The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 84

They steered by stars the elder s.h.i.+pmen knew, And laid their courses where the currents draw Of ancient wisdom channelled deep in law.

The undaunted few Who changed the Old World for the New, 270 And more devoutly prized Than all perfection theorized The more imperfect that had roots and grew.

They founded deep and well, Those danger-chosen chiefs of men Who still believed in Heaven and h.e.l.l, Nor hoped to find a spell, In some fine flourish of a pen, To make a better man Than long-considering Nature will or can, 280 Secure against his own mistakes, Content with what life gives or takes, And acting still on some fore-ordered plan, A cog of iron in an iron wheel, Too nicely poised to think or feel, Dumb motor in a clock-like commonweal.

They wasted not their brain in schemes Of what man might be in some bubble-sphere, As if he must be other than he seems Because he was not what he should be here, 290 Postponing Time's slow proof to petulant dreams: Yet herein they were great Beyond the incredulous lawgivers of yore, And wiser than the wisdom of the shelf, That they conceived a deeper-rooted state, Of hardier growth, alive from rind to core, By making man sole sponsor of himself.

3.

G.o.d of our fathers, Thou who wast, Art, and shalt be when those eye-wise who flout Thy secret presence shall be lost In the great light that dazzles them to doubt, 301 We, sprung from loins of stalwart men Whose strength was in their trust That Thou woudst make thy dwelling in their dust And walk with those a fellow-citizen Who build a city of the just, We, who believe Life's bases rest Beyond the probe of chemic test, Still, like our fathers, feel Thee near, Sure that, while lasts the immutable decree, 310 The land to Human Nature dear Shall not be unbeloved of Thee.

HEARTSEASE AND RUE

I. FRIENDs.h.i.+P

AGa.s.sIZ

Come Dicesti _egli ebbe?_ non viv' egli ancora?

Non fiere gli occhi suoi lo dolce lome?

I

1.

The electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill Makes next-door gossips of the antipodes, Confutes poor Hope's last fallacy of ease,-- The distance that divided her from ill: Earth sentient seems again as when of old The h.o.r.n.y foot of Pan Stamped, and the conscious horror ran Beneath men's feet through all her fibres cold: s.p.a.ce's blue walls are mined; we feel the throe From underground of our night-mantled foe: 10 The flame-winged feet Of Trade's new Mercury, that dry-shod run Through briny abysses dreamless of the sun, Are mercilessly fleet, And at a bound annihilate Ocean's prerogative of short reprieve; Surely ill news might wait, And man be patient of delay to grieve: Letters have sympathies And tell-tale faces that reveal, 20 To senses finer than the eyes.

Their errand's purport ere we break the seal; They wind a sorrow round with circ.u.mstance To stay its feet, nor all unwarned displace The veil that darkened from our sidelong glance The inexorable face: But now Fate stuns as with a mace; The savage of the skies, that men have caught And some scant use of language taught, Tells only what he must,-- 30 The steel-cold fact in one laconic thrust.

2.

So thought I, as, with vague, mechanic eyes, I scanned the festering news we half despise Yet scramble for no less, And read of public scandal, private fraud, Crime flaunting scot-free while the mob applaud, Office made vile to bribe unworthiness, And all the unwholesome mess The Land of Honest Abraham serves of late To teach the Old World how to wait, 40 When suddenly, As happens if the brain, from overweight Of blood, infect the eye, Three tiny words grew lurid as I read, And reeled commingling: _Aga.s.siz is dead_.

As when, beneath the street's familiar jar, An earthquake's alien omen rumbles far, Men listen and forebode, I hung my head, And strove the present to recall, As if the blow that stunned were yet to fall. 50

3.

Uprooted is our mountain oak, That promised long security of shade And brooding-place for many a winged thought; Not by Time's softly cadenced stroke With pauses of relenting pity stayed, But ere a root seemed sapt, a bough decayed, From sudden ambush by the whirlwind caught And in his broad maturity betrayed!

4.

Well might I, as of old, appeal to you, O mountains, woods, and streams, 60 To help us mourn him, for ye loved him too; But simpler moods befit our modern themes, And no less perfect birth of nature can, Though they yearn tow'rd him, sympathize with man.

Save as dumb fellow-prisoners through a wall; Answer ye rather to my call, Strong poets of a more unconscious day, When Nature spake nor sought nice reasons why, Too much for softer arts forgotten since That teach our forthright tongue to lisp and mince, 70 And drown in music the heart's bitter cry!

Lead me some steps in your directer way, Teach me those words that strike a solid root Within the ears of men; Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel, Deep-chested Chapman and firm-footed Ben, For he was masculine from head to heel.

