The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 85

1.

Now forth into the darkness all are gone, But memory, still unsated, follows on, Retracing step by step our homeward walk, With many a laugh among our serious talk, Across the bridge where, on the dimpling tide, The long red streamers from the windows glide, Or the dim western moon Rocks her skiff's image on the broad lagoon, 321 And Boston shows a soft Venetian side In that Arcadian light when roof and tree, Hard prose by daylight, dream in Italy; Or haply in the sky's cold chambers wide Shivered the winter stars, while all below, As if an end were come of human ill, The world was wrapt in innocence of snow And the cast-iron bay was blind and still; These were our poetry; in him perhaps 330 Science had barred the gate that lets in dream, And he would rather count the perch and bream Than with the current's idle fancy lapse; And yet he had the poet's open eye That takes a frank delight in all it sees, Nor was earth voiceless, nor the mystic sky, To him the life-long friend of fields and trees: Then came the prose of the suburban street, Its silence deepened by our echoing feet, And converse such as rambling hazard finds; 340 Then he who many cities knew and many minds, And men once world-noised, now mere Ossian forms Of misty memory, bade them live anew As when they shared earth's manifold delight, In shape, in gait, in voice, in gesture true, And, with an accent heightening as he warms, Would stop forgetful of the shortening night, Drop my confining arm, and pour profuse Much worldly wisdom kept for others' use, Not for his own, for he was rash and free, 350 His purse or knowledge all men's, like the sea.

Still can I hear his voice's shrilling might (With pauses broken, while the fitful spark He blew more hotly rounded on the dark To hint his features with a Rembrandt light) Call Oken back, or Humboldt, or Lamarck, Or Cuvier's taller shade, and many more Whom he had seen, or knew from others' sight, And make them men to me as ne'er before: Not seldom, as the undeadened fibre stirred 360 Of n.o.ble friendships knit beyond the sea, German or French thrust by the lagging word, For a good leash of mother-tongues had he.

At last, arrived at where our paths divide, 'Good night!' and, ere the distance grew too wide, 'Good night!' again; and now with cheated ear I half hear his who mine shall never hear.

2.

Sometimes it seemed as if New England air For his large lungs too parsimonious were, As if those empty rooms of dogma drear 370 Where the ghost shivers of a faith austere Counting the horns o'er of the Beast, Still scaring those whose faith to it is least, As if those snaps o' th' moral atmosphere That sharpen all the needles of the East, Had been to him like death, Accustomed to draw Europe's freer breath In a more stable element; Nay, even our landscape, half the year morose, Our practical horizon, grimly pent, 380 Our air, sincere of ceremonious haze, Forcing hard outlines mercilessly close, Our social monotone of level days, Might make our best seem banishment; But it was nothing so; Haply this instinct might divine, Beneath our drift of puritanic snow, The marvel sensitive and fine Of sanguinaria over-rash to blow And trust its shyness to an air malign; 390 Well might he prize truth's warranty and pledge In the grim outcrop of our granite edge, Or Hebrew fervor flashing forth at need In the gaunt sons of Calvin's iron breed, As prompt to give as skilled to win and keep; But, though such intuitions might not cheer, Yet life was good to him, and, there or here, With that sufficing joy, the day was never cheap; Thereto his mind was its own ample sphere, And, like those buildings great that through the year 400 Carry one temperature, his nature large Made its own climate, nor could any marge Traced by convention stay him from his bent: He had a habitude of mountain air; He brought wide outlook where he went, And could on sunny uplands dwell Of prospect sweeter than the pastures fair High-hung of viny Neufchatel; Nor, surely, did he miss Some pale, imaginary bliss Of earlier sights whose inner landscape still was Swiss. 411

V

1.

I cannot think he wished so soon to die With all his senses full of eager heat, And rosy years that stood expectant by To buckle the winged sandals on their feet, He that was friends with Earth, and all her sweet Took with both hands unsparingly: Truly this life is precious to the root, And good the feel of gra.s.s beneath the foot; To lie in b.u.t.tercups and clover-bloom, 420 Tenants in common with the bees, And watch the white clouds drift through gulfs of trees, Is better than long waiting in the tomb; Only once more to feel the coming spring As the birds feel it, when it bids them sing, Only once more to see the moon Through leaf-fringed abbey-arches of the elms Curve her mild sickle in the West Sweet with the breath of hayc.o.c.ks, were a boon Worth any promise of soothsayer realms 430 Or casual hope of being elsewhere blest; To take December by the beard And crush the creaking snow with springy foot, While overhead the North's dumb streamers shoot, Till Winter fawn upon the cheek endeared, Then the long evening-ends Lingered by cosy chimney-nooks, With high companionship of books Or slippered talk of friends And sweet habitual looks, Is better than to stop the ears with dust: 441 Too soon the spectre comes to say, 'Thou must!'

2.

When toil-crooked hands are crost upon the breast, They comfort us with sense of rest; They must be glad to lie forever still; Their work is ended with their day; Another fills their room; 't is the World's ancient way, Whether for good or ill; But the deft spinners of the brain, Who love each added day and find it gain, 450 Them overtakes the doom To snap the half-grown flower upon the loom (Trophy that was to be of life long pain), The thread no other skill can ever knit again.

'Twas so with him, for he was glad to live, 'Twas doubly so, for he left work begun; Could not this eagerness of Fate forgive Till all the allotted flax were spun?

It matters not; for, go at night or noon, A friend, whene'er he dies, has died too soon, 460 And, once we hear the hopeless _He is dead,_ So far as flesh hath knowledge, all is said.

