Classic Poem

I

Now , when the mocking-bird returned, from his Florida winter,
Sings where the sprays of the elm first touch the plumes of the cypress;
When on the southern porch the stars of the jessamine sparkle
Faint in the dusk of leaves; and the thirsty ear of the Poet
Calls for the cup of song himself must mix ere it gladden,—
Careful vintager first, though latest guest at the banquet,—
Where shall he turn? What foreign Muse invites to her vineyard?
Out of what bloom of the Past the wine of remoter romances?
Foxy our grapes, of earthy tang and a wildwood astringence
Unto fastidious tongues; but later, it may be, their juices,
Mellowed by time, shall grow to be sweet on the palates of others.
So will I paint in my verse the forms of the life I am born to,
Not mediæval, or ancient! For whatso hath palpable colors,
Drawn from being and blood, nor thrown by the spectrum of Fancy,
Charms in the Future even as truth of the Past in the Present.

II

Not for this, nor for nearer voices of intimate counsel,—
When were ever they heeded?—but since I am sated with visions,
Sated with all the siren Past and its rhythmical phantoms,
Here will I seek my songs in the quiet fields of my boyhood,
Here, where the peaceful tent of home is pitched for a season.
High is the house and sunny the lawn: the capes of the woodlands
Bluff, and buttressed with many boughs, are gates to the distance,
Blue with hill over hill, that sink as the pausing of music.
Here the hawthorn blossoms, the breeze is blithe in the orchards,
Winds from the Chesapeake dull the sharper edge of the winters,
Letting the cypress live, and the mounded box, and the holly;
Here the chestnuts fall and the cheeks of peaches are crimson,
Ivy clings to the wall and sheltered fattens the fig-tree.
North and South are as one in the blended growth of the region,
One in the temper of man, and ancient, inherited habits.

III

Yet, though fair as the loveliest landscapes of pastoral England,
Who hath touched them with song? and whence my music, and whither?
Life still bears the stamp of its early struggle and labor,
Still is shorn of its color by pious Quaker repression,
Still is turbid with calm, or only swift in the shallows.
Gone are the olden cheer, the tavern-dance and the fox-hunt,
Muster at trainings, buxom lasses that rode upon pillions,
Husking-parties and jovial home-comings after the wedding,
Gone, as they never had been!—and now, the serious people
Solemnly gather to hear some wordy itinerant speaker
Talking of Temperance, Peace, or the Right of Suffrage for Women.
Sport, that once like a boy was equally awkward and restless,
Sits with thumb in his mouth, while a petulant ethical bantling
Struts with his rod, and threatens our careless natural joyance.
Weary am I with all this preaching the force of example,
Painful duty to self, and painfuller still to one's neighbor,
Moral shibboleths, dinned in one's ears with slavering unction,
Till, for the sake of a change, profanity loses its terrors.

IV

Clearly, if song is here to be found, I must seek it within me:
Song, the darling spirit that ever asserted her freedom,
Soaring on sunlit wing above the clash of opinions,
Poised at the height of Good with a sweeter and lovelier instinct!
Call thee I will not, my life's one dear and beautiful Angel.
Wayward, faithful and fond; but, like the Friends in the Meeting,
Waiting, will so dispose my soul in the pastoral stillness,
That, denied to Desire, Obedience yet may invite thee!