Kitobni o'qish: «Sonnets and Canzonets»
TO A. BRONSON ALCOTT,
UPON READING HIS OCTOGENARIAN POEMS
The period to which the scholar of two and eighty years belongs, is seldom that of his youngest readers: it is more likely to be the epoch of his own golden youth, when his masters were before his eyes, and his companions were the books and the friends of his heart. Thus the aged Landor could not bring his thoughts down from the grand forms of Greek and Roman literature to which they were early accustomed; he had swerved now and then from that loyalty in middle life, impressed and acted upon as he was by the great political events of the Napoleonic era, – but he returned to the epigram and the idyl in the “white winter of his age,” and the voices of the present and of the future appealed to him in vain. In the old Goethe there was something more prophetic and august; he came nearer to his contemporaries, and prepared the way for a recognition of his greatness by the generation which saw the grave close over him. In this, that strange but loyal disciple of his, the Scotch Carlyle, rendered matchless service to his master; yet he, too, in his unhappy old age, could only at intervals, and by gleams of inspiration, – as at the Edinburgh University Festival, – come into communication with the young spirits about him. To you, dear Friend and Master, belongs the rare good fortune (good genius rather) that has brought you in these late days, into closer fellowship than of yore with the active and forthlooking spirit of the time. In youth and middle life you were in advance of your period, which has only now overtaken you when it must, by the ordinance of Nature, so soon bid you farewell, as you go forward to new prospects, in fairer worlds than ours.
It is this union of youth and age, of the past and the present – yes, and the future also – that I have admired in these artless poems, over which we have spent together so many agreeable hours. Fallen upon an age in literature when the poetic form is everywhere found, but the discerning and inventive spirit of Poesy seems almost lost, I have marked with delight in these octogenarian verses, flowing so naturally from your pen, the very contradiction of this poetic custom of the period. Your want of familiarity with the accustomed movement of verse in our time, brings into more distinct notice the genuine poetical motions of your genius. Having been admitted to the laboratory, and privileged to witness the action and reaction of your thought, as it crystallized into song, I perceived, for the first time, how high sentiment, by which you have from youth been inspired, may become the habitual movement of the mind, at an age when so many, if they live at all in spirit, are but nursing the selfish and distorted fancies of morose singularity. To you the world has been a brotherhood of noble souls, – too few, as we thought, for your companionship, – but which you have enlarged by the admission to one rank of those who have gone, and of us who remain to love you and listen to your oracles. The men and the charming women who recognized your voice when it was that of one crying in the wilderness – “Prepare ye the way of our Lord,” are joined, in your commemorative sonnets, with those who hearken to its later accents, proclaiming the same acceptable year of the Lord.
It is the privilege of poets – immemorial and native to the clan – that they should share the immortality they confer. This right you may vindicate for your own. The honors you pay, in resounding verse, to Channing, to Emerson, to Margaret Fuller, to Hawthorne, Thoreau, and the rest of the company with whom you trod these groves, and honored these altars of the Spirit unnamed, return in their echoes to yourself. They had their special genius, and you yours no less, though it found not the same expression with theirs. We please our love with the thought that, in these sonnets and canzonets of affection, you have celebrated yourself with them; that the swift insight, the ennobling passion for truth and virtue, the high resolve, the austere self-sacrifice, the gentle submission to a will eternally right, in which these friends, so variously gifted, found a common tie, – all these are yours also, – and may they be ours! The monuments and trophies of genius are perishable, but the soul’s impression abides forever, forma mentis æterna. To that imperishable, ever-beauteous, self-renouncing, loyal, and steadfast Spirit of the Universe which we learned to worship in our youth, and which has never forsaken our age and bereavement, may these offerings, and all that we are, be consecrated now and forever!
F. B. SANBORN.
Concord, January 1, 1882.
