The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 95

'FRANCISCUS DE VERULAMIO SIC COGITAVIT'

That's a rather bold speech, my Lord Bacon, For, indeed, is't so easy to know Just how much we from others have taken, And how much our own natural flow?

Since your mind bubbled up at its fountain, How many streams made it elate, While it calmed to the plain from the mountain, As every mind must that grows great?

While you thought 'twas You thinking as newly As Adam still wet with G.o.d's dew, You forgot in your self-pride that truly The whole Past was thinking through you.

Greece, Rome, nay, your namesake, old Roger, With Truth's nameless delvers who wrought In the dark mines of Truth, helped to prod your Fine brain with the goad of their thought.

As mummy was prized for a rich hue The painter no elsewhere could find, So 'twas buried men's thinking with which you Gave the ripe mellow tone to your mind.

I heard the proud strawberry saying, 'Only look what a ruby I've made!'

It forgot how the bees in their maying Had brought it the stuff for its trade.

And yet there's the half of a truth in it, And my Lord might his copyright sue; For a thought's his who kindles new youth in it, Or so puts it as makes it more true.

The birds but repeat without ending The same old traditional notes, Which some, by more happily blending, Seem to make over new in their throats;

And we men through our old bit of song run, Until one just improves on the rest, And we call a thing his, in the long run, Who utters it clearest and best.

AUSPEX

My heart, I cannot still it, Nest that had song-birds in it; And when the last shall go, The dreary days, to fill it, Instead of lark or linnet, Shall whirl dead leaves and snow.

Had they been swallows only, Without the pa.s.sion stronger That skyward longs and sings,-- Woe's me, I shall be lonely When I can feel no longer The impatience of their wings!

A moment, sweet delusion, Like birds the brown leaves hover; But it will not be long Before their wild confusion Fall wavering down to cover The poet and his song.

THE PREGNANT COMMENT

Opening one day a book of mine, I absent, Hester found a line Praised with a pencil-mark, and this She left transfigured with a kiss.

When next upon the page I chance, Like Poussin's nymphs my pulses dance, And whirl my fancy where it sees Pan piping 'neath Arcadian trees, Whose leaves no winter-scenes rehea.r.s.e, Still young and glad as Homer's verse.

'What mean,' I ask, 'these sudden joys?

This feeling fresher than a boy's?

What makes this line, familiar long, New as the first bird's April song?

I could, with sense illumined thus, Clear doubtful texts in aeeschylus!'

Laughing, one day she gave the key, My riddle's open-sesame; Then added, with a smile demure, Whose downcast lids veiled triumph sure, 'If what I left there give you pain, You--you--can take it off again; 'Twas for _my_ poet, not for him, Your Doctor Donne there!'

Earth grew dim And wavered in a golden mist, As rose, not paper, leaves I kissed.

Donne, you forgive? I let you keep Her precious comment, poet deep.

THE LESSON

I sat and watched the walls of night With cracks of sudden lightning glow, And listened while with clumsy might The thunder wallowed to and fro.

The rain fell softly now; the squall, That to a torrent drove the trees, Had whirled beyond us to let fall Its tumult on the whitening seas.

But still the lightning crinkled keen, Or fluttered fitful from behind The leaden drifts, then only seen, That rumbled eastward on the wind.

Still as gloom followed after glare, While bated breath the pine-trees drew, Tiny Salmoneus of the air, His mimic bolts the firefly threw.

He thought, no doubt, 'Those flashes grand, That light for leagues the shuddering sky, Are made, a fool could understand, By some superior kind of fly.

'He's of our race's elder branch, His family-arms the same as ours.

Both born the twy-forked flame to launch, Of kindred, if unequal, powers.'

And is man wiser? Man who takes His consciousness the law to be Of all beyond his ken, and makes G.o.d but a bigger kind of Me?

SCIENCE AND POETRY

He who first stretched his nerves of subtile wire Over the land and through the sea-depths still, Thought only of the flame-winged messenger As a dull drudge that should encircle earth With sordid messages of Trade, and tame Blithe Ariel to a bagman. But the Muse Not long will be defrauded. From her foe Her misused wand she s.n.a.t.c.hes; at a touch, The Age of Wonder is renewed again, And to our disenchanted day restores The Shoes of Swiftness that give odds to Thought, The Cloak that makes invisible; and with these I glide, an airy fire, from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, Or from my Cambridge whisper to Cathay.

A NEW YEAR'S GREETING

The century numbers fourscore years; You, fortressed in your teens, To Time's alarums close your ears, And, while he devastates your peers, Conceive not what he means.

If e'er life's winter fleck with snow Your hair's deep shadowed bowers, That winsome head an art would know To make it charm, and wear it so As 'twere a wreath of flowers.

If to such fairies years must come, May yours fall soft and slow As, shaken by a bee's low hum, The rose-leaves waver, sweetly dumb, Down to their mates below!

THE DISCOVERY

I watched a moorland torrent run Down through the rift itself had made, Golden as honey in the sun, Of darkest amber in the shade.

In this wild glen at last, methought, The magic's secret I surprise; Here Celia's guardian fairy caught The changeful splendors of her eyes.

All else grows tame, the sky's one blue, The one long languish of the rose, But these, beyond prevision new, Shall charm and startle to the close.

WITH A SEASh.e.l.l