Classic Poem

YOUNG E MILY has temples fair,
Caressed by locks of dark brown hair.
A thousand sweet humanities
Speak wisely from her hazel eyes.
Her speech is ignorant of command,
But it can lead you like a hand.
Her white teeth sparkle when the eclipse,
Is laughter-moved, of her red lips.
She moves — all grace — with gliding limbs,
As a white-breasted cygnet swims.

In her sweet childhood, Emily,
Was wild with natural gayety,
A little creature, full of laughter,
Who cast no thought before or after,
And knew not custom or its chains.
The dappled fawns upon the plains,
The birds that filled the morning skies
Above her, with their ecstacies —
Of love and music prodigal —
Were not more gladly natural.

But with this childish merriment,
Mind, and the ripening years, have blent
A thoughtfulness — not melancholy —
Which wins her life away from folly;
Checking somewhat the natural gladness,
But saved, by that it checks, from sadness —
Like clouds, across a May-morn sailing,
Which take the golden light they are veiling.
She loves her kind, and shuns no duty,
Her virtues sanctify her beauty,
And all who know her say that she
Was born for man's felicity.
I know that she was born for mine;
Dearer than any joy of wine,
Of pomp, or gold, or man's loud praise,
Or purple power, art thou to me —
Kind cheerer of my clouded ways —
Young vine upon a rugged tree!

Maidens who love are full of hope,
And crowds hedge in its golden scope;
Therefore they love green solitudes
And silence for their better moods.
I know some wilds where tulip trees,
Full of the singing toil of bees,
Depend their loving branches over
Great rocks, which honeysuckles cover
In rich and liberal overflow.
In the dear time of long ago,
When I had wooed young Emily,
And she had told her love to me,
I often found her in these bowers
Quite rapt away in meditation,
Or giving earnest contemplation
To leaf, or bird, or wild-wood flowers;
And once I heard the maiden singing,
Until the very woods were ringing —
Singing an old song to the hours!
I well remember that rare song,
It charged the hours with cruel wrong —
Wrong to the verdure of the boughs —
Wrong to the lustre of fair brows.
Its music had a wondrous sound,
And made the greenwood haunted ground.
But I delay: one jocund morn —
A morn of that blithe time of spring,
When milky blossoms load the thorn,
And birds so prate, and soar, and sing,
That melody is every where,
On the glad earth and in the air —
On such a morn I went to seek,
Through our wild haunts, for Emily.
I found her where a flowering tree
Gave odours and cool shade. Her cheek
A little rested on her hand;
Her rustic skill had made a band,
Of fair device, which garlanded
The beauty of her bending head;
Some maiden thoughts, most kind and wise,
Were dimly burning in her eyes.
When I beheld her — form and face
So lithe, so fair — the spirit race,
Of whom the better poets dreamed,
Came to my thought, and I half deemed
My earth-born mistress, pure and good,
Was some such lady of the wood
As she who worked at spell and snare,
With Huon of the dusky hair,
And fled, in likeness of a doe,
Before the fleet youth Angelo.
But these infirm imaginings
Flew quite away on instant wings.
I called her name. A swift surprise
Came whitely to her face, but soon
It fled before some daintier dyes,
And, laughing like a brook in June,
With sweet accost she welcomed me;
And I sate there with Emily.
The gods were very good to bless
My life with so much happiness
The maiden on that lowly seat —
I sitting at her little feet!
Two happier lovers never met
In dear and talk-charmed privacy.
It was a golden day to me,
And its great bliss is with me yet,
Warming, like wine, my inmost heart —
For memories of happy hours
Are like the cordials pressed from flowers,
And madden sweetly.

I impart
Naught of the love-talk I remember,
For May's young pleasures are best hid
From the cold prudence of December,
Which clips, and chills, all vernal wings;
And love's own sanctities forbid,
Now, as of old, such gossippings
In hall, of what befalls in bower.
But other matters of the hour,
Of which it breaks no faith to tell,
My homely rhyme shall chronicle.
As silently we sate alone —
Our love-talk spent — two mated birds
Began to prate in loving tone;
Quoth Emily, " They sure have words!
Didst hear them say " My sweet ," " My dear "? "
And as they chirped, we laughed to hear.

Soon after this a southern wind
Came sobbing, like a hunted hind,
Into the quiet of the glen.
The maiden mused awhile, and then
Worded her thought right playfully.
" These winds, " she said, " of land and sea,
My friend, are surely living things
That come and go on unseen wings.
The teeming air, and prodigal,
Which droops its azure over all,
Is full of immortalities
That look on us with unseen eyes.
This sudden wind that hath come here,
With its low sobs of pain or fear,
It may be is a spirit kind
That loves the bruised flowers to bind,
Whose task it is to shake the dew
From the sad violet's eye of blue,
Or chase the honey-making thieves
From off the rose, and shut its leaves
Against the cold of April eves.
Perhaps its dainty, pink-tipt, hands
Have plied such tasks in far-off lands,
And now, perchance, some grim foe follows
The little wight to these green hollows. "
Such gentle words had Emily
For the south wind in the tulip tree.