AN ESSAY
THE SONNET AND THE CANZONET
“Scorn not the sonnet,” said Wordsworth, and then gave us at least fifty noble reasons why we should not, – for so many at least of his innumerable sonnets are above languor and indifference, and all of them above contempt. Milton was more self-restrained than Wordsworth, and wrote fewer sonnets, every one of which is a treasure, either for beauty of verse, nobility of thought, happy portraiture of persons, or quaint and savage humor, – like that on “Tetrachordon,” and the elongated sonnet in which he denounces the Presbyterians, and tells them to their face, “New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.” Shakespeare unlocked his heart with sonnets in another key than Milton’s, – less conformed to the model of the Italian sonnet, but more in keeping with English verse, of which Shakespeare had the entire range. His sonnets are but quatrains following each other by threes, with a resounding couplet binding them together in one sheaf, and his example has made this form of the sonnet legitimate for all who write English verse, – no matter what the studious or the pedantic may say. Surrey also, who first used the sonnet in English, wrote it in this free manner of Shakespeare, as well as in the somewhat stricter form that Sidney employed, and it is only of late years that they have tried to shut us up to one definite and unchanging sequence and interplay of rhyme. Mr. Alcott in these new sonnets, the ripe fruit of an aged tree, has used the freedom that nature gave him, and years allow: he has written with little uniformity in the order and number of his rhymes, but with much regard to the spirit of the sonnet as a high form of verse. I fancy that Dante (who may be called the father of the sonnet, though not the first to write it) chose this graceful and courteous verse, because it is so well suited to themes of love and friendship. When he would express sorrow or anger, or light and jesting humor, he had recourse to the canzonet, the terza rima, or what he called the ballad, – something quite unlike what we know by that name. Mr. Alcott has followed in the same general course; his sonnets are one thing, his canzonets another: though the difference in feeling, which prompts him to use one form rather than the other, cannot always be definitely expressed. It is felt rather than seen, and seen rather by the effect of the finished poem than by the light of any rule or formal definition.
Definiteness, in fact, must not be looked for in these poems; nor is it the characteristic of the highest poetry in any language. Verse may be powerful and suggestive, or even clear in the sense of producing a distinct impression on the mind, without being definite, and responding to all the claims of analysis. I take it that few readers will fail to see the central thought, or the vivid portraiture in each of these sonnets and canzonets; but fewer still will be able to explain precisely, even to their own minds, what each suggestive phrase and period includes and excludes in its meaning. For this fine vagueness of utterance, the sonnet has always given poets a fair field, and our present author has not gone beyond his due privilege in this respect, though he has availed himself of it more frequently than many would have done. The mottoes and citations accompanying each sonnet may help the reader to a meaning that does not at once flash in his eyes. But he must not expect to conquer these verses at a single reading. The thought of years, the labor of months, has been given to the writing of them; and the reader ought not to complain if he take as much time to comprehend them as the author took to write them. They are worth the pains of reading many times over, and even of learning them by heart, for which their compendious form well fits them.
It may be complained that these sonnets lack variety. This is indeed a fault into which sonneteers often fall, – our best collection of American sonnets hitherto – those of Jones Very – being open to this censure. It will be found, perhaps, that the sameness of rhyme and thought is often but an appearance, – the delicate shade of meaning being expressed, in a vocabulary of no large extent, by a rare process of combining and collocating words. Certain phrases recur, too, because the thought necessarily recurs, – as when the oratory of Phillips and of Parker, as of others, is characterized by the general term, eloquence. In the poverty of our language, there is no other term to use, while the qualifying words and their connection sufficiently distinguish between one person and another. The critical are referred to Homer, who never fails to repeat the same word, or the same verse, when it comes in his way to do so.
But to return to the sonnet itself. Landor, to whom as to Thoreau, Milton was the greatest English poet, thought that the blind Puritan had made good his offence against the Psalms of David, by the sonnet on the slaughtered saints of Piedmont. “Milton,” he says, “was never half so wicked a regicide as when he lifted up his hand and smote King David. He has atoned for it, however, by composing a magnificent psalm of his own, in the form of a sonnet. There are others in Milton comparable to it, but none elsewhere.” And then the wilful critic goes on to say, putting his words into the mouth of Porson: “In the poems of Shakespeare, which are printed as sonnets, there is sometimes a singular strength and intensity of thought, with little of that imagination which was afterward to raise him highest in the universe of poetry. Even the interest we take in the private life of this miraculous man, cannot keep the volume in our hands long together. We acknowledge great power, but we experience great weariness. Were I a poet, I would much rather have written the ‘Allegro,’ or the ‘Penseroso’ than all those.” Monstrous as this comment seems to us, there is a certain truth in it, the sonnet in large quantities always producing weariness; for which reason, as I suppose, Dante interspersed his love sonnets in the “Vita Nuova” and the “Convito,” with canzonets and ballads. His commentaries – often of a singular eloquence – also serve as a relief to the formal verse, as his melodious Tuscan lines do to the formality of his poetical metaphysics. A person, says Landor, “lately tried to persuade me that he is never so highly poetical, as when he is deeply metaphysical. He then quoted fourteen German poets of the first order, and expressed his compassion for Æschylus and Homer.” Dante’s metaphysics were of a higher cast, and so interfused with love and fair ladies, that they only weary us with a certain perplexity as to where are the limits of courtship and of logic. Mr. Alcott also is quaintly metaphysical in Dante’s fashion; like the sad old Florentine, but with a more cheerful spirit, he addresses himself
“To every captive soul and gentle heart,”
(A ciascun alma presa e gentil core,)
and would fain inquire of those who go on a pilgrimage of Love (O voi che per la via d’Amor passate) and of the fair ladies who have learned love at first hand (Donne che avete intelletto d’amore.) His doctrine is that of the wise man whom Dante quotes and approves in the “Vita Nuova,” —
“One and the same are love and the gentle heart.”
