The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 65

So we two went together; downward sloped The path through yellow meads, or so I dreamed, Yellow with sunshine and young green, but I Saw naught nor heard, shut up in one close joy; I only felt the hand within my own, Trans.m.u.ting all my blood to golden fire, Dissolving all my brain in throbbing mist. 40

Suddenly shrank the hand; suddenly burst A cry that split the torpor of my brain, And as the first sharp thrust of lightning loosens From the heaped cloud its rain, loosened my sense: 'Save me!' it thrilled; 'oh, hide me! there is Death!

Death the divider, the unmerciful, That digs his pitfalls under Love and Youth, And covers Beauty up in the cold ground; Horrible Death! bringer of endless dark; Let him not see me! hide me in thy breast!' 50 Thereat I strove to clasp her, but my arms Met only what slipped crumbling down, and fell, A handful of gray ashes, at my feet.

I would have fled, I would have followed back That pleasant path we came, but all was changed; Rocky the way, abrupt, and hard to find; Yet I toiled on, and, toiling on, I thought, 'That way lies Youth, and Wisdom, and all Good; For only by unlearning Wisdom comes And climbing backward to diviner Youth; 60 What the world teaches profits to the world, What the soul teaches profits to the soul, Which then first stands erect with G.o.dward face, When she lets fall her pack of withered facts, The gleanings of the outward eye and ear, And looks and listens with her finer sense; Nor Truth nor Knowledge cometh from without.'

After long, weary days I stood again And waited at the Parting of the Ways; Again the figure of a woman veiled 70 Stood forth and beckoned, and I followed now: Down to no bower of roses led the path, But through the streets of towns where chattering Cold Hewed wood for fires whose glow was owned and fenced, Where Nakedness wove garments of warm wool Not for itself;--or through the fields it led Where Hunger reaped the unattainable grain, Where idleness enforced saw idle lands, Leagues of unpeopled soil, the common earth, Walled round with paper against G.o.d and Man. 80 'I cannot look,' I groaned, 'at only these; The heart grows hardened with perpetual wont, And palters with a feigned necessity, Bargaining with itself to be content; Let me behold thy face.'

The Form replied: 'Men follow Duty, never overtake; Duty nor lifts her veil nor looks behind.'

But, as she spake, a loosened lock of hair Slipped from beneath her hood, and I, who looked To see it gray and thin, saw amplest gold; 90 Not that dull metal dug from sordid earth, But such as the retiring sunset flood Leaves heaped on bays and capes of island cloud.

'O Guide divine,' I prayed, 'although not yet I may repair the virtue which I feel Gone out at touch of untuned things and foul With draughts of Beauty, yet declare how soon!'

'Faithless and faint of heart,' the voice returned, 'Thou seest no beauty save thou make it first; Man, Woman, Nature each is but a gla.s.s 100 Where the soul sees the image of herself, Visible echoes, offsprings of herself.

But, since thou need'st a.s.surance of how soon, Wait till that angel comes who opens all, The reconciler, he who lifts the veil, The reuniter, the rest-bringer, Death.'

I waited, and methought he came; but how, Or in what shape, I doubted, for no sign, By touch or mark, he gave me as he pa.s.sed; Only I knew a lily that I held 110 Snapt short below the head and shrivelled up; Then turned my Guide and looked at me unveiled, And I beheld no face of matron stern, But that enchantment I had followed erst, Only more fair, more clear to eye and brain, Heightened and chastened by a household charm; She smiled, and 'Which is fairer,' said her eyes, 'The hag's unreal Florimel or mine?'

ALADDIN

When I was a beggarly boy And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp; When I could not sleep for the cold, I had fire enough in my brain, And builded, with roofs of gold, My beautiful castles in Spain!

Since then I have toiled day and night, I have money and power good store, But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright For the one that is mine no more; Take, Fortune, whatever you choose, You gave, and may s.n.a.t.c.h again; I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose, For I own no more castles in Spain!

AN INVITATION

TO J[OHN] F[RANCIS] H[EATH]

Nine years have slipt like hour-gla.s.s sand From life's still-emptying globe away, Since last, dear friend, I clasped your hand, And stood upon the impoverished land, Watching the steamer down the bay.

I held the token which you gave, While slowly the smoke-pennon curled O'er the vague rim 'tween sky and wave, And shut the distance like a grave, Leaving me in the colder world; 10

The old, worn world of hurry and heat, The young, fresh world of thought and scope; While you, where beckoning billows fleet Climb far sky-beaches still and sweet, Sank wavering down the ocean-slope.

You sought the new world in the old, I found the old world in the new, All that our human hearts can hold, The inward world of deathless mould, The same that Father Adam knew. 20

He needs no ship to cross the tide, Who, in the lives about him, sees Fair window-prospects opening wide O'er history's fields on every side, To Ind and Egypt, Rome and Greece.