Nay, let himself stand undiminished by With those clear parts of him that will not die.

Himself from out the recent dark I claim 80 To hear, and, if I flatter him, to blame; To show himself, as still I seem to see, A mortal, built upon the antique plan, Brimful of l.u.s.ty blood as ever ran, And taking life as simply as a tree!

To claim my foiled good-by let him appear, Large-limbed and human as I saw him near, Loosed from the stiffening uniform of fame: And let me treat him largely; I should fear, (If with too prying lens I chanced to err, 90 Mistaking catalogue for character,) His wise forefinger raised in smiling blame.

Nor would I scant him with judicial breath And turn mere critic in an epitaph; I choose the wheat, incurious of the chaff That swells fame living, chokes it after death, And would but memorize the s.h.i.+ning half Of his large nature that was turned to me: Fain had I joined with those that honored him With eyes that darkened because his were dim, 100 And now been silent: but it might not be.

II

1.

In some the genius is a thing apart, A pillared hermit of the brain, h.o.a.rding with incommunicable art Its intellectual gain; Man's web of circ.u.mstance and fate They from their perch of self observe, Indifferent as the figures on a slate Are to the planet's sun-swung curve Whose bright returns they calculate; 110 Their nice adjustment, part to part, Were shaken from its serviceable mood By unpremeditated stirs of heart Or jar of human neighborhood: Some find their natural selves, and only then, In furloughs of divine escape from men, And when, by that brief ecstasy left bare, Driven by some instinct of desire, They wander worldward, 'tis to blink and stare, Like wild things of the wood about a fire, 120 Dazed by the social glow they cannot share; His nature brooked no lonely lair, But basked and bourgeoned in co-partnery, Companions.h.i.+p, and open-windowed glee: He knew, for he had tried, Those speculative heights that lure The unpractised foot, impatient of a guide, Tow'rd ether too attenuately pure For sweet unconscious breath, though dear to pride, But better loved the foothold sure 130 Of paths that wind by old abodes of men Who hope at last the churchyard's peace secure, And follow time-worn rules, that them suffice, Learned from their sires, traditionally wise, Careful of honest custom's how and when; His mind, too brave to look on Truth askance, No more those habitudes of faith could share, But, tinged with sweetness of the old Swiss manse, Lingered around them still and fain would spare.

Patient to spy a sullen egg for weeks, 140 The enigma of creation to surprise, His truer instinct sought the life that speaks Without a mystery from kindly eyes; In no self-spun coc.o.o.n of prudence wound, He by the touch of men was best inspired, And caught his native greatness at rebound From generosities itself had fired; Then how the heat through every fibre ran, Felt in the gathering presence of the man, While the apt word and gesture came unbid! 150 Virtues and faults it to one metal wrought, Fined all his blood to thought, And ran the molten man in all he said or did.

All Tully's rules and all Quintilian's too He by the light of listening faces knew, And his rapt audience all unconscious lent Their own roused force to make him eloquent; Persuasion fondled in his look and tone; Our speech (with strangers prudish) he could bring To find new charm in accents not her own; 160 Her coy constraints and icy hindrances Melted upon his lips to natural ease, As a brook's fetters swell the dance of spring.

Nor yet all sweetness: not in vain he wore, Nor in the sheath of ceremony, controlled By velvet courtesy or caution cold, That sword of honest anger prized of old, But, with two-handed wrath, If baseness or pretension crossed his path, Struck once nor needed to strike more. 170

2.

His magic was not far to seek.-- He was so human! Whether strong or weak, Far from his kind he neither sank nor soared, But sate an equal guest at every board: No beggar ever felt him condescend, No prince presume; for still himself he bare At manhood's simple level, and where'er He met a stranger, there he left a friend.

How large an aspect! n.o.bly un-severe, With freshness round him of Olympian cheer, 180 Like visits of those earthly G.o.ds he came; His look, wherever its good-fortune fell, Doubled the feast without a miracle, And on the hearthstone danced a happier flame; Philemon's crabbed vintage grew benign; Amphitryon's gold-juice humanized to wine.

III

1.

The garrulous memories Gather again from all their far-flown nooks, Singly at first, and then by twos and threes, Then in a throng innumerable, as the rooks 190 Thicken their twilight files Tow'rd Tintern's gray repose of roofless aisles: Once more I see him at the table's head When Sat.u.r.day her monthly banquet spread To scholars, poets, wits, All choice, some famous, loving things, not names, And so without a twinge at others' fames; Such company as wisest moods befits, Yet with no pedant blindness to the worth Of undeliberate mirth, 200

Natures benignly mixed of air and earth, Now with the stars and now with equal zest Tracing the eccentric orbit of a jest.

