The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 66

That both from that mad contrast borrow A perfectness found nowhere else.

The beach-bird on its pearly verge Follows and flies the whispering surge, 50 While, in his tent, the rock-stayed sh.e.l.l Awaits the flood's star-timed vibrations, And both, the flutter and the patience, The sauntering poet loves them well.

Fulfil so much of G.o.d's decree As works its problem out in thee, Nor dream that in thy breast alone The conscience of the changeful seasons, The Will that in the planets reasons With s.p.a.ce-wide logic, has its throne. 60

Thy virtue makes not vice of mine, Unlike, but none the less divine; Thy toil adorns, not chides, my play; Nature of sameness is so chary, With such wild whim the freakish fairy Picks presents for the christening-day.

SELF-STUDY

A presence both by night and day, That made my life seem just begun, Yet scarce a presence, rather say The warning aureole of one.

And yet I felt it everywhere; Walked I the woodland's aisles along, It seemed to brush me with its hair; Bathed I, I heard a mermaid's song.

How sweet it was! A b.u.t.tercup Could hold for me a day's delight, A bird could lift my fancy up To ether free from cloud or blight.

Who was the nymph? Nay, I will see, Methought, and I will know her near; If such, divined, her charm can be, Seen and possessed, how triply dear!

So every magic art I tried, And spells as numberless as sand, Until, one evening, by my side I saw her glowing fulness stand.

I turned to clasp her, but 'Farewell,'

Parting she sighed, 'we meet no more; Not by my hand the curtain fell That leaves you conscious, wise, and poor.

'Since you nave found me out, I go; Another lover I must find, Content his happiness to know, Nor strive its secret to unwind.'

PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE

I

A heap of bare and splintery crags Tumbled about by lightning and frost, With rifts and chasms and storm-bleached jags, That wait and growl for a ship to be lost; No island, but rather the skeleton Of a wrecked and vengeance-smitten one, Where, aeons ago, with half-shut eye, The sluggish saurian crawled to die, Gasping under t.i.tanic ferns; Ribs of rock that seaward jut, 10 Granite shoulders and boulders and snags, Round which, though the winds in heaven be shut, The nightmared ocean murmurs and yearns, Welters, and swashes, and tosses, and turns, And the dreary black seaweed lolls and wags; Only rock from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, Only a moan through the bleak clefts blown, With sobs in the rifts where the coa.r.s.e kelp shifts, Falling and lifting, tossing and drifting, And under all a deep, dull roar, 20 Dying and swelling, forevermore,-- Rock and moan and roar alone, And the dread of some nameless thing unknown, These make Appledore.

These make Appledore by night: Then there are monsters left and right; Every rock is a different monster; All you have read of, fancied, dreamed, When you waked at night because you screamed, There they lie for half a mile, 30 Jumbled together in a pile, And (though you know they never once stir) If you look long, they seem to be moving Just as plainly as plain can be, Crushing and crowding, wading and shoving Out into the awful sea, Where you can hear them snort and spout With pauses between, as if they were listening, Then tumult anon when the surf breaks glistening In the blackness where they wallow about. 40

II

All this you would scarcely comprehend, Should you see the isle on a sunny day; Then it is simple enough in its way,-- Two rocky bulges, one at each end, With a smaller bulge and a hollow between; Patches of whortleberry and bay; Accidents of open green, Sprinkled with loose slabs square and gray, Like graveyards for ages deserted; a few Unsocial thistles; an elder or two, 50 Foamed over with blossoms white as spray; And on the whole island never a tree Save a score of sumachs, high as your knee.

That crouch in hollows where they may, (The cellars where once stood a village, men say,) Huddling for warmth, and never grew Tall enough for a peep at the sea; A general dazzle of open blue; A breeze always blowing and playing rat-tat With the bow of the ribbon round your hat; 60 A score of sheep that do nothing but stare Up or down at you everywhere; Three or four cattle that chew the cud Lying about in a listless despair; A medrick that makes you look overhead With short, sharp scream, as he sights his prey, And, dropping straight and swift as lead, Splits the water with sudden thud;-- This is Appledore by day.

