Poems of James Russell Lowell Part 34

How many times, prouder than king on throne, Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's, Panting have I the creaky bellows blown, And watched the pent volcano's red increase, Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, brought down By that hard arm voluminous and brown, From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees.

Dear native town! whose choking elms each year With eddying dust before their time turn gray, Pining for rain,--to me thy dust is dear; It glorifies the eve of summer day, And when the westering sun half-sunken burns, The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns, The westward horseman rides through clouds of gold away,

So palpable, I've seen those unshorn few, The six old willows at the causey's end, (Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed nor drew,) Through this dry mist their checkering shadows send, Striped, here and there, with many a long-drawn thread, Where streamed through leafy c.h.i.n.ks the trembling red, Past which, in one bright trail, the hangbird's flashes blend.

Yes, dearer far thy dust than all that e'er, Beneath the awarded crown of victory, Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer; Though lightly prized the ribboned parchments three, Yet _collegisse juvat_, I am glad That here what colleging was mine I had,-- It linked another tie, dear native town, with thee!

Nearer art thou than simply native earth, My dust with thine concedes a deeper tie; A closer claim thy soil may well put forth, Something of kindred more than sympathy; For in thy bounds I reverently laid away That blinding anguish of forsaken clay, That t.i.tle I seemed to have in earth and sea and sky,

That portion of my life more choice to me (Though brief, yet in itself so round and whole) Than all the imperfect residue can be;-- The Artist saw his statue of the soul Was perfect; so, with one regretful stroke, The earthen model into fragments broke, And without her the impoverished seasons roll.

THE GROWTH OF THE LEGEND.

A FRAGMENT.

A legend that grew in the forest's hush Slowly as tear-drops gather and gush, When a word some poet chanced to say Ages ago, in his careless way, Brings our youth back to us out of its shroud Clearly as under yon thunder-cloud I see that white sea-gull. It grew and grew, From the pine-trees gathering a sombre hue, Till it seems a mere murmur out of the vast Norwegian forests of the past; And it grew itself like a true Northern pine, First a little slender line, Like a mermaid's green eyelash, and then anon A stem that a tower might rest upon, Standing spear-straight in the waist-deep moss, Its bony roots clutching around and across, As if they would tear up earth's heart in their grasp Ere the storm should uproot them or make them unclasp; Its cloudy boughs singing, as suiteth the pine, To shrunk snow-bearded sea-kings old songs of the brine, Till they straightened and let their staves fall to the floor, Hearing waves moan again on the perilous sh.o.r.e Of Vinland, perhaps, while their prow groped its way 'Twixt the frothy gnashed tusks of some ship-crunching bay.

So, pine-like, the legend grew, strong-limbed and tall, As the Gipsy child grows that eats crusts in the hall; It sucked the whole strength of the earth and the sky, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, all brought it supply; 'Twas a natural growth, and stood fearlessly there, A true part of the landscape as sea, land, and air; For it grew in good times, ere the fashion it was To force up these wild births of the woods under gla.s.s, And so, if 'tis told as it should be told, Though 't were sung under Venice's moonlight of gold, You would hear the old voice of its mother, the pine, Murmur sea-like and northern through every line, And the verses should hang, self-sustained and free, Round the vibrating stem of the melody, Like the lithe sun-steeped limbs of the parent tree.

Yes, the pine is the mother of legends; what food For their grim roots is left when the thousand-yeared wood-- The dim-aisled cathedral, whose tall arches spring Light, sinewy, graceful, firm-set as the wing From Michael's white shoulder--is hewn and defaced By iconoclast axes in desperate waste, And its wrecks seek the ocean it prophesied long, Ca.s.sandra-like, crooning its mystical song?

Then the legends go with them,--even yet on the sea A wild virtue is left in the touch of the tree, And the sailor's night-watches are thrilled to the core With the lineal offspring of Odin and Thor.

Yes, wherever the pine-wood has never let in, Since the day of creation, the light and the din Of manifold life, but has safely conveyed From the midnight primeval its armful of shade, And has kept the weird Past with its sagas alive Mid the hum and the stir of To-day's busy hive, There the legend takes root in the age-gathered gloom, And its murmurous boughs for their tossing find room.

Where Aroostook, far-heard, seems to sob as he goes Groping down to the sea 'neath his mountainous snows; Where the lake's frore Sahara of never-tracked white, When the crack shoots across it, complains to the night With a long, lonely moan, that leagues northward is lost, As the ice shrinks away from the tread of the frost; Where the lumberers sit by the log-fires which throw Their own threatening shadows far round o'er the snow, When the wolf howls aloof, and the wavering glare Flashes out from the blackness the eyes of the bear, When the wood's huge recesses, half-lighted, supply A canvas where Fancy her mad brush may try, Blotting in giant Horrors that venture not down Through the right-angled streets of the brisk, whitewashed town, But skulk in the depths of the measureless wood Mid the Dark's creeping whispers that curdle the blood, When the eye, glanced in dread o'er the shoulder, may dream, Ere it shrinks to the camp-fire's companioning gleam, That it saw the fierce ghost of the Red Man crouch back To the shroud of the tree-trunk's invincible black;-- There the old shapes crowd thick round the pine-shadowed camp, Which shun the keen gleam of the scholarly lamp, And the seed of the legend finds true Norland ground, While the border-tale's told and the canteen flits round.

