Classic Poem

At times, the hermit and myself forsook
The narrow boundary of that small place;
And nothing being left of novel there,
If ever was such element, we roamed
Afar the rocky upland, seeking new
And wilder pastures to contemplate near,
Thinking that thus might come a change of thought, —
Perhaps to me; for in the hermit's faith,
Thought, like the pumpkin, yielded but a rind.
Wearily he drew his scanty members
O'er the snow-clad ground, in theory as stout
As him fed up on grossness, and more weak,
In my poor estimate, than some slim boy's.
Far we tramped, dragging along the snow,
Through which for very joy I sometime danced
At living still, and knowing one alive;
At which he laughed, to watch me skipping there,
With but a partial looseness in my joints.
Wide pastures, petty woodland, passing soon,
The little cottage where he dwells we reached
Who in great contemplation moulders life,
Or guesses that he does, — one framed to be
Saint of some feverish nation tumbling down
In hot Mahomet's pages, or like Jove,
On that Homeric fable rubbed so bright.

For in the dusty muddle of the time,
When learning goes for nothing, or much less,
He who knows not now triumphs o'er who knows,
And has more glowing honors than a prince.
Who, like the Titans might embroil the skies,
Wears rusty black, and mourns a threadbare seam, —
Him did our hermit love. In him he found
An eremite indeed, a true reformer
Cudgelled from the tomb, — Jerome or Augustine,
Longest breathed of all seraphic writers,
Whose vast tomes, heaps of indifference,
Might furnish forth whole libraries for them,
Who, in these octave days, pop out their books.
There, in his tiny cottage, with no art,
Nor graced with aught but the sublime intent,
Patronus sat upon his learned throne.
He ruled a library, a saint's true prize.
Its covers hanging awkward as the thought,
Done with self-knowledge, cheapest property.
Once as we looked from that divine abode
On those sad mountains shining on the west,
Blue as philosophy, and as far off,
We asked our Mentor if his learned eye,
Drawn outward, had been raised to Nature's height,
Whether he filled the prospect with himself,
Or was himself the creature of the scene.
But you could ask this creature all day long
A hundred questions, and renew the quest.
Reminded thus of those aerial heights,
And nothing doubting, to that point I bent,
I, with the hermit; and once there we sat
On the ascending slope in festive mood,
Across the valleys gazing on dim heights,
And looking in the valleys for a place
To which I fancy I might once pertain.
Strange, a few cubits raised above the plain,
And a few tables of resistless stone
Spread round us, with that rich, delightful air,
Draping high altars in cerulean space,
Could thus enchant the being that we are! —
Those altars, where the airy element
Flows o'er in new perfection, and reveals
Its constant lapsing (never stillness all),
As a mother's kiss touching the bright spruce-foliage;
And in her wise distilment the soft rain,
Trickling below the sphagnum that o'erlays
The plateau's slope, is led to the ravine,
And so electrified by her pure breath,
As if in truth the living water famed,
Recorded in John's mythus, who first dashed
Ideal baptism upon Jordan's shore.
Where doomed Tiberias o'er Gennesareth,
Burns up her smoking columns to the sky,
From Thermae famed, — dead as her Herod now.

In this sweet solitude, the Mountain's life,
At morn and eve, at rise and hush of day,
I heard the wood-thrush sing in the white spruce,
The living water, the enchanted air
So mingling in the crystal clearness there,
A sweet peculiar grace from both, — this song,
Voice of the lovely mountain's favorite bird!
These steeps inviolate by human art,
Centre of awe, raised over all that man
Would fain enjoy and consecrate to one,
Lord of the desert and of all beside,
Consorting with the cloud, the echoing storm,
When like a myriad bowls the mountain wakes
In all its alleys one responsive roar;
And sheeted down the precipice, all light,
Tumble the momentary cataracts, —
The sudden laughter of the mountain-child!
Here haunts the sage of whom I sometime spake, —
Ample Fortunio. On the mountain-peak
I marked him once, at sunset, where he mused,
Forth looking on the continent of hills;
While from his feet the five long granite spurs
That bind the centre to the valley's side
(The spokes from this strange middle to the wheel)
Stretched in the fitful torrent of the gale,
Bleached on the terraces of leaden cloud
And passages of light, — Sierras long
In archipelagoes of mountain sky,
Where it went wandering all the livelong year.
He spoke not; yet methought I heard him say,
" All day and night the same; in sun or shade,
In summer flames and the jagged biting knife
That hardy winter splits upon the cliff, —
From earliest time the same. One mother
And one father brought us forth, thus gazing
On the summits of the days, nor wearied
Yet if all your generations fade:
The crystal air, the hurrying light, the night,
Always the day that never seems to end,
Always the night whose day does never set;
One harvest and one reaper, ne'er too ripe,
Sown by the self-preserver, free from mould,
And builded in these granaries of heaven,
This ever living purity of air,
In these perpetual centres of repose
Still softly rocked. "