Whatever moulds of various brain E'er shaped the world to weal or woe, Whatever empires' wax and wane To him that hath not eyes in vain, Our village-microcosm can show. 30

Come back our ancient walks to tread, Dear haunts of lost or scattered friends, Old Harvard's scholar-factories red, Where song and smoke and laughter sped The nights to proctor-haunted ends.

Constant are all our former loves, Unchanged the icehouse-girdled pond, Its hemlock glooms, its shadowy coves, Where floats the coot and never moves, Its slopes of long-tamed green beyond. 40

Our old familiars are not laid, Though snapt our wands and sunk our books; They beckon, not to be gainsaid, Where, round broad meads that mowers wade, The Charles his steel-blue sickle crooks.

Where, as the cloudbergs eastward blow, From glow to gloom the hillsides shift Their plumps of orchard-trees arow, Their lakes of rye that wave and flow, Their snowy whiteweed's summer drift. 50

There have we watched the West unfurl A cloud Byzantium newly born, With flickering spires and domes of pearl, And vapory surfs that crowd and curl Into the sunset's Golden Horn.

There, as the flaming occident Burned slowly down to ashes gray, Night pitched o'erhead her silent tent, And glimmering gold from Hesper sprent Upon the darkened river lay, 60

Where a twin sky but just before Deepened, and double swallows skimmed, And from a visionary sh.o.r.e Hung visioned trees, that more and more Grew dusk as those above were dimmed.

Then eastward saw we slowly grow Clear-edged the lines of roof and spire, While great elm-ma.s.ses blacken slow, And linden-ricks their round heads show Against a flush of widening fire. 70

Doubtful at first and far away, The moon-flood creeps more wide and wide; Up a ridged beach of cloudy gray, Curved round the east as round a bay, It slips and spreads its gradual tide.

Then suddenly, in lurid mood, The disk looms large o'er town and field As upon Adam, red like blood, 'Tween him and Eden's happy wood, Glared the commissioned angel's shield. 80

Or let us seek the seaside, there To wander idly as we list, Whether, on rocky headlands bare, Sharp cedar-horns, like breakers, tear The trailing fringes of gray mist,

Or whether, under skies full flown, The brightening surfs, with foamy din, Their breeze-caught forelocks backward blown, Against the beach's yellow zone Curl slow, and plunge forever in. 90

And, as we watch those canvas towers That lean along the horizon's rim, 'Sail on,' I'll say; 'may sunniest hours Convoy you from this land of ours, Since from my side you bear not him!'

For years thrice three, wise Horace said, A poem rare let silence bind; And love may ripen to the shade, Like ours, for nine long seasons laid In deepest arches of the mind. 100

Come back! Not ours the Old World's good, The Old World's ill, thank G.o.d, not ours; But here, far better understood, The days enforce our native mood, And challenge all our manlier powers.

Kindlier to me the place of birth That first my tottering footsteps trod; There may be fairer spots of earth, But all their glories are not worth The virtue in the native sod. 110

Thence climbs an influence more benign Through pulse and nerve, through heart and brain; Sacred to me those fibres fine That first clasped earth. Oh, ne'er be mine The alien sun and alien rain!

These nourish not like homelier glows Or waterings of familiar skies, And nature fairer blooms bestows On the heaped hush of wintry snows, In pastures dear to childhood's eyes, 120

Than where Italian earth receives The partial sunshine's ampler boons, Where vines carve friezes 'neath the eaves, And, in dark firmaments of leaves, The orange lifts its golden moons.

THE NOMADES

What Nature makes in any mood To me is warranted for good, Though long before I learned to see She did not set us moral theses, And scorned to have her sweet caprices Strait-waistcoated in you or me.

I, who take root and firmly cling, Thought fixedness the only thing; Why Nature made the b.u.t.terflies, (Those dreams of wings that float and hover 10 At noon the slumberous poppies over,) Was something hidden from mine eyes,

Till once, upon a rock's brown bosom, Bright as a th.o.r.n.y cactus-blossom, I saw a b.u.t.terfly at rest; Then first of both I felt the beauty; The airy whim, the grim-set duty, Each from the other took its best.

Clearer it grew than winter sky That Nature still had reasons why; 20 And, shifting sudden as a breeze, My fancy found no satisfaction, No ant.i.thetic sweet attraction, So great as in the Nomades.

Scythians, with Nature not at strife, Light Arabs of our complex life, They build no houses, plant no mills To utilize Time's sliding river, Content that it flow waste forever, If they, like it, may have their wills. 30

An hour they pitch their shifting tents In thoughts, in feelings, and events; Beneath the palm-trees, on the gra.s.s, They sing, they dance, make love, and chatter, Vex the grim temples with their clatter, And make Truth's fount their looking-gla.s.s.

A picnic life; from love to love, From faith to faith they lightly move, And yet, hard-eyed philosopher, The flightiest maid that ever hovered 40 To me your thought-webs fine discovered, No lens to see them through like her.

So witchingly her finger-tips To Wisdom, as away she trips, She kisses, waves such sweet farewells To Duty, as she laughs 'To-morrow!'