A runnel, hidden by the trees,
Gave out some natural melodies.
She said " The brook among the stones
Is solemn in its undertones:
How like a hymn! the singing creature
Is worshipping the God of Nature. "
But I replied, " My dear — not so;
Thy solemn eyes, thy brow of snow,
And, more than these, thy maiden merit,
Have won Undine, that gentle spirit,
To sing her songs of love to thee. "
Swift answered merry Emily,
" Undine is but a girl, you know,
And would not pine for love of me;
She has been peering from the brook
And glimpsed at you. " She said, and shook
With a rare fit of silvery laughter.
I was more circumspect thereafter.
And dealt in homelier talk. A man
May call a white-browed girl Dian ,
But likes not to be turned upon,
And nick-named Young Endymion .

My Emily loved very well,
At times, those ancient lays which tell
Rude natural tales; she had no lore
Of trouvere or of troubadour,
Nor knew what difference there might be
Between the tongues of oc and oui;
But hearing old tales, loved them all,
If truth but made them natural,
In our good talks, we oft went o'er
The little hoard of my quaint lore,
Culled out of old melodious fable.
She little cared for Arthur's Table,
For tales of doughty Launcelot,
Or Tristram, or of him who smote
The giant, Angoulafre hight,
And moaned for love by day and night;
She little cared for such as these.
But if I crossed the Pyrenees,
With the great peers of Charlemagne
Descending toward the Spanish plain,
Her eye would lighten at the strain.
And it would moisten with a tear.
The sad end of that tale to hear;
How, all aweary, worn, and white,
Urging his foaming horse amain,
A courier from the south, one night,
Reached the great city of the Seine;
And how, at that same time and hour,
The bride of Roland lay in bower,
Wakeful, and quick of ear to win
Some rumour of her Paladin —
And how it came, in sudden cries
That shook the earth, and rent the skies;
And how the messenger of fate —
The courier who rode so late —
Was dragged on to her palace gate;
And how the lady sate in hall,
Moaning, among her damsels all,
At the wild tale of Ronceval.
That story sounds like solemn truth,
And she would hear it with such ruth
As sympathetic hearts will pay
To moving griefs of yesterday.

Pity looked lovely in the maiden;
Her eyes were softer when so laden
With the bright dew of tears unshed.
But I was somewhat envious
That other bards should move her thus,
And oft within myself had said,
" Yea — I will strive to touch her heart
With some fair songs of mine own art. "
And, many days before the day
Whereof I speak, I made assay
At this bold labour. In the wells
Of Froissart's life-like chronicles,
I dipped for moving truths of old.
A thousand stories, soft and bold,
Of stately dames, and gentlemen,
Which good Lord Berners, with a pen
Pompous in its simplicity,
Yet tipt with charming courtesy,
Had put in English words, I learned;
And some of these I deftly turned
Into the forms of minstrel verse.
I know the good tales are the worse —
But, sooth to say, it seems to me
My verse has sense and melody —
Even that its measure sometimes flows
With the brave pomp of that old prose.

Beneath our trysting tree, that day,
With dubious face, I read one lay.
Young Emily quite understood
My fears, and gave me guerdon good
In well-timed praise, and cheered me on
Into full flow of heart and tone.
And when, in days of pleasant weather,
Thereafter, we were met together —
As our strong love oft made us meet —
I always took my cosy seat
Just at the damsel's little feet,
And read my tales. It was no friend
To me, that day that heard their end.
It had become a play of love
To watch the swift expression rove
Over the bright sky of her face,
To steal those upward looks, and trace
In every change of cheek and eye
The influence of my poesy.

I made my verse for Emily:
I give it, reader, now to thee.
The tales, which I have toiled to tell,
Of dame in hall, and knight in selle,
Of faithful love, and courage high —
Bright flower, strong staff of chivalry —
These tales, indeed, are old of date,
But why should Time their force abate?
Must we look back with vision dull
On the old brave and beautiful —
All careless of their joy or wo,
Because they lived so long ago?
If sympathy knows but to-day,
If time quite wears its nerve away —
If deeds majestically bold,
In words of ancient music told,
Are only food for studious minds,
And touch no hearts — if man but finds
An abstract virtue in the faith
Which clung to truth, and courted death —
If he can lift the dusky pall
With dainty hand artistical,
And smile' at woes, because some years
Have swept between them and his tears —
I say, my friend, if this may be,
Then burn old books; antiquity
Is no more than a skeleton
Of painted vein, and polished bone.

Reader! the minstrel brotherhood,
Earnest to soothe thy listening mood,
Were wont to style thee gentle, good ,
Noble or gracious: — they could bow
With loyal knee, yet open brow —
They knew to temper thy decision
With graces of a proud submission.
That wont is changed. Yet I, a man
Of this new land republican,
Where insolence wins upward better
Than courtesy — that old dead letter —
And toil claims pay, with utterance sharp,
Follow the good lords of the harp,
And dub thee with each courtly phrase —
And ask indulgence for my lays.