The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 73

'What's Beauty?' mused I; 'is it told By synthesis? a.n.a.lysis?

Have you not made us lead of gold?

To feed your crucible, not sold Our temple's sacred chalices?'

Then o'er my senses came a change; My book seemed all traditions, Old legends of profoundest range, Diablery, and stories strange Of goblins, elves, magicians. 20

Old G.o.ds in modern saints I found, Old creeds in strange disguises; I thought them safely underground, And here they were, all safe and sound, Without a sign of phthisis.

Truth was, my outward eyes were closed, Although I did not know it; Deep into dream-land I had dozed, And thus was happily transposed From proser into poet. 30

So what I read took flesh and blood, And turned to living creatures: The words were but the dingy bud That bloomed, like Adam, from the mud, To human forms and features.

I saw how Zeus was lodged once more By Baucis and Philemon; The text said, 'Not alone of yore, But every day, at every door Knocks still the masking Demon.' 40

DAIMON 'twas printed in the book And, as I read it slowly, The letters stirred and changed, and took Jove's stature, the Olympian look Of painless melancholy.

He paused upon the threshold worn: 'With coin I cannot pay you; Yet would I fain make some return; The gift for cheapness do not spurn, Accept this hen, I pray you. 50

'Plain feathers wears my Hemera, And has from ages olden; She makes her nest in common hay, And yet, of all the birds that lay, Her eggs alone are golden.'

He turned, and could no more be seen; Old Bancis stared a moment, Then tossed poor Partlet on the green, And with a tone, half jest, half spleen, Thus made her housewife's comment: 60

'The stranger had a queerish face, His smile was hardly pleasant, And, though he meant it for a grace, Yet this old hen of barnyard race Was but a stingy present.

'She's quite too old for laying eggs, Nay, even to make a soup of; One only needs to see her legs,-- You might as well boil down the pegs I made the brood-hen's coop of! 70

'Some eighteen score of such do I Raise every year, her sisters; Go, in the woods your fortunes try, All day for one poor earthworm pry, And scratch your toes to blisters!'

Philemon found the rede was good, And, turning on the poor hen, He clapt his hands, and stamped, and shooed, Hunting the exile tow'rd the wood, To house with snipe and moorhen. 80

A poet saw and cried: 'Hold! hold!

What are you doing, madman?

Spurn you more wealth than can be told, The fowl that lays the eggs of gold, Because she's plainly clad, man?'

To him Philemon: 'I'll not balk Thy will with any shackle; Wilt add a harden to thy walk?

There! take her without further talk: You're both but fit to cackle!' 90

But scarce the poet touched the bird, It swelled to stature regal; And when her cloud-wide wings she stirred, A whisper as of doom was heard, 'Twas Jove's bolt-bearing eagle.

As when from far-off cloud-bergs springs A crag, and, hurtling under, From cliff to cliff the rumor flings, So she from flight-foreboding wings Shook out a murmurous thunder. 100

She gripped the poet to her breast, And ever, upward soaring, Earth seemed a new moon in the west, And then one light among the rest Where squadrons lie at mooring.

How tell to what heaven-hallowed seat The eagle bent his courses?

The waves that on its bases beat, The gales that round it weave and fleet, Are life's creative forces. 110

Here was the bird's primeval nest, High on a promontory Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest To brood new aeons 'neath her breast, The future's unfledged glory.

I know not how, but I was there All feeling, hearing, seeing; It was not wind that stirred my hair But living breath, the essence rare Of unembodied being. 120

And in the nest an egg of gold Lay soft in self-made l.u.s.tre, Gazing whereon, what depths untold Within, what marvels manifold, Seemed silently to muster!

Daily such splendors to confront Is still to me and you sent?

It glowed as when Saint Peter's front, Illumed, forgets its stony wont, And seems to throb translucent. 130

One saw therein the life of man, (Or so the poet found it,) The yolk and white, conceive who can, Were the glad earth, that, floating, span In the glad heaven around it.

I knew this as one knows in dream, Where no effects to causes Are chained as in our work-day scheme, And then was wakened by a scream That seemed to come from Baucis. 140

'Bless Zeus!' she cried, 'I'm safe below!'

First pale, then red as coral; And I, still drowsy, pondered slow, And seemed to find, but hardly know, Something like this for moral.

Each day the world is born anew For him who takes it rightly; Not fresher that which Adam knew, Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew Entranced Arcadia nightly. 150

Rightly? That's simply: 'tis to see _Some_ substance casts these shadows Which we call Life and History, That aimless seem to chase and flee Like wind-gleams over meadows.

Simply? That's n.o.bly: 'tis to know That G.o.d may still be met with, Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow These senses fine, this brain aglow, To grovel and forget with. 160

Beauty, Herr Doctor, trust in me, No chemistry will win you; Charis still rises from the sea: If you can't find her, _might_ it be Because you seek within you?

A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND

Alike I hate to be your debtor, Or write a mere perfunctory letter; For letters, so it seems to me, Our careless quintessence should be, Our real nature's truant play When Consciousness looks t'other way; Not drop by drop, with watchful skill, Gathered in Art's deliberate still, But life's insensible completeness Got as the ripe grape gets its sweetness, 10 As if it had a way to fuse The golden sunlight into juice.

