The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 26

SUGGESTED BY THE GRAVES OF TWO ENGLISH SOLDIERS ON CONCORD BATTLE-GROUND

The same good blood that now refills The dotard Orient's shrunken veins, The same whose vigor westward thrills, Bursting Nevada's silver chains, Poured here upon the April gra.s.s, Freckled with red the herbage new; On reeled the battle's trampling ma.s.s, Back to the ash the bluebird flew.

Poured here in vain;--that st.u.r.dy blood Was meant to make the earth more green, But in a higher, gentler mood Than broke this April noon serene; Two graves are here: to mark the place, At head and foot, an unhewn stone, O'er which the herald lichens trace The blazon of Oblivion.

These men were brave enough, and true To the hired soldier's bull-dog creed; What brought them here they never knew, They fought as suits the English breed: They came three thousand miles, and died, To keep the Past upon its throne: Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, Their English mother made her moan.

The turf that covers them no thrill Sends up to fire the heart and brain; No stronger purpose nerves the will, No hope renews its youth again: From farm to farm the Concord glides, And trails my fancy with its flow; O'erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides, Twinned in the river's heaven below.

But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs, Proud of thy birth and neighbor's right, Where sleep the heroic villagers Borne red and stiff from Concord fight; Thought Reuben, s.n.a.t.c.hing down his gun, Or Seth, as ebbed the life away, What earthquake rifts would shoot and run World-wide from that short April fray?

What then? With heart and hand they wrought, According to their village light; 'Twas for the Future that they fought, Their rustic faith in what was right.

Upon earth's tragic stage they burst Unsummoned, in the humble sock; Theirs the fifth act; the curtain first Rose long ago on Charles's block.

Their graves have voices; if they threw Dice charged with fates beyond their ken, Yet to their instincts they were true, And had the genius to be men.

Fine privilege of Freedom's host, Of humblest soldiers for the Right!-- Age after age ye hold your post, Your graves send courage forth, and might.

TO----

We, too, have autumns, when our leaves Drop loosely through the dampened air, When all our good seems bound in sheaves, And we stand reaped and bare.

Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go; At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow.

But each day brings less summer cheer, Crimps more our ineffectual spring, And something earlier every year Our singing birds take wing.

As less the olden glow abides, And less the chillier heart aspires, With drift-wood beached in past spring-tides We light our sullen fires.

By the pinched rushlight's starving beam We cower and strain our wasted sight, To st.i.tch youth's shroud up, seam by seam, In the long arctic night.

It was not so--we once were young When Spring, to womanly Summer turning, Her dew-drops on each gra.s.s-blade strung, In the red sunrise burning.

We trusted then, aspired, believed That earth could be remade to-morrow; Ah, why be ever undeceived?

Why give up faith for sorrow?

O thou, whose days are yet all spring, Faith, blighted one, is past retrieving; Experience is a dumb, dead thing; The victory's in believing.

FREEDOM

Are we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be That thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringest Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea, Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom flingest, As on an altar,--can it be that ye Have wasted inspiration on dead ears, Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains?

The people's heart is like a harp for years Hung where some petrifying torrent rains Its slow-incrusting spray: the stiffened chords 10 Faint and more faint make answer to the tears That drip upon them: idle are all words: Only a golden plectrum wakes the tone Deep buried 'neath that ever-thickening stone.

We are not free: doth Freedom, then, consist In musing with our faces toward the Past, While petty cares and crawling interests twist Their spider-threads about us, which at last Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind In formal narrowness heart, soul and mind? 20 Freedom is re-created year by year, In hearts wide open on the G.o.dward side, In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, In minds that sway the future like a tide.

He broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes; She chooses men for her august abodes, Building them fair and fronting to the dawn; Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few Light footprints, leading mornward through the dew: Before the day had risen, she was gone. 30

And we must follow: swiftly runs she on, And, if our steps should slacken in despair, Half turns her face, half smiles through golden hair, Forever yielding, never wholly won: That is not love which pauses in the race Two close-linked names on fleeting sand to trace; Freedom gained yesterday is no more ours; Men gather but dry seeds of last year's flowers; Still there's a charm uugranted, still a grace, Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained, 40 Makes us Possession's languid hand let fall; 'Tis but a fragment of ourselves is gained, The Future brings us more, but never all.

And, as the finder of some unknown realm, Mounting a summit whence he thinks to see On either side of him the imprisoning sea, Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelm The valley-land, peak after snowy peak Stretch out of sight, each like a silver helm Beneath its plume of smoke, sublime and bleak, 50 And what he thought an island finds to be A continent to him first oped,--so we Can from our height of Freedom look along A boundless future, ours if we be strong; Or if we shrink, better remount our s.h.i.+ps And, fleeing G.o.d's express design, trace back The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet-track To Europe entering her blood-red eclipse.

Therefore of Europe now I will not doubt, For the broad foreheads surely win the day, 60 And brains, not crowns or soul-gelt armies, weigh In Fortune's scales: such dust she brushes out.

Most gracious are the conquests of the Word, Gradual and silent as a flower's increase, And the best guide from old to new is Peace-- Yet, Freedom, than canst sanctify the sword!

Bravely to do whate'er the time demands, Whether with pen or sword, and not to flinch, This is the task that fits heroic hands; So are Truth's boundaries widened inch by inch. 70

I do not love the Peace which tyrants make; The calm she breeds let the sword's lightning break!

It is the tyrants who have beaten out Ploughshares and pruning-hooks to spears and swords, And shall I pause and moralize and doubt?

Whose veins run water let him mete his words!

Each fetter sundered is the whole world's gain!

And rather than humanity remain A pearl beneath the feet of Austrian swine, Welcome to me whatever breaks a chain. 80 _That_ surely is of G.o.d, and all divine!

BIBLIOLATRES

Bowing thyself in dust before a Book, And thinking the great G.o.d is thine alone, O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brook What G.o.ds the heathen carves in wood and stone, As if the Shepherd who from the outer cold Leads all his s.h.i.+vering lambs to one sure fold Were careful for the fas.h.i.+on of his crook.

There is no broken reed so poor and base, No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue, But He therewith the ravening wolf can chase, And guide his flock to springs and pastures new; Through ways unloosed for, and through many lands, Far from the rich folds built with human hands, The gracious footprints of his love I trace.

And what art thou, own brother of the clod, That from his hand the crook wouldst s.n.a.t.c.h away And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod, To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day?

Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew, That with thy idol-volume's covers two Wouldst make a jail to coop the living G.o.d?

Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ-tone By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught, Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brains Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought, Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire, Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desire To weld anew the spirit's broken chains.

G.o.d is not dumb, that He should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor; There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less, Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends, Intent on manna still and mortal ends, Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore.

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone; Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan.

While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, While thunder's surges burst on cliffs and cloud, Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.

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, 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, 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, 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, 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.