(Amor e’ l cor gentil sono una cosa.)
Other Americans have written sonnets in this ancient faith, – as he, who thus (in that happy season so aptly described by Mr. Alcott, as addressed his own cor gentil: —
“Youth’s glad morning when the rising East
Glows golden with assurance of success,
And life itself’s a rare continual feast,
Enjoyed the more if meditated less,”)
addressed his own cor gentil: —
“My heart, forthlooking in the purple day,
Tell me what sweetest image thou may’st see,
Fit to be type of thy dear love and thee?
Lo! here where sunshine keeps the wind away,
Grow two young violets, – humble lovers they, —
With drooping face to face, and breath to breath,
They look and kiss and love and laugh at death: —
Yon bluebird singing on the scarlet spray
Of the bloomed maple in the blithe spring air,
SONNETS AND CANZONETS
“These quiet and green places, these mountains and valleys, were created by Nature on purpose for loving hearts.”
Meli’s Canzonets.
“Be it that my unseasonable song
Come out of time, that fault is in the time;
And I must not do Virtue so much wrong,
As love her aught the worse for others’ crime;
And yet I find some blessed spirits among
That cherish me, and like and grace my rhyme.”
Daniel.
PART I.
PROEM
Long left unwounded by the grisly foe,
Who sometime pierces all with fatal shaft,
Still on my cheek fresh youth did lively glow,
And at his threatening arrow gaily laught;
Came then my friendly scholar, and we quaffed
From learning’s spring, its sparkling overflow;
All through the lingering evening’s charmèd hours,
Delightful fellowship in thought was ours:
If I from Poesy could not all abstain,
He my poor verses oft did quite undress,
New wrapt in words my thought’s veiled nakedness,
Or kindly clipt my steed’s luxuriant mane:
’Twas my delight his searching eye to meet,
In days of genial versing, memories sweet.
January 1, 1882.
“O Spring, thou youthful beauty of the year,
Mother of flowers, bringer of warbling quires,
Of all sweet new green things, and new desires.”
Guarini’s Pastor Fido.
I
Auspicious morn, com’st opportune, unbought?
Bring’st thou glad furtherance in thy rosy train?
Speed then, my chariot, following fast my thought,
And distance on thy track the lumbering wain,
O’er plain and hillock nearing her abode,
The goal of expectation, fortune’s road, —
The maiden waits to greet with courtesy
Her bashful guest, while stranger yet is he:
From friendly circle at the city’s Court
She’s come to cull the flowers, to toy and play
With prattling childhood, love’s delightful sport;
Its smile call forth, to scent the new-mown hay,
Enjoy the wholesome laughter, simple mien,
Of country people in this rural scene.
“So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.”
Shenstone.
II
Ah! why so brief the visit, short his stay?
The acquaintance so surprising, and so sweet,
Stolen is my heart, ’tis journeying far away,
With that shy stranger whom my voice did greet.
That hour so fertile of entrancing thought,
So rapt the conversation, and so free, —
My heart lost soundings, tenderly upcaught,
Driven by soft sails of love and ecstasy!
Was I then? was I? clasped in Love’s embrace,
And touched with ardors of divinity?
Spake with my chosen lover face to face,
Espoused then truly? such my destiny?
I cannot tell; but own the pleasing theft,
That when the stranger went, I was of Love bereft.
“Though the bias of her nature was not to thought but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature, as to meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her heart, warming them by her sentiments; believing, as she did, that, by dealing nobly with all, all would show themselves noble.”
III
Not all the brilliant beauties I have seen,
Mid the gay splendors of some Southern hall,
In jewelled grandeur, or in plainest mien,
Did so my fancy and my heart enthral,
As doth this noble woman, Nature’s queen!