A common island, you will say; 70 But stay a moment: only climb Up to the highest rock of the isle, Stand there alone for a little while, And with gentle approaches it grows sublime, Dilating slowly as you win A sense from the silence to take it in.

So wide the loneness, so lucid the air, The granite beneath you so savagely bare, You well might think you were looking down From some sky-silenced mountain's crown, 80 Whose waist-belt of pines is wont to tear Locks of wool from the topmost cloud.

Only be sure you go alone, For Grandeur is inaccessibly proud, And never yet has backward thrown Her veil to feed the stare of a crowd; To more than one was never shown That awful front, nor is it fit That she, Cothurnus-shod, stand bowed Until the self-approving pit 90 Enjoy the gust of its own wit In babbling plaudits cheaply loud; She hides her mountains and her sea From the harriers of scenery, Who hunt down sunsets, and huddle and bay, Mouthing and mumbling the dying day.

Trust me, 'tis something to be cast Face to face with one's Self at last, To be taken out of the fuss and strife, The endless clatter of plate and knife, 100 The bore of books and the bores of the street, From the singular mess we agree to call Life, Where that is best which the most fools vote is, And planted firm on one's own two feet So nigh to the great warm heart of G.o.d, You almost seem to feel it beat Down from the sunshine and up from the sod; To be compelled, as it were, to notice All the beautiful changes and chances Through which the landscape flits and glances, 110 And to see how the face of common day Is written all over with tender histories, When you study it that intenser way In which a lover looks at his mistress.

Till now you dreamed not what could be done With a bit of rock and a ray of sun: But look, how fade the lights and shades Of keen bare edge and crevice deep!

How doubtfully it fades and fades, And glows again, yon craggy steep, 120 O'er which, through color's dreamiest grades, The musing sunbeams pause and creep!

Now pink it blooms, now glimmers gray, Now shadows to a filmy blue, Tries one, tries all, and will not stay, But flits from opal hue to hue, And runs through every tenderest range Of change that seems not to be change, So rare the sweep, so nice the art, That lays no stress on any part, 130 But shifts and lingers and persuades; So soft that sun-brush in the west, That asks no costlier pigments' aids, But mingling k.n.o.bs, flaws, angles, dints, Indifferent of worst or best, Enchants the cliffs with wraiths and hints And gracious preludings of tints, Where all seems fixed, yet all evades, And indefinably pervades Perpetual movement with perpetual rest! 140

III

Away northeast is Boone Island light; You might mistake it for a ship, Only it stands too plumb upright, And like the others does not slip Behind the sea's unsteady brink; Though, if a cloud-shade chance to dip Upon it a moment, 'twill suddenly sink, Levelled and lost in the darkened main, Till the sun builds it suddenly up again, As if with a rub of Aladdin's lamp. 150 On the mainland you see a misty camp Of mountains pitched tumultuously: That one looming so long and large Is Saddleback, and that point you see Over yon low and rounded marge, Like the boss of a sleeping giant's targe Laid over his breast, is Ossipee; That shadow there may be Kearsarge; That must be Great Haystack; I love these names, Wherewith the lonely farmer tames 160 Nature to mute companionship With his own mind's domestic mood, And strives the surly world to clip In the arms of familiar habitude.

'Tis well he could not contrive to make A Saxon of Agamenticus: He glowers there to the north of us, Wrapt in his blanket of blue haze, Unconvertibly savage, and scorns to take The white man's baptism or his ways. 170 Him first on sh.o.r.e the coaster divines Through the early gray, and sees him shake The morning mist from his scalp-lock of pines; Him first the skipper makes out in the west, Ere the earliest sunstreak shoots tremulous, Plashing with orange the palpitant lines Of mutable billow, crest after crest, And murmurs _Agamenticus!_ As if it were the name of a saint.

But is that a mountain playing cloud, 180 Or a cloud playing mountain, just there, so faint?

