Our Friend John Burroughs Part 12

This stanza is a detraction from the poem as we know it, and a.s.suredly its author has a right to drop it. Concerning the fifth stanza, Mr.

Burroughs says he has never liked it, and has often subst.i.tuted one which he wrote a few years ago. The stanza he would reject is--

The waters know their own and draw The brook that springs in yonder heights; So flows the good with equal law Unto the soul of pure delights.

The one he would offer instead--

The law of love binds every heart, And knits it to its utmost kin, Nor can our lives flow long apart From souls our secret souls would win.

And yet he is not satisfied with this; he says it is too subtle and lacks the large, simple imagery of the original lines.

The legion who cherish this poem in their hearts are justly incensed whenever they come across a copy of it to which some one, a few years ago, had the effrontery to add this inane stanza:--

Serene I fold my hands and wait, Whate'er the storms of life may be, Faith guides me up to heaven's gate, And love will bring my own to me.

One of Mr. Burroughs's friends (Joel Benton), himself a poet, in an article tracing the vicissitudes of this poem, shows pardonable indignation at the "impudence and hardihood of the unmannered meddler"

who tacked on the "heaven's gate" stanza, and adds:--

The lyric as Burroughs wrote it embodies a motive, or concept, that has scarcely been surpa.s.sed for amenability to poetic treatment, and for touching and impressive point. Its partly elusive outlines add to its charm. Its balance between hint and affirmation; its faith in universal forces, and its tender yet virile expression, are all shining qualities, apparent to the critical, and hypnotic to the general, reader. There is nothing in it that need even stop at "heaven's gate." It permits the deserving reader by happy instinct to go through that portal--without waiting outside to parade his sect mark. But the force of the poem and catholicity of its sanctions are either utterly destroyed or ridiculously enfeebled, by capping it with a sectarian and narrowly interpreted climax.

Although the poem is so well known, I shall quote it here in the form preferred by its author;--

WAITING

Serene, I fold my hands and wait, Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For lo! my own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays, For what avails this eager pace?

I stand amid th' eternal ways, And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day, The friends I seek are seeking me; No wind can drive my bark astray, Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?

I wait with joy the coming years; My heart shall reap where it hath sown, And garner up its fruit of tears.

The waters know their own and draw The brook that springs in yonder heights; So flows the good with equal law Unto the soul of pure delights.

The stars come nightly to the sky, The tidal wave comes to the sea; Nor time, nor s.p.a.ce, nor deep, nor high, Can keep my own away from me.

A WINTER DAY AT SLABSIDES

"Come and go to Slabsides for over Sunday--I think we can keep warm. We will have an old-fashioned time; I will roast a duck in the pot; it will be great fun."

This invitation came from Mr. Burroughs in 1911 to friends who proposed to call on him early in December. Riverby was closed for the season, its occupants tarrying in Poughkeepsie, but, ever ready for an adventure, the Sage of Slabsides proposed a winter picnic at his cabin in the hills.

A ride of some two hours from New York brings us to West Park, where our host awaits us. A stranger, glancing at his white hair and beard, might credit his seventy-five years, but not when looking at his ruddy face with the keen, bright eyes, or at his alert, vigorous movements.

Together with blankets and a market-basket of provisions we are stowed away in a wagon and driven up the steep, winding way; at first along a country road, then into a wood's road with huge Silurian rocks cropping out everywhere, showing here and there seams of quartz and patches of moss and ferns.

"In there," said Mr. Burroughs, pointing to an obscure path, "I had a partridge for a neighbor. She had a nest there. I went to see her every day till she became uneasy about it, and let me know I was no longer welcome."

"Yonder," he continued, indicating a range of wooded hills against the wintry sky, "is the cla.s.sic region of 'Popple Town Hill,' and over there is 'Pang Yang.'"

Some friendly spirit has preceded us to the cabin; a fire is burning in the great stone fireplace, and mattresses and bedding are exposed to the heat. Moving these away, the host makes room for us near the hearth. He piles on the wood, and we are soon permeated by the warmth of the fire and of the unostentatious hospitality of Slabsides.

