Selections from American poetry Part 21

There drooped thy more than mortal face, O Mother, beautiful and mild!

Enfolding in one dear embrace Thy Saviour and thy Child!

The rapt brow of the Desert John; The awful glory of that day When all the Father's brightness shone Through manhood's veil of clay.

And, midst gray prophet forms, and wild Dark visions of the days of old, How sweetly woman's beauty smiled Through locks of brown and gold!

There Fornarina's fair young face Once more upon her lover shone, Whose model of an angel's grace He borrowed from her own.

Slow pa.s.sed that vision from my view, But not the lesson which it taught; The soft, calm shadows which it threw Still rested on my thought

The truth, that painter, bard, and sage, Even in Earth's cold and changeful clime, Plant for their deathless heritage The fruits and flowers of time.

We shape ourselves the joy or fear Of which the coming life is made, And fill our Future's atmosphere With sunshine or with shade.

The tissue of the Life to be We weave with colors all our own, And in the field of Destiny We reap as we have sown.

Still shall the soul around it call The shadows which it gathered here, And, painted on the eternal wall, The Past shall reappear.

Think ye the notes of holy song On Milton's tuneful ear have died?

Think ye that Raphael's angel throng Has vanished from his side?

O no!--We live our life again Or warmly touched, or coldly dim, The pictures of the Past remain,-- Man's works shall follow him!

SEED-TIME AND HARVEST

As o'er his furrowed fields which lie Beneath a coldly-dropping sky, Yet chill with winter's melted snow, The husbandman goes forth to sow,

Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast The ventures of thy seed we cast, And trust to warmer sun and rain To swell the germ, and fill the grain.

Who calls thy glorious service hard?

Who deems it not its own reward?

Who, for its trials, counts it less A cause of praise and thankfulness?

It may not be our lot to wield The sickle in the ripened field; Nor ours to hear, on summer eves, The reaper's song among the sheaves.

Yet where our duty's task is wrought In unison with G.o.d's great thought, The near and future blend in one, And whatsoe'er is willed, is done!

And ours the grateful service whence Comes, day by day, the recompense; The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed, The fountain and the noonday shade.

And were this life the utmost span, The only end and aim of man, Better the toil of fields like these Than waking dream and slothful ease.

But life, though falling like our grain, Like that revives and springs again; And, early called, how blest are they Who wait in heaven their harvest-day!

THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL

1697

Up and gown the village streets Strange are the forms my fancy meets, For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid, And through the veil of a closed lid The ancient worthies I see again: I hear the tap of the elder's cane, And his awful periwig I see, And the silver buckles of shoe and knee.

Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, His black cap hiding his whitened hair, Walks the Judge of the great a.s.size, Samuel Sewall the good and wise.

His face with lines of firmness wrought, He wears the look of a man unbought, Who swears to his hurt and changes not; Yet, touched and softened nevertheless With the grace of Christian gentleness, The face that a child would climb to kiss!

True and tender and brave and just, That man might honor and woman trust.

Touching and sad, a tale is told, Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old, Of the fast which the good man lifelong kept With a haunting sorrow that never slept, As the circling year brought round the time Of an error that left the sting of crime, When he sat on the bunch of the witchcraft courts, With the laws of Moses and Hales Reports, And spake, in the name of both, the word That gave the witch's neck to the cord, And piled the oaken planks that pressed The feeble life from the warlock's breast!

All the day long, from dawn to dawn, His door was bolted, his curtain drawn; No foot on his silent threshold trod, No eye looked on him save that of G.o.d, As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms, And, with precious proofs from the sacred word Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord, His faith confirmed and his trust renewed That the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued, Might be washed away in the mingled flood Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood!

Green forever the memory be Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, Whom even his errors glorified, Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side By the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide!

Honor and praise to the Puritan Who the halting step of his age outran, And, seeing the infinite worth of man In the priceless gift the Father gave, In the infinite love that stooped to save, Dared not brand his brother a slave!

"Who doth such wrong," he was wont to say, In his own quaint, picture-loving way, "Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade Which G.o.d shall cast down upon his head!"

