The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 6

Then, if so fierce the insatiate patriot's flame, Truth looks too pale and history seems too tame, Bid him await some new Columbiad's page, To gild the tablets of an iron age, And save his tears, which yet may fall upon Some fabled field, some fancied Washington!

IV.

But once again, from their AEolian cave, The winds of Genius wandered on the wave.

Tired of the scenes the timid pencil drew, Sick of the notes the sounding clarion blew, Sated with heroes who had worn so long The shadowy plumage of historic song, The new-born poet left the beaten course, To track the pa.s.sions to their living source.

Then rose the Drama;--and the world admired Her varied page with deeper thought inspired Bound to no clime, for Pa.s.sion's throb is one In Greenland's twilight or in India's sun; Born for no age, for all the thoughts that roll In the dark vortex of the stormy soul, Unchained in song, no freezing years can tame; G.o.d gave them birth, and man is still the same.

So full on life her magic mirror shone, Her sister Arts paid tribute to her throne; One reared her temple, one her canvas warmed, And Music thrilled, while Eloquence informed.

The weary rustic left his stinted task For smiles and tears, the dagger and the mask; The sage, turned scholar, half forgot his lore, To be the woman he despised before.

O'er sense and thought she threw her golden chain, And Time, the anarch, spares her deathless reign.

Thus lives Medea, in our tamer age, As when her buskin pressed the Grecian stage; Not in the cells where frigid learning delves In Aldine folios mouldering on their shelves, But breathing, burning in the glittering throng, Whose thousand bravoes roll untired along, Circling and spreading through the gilded halls, From London's galleries to San Carlo's walls!

Thus shall he live whose more than mortal name Mocks with its ray the pallid torch of Fame; So proudly lifted that it seems afar No earthly Pharos, but a heavenly star, Who, unconfined to Art's diurnal bound, Girds her whole zodiac in his flaming round, And leads the pa.s.sions, like the orb that guides, From pole to pole, the palpitating tides!

V.

Though round the Muse the robe of song is thrown, Think not the poet lives in verse alone.

Long ere the chisel of the sculptor taught The lifeless stone to mock the living thought; Long ere the painter bade the canvas glow With every line the forms of beauty know; Long ere the iris of the Muses threw On every leaf its own celestial hue, In fable's dress the breath of genius poured, And warmed the shapes that later times adored.

Untaught by Science how to forge the keys That loose the gates of Nature's mysteries; Unschooled by Faith, who, with her angel tread, Leads through the labyrinth with a single thread, His fancy, hovering round her guarded tower, Rained through its bars like Danae's golden shower.

He spoke; the sea-nymph answered from her cave He called; the naiad left her mountain wave He dreamed of beauty; lo, amidst his dream, Narcissus, mirrored in the breathless stream; And night's chaste empress, in her bridal play, Laughed through the foliage where Endymion lay; And ocean dimpled, as the languid swell Kissed the red lip of Cytherea's sh.e.l.l.

Of power,--Bellona swept the crimson field, And blue-eyed Pallas shook her Gorgon shield; O'er the hushed waves their mightier monarch drove, And Ida trembled to the tread of Jove!

So every grace that plastic language knows To nameless poets its perfection owes.

The rough-hewn words to simplest thoughts confined Were cut and polished in their nicer mind; Caught on their edge, imagination's ray Splits into rainbows, shooting far away;-- From sense to soul, from soul to sense, it flies, And through all nature links a.n.a.logies; He who reads right will rarely look upon A better poet than his lexicon!

There is a race which cold, ungenial skies Breed from decay, as fungous growths arise; Though dying fast, yet springing fast again, Which still usurps an unsubstantial reign, With frames too languid for the charms of sense, And minds worn down with action too intense; Tired of a world whose joys they never knew, Themselves deceived, yet thinking all untrue; Scarce men without, and less than girls within, Sick of their life before its cares begin;-- The dull disease, which drains their feeble hearts, To life's decay some hectic thrill's imparts, And lends a force which, like the maniac's power, Pays with blank years the frenzy of an hour.

And this is Genius! Say, does Heaven degrade The manly frame, for health, for action made?

Break down the sinews, rack the brow with pains, Blanch the right cheek and drain the purple veins, To clothe the mind with more extended sway, Thus faintly struggling in degenerate clay?

No! gentle maid, too ready to admire, Though false its notes, the pale enthusiast's lyre; If this be genius, though its bitter springs Glowed like the morn beneath Aurora's wings, Seek not the source whose sullen bosom feeds But fruitless flowers and dark, envenomed weeds.

But, if so bright the dear illusion seems, Thou wouldst be partner of thy poet's dreams, And hang in rapture on his bloodless charms, Or die, like Raphael, in his angel arms, Go and enjoy thy blessed lot,--to share In Cowper's gloom or Chatterton's despair!

