The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 102

CHANGED PERSPECTIVE

Full oft the pathway to her door I've measured by the selfsame track, Yet doubt the distance more and more, 'Tis so much longer coming back!

WITH A PAIR OF GLOVES LOST IN A WAGER

We wagered, she for sunshine, I for rain, And I should hint sharp practice if I dared; For was not she beforehand sure to gain Who made the sunshine we together shared?

SIXTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY

As life runs on, the road grows strange With faces new, and near the end The milestones into headstones change, 'Neath every one a friend.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT

In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing; The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.

LAST POEMS

HOW I CONSULTED THE ORACLE OF THE GOLDFISHES

What know we of the world immense Beyond the narrow ring of sense?

What should we know, who lounge about The house we dwell in, nor find out, Masked by a wall, the secret cell Where the soul's priests in hiding dwell?

The winding stair that steals aloof To chapel-mysteries 'neath the roof?

It lies about us, yet as far From sense sequestered as a star 10 New launched its wake of fire to trace In secrecies of unprobed s.p.a.ce, Whose beacon's lightning-pinioned spears Might earthward haste a thousand years Nor reach it. So remote seems this World undiscovered, yet it is A neighbor near and dumb as death, So near, we seem to feel the breath Of its hushed habitants as they Pa.s.s us unchallenged, night and day. 20

Never could mortal ear nor eye By sound or sign suspect them nigh, Yet why may not some subtler sense Than those poor two give evidence?

Transfuse the ferment of their being Into our own, past hearing, seeing, As men, if once attempered so, Far off each other's thought can know?

As horses with an instant thrill Measure their rider's strength of will? 30 Comes not to all some glimpse that brings Strange sense of sense-escaping things?

Wraiths some transfigured nerve divines?

Approaches, premonitions, signs, Voices of Ariel that die out In the dim No Man's Land of Doubt?

Are these Night's dusky birds? Are these Phantasmas of the silences Outer or inner?--rude heirlooms From grovellers in the cavern-glooms, 40 Who in unhuman Nature saw Misshapen foes with tusk and claw, And with those night-fears brute and blind Peopled the chaos of their mind, Which, in ungovernable hours, Still make their b.e.s.t.i.a.l lair in ours?

Were they, or were they not? Yes; no; Uncalled they come, unbid they go, And leave us fumbling in a doubt Whether within us or without 50 The spell of this illusion be That witches us to hear and see As in a twi-life what it will, And hath such wonder-working skill That what we deemed most solid-wrought Turns a mere figment of our thought, Which when we grasp at in despair Our fingers find vain semblance there, For Psyche seeks a corner-stone Firmer than aught to matter known. 60

Is it illusion? Dream-stuff? Show Made of the wish to have it so?

'Twere something, even though this were all: So the poor prisoner, on his wall Long gazing, from the chance designs Of crack, mould, weather-stain, refines New and new pictures without cease, Landscape, or saint, or altar-piece: But these are Fancy's common brood Hatched in the nest of solitude; 70 This is Dame Wish's hourly trade, By our rude sires a G.o.ddess made.

Could longing, though its heart broke, give Trances in which we chiefly live?

Moments that darken all beside, Tearfully radiant as a bride?

Beckonings of bright escape, of wings Purchased with loss of baser things?

Blithe truancies from all control Of Hyle, outings of the soul? 80

The worm, by trustful instinct led, Draws from its womb a slender thread, And drops, confiding that the breeze Will waft it to unpastured trees: So the brain spins itself, and so Swings boldly off in hope to blow Across some tree of knowledge, fair With fruitage new, none else shall share: Sated with wavering in the Void, It backward climbs, so best employed, 90 And, where no proof is nor can be, Seeks refuge with a.n.a.logy; Truth's soft half-sister, she may tell Where lurks, seld-sought, the other's well, With metaphysic midges sore, My Thought seeks comfort at her door, And, at her feet a suppliant cast, Evokes a spectre of the past.

Not such as shook the knees of Saul, But winsome, golden-gay withal,-- 100 Two fishes in a globe of gla.s.s, That pa.s.s, and waver, and re-pa.s.s, And lighten that way, and then this, Silent as meditation is.

With a half-humorous smile I see In this their aimless industry, These errands nowhere and returns Grave as a pair of funeral urns, This ever-seek and never-find, A mocking image of my mind. 110 But not for this I bade you climb Up from the darkening deeps of time: Help me to tame these wild day-mares That sudden on me unawares.

Fish, do your duty, as did they Of the Black Island far away In life's safe places,--far as you From all that now I see or do.

You come, embodied flames, as when I knew you first, nor yet knew men; 120 Your gold renews my golden days, Your splendor all my loss repays.

'Tis more than sixty years ago Since first I watched your to-and-fro; Two generations come and gone From silence to oblivion, With all their noisy strife and stress Lulled in the grave's forgivingness, While you unquenchably survive Immortal, almost more alive. 130 I watched you then a curious boy, Who in your beauty found full joy, And, by no problem-debts distrest, Sate at life's board a welcome guest.

