The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 74

But, the dead plunder once secured And safe beside the vessel moored, All that had stirred the blood before Is so much blubber, nothing more, 170 (I mean no pun, nor image so Mere sentimental verse, you know,) And all is tedium, smoke, and soil, In trying out the noisome oil.

Yes, this _is_ life! And so the bard Through briny deserts, never scarred Since Noah's keel, a subject seeks, And lies upon the watch for weeks; That once harpooned and helpless lying, What follows is but weary trying. 180

Now I've a notion, if a poet Beat up for themes, his verse will show it; I wait for subjects that hunt me, By day or night won't let me be, And hang about me like a curse, Till they have made me into verse, From line to line my fingers tease Beyond my knowledge, as the bees Build no new cell till those before With limpid summer-sweet run o'er; 190 Then, if I neither sing nor s.h.i.+ne, Is it the subject's fault, or mine?

AN EMBER PICTURE

How strange are the freaks of memory!

The lessons of life we forget, While a trifle, a trick of color, In the wonderful web is set,--

Set by some mordant of fancy, And, spite of the wear and tear Of time or distance or trouble, Insists on its right to be there.

A chance had brought us together; Our talk was of matters-of-course; We were nothing, one to the other, But a short half-hour's resource.

We spoke of French acting and actors, And their easy, natural way: Of the weather, for it was raining, As we drove home from the play.

We debated the social nothings We bore ourselves so to discuss; The thunderous rumors of battle Were silent the while for us.

Arrived at her door, we left her With a drippingly hurried adieu, And our wheels went crunching the gravel Of the oak-darkened avenue.

As we drove away through the shadow, The candle she held in the door From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree-trunk Flashed fainter, and flashed no more;--

Flashed fainter, then wholly faded Before we had pa.s.sed the wood; But the light of the face behind it Went with me and stayed for good.

The vision of scarce a moment, And hardly marked at the time, It comes unbidden to haunt me, Like a sc.r.a.p of ballad-rhyme.

Had she beauty? Well, not what they call so; You may find a thousand as fair; And yet there's her face in my memory With no special claim to be there.

As I sit sometimes in the twilight, And call back to life in the coals Old faces and hopes and fancies Long buried, (good rest to their souls!)

Her face s.h.i.+nes out in the embers; I see her holding the light, And hear the crunch of the gravel And the sweep of the rain that night.

'Tis a face that can never grow older, That never can part with its gleam, 'Tis a gracious possession forever, For is it not all a dream?

TO H.W.L.

ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1867

I need not praise the sweetness of his song, Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides along, Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.

With loving breath of all the winds his name Is blown about the world, but to his friends A sweeter secret hides behind his fame, And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim To murmur a _G.o.d bless you!_ and there ends.

As I muse backward up the checkered years Wherein so much was given, so much was lost, Blessings in both kinds, such as cheapen tears,-- But hus.h.!.+ this is not for profaner ears; Let them drink molten pearls nor dream the cost.

Some suck up poison from a sorrow's core, As naught but nightshade grew upon earth's ground; Love turned all his to heart's-ease, and the more Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound.

Even as a wind-waved fountain's swaying shade Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot with sun, So through his trial faith translucent rayed Till darkness, halt disnatured so, betrayed A heart of suns.h.i.+ne that would fain o'errun.

Surely if skill in song the shears may stay And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss, If our poor life be lengthened by a lay, He shall not go, although his presence may, And the next age in praise shall double this.

Long days be his, and each as l.u.s.ty-sweet As gracious natures find his song to be; May Age steal on with softly-cadenced feet Falling in music, as for him were meet Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he!

THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY

'Come forth!' my catbird calls to me, 'And hear me sing a cavatina That, in this old familiar tree, Shall hang a garden of Alcina.

'These b.u.t.tercups shall brim with wine Beyond all Lesbian juice or Ma.s.sic; May not New England be divine?

My ode to ripening summer cla.s.sic?

'Or, if to me you will not hark, By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing Till all the alder-coverts dark Seem suns.h.i.+ne-dappled with his singing.

'Come out beneath the unmastered sky, With its emanc.i.p.ating s.p.a.ces, And learn to sing as well as I, Without premeditated graces.

'What boot your many-volumed gains, Those withered leaves forever turning, To win, at best, for all your pains, A nature mummy-wrapt to learning?

'The leaves wherein true wisdom lies On living trees the sun are drinking; Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies, Grew not so beautiful by thinking.

'"Come out!" with me the oriole cries, Escape the demon that pursues you: And, hark, the cuckoo weather-wise, Still hiding farther onward, wooes you.'

'Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, Hast poured from that syringa thicket The quaintly discontinuous lays To which I hold a season-ticket.

'A season-ticket cheaply bought With a dessert of pilfered berries, And who so oft my soul hast caught With morn and evening voluntaries,

'Deem me not faithless, if all day Among my dusty books I linger, No pipe, like thee, for June to play With fancy-led, half-conscious finger.

'A bird is singing in my brain And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain Fed with the sap of old romances.

'I ask no ampler skies than those His magic music rears above me, No falser friends, no truer foes,-- And does not Dona Clara love me?

'Cloaked shapes, a tw.a.n.ging of guitars, A rush of feet, and rapiers clas.h.i.+ng, Then silence deep with breathless stars, And overhead a white hand flas.h.i.+ng.

'O music of all moods and climes, Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, Where still, between the Christian chimes, The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly!

'O life borne lightly in the hand, For friend or foe with grace Castilian!

O valley safe in Fancy's land, Not tramped to mud yet by the million!

'Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale To his, my singer of all weathers, My Calderon, my nightingale, My Arab soul in Spanish feathers.

'Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, And still, G.o.d knows, in purgatory, Give its best sweetness to all song, To Nature's self her better glory.'