How good it is to be here! The city, with its rush and roar and complexities, seems far away. How satisfying it is to strip off the husks and get at the kernel of things! There is more chance for high thinking when one is big enough to have plain living. How we surround ourselves with non-essentials, how we are dominated with the "mania of owning things"--one feels all this afresh in looking around at this simple, well-built cabin with its few needful things close at hand, and with life reduced to the simplest terms. One sees here exemplified the creed Mr. Burroughs outlined several years ago in his essay "An Outlook upon Life":--

I am bound to praise the simple life, because I have lived it and found it good.... I love a small house, plain clothes, simple living. Many persons know the luxury of a skin bath--a plunge in the pool or the wave unhampered by clothing. That is the simple life--direct and immediate contact with things, life with the false wrappings torn away--the fine house, the fine equipage, the expensive habits, all cut off. How free one feels, how good the elements taste, how close one gets to them, how they fit one's body and one's soul! To see the fire that warms you, or better yet, to cut the wood that feeds the fire that warms you; to see the spring where the water bubbles up that slakes your thirst, and to dip your pail into it; to see the beams that are the stay of your four walls, and the timbers that uphold the roof that shelters you; to be in direct and personal contact with the sources of your material life; to want no extras, no shields; to find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to find a quest of wild berries more satisfying than a gift of tropic fruit; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest, or over a wild flower in spring--these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

(Ill.u.s.tration of The Living-Room. From a photograph by M. H. Fanning)

The two men were soon talking companionably. When persons of wide reading and reflection, and of philosophic bent, who have lived long and been mellowed by life, come together, the interchange of thought is bound to be valuable; things are so well said, so inevitably said, that the listener thinks he cannot forget the manner of saying; but thoughts crowd thick and fast, comments on men and measures, on books and events, are numerous and varied, but hard to recapture. The logs ignite, sending out their cheering heat, the coals glow, the sparks fly upward, warmth and radiance envelop us; but an attempt to warm the reader by the glow of that fireside talk is almost as futile as an effort to dispel to-day's cold by the fire of yesterday.

A few deserted cottages perched on the rocks near by show us where the summer neighbors of our host live, but at all seasons his wild neighbors are the ones he hobn.o.bs with the most; while his indoor companions are Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve, Carlyle, Arnold, Wordsworth, Darwin, Huxley, Emerson, Whitman, Bergson, and many others, ancient and modern.

"I've been rereading Emerson's essay on 'Immortality' lately, evenings in my study down there by the river," said Mr. Burroughs. "I had forgotten it was so n.o.ble and fine--he makes much of the idea of permanence."

In this connection he spoke of John Fiske and his contributions to literature, telling of the surprise he felt on first meeting Fiske at Harvard, to see the look of the _bon vivant_ in one in whom the intellectual and the spiritual were so prominent. Laughing, he recalled the amus.e.m.e.nt of the college boys at Fiske's comical efforts to discover a piece of chalk dropped during his lecture on "Immortality." Standing on the hearth, a merry twinkle in his eyes, he recited some humorous lines which he had written concerning the episode.

Reverting to the question of immortality in a serious vein, he summed up the debated question much as he has done in one of his essays,--that it has been good to be here, and will be good to go hence; that we know not whence we come, nor whither we go; were not consulted as to our coming, and shall not be as to our going; but that it is all good; all for "the glory of G.o.d;" though we must use this phrase in a larger sense than the cramped interpretation of the theologian. All the teeming life of the globe, the millions on millions in the microscopic world, and the millions on millions of creatures that can be seen by the naked eye--those who have been swept away, those here now, those who will come after--all appearing in their appointed time and place, playing their parts and vanishing, and to the old question "Why?" we may as well answer, "For the glory of G.o.d"; if we will only conceive a big enough glory, and a big enough G.o.d. His utter trust in things as they are seemed a living embodiment of that sublime line in "Waiting"--

"I stand amid the Eternal ways";

and, thus standing, he is content to let the powers that be have their way with him.

"To all these mysteries I fall back upon the last words I heard Whitman say, shortly before the end--commonplace words, but they sum it up: 'It's all right, John, it's all right'; but Whitman had the active, sustaining faith in immortality--

'I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time.'"

As the afternoon wanes, Mr. Burroughs hangs the kettle on the crane, broils the chops, and with a little help from one of the guests, soon has supper on the table, a discussion of Bergson's philosophy suffering only occasional interruptions; such as, "Where _have_ those women (summer occupants of Slabsides) put my holder?" or, "See if there isn't some salt in the cupboard."

"There! I forgot to bring up eggs for breakfast, but here are other things," he mutters as he rummages in his market-basket. "That memory of mine is pretty tricky; sometimes I can't remember things any better than I can find them when they are right under my nose. I've just found a line from Emerson that I've been hunting for two days--'The worm striving to be man.' I looked my Emerson through and through, and no worm; then I found in Joel Benton's Concordance of Emerson that the line was in 'May-Day'; he even cited the page, but my Emerson had no printing on that page. I searched all through 'May-Day,' and still no worm; I looked again with no better success, and was on the point of giving up when I spied the worm--it almost escaped me--"