Hopeless my mental pump I try, The boxes hiss, the tube is dry; As those petroleum wells that spout Awhile like M.C.'s, then give out, My spring, once full as Arethusa, Is a mere bore as dry's Creusa; And yet you ask me why I'm glum, And why my graver Muse is dumb. 20 Ah me! I've reasons manifold Condensed in one,--I'm getting old!

When life, once past its fortieth year, Wheels up its evening hemisphere, The mind's own shadow, which the boy Saw onward point to hope and joy, s.h.i.+fts round, irrevocably set Tow'rd morning's loss and vain regret, And, argue with it as we will, The clock is unconverted still. 30

'But count the gains,' I hear you say, 'Which far the seeming loss out-weigh; Friends.h.i.+ps built firm 'gainst flood and wind On rock foundations of the mind; Knowledge instead of scheming hope; For wild adventure, settled scope; Talents, from surface-ore profuse, Tempered and edged to tools for use; Judgment, for pa.s.sion's headlong whirls; Old sorrows crystalled into pearls; 40 Losses by patience turned to gains, Possessions now, that once were pains; Joy's blossom gone, as go it must, To ripen seeds of faith and trust; Why heed a snow-flake on the roof If fire within keep Age aloof, Though blundering north-winds push and strain With palms benumbed against the pane?'

My dear old Friend, you're very wise; We always are with others' eyes, 50 And see _so_ clear! (our neighbor's deck on) What reef the idiot's sure to wreck on; Folks when they learn how life has quizzed 'em Are fain to make a s.h.i.+ft with Wisdom, And, finding she nor breaks nor bends, Give her a letter to their friends.

Draw pa.s.sion's torrent whoso will Through sluices smooth to turn a mill, And, taking solid toll of grist, Forget the rainbow in the mist, 60 The exulting leap, the aimless haste Scattered in iridescent waste; Prefer who likes the sure esteem To cheated youth's midsummer dream, When every friend was more than Damon, Each quicksand safe to build a fame on; Believe that prudence snug excels Youth's gross of verdant spectacles, Through which earth's withered stubble seen Looks autumn-proof as painted green,-- 70 I side with Moses 'gainst the ma.s.ses, Take you the drudge, give me the gla.s.ses!

And, for your talents shaped with practice, Convince me first that such the fact is; Let whoso likes be beat, poor fool, On life's hard st.i.thy to a tool, Be whoso will a ploughshare made, Let me remain a jolly blade!

What's Knowledge, with her stocks and lands, To gay Conjecture's yellow strands? 80 What's watching her slow flock's increase To ventures for the golden fleece?

What her deep s.h.i.+ps, safe under lee, To youth's light craft, that drinks the sea, For Flying Islands making sail, And failing where 'tis gain to fail?

Ah me! Experience (so we're told), Time's crucible, turns lead to gold; Yet what's experience won but dross, Cloud-gold trans.m.u.ted to our loss? 90 What but base coin the best event To the untried experiment!

'Twas an old couple, says the poet, That lodged the G.o.ds and did not know it; Youth sees and knows them as they were Before Olympus' top was bare; From Swampscot's flats his eye divine Sees Venus rocking on the brine, With lucent limbs, that somehow scatter a Charm that turns Doll to Cleopatra; 100 Bacchus (that now is scarce induced To give Eld's lagging blood a boost), With cymbals' clang and pards to draw him, Divine as Ariadne saw him, Storms through Youth's pulse with all his train And wins new Indies in his brain; Apollo (with the old a trope, A sort of finer Mister Pope), Apollo--but the Muse forbids: At his approach cast down thy lids, 110 And think it joy enough to hear Far off his arrows singing clear; He knows enough who silent knows The quiver chiming as he goes; He tells too much who e'er betrays The s.h.i.+ning Archer's secret ways.

Dear Friend, you're right and I am wrong; My quibbles are not worth a song, And I sophistically tease My fancy sad to tricks like these. 120 I could not cheat you if I would; You know me and my jesting mood, Mere surface-foam, for pride concealing The purpose of my deeper feeling.

I have not spilt one drop of joy Poured in the senses of the boy, Nor Nature fails my walks to bless With all her golden inwardness; And as blind nestlings, unafraid, Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade 130 By which their downy dream is stirred, Taking it for the mother-bird, So, when G.o.d's shadow, which is light, Unheralded, by day or night, My wakening instincts falls across, Silent as sunbeams over moss, In my heart's nest half-conscious things Stir with a helpless sense of wings, Lift themselves up, and tremble long With premonitions sweet of song. 140

Be patient, and perhaps (who knows?) These may be winged one day like those; If thrushes, close-embowered to sing, Pierced through with June's delicious sting; If swallows, their half-hour to run Star-breasted in the setting sun.

At first they're but the unfledged proem, Or songless schedule of a poem; When from the sh.e.l.l they're hardly dry If some folks thrust them forth, must I? 150

But let me end with a comparison Never yet hit upon by e'er a son Of our American Apollo, (And there's where I shall beat them hollow, If he indeed's no courtly St. John, But, as West said, a Mohawk Injun.) A poem's like a cruise for whales: Through untried seas the hunter sails, His prow dividing waters known To the blue iceberg's hulk alone; 160 At last, on farthest edge of day, He marks the smoky puff of spray; Then with bent oars the shallop flies To where the basking quarry lies; Then the excitement of the strife, The crimsoned waves,--ah, this is life!