The Vision of Sir Launfal Part 7

Edgewise or flat, in Druid-like device, 190 With leaden pools between or gullies bare, The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice; No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, 195 Or when the close-wedged fields of ice crunch here and there.

But let me turn from fancy-pictured scenes To that whose pastoral calm before me lies: Here nothing harsh or rugged intervenes; The early evening with her misty dyes 200 Smooths off the ravelled edges of the nigh, Relieves the distant with her cooler sky, And tones the landscape down, and soothes the wearied eyes.

There gleams my native village, dear to me, Though higher change's waves each day are seen, 205 Whelming fields famed in boyhood's history, Sanding with houses the diminished green; There, in red brick, which softening time defies, Stand square and stiff the Muses' factories;-- How with my life knit up is every well-known scene! 210

Flow on, dear river! not alone you flow To outward sight, and through your marshes wind; Fed from the mystic springs of long-ago, Your twin flows silent through my world of mind: Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's gray! 215 Before my inner sight ye stretch away, And will forever, though these fleshly eyes grow blind.

Beyond the hillock's house-bespotted swell, Where Gothic chapels house the horse and chaise, Where quiet cits in Grecian temples dwell, 220 Where Coptic tombs resound with prayer and praise, Where dust and mud the equal year divide, There gentle Allston lived, and wrought, and died, Transfiguring street and shop with his illumined gaze.

_Virgilium vidi tantum_,--I have seen 225 But as a boy, who looks alike on all, That misty hair, that fine Undine-like mien.

Tremulous as down to feeling's faintest call;-- Ah, dear old homestead! count it to thy fame That thither many times the Painter came;-- 230 One elm yet bears his name, a feathery tree and tall.

Swiftly the present fades in memory's glow,-- Our only sure possession is the past; The village blacksmith died a month ago, And dim to me the forge's roaring blast; 235 Soon fire-new medievals we shall see Oust the black smithy from its chestnut-tree, And that hewn down, perhaps, the bee-hive green and vast.

How many times, prouder than king on throne, Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's, 240 Panting have I the creaky bellows blown, And watched the pent volcano's red increase, Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, brought down By that hard arm voluminous and brown, From the white iron swarm its golden vanis.h.i.+ng bees. 245

Dear native town! whose choking elms each year With eddying dust before their time turn gray, Pining for rain,--to me thy dust is dear; It glorifies the eve of summer day, And when the westering sun half sunken burns, 250 The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns, The westward horseman rides through clouds of gold away.

So palpable, I've seen those unshorn few, The six old willows at the causey's end (Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed nor drew), 255 Through this dry mist their checkering shadows send, Striped, here and there, with many a long-drawn thread, Where streamed through leafy c.h.i.n.ks the trembling red, Past which, in one bright trail, the hang-bird's flashes blend.

Yes, dearer far thy dust than all that e'er, 260 Beneath the awarded crown of victory, Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer; Though lightly prized the ribboned parchments three, Yet _collegisse juvat_, I am glad That here what colleging was mine I had,-- 265 It linked another tie, dear native town, with thee!

Nearer art thou than simply native earth, My dust with thine concedes a deeper tie; A closer claim thy soil may well put forth, Something of kindred more than sympathy; 270 For in thy bounds I reverently laid away That blinding anguish of forsaken clay, That t.i.tle I seemed to have in earth and sea and sky.

That portion of my life more choice to me (Though brief, yet in itself so round and whole) 275 Than all the imperfect residue can be;-- The Artist saw his statue of the soul Was perfect; so, with one regretful stroke, The earthen model into fragments broke, And without her the impoverished seasons roll. 280

THE OAK

What gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, is his!

There needs no crown to mark the forest's king; How in his leaves outs.h.i.+nes full summer's bliss!

Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring, Which he with such benignant royalty 5 Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent; All nature seems his va.s.sal proud to be, And cunning only for his ornament.

How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows, An unquelled exile from the summer's throne, 10 Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly shows, Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are flown.

His boughs make music of the winter air, Jewelled with sleet, like some cathedral front Where clinging snow-flakes with quaint art repair 15 The dents and furrows of time's envious brunt.

How doth his patient strength the rude March wind Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer breeze, And win the soil, that fain would be unkind, To swell his revenues with proud increase! 20 He is the gem; and all the landscape wide (So doth his grandeur isolate the sense) Seems but the setting, worthless all beside, An empty socket, were he fallen thence.

So, from oft converse with life's wintry gales, 25 Should man learn how to clasp with tougher roots The inspiring earth; how otherwise avails The leaf-creating sap that sunward shoots?

So every year that falls with noiseless flake Should fill old scars up on the stormward side, 30 And make h.o.a.r age revered for age's sake, Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride.

So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate, True hearts compel the sap of st.u.r.dier growth, So between earth and heaven stand simply great, 35 That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock him still. 40

Lord! all 'Thy works are lessons; each contains Some emblem of man's all-containing soul; Shall he make fruitless all thy glorious pains, Delving within thy grace an eyeless mole?

Make me the least of thy Dodona-grove, 45 Cause me some message of thy truth to bring, Speak but a word through me, nor let thy love Among my boughs disdain to perch and sing.

BEAVER BROOK

Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, And, minuting the long day's loss, The cedar's shadow, slow and still, Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss.

Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, 5 The aspen's leaves are scarce astir; Only the little mill sends up Its busy, never-ceasing burr.

Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems The road along the mill-pond's brink, 10 From 'neath the arching barberry-stems My footstep scares the shy chewink.

Beneath a bony b.u.t.tonwood The mill's red door lets forth the din; The whitened miller, dust-imbued, 15 Flits past the square of dark within.

No mountain torrent's strength is here; Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, 20 And gently waits the miller's will.

Swift slips Undine along the race Unheard, and then, with flas.h.i.+ng bound, Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round.

The miller dreams not at what cost, 25 The quivering millstones hum and whirl, Nor how for every turn are tost Armfuls of diamond and of pearl.

But Summer cleared my happier eyes With drops of some celestial juice, 30 To see how Beauty underlies, Forevermore each form of use.

And more; methought I saw that flood, Which now so dull and darkling steals, Thick, here and there, with human blood, 35 To turn the world's laborious wheels.

No more than doth the miller there, Shut in our several cells, do we Know with what waste of beauty rare Moves every day's machinery. 40

Surely the wiser time shall come When this fine overplus of might, No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, Shall leap to music and to light.

In that new childhood of the Earth 45 Life of itself shall dance and play, Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make mirth, And labor meet delight half-way.--

THE PRESENT CRISIS

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the th.o.r.n.y stem of Time. 5

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe, When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro; At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart. 10

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with G.o.d In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod, Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the n.o.bler clod. 15

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong; Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;-- In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. 20

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, G.o.d's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. 25

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand, Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is Truth alone is strong, And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to ens.h.i.+eld her from all wrong. 30

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, G.o.d's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath pa.s.sed by. 35