Beware of asking for time. Misfortune accords it never. While you are lingering, the evil day will come upon you. Why, gentlemen, it is but a few days since, that upon occasion of some foolish bustle in the Palais Royal, some ridiculous insurrection that existed nowhere but in the heads of a few weak or designing individuals, we were told with emphasis, "Catiline is at the gates of Rome, and yet we deliberate."

6. We know, gentlemen, that this was all imagination. We are far from being at Rome; nor is there any Catiline at the gates of Paris. But now are we threatened with a real danger; bankruptcy, national bankruptcy, is before you; it threatens to swallow up your persons, your property, your honor,--and yet you deliberate.

MIRABEAU.

THE LANTERN BEARERS.

1. These boys congregated every autumn about a certain easterly fisher-village, where they tasted in a high degree the glory of existence. The place was created seemingly on purpose for the diversion of young gentlemen. A street or two of houses, mostly red and many of them tiled; a number of fine trees cl.u.s.tered about the manse and the kirkyard, and turning the chief street into a shady alley; many little gardens more than usually bright with flowers; nets a-drying, and fisher-wives scolding in the backward parts; a smell of fish, a genial smell of seaweed; whiffs of blowing sand at the street corners; shops with golf-b.a.l.l.s and bottled lollipops; such, as well as memory serves me, were the ingredients of the town.

2. These, you are to conceive posted on a spit between two sandy bays, and spa.r.s.ely flanked with villas--enough for the boys to lodge in with their subsidiary parents, not enough (not yet enough) to c.o.c.knify the scene; a haven in the rocks in front: in front of that, a file of gray islets; to the left, endless links and sand wreaths, a wilderness of hiding-holes, alive with popping rabbits and soaring gulls: to the right, a range of seaward crags, one rugged brow beyond another; the ruins of a mighty and ancient fortress on the brink of one; coves between--now charmed into sunshine quiet, now whistling with wind and clamorous with bursting surges; the dens and sheltered hollows redolent of thyme and southernwood, the air at the cliff's edge brisk and clean and pungent of the sea--in front of all, the Ba.s.s Rock, tilted seaward like a doubtful bather, the surf ringing it with white, the solan-geese hanging round its summit like a great and glittering smoke.

3. This choice piece of seaboard was sacred, besides, to the wrecker; and the Ba.s.s, in the eye of fancy, still flew the colors of King James; and in the ear of fancy the arches of Tantallon still rang with horse-shoe iron, and echoed to the commands of Bell--the--Cat.

4. ... But what my memory dwells upon the most was a sport peculiar to the place, and indeed to a week or so of our two months' holiday there.

Maybe it still flourishes in its native spot; for boys and their pastimes are swayed by periodic forces inscrutable to man; so that tops and marbles reappear in their due season, regular like the sun and moon; and the harmless art of knuckle-bones has seen the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of the United States.

5. It may still flourish in its native spot, but nowhere else, I am persuaded; for I tried myself to introduce it on Tweed-side, and was defeated lamentably; its charm being quite local, like a country wine that cannot be exported.

6. The idle manner of it was this: Toward the end of September, when school-time was drawing near and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from our respective villas, each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern. The thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of Great Britain; and the grocers, about the due time, began to garnish their windows with our particular brand of luminary. We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigour of the game, a b.u.t.toned top-coat. They smelled noisomely of blistered tin; they never burned aright, though they would always burn our fingers; their use was naught; the pleasure of them merely fanciful; and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat asked for nothing more.

7. The fishermen used lanterns about their boats, and it was from them, I suppose, that we had got the hint; but theirs were not bull's-eyes, nor did we ever play at being fishermen. The police carried them at their belts, and we had plainly copied them in that; yet we did not pretend to be policemen. Burglars, indeed, we may have had some haunting thoughts of; and we had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common, and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely. But take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive, and to be a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat was good enough for us.

8. When two of these a.s.ses met, there would be an anxious "Have you got your lantern?" and a gratified "Yes!" That was the shibboleth, and very needful too; for, as it was the rule to keep our glory contained, none could recognize a lantern bearer, unless (like the pole-cat) by the smell. Four or five would sometimes climb into the belly of a ten-man lugger, with nothing but the thwarts above them--for the cabin was usually locked, or choose out some hollow of the links where the wind might whistle overhead. There the coats would be unb.u.t.toned and the bull's-eyes discovered; and in the chequering glimmer, under the huge windy hall of the night, and cheered by a rich steam of toasting tinware, these fortunate young gentlemen would crouch together in the cold sands of the links or on the scaly bilges of the fishing-boat, and delight themselves with inappropriate talk.

9. Woe is me that I may not give some specimens--some of their foresights of life, or deep inquiries into the rudiments of man and nature, these were so fiery and so innocent, they were so richly silly, so romantically young. But the talk at any rate was but a condiment; and these gatherings themselves only accidents in the career of the lantern bearer. The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; the slide shut, the top-coat b.u.t.toned; not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public: a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TARPEIA.

Woe: lightly to part with one's soul as the sea with its foam!

Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome!

Lo, now it was night, with the moon looking chill as she went: It was morn when the innocent stranger strayed into the tent.

The hostile Sabini were pleased, as one meshing a bird; She sang for them there in the ambush: they smiled as they heard.

Her sombre hair purpled in gleams, as she leaned to the light; All day she had idled and feasted, and now it was night.

The chief sat apart, heavy-browed, brooding elbow on knee; The armlets he wore were thrice royal, and wondrous to see:

Exquisite artifice, work of barbaric design, Frost's fixed mimicry; orbic imaginings fine

In sevenfold coils: and in orient glimmer from them, The variform voluble swinging of gem upon gem.

And the glory thereof sent fever and fire to her eye.

"I had never such trinkets!" she sighed,--like a lute was her sigh.