Such hearty greeting from her lips did fall,
And I ennobled was through her esteem;
At once made sharer of her confidence,
As by enchantment of some rapturous dream;
With subtler vision gifted, finer sense,
She loosed my tongue’s refraining diffidence,
And softer accents lent our varying theme:
So much my Lady others doth surpass,
I read them all through her transparent glass.
“They love indeed who quake to say they love.”
Sir Philip Sidney.
IV
The April rains are past, the frosts austere, —
The flowers are hungering for the genial sun,
The snow’s dissolved, the merry birds are here,
And rural labors now are well begun.
Hither, from the disturbing, noisy Court
I’ve flown to this sequestered, quiet scene,
To meditate on Love and Love’s disport
Mid these smooth pastures and the meadows green.
Sure ’twere no fault of mine, no whispering sin,
If these coy leaves he sends me seem to speak
All that my heart, caressing, folds within;
Nor if I sought to smother, my flushed cheek
Would tell too plainly what I cannot hide,
Fond fancy disenchant nor set aside.
“Love is the life of friendship, letters are
The life of love, the loadstones that by rare
Attraction make souls meet, and melt, and mix,
As when by fire exalted gold we fix.”
Howel.
V
Most precious leaves the mail delights to bring,
All loving parcels, neatly squared and sealed;
Her buoyant fancy trims its glossy wing,
And flits courageous o’er Love’s flowery field.
Sure ’tis a tender and a sparkling flame
That letters kindle and do sweetly feed;
Wilt fly, schoolmaster, for such noble game?
Maiden that doth all other maids exceed!
She writes with passion, and a nimble wit,
Void of all pedantry and vain pretence,
With native genius forcible and fit,
A flowing humor and surpassing sense:
Who gains her heart will win a precious prize,
And fortunate be in every lover’s eyes.
“This place may seem for lovers’ leisure made,
So close those elms inweave their lofty shade.
The twining woodbine, how it climbs to breathe
Refreshing sweets around us; all beneath,
The ground with grass of cheerful green bespread,
Through which the springing flower uprears its head.
Lo, here are kingcups of a golden hue,
Medleyed with daisies white and endive blue,
And honeysuckles of a purple dye:
Confusion gay! bright waving to the eye.”
Ambrose Phillips.
VI
’Tis but a half-hour’s walk the Mill-Dam o’er,
Past Punch Bowl Inn, where, by the turnpike’s side,
The shaded pathway winding to the door,
The mansion rises in ancestral pride: —
Its shaven lawn, and blossoming orchard hoar,
And trellised vines, and hedges trim and neat,
Show plenty and refinement here abide, —
The generous gentleman’s fair country-seat.
Now, whilst the full moon glances soft and bright
O’er Mall and Mill-Dam and suburban street,
Turn hitherward thine unaccustomed feet,
At afternoon, or evening, or late night;
A change of scene oft rare attraction lends
To new acquaintance, as to older friends.
“If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep,
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:
My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne,
And all this day an unaccustomed spirit
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.”
Shakespeare.
VII
The morning’s clear, the sky without a frown,
The dew-bespangled pastures wet the shoe;
Sauntering full early toward the sleeping town,
We’ll take the dry, well-trodden avenue;
On these crisp pathways, and familiar grounds
(Unless my flattering heart be over-bold),
While lingering purposely amid our rounds,
Some shady lane may love to hear all told.
One name has captured his too partial ear, —
(These kind, concealing bushes love invite
No tell-tales are, nor neighbors impolite;)
I’ll hear his suit devoid of blame or fear.
Impatiently the moment I await;
Who nothing ventures, stays disconsolate.
“Who knows thy destiny? when thou hast done,
Perchance her cabinet may harbor thee,
Whither all noble ambitious wits do run,
A nest almost as full of good as she.
Mark if to get thee she o’erskip the rest,
Mark if she read thee thrice, and kiss the name,
Mark if she do the same that they protest,
Mark if she mark whither her woman came.”
Donne.
VIII
Mean are all titles of nobility,
And kings poor spendthrifts, while I do compare
The wealth she daily lavishes on me
Of love, the noble kingdom that I share:
Is it the jealous year, for emphasis,
Sheds beauteous sunshine and refreshing dews?
My maiden’s month doth softlier court and kiss,
Tint springtime’s virgin cheek with rosier hues
Fly faster o’er my page, impassioned quill,
Signing this note of mine with tenderer touch!
Say I no measure find to mete my will,
Say that I love, but cannot tell how much;
Let time and trouble the full story tell:
I cannot love thee more, I know I love thee well.