I looked; but he was gone.
I saw his robe gleam on the clean-cut stone;
Nor did I doubt he trod the downward path,
Where we had raised, with competent ado,
That vernal mansion sometimes named in sport
The True Observatory, so to stay
The unversed footstep from these mocking paths.
We found him in the camp (I mean Fortunio);
His foot as fleet to scale those pinnacles
As the wild chamois and the Switzer Tell,
Who in the breast of tyrants smote his shaft.
He then resumed his singing, or I dreamed:
Upon the mountain's side no hour is vain,
No fatal thought e'er passes through the mind.
Low in the valley hangs the village church;
I note the tavern with its rusted sign
Creak in the blast, and hear the drover's voice
As on he sweeps his herd, wild as his bulls,
From the pastures high returning: there, below
The cottage lamp gleams forth, ere on the hill
Our daylight flits, or the first tearful stars
Have dallied o'er Wachusett: the hind comes
Home to the evening meal, his children round;
And the coarse village cur, dozing all day,
Essays to hoarsely wheeze largest response
To his adhesive neighbors. On the height,
Diminished thus in distance to mere specks,
I view the fear, the fortune, and the fate
Of that same mortal race chanted in song.
And while the eagles, soaring o'er the peak,
By their shrill echoing whistles fright the hare
Bounding along the naked mountain-side,
And the grave porcupine his shuffling quills
Marches along the ledges black as Ind,
I mark the starry host assert their reign,
Or muse on Nature's income, or my own.
Was there a time when these half-answering hills
Lay at the frown of an ambitious sea,
Grinding along with its cold worlds of ice,
Till, all the furrowed surface deeply carved,
The saline torment took its hand away,
And left a course of splinters in dry air,
To mock the baffled thinker of an orb,
Where somewhat thinks superior to himself.
Oh! what a day, and night of days, swept by,
As, slowly o'er the gray unmoving hills,
In endless march deployed the polar host!
Oh! what an hour when that sea-tossing mass
Began to cut the coast-lines, and map out
The rays of a few continents, and drop
Their bowlders in the path!

Why ask, refused,
Why solitary in the clear expanse
The ceaseless tragedies revolve forlorn?
Nor showman's baton , nor responsive shout
Of all the tribe who make this peak their friend
For a few hurried hours, disturbs the dream.
They speak of questions answered in the deep,
As if these curious carvings were but flung
Aside, like mason's chippings from his blocks,
And left to fill the rut of Nature's road.
They stand forever silent in themselves,
(Whether interior instincts dwell in such,
So speechless, or some deeper cause presides,
Barring out human nature from the ken
Of these presumed concealments,) and disposed
Rather to end, and make no sign, than speak.
Amen! by this neither we lose or gain;
The phantoms of a morn whose blinking sun
Shoots swift combustion, or prefaces death,
And whate'er more, the preface to a tale.

Fair on the hillside as beseemed the state,
Of small spruce-boughs supported by the ash,
Whose crimson berries in September's sun
Lay sparkling jewels o'er the mountain's breast,
There, in a native cot with three stone walls,
I had built out a sort of summer-house,
(As much to nature's trickery owing
As my own); and viewed beneath the lowlands;
The little hamlets with their shining roofs,
When burning noontide fell plumb from the sky;
The flicker of the tapers from the night;
And clouding lakes and woods, all still, unless,
Like battle's brunt, I heard the quarries boom
In far Fitzwilliam, where the granite ledge
Hurls forth its masses for the griping town,
Or the far train sighing in lonely fear;
And never ceased to feel a certain power
That o'er me ruled, uplifted in the height
Of all the crystal sky and perfect air,
Where, but the breath of man were such a thing,
I might have thought vitality a crown.

And here the hermit sat, and told his beads,
And stroked his flowing locks, red as the fire,
Summed up his tale of moon and sun and star:
" How blest are we, " he deemed, " who so comprise
The essence of the whole, and of ourselves,
As in a Venice flask of lucent shape,
Ornate of gilt Arabic, and inscribed
With Suras from Time's Koran, live and pray,
More than half grateful for the glittering prize,
Human existence! If I note my powers,
So poor and frail a toy, the insect's prey,
Itched by a berry, festered by a plum,
The very air infecting my thin frame
With its malarial trick, whom every day
Rushes upon and hustles to the grave,
Yet raised, by the great love that broods o'er all
Responsive, to a height beyond all thought! "

