The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas, The troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds, The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays, plays, Shakspere, Schiller, Walter Scott, Tennyson, As some vast wondrous weird dream-presences, The great shadowy groups gathering around, Darting their mighty masterful eyes forward at thee, Thou! with as now thy bending neck and head, with courteous hand and word, ascending, Thou! pausing a moment, drooping thine eyes upon them, blent with their music, Well pleased, accepting all, curiously prepared for by them, A CHRISTMAS GREETING. [From a Northern Star-Group to a Southern. 1889-90.] WELCOME, Brazilian brother-thy ample place is ready; A loving hand—a smile from the north-a sunny instant hail ! (Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles, impedimentas, Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the acceptance and the faith ;) To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck-to thee from us the expectant eye, Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning well, The true lesson of a nation's light in the sky, (More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,) The height to be superb humanity. SOUNDS OF THE WINTER. SOUNDS of the winter too, Sunshine upon the mountains--many a distant strain From cheery railroad train-from nearer field, barn, house, An old man's garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out yet, Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt. A TWILIGHT SONG. As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame, Musing on long-pass'd war-scenes-of the countless buried unknown soldiers, Of the vacant names, as unindented air's and sea's-the unreturn'd, The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the deep-fill'd trenches Of gather'd dead from all America, North, South, East, West, whence they came up, From wooded Maine, New-England's farms, from fertile Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolinas, Texas, (Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless flickering flames, Again I see the stalwart ranks on-filing, rising-I hear the rhythmic tramp of the armies ;) You million unwrit names all, all-you dark bequest from all the war, A special verse for you-a flash of duty long neglected-your mystic roll strangely gather'd here, Each name recall'd by me from out the darkness and death's ashes, Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my heart recording, for many a future year, Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or South, Embalm'd with love in this twilight song. WHEN THE FULL-GROWN POET CAME. WHEN the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine; But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone; -Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand; And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands, Which he will never release until he reconciles the two, [When I was nearly grown to manhood in Brooklyn, New York (middle of 1838), I met one of the return'd U.S. Marines from Fort Moultrie, S. C., and had long talks with him—learn'd the occurrence below described death of Osceola. The latter was a young, brave, leading Seminole in the Florida war of that time-was surrender'd to our troops, imprison'd, and literally died of a broken heart" at Fort Moultrie. He sicken'd of his confinement—the doctor and officers made every allowance and kindness possible for him; then the close.] 66 WHEN his hour for death had come, He slowly rais'd himself from the bed on the floor, Drew on his war-dress, shirt, leggings, and girdled the belt around his waist, Call'd for vermilion paint (his looking-glass was held before him,) Painted half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands. Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt-then lying down, resting a moment, Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand to each and all, Sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk handle,) Fix'd his look on wife and little children-the last : (And here a line in memory of his name and death.) A VOICE FROM DEATH. [The Johnstown, Penn., cataclysm, May 31, 1889.] A VOICE from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and power, With sudden, indescribable blow-towns drown'd-humanity by thousands slain, The vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron bridge, Dash'd pell-mell by the blow-yet usher'd life continuing on, (Amid the rest, amid the rushing, whirling, wild debris, A suffering woman saved-a baby safely born!) Although I come and unannounc'd, in horror and in pang, In pouring flood and fire, and wholesale elemental crash, (this voice so solemn, strange,) I too a minister of Deity. Yea, Death, we bow our faces, veil our eyes to thee, The household wreck'd, the husband and the wife, the engulf'd forger in his forge, The corpses in the whelming waters and the mud, The gather'd thousands to their funeral mounds, and thousands never found or gather'd. Then after burying, mourning the dead, (Faithful to them found or unfound, forgetting not, bearing the past, here new musing,) A day-a passing moment or an hour-America itself bends low, War, death, cataclysm like this, America, E'en as I chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime, From West and East, from South and North and over sea, Its hot-spurr'd hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on; And from within a thought and lesson yet. Thou ever-darting Globe! through Space and Air! Thou waters that encompass us! Thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep! Thou laws invisible that permeate them and all, Thou that in all, and over all, and through and under all, incessant! Thou thou! the vital, universal, giant force resistless, sleepless, calm, Holding Humanity as in thy open hand, as some ephemeral toy, How ill to e'er forget thee! For I too have forgotten, (Wrapt in these little potencies of progress, politics, culture, wealth, inventions, civilization,) Have lost my recognition of your silent ever-swaying power, ye mighty, elemental throes, In which and upon which we float, and every one of us is buoy'd. A PERSIAN LESSON. For his o'erarching and last lesson the greybeard sufi, On the slope of a teeming Persian rose-garden, Under an ancient chestnut-tree wide spreading its branches, "Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest, Allah is all, all, all-is immanent in every life and object, May-be at many and many-a-more removes-yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there. "Has the estray wander'd far? Is the reason-why strangely hidden? Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world? Would you know the dissatisfaction ? the urge and spur of every life; The something never still'd-never entirely gone? the invisible need of every seed? "It is the central urge in every atom, (Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,) To return to its divine source and origin, however distant, Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception." THE COMMONPLACE. THE Commonplace I sing; How cheap is health! how cheap nobility! The open air I sing, freedom, toleration, (Take here the mainest lesson-less from books-less from the schools,) The common day and night-the common earth and waters, The democratic wisdom underneath, like solid ground for all. "THE ROUNDED CATALOGUE DIVINE COMPLETE." [Sunday, - Went this forenoon to church. A college professor, Rev. Dr. · -, gave us a fine sermon, during which I caught the above words; but the minister included in his "rounded catalogue" letter and spirit, only the esthetic things, and entirely ignored what I name in the following.] THE devilish and the dark, the dying and diseas'd, The countless (nineteen-twentieths) low and evil, crude and savage, The crazed, prisoners in jail, the horrible, rank, malignant, Venom and filth, serpents, the ravenous sharks, liars, the dissolute; What is the part the wicked and the loathesome bear within earth's orbic scheme?) Newts, crawling things in slime and mud, poisons, The barren soil, the evil men, the slag and hideous rot. |