The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 20

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; 10 This fruitless husk which dustward dries Hath been a heart once, hath 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! 20 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 hundredfold?' 30 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 a brother heart? 40

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,' 50 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 unqueached for fourscore years A spark of the eternal G.o.d; 60 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, 70 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. 80

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.

So, from oft converse with life's wintry gales, Should man learn how to clasp with tougher roots The inspiring earth; how otherwise avails The leaf-creating sap that sunward shoots?

So every year that falls with noiseless flake Should fill old scars up on the stormward side, And make h.o.a.r age revered for age's sake, Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride.

So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate, True hearts compel the sap of st.u.r.dier growth, So between earth and heaven stand simply great, That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock him still.

Lord! all thy works are lessons; each contains Some emblem of man's all-containing soul; Shall he make fruitless all thy glorious pains, Delving within thy grace an eyeless mole?

Make me the least of thy Dodona-grove, Cause me some message of thy truth to bring, Speak but a word through me, nor let thy love Among my boughs disdain to perch and sing.

AMBROSE

Never, surely, was holier man Than Ambrose, since the world began; With diet spare and raiment thin He shielded himself from the father of sin; With bed of iron and scourgings oft, His heart to G.o.d's hand as wax made soft.

Through earnest prayer and watchings long He sought to know 'tween right and wrong, Much wrestling with the blessed Word To make it yield the sense of the Lord, 10 That he might build a storm-proof creed To fold the flock in at their need.

At last he builded a perfect faith, Fenced round about with _The Lord thus saith_; To himself he fitted the doorway's size, Meted the light to the need of his eyes, And knew, by a sure and inward sign, That the work of his fingers was divine.

Then Ambrose said, 'All those shall die The eternal death who believe not as I;' 20 And some were boiled, some burned in fire, Some sawn in twain, that his heart's desire, For the good of men's souls might be satisfied By the drawing of all to the righteous side.

One day, as Ambrose was seeking the truth In his lonely walk, he saw a youth Resting himself in the shade of a tree; It had never been granted him to see So shining a face, and the good man thought 'Twere pity he should not believe as he ought. 30

So he set himself by the young man's side, And the state of his soul with questions tried; But the heart of the stranger was hardened indeed, Nor received the stamp of the one true creed; And the spirit of Ambrose waxed sore to find Such features the porch of so narrow a mind.

'As each beholds in cloud and fire The shape that answers his own desire, So each,' said the youth, 'in the Law shall find The figure and fashion of his mind; 40 And to each in his mercy hath G.o.d allowed His several pillar of fire and cloud.'

The soul of Ambrose burned with zeal And holy wrath for the young man's weal: 'Believest thou then, most wretched youth,'

Cried he, 'a dividual essence in Truth?

I fear me thy heart is too cramped with sin To take the Lord in his glory in.'

Now there bubbled beside them where they stood A fountain of waters sweet and good: 50 The youth to the streamlet's brink drew near Saying, 'Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here!'

Six vases of crystal then he took, And set them along the edge of the brook.

'As into these vessels the water I pour, There shall one hold less, another more, And the water unchanged, in every case, Shall put on the figure of the vase; O thou, who wouldst unity make through strife, Canst thou fit this sign to the Water of Life?' 60

When Ambrose looked up, he stood alone, The youth and the stream and the vases were gone; But he knew, by a sense of humbled grace, He had talked with an angel face to face, And felt his heart change inwardly, As he fell on his knees beneath the tree.

ABOVE AND BELOW

I

O dwellers in the valley-land, Who in deep twilight grope and cower, Till the slow mountain's dial-hand Shorten to noon's triumphal hour, While ye sit idle, do ye think The Lord's great work sits idle too?

That light dare not o'erleap the brink Of morn, because 'tis dark with you?