The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 77

III

His life's expense Hath won him coeternal youth With the immaculate prime of Truth; While we, who make pretence At living on, and wake and eat and sleep, And life's stale trick by repet.i.tion keep, Our fickle permanence (A poor leaf-shadow on a brook, whose play Of busy idlesse ceases with our day) Is the mere cheat of sense. 70

We bide our chance, Unhappy, and make terms with Fate A little more to let us wait; He leads for aye the advance, Hope's forlorn-hopes that plant the desperate good For n.o.bler Earths and days of manlier mood; Our wall of circ.u.mstance Cleared at a bound, he flashes o'er the fight, A saintly shape of fame, to cheer the right And steel each wavering glance. 80

I write of one, While with dim eyes I think of three; Who weeps not others fair and brave as he?

Ah, when the fight is won, Dear Land, whom triflers now make bold to scorn, (Thee! from whose forehead Earth awaits her morn,) How n.o.bler shall the sun Flame in thy sky, how braver breathe thy air, That thou bred'st children who for thee could dare And die as thine have done!

ON BOARD THE '76

WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

NOVEMBER 3, 1884

Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side; Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free, Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide; Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn, We lay, awaiting morn.

Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair; And she that bare the promise of the world.

Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare, At random o'er the wildering waters hurled; 10 The reek of battle drifting slow alee Not sullener than we.

Morn came at last to peer into our woe, When lo, a sail! Mow surely help was nigh; The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge; but no, Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by And hails us:--'Gains the leak! Ay, so we thought!

Sink, then, with curses fraught!'

I leaned against my gun still angry-hot, And my lids tingled with the tears held back: 20 This scorn methought was crueller than shot: The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack, Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far Than such fear-smothered war.

There our foe wallowed, like a wounded brute The fiercer for his hurt. What now were best?

Once more tug bravely at the peril's root, Though death came with it? Or evade the test If right or wrong in this G.o.d's world of ours Be leagued with mightier powers? 30

Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs; Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry flag That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 'Neath the all-seeing sun.

But there was one, the Singer of our crew, Upon whose head Age waved his peaceful sign, But whose red heart's-blood no surrender knew; And couchant under brows of ma.s.sive line, 40 The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet, Watched, charged with lightnings yet.

The voices of the hills did his obey; The torrents flashed and tumbled in his song; He brought our native fields from far away, Or set us 'mid the innumerable throng Of dateless woods, or where we heard the calm Old homestead's evening psalm.

But now he sang of faith to things unseen, Of freedom's birthright given to us in trust; 50 And words of doughty cheer he spoke between, That made all earthly fortune seem as dust, Matched with that duty, old as Time and new, Of being brave and true.

We, listening, learned what makes the might of words,-- Manhood to back them, constant as a star: His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard, and wooed The winds with loftier mood. 60

In our dark hours he manned our guns again; Remanned ourselves from his own manhood's stores; Pride, honor, country, throbbed through all his strain; And shall we praise? G.o.d's praise was his before; And on our futile laurels he looks down, Himself our bravest crown.

ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION

JULY 21, 1865

I

Weak-winged is song, Nor aims at that clear-ethered height Whither the brave deed climbs for light: We seem to do them wrong, Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hea.r.s.e Who in warm life-blood wrote their n.o.bler verse, Our trivial song to honor those who come With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum, And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire, Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire: 10 Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious memory to buoy up and save From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave Of the unventurous throng.

II

To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back Her wisest Scholars, those who understood The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, And offered their fresh lives to make it good: No lore of Greece or Rome, No science peddling with the names of things, 20 Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, Can lift our life with wings Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits, And lengthen out our dates With that clear fame whose memory sings In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates: Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!

Not such the trumpet-call Of thy diviner mood, That could thy sons entice 30 From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest Of those half-virtues which the world calls best, Into War's tumult rude; But rather far that stern device The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood In the dim, unventured wood, The VERITAS that lurks beneath The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth living, Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 40 One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.

III

Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil Amid the dust of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.

Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her; But these, our brothers, fought for her, At life's dear peril wrought for her, So loved her that they died for her, 50 Tasting the raptured fleetness Of her divine completeness: Their higher instinct knew Those love her best who to themselves are true, And what they dare to dream of, dare to do; They followed her and found her Where all may hope to find, Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.

Where faith made whole with deed 60 Breathes its awakening breath Into the lifeless creed, They saw her plumed and mailed, With sweet, stern face unveiled.

And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.

IV

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past; What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last?

Is earth too poor to give us 70 Something to live for here that shall outlive us?

Some more substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?

The little that we see From doubt is never free; The little that we do Is but half-n.o.bly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the G.o.ds call dross, Life seems a fest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard pa.s.sions and desires, Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.

But stay! no age was e'er degenerate, Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, For in our likeness still we shape our fate. 90 Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, Something that gives our feeble light A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; A seed of sunshine that can leaven Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars, And glorify our clay With light from fountains elder than the Day; 100 A conscience more divine than we, A gladness fed with secret tears, A vexing, forward-reaching sense Of some more n.o.ble permanence; A light across the sea, Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years.

V

Whither leads the path To ampler fates that leads?

Not down through flowery meads, 110 To reap an aftermath Of youth's vainglorious weeds, But up the steep, amid the wrath And shock of deadly-hostile creeds, Where the world's best hope and stay By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.

Peace hath her not ign.o.ble wreath, Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword 120 Dreams in its easeful sheath; But some day the live coal behind the thought, Whether from Baal's stone obscene, Or from the shrine serene Of G.o.d's pure altar brought, Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught, And, helpless in the fiery pa.s.sion caught, Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men: Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 130 Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, And cries reproachful: 'Was it, then, my praise, And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth; Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, The victim of thy genius, not its mate!'

Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to Truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So bountiful is Fate; 140 But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield, This shows, methinks, G.o.d's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

VI

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 150 Whom late the Nation he had led.

With ashes on her head, Wept with the pa.s.sion of an angry grief: Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating as by rote: 160 For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of G.o.d, and true, How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth, 170 But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity!

They knew that outward grace is dust; They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind.

Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 180 Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.

Nothing of Europe here, Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface And thwart her genial will; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 190 I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate, So always firmly he: He knew to bide his time, And can his fame abide, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Till the wise years decide.

Great captains, with their guns and drums, 201 Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes; These all are gone, and, standing like a tower.

Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man.

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American.

VII