Look along over the low right shoulder Of Agamenticus into that crowd Of bra.s.sy thunderheads behind it; Now you have caught it, but, ere you are older By half an hour, you will lose it and find it A score of times; while you look 'tis gone, And, just as you've given it up, anon It is there again, till your weary eyes Fancy they see it waver and rise, 190 With its brother clouds; it is Agiochook, There if you seek not, and gone if you look, Ninety miles off as the eagle flies.

But mountains make not all the sh.o.r.e The mainland shows to Appledore: Eight miles the heaving water spreads To a long, low coast with beaches and heads That run through unimagined mazes, As the lights and shades and magical hazes Put them away or bring them near, 200 Shimmering, sketched out for thirty miles Between two capes that waver like threads, And sink in the ocean, and reappear, Crumbled and melted to little isles With filmy trees, that seem the mere Half-fancies of drowsy atmosphere; And see the beach there, where it is Flat as a threshing-floor, beaten and packed With the flashing flails of weariless seas, How it lifts and looms to a precipice, 210 O'er whose square front, a dream, no more, The steepened sand-stripes seem to pour, A murmurless vision of cataract; You almost fancy you hear a roar, Fitful and faint from the distance wandering; But 'tis only the blind old ocean maundering, Raking the shingle to and fro, Aimlessly clutching and letting go The kelp-haired sedges of Appledore, Slipping down with a sleepy forgetting, 220 And anon his ponderous shoulder setting, With a deep, hoa.r.s.e pant against Appledore.

IV

Eastward as far as the eye can see, Still eastward, eastward, endlessly, The sparkle and tremor of purple sea That rises before you, a flickering hill, On and on to the shut of the sky, And beyond, you fancy it sloping until The same mult.i.tudinous throb and thrill That vibrate under your dizzy eye 230 In ripples of orange and pink are sent Where the poppied sails doze on the yard, And the clumsy junk and proa lie Sunk deep with precious woods and nard, 'Mid the palmy isles of the Orient.

Those leaning towers of clouded white On the farthest brink of doubtful ocean, That shorten and shorten out of sight, Yet seem on the selfsame spot to stay, Receding with a motionless motion, 240 Fading to dubious films of gray, Lost, dimly found, then vanished wholly, Will rise again, the great world under, First films, then towers, then high-heaped clouds, Whose nearing outlines sharpen slowly Into tall ships with cobweb shrouds, That fill long Mongol eyes with wonder, Crushing the violet wave to spray Past some low headland of Cathay;-- What was that sigh which seemed so near, 250 Chilling your fancy to the core?

'Tis only the sad old sea you hear, That seems to seek forevermore Something it cannot find, and so, Sighing, seeks on, and tells its woe To the pitiless breakers of Appledore.

V

How looks Appledore in a storm?

I have seen it when its crags seemed frantic, b.u.t.ting against the mad Atlantic, When surge on surge would heap enorme, 260 Cliffs of emerald topped with snow, That lifted and lifted, and then let go A great white avalanche of thunder, A grinding, blinding, deafening ire Monadnock might have trembled under; And the island, whose rock-roots pierce below To where they are warmed with the central fire, You could feel its granite fibres racked, As it seemed to plunge with a shudder and thrill Right at the breast of the swooping hill, 270 And to rise again snorting a cataract Of rage-froth from every cranny and ledge, While the sea drew its breath in hoa.r.s.e and deep, And the next vast breaker curled its edge, Gathering itself for a mightier leap.

North, east, and south there are reefs and breakers You would never dream of in smooth weather, That toss and gore the sea for acres, Bellowing and gnashing and snarling together; Look northward, where Duck Island lies, 280 And over its crown you will see arise, Against a background of slaty skies, A row of pillars still and white, That glimmer, and then are gone from sight, As if the moon should suddenly kiss, While you crossed the gusty desert by night, The long colonnades of Persepolis; Look southward for White Island light, The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide; There is first a half-mile of tumult and fight, 290 Of dash and roar and tumble and fright, And surging bewilderment wild and wide, Where the breakers struggle left and right, Then a mile or more of rushing sea, And then the lighthouse slim and lone; And whenever the weight of ocean is thrown Full and fair on White Island head, A great mist-jotun you will see Lifting himself up silently High and huge o'er the lighthouse top, 300 With hands of wavering spray outspread, Groping after the little tower, That seems to shrink and shorten and cower, Till the monster's arms of a sudden drop, And silently and fruitlessly He sinks back into the sea.