“Let raptured fancy on that moment dwell
When thy dear vows in trembling accents fell,
When love acknowledged waked the tender sigh,
Swelled thy full breast, and filled the melting eye.”
Langhorne.
IX
Now I no longer wait my love to tell,
As ’twere a weakness love should not commit;
E’en did avowal my fond hope dispel,
My passion would of weakness me acquit.
Enamoured thus and holden by its spell,
Evasive words disloyal were, unfit
To emphasize the exquisite happiness
My boldest accents falteringly express;
Here, take my hand, and, life-long wedded, lead
Me by thy side; and, with my hand, my heart
Given thee long since in thought, given now in deed;
My life, my love, shall play no faithless part.
Blest be that hour, when, meeting face to face,
Our vows are plighted, ours the dear embrace!
“Venus, thy eternal sway
All the race of men obey.”
Euripides.
X
Unconquerable and inviolate
Is Love; servant and sov’reign of man’s wit:
Though the light-wingèd fancy changeful flit,
She rules unswervingly her fair estate,
O’erbears mischance and error, envy and hate;
High intellect, ambition, passion, pride,
Endowments that capricious Fortune brings,
By her disfranchisements are set aside;
The mistress she alike of slaves and kings,
Empress of Earth’s dominions, far and wide,
Eldest of potentates, and latest born.
Of all in Heaven above or Earth below,
No being so illustrious or forlorn,
That to Love’s sceptre doth not gladly bow.
“Ye tradeful merchants! that with weary toil
Do seek most precious things to make your gain,
And both the Indies of their treasure spoil,
What needeth you to seek so far in vain?
For, lo! my love doth in herself contain
All this world’s riches that may far be found;
But that which fairest is, but few behold,
Her mind adorned with virtues manifold.”
Spenser.
XI
Ancestral tendencies far down descend;
They bless or blame for generations long;
They prick us forward toward our destined end,
Alike the weak, the sluggish, and the strong.
When her grave ancestor, of Winthrop’s date,
Did with the rich mint-master’s daughter join
In wedlock, he, sagacious magistrate,
Gained more in sterling worth than silver coin:
So, when King’s Chapel saw, in gladsome May,
The mild schoolmaster lead his willing bride,
And the courtly warden give her hand away,
Mintage of like worth had no land beside.
True love alone nobility doth outvie,
And character’s the sterling currency.
“How still the sea! behold, how calm the sky!
And how, in sportive chase, the swallows fly!
Sweet breathe the fields, and now a gentle breeze
Moves every leaf and trembles through the trees.”
Phillips.
XII
Hither, the gray and shapely church beside,
At sandy Hingham, by the sounding sea,
From the disturbing town escaped thus wide,
I’m come, from all encumbering care set free,
To raise the choral song, with friends discourse,
Roam the wide fields for flowers, or seaward sail,
Or to Cohasset’s strand repair, where hoarse
Tumultuous surges chant their ceaseless tale;
Or poesy entertain, grave Wordsworth’s lays,
Melodious musing childhood’s glorious prime,
Shakespeare’s warm sonnets or Venetian plays,
Or that sad wizard Mariner’s marvellous Rime.
Here in these haunts, this lovers’ company,
Sweet Love’s symposium hold we happily.
“Books have always a secret influence on the understanding: we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas; he that reads books of science, though without any desire for improvement, will grow more knowing; he that entertains himself with moral or religious treatises will imperceptibly advance to goodness; the ideas which are often offered to the mind will at last find a lucky moment when it is disposed to receive them.”
Dr. Johnson.
XIII
My Lady reads, with judgment and good taste,
Books not too many, but the wisest, best,
Pregnant with sentiment sincere and chaste,
Rightly conceived were they and aptly dressed:
These wells of learning tastes she at the source, —
Johnson’s poised periods, Fénelon’s deep sense,
Taylor’s mellifluous and sage discourse,
Majestic Milton’s epic eloquence, —
Nor these alone her thoughts do all engage,
But classic authors of the modern time,
And the great masters of the ancient age,
In prose alike and of the lofty rhyme:
Montaigne and Cowper, Plutarch’s gallery,
Blind Homer’s Iliad and his Odyssey.
“Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make: I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss I feel – I feel it all.”
Wordsworth.
XIV
Not Wordsworth’s genius, Pestalozzi’s love,
The stream have sounded of clear infancy.
Baptismal waters from the Head above
These babes I foster daily are to me;
I dip my pitcher in these living springs
And draw, from depths below, sincerity;
Unsealed, mine eyes behold all outward things
Arrayed in splendors of divinity.