Widely as heaven and h.e.l.l, contrast That brave old jurist of the past And the cunning trickster and knave of courts Who the holy features of Truth distorts,-- Ruling as right the will of the strong, Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong; Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weak Deaf as Egypt's G.o.ds of leek; Scoffing aside at party's nod, Order of nature and law of G.o.d; For whose dabbled ermine respect were waste, Reverence folly, and awe misplaced; Justice of whom 't were vain to seek As from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik!

O, leave the wretch to his bribes and sins; Let him rot in the web of lies he spins!

To the saintly soul of the early day, To the Christian judge, let us turn and say "Praise and thanks for an honest man!-- Glory to G.o.d for the Puritan!"

I see, far southward, this quiet day, The hills of Newbury rolling away, With the many tints of the season gay, Dreamily blending in autumn mist Crimson, and gold, and amethyst.

Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned, Plum Island lies, like a whale aground, A stone's toss over the narrow sound.

Inland, as far as the eye can go, The hills curve round like a bonded bow; A silver arrow from out them sprung, I see the shine of the Quasycung; And, round and round, over valley and hill, Old roads winding, as old roads will, Here to a ferry, and there to a mill; And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves, Through green elm arches and maple leaves,-- Old homesteads sacred to all that can Gladden or sadden the heart of man,-- Over whose thresholds of oak and stone Life and Death have come and gone!

There pictured tiles in the fireplace show, Great beams sag from the ceiling low, The dresser glitters with polished wares, The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs, And the low, broad chimney shows the crack By the earthquake made a century back.

Lip from their midst springs the collage spire With the crest of its c.o.c.k in the sun afire; Beyond are orchards and planting lands, And great salt marshes and glimmering sands, And, where north and south the coast-lines run, The blink of the sea in breeze and sun!

I see it all like a chart unrolled, But my thoughts are full of the past and old, I hear the tales of my boyhood told; And the shadows and shapes of early days Flit dimly by in the veiling haze, With measured movement and rhythmic chime Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme.

I think of the old man wise and good Who once on yon misty hillsides stood, (A poet who never measured rhyme, A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,) And, propped on his staff of age, looked down, With his boyhood's love, on his native town, Where, written, as if on its hills and plains, His burden of prophecy yet remains, For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind To read in the ear of the musing mind:--

"As long as Plum Island, to guard the coast As G.o.d appointed, shall keep its post; As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep Of Merrimack River, or sturgeon leap; As long as pickerel swift and slim, Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim; As long as the annual sea-fowl know Their time to come and their time to go; As long as cattle shall roam at will The green, gra.s.s meadows by Turkey Hill; As long as sheep shall look from the side Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide, And Parker River, and salt-sea tide; As long as a wandering pigeon shall search The fields below from his white-oak perch, When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn, And the dry husks fall from the standing corn; As long as Nature shall not grow old, Nor drop her work from her doting hold, And her care for the Indian corn forget, And the yellow rows in pairs to set;-- So long shall Christians here be born, Grow up and ripen as G.o.d's sweet corn!-- By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost Shall never a holy ear be lost, But husked by Death in the Planter's sight, Be sown again m the fields of light!"

The Island still is purple with plums, Up the river the salmon comes, The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds On hillside berries and marish seeds,-- All the beautiful signs remain, From spring-time sowing to autumn rain The good man's vision returns again!

And let us hope, as well we can, That the Silent Angel who garners man May find some grain as of old he found In the human cornfield ripe and sound, And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own The precious seed by the fathers sown!

SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE

Of all the rides since the birth of time, Told in story or sung in rhyme,-- On Apuleius's Golden a.s.s, Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of bra.s.s, Witch astride of a human back, Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,-- The strangest ride that ever was sped Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead!

Body of turkey, head of owl, Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, Feathered and ruffled in every part, Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.

Scores of women, old and young, Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, Shouting and singing the shrill refrain "Here's Flud Oirson, for his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!"

Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,

With conch-sh.e.l.ls blowing and fish-horns' tw.a.n.g.

Over and over the Maenads sang: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!"