He ended, as the nightly prayer and fast
Summoned him inward. But I sat and heard
The night-hawks rip the air above my head,
Till midnight o'er the warm dry, dewless rocks;
And saw the blazing dog-star droop his fire,
And the low comet, trailing to the south,
Bend his reverted gaze, and leave us free.
At times I sat in July's fiercest ray,
Until the solid heat had fairly flayed
Me in her crucible, and the small cisterns,
Where the good mother kept my royal purl,
Had gone to air. Each night renews the waste;
And still each morn the cold pellucid bath
With faith revives the fainting soul, and forth
I step elate upon my chosen path,
Snatching the dewy fragrance of the hour.
Then in the happy sunlight, and the first
Of all those endless hours we name July,
What chosen beauty gleams among the copse
While each lovely tree welcomes its snow-bird;
This his summer-home: his graceful trill,
Perpetually fresh, delights the ear
From spruce to spruce, and the quick glimmering
Of his staty tail (snow-white its circle)
Sends out most cheerful omens to the eye.

" Here let us live and spend away our lives, "
Said once Fortunio, " while below, absorbed,
The riotous, careering race of man,
Intent on gain or war, pour out their news.
Let us bring in a chosen company,
Like that the noblest of our beauteous maids
Might lead, — unequalled Margaret! herself
The summary of good for all our state;
Composedly thoughtful, genial, yet reserved,
Pure as the wells that dot the ravine's bed,
And lofty as the stars that pierce her skies.
Here shall she reign triumphant, and preside
With gentle prudence o'er the camp's wild mood,
Summoning forth much order from what else
Surely must prove unsound. "

Here in the blast,
Drawn from the ranges of our westering hills,
That like far meadows strewn with haycocks lie,
Cool as most well-iced wine, erect the blaze,
Fruit of Herculean labor from the strength
Of one whose hand serves him for others' needs
(No thought of self e'er soils his manly glove),
Blaze of no dry or fitful accident,
The toy of wintry frolic on these slopes,
White as a grandsire's locks; but of green spruce,
Tough and substantial as her granite roots,
And with strong lights painting the ravine's face,
Or Tintoretto's reds and Rembrandt's shade,
And some fine impulse for our human eyes.
Here let us list the descant bravely raised,
Hymn for the Kaiser, or that seashore lay
Sung on the strand, though inland in its theme;
O Rolling River! boldly may it swell,
Till the dear creatures on the dark low plain
Catch the sweet strain of music, taught by art
Of distance, to unfold the lenient melody;
And the loud-blazing torches of birch-bark
Repeat the Indian's war-dance to the cliffs!
Nor let us pass the Spirit of the hills,
One whom no July's blaze has faintly tanned,
No fierce, precipitous slide ever deters
From leaping gladdened down the fearful pass,
His Alpine tira-lira echoing sweet,
And lion curls far sweeping in the blast.
To him such solitudes have been a prayer,
A fount of inspiration, and his hopes,
Whene'er the problem rises, such as youth
From out the store of green expectancy
Brings musing. Then swift he braved the peaks,
Folded his arms, and in the wayward blast,
Tearing the thoughts to ribbons, he would stand,
Composed as silence in the inward heart
Of all the rocking tumult, inly blest.
And now the blaze, uplifting in the breeze,
Shows the mute figures, such as not by art,
To better Gypsy camp, might be improved.
There serious listeners, those undaunted maids,
Vigorous and swift as the lithe Indian girls,
Who in the natural ages sought our rocks,
Lured by tradition to the grotto's gloom,
Or stung by love, here ventured to the taste
Of the cold precipice, and dashed in scorn
Their pulsing hearts on silence and the waste. —
Alertly swift they mount in earliest dawn
The dim Sierra's point, and Persian there,
(Like Oromazdi's tribe or Mexic priest,)
Wait the approaching day on those cold heights,
Clear as the early hour and with the hues
Of blushing morn caught on their Indian cheeks.
Sometimes I see them, standing silent, grace
The rounded rock like statues framed by art,
For worship in these deserts; sometimes hear
Their vigilant step, quick speeding home
To raise the fragrant steam, excite the urn,
Or, drawn from India's shore, the gleaming rice
Responsive boil. Oh! with much patience,
With superior views they frequent strive,
As the cool western breeze, courteously devout,
Salutes the other cheek, and with soft grace
Confers his smoky offering to the orb
Of the delighted worshipper of pan and pot,
Who by her tears proves how sincerely strong
May be a spruce's blessing.