What mount of vision can with mine compare?
Not Roman Jove nor yet Olympian Zeus
Darted from loftier ether through bright air
One spark of holier fire for human use.
Glad tidings thence these angels downward bring,
As at their birth the heavenly choirs do sing.
“Fresh as the morning, earnest as the hour
That calls the noisy world to grateful sleep,
Our silent thought reveres the nameless power
That high seclusion round thy life doth keep.”
Sanborn.
XV
Daughter, beloved of all, thy tender eye,
Sweet disposition, and thy gentle voice,
Make every heart, full soon thy close ally,
Respect thy wishes, thine unspoken choice, —
Hastening, unbidden, therewith to comply;
They in thy cheerful countenance rejoice,
Kindness unfailing, and quick sympathy.
Peacemaker thou, with equanimity
And aspirations far above thy care,
Leavest no duty slighted or undone,
Living for thy dear kindred, always there,
Faithful as rising and as setting sun.
Can I of lovelier mansion be possest,
Than in thy heart to dwell a welcome guest?
“Stern daughter of the voice of God!
O Duty, if that name thou love,
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove;
Thou who art victory and law,
When empty terrors overawe;
And calm’st the weary strife of frail humanity!”
Wordsworth.
XVI
When I remember with what buoyant heart,
Midst war’s alarms and woes of civil strife,
In youthful eagerness, thou didst depart,
At peril of thy safety, peace, and life,
To nurse the wounded soldier, swathe the dead —
How piercèd soon by fever’s poisoned dart,
And brought unconscious home, with wildered head —
Thou, ever since, mid languor and dull pain,
To conquer fortune, cherish kindred dear,
Hast with grave studies vexed a sprightly brain,
In myriad households kindled love and cheer;
Ne’er from thyself by Fame’s loud trump beguiled,
Sounding in this and the farther hemisphere: —
I press thee to my heart, as Duty’s faithful child.
“In deepest passions of my grief-swoll’n breast,
Sweet soul, this only comfort seizeth me,
That so few years should make thee so much blest,
And give such wings to reach eternity.”
Brown’s Shepherd’s Pipe.
XVII
’T was not permitted thee the Fates to please,
And with survivors share our happier day;
For smitten early wast thou by disease,
Whilst with thy sisters thou didst smile and play.
Wasted by pains and lingering decay,
Life’s glowing currents at the source did freeze;
Yet, ere the angel summoned thee away,
Above thy cheerful couch affection’s ray
Did brightly shine, and all thy sufferings ease.
Dear child of grace! so patient and so strong,
Bound to thy duty by quick sympathy,
They did our hearts irreparable wrong
To break the promise of thy infancy;
Ah me! life is not life, deprived of thee.
“Will’t ne’er be morning? will that promised light
Ne’er break, and clear these clouds of night?
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day,
Whose conquering ray
May chase these fogs: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.”
Quarles.
XVIII
LOVE’S MORROW
I
It was but yesterday
That all was bright and fair:
Came over the sea,
So merrily,
News from my darling there.
Now over the sea
Comes hither to me
Knell of despair, —
“No more, no longer there!”
II
Ah! gentle May,
Couldst thou not stay?
Why hurriedst thou so swift away?
No – not the same —
Nor can it be —
That lovely name —
Ever again what once it was to me.
It cannot, cannot be
That lovely name to me.
III
I cannot think her dead,
So lately, sweetly wed;
She who had tasted bliss,
A mother’s virgin kiss,
Rich gifts conferred to bless
With costliest happiness,
Nobility and grace
To ornament her place.
IV
Broken the golden band,
Severed the silken strand,
Ye sisters four!
Still to me two remain,
And two have gone before:
Our loss, her gain, —
And He who gave can all restore.
And yet – Oh! why,
My heart doth cry,
Why take her thus away?
V
I wake in tears and sorrow:
Wearily I say,
“Come, come, fair morrow,
And chase my grief away!”
Night-long I say,
“Haste, haste, fair morrow,
And bear my grief away!”
All night long,
My sad, sad song.
VI
“Comes not the welcome morrow,”
My boding heart doth say;
Still grief from grief doth borrow;
“My child is far away.”
Still as I pray
The deeper swells my sorrow.
Break, break! The risen day
Takes not my grief away.
VII
Full well I know,
Joy’s spring is fathomless, —
Its fountains overflow
To cheer and bless,
And underneath our grief
Well forth and give relief.
Transported May!
Thou couldst not stay;
Who gave, took thee away.