VI

1.

I seem to see the black procession go: That crawling prose of death too well I know, The vulgar paraphrase of glorious woe; I see it wind through that unsightly grove, Once beautiful, but long defaced With granite permanence of c.o.c.kney taste And all those grim disfigurements we love: There, then, we leave him: Him? such costly waste 470 Nature rebels at: and it is not true Of those most precious parts of him we knew: Could we be conscious but as dreamers be, 'Twere sweet to leave this shifting life of tents Sunk in the changeless calm of Deity; Nay, to be mingled with the elements, The fellow-servants of creative powers, Partaker in the solemn year's events, To share the work of busy-fingered hours, To be night's silent almoner of dew, 480 To rise again in plants and breathe and grow, To stream as tides the ocean caverns through, Or with the rapture of great winds to blow About earth's shaken coignes, were not a fate To leave us all-disconsolate; Even endless slumber in the sweetening sod Of charitable earth That takes out all our mortal stains, And makes us cleanlier neighbors of the clod, Methinks were better worth Than the poor fruit of most men's wakeful pains, 491 The heart's insatiable ache: But such was not his faith, Nor mine: it may be he had trod Outside the plain old path of _G.o.d thus spake_, But G.o.d to him was very G.o.d And not a visionary wraith Skulking in murky corners of the mind, And he was sure to be Somehow, somewhere, imperishable as He, 500 Not with His essence mystically combined, As some high spirits long, but whole and free, A perfected and conscious Aga.s.siz.

And such I figure him: the wise of old Welcome and own him of their peaceful fold, Not truly with the guild enrolled Of him who seeking inward guessed Diviner riddles than the rest, And groping in the darks of thought Touched the Great Hand and knew it not; 510 Rather he shares the daily light, From reason's charier fountains won, Of his great chief, the slow-paced Stagyrite, And Cuvier clasps once more his long-lost son.

2.

The shape erect is p.r.o.ne: forever stilled The winning tongue; the forehead's high-piled heap, A cairn which every science helped to build, Unvalued will its golden secrets keep: He knows at last if Life or Death be best: Wherever he be flown, whatever vest 520 The being hath put on which lately here So many-friended was, so full of cheer To make men feel the Seeker's n.o.ble zest, We have not lost him all; he is not gone To the dumb herd of them that wholly die; The beauty of his better self lives on In minds he touched with fire, in many an eye He trained to Truth's exact severity; He was a Teacher: why be grieved for him Whose living word still stimulates the air? 530 In endless file shall loving scholars come The glow of his transmitted touch to share, And trace his features with an eye less dim Than ours whose sense familiar wont makes dumb.

TO HOLMES

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY

Dear Wendell, why need count the years Since first your genius made me thrill, If what moved then to smiles or tears, Or both contending, move me still?

What has the Calendar to do With poets? What Time's fruitless tooth With gay immortals such as you Whose years but emphasize your youth?

One air gave both their lease of breath; The same paths lured our boyish feet; One earth will hold us safe in death With dust of saints and scholars sweet.

Our legends from one source were drawn, I scarce distinguish yours from mine, And _don't_ we make the Gentiles yawn With 'You remembers?' o'er our wine!

If I, with too senescent air, Invade your elder memory's pale, You snub me with a pitying 'Where Were you in the September Gale?'

Both stared entranced at Lafayette, Saw Jackson dubbed with LL.D.

What Cambridge saw not strikes us yet As scarcely worth one's while to see.

Ten years my senior, when my name In Harvard's entrance-book was writ, Her halls still echoed with the fame Of you, her poet and her wit.

'Tis fifty years from then to now; But your Last Leaf renews its green, Though, for the laurels on your brow (So thick they crowd), 'tis hardly seen.

The oriole's fledglings fifty times Have flown from our familiar elms; As many poets with their rhymes Oblivion's darkling dust o'erwhelms.

The birds are hushed, the poets gone Where no harsh critic's lash can reach, And still your winged brood sing on To all who love our English speech.

Nay, let the foolish records he That make believe you're seventy-five: You're the old Wendell still to me,-- And that's the youngest man alive.

The gray-blue eyes, I see them still, The gallant front with brown o'erhung, The shape alert, the wit at will, The phrase that stuck, but never stung.

You keep your youth as yon Scotch firs, Whose gaunt line my horizon hems, Though twilight all the lowland blurs, Hold sunset in their ruddy stems.

_You_ with the elders? Yes, 'tis true, But in no sadly literal sense, With elders and coevals too, Whose verb admits no preterite tense.

Master alike in speech and song Of fame's great antiseptic--Style, You with the cla.s.sic few belong Who tempered wisdom with a smile.

Outlive us all! Who else like you Could sift the seedcorn from our chaff, And make us with the pen we knew Deathless at least in epitaph?

IN A COPY OF OMAR KHAYYaM

These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

Fit rosary for a queen, in shape and hue, When Contemplation tells her pensive beads Of mortal thoughts, forever old and new.

Fit for a queen? Why, surely then for you!

The moral? Where Doubt's eddies toss and twirl Faith's slender shallop till her footing reel, Plunge: if you find not peace beneath the whirl, Groping, you may like Omar grasp a pearl.

ON RECEIVING A COPY OF MR. AUSTIN DOBSON'S 'OLD WORLD IDYLLS'

I

At length arrived, your book I take To read in for the author's sake; Too gray for new sensations grown, Can charm to Art or Nature known This torpor from my senses shake?

Hush! my parched ears what runnels slake?

Is a thrush gurgling from the brake?

Has Spring, on all the breezes blown, At length arrived?