You were my sister's pets, not mine; But Property's dividing line No hint of dispossession drew On any map my simplesse knew; O golden age, not yet dethroned!

What made me happy, that I owned; 140 You were my wonders, you my Lars, In darkling days my sun and stars, And over you entranced I hung, Too young to know that I was young.

Gazing with still unsated bliss, My fancies took some shape like this: 'I have my world, and so have you, A tiny universe for two, A bubble by the artist blown, Scarcely more fragile than our own, 150 Where you have all a whale could wish, Happy as Eden's primal fish.

Manna is dropt you thrice a day From some kind heaven not far away, And still you s.n.a.t.c.h its softening crumbs, Nor, more than we, think whence it comes.

No toil seems yours but to explore Your cloistered realm from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e; Sometimes you trace its limits round, Sometimes its limpid depths you sound, 160 Or hover motionless midway, Like gold-red clouds at set of day; Erelong you whirl with sudden whim Off to your globe's most distant rim, Where, greatened by the watery lens, Methinks no dragon of the fens Flashed huger scales against the sky, Roused by Sir Bevis or Sir Guy, And the one eye that meets my view, Lidless and strangely largening, too, 170 Like that of conscience in the dark, Seems to make me its single mark.

What a benignant lot is yours That have an own All-out-of-doors, No words to spell, no sums to do, No Nepos and no parlyvoo!

How happy you without a thought Of such cross things as Must and Ought,-- I too the happiest of boys To see and share your golden joys!' 180

So thought the child, in simpler words, Of you his finny flocks and herds; Now, an old man, I bid you rise To the fine sight behind the eyes, And, lo, you float and flash again In the dark cistern of my brain.

But o'er your visioned flames I brood With other mien, in other mood; You are no longer there to please, But to stir argument, and tease 190 My thought with all the ghostly shapes From which no moody man escapes.

Diminished creature, I no more Find Fairyland beside my door, But for each moment's pleasure pay With the _quart d'heure_ of Rabelais!

I watch you in your crystal sphere, And wonder if you see and hear Those shapes and sounds that stir the wide Conjecture of the world outside; 200 In your pent lives, as we in ours, Have you surmises dim of powers, Of presences obscurely shown, Of lives a riddle to your own, Just on the senses' outer verge, Where sense-nerves into soul-nerves merge, Where we conspire our own deceit Confederate in deft Fancy's feat, And the fooled brain befools the eyes With pageants woven of its own lies? 210 But _are_ they lies? Why more than those Phantoms that startle your repose, Half seen, half heard, then flit away, And leave you your prose-bounded day?

The things ye see as shadows I Know to be substance; tell me why My visions, like those haunting you, May not be as substantial too.

Alas, who ever answer heard From fish, and dream-fish too? Absurd! 220 Your consciousness I half divine, But you are wholly deaf to mine.

Go, I dismiss you; ye have done All that ye could; our silk is spun: Dive back into the deep of dreams, Where what is real is what, seems!

Yet I shall fancy till my grave Your lives to mine a lesson gave; If lesson none, an image, then, Impeaching self-conceit in men 230 Who put their confidence alone In what they call the Seen and Known.

How seen? How known? As through your gla.s.s Our wavering apparitions pa.s.s Perplexingly, then subtly wrought To some quite other thing by thought.

Here shall my resolution be: The shadow of the mystery Is haply wholesomer for eyes That cheat us to be overwise, 240 And I am happy in my right To love G.o.d's darkness as His light.

TURNER'S OLD TeMeRAIRE

UNDER A FIGURE SYMBOLIZING THE CHURCH

Thou wast the fairest of all man-made things; The breath of heaven bore up thy cloudy wings, And, patient in their triple rank, The thunders crouched about thy flank, Their black lips silent with the doom of kings.

The storm-wind loved to rock him in thy pines, And swell thy vans with breath of great designs; Long-wildered pilgrims of the main By thee relaid their course again, Whose prow was guided by celestial signs.

How didst thou trample on tumultuous seas, Or, like some basking sea-beast stretched at ease, Let the bull-fronted surges glide Caressingly along thy side, Like glad hounds leaping by the huntsman's knees!

Heroic feet, with fire of genius shod, In battle's ecstasy thy deck have trod, While from their touch a fulgor ran Through plank and spar, from man to man, Welding thee to a thunderbolt of G.o.d.

Now a black demon, belching fire and steam, Drags thee away, a pale, dismantled dream, And all thy desecrated bulk Must landlocked lie, a helpless hulk, To gather weeds in the regardless stream.

Woe's me, from Ocean's sky-horizoned air To this! Better, the flame-cross still aflare, Shot-shattered to have met thy doom Where thy last lightnings cheered the gloom, Than here be safe in dangerless despair.