You, meanwhile, where drenched you stand, Awaken once more to the rush and roar, And on the rock-point tighten your hand, As you turn and see a valley deep, 310 That was not there a moment before, Suck rattling down between you and a heap Of toppling billow, whose instant fall Must sink the whole island once for all, Or watch the silenter, stealthier seas Feeling their way to you more and more; If they once should clutch you high as the knees, They would whirl you down like a sprig of kelp, Beyond all reach of hope or help;-- And such in a storm is Appledore. 320

VI

'Tis the sight of a lifetime to behold The great shorn sun as you see it now, Across eight miles of undulant gold That widens landward, weltered and rolled, With freaks of shadow and crimson stains; To see the solid mountain brow As it notches the disk, and gains and gains, Until there comes, you scarce know when, A tremble of fire o'er the parted lips Of cloud and mountain, which vanishes; then 330 From the body of day the sun-soul slips And the face of earth darkens; but now the strips Of western vapor, straight and thin, From which the horizon's swervings win A grace of contrast, take fire and burn Like splinters of touchwood, whose edges a mould Of ashes o'er feathers; northward turn For an instant, and let your eye grow cold On Agamenticus, and when once more You look, 'tis as if the land-breeze, growing, 340 From the smouldering brands the film were blowing, And brightening them down to the very core; Yet, they momently cool and dampen and deaden, The crimson turns golden, the gold turns leaden, Hardening into one black bar O'er which, from the hollow heaven afar, Shoots a splinter of light like diamond, Half seen, half fancied; by and by Beyond whatever is most beyond In the uttermost waste of desert sky, 350 Grows a star; And over it, visible spirit of dew,-- Ah, stir not, speak not, hold your breath, Or surely the miracle vanisheth,-- The new moon, tranced in unspeakable blue!

No frail illusion; this were true, Rather, to call it the canoe Hollowed out of a single pearl, That floats us from the Present's whirl Back to those beings which were ours, 360 When wishes were winged things like powers!

Call it not light, that mystery tender, Which broods upon the brooding ocean, That flush of ecstasied surrender To indefinable emotion, That glory, mellower than a mist Of pearl dissolved with amethyst, Which rims Square Rock, like what they paint Of mitigated heavenly splendor Round the stern forehead of a Saint! 370

No more a vision, reddened, largened, The moon dips toward her mountain nest, And, fringing it with palest argent, Slow sheathes herself behind the margent Of that long cloud-bar in the West, Whose nether edge, erelong, you see The silvery chrism in turn anoint, And then the tiniest rosy point Touched doubtfully and timidly Into the dark blue's chilly strip, As some mute, wondering thing below, 381 Awakened by the thrilling glow, Might, looking up, see Dian dip One lucent foot's delaying tip In Latmian fountains long ago.

Knew you what silence was before?

Here is no startle of dreaming bird That sings in his sleep, or strives to sing; Here is no sough of branches stirred, Nor noise of any living thing, 390 Such as one hears by night on sh.o.r.e; Only, now and then, a sigh, With fickle intervals between, Sometimes far, and sometimes nigh, Such as Andromeda might have heard, And fancied the huge sea-beast unseen Turning in sleep; it is the sea That welters and wavers uneasily.

Round the lonely reefs of Appledore.

THE WIND-HARP

I treasure in secret some long, fine hair Of tenderest brown, but so inwardly golden I half used to fancy the sunshine there, So shy, so shifting, so waywardly rare, Was only caught for the moment and holden While I could say _Dearest!_ and kiss it, and then In pity let go to the summer again.