I might deem
That rarely yet had royal hall more seat,
Richer supply of furniture produced,
Rococo or inlaid, and what more light
The Renaissance supplied. The tables, rock;
The chairs carved of the like; and so the floor,
For matutinal or vespernal rite.
And truly nobler ceiling was not framed
Than all that dome of heaven above our heads,
Dappling afar the lazy afternoons
O'er twice a hundred valleys; or, intent
To march upon our banquet, seven wild showers
In misty columns making for the plates.
And much supply of couches spread along.
Behold the mountain's floor! protend your rock,
In some sharp crevice where the cornel paints
Immenser scarlet and more smashing reds
Than gorgeous Turner's palette, drop thy bones;
Soothed by the spruces murmuring in thy ear,
The ever-rising, ever-falling sigh
Of the perpetual air, and with the night,
Reserved companion, cool and sparsely clad,
Dream, till the threefold hour, with lowly voice,
Steals whispering in thy frame, " Rise, valiant youth!
The dawn draws on apace, envious of thee,
And polar in his gait: advance thy limbs,
Nor strive to heat the stones. "

When August suits,
Some hasten to their haunts, and steal away
The berries blue as heaven that paint the sod
In chosen districts, sweetly edible,
As grape from torrid Spain that commerce wafts,
Or famed Sumatra's fruit, or Cuban pine,
Or where the guava shakes its purple sides,
Glory of camps! Nor let us fail to glean
Proud store of mountain cranberries (more tart
And spicy tasted them the learned deem
Than lowland species), while the faithful maid
Oft stirs the ruddy conserve, nor permits
(Child of inconstancy) the mess to burn.
This task to Madeline was frequent given.
Slight as the daisy bowing in the wind,
She owned a genial grace to charm, persuade,
With copious reasonings on didactic things,
Filled from the springs of genius like a sea,
And touching on the beach of human life
And its smooth pebbles, as a glittering spray,
A fairy music soft as eventide.

Thrice I essayed afar that eastern spur
Where the rude torrents of primeval rock,
Stripped from their canvas, toss in grandeur vast,
A pile tremendous, where four Doric shafts,
Upreared in chaos, front the eager sky,
Graced with an architrave, so that no art
Could more sublime their glory. Wandering here
Once with the hermit, I essayed to speak
Of that conclusive figure on the arch
Of this small temple, carved by nature's rule, —
Things of some prime existence ere our race
Had cast the hammer, and with meted lines
Traced out the right proportions of the form;
Long ere the Parthenon on the Athenian mound
Constrained the view of him, who from the isles
Cycladean, swift from pirate's prow, flushes
His mainsail till old Sunium's past;
And next we skirted that supinest swamp,
Flowered with the pure white bolls of cotton-grass,
Where the decaying frames of the old trees
(I scarcely know how sprouting from the rocks,
Home of the wildcat, and the panther's house)
Lay prostrate: wrecks of the fiery storm,
That swept away their groves, and, vanquished, cast
To dry and whiten on the careless stones
Beneath the unheeding sky. Then eastward,
As I yet pursued that way, last coming
To the sheer untrammelled precipice that hangs
Forever wall against the small romance, —
The steading small, the little human nook
With its three speaking roofs, some pastoral smoke
Soft issuing from those hearths, a token glad
Sent to the laughing children leaving school,
And the tanned ploughman as he homeward stalks
Ached to the bone, and ragged as the wolf
That preys upon his vitals; soothed he sees.
Poised in my airy pinnacle, I paint
(The darting swallow whirring swiftly by)
At dizzy depths, far in the valley's womb,
The zigzag coil of alders, a black thread,
The serpentine progression of the Stream
That plays its rival flute-notes all the year;
See the herds feeding on the tiresome hills,
Enormous to the herdsman, and to me
As flat and motionless as I to him
Obliterate; and in truth, how sweet,
And never half as sweet the human thought!
Then wished I for some chat with roguish lad,
Or idle gossip fresh from parlors full
Of sewing charities, where ladies meet
And thread the needle, but employ the ear;
E'en the dry call of herd-boy to his cows,
His endless goaf , reiterate o'er the fields;
Or the white phantom of an ancient maid
Doing its shopping on a pistareen;
Or the lame parson's sulky, time-worn trap,
Sahara's sermon creaking in the wheel.

In this upraised seclusion from the race
Which holds the mirror to the earnest soul,
And bids it scan itself, and set its rate,
How rapid fly our self-conceits afar!
There in the sole unspeaking life of things,
Only the sky for answer, or the rocks
Stretched out beneath, and seeming clouds asleep;
And the bright spruces that engross the eye
Along the sharp horizon, and content,
So fine and lovely their pathetic grace:
Set in the rocks, apart and sweet and lone,
Like some chaste maid who still attracts us on;
The twittering snow bird and the red chewink,
All voices for that place, and man so far!
Then search we out the mazy village-roads,
Stealing from town to town, a sweet response
Greeting our hearts where human feet have trod;
And village spire, and gleams of pine-clad lake,
And rippling river playful in the sun,
A glance of human sunshine on the shore
Where labor pulsates; all these signs, and more,
That earth, from this divorce. Oh! far apart,
Then, when the dying orb behind the range,
Gilds the Sierra, and on this, the night
Thrown from his Alpine shoulders, fills our souls.