Come, child, and whisper peace to me,
Say, must I wait, or come to thee?
I list to hear
Thy message clear.
VIII
“Cease, cease, new grief to borrow!”
Last night I heard her say;
“For sorrow hath no morrow,
’T is born of yesterday.
Translated thou shalt be,
My cloudless daylight see,
And bathe, as I, in fairest morrows endlessly.”
“Shall not from these remains,
From this low mound, dear ashes of the dead,
The violet spring?”
Persius.
XIX
O Death! thou utterest deeper speech,
A tenderer, truer tone,
Than all our languages can reach,
Though all were voiced in one.
Thy glance is deep, and, far beyond
All that our eyes do see,
Assures to fairest hopes and fond
Their immortality.
Sing, sing, the Immortals,
The Ancients of days,
Ever crowding the portals
Of Time’s peopled ways;
These Babes ever stealing
Into Eden’s glad feeling,
The fore-world revealing,
God’s face ne’er concealing.
XX
Voyager across the seas,
In my arms thy form I press;
Come, my Baby, me to please,
Blue-eyed nurseling, motherless!
All is strange and beautiful,
Every sense finds glad surprise,
Life is lovely, wonderful,
Faces fair, and beaming eyes.
Safe, ye angels, keep this child,
Life-long guard her innocence,
Winsome ways, and temper mild;
Heaven, our home, be her defence!
“O, how thy worth with manners may I sing,
When thou art all the better part of me?
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?
And what is’t but mine own when I praise thee?”
Shakespeare.
XXI
Dear Heart! if aught to human love I’ve owed
For noble furtherance of the good and fair;
Climbed I, by bold emprise, the dizzying stair
To excellence, and was by thee approved,
In memory cherished and the more beloved;
If fortune smiled, and late-won liberty, —
’T was thy kind favor all, thy generous legacy.
Nor didst thou spare thy large munificence
Me here to pleasure amply and maintain,
But conjured from suspicion and mischance,
Exile, misapprehension, cold disdain,
For my loved cloud-rapt dream, supremacy;
To bright reality transformed romance,
Crowning with smiles the hard-earned victory.
“The hills were reared, the valleys scooped in vain,
If Learning’s altars vanish from the plain.”
Channing.
XXII
Calm vale of comfort, peace, and industry,
Well doth thy name thy homebred traits express! —
Considerate people, neighborly and free,
Proud of their monuments, their ancestry,
Their circling river’s quiet loveliness,
Their noble townsmen’s fame and history.
Nor less I glory in each goodly trait,
Child of another creed, a stricter State;
I chose thee for my haunt in troublous time,
My home in days of late prosperity,
And laud thee now in this familiar rhyme;
Here on thy bosom the last summons wait
To scenes, if lovelier, still reflecting thee,
Resplendent both in hope and memory.
PART II.
SONNETS
“In sundry moods, ’t was pastime to be bound
Within the sonnet’s scanty plot of groud.”
Wordsworth.
“I like that friendship which, by soft gentle pauses, steals upon the affections and grows mellow with time, by reciprocal offices and trials of love; that friendship is like to last long, and never shrink in the wetting.”
Howel.
I
In Youth’s glad morning, when the rising East
Glows golden with assurance of success,
And life itself ’s a rare continual feast,
Enjoyed the more if meditated less,
’T is then that friendship’s pleasures chiefly bless,
As if without beginning, – ne’er to end, —
So rich the season and so dear the friend,
When thou and I went wandering hand in hand;
Mine wert thou in our years of earliest prime,
Studious at home, or to the southern land
Adventuring bold; again in later time,
Thy kindly service, always at command
Of calm discretion, and abounding sense,
Prompted and showed the path to excellence.
“Power above powers! O heavenly eloquence!
That, with the strong rein of commanding words,
Dost manage, guide, and master the eminence
Of man’s affections more than all their swords;
Shall we not offer to thy excellence
The richest treasure that our wit affords?
Or should we careless come behind the rest
In power of words that go before in worth;
When all that ever hotter spirits exprest
Comes bettered by the patience of the North?”
Daniel.
II
My thought revives at utterance of thy name, —
Doth high behavior, sweet discourse recall,
Lit with emotion’s quick and quenchless flame,
Imagination interfused through all;
Then peals thy voice melodious on mine ear,
As when grave anthems thou didst well recite, —
Laodamia’s vision sad and dear,
Or “Thanatopsis,” or “Hail, Holy Light!”