A CONTRAST.

Thy love thou sentest oft to me, And still as oft I thrust it back; Thy messengers I could not see In those who everything did lack,-- The poor, the outcast, and the black.

Pride held his hand before mine eyes, The world with flattery stuffed mine ears; I looked to see a monarch's guise, Nor dreamed thy love would knock for years, Poor, naked, fettered, full of tears.

Yet, when I sent my love to thee, Thou with a smile didst take it in, And entertain'dst it royally, Though grimed with earth, with hunger thin, And leprous with the taint of sin.

Now every day thy love I meet, As o'er the earth it wanders wide, With weary step and bleeding feet, Still knocking at the heart of pride And offering grace, though still denied.

EXTREME UNCTION.

Go! leave me, Priest; my soul would be Alone with the consoler, Death; Far sadder eyes than thine will see This crumbling clay yield up its breath; These shrivelled hands have deeper stains Than holy oil can cleanse away,-- Hands that have plucked the world's coa.r.s.e gains As erst they plucked the flowers of May.

Call, if thou canst, to these gray eyes Some faith from youth's traditions wrung; This fruitless husk which dustward dries Has been a heart once, has been young; On this bowed head the awful Past Once laid its consecrating hands; The Future in its purpose vast Paused, waiting my supreme commands.

But look! whose shadows block the door?

Who are those two that stand aloof?

See! on my hands this freshening gore Writes o'er again its crimson proof!

My looked-for death-bed guests are met;-- There my dead Youth doth wring its hands, And there, with eyes that goad me yet, The ghost of my Ideal stands!

G.o.d bends from out the deep and says,-- "I gave thee the great gift of life; Wast thou not called in many ways?

Are not my earth and heaven at strife?

I gave thee of my seed to sow, Bringest thou me my hundred-fold?"

Can I look up with face aglow, And answer, "Father, here is gold?"

I have been innocent; G.o.d knows When first this wasted life began, Not grape with grape more kindly grows, Than I with every brother-man: Now here I gasp; what lose my kind, When this fast-ebbing breath shall part?

What bands of love and service bind This being to the world's sad heart?

Christ still was wandering o'er the earth, Without a place to lay his head; He found free welcome at my hearth, He shared my cup and broke my bread: Now, when I hear those steps sublime, That bring the other world to this, My snake-turned nature, sunk in slime, Starts sideway with defiant hiss.

Upon the hour when I was born, G.o.d said, "Another man shall be,"

And the great Maker did not scorn Out of himself to fashion me; He sunned me with his ripening looks, And Heaven's rich instincts in me grew, As effortless as woodland nooks Send violets up and paint them blue.

Yes, I who now, with angry tears, Am exiled back to brutish clod, Have borne unquenched for fourscore years A spark of the eternal G.o.d; And to what end? How yield I back The trust for such high uses given?

Heaven's light hath but revealed a track Whereby to crawl away from heaven.

Men think it is an awful sight To see a soul just set adrift On that drear voyage from whose night The ominous shadows never lift; But 'tis more awful to behold A helpless infant, newly born, Whose little hands unconscious hold The keys of darkness and of morn.

Mine held them once; I flung away Those keys that might have open set The golden sluices of the day, But clutch the keys of darkness yet;-- I hear the reapers singing go Into G.o.d's harvest; I, that might With them have chosen, here below Grope shuddering at the gates of night.

O glorious Youth, that once wast mine!

O high ideal! all in vain Ye enter at this ruined shrine Whence worship ne'er shall rise again, The bat and owl inhabit here, The snake nests in the altar-stone, The sacred vessels moulder near, The image of the G.o.d is gone.

THE OAK.

What gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, is his!

There needs no crown to mark the forest's king; How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss!

Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring, Which he with such benignant royalty Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent; All nature seems his va.s.sal proud to be, And cunning only for his ornament.

How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows, An unquelled exile from the summer's throne, Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly shows, Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are flown.

His boughs make music of the winter air, Jewelled with sleet, like some cathedral front Where clinging snow-flakes with quaint art repair The dints and furrows of time's envious brunt.

How doth his patient strength the rude March wind Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer breeze, And win the soil that fain would be unkind, To swell his revenues with proud increase!

He is the gem; and all the landscape wide (So doth his grandeur isolate the sense) Seems but the setting, worthless all beside, An empty socket, were he fallen thence.