Not such were they whom, wandering o'er the waves, I looked to meet, but only found their graves; If friendship's smile, the better part of fame, Should lend my song the only wreath I claim, Whose voice would greet me with a sweeter tone, Whose living hand more kindly press my own, Than theirs,--could Memory, as her silent tread Prints the pale flowers that blossom o'er the dead, Those breathless lips, now closed in peace, restore, Or wake those pulses hushed to beat no more?

Thou calm, chaste scholar! I can see thee now, The first young laurels on thy pallid brow, O'er thy slight figure floating lightly down In graceful folds the academic gown, On thy curled lip the cla.s.sic lines that taught How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought, And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye, Too bright to live,--but oh, too fair to die!

And thou, dear friend, whom Science still deplores, And Love still mourns, on ocean-severed sh.o.r.es, Though the bleak forest twice has bowed with snow Since thou wast laid its budding leaves below, Thine image mingles with my closing strain, As when we wandered by the turbid Seine, Both blessed with hopes, which revelled, bright and free, On all we longed or all we dreamed to be; To thee the amaranth and the cypress fell,-- And I was spared to breathe this last farewell!

But lived there one in unremembered days, Or lives there still, who spurns the poet's bays, Whose fingers, dewy from Castalia's springs, Rest on the lyre, yet scorn to touch the strings?

Who shakes the senate with the silver tone The groves of Pindus might have sighed to own?

Have such e'er been? Remember Canning's name!

Do such still live? Let "Alaric's Dirge" proclaim!

Immortal Art! where'er the rounded sky Bends o'er the cradle where thy children lie, Their home is earth, their herald every tongue Whose accents echo to the voice that sung.

One leap of Ocean scatters on the sand The quarried bulwarks of the loosening land; One thrill of earth dissolves a century's toil Strewed like the leaves that vanish in the soil; One hill o'erflows, and cities sink below, Their marbles splintering in the lava's glow; But one sweet tone, scarce whispered to the air, From sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e the blasts of ages bear; One humble name, which oft, perchance, has borne The tyrant's mockery and the courtier's scorn, Towers o'er the dust of earth's forgotten graves, As once, emerging through the waste of waves, The rocky t.i.tan, round whose shattered spear Coiled the last whirlpool of the drowning sphere!

ADDITIONAL POEMS

1837-1848

THE PILGRIM'S VISION

IN the hour of twilight shadows The Pilgrim sire looked out; He thought of the "bloudy Salvages"

That lurked all round about, Of Wituwamet's pictured knife And Pecksuot's whooping shout; For the baby's limbs were feeble, Though his father's arms were stout.

His home was a freezing cabin, Too bare for the hungry rat; Its roof was thatched with ragged gra.s.s, And bald enough of that; The hole that served for cas.e.m.e.nt Was glazed with an ancient hat, And the ice was gently thawing From the log whereon he sat.

Along the dreary landscape His eyes went to and fro,

The trees all clad in icicles, The streams that did not flow; A sudden thought flashed o'er him,-- A dream of long ago,-- He smote his leathern jerkin, And murmured, "Even so!"

"Come hither, G.o.d-be-Glorified, And sit upon my knee; Behold the dream unfolding, Whereof I spake to thee By the winter's hearth in Leyden And on the stormy sea.

True is the dream's beginning,-- So may its ending be!

"I saw in the naked forest Our scattered remnant cast, A screen of shivering branches Between them and the blast; The snow was falling round them, The dying fell as fast; I looked to see them perish, When lo, the vision pa.s.sed.

"Again mine eyes were opened;-- The feeble had waxed strong, The babes had grown to st.u.r.dy men, The remnant was a throng; By shadowed lake and winding stream, And all the sh.o.r.es along, The howling demons quaked to hear The Christian's G.o.dly song.

"They slept, the village fathers, By river, lake, and sh.o.r.e, When far adown the steep of Time The vision rose once more I saw along the winter snow A spectral column pour, And high above their broken ranks A tattered flag they bore.

"Their Leader rode before them, Of bearing calm and high, The light of Heaven's own kindling Throned in his awful eye; These were a Nation's champions Her dread appeal to try.

G.o.d for the right! I faltered, And lo, the train pa.s.sed by.

"Once more;--the strife is ended, The solemn issue tried, The Lord of Hosts, his mighty arm Has helped our Israel's side; Gray stone and gra.s.sy hillock Tell where our martyrs died, But peaceful smiles the harvest, And stainless flows the tide.

"A crash, as when some swollen cloud Cracks o'er the tangled trees With side to side, and spar to spar, Whose smoking decks are these?

I know Saint George's blood-red cross, Thou Mistress of the Seas, But what is she whose streaming bars Roll out before the breeze?

"Ah, well her iron ribs are knit, Whose thunders strive to quell The bellowing throats, the blazing lips, That pealed the Armada's knell!

The mist was cleared,--a wreath of stars Rose o'er the crimsoned swell, And, wavering from its haughty peak, The cross of England fell!

"O trembling Faith! though dark the morn, A heavenly torch is thine; While feebler races melt away, And paler orbs decline, Still shall the fiery pillar's ray Along thy pathway shine, To light the chosen tribe that sought This Western Palestine.