Thou true Professor, gifted to dispense
New pathos e’en to Channing’s eloquence;
If mother tongue they fail to speak or write,
Nor Greek nor Latin draw thy pupils thence;
Such culture, taught by the far Northern sea,
This scholar brings, New England, home to thee.
“Ascending soul, sing Pæan.”
Oracle.
III
Christian beloved! devoid of art and wile, —
Who lovest thy Lord so well, with heart so true,
That neither mist nor mote of worldly guile
May clog thy vision, nor confuse the view
Of that transcendent and commanding style
Of god-like manhood; which had dazed long while
Each purblind brother’s idol-loving eye.
Sense overpowering doth the soul belie:
Thou the soul’s errand and due place dost see,
Its heavenly features to thy ken disclose,
As when in Nazareth thy Lord uprose,
The Father’s image in Humanity.
A holy service thine, interpreter
Of Lazarus rising from the sepulchre.
“The virtuous mind that ever walks attended
By a strong siding champion, Conscience.”
Milton.
IV
Channing! my Mentor whilst my thought was young,
And I the votary of fair liberty, —
How hung I then upon thy glowing tongue,
And thought of love and truth as one with thee!
Thou wast the inspirer of a nobler life,
When I with error waged unequal strife,
And from its coils thy teaching set me free.
Be ye, his followers, to his leading true,
Nor privilege covet, nor the wider sway;
But hold right onward in his loftier way,
As best becomes, and is his rightful due.
If learning ’s yours, – gifts God doth least esteem, —
Beyond all gifts was his transcendent view;
O realize his Pentecostal dream!
“Without oblivion there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, then the general soul is clear, melodious, and true.”
Carlyle.
V
Daughter of Memory! who her watch doth keep
O’er dark Oblivion’s land of shade and dream,
Peers down into the realm of ancient Sleep,
Where Thought uprises with a sudden gleam
And lights the devious path ’twixt Be and Seem;
Mythologist! that dost thy legend steep
Plenteously with opiate and anodyne,
Inweaving fact with fable, line with line,
Entangling anecdote and episode,
Mindful of all that all men meant or said, —
We follow, pleased, thy labyrinthine road,
By Ariadne’s skein and lesson led:
For thou hast wrought so excellently well,
Thou drop’st more casual truth than sages tell.
“Not on the store of sprightly wine,
Nor plenty of delicious meats,
Though gracious Nature did design
To court us with perpetual treats;
’Tis not on these we for content depend,
So much as on the shadow of a friend.”
Menander.
VI
Misfortune to have lived not knowing thee!
’T were not high living, nor to noblest end,
Who, dwelling near, learned not sincerity,
Rich friendship’s ornament that still doth lend
To life its consequence and propriety.
Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend:
By the hand thou took’st me, and did’st condescend
To bring me straightway into thy fair guild;
And life-long hath it been high compliment
By that to have been known, and thy friend styled,
Given to rare thought and to good learning bent;
Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled.
Permit me, then, thus honored, still to be
A scholar in thy university.
“He shall not seek to weave,
In weak, unhappy times,
Efficacious rhymes;
Wait his returning strength.
Bird, that from the nadir’s floor
To the zenith’s top can soar,
The soaring orbit of the Muse exceeds that journey’s length.”
VII
Hierophant, and lyrist of the soul!
Clear insight thine of universal mind;
While from its crypts the nascent Powers unrol,
And represent to consciousness the Whole.
Each in its order seeks its natural kind,
These latent or apparent, stir or sleep,
Watchful o’er widening fields of airy space,
Or slumbering sightless in the briny deep; —
Thou, far above their shows, servant of Grace,
Tread’st the bright way from Spirit down to Sense,
Interpreting all symbols to thy race, —
Commanding vistas of the fair Immense,
And glimpses upward far, where, sons of Heaven,
Sit in Pantheon throned the Sacred Seven.
“The princely mind, that can
Teach man to keep a God in man,—
And when wise poets would search out to see
Good men, behold them all in thee!”
VIII
Pleased, I recall those hours, so fair and free,
When all the long forenoons we two did toss
From lip to lip, in lively colloquy,
Plato, Plotinus, or famed schoolman’s gloss,
Disporting in rapt thought and ecstasy.
Then by the tilting rail Millbrook we cross,
And sally through the fields to Walden wave,
Plunging within the cove, or swimming o’er;
Through woodpaths wending, he with gesture quick
Rhymes deftly in mid-air with circling stick,
Skims the smooth pebbles from the leafy shore,
Or deeper ripples raises as we lave;
Nor slumb’rous pillow touches at late night,
