Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“
[blocks in formation]

I saw the green banks of the castle-crowned
Rhine,
Where the grapes drink the moonlight and
change it to wine;

1 See the notes on Whittier's The Last Walk in Autumn,' p. 292, and on Emerson's Written in Naples,' p. 60, and compare a recent sonnet on the Hudson by Mr. George S. Hellman:

Where in its old historic splendor stands
The home of England's far-famed Parliament,
And waters of the Thames in calm content
At England's fame flow slowly o'er their sands;
And where the Rhine past vine-entwined lands
Courses in castled beauty, there I went ;
And far to Southern rivers, flower-besprent ;
And to the icy streams of Northern strands.
Then mine own native shores I trod once more,
And, gazing on thy waters' majesty,

The memory, O Hudson, came to me

Of one who went to seek the wide world o'er

For Love, but found it not. Then home turned he
And saw his mother waiting at the door.

[blocks in formation]

So, parted by the rolling flood,
The love that springs from common blood
Needs but a single sunlit hour

Of mingling smiles to bud and flower;
Unharmed its slumbering life has flown,
From shore to shore, from zone to zone,
Where summer's falling roses stain
The tepid waves of Pontchartrain,
Or where the lichen creeps below
Katahdin's wreaths of whirling snow.

Though fiery sun and stiffening cold
May change the fair ancestral mould,
No winter chills, no summer drains
The life-blood drawn from English veins,
Still bearing wheresoe'er it flows
The love that with its fountain rose,
Unchanged by space, unwronged by time,
From age to age, from clime to clime!

(1861.)

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

JANUARY 18, 1856

WHEN life hath run its largest round
Of toil and triumph, joy and woe,
How brief a storied page is found
To compass all its outward show!

The world-tried sailor tires and droops;
His flag is rent, his keel forgot;
His farthest voyages seem but loops
That float from life's entangled knot.

But when within the narrow space
Some larger soul hath lived
wrought,

and

[ocr errors]

Whose sight was open to embrace
The boundless realms of deed and
thought,

When, stricken by the freezing blast,
A nation's living pillars fall,

How rich the storied page, how vast,
A word, a whisper, can recall!

No medal lifts its fretted face,

Nor speaking marble cheats your eye,
Yet, while these pictured lines I trace,
A living image passes by:

A roof beneath the mountain pines;
The cloisters of a hill-girt plain;
The front of life's embattled lines;
A mound beside the heaving main.
These are the scenes: a boy appears;
Set life's round dial in the sun,
Count the swift arc of seventy years,
His frame is dust; his task is done.

Yet pause upon the noontide hour,
Ere the declining sun has laid
His bleaching rays on manhood's power,
And look upon the mighty shade.

No gloom that stately shape can hide,
No change uncrown its brow; behold!

20

30

Dark, calm, large-fronted, lightning-eyed, Earth has no double from its mould!

Ere from the fields by valor won

The battle-smoke had rolled away, And bared the blood-red setting sun, His eyes were opened on the day.

His land was but a shelving strip

Black with the strife that made it free; He lived to see its banners dip

Their fringes in the Western sea.

The boundless prairies learned his name, His words the mountain echoes knew. The Northern breezes swept his fame From icy lake to warm bayou.

In toil he lived; in peace he died;

When life's full cycle was complete Put off his robes of power and pride,

And laid them at his Master's feet.

40

50

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Not while the rocking steeples reel
With midnight tocsins ringing,
Not while the crashing war-notes peal,
God sets his poets singing;
The bird is silent in the night,

Or shrieks a cry of warning
While fluttering round the beacon-light,
But hear him greet the morning!

The lark of Scotia's morning sky!
Whose voice may sing his praises?
With Heaven's own sunlight in his eye,
He walked among the daisies,
Till through the cloud of fortune's wrong
He soared to fields of glory;
But left his land her sweetest song
And earth her saddest story.

30

40

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

30

As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Suggested by looking at a section of one of those chambered shells to which is given the name of Pearly Nautilus.... If you will look into Roget's Bridgewater Treatise you will find a figure of one of these shells and a section of it. The last will show you the series of enlarging compartments successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the shell, which is built in a widening spiral. (HOLMES, in the Autocrat.)

[blocks in formation]

No rest that throbbing slave may ask,
Forever quivering o'er his task,
While far and wide a crimson jet
Leaps forth to fill the woven net
Which in unnumbered crossing tides
The flood of burning life divides,
Then, kindling each decaying part,
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.

But warmed with that unchanging flame
Behold the outward moving frame,
Its living marbles jointed strong
With glistening band and silvery thong,
And linked to reason's guiding reins
By myriad rings in trembling chains,
Each graven with the threaded zone
Which claims it as the master's own.

See how yon beam of seeming white
Is braided out of seven-hued light,

20

30

1 Having read our company so much of the ProfesBor's talk about age and other subjects connected with physical life, I took the next Sunday morning to repeat to them the following poem of his, which I have had by me for some time. He calls it-I suppose for his professional friends The Anatomist's Hymn,' but I shall name it The Living Temple.' (HOLMES, introducing the poem, in the Autocrat.)

Yet in those lucid globes no ray
By any chance shall break astray.
Hark how the rolling surge of sound,
Arches and spirals circling round,
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine

ear

With music it is heaven to hear.

Then mark the cloven sphere that holds
All thought in its mysterious folds;
That feels sensation's faintest thrill,
And flashes forth the sovereign will;
Think on the stormy world that dwells
Locked in its dim and clustering cells!
The lightning gleams of power it sheds
Along its hollow glassy threads !

O Father! grant thy love divine
To make these mystic temples thine!
When wasting age and wearying strife
Have sapped the leaning walls of life,
When darkness gathers over all,
And the last tottering pillars fall,
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms,
And mould it into heavenly forms!

40

50

[blocks in formation]

That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,

And then, of a sudden, it—ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,

Frightening people out of their wits,
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« AnkstesnisTęsti »