2.

I see in vision the warm-lighted hall, The living and the dead I see again, And but my chair is empty; 'mid them all 'Tis I that seem the dead: they all remain Immortal, changeless creatures of the brain: Wellnigh I doubt which world is real most, Of sense or spirit to the truly sane; 210 In this abstraction it were light to deem Myself the figment of some stronger dream; They are the real things, and I the ghost That glide unhindered through the solid door, Vainly for recognition seek from chair to chair, And strive to speak and am but futile air, As truly most of us are little more.

3.

Him most I see whom we most dearly miss, The latest parted thence, His features poised in genial armistice 220 And armed neutrality of self-defence Beneath the forehead's walled preeminence, While Tyro, plucking facts with careless reach, Settles off-hand our human how and whence; The long-trained veteran scarcely wincing hears The infallible strategy of volunteers Making through Nature's walls its easy breach, And seems to learn where he alone could teach.

Ample and ruddy, the board's end he fills As he our fireside were, our light and heat, 230 Centre where minds diverse and various skills Find their warm nook and stretch unhampered feet; I see the firm benignity of face, Wide-smiling champaign, without tameness sweet, The ma.s.s Teutonic toned to Gallic grace, The eyes whose suns.h.i.+ne runs before the lips While Holmes's rockets, curve their long ellipse, And burst in seeds of fire that burst again To drop in scintillating rain.

4.

There too the face half-rustic, half-divine, 240 Self-poised, sagacious, freaked with humor fine, Of him who taught us not to mow and mope About our fancied selves, but seek our scope In Nature's world and Man's, nor fade to hollow trope, Content with our New World and timely bold To challenge the o'ermastery of the Old; Listening with eyes averse I see him sit p.r.i.c.ked with the cider of the Judge's wit (Ripe-hearted homebrew, fresh and fresh again), While the wise nose's firm-built aquiline 250 Curves sharper to restrain The merriment whose most unruly moods Pa.s.s not the dumb laugh learned in listening woods Of silence-shedding pine: Hard by is he whose art's consoling spell Hath given both worlds a whiff of asphodel, His look still vernal 'mid the wintry ring Of petals that remember, not foretell, The paler primrose of a second spring.

5.

And more there are: but other forms arise 260 And seen as clear, albeit with dimmer eyes: First he from sympathy still held apart By shrinking over-eagerness of heart, Cloud charged with searching fire, whose shadow's sweep Heightened mean things with sense of brooding ill, And steeped in doom familiar field and hill,-- New England's poet, soul reserved and deep, November nature with a name of May, Whom high o'er Concord plains we laid to sleep, While the orchards mocked us in their white array 270 And building robins wondered at our tears, s.n.a.t.c.hed in his prime, the shape august That should have stood unbent 'neath fourscore years, The n.o.ble head, the eyes of furtive trust, All gone to speechless dust.

And he our pa.s.sing guest, Shy nature, too, and stung with life's unrest, Whom we too briefly had but could not hold, Who brought ripe Oxford's culture to our board, The Past's incalculable h.o.a.rd, 280 Mellowed by scutcheoned panes in cloisters old, Seclusions ivy-hushed, and pavements sweet With immemorial lisp of musing feet; Young head time-tonsured smoother than a friar's, Boy face, but grave with answerless desires, Poet in all that poets have of best, But foiled with riddles dark and cloudy aims, Who now hath found sure rest, Not by still Isis or historic Thames, Nor by the Charles he tried to love with me, 290 But, not misplaced, by Arno's hallowed brim, Nor scorned by Santa Croce's neighboring fames, Haply not mindless, wheresoe'er he be, Of violets that to-day I scattered over him, He, too, is there, After the good centurion fitly named, Whom learning dulled not, nor convention tamed, Shaking with burly mirth his hyacinthine hair, Our hearty Grecian of Homeric ways, Still found the surer friend where least he hoped the praise.

6.

Yea truly, as the sallowing years 301 Fall from us faster, like frost-loosened leaves Pushed by the misty touch of shortening days, And that unwakened winter nears, 'Tis the void chair our surest guest receives, 'Tis lips long cold that give the warmest kiss, 'Tis the lost voice comes oftenest to our ears; We count our rosary by the beads we miss: To me, at least, it seemeth so, An exile in the land once found divine, 310 While my starved fire burns low, And homeless winds at the loose cas.e.m.e.nt whine Shrill ditties of the